“Tied into your emotions, you said.” He sounded bored, his voice cutting. “So access your emotions.”
“Agh!” She pressed her fists against her thighs and tried to remember just exactly how it had happened. She had felt so full of pain and rage she could barely see straight, let alone talk coherently.
The memory was easy enough to access. But pulling up the emotion itself was another matter. Violent, powerful emotions didn’t just lie around waiting for someone to trip over them.
Maybe she was defective. Maybe she wasn’t going to be as Powerful as he thought she was. Maybe she didn’t have the full range of capability other awakening witches did…
Josiah hauled her into his arms. Her lips parted on a shocked gasp. He clamped a hard hand at the back of her neck, and his head plummeted down.
What. The. Hell.
That was as far as she got. Then her spinning thoughts blew to smithereens as his mouth came over hers. He kissed her hard, clamping her against his long, muscled body.
It had been years since anyone other than Austin had kissed her. Years and years. The shock of contact jolted everywhere, followed swiftly by astonished pleasure and outrage.
No, she was pretty sure that was pleasure. Wait, outrage.
Pleasure. Outrage?
She forgot to breathe as her lips moved tentatively under his. Somewhere in her head, a siren began to blare in a klaxon warning.
Austin might have cheated, but she never had. Even though she was getting divorced and no longer owed him a damn thing, she was deeply faithful by nature. This felt like crossing a line she wasn’t supposed to cross. It felt good, but it also felt wrong.
Then Josiah’s tongue plunged into her mouth. His tongue.
Inside her mouth.
A muffled, wordless hnnnf came out of her. Her body caught up with what had happened, and she started to struggle. For a moment his arms remained around her, as unbreakable as iron bands.
Then he let her go. Panting, she fell back and glared at him. He glared back, his amber gaze lambent. She couldn’t tell if he was close to laughter, anger, or arousal—or if it was a combination of all three.
She needed to slap him. Lightning sparked at the edge of her vision.
His eyebrows rose. He pivoted to point at the beer bottle in the middle of the parking lot.
She swiveled to stare where he pointed, and there it was. Power rose up inside, and as she focused her attention on the bottle, the Power shot out of her like a lightning bolt.
Fifteen feet away, the bottle wobbled and fell over.
The bottle fell over.
She whispered, “I did that?”
“You did that,” Josiah said. Fierce satisfaction filled his voice.
She remembered what had just happened and rounded on him. “What the hell!”
He gave her an insolent, unrepentant look. “Now do that five hundred times. Don’t overthink it, don’t doubt yourself, and don’t split your energy by worrying about things.” He stuck his face into hers and snapped out, “Don’t make me kiss you again unless you really mean it. You reach that part of yourself and pull it out on your own. Make it happen.”
Don’t make me kiss you again unless…
He hadn’t meant the kiss. She had tied herself up in knots and felt like she had crossed an ethical line when she hadn’t—and he hadn’t even meant it.
She scrubbed her mouth with the back of one hand. “You manipulative son of a bitch!”
He pointed at the fallen beer bottle. Turning, she glared at it.
There it was, inside her, just as Josiah said it would be. She knew how to find it now. Her magic flared, bright and deadly like a supernova. She focused it on the target.
This time when the bolt left her, the bottle shattered.
“There you go,” Josiah said. He gave her a nod. “You’re welcome.”
She was so furious she didn’t know what to do. She spat out, “Try to manhandle me like that again, and you’ll regret it.”
His eyes glittered. “I tolerated the first threat you made. Be careful. I won’t be tolerant very much longer.”
The tiger was no longer amused. She forced herself to take in a deep, shaking breath. “You’re such an asshole.”
“That must make you Captain Obvious.” He shook his head with a snort. “It was a kiss. Get over it. I manhandled you a little, and I let you go as soon as you started to struggle. More importantly, it gave you the shock you needed to get the job done. Now, I have a breakfast meeting with the mayor in the morning and a major new investigation to start. Do you have any more tips for me?”
Still breathing hard, she shook her head. She didn’t trust herself to speak. She wanted to plant her fist in his arrogant, unrepentant face.
“All right,” he said. “Remember, do it at least five hundred more times. Do it until it becomes second nature and you don’t have to struggle to access that part of you. Practice it on different targets—on moving targets, if you can find any. Practice it when you’re exhausted and when you first wake up. Good night.”
With that, he turned and strode to his car, leaving her standing alone in the parking lot, staring after him. Her lips still throbbed from the hard pressure of his mouth, and adrenaline pounded through her body.
Just a kiss, he said. Get over it.
But it had been more than just a kiss. It had been her first delicate exploration beyond her dead marriage. Her first hint of pleasure with someone other than her husband.
But he hadn’t meant it.
And for the space of a moment when she had struggled against his strength, she had been very aware that he could overpower her with little effort. And that she couldn’t get free of him unless he chose to let her go.
As her blood cooled in the evening chill, she calmed enough to think. Maybe that wasn’t what he had intended. Like he said, he had let her go as soon as he felt her struggle.
Yet for that one moment she had felt what it was like to be overpowered by someone larger and physically stronger than she was.
She took another beer bottle, set it on the asphalt, and walked several yards away.
As she eyed her target, she whispered, “I’m not going to get over it.”
Then she concentrated on pulling up her magic and focusing it like a weapon.
Another beer bottle shattered.
Four hundred and ninety-nine more to go.
Chapter Six
He shouldn’t have kissed her.
That thought dominated as Josiah pulled onto the interstate to Birmingham. He sped through the deepening night, his mood turning savage.
What the fuck had he been thinking? He’d meant to get her riled, but there were a thousand other ways he could have done it, and the desire to explore her beautiful lips had mingled disastrously with the urge to knock her out of her shackles of self-doubt.
And as he had so many times already, he had miscalculated. Badly. But that wasn’t what had seared his brain.
She had responded to his kiss. Her spectacular mouth had moved so gently and hesitantly under his it had made some long-dead thing in his chest squeeze tight.
Even now as he thought of it, his skin grew hot and his groin hardened in the first involuntary response he’d had in…
Gods, he couldn’t remember how long it had been.
Abruptly, he did a mental one-eighty. Hell, it was a good thing he had burned down the new, tentative bridge they had begun to build between them. Just as well that she ended up looking at him like he was Satan personified and the embodiment of every male asshole on the continent.