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I pushed up on my toes, closing the distance between us. Blazing flickers of power burst to life. Our magic glowed hot and hard. Years of pent-up energy had been building to this moment. Rain poured down as electricity snapped and sizzled, leaving a metallic tinge in the air. I let out a breathy sigh, and he gripped my hips, dragging me closer. Our tongues tangled together, both of us demanding and dominant.
Without warning, he broke the kiss and took a step back. “That”—he sucked in a deep breath—”was a complete failure.”
I let out a laugh that might’ve bordered on hysterical. “We should’ve quit while we were ahead. But at least we can touch and test our powers okay, so there’s that.”
“Speaking of, there’s something else I want to try.” My energy still pulsed with that need for release, and I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to keep it together for round two. “Nothing to do with the side effects,” he said when he caught the hesitation in my expression.
He wandered around the clearing, gathering up sticks and dry leaves. Once he had enough to satisfy whatever he was planning, he arranged them into a small triangular structure. He stepped back over to me with his shoulders back, chest thrust outward, and the proud look of a four-year-old who had just completed his first finger painting.
“I see you puffing yourself up like an overgrown rooster, but I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be impressed by here,” I said.
“I’m going to set that pile of leaves on fire.” He took my hand again, sending shoots of lightning at the pile, but the electrical current wasn’t strong enough to cause a spark. It made for a pretty light show, though.
For the next fifteen minutes I stood under a gray cloud while I watched Wes make a lot of noise, and not much else. My own power began to nudge me, begging to play, so I closed my fingers to a point and brought my rain down to a single stream of water. I moved it to where Wes continued to work on lighting his leaves on fire. The water and electricity hit a stick at the same time. A buzzing sound that resembled a bug zapper split the air and the stick lifted off the ground. Large green sparks shot off the tips of it before it fell back into the pile.
“Wow.” I pressed my palm over my racing heart. “What the hell was that?”
His dark eyes gleamed as he met my gaze. “I think we just figured out how our powers are supposed to work together.”
I dropped his hand and moved to get a closer look at the stick. Small waves of green and gold light flowed off the end of it before losing traction in the dirt. My water still poured over it in that single spot. I could feel my power still holding on, as if touching Wes for longer than a few minutes gave each of us enough of a charge to allow us to work on our own for a short stretch.
“Time this.” I pointed at my baby rain cloud. “See how long I can hold it without having my hands on you.”
“I bet you say that to all the guys.”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” I gave him a sharky grin, and he took a step toward me. I held out a hand to stop him. “Timing, no touching.”
He groaned, but did as I asked. Wanting to make sure I made the most of this latest experiment, I reached inside myself, working with my power to flip it from rain to snow, then to ice, and back to rain again. I brought it down to a fine point and expanded it outward enough to cover the entire clearing. Using it in different ways cost energy and drained my power much faster, but I needed to see how long a charge could last me in a fight. My personal rain cloud began to evaporate until it was little more than a wisp of gray fog.
When the last raindrop fell, Wes called time. “Twenty minutes, give or take a few, depending on what you consider the breaking point of functionality.”
“Hmm.” I tapped a finger to my lips. “We had contact outside the cave for a good ten minutes and my ice melted pretty quickly after losing the physical connection.”
“Maybe because we both expended the majority of our energy on other things. I didn’t give a damn about doing anything with my powers when I was trying not to blow my—”
“Got it. Thanks.” My skin flushed at the image of Wes, hard and tense as he tried to come down from the side effects. “I wonder what would happen if we slept together.”
Wes choked and pounded on his chest as he coughed. “You want to—?”
“No. God. I meant literal sleep. Try to keep up. If we closed our eyes at the same time and fell asleep next to each other,”—I gave him a pointed look—”could we hold our powers on our own for the whole day? It might be worth trying.”
He frowned. “I’m not doing that.”
“Why?”
He folded his arms over his chest. “Because if you’re in my bed, sleep would be the last thing on our minds, and you know it as well as I do.”
Okay. Fair point. “Scratch that idea. Let’s try putting our powers together again.”
We joined hands and let our energy charge for ten minutes before combining what we had as individuals into a single weapon. My rain and his lightning were downright deadly together. We blew the petals off flowers and stripped the leaves from a vine. A fat black beetle scuttled out of the carcass of a rotting log and I nodded at it. We aimed for the greasy wings and its body came apart before I could blink. I could’ve sworn it let out a scream as it died.
Once we’d both fully charged, we took opposite sides of the clearing and shot our powers at each other. My ice and his sparks collided and tangled together, raising roots from the earth. The ground turned into an electric field that burned grass and fried ant hills.
We’d gotten so caught up in testing our combined magic, neither of us spotted the inky tendrils of smoke that leaked out of the trees until it had us wrapped in a tight circle. This wasn’t the same faint vapors we’d encountered at the cave. Thick and volatile smog roiled with dark energy. How long had it been watching us? I stretched out my hand to swipe it away and my fingers disappeared into an endless black void. The curse continued to rise higher, covering us in an impenetrable blanket of dust and soot.
“Wes.” My voice shook as my energy flickered and recoiled.
“Right here.” His strong arms came around me, and I sagged against him in relief.
