Page 1022 of One More Kiss

Chapter7

Before that fraternityparty at the University of Texas, I hadn’t realized exactly how powerful I was.

My parents had always trained me to control my magic, to think before I acted. But on that night, I walked into the bedroom in a frat house and found my roommate lying unconscious on a bed, with a mostly naked fraternity brother looming over her, leering, preparing to rape her as several of his friends looked on.

The more sympathetic news stories had called what I did the result of a ‘protective instinct.’

All I knew is that when I saw someone I cared about on the verge of being harmed, all my training disappeared, and that deep pool of magic had consumed me.

The same thing happened now.

The sight of Connor’s limp, unmoving body on the dusty barn floor sent me over the edge, dropped me headlong into the deepest part of my magic.

It swelled around me, washing through me until it was no longer something separate from me.

Until I was simply a vessel it poured through.

I didn’t use any spells. No incantations, no charms. No casting gestures carefully developed over centuries of magecraft.

The power cascaded out of me.

First, it ensconced Connor, covering him in an impenetrable shell, protecting him from any further magical strikes from Abercrombie.

At the same time, it shoved the sommelier into a back corner of the barn, bricking her in behind a glowing wall that built itself from nothing in seconds.

That left only Abercrombie to deal with.

He turned up the intensity of his magic, presumably to its limits, but it was no match for mine.

With his magic sparking throughout the barn, tea leaves began to catch on fire, becoming tiny flames fluttering through the air. Flicking one finger and sucking rain out of the atmosphere, I sent water gushing down from only a few feet above us, and the fires sputtered out.

When I met Abercrombie’s gaze, he recoiled.

I knew exactly what he saw in my eyes—the strength of the magical power I held inside.

And it frightened him almost as much as it terrified me.

With a wave of my hand, I sent a rope woven of pure power snaking across the room, where it wrapped itself around my now-former client, pinning him in place.

Deep inside, the power tugged at me, like mud trying to suck me down further into it. It whispered through my mind, urging me to take the final shot at him, to remove him, take away any chance that he could ever hurt anyone.

I felt it spinning up inside me, building to a crescendo, its strength threatening to overwhelm me.

Until a yipping noise caught my attention.

I glanced down, away from Abercrombie, and realized as the yip turned to a howl that Connor was standing up inside his magical cage, trying to get my attention.

I shoved down the impulse to destroy Abercrombie away from me, pushed it deep into that pool of magic and forced myself to float to the surface.

Swallowing hard, I flicked my fingers toward Connor, dissolving the dome that had protected him. The rain falling inside the barn slowed to a patter, and I realized I was soaked.

Connor trotted over to me, then moved behind me to paw at his clothing. He had dropped it on the ground when he shifted, and now it floated in a puddle of rainwater.

Rainwater with tea leaves floating in it.

I had soaked his clothes in tea.

A small snicker escaped me. “You know,” I said, my voice hoarse with exhaustion, “if you could bring those out and save the tea, it would be worth a fortune.”

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