Felicia wheeled around. She lost her balance, and fell into the water with a splash.
Spluttering and totally forgetting about controlling her heat, she surfaced a moment later. Luckily for her—who couldn’t swim—the water wasn’t much deeper than up to her waist and the current was not enough to drag a grown person wherever it wanted.
Before she had time to get a slippery grip on the rock and haul herself out of the river, two strong arms took a hold of her and set her down on dry ground.
She shook herself like a wet dog and cursed. After wiping some strands of hair out of her face, she glared up.
“Don’t you know better than to sneak up on people?”
Joshua chuckled drily, although he did look guilty when he cast a glance down at her soaked clothes.
“You should know by now that it’s one of my specialties. Besides, I don’t think a private investigator announcing his presence in advance would be successful at his job.”
She gritted her teeth, chattering from the wet and cold.
“So I’m just another assignment for Mr. Pseudo James Bond?”
It only made him chuckle harder for a moment, but then his face grew frighteningly sober.
“No, you’re not.”
He kissed her. Hard, deep, with searing passion, and full of an emotional message that she couldn’t decipher, but felt resonate inside her.
First, her lips and his were the same temperature because of her fall into the water. But slowly she felt the coolness of his mouth, and the fire core inside her picked itself up to respond.
The pressure of his lips was replaced by an icy tongue licking across her lower lip and seeking entrance. When she welcomed him, rational thought became impossible. There was only cold and heat and the wish for more. She had no idea how long it lasted, but a subtle change caught her attention and had her break the kiss reluctantly. When he stepped back and curled his lips into one of his killer smiles, eyebrows raised while scanning her from head to toe, she looked down at herself and gasped.
Apparently, the kiss had caused the heat to step it up a notch.
Not only was she glowing again, but she was also magically dry, her clothes having a crisp feel to them as if freshly ironed, her hair curling out like a wild crown instead of sticking to her face.
For an instant, she wondered whether he had only kissed her to activate the weird heating-drying system within her, or whether he had missed her as much as she had missed him. There had been such feeling behind the kiss…
She swallowed down all other harsh remarks lying on the tip of her tongue. Her knees still felt weak from the impact of the kiss, his intoxicating scent was all around her, and her own magic of fighting the water took up much too much importance to be annoyed. And to be honest, she was also too glad to have him back and at the same time too scared she’d start asking him where he had been and what he had done, which would sound like love-sick pining.
They stood silently for some time, Felicia breathing and processing, Joshua watching her in a way that made her want to bridge the few feet’s distance and demand another kiss.
Finally, he dipped his chin to a fallen tree trunk not far away, walked over and leaned himself against a nearby tree, arms folded across his chest, one foot resting on the fallen trunk. She followed and sat down on the mossy wood. Although part of her wanted to focus on herself, she couldn’t help looking at him, whiter than white in the moonlight. She wanted to reach out and draw him down for another kiss because the flames inside her would have nothing else, smoldering with longing deep in her belly.
“So, what have you learned?”
With the simple question, a dam broke. She skidded over the words in her haste to tell him what had happened. She mentioned the X-Men movies, the small changes she had made to her daily life, and the incident at the ruin. During the last description, his blue eyes turned somehow whiter and greyer, maybe in a way that other people’s eyes darkened, because his face looked more serious now, and there was a frown etched into his forehead.
When her words grew slower and softer while talking about her warming up the water some minutes ago, he turned his head and stared out across the river, looking miles away and lost in his own thoughts. She studied his sharp profile with the fine nose and wondered how he would react. Would it all make more sense to him than to her?
Without turning back to face her, he said, “I guess it’s high time to start the lessons.”
This excited and angered her at the same time.
“Do you have to call it lessons? Like you’re a teacher and I’m a student and you’ll make me read books and listen to you preach and give me homework? Isn’t this the wrong word for fascinating possibilities and uncertain experiments?”
He frowned.
“I want to call it exactly that. Lessons. You have so much to learn. You might be a freaky mutant or a goddamn wonder child or the long-awaited savior of the world, but there’s no way around learning. Every single great and famous person on earth has had to learn. The gift is there, the brain is primed, the body ready, but without practice, there is no improvement, and without control, there is no real deed done. You’re merely raw material now. A sharp stone that can be shaped into a weapon or statue or talisman or simply something more useful.”
She hated it when he sounded so sure and commanding… and so correct.
With a huff, she threw up her hands.
“Sure, sure. Have it your way, professor.”
The air around her grew icy cold and bit sharply at her skin.
“Have you watched those movies and read the book with your eyes closed?” he asked with cool contempt in his silky voice.
Her temper flared.
“What the hell do you mean? Haven’t I just shared with you what it has taught me?”
“I don’t think it has taught you anything, to be frank. It has filled your head with all sorts of crazy ideas and added new desires and new fears and nourished your fire. But I doubt you wanted to take any lessons away from it. Haven’t you understood the importance of being in charge and of being careful, not even while watching X-Men? Don’t you remember how they were no more than a bunch of freaks caught between blending in and flexing their juvenile muscles until disaster hit them and their two leaders urged them to work with what they have?”
She remained silent, stubbornly refusing to acknowledge that once again he had a valid point.
In a few quick, angry strides he was in front of her, bent down and grabbed her shoulders.
“Felicia, you’re not dealing with a talent of playing piano like a virtuoso or calculating enormous sums in your head or turning tea cups into cute little bunnies. You’re dealing with fire. Do you want to wait until it burns you up from the inside or until it harms somebody by turning them into a living torch if they so much as annoy you? Does somebody have to die for you to get down from your high horse, overcome your fear and learn?”
His voice was quiet and cold in its fury, but it echoed inside her head as though he had shouted. The image of the burning doll flared up in front of her eyes. She saw her parents’ terrified faces when the curtains blazed. She saw Cindy fanning herself and unconsciously edging away from her when she sensed the heat of her annoyance.
