Page 14 of A Touch Enchanted

“I’m pretty sure he knows what to do about it. But one minute he’s all over me, pinning me against the wall, and the next he’s backing off, all regretful.”

I wasn’t completely obtuse. I fully understood that he wanted me while our magic was activated. I’dfeltjust how much his magic wanted me.

But that didn’t say anything about what Donovan wanted, separate from the energy that burned between us. He’d been so freaked out by his arousal the first time that he didn’t talk to me for weeks. It wasn’t like he’d suddenly changed his mind. He only showed up at my apartment because whatever Finn had said to him had finally gotten through. It didn’t make the situation any less confusing for me, though. Even if it was just the magic.

Kenna laid her hand over mine. “What is it thatyouwant?”

That was the million-dollar question. The truth was, I had no clue. Of course, I found Donovan attractive. He was a Latham and I was a straight, allosexual woman with a pulse. All of them, including Cole’s grumpy ass, radiated sexual energy like they’d been put on this earth for the sole purpose of toe-curling pleasure.

But attraction was basic. Attraction fueled the lust-driven side effects of using magic. It didn’t last and didn’t make for a solid foundation in a relationship, and at this point in my life, I was looking for solid.

I lifted the second beer to my lips. “I think I should keep drinking until I’m not thinking about this at all anymore.”

Kenna smirked. “You’ll have to deal with it eventually.”

“And you’ll have to deal with your magic eventually, but if you can play the avoidance game, so can I.”

That wiped the smirk off her face. “You’re a mean drunk, Fischer.”

“I’m a loving drunk. Just ask Audrey.”

“It’s true.” Audrey took a seat on the stool next to me, and Thora took the one on her opposite side. Brooke would be joining us soon. “Give her a few more drinks, and she’ll start petting me like a cat and telling me how pretty I am. She’s a great confidence booster.”

Kenna rolled her eyes, but a small smile played around her lips. She couldn’t stay mad at me for long. Our friendship ran too deep for that.

By the time she got Thora and Audrey drinks, business at the bar had picked up and she had too much going on to stand around and chat with us, so we grabbed one of the last open tables. Brooke arrived a few minutes later and set a pot with some dirt in it on the table next to her drink. Her silver bracelets clinked together as she swept her honey-blonde curls off her neck and pulled them into a sloppy bun.

“Who’s your friend?” I nodded to the pot.

“This is Betsy. She’s being shy, so I’m hoping a little social activity will encourage her to show off those gorgeous leaves I know she’s hiding in there.”

We all said our hellos to Betsy, very accustomed to Brooke’s penchant for naming plants and carrying them around as if they were babies or sweater-wearing Yorkies. She owned the only greenhouse on the island and supplied every festival and parade with flowers. She was constantly experimenting with new breeds by grafting stems together and caring for them as they grew. Some needed a little more encouragement than others. Hence the carrying pots around town. No one gave as much love to plants as Brooke.

“I’m doing some cross-pollinating in greenhouse three, but this one is a little slow to grow.” She touched the dirt and rubbed it between her fingers. “Not sure why, but I’ll figure it out eventually. What’s new with all of you? I feel like I haven’t seen you in ages.”

Audrey and Thora filled Brooke in on the beginning stages of their wedding planning. Both of their diamonds caught the dim lighting in the bar, but the shine on those rocks couldn’t compare to the glow on both their faces. They would both be beautiful brides, and nothing made me happier than seeing good things happen to the best people.

“Enough about wedding stuff.” Thora turned to me. “How has practice been going with Donovan? Have you been managing the side effects okay?”

“Yes?” At least we’d stayed dressed. As far as I was concerned, that was the best I could do when it came to managing my arousal. “I don’t get it, though. The side effects are supposed to go away when we form an emotional connection. But we already have one. We’re friends.”

“Friends.” Audrey made a face like she’d just sucked on a particularly sour lemon. “Sure. If that’s what you want to call it.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “Wearefriends.”

“I’m not denying that you are, sweetie.” She squeezed my arm. “I’m just saying, the way he looks at you sometimes is anything but friendly. And because of that, maybe your emotional block isn’t going to be anything like what Thora and I had to overcome.”

This wasn’t the first time Audrey had claimed Donovan’s feelings ran a little deeper, and normally I trusted her judgment. She had an intuition about people that tended to be spot on. I just thought she was wrong in this case. I’d already thrown myself at Donovan once, and he rejected me. She must’ve just been projecting. Happy and in-love people wanted to pair everyone up. It was like a couple’s form of nesting.

“Anyway, moving on. I think there’s a reason why the curse is hovering around the main beach versus the forest. What if it’s guarding something underwater? Something it doesn’t want us to find. And that’s why it’s going after me and Donovan so hard right now.”

Audrey’s eyes lit up. There were few things she liked more than theorizing about the legend. While all of us had grown up with it, it had always been more than a story to Audrey. Her grandmother treated it like a history lesson and passed down every bit of knowledge she’d acquired over her lifetime to her only grandchild. Unfortunately, most of the legend had turned out to be either misleading or flat-out false. Only the order of the attacks seemed to be true.

Which left the rest of it up to us to figure out on our own. But we all believed that uncovering the truth would give us the ammunition we needed to defeat the curse for good. In just under a month, we’d already discovered that we weren’t meant to give up our magic or our memories like the original descendants had; that there had been a thirteenth descendant who had most likely been the one to cast the curse, not Ophiuchus as we had believed; and that we’d always been the ones who were meant to regain our magic and fight. It wasn’t a lot to go on, but it was a hell of a lot more than we’d known before the curse had been unleashed again.

“What do you think it could be guarding?” Audrey asked.

“I’m not sure.” As soon as Donovan and I got a decent handle on our magic, or at least got to the point where we could hold each other for longer than five minutes without wanting to shed all our clothes as quickly as possible, I intended to do a deeper dive in the ocean to find out. “It has to have something to do with how it plans to trap us here, though. Maybe I can dismantle it before it gets to that point.”

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