Page 35 of Big Little Spells

I’m not proud of my reaction then, because it’s too much like my reaction that night. I let that throb of power deep within me lash out without any attempt at controlling it.

And I’m not aiming at the wall he made.

I’m aiming at him.

He blocks me—of course he does—but a lash of anger sparks back at me, and better yet, I can read it on his face. A surprise, because it is a tiny chink in his famous icy control.

In all the ways he’s slapped me down over the years, it’s never before been with even a hint of his temper.

And while, yes, as a teenager, I had a stupid, mortifying crush on the man, the myth, the legend—his many slap-downs then never once reverberated deep within me like sex itself.

It makes me angry enough to try again, even knowing full well I’ll never win. He did challenge me after all. You could at least try.

I spit lightning at him, but not like I did the night everything was ruined. The night I left. I hold back a little, and of course that’s stupid. Because Nicholas Frost knows everything, has seen everything. My pulled punch is nothing to the likes of him.

But Nicholas is struggling with his temper tonight. He doesn’t show it on his face any longer, not after that first unmistakable flash, but somehow I know it’s still there. Somehow I know...it isn’t lightning that will win this war. I see it, like one of my visions.

I need to touch him.

It makes no sense, and Hecate knows it’s asking for sheer disaster when this little battle of wills is less like a proper fight and more like foreplay.

But before I can even take a step forward, before I can even reach out to try and press my fingertips to his skin the way everything inside me is screaming that I should—

I can’t.

He has wrapped himself in some kind of protection, some kind of ward, and his eyes are bluer than I’ve ever seen them. I feel his gaze inside me, like he’s the one touching me.

When he speaks it’s not out loud. Just inside my head. You can bluster and fight all you want, witchling, but we both know what you’d do to protect your sister and your friends. What you already did. To be effective, you must have access to your full power.

Think you can handle it? I shoot back at him.

Unwisely.

Probably.

There’s more of that wild blue gaze. The next full moon will rise on Beltane. You will meet me at Frost House at midnight.

I want to challenge that, too, but the truth comes at me hard. Of course I’ll be there. I’ll meet him anywhere. I always have.

I don’t know what shows on my face, but the temper in him seems to ebb then. A high tide receding, and it’s not until I realize I can’t do anything to stop it that I realize something else.

I’m not afraid of his temper. On the contrary, I crave it.

I threw my own at him because what I wanted was his.

What I’m afraid of is this.

This...moment between us, that swells like a song too frightening to sing. The way he looks at me. The way it feels.

As if all of this has been nothing more than smoke and mirrors, storms and lightning flashes, to protect us both from the quiet immensity of this—

He disappears then. Not dramatically. No thunderclaps or raven caws. He’s simply gone. And it’s wrong.

It’s all terribly wrong.

I don’t want to think about that last moment, that impossible song. Maybe I can’t, though I can still feel the ache of it inside me.

What I think instead is that he’s ruined my night, once again. He’s very good at it. But Emerson and my friends are still in that bar and I am not a teenager any longer. What I am is suddenly far too sober and definitely too freaking old to let him keep wrecking me whenever he feels like it.

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