I sit up. “You loved that?”
“Such a good actress.” He brushes hair from my eyes. “Those were my favorite days. Sometimes I’d go into the bookshop just so you could verbally assault me.”
I laugh. “You’re joking.”
He stills. “Blair, even a moment of your pretend hate is better than a lifetime without you.”
I kiss his chest and smooth the hairs that sit over his pecs. “I hated you for so long.”
“No, you didn’t. That wasn’t hate, like I said. It was pretend hate. You loved me the whole time.”
“No, I didn’t.”
He launches up, grabs me around my waist. I squeal, and he flips me onto my back. Devlin entwines his fingers in mine and stares down at me. Butterflies clog up my throat as I look at this man. He’s so beautiful. He’s not perfect. He’s damaged like me, but he’s so perfectly everything.
“I will tickle you if you don’t admit that you loved me.”
I smile. “Of course I loved you.”
“That’s better.”
He drops his mouth to my neck and nuzzles me. He stops and his head pops up. There’s sadness in his eyes. “There’s something I want you to know about my power.”
I curl a tendril of his hair around my finger. “What is it?”
“After my parents died, I went to live with my uncle. I told him about the power, but instead of helping me understand this gift, he used it against me. He tried to get me to see the future of sporting events so that he could bet on them, make money.”
Devlin sits back and I rise, pulling the comforter to my chest. “He used you.”
He nods and bends his knee, dropping his arm to rest on it. “When I couldn’t see visions, he beat me, locked me in closets.” He shakes his head. “I still can’t have a door on a closet.” He nods to his own, which is an open doorframe that leads into a room lined with shelves with racks and racks of clothes.
I touch his knee. “Your grandmother told me some of it, and I’m so sorry that it happened to you.”
“She told you?”
“I hope you’re not mad.”
He takes my hand and kisses it. “Now how could I be mad at you? You’ve just given me the best sex of my life.”
I swat him. “Is that all I’m good for?”
He shoots me a stern look. “You know that I’m joking.”
“Wait. It’s not the best sex of your life?”
“Oh, it’s the best sex. But you mean more to me than that.”
I kiss the back of his hand and let both of them fall onto the bed. I sigh. “Your power…you’ve let it control you for so long, too long.”
“There’s the pot calling the kettle black,” he jokes.
“You can see another person’s future. You could help people, Devlin. Like, a lot of people.”
He sinks back on the bed, dragging me on top of him. I’m not complaining. Lying with him has become my new favorite thing. “How do you figure?”
“What if there were things in a person’s future that they should know? What if you could help other wizards or scientists find cures for things—diseases, ways to improve society. What if you could do that?”
He shakes his head. “And what if all I found were people who wanted to lock me up and extract my power?”
