Page 79 of Her Dreadful Will
“You could stop me,” she said, still pushing with her power, staring at the black swirls and sigils between her splayed fingers.
His hand closed around her wrist. “And you’d retaliate the second I tried anything. You’d paralyze me, suck out my soul, or turn me into a shaking mass of nerves. For someone who wants to do good, you have a lot of violent talismans.”
She pressed harder, testing the strength of the mandala, probing for weaknesses even as his breath turned short and sharp. Could she summon enough power to break through, to lay him bare and defenseless? She couldn’t deny the pleasure that licked through her soul at the thought.
A shiver ran over Achan’s body, and she met his eyes. “Are you afraid of me?”
“Yes.” The word escaped him in a groan that sent a soft tickle along her clit.
Magic flared inside Soleil—not the cerebral calm of her mind-flex affinity, but something deeper and more violent, a flame-eyed beast slavering for a fight, craving conflict. This wild magic wanted to be spent in glorious battle. “Fight me then.”
“I refuse to hurt you,” he said, hoarse and trembling, not with pain, but with the force of restraining the vast reservoir of power she’d sensed in him. The dam must be nearly bursting now, and she longed to see the flood it would release. Why wouldn’t he let go?
“Why won’t you fight me?” Soleil tipped her face up to his, her mouth an inch or two from his lips. “I deserve to be punished—you know I do. I screw with people’s wills. I put my fingers into their minds and I play around. Does it really help them, or does it hurt them? Who knows? I’m hurting you, right now, and I don’t even care.”
“Because you are savagely, gorgeously wicked, my love,” he whispered. “I have always felt it, and now you are letting it out.”
His fingers pressed over her heart, a flicker of magic probing gently. Soleil resisted for a second, but then she yielded, letting his magic slither past flesh and breastbone into the throbbing center of her chest. At the same moment, she eased her onslaught against the mandala.
What was she even doing right now? Had she broken her vow by attacking him? Did it even matter anymore? Who was she and what the hell did shewant?
“I don’t want to be wicked,” she said faintly. “I want to be good, and do good.”
“But my darling, you cannot truly be good until you see the evil inside yourself—until you face it, and touch it, and embrace it. No real choice is possible until you know all the layers of your own soul.” His chin tilted up and his eyes closed. “I am touching it now, and it’s beautiful, Soleil. You are beautiful.”
His magic coiled in her chest, a soft serpent tenderly encircling her heart. Paralyzed, entranced, she barely had the voice to form a question. “How are you doing that?”
“It’s like the spell they use to read someone’s radiance, except this is my own twist on it.” He bent his head, his face nearing hers. “You’re the one who let me in. Do you want me to stop?”
She sidestepped the question, tracing his jawline with two fingers. “What about you, Achan Gilliam? When are you going to let me in?”
The sweet eagerness in his gaze shuttered immediately. “I can’t yet. I want to, but—is it too much to ask for some time?”
When he looked at her with that yearning ache in his eyes, she would have agreed to anything. But she was disappointed, and she retreated into herself, pushing him out and closing the channel between them. The exit of his magic from her chest left her hollow and chilled inside. “I should get home.”
They finished packing up and walked back to the car in silence. Soleil stared out the window while Achan drove, losing her worries and wonderings in the dark flow of the nightscape.
He pulled into her driveway, not saying a word as she got out. But when she passed his side of the car on her way to the front door, he rolled down the window. “I can give you a lesson in chaos magic tomorrow evening, if you like.”
She came a step nearer. “And the Institute won’t know?”
“I’ll make sure of it. I’ve been hiding my true power from the Institute and the Convocation for years, Sol. I know how to fool them.”
“Okay then.” She dug her nails into her palms. How did one say good night to a chaos witch after an evening of nakedness and exhilarating power and almost-kisses? How was he so measured, so calm, when she felt as if she might burst with the excess of power—or from a practiced touch in the right place?
Her gaze dropped to Achan’s hands. He was gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles were bone-white.
She leaned into the car and kissed his temple. “It’s a date.”
28
When Soleil climbed into Achan’s car for their first lesson in chaos magic, she insisted that he take her to the taco restaurant first, to retrieve her car. He laid a hand on the VW’s hood, his eyes closed and brows furrowed, while Soleil waited under the searing sun. She could see the heat rising in shimmering waves from the black pavement.
Much more of this heat, and this gnawing anxiety in her bones, and she might tell him to forget the whole thing. What was she doing anyway, letting a chaos witch teach her his lawless magic?
Why was Achan taking so long?
“You done?” she said, more sharply than she meant to.
