Page 24 of Power Shift
“How wrong you are, Evie Quinn.” Caelan sighed and pushed his chair back. “You are much more than you claim to be and so much more than I ever imagined.”
Unsure how to respond, I hiked my purse up and leaned close. Calling up a whisper of magic in my palm, I touched it to his boutonniere, closed my eyes, and poured my power into the flytrap.
When I opened them, Caelan’s intense stare took my breath away. He stared at me like he knew my inner heart. But that was impossible. No one did. “What did you do?”
I stroked a finger over one of the traps and smiled. “Nowit’s poisonous.”
With a wink, I turned and headed out of the ballroom, Caelan’s shout of laughter echoing behind me.
Chapter
Five
CAELAN
Love. The missing piece was love. Not missing on my part. But how was I to tell Evie I loved her when I wasn’t sure what love was? For a Lord, love meant power. Loyalty. Dominance.
Not the kind of soft, tender thing I knew Evie craved.
I swore under my breath and rubbed a hand through my hair. Every time she walked away, I itched to run after her, capture her, and force her to stay.
That couldn’t be love. This intense feeling of need, ofwant. I wanted her to stay and wanted her to wake up next to me every single day. I wanted her face to be the first thing I saw each morning and the last thing I saw before I closed my eyes each night.
“Fuck.” I sank onto the couch in my study and buried my face in my hands.
A sharp knock on the door before Soren poked his head in.
“What?” I snapped.
The bastard laughed and stepped inside, closing the door behind him. He’d taken his suit jacket and tie off and untucked his shirt, lending a rumpled, befuddled air about him.
Soren collapsed into the chair opposite me. “Those two women are harridans.”
A surprised laugh burst from me. “That they are.”
“Evie seems worse.”
I took no umbrage. Soren didn’t sound angry or hateful, more like he was making a hedging observation. “She has reason to be more volatile than Moira. The Lords are sniffing at her door. Anyone would lash out.”
“But she doesn’t,” he observed. “Only when you poke at her.”
Seymour, my carnivorous bespelled and bloodthirsty Red Dragon flytrap, thumped down from the windowsill and made his way over to the couch.
Soren sucked in a breath as he watched Seymour make his way over. “Goddamn. Evie is everywhere in this Keep, Caelan. Don’t your people wonder about her?”
I grinned and rubbed the top of Seymour’s main trap. “Let them wonder.”
Soren made a noise deep in his throat. “You’ve changed.”
I looked up. “So have you.” Soren and I had never had an antagonistic relationship, but we’d never been friends. Nor had we always seen eye to eye. But Soren was a good leader in his territory, and he’d never made a move against me. Maybe things could change in the future between us.
He scrubbed a hand over his jaw and closed his eyes, letting out a heavy breath. “Yeah. I’m tired, Caelan. When does it stop being so difficult?”
Seymour thumped his pot again, sailing from the arm of the couch right into my lap. I caught him before he could do himself harm and settled him onto my lap.
Soren choked. “That thing is poisonous, isn’t it?”
“If it bites you, yes.”
