She gives me a stern mom face, and I parrotokayback to her.
“Tell Parker I say hello, and if he needs to talk or anything else, he can call me anytime.”
We say our goodbyes, and they continue on with whatever they were doing before they spotted Sabin and I coming out of the spell shop. I pick up the box of spells at my feet and scan everything around us, spotting three out of the five members of Pebble’s coven. I look over to Sabin, and he’s doing the same thing.
“You’re a good guy, Sabin Gamull,” I tell him, a huge smile taking over my face.
He looks at me confused for a moment before leaning down and giving me a sweet kiss.
“You look like the kind of guy mothers should hide their daughters from, but inside you’re a handkerchief toting, Pride & Prejudice loving, stargazing, romantic, who has my back...literally. I am one lucky girl.”
Sabin pulls open the back of the car and takes the box of spells from my hand to set them inside. I let out a surprised squeal when he suddenly grabs me out of nowhere, pivots me so he’s supporting my weight, and dips me back until I’m a foot off the pavement. He kisses me deeply and thoroughly as he dips me, like we’re part of some grand dance finale from the 1950s.
When he’s kissed me nice and properly mindless, he swoops me back up, steadies me and boops my nose. “You’re just now realizing how lucky you are?” he asks, a cheeky tone in his playful voice. “You’ve got to get quicker on the uptake. Now let’s get back and figure out what to do about the elders and your set of stalker paladin.”
He twirls his keys around his finger as he swaggers to the passenger side and opens the door for me. I watch his ass as he moves, and when he turns around I run my gaze lasciviously and with no shame up his body.
Fuck, lucky girl is a serious understatement!
34
“Shit!” Knox exclaims, as he calls a short sword into his hand and the blade appears in his palm instead of the grip.
He jerks his hand back, and the sword tumbles toward the ground, disappearing before it can make contact with the dirt. He eyes the cut on his hand, staring at it like it’s a traitor that’s betrayed him in the deepest of ways, before reaching his palm out to me. I take it trying to fight my smile and push Healing magic into him. I watch as my magic cooperates and the skin knits together. I feel bad that he’s having trouble figuring out the magic weapons, but it’s been good for practice for me with my Healing magic.
“Why does that keep happening?” Knox asks, a hint of a whine in his tone.
“It’s the sequence you’re calling. If you push too much magic, too fast, into the runes you want to activate, then the sequence gets fucked up. That’s why you keep getting blade first, or the whole weapon sideways. You have to slow the flow down, feed it into each rune until you get the combination you want. Don’t flood the sequence.”
Knox lets out a frustrated huff and twists his arm to stare at the runes there. The muscles in his arm tighten with the movement, and it sends a flutter of desire through me. Seeing his gorgeous body withmymarks all over it sparks something in me in a primal, neanderthal-ish way.By the stars, I want to get him naked.I clench my thighs against that thought.Not the time or place, Vinna.I pull myself away from my sex-filled plans for later and refocus.
Knox is staring at the runes on his arm, and I’d swear he’s giving them a lecture. I chuckle because I talk to my magic too. He looks up at me, chagrin leaking into his features at getting caught.
“How the fuck do you make it look so easy?” he asks.
I snicker and hold up my index finger. “One, because I’m a badass, and two, I’ve got six years of practice on you. The thing is, I didn’t have anyone around with healing magic to fix all my booboos, so Sentinel up, and let’s fucking do this!”
I swat his chest with the back of my hand and raise an eyebrow at him in challenge. Bastien’s laugh bounces towards us from the chair he’s perched in on the back patio, and Knox aims a glare at him.
“Laugh it up, chuckles, we’ll see how many cuts you end up with when you get your runes,” Knox threatens.
“I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to figure out which end of the sword not to grab,” Bastien retorts.
“Them’s fighting words, Fierro! Should we bet on it?”
Bastien’s grin widens. “Yes, Howell, I think a friendly wager is in order; name your stakes.”
“Shit’s getting real if they’re using last names,” Valen announces, as he strides through the sliding glass door and plops into a seat next to his twin. “What’d I miss?”
“Knox likes the sharp and pointy side of his weapons, Bastien’s ego is on a level that should concern us all, and Vinna is a badass.”
I grin at Ryker as he sums up what’s happening for Valen, but he seems singularly focused on the task I just assigned him. Bright yellow-orange magic crackles across his skin as he tries to activate the runes on his back that create the staff. He’s done really well with calling his short swords and daggers so far, and has graduated to what I find are the harder of the sequences, the long sword and the staff.
“You’re leaking,” I tell him.
Ryker furrows his brow in concentration, and the crackle of magic sparks out, but no staff appears in his hand. I walk over to him.
“These weapons were harder for me; it helped sometimes if I physically touched the first couple of runes, like it helped my instincts or brain realize which set of runes I was needing. You can try that if you want, but be careful; it’s become a habit for me now to call these runes that way, and that might not be a good thing. You still want to make sure you can call them without touch. So focus on how each rune feels as you call it, memorize that feeling and it will be easier to call that particular rune or put it in a sequence when you need it.”
