Strength I didn’t know I possessed filled me, and I tore my hands from Nikolas’s and backed away from him. Surprise flickered on his face before he began to stalk me silently, his intent clear in his eyes. What the hell was wrong with him? Didn’t he realize how much I could hurt him right now?
“Nikolas, please stop,” I pleaded as he continued to advance on me. “I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to hurt you.”
Instead of answering, he blurred out of sight. A second later, I screamed as hands gripped my shoulders from behind. I knew it was him, but instinct took over and the power I had just reigned in lashed out at him. The Mori surged forward, and I cried out as I latched onto my power at the last second to keep the brunt of it from hitting him. I smelled ozone a split second before there was a crackling pop, followed by something crashing into the wooden seats behind me.
I spun around, and my heart stuttered when I saw Nikolas sprawled unmoving on the floor. “Nikolas!”
In seconds, I was at kneeling at his side, shaking him roughly. “Nikolas, wake up! Oh God, please don’t be dead.” He didn’t move, and I pressed my ear to his chest, swallowing back a sob when I heard his heartbeat and felt his chest rise and fall. I rose over him and peered at his closed eyes and slightly parted lips that made him look like he was merely sleeping. He was alive, but I had no idea what my power had done to him. My chest squeezed painfully until I could barely breathe.
His lids flickered open and his smoky gaze locked with mine, making the breath catch in my throat. Before I could find my voice, he gave me a lazy smile. “I said you could do it.”
“You jerk! You . . . you asshole!” I punched his chest hard and scrambled to my feet. Angry tears burned the back of my throat as I ran toward the door. To think I had been worried about hurting him. If I wasn’t afraid I’d actually kill him this time, I’d turn around and give him a real dose of my power.
“Umph!” I grunted when I ran smack into his chest. Too angry to speak or look at him, I tried to move around him, but he grabbed me before I could get past him.
“Sara, we needed to test your power to see if you can use it at will, and now we know.”
“At will?” I blazed at him. “I almost fried your ass! If I hadn’t pulled it back in time, you’d be singing a different tune. No, actually, you’d probably be dead.”
“But you did control it, as I knew you would. You want to know how I knew that?”
He let go of my arms, and I crossed them to keep from throttling him. “Please, educate me.”
“I know because if there is one thing I have learned about you it’s that you are incapable of hurting someone – unless they are trying to hurt you or someone you care about.” He gave me one of his infuriating smiles. “Then all bets are off.”
Feeling my anger abate under the force of his smile, I looked away from him. I used to watch Roland and some of the other boys back home using sweet words and boyish grins to charm girls, but Nikolas was in a whole different league. “You scared the hell out of me,” I said, unable to keep a note of hurt out of my voice. “I thought . . . ”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to frighten you, but the only way to get you to show your power was to expose you to a demon and to put you on the defensive. Now we know what you can do and we can work with that, and teach you to call on it when you need it.”
I shook my head fervently. “I am never doing that again.”
“Not that, no,” he replied calmly, ignoring my outburst. “We won’t have to try anything that drastic next time.”
“Next time? What part of never do you not understand?” I practically shouted at him.
His eyebrows rose. “So you refuse to use your power on me again, no matter what I do?”
“That’s right.”
“And how will you stop it?”
I knew he was trying to trick me somehow, but I couldn’t stop from asking, “What do you mean?”
“If I bring my Mori out again and come after you, what’s to stop your power from attacking me again?”
“I will stop it.”
“How?”
So much for his faith in me. “I just will, okay? I know what it is now, and I won’t let it get away from me again.”
He did not respond, and my words hung in the silence between us until the full meaning of what I’d said hit me. That sneaky bastard! He had planned this all along.
“So now that we have that settled, why don’t we try something easy that doesn’t involve throwing me across the room?” He looked entirely too self-satisfied for someone who had just gotten his butt kicked. “If you are up for it, that is.”