“No, the point is that you are getting mad at me for doing exactly what we both wanted me to do. Magic put me up there. Without me even calling it or gathering it or anything. I just did it. I just flew,” she protested.
It didn’t reallyfeellike a protest, however.
And had she gone up on tiptoe?
Maybe. Maybe.
Her facewassuddenly closer to his.
“I’m not mad about that, Mina.”
“But you’re not happy. And you should be.”
“Because you can avoid being flung out of a sky door?”
“No. Because now you probably don’t need to give me lessons anymore.”
There that settles it, she thought. Only somehow, he didn’t pull away. Instead, his eyes seemed to search her face. They trailed all over it, as if trying to find a crack in her certainty. Before they met her gaze once more.
“Really,” he murmured.
So she lifted her chin. Tried to seem confident. “Yes.”
“All right, then. Make a knife.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean make something that can kill me, before I kill you.”
“So you still think you could just murder me in cold blood, then.”
The light in his eyes shifted. Bright to dark.
Then they dropped to her throat. Her fluttering pulse.
“It isn’t a matter ofcould. It’s a matter of being unable to stop myself.”
“Fine. Fine. Give me a second, and I will. I just need to concentrate,” she said, only even as she did, she knew it wasn’t going to happen. The second she tried to let it, her whole body just became so much more aware of him. Her skin bristled; she felt her back arch away from the wall he was coming close to pressing her against.
She had to stop.
So of course the magic didn’t bloom.
“Nothing seems to be happening,” he said. And not even smugly. His voice was soft; his gaze had drifted down between them. It made her think of him looking at other things—like the fact that her dress had ruffled just a little. She could see a lot of her own thigh, when she followed his eyes.
Which only added to the issue.
“Because you’re distracting me,” she burst out, as that gaze roamed back up to her face. While she kept her own on anything but him. The floor to their side, the door that wasn’t there anymore.Please, god, let him stop, she thought.
But he didn’t.
“Or you’re still avoiding fully giving in to the feelings you need to.”
“I’m doing nothingbutgive in. I’m barely anything other than that.”
“And yet you still can’t make a blade. So I hardly think stopping now would be a good idea. In fact, I think we should do the same thing we did yesterday; we should try to build on thefoundation we made, explore things that you like slowly, more deeply, and in a way you could never deny—” he said, one seductive word tumbling after the other until she just couldn’t take it.
She had to cut him off.
