Page 17 of A Heart of Winter
I’d had this conversation before, of course, not least with Michael when he’d been new to the world of magic. Michael had been easy to convince, because he’d wanted to believe. He’d wanted what magic had to offer him. People I’d told before had been in previous centuries, times when the average person believed in magic to begin with, so they didn’t assume I was in need of mental help when I started talking.
Kai was different. He was strong, and already had what he wanted in life. He was a sensible man who believed inmodern science and not whimsical flights of fancy. He’d once in conversation mentioned one of his father’s old fashioned superstitions with a tone of long-suffering amusement.
Because magic was silly.
Still, it had to come out. I wasn’t going to lie to him forever.
“The storms are my fault. Well, maybe not the blizzard. I don’t—I don’t know how it all works, exactly. I usually have better control than this.” He looked confused, and I could hardly blame him. I wasn’t making any sense, by the definition of a rational, sane modern man. So I took a deep breath, concentrated, and held out my hand, calling the moisture out of the air to coalesce in my palm.
This was usually the easiest prospect in the world, even in the middle of summer—it was easier in the summer, in fact, since the air held more moisture then, so calling it up was fast and simple. This time there was a strange tug deep inside me when I reached for the power, as if the magic itself was unmoored, and calling it to work had been more taxing than usual.
As though it had unseated my very core, and for a moment, I was left dizzy and reeling.
“Holy shit,” Kai muttered, and when I could focus again, it wasn’t hard to see why. I had a ball of ice in my hand, yes. But it wasn’t just the size of a snowball or an especially impressive ice cube. It was twice the size of a softball, outright weighing my hand down with the size of it. He looked up at me, eyes round with shock. “You. You did that. You said you’re—the snow? You made it snow?”
“When I was younger, once I accidentally caused a blizzard because”—I looked away, coughing into my free hand and trying to hide my blush—“a boy rejected me. I was—I was unhappy. I thought I had it under control after puberty, but it’s been acting up again lately.”
He stared into nothing, eyes focused in the distance. “The sudden storms in New York last month. And now it’s snowing here. You—Of course, you came here because snow in Minnesota isn’t ever newsworthy, but September blizzards in central Manhattan are unheard of.”
He believed me. Hadn’t even questioned it, once he understood what I was saying. Yes, I’d summoned a ball of ice out of nowhere, but even Michael had taken more convincing than one maneuver that could have been particularly clever sleight of hand.
Not that I was good at that, but I could be.
I swallowed and nodded. “I’m causing it. Because I can’t control myself. I would if I could, but I don’t know how to make it stop.”
Slumping against the passenger seat, I sighed, dejected at the ridiculousness of the situation. I was three hundred years old, an experienced and skilled witch, and I couldn’t control my own damned powers.
Kai, though . . . he smiled at me. “That’s incredible. I’m not going to lie, it’s going to take me a while to process this. I”—he looked down at the ball of ice, reached out and poked it with a finger—“I didn’t really believe in magic. Still wouldn’t if I hadn’t watched you do that. What else can you do?”
What else?
I stared at him. He wanted to know more about magic, not demand to know why I wasn’t doing a better job at stopping the snow? Not why I hadn’t been open about it right away? Well, it had only been a few days, I supposed. It was faster than I’d ever told anyone before. And then there was?—
“Gerda knows she’s a witch, doesn’t she?”
He paused a moment, biting his lip, before shaking his head. “Not exactly. There have just always been . . . odd things. Stuff she wanted that just seemed to happen. It could have been luck,but I took statistics in college. I know how likely luck that good is.” He ducked his head, giving me a boyish smile. “Then you tell me maybe you can help her, and then you tell me you’re magical. I mean, I never would have assumed all that, but the pieces fit together, don’t they?”
“There’s a bed still in there, right?” I asked, still staring at him, motioning toward his childhood house. “Because I have a sudden burning need to have sex with you.”
He laughed, but he was rushing out of the truck as he called behind him, “There definitely is. Condoms, too.”
Hell yes.
I dropped my ice ball on the ground and rushed after him.
Get Lucky
We tripped our way through the house, him half leading, half distracted by stopping to kiss me, pressing my body up against any handy hard surface.
The house was probably lovely, but it was mostly a blur of lips and breathless kissing and Kai.
So much Kai.
It had to be his childhood room, since the bed was a long twin, but definitely a twin. I couldn’t bring myself to care about the size of the bed; I just needed him closer. As close as I could get him.
We tumbled onto the bed together, tangled in clothes that were in various stages of removal, as we tried to get them off, tossing them this way and that, ignoring everything but each other and the skin we were baring as we went.
He threw my sweater onto a chair in the corner and started kissing his way down my chest, his fingers working on my pants, wrenching them and my underwear down past my hipsjust as his mouth reached my navel, and a moment later he was swallowing my cock down like a fucking master.
