“I can arrange that,” he says gallantly like he’s the best gentleman in all the world. “But before you can go on your tour down memory lane, would you please excuse Blair and myself?”
“Of course.”
And then Nana floats away with her shoulders lifted as if she doesn’t have a care in the world. To her credit, she probably doesn’t.
As soon as she’s gone, I glare at Devlin. “Give me back my power.”
He glances up at the sky and shakes his head as if silently asking,Why me?
“Just try,” I explain. “I know that you can’t figure it out, but let’s just try. I don’t want it back, gods know, but I can’t have you running around town convincing every woman to sleep with you.”
His jaw tightens. “Is that what you think of me? That I would use your power to have massive orgies?”
“Yes, I do.”
He scoffs but says nothing. “How would you like me to give it back? Put our hands together? Maybe press our foreheads to one another and hope that it happens?”
“You don’t have to be smart,” I snap. “I just know that you can’t be trusted with my magic.”
“And you think that I wantyouhavingmine?” He touches his chest. “I barely want it myself. If I’d known this would happen, I never would have spoken those words.”
His face contorts in hurt, but there’s more than that—worry. He’sworried.The great playboy Devlin Ross is worried about something? Impossible.
“What is your power?”
He punches his hands into his pockets and rips his gaze away. A moment later he sighs. “Sometimes I have visions of things that are going to happen. They always come true, always, and right now I’m waiting on one that will help me decipher the next piece of an invention that I’m working on. I’ve been feeling it coming, but now…”
“But now I have your power,” I murmur.
He drops his head for a moment and then glances at me through his thick eyelashes. “Yes, you do.”
It takes a second for this to sink in. Devlin can see the future. His magical power is that he has visions. “You… No one knows this.”
My tone makes it sound like an accusation, but there’s more to it than that. I’m shocked, really. This knowledge not only surprises me. It’s a blow. Devlin and I dated for months before I ever told him about my power, and he never, ever told me about his. I didn’t even know hehada special gift until tonight.
“Some things people don’t need to know.” His playboy mask drops for a second, and I see the vulnerability in his eyes. “There are people who would use it against me and for their own gain.”
His tone suggests this isn’t a theory. It’s a fact, one that’s happened to him before, and against my working brain, the smart part of my head that tells me not to feel things for this jerk, an unexpected wave of sympathy overwhelms me.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
“There’s nothing to be sorry about except that you have something that I need back. Now.”
And I can help that, how?“Maybe our powers will reverse tomorrow.”
“I don’t think so.” He glances over his shoulder, out into the garden that’s still bathed in moonlight. “You have to come home with me.”
“What? You just jumped from zero to sixty with nothing in between. I’m not going home with you.”
“But you’ll have the vision.”
I scoff. “What makes you think that I’ll have it?”
“You will if you’re near me,” he states stoically, dragging his gaze from the garden to me. There’s a fierceness in his eyes that sucks the breath from my lungs. It takes a moment before my body remembers how to breathe. “If you’re with me day and night, you’ll have the vision that I need.”
“How do you know? You could be saying that so that you can get me to your house and unleash my own power on me, keep me chained up as your sex slave for days or weeks on end. I can see it now—you’ll have me lashed to your bed so that you can play your sick games with me anytime you want.”
He smirks. “Is this supposed to beyourfantasy or mine?”
