Page 45 of The Witch They Fear

I pull the door back open. He's watching me with that half-smirk, storm-blue eyes lit up with the particular satisfaction of someone who just played the one card that would keep me in the game.

Asshole. He knew that would work.

"What do you know about it?" I ask.

He examines his fingernails. "Oh, now I'm worthy of your attention? Thought you were going to go back into your cottage and play loner like the biggest sad sack on campus." A half-grin. "That's supposed to be my gig, Hex. I don't appreciate the competition."

"Someone carved that into my door after I moved in. You said you recognize it." I cross my arms. "So either tell me what it is or stop wasting my time."

He grins. Doesn't answer. Of course he doesn't—giving me what I want would end the conversation, and ending the conversation isn't what he came here for.

Fine. Fuck. I’m going to have to play his game if I want information.

I plaster a fake smile on my lips and change my tune.

"My name is Calypso. Calypso Dellaby." I extend my hand out to him. An olive branch. A human gesture. "Since we haven't been properly introduced."

He looks at my hand. His smirk sharpens. His eyes drop to my outstretched fingers, then track up my arm—slow, deliberate, taking inventory of my wrist, my shoulder, the curve of my neck, before landing back on my face. He looks at me the way a cat looks at a bird that just hopped closer.

The second my hand crosses the doorframe, he grabs my wrist.

Not gentle. His fingers close around my wrist like a vice—cool and hard and absolute—and before I can process it he's pulling, yanking me out of the cottage, off the porch, around the side of the building. My feet leave the step and hit grass and the world whips past in a blur of dark oaks and garden shadows and then my back is against the cottage wall and Kage is in front of me, one hand still on my wrist, the other planted flat against the wall beside my head.

"What the fuck—"

"Shh." Close. So close I can feel the word against my jaw. The stone wall is cold against my shoulder blades and damp from the night air. His body blocks the porch light, the path, the sky—everything reduced to the six inches of charged air between his chest and mine and the smell of him, cedar and sweat and old iron, filling my lungs whether I want it there or not.

The contact hits me like a live wire. His fingers on my wrist—heat shoots up my arm and explodes behind my sternum, my magic lurching toward him so hard my ribs ache with it. Every inch of skin where he's touching me is buzzing, tingling, awake in a way that feels like the opposite of the dampeners.

Like twelve years of numbness being ripped off in one second.

I try to yank free. His grip doesn't budge.

He leans in. Dips his head. And inhales—a long, slow breath drawn along the line of my neck, from my collarbone to the hinge of my jaw. A sound comes out of him—low, guttural, caught between a grunt and a groan—and his fingers tighten on my wrist.

"God," he mutters against my skin. "You smell like a lit fuse."

"Let go of me." My voice comes out wrong. Too breathless. Too aware. I can feel my pulse slamming against his fingers where they're wrapped around my wrist, and the heat pooling low in my belly is making me furious because it has no right to be there—not for this, not for a man who just dragged me out of my own home and pinned me against a wall in the dark.

"Your magic's doing that thing again." He pulls back just enough to look at my face. Storm-blue eyes, inches away. The scar catches the moonlight. "The pulling. You feel it too, right? That current?"

"I feel you assaulting me. Let. Go."

He doesn't let go. He shifts his weight instead—crowding closer, his chest pressing against mine now, pinning me harder against the stone. One knee edges between my legs. He's watching me with a focus that borders on clinical, cataloguing my reactions the way I catalogue everyone else's. My shaking hands. My rapid breathing. The flush climbing up my neck that I can feel but can't stop.

"You're trembling," he says. Not concerned. Amused. Like he's poking a hornet's nest with a stick and enjoying the buzz. "Relax, Hex. I'm not going to hurt you."

"You're pinning me to a wall." My magic is roaring inside me, clawing to get out.

"And you're letting me." He grins. The scar pulls his lip and the moonlight catches his teeth and he looks like exactly what he is—something dangerous that's having fun. "All that power in your body and you're just standing here shaking. What are you waiting for?"

The sparks.

They're back—flickering at my fingertips, little arcs of light dancing across my knuckles. He sees them. His eyes drop to my hands and his whole body changes—shoulders rolling forward, chin dropping, like a wolf that just caught a scent. His tongue drags across his lower lip.

"There she is," he murmurs. "There's the fire. Knew you had it in you, Hex. You just needed a push."

"I didn't need anything from you—"