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“What are you interested in?” The words left her lips before she could halt them.
The temperature dropped, his icy power brushing over her in a promise of pleasure to come.
“You,” he murmured softly. “I want nothing but you.”
Peri’s mouth dried to the texture of sandpaper, her body quivering to give into temptation.
“You don’t know me,” she forced herself to insist.
He leaned closer. “Not as well as I intend to.”
Peri lifted her hands, pressing them against his chest. She’d spent years hiding the suspicion that there was something different about her. It was time for her to take her head out of the sand.
“No. I mean, the truth came out in that cabin,” she reminded him, as if he hadn’t noticed her lightning storm of carnage. “I can’t hide it anymore.”
“Good,” he said without hesitation. “I’ve never seen anything more glorious. A goddess at last revealing her powers.”
She made a sound of impatience. He was deliberately avoiding the massive elephant in the room.
“I could have fried you. I nearly did,” she said bluntly. “It was only sheer luck—”
Her protest was cut short as he pressed a kiss against her parted lips. Desire fizzed through her, like the finest champagne. And just as heady.
“It wasn’t luck.” He spoke against her mouth, the tips of his fangs pressing into her skin. “It was you. You kept the lightning from striking me.”
Peri frowned. The events in the cabin were blurred, as if she’d dreamed the attack from the miasma and the release of her wild magic, but she had a vague memory of desperately weaving the lightning to create an opening for Valen.
Still, she had no idea how she did it or if she could repeat the process.
“I can’t control it.” She glared into his painfully beautiful face. “I’m dangerous.”
“You’ll learn.”
“How can you be so certain?”
“Because you’re Peri Sanguis.” He lifted his head to regard her with a somber expression. “You faced down death and an evil magic and called on ancient powers that haven’t been seen in this world for endless centuries. There’s no obstacle you can’t overcome.”
There was a fierce certainty in his voice, as if he truly believed that she would learn to control the unpredictable magic.
Peri forced herself to consider his words. Maybe Valen was right. She had survived her mother’s attempt to murder her. And she’d battled against an evil that would have destroyed any other mage. She wasn’t being vain. It was simple truth. So maybe she could learn to control the magic.
“It doesn’t bother you that I could potentially kill you?” she pressed.
He shrugged, turning the tables on her. “Does it bother you that I could potentially kill you?”
Peri considered the question, recalling her defensive determination to keep this male at a distance when she first arrived in the area.
“It did. At first.”
“And now?”
Her hands smoothed over the bare skin of his chest, her fear that she might hurt Valen melting beneath the searing heat of her desire.
“Now I trust you.”
His expression softened, the silver eyes darkening to a smoky gray. “Just as I trust you.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I’m still not sure what’s going to happen. The magic might disappear or it might be something that appears whenever I lose my temper. Which is a regular occurrence.”
