Page 76 of The Lunatics

He turned to look at me beneath his lashes. A kind of goading pleasure rose in the back of my mind. “Your preference in my clothing also came through.”

I buried my face in my hands.

He chuckled.

CHAPTER 17

Ifelt a tug on my scalp and risked a glance through my fingers. Michael had grabbed hold of a long strand of my hair. He faced the fire, idly twirling it. The teasing edge of his mood disappeared, replaced by deep concentration.

“I still don’t understand or fully believe what just happened,” he said, staring into the flames. “The MacKenzie wolves spent hundreds of years breeding this strength and power into you. It’s genetics. How is it possible that I’ve simply… absorbed some of it because of our bond?”

I shrugged. “Magic.”

He looked at me. “Magic? Just like that?”

“Like you said, we’re creaturesofmagic. Who’s to say our very genetic code isn’t ingrained with it, allowing it to be shared via the bond just like our emotions and now our thoughts? You accepted those pretty easily. Why not this?”

His face was half bathed in the glow from the fire, half in shadow. It painted his features in sharp angles and made his lips look impossibly soft. “I believe, much like you did earlier,I’ve finally reached my threshold for the amount of shock I can sustain.”

I barked a humorless laugh. “Trust me, I get it.”

“Does the mental connection continue even in our human forms?”

“I don’t know. Want to test it?”

He frowned in response and closed his eyes, those long lashes fluttering shut to kiss the top of his cheeks. His power licked over me, and then I felt a small brush against my psyche.Layla?

I let out a shaky breath.Hi, Michael.

He opened his eyes.Well. That answers that question.

I drew my power back in and cut the connection. Regardless of the fact that I believed what I had told him—that this newfound ability was gifted to us via magic—I still wasn’t comfortable with it. Before, I’d at least had my own thoughts to myself. Now I had to worry about accidentally projecting my inner monologue all over him when I was stressed.

Or horny.

We needed to learn how to control this,now.

“You can’t go back to the city leaking power everywhere,” I said.

“Agreed. How do you contain yours?”

I explained the mental cage within my mind. While I talked, Michael continued to twirl my hair absently, like a worry stone. When I was done, I assumed the role Audrey had played in my youth. I talked him through the formation of his own cage, how at first he would need to picture it there almost constantly until it became fixed in his mind, a part of himself. I told him how to shrink and expand it with a thought.

Or at least I tried to.

I wasn’t a great teacher, and this concept was new to Michael. He kept his cool time and time again as he slowly drew his newlyexpanded psyche into himself, only for it to explode outward again. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that each of those explosions was more powerful than the last, splashing me with metaphysical heat that sparked like a downed power line.

He shook his head. “This isn’t working. What if I…” His eyes unfocused, and he stared past me. Slowly, his power began to recede, but along with it, so did Michael.

I grabbed his arm. Our skin-to-skin contact snapped him out of it, and he came roaring back. “You said you wouldn’t do this to me again,” I reminded him.

“I didn’t plan to disappear altogether, just to mute the power in the same way I do the wolf.”

“Your wolf form,” I said. “Please don’t start reverting.”

He let out a frustrated sound and shook me off so he could stand. The fire danced over his stocky frame as he paced. His fingers went to his temples. I felt a small echo of pain in my own. His heightened senses must be giving him a headache. Outside, a night bird called, far in the distance. He stopped in his tracks and turned to gaze toward the mouth of the cave, eyes reflecting the firelight like quicksilver. I didn’t envy his position. I’d lived with this power my entire life, and I was still distracted by it at times. To have it suddenly dumped on him must have been damn near all-consuming. A lesser wolf would have lost themself to it by now.

I was suddenly angry. I should have been warned about this. Told about my powers and the way they would bleed through the bond. Shown how to use them by someone who understood them. My parents and Audrey had done the best they could to teach me control of the abilities I’d manifested in my youth, but how much more did I still have to learn? What else might rear its ugly head now that I was bonded? And what if something major, like this power share, happened when we were in the city? We might not have time to contain it before someone detected the change inMichael. Any weirdness in me could be explained away by my heritage, but he was a known commodity, and if he lost control and let his power flare all over the next wolf to piss him off, the jig would be up.