Мишель Роуэн - Hot Spell

“Where’d you get the ax?” she asked tensely.

“I conjured it out of thin air. Or from my trunk where I keep the rest of my arsenal.”

“Oh.”

“I can take care of this myself,” he said. “You don’t have to be here.”

She exhaled shakily. “Don’t do it.”

“Excuse me?”

She closed the distance between them and grabbed the weapon out of his hand. “Don’t take the clock apart.”

He raised both his eyebrows. “Are you possessed?”

“Not the last time I checked, although I guess it’s possible.”

“Should I go get the holy water just to make sure?”

“Just listen to me for a second, would you?”

“Oh, believe me, I’m all ears.”

What is she doing? his thoughts echoed in her ears. She wanted this and now she’s stopping me? The woman is certifiable .

“You’re right, I did want this,” she said. “But now I don’t. I don’t want you to burn the clock.”

“If we don’t burn it we won’t be able to break the spell.”

“I know.”

His brow furrowed and he studied her intensely, a jumble of thoughts speeding through his head. “What the hell are you talking about?” he growled.

Her head ached. “I know it sounds crazy—”

“It does.”

“But…but I don’t want to lose this. What we have between us. I’ve never felt this way before. I guess it scared me. But even if it’s only made of magic, I don’t want it to go away.”

He stared at her for a few moments. “You’re serious about this, aren’t you?”

She nodded.

“You’d rather stay cursed than risk losing what we have?”

“I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true. I didn’t know how much this means to me, how much you mean to me, until I realized it was going to be taken away.”

Kind of like how Catherine had been blasé about her and Nathan’s relationship until she faced the prospect of being exorcised and forced apart. That was what had done it for Amanda. Seeing that grief in Catherine’s eyes, that sense of impending loss, had made her realize how deep her feelings for Jacob were. She didn’t want to lose him, either.

It wasn’t just amazing sex. It was so much more than that.

His look was grim. “So that means you’ll still be able to read my mind and I can make you tell the truth.”

“That’s right.”

“That’s no damn way to live.”

“I can deal with it,” she said, with more certainty than she’d ever felt before.

His lips thinned. “Well, maybe I can’t.”

That answer, not previewed in his thoughts, cut into her. “No?”

He shook his head. “You said it yourself. This isn’t real, this is all just an illusion.” He leveled his gaze with hers. “Until you change your mind about that I don’t think we have anything else to discuss here.”

This is real , his thoughts told her. You’re just too wrapped up in having your life make perfect sense when life doesn’t make sense. It never has and it never will. And that’s what’s so great about it .

He closed the distance between them and kissed her hard. She groaned against his lips. It was insane, the way he made her feel. Even the briefest touch was enough to send her over the edge.

He reached down to slide his hands under her skirt. He cupped her panty-free bottom and pull her up against the hard bulge in his pants as their kiss deepened.

She knew she wanted him—there was no denying that he could turn her on as easily as a light switch—but something still bothered her.

Was it that he represented everything that was strange and unusual? Everything that her mother had always told her was wrong? The same things she was mercilessly teased about in school? Not even the teachers had intervened unless things got really bad and even then all they usually did was give her a tissue to wipe her tears.

Jacob embraced his psychic abilities. He didn’t find anything wrong with them. He didn’t find anything wrong with her .

The fault, obviously, lay with her. She was stubborn and messed-up and neurotic and she gave him a harder time than anyone else probably ever had in his life.

But he still thought he was in love with her.

Why would he love her?

She laughed then, against his lips, as something very important began to make sense to her. She wasn’t rejecting him by refusing to believe what she felt was real. She was rejecting herself. Because if she truly believed this was more than magic, she’d have to accept who and what she was once and for all. If she loved Jacob, despite his strangeness, she’d have to love herself, too.

But she’d never loved herself. There was always some fault, even above and beyond her abilities. That had just seemed the best area to focus her self-loathing on.

She pulled away from him and he let her go, his arms dropping slackly to his sides.

“I don’t know what else to do here, Amanda,” he said. “I give up.”

She looked at him, then. Really looked. He stood next to the clock that ticked away the minutes toward midnight—it was currently eleven-thirty. The clock that Rose Embry had enchanted a hundred years ago to help her niece find true love.

And suddenly, as Amanda looked at Jacob Caine, she saw the truth, as well. It made her gasp and tears welled in her eyes.

The very next moment, a bolt of lightning-hot pain went through Amanda’s brain and her knees buckled. Jacob caught her, his brows furrowed and drawn together.

“Did you feel that?” Amanda asked weakly.

“I swear, this spell is going to make my head explode.”

“Mine, too.”

“Pain’s gone. Are you okay?”

She nodded. She was okay but the concerned expression Jacob gave her was almost worth more agony. He’d probably felt exactly the same amount of pain as she had, but his first concern was with her well-being.

“What was that?” he asked. “More magic?”

“I think so.”

“You can let go of me now,” she said.

“Sorry.” He released her again. “What can I say? Hard to keep my hands to myself. I do wish right now that you were wearing panties. Or possibly a chastity belt of some kind.”

“I will be sending you a bill for new lingerie.”

His attention was focused on her lips. “Maybe…maybe I was hasty in my decision. I guess there’s no reason for us to chop up the clock tonight. We’re not on a deadline, are we?”

“No deadline,” she agreed. “Other than my moving three hundred miles away from town tomorrow.”

He frowned. “I keep forgetting that little fact.”

“That makes one of us.”

He gave her a small smile. “So what does this mean? How can we possibly make this mutually acceptable curse work for us? Weekend booty calls? I mean, I’m not ruling those out, but I would like something a little more meaningful. Does that make me less of a macho guy to admit that?”

She smiled. He hadn’t figured it out yet, had he?

She closed her eyes and tried to listen in on his thoughts but there was only silence now.

The spell had been broken.

It had been broken the moment she realized the truth—she loved Jacob, and that love was real. The clock’s enchantment had helped draw back the layers of protection they’d had over their hearts and egos until they couldn’t resist what they both already knew down deep.

She’d never hated him. Not from the very first moment they met.

She’d hated how he’d made her feel with an ill-placed mention of her despised nickname, Amanda the Strange. But he hadn’t meant anything cruel by it. She’d stayed away from him as much as she could because the strong feelings she’d had for him from the very beginning—that love at first sight—had never faded. It had scared her so she’d buried it down deep.