I suck in a breath, and with it, just a touch of that magic. It zigzags inside me, lighting up my insides like a bonfire and bonding with my own magic, drawing it forth. It’s still a strange feeling for me, this electricity inside me. I’ve spent so many years without it, and now that it’s here, I’m not really sure what to do with it.
So, like so many other things in my life lately, I ignore it. Focus on the mundane instead. “Everything okay in here?”
He isn’t even breathing hard from his exertions when he answers, “Everything’s fine, Xandra.”
“Good.” I nod, but I’m not sure I believe him. The room is lit up like a beacon even though it’s only four in the morning. I’ve had a difficult time being in the dark since my less-than-conventional magic kicked in. I wonder whether it’s been the same for him. If every time he closes his eyes he remembers how close we came to losing each other.
Or maybe my fears are influencing him. I don’t know if that’s even possible, but it seems it could be. Some days I feel a grimness hanging over me, one that could come only from him. If that can happen, then it seems reasonable to think that my issues could become his as well.
I really hope that’s not the case. Declan’s existence is already so turbulent that I hate to think that I’m adding to it. But this soulbound thing is new for me, new for us, and I don’t know if either of us is exactly certain of what it means. Of how it will change us. Or how we’ll change each other.
Uncomfortable with the direction my thoughts are taking, I glance self-consciously around the room. It’s huge, the largest in the lake house Declan bought three days ago—with cash—because he wanted to be near me. Which is why I’m here now, standing in the middle of what for most people would be the great room, but for Declan is a place of sweat and ceremony.
He hasn’t done much to furnish it yet, just thrown down some mats for his rituals and brought in some of the magical objects that accompany him when he tours as a magician. He’s known as the greatest illusionist of our time, but that’s only because most of his audience doesn’t realize that what they’re seeing aren’t illusions at all. Instead, they are magic in its most potent form.
“I like what you’ve done with the place,” I tell him flippantly, wandering over to the twenty-foot-long credenza that stretches the length of the back wall. Yesterday I didn’t have time to explore the changes he made while I was at work. He was too busy rushing me into the bedroom the minute I walked through the door.
“It’s not much, but it’s home,” he deadpans as he does a particularly difficult combination. I watch him and try to keep my tongue from hanging out of my mouth at the way his muscles bunch and flow. He really is one incredibly gorgeous specimen of manhood.
Paying more attention to him than to anything in the room, I absently pick up one of the many athames lying on top of the credenza, then immediately wish I hadn’t as terror—bone-deep and vivid—rips through me. Not mine. Not Declan’s. I drop the magical dagger back onto the polished mahogany with a thunk.
I don’t want to know. What Declan did before me isn’t important. It’s what he does now, when we’re together, that matters. I grab onto the thought, repeat it like a mantra until I actually start to believe it. Until I forget the cloying taste of fear that ripped through my senses the moment I touched the ancient knife.
Making sure to give the rest of his stuff a wide berth—I’m not one to bury my head in the sand, but there are some things that even I’m aware I’m better off not knowing—I turn back just in time to see Declan stretch out his arms in a move that is all ancient warrior. I watch, fascinated, as his muscles stand out in stark relief and a bead of sweat drips slowly down his spine. Seconds later, fire explodes in a ring all around him, a blaze that starts out small but that grows to touch the ceiling in seconds.
Deep inside I recoil, my fear instinctive after I was nearly burned alive just days ago. But I work hard not to let my instant revulsion for the fire show. Declan is a fire element, the most powerful I’ve ever met, and I am afraid a rejection of the flame will somehow translate into a rejection of him. So I don’t move, don’t speak, barely even breathe, and watch with deliberately blank eyes as the fire winds itself around his chest and arms and legs.
He must sense my uneasiness, though, because with a flick of his hand he quenches the flames.
“You didn’t have to do that.”
He smiles—a slow, sexy curling of one corner of his mouth that melts my brain cells and my resolve.