Sapphire Flames

His big body braced mine against the wall. I saw his eyes, amber and heated from within, he bent his head, his lips touched mine, and I tasted the faint hint of champagne . . .

He kissed me.

It felt like lightning. It tore through me in one blinding jolt and then I was on fire. There was nothing hesitant or gentle about it. He kissed me like he needed me to breathe. I grabbed his jacket and pulled him closer, fierce and desperate, my body screaming for more of him. It was reckless and stupid, and I knew we had to stop, but nothing in this world could make me let go.

His tongue licked mine, his strong arms gripped me to him, his hand slid into my hair, and it felt so good, all of it. So impossibly good.

His magic boiled around him, the searing flashes of orange dancing, the power churning and twisting. There was no going back. There was life before this kiss and there would be one after, but they wouldn’t be the same.

He broke away and looked at me, his amber eyes full of lust and a searing need. That hint of the terrifying edge I’d glimpsed in him before was out now, dangerous and glaring right back at me from deep inside him. It took my breath away.

He should’ve never kissed me. He was mine now and I wanted him.

I threw my arms around his neck and sealed my mouth to his. Touching him was like coming home. I’d wanted to do that since the moment he put his arms around me on that roof. I tasted his mouth, trying to feed the howling need. He growled low in his throat.

His hands slid over my back. The wall behind me gave. I stumbled back, but he caught me, and then we were in a small room and he shut the door behind him. He kissed my lips, my neck, my throat. It felt like I had shattered, and he was putting me back together with every touch of his lips.

There were too many layers between us. I clawed at his jacket and he let me go for a torturous second to shrug it off and toss it to the side. We came back together like two fighters about to grapple. He cupped my butt, picked me up, and hoisted me onto something, a counter, a sink? I didn’t care. I threaded my fingers through his hair, knotting my fingers in it, and kissed that gorgeous jaw, tasting his skin. I was burning up.

He yanked the straps of my dress down my shoulders, trapping my arms, and buried his face in my bare breasts. I gasped and arched my back. His lips found my nipple. I closed my eyes, savoring each delicious moment. His teeth grazed the sensitive bundle of nerves, his hot tongue tasted me, and he sucked, sending a tiny electric shock through me. I moaned. I wanted to make love to him, and I wanted it to be amazing, so he would stay with me forever.

“Angelo mio,” Alessandro whispered, his words ragged and rough. “So beautiful.”

I opened my eyes and saw the edge of my feathers glowing as his magic roiled around us. I was sitting on a counter, gloriously half naked, and my wings were out, spread wide above my shoulders, each luminescent feather deep green at the base then brightening, like the water of the Aegean growing lighter as one rose from a deep dive, turning emerald, then grass-green, then turquoise until finally at the tips, they shone with radiant gold.

My wings were out.

Reality punched me with a cold hard fist. I jerked away and shoved him back.

“What is it?” Alessandro spun, alert, looking for threats.

My magic was all around him. I had lost it. It made sense now. Why else would he suddenly want to make love to me in the hallway and then kiss me like his life depended on it? Oh my God, what had I done?

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry . . .”

“What are you sorry about?”

“We have to go.” Panic clawed at me, ripping me apart from the inside. I’d destroyed his life. “I have to drain you. We have to . . .”

“I don’t have to drain.”

“You don’t understand. I didn’t mean to. We have to fix it.”

He grabbed my shoulders and looked into my eyes. “Look at me. Look me in the eyes. Your witchery doesn’t work on me. I’m already obsessed with you.”

He was too far gone. He was saying nonsense. “Of course you are.”

I turned around. Where the hell did it go? “It’s okay, it will be okay, I’ll fix this.”

“What are you looking for?”

“My clutch. I have chalk in it.” Even if I drew a circle, it would take forever to drain him. He was a ridiculously powerful Prime. I could run out of magic before he did, and then it wouldn’t work.

“What should I do?” he asked. “Should I stay right here, out of the way, and not go anywhere? Would it make you happy?”

“Yes, stand right here and don’t move. It will make me very happy.”

“Don’t move. Got it.”

He grabbed his jacket off the tiled floor and walked out. My magic wailed in mourning.

