The stubble on his chin whispered across her skin as he said hoarsely, “Seven years asleep has been worth it for these three days with you.”
He watched her for a second longer. No matter what happened, she would always remember him just like this: a mess of sandy brown hair, kind green eyes, straight nose in a shadowy face, his lips twisted into a quizzical bow.
They kissed for a long time in the darkness. Slowly his body melted and settled into hers, his tongue exploring deep inside her mouth, his knee tucked between her thighs, his chest rising and falling against hers as they breathed together.
She thought of undressing him. Surprised, he looked down and watched her long and perfect pink nails sliding down his faded T-shirt. She was so beautiful. He would never get used to her.
She rolled him onto his back and straddled him. Then she grabbed the hem of his T-shirt on either side, lifted it up, and smoothed her small hands up his bare chest. Just as in Shane’s car that morning, her admiration for his body would have embarrassed him except that it gave her pleasure and heated her blood. His blood heated with hers.
“Your turn,” he said, running his fingers underneath the cups of her bikini top. She shuddered at his touch. Slowly, seductively, she unhooked the top and pulled it off, exposing her perfect br**sts. Then, without turning around, she tossed the top over her shoulder. It rang a small basketball goal in the corner of his room.
“Score!” he exclaimed.
“Only if you have a condom,” she deadpanned. She winked at him. The extra drama provided by her false eyelashes set his skin on fire.
“I do.” He propped himself up on his elbows and looked into her eyes, searching for a bead on whether she really wanted to do this. She gazed steadily back at him. She was sure. She was scared, but she was sure.
To prove it, she unbuttoned his jeans and pulled his waistband until he helped her take his jeans and boxers off. He tugged her bikini bottoms down her thighs. All their clothes discarded, she eased on top of him again and massaged his hard length first with her hand, then with her power.
“Oh my Lord,” he breathed. Every second he thought his euphoria was too good to withstand, and every second he felt even better.
She felt the same way. As he watched her in the dim light, her pupils dilated, her brown eyes turning black.
He twisted underneath her and leaned over to peer into the top drawer of his nightstand. Reaching in carefully—Shane’s Glock was in there too, loaded now—he pulled out a condom packet. As he tore it open, he explained, “I bought them when we stopped for gas in St. George. I had high hopes for this day, and things are finally looking up, despite the argument, and the head trauma, and the escape from the fortieth floor.”
She laughed nervously, watching him put the condom on. He tried to put her at ease and felt a little like a dentist making small talk over the sound of the drill. “Seriously, did you ring that goal on purpose?”
“If I said no, I wouldn’t be a very good magician,” she joked, but he hadn’t taken her mind off what was about to happen. She watched his hands. Her breath came light and fast.
Slowly he rolled on top of her. Even more slowly he slid into her. She wrapped him in her power. His body was ablaze with his power and hers, her arousal and his own.
He grabbed both her hands and set his forehead against hers as he stroked inside her. “They were right to keep us apart,” he whispered.
She giggled between gasps of pleasure. “If we’d figured this out, they wouldn’t have been able to keep me away from you.”
“No. And I would not have done my homework.”
His joke didn’t get the laugh from her that he’d wanted. Instead, she thought of the night seven years ago when he first asked her out, and her parents said no and took away her power. Her homework had been reading Romeo and Juliet. She was afraid her story with Elijah would end the same way.
“Baby, don’t go there,” he coaxed her, brushing her curls away from her face. “We’ll be okay. We have each other’s backs now. They won’t be able to tear us apart again.”
He braced himself above her and stroked her harder, trying to get her mind off everything but their bodies and their power. It didn’t work. She felt as euphoric as before, but she was thinking hard about their future together. If they did survive, she wondered what the sex would be like when they were older and their power began to fade. She bet it would still be excellent. Power was delicious, but she had wanted him before, when he was only smart and funny and kind, with his hair in his eyes.
“I love you, too.” He kissed her mouth and thrust into her until they both were high.
Afterward he knitted his fingers into her thick hair and kissed her again, a long and thorough kiss of appreciation. He trailed more kisses high across her cheekbone and toward her hairline, following the smear of glittering makeup.
“I’m so sorry about this morning,” she said huskily.
“Me too,” he said between kisses.
“Powers make everything so complicated. We always have to remember why we liked each other in the first place in high school.”
“Yeah.” He wound one of her long curls around his finger.
“I wish this hadn’t happened,” she said, “and we could just lie here, and do it, and talk about rock bands, and the casino, and our lame parents, and the awful food in the high school cafeteria.”
He laughed. The high school cafeteria food had been truly awful. But he didn’t understand the rest of what she was saying. “Really? You wish this hadn’t happened? You wish you didn’t have power?”
She frowned. “I wouldn’t want to go back to thinking I was crazy. Having power is definitely better than that. But the Res or the casino or both are about to pin us like insects on a board. I wish I could go back to fourteen and start over. You could ask me to the prom, and I could go, and I would never float up to my parents’ living room chandelier.” She shuddered as he moved one finger along her collarbone. “How about you? Wouldn’t you rather start over?”
He shook his head against the pillow. “I always felt like half a person. Now I feel whole. You deserve a whole man.”
Her brows went down. She believed he loved his power, but she didn’t believe the reason had anything to do with her.
Then she remembered he could read her mind. Her dark eyes widened. She had screwed up everything again.
“No, you didn’t,” he grumbled. “Come here.” He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her on top of him.