I was alone in the bathroom. Sitting on the sink counter. The sound of rushing water came from the pipes.

He had walked away from me. No person I’d beguiled could’ve done that.

This was too much. I couldn’t process it.

I looked at myself in the mirror. My neck was red. Lipstick smears stretched across my skin from my lips.

In the distance a loud chime announced the end of the intermission. I pulled my dress back up over my breasts, jumped off, and frantically looked for my clutch. I’d put a compact and lipstick into it, and I had to make myself presentable again.

I slipped out of the bathroom. My neck was back to a neutral color, my hair was fixed, and my lipstick tinted my lips and nothing else. Alessandro was fully dressed. We rushed down the hallway to the foyer.

“This did not happen,” I told him.

“Oh, it happened. Stopping felt like the hardest fucking thing I had to do in my life. Fighting Benedict now would be a breeze.”

“No, it didn’t happen and we’re not talking about this.”

“We are going to talk about it. Tonight. My room, your room, wherever we can find some privacy.”

Privacy was the last thing we needed.

We reached the end of the hallway. The second performance was about to start. Alessandro walked me to the table. Cristal was at her table with another glass of champagne.

“I was getting ready to send out a search party,” Linus said.

“That’s all right,” Alessandro told him, “we found our way back.”

Pairs of acrobats in silver suits took to the trapeze to the sound of haunting music. The soprano stepped onto the stage. She was about my mother’s age, a beautiful black woman wearing a shimmering gold suit that set off her brown skin. Her glossy dark hair fell on her back in a cascade of locks and golden jewels. She tilted her face up and began to sing, her voice rising to the ceiling, clear, pure, and tugging on some deeply buried emotion I couldn’t identify. Everything stopped. Madame Trapeze sang her heart out, pouring out emotion as if she had torn herself open for us. I had to fight to keep from crying.

Alessandro covered my hand with his. I should have pulled away, but I didn’t. I would get to the bottom of this. I didn’t know if I could pry him loose from whatever forced him into murder. I would try as hard as I could. But there was nothing to be done about it right now. We had a job to do, so I listened to the best singer I had ever heard in my life, while the only man I wanted in the entire universe sat next to me and held my hand. Whatever came after, I would always have this moment.

The last notes of the aria died. The song was over. An overwhelming sadness settled over me. We all applauded, Madame Trapeze bowed, and the lights came on.

A waiter came to clear our plates and faltered, perplexed because I hadn’t eaten anything. A new lively melody filtered through the speakers.

“Dance with me,” Alessandro said.

I put my hand in his and we made our way to the stage. He rested his hand on my back and we swayed among other couples. I had taken enough dancing lessons to not embarrass myself, but nobody around us was doing anything identifiable or complicated. Drifting in pairs seemed to be perfectly acceptable.

Alessandro drifted with a purpose, moving us slowly but inevitably to Cristal’s table.

“What are you doing?” I murmured.

“I don’t know yet.”

“That’s great.”

“It probably will be.”

Humility, thy name is Alessandro. “Were you always immune?”

“No. You sucker-punched me at your trials. Your magic was unfamiliar. But I recovered. If you’re asking whether I pretended for your sake, I didn’t. I would never falsify the test of a Prime.”

“What about when you came to see me after?”

“Back then I just wanted to get to know you better. After I received the invitation to your trials, I looked you up on Instagram. I thought you were cute. I followed you and you deleted your account. I was intrigued. Then I came to invite you for a drive, and you called the cops on me.”

“I thought you were besotted.”

“I know. You tried to save me from yourself. It was adorable. Almost as adorable as seeing you chase Conway down the hall.”

I quashed the urge to growl.

“You’re right, you know.” He raised my hand to his lips and kissed my fingers. “I am besotted.”

My face was on fire. “Stop.”

“Never.”

We were nearly to Cristal’s table. A pink flush tinted her cheeks. Her eyes were glistening, and her movements, as she leaned in to listen to a young, attractive aquakinetic Prime, were very deliberate. It was the most animated I had seen her all evening. Cristal seemed to suffer from crippling social anxiety and she dealt with it by getting drunk. It was easy to be the queen of snark online. Real life was a whole different war.