It made her swallow back a lump forming in her throat. Damn this man for always being right and knowing how to convince her!
Her feelings must have shown on her face, because the grip on her shoulders grew lighter and he squatted down, so he was face to face with her.
“We had a deal. And I think it’s more important than ever that we go through with this plan before it’s too late. You have to get a hold of your fiery temperament, you have to tame this wild horse and saddle and ride it. Only then can it take you where you want to go. Otherwise, you have to hang in there and hope it won’t crash headlong into disaster, or throw you off its back and trample you underfoot.”
His way of using metaphors to get his point across gave him such power. She could perfectly picture
what he had described, though in her mind, it was all about taming a fierce dragon to be able to fly and rule from its back.
“Let’s get on with these lessons,” she said, passion and determination in her voice and in her glowing eyes that stared straight into his two icy blue pools.
He smiled, leaned forward, and placed a kiss on her lips. It was so achingly tender and emotional she nearly melted then and there, in a way that fire could never have made her want to give in.
She wondered whether he felt as strongly, because he got up, put on a business-like face and resumed his position against the tree.
“While I’m all about ice and you’re all about fire, I’m going to rely mostly on my previous experiences, successes and failures to teach you. And I rely on input from you because I can’t see inside your pretty little head and guess how this is all for you. Ultimately, it’s about your willingness to learn more than about my teaching.”
She nodded curtly, biting back the acerbic remark that had welled up inside her at his usage of ‘pretty little head’ and the pride which rang through when he spoke of his experiences.
This had to work. She’d make it work. It was indeed about her and not him… or them.
“Right. The first lesson is this: Learn to picture the power inside you. Look into yourself and see the fire and acknowledge it and make it yours. It helps if it is something clearly visible because in a later lesson, you’ll have to work at taking what’s inside out and directing it. Understand?”
Again, she nodded. Curiosity took over.
“I bet is easier for fire. What do you imagine?”
Annoyance flickered across his face, as if he didn’t like being asked a personal question.
“Give and take, remember?” she asked.
It was his turn to nod.
“I am not only ice. I am cold. I picture a frost hand reaching out and laying itself like mist or a mantle of snow or a wispy cloud of cold across people and things.”
He closed his eyes and stood straighter.
There was a palpable change in the air around them. It grew colder and somehow stiller, as though the forest held its breath.
Around his body, the air grew thick and cold, filled with mist. A white smoky haze of sorts formed a protective coat around him, and he opened his eyes and whispered “yes”.
The mist separated itself from his body and shaped itself into a huge hand with icy fingers reaching out and brushing over the trunk of a nearby tree. Its touch left behind a thin coating of sparkling ice. When the fingers swirled around the trunk in a graceful, semi-transparent dance, frost flowers adorned the tree, as could sometimes be seen on window panes in winter, crystal flowers of fragile beauty.
Felicia, whose heat had automatically crept into her skin to keep her warm, was watching in open-mouthed fascination.
Screw the X-Men movies, this was as real as it could get, and a million times as magical! She wanted to do this too. She wanted him to admire her like this and she wanted to feel power like this. Control, oh yes.
He sucked in a big, slightly ragged breath and the hand of frost slunk backward into his body, pulled on an invisible leash.
His gaze returned to her, a faint smile caressing his bluish lips, his skin whiter than ever.
“This is what you can do, if you put in some effort. Now go into yourself and acknowledge the fire inside you and give it a face.”
She closed her eyes and tuned the world out. Immediately, the fire core inside her responded. It was eager to have her full attention, like a puppy wanting to impress and receive a treat. When she tried to look at it like something real, on the outside instead of inside her, it took on a shape.
She smiled.
Inside her, a dragon raised its head and looked back at her through glowing eyes, the tip of its tail twitching with interest like a kitten’s. It looked small, like a baby dragon, but already beautiful and wonderfully magical. As if it had sensed her admiration, the fire shaped like a dragon grew and shone brighter, uncurling its long tail and unfurling a pair of wings previously tucked against its body. What now? Would it get up, flap its wings and soar out of her body?
On cue, the dragon did exactly that. She could feel the heat inside her shift and expand and travel up from her belly to her heart and beyond. It was aiming for her left hand like a vehicle shooting toward the only available exit. Automatically, her arm lifted and her hand opened because she couldn’t contain the flames lapping at the confines of her skin. Her eyes flew open in time to see a flame burst from her hand, looking remarkably like a pocket-sized dragon.
She gasped and shot to her feet, the sensation of the fire out instead of inside her indescribable, tip-toeing the fine line between ecstasy and pain, between power and fear, gain and loss.
“Felicia!”
Joshua’s voice, barely penetrating the haze, sounded oddly on edge.
She only had eyes for the fire dragon zooming around so fast her head spun when she followed it with her gaze, like a bird on steroids.
Cartwheeling in the air, obviously happy to be let out and unwilling to ever be caged again, the dragon zoomed here and there. It kept its distance from the still figure of a ghostly white statue-like man watching it with wary eyes, and from the rushing, cold water whispering fatal invitations. When it hit a branch and almost lost its balance in its burst of energy and merry, the baby fire dragon stopped in mid-movement. It stared at the branch before drawing itself to its full—not exactly intimidating—size and spitting a flame at it. It was so comical that a giggle threatened to spill out of her mouth. Despite the smallness of the flame, however, like a match aimed properly, the dragon managed to set the branch ablaze. The first timid lick of flame brought hungry, bigger flames in its wake. They ran their tongues toward the other branches of the tree threateningly.
“No! Do something!”
This time, Joshua’s shouts pierced the bubble of fascination and burst it.
From one moment to the other, she wasn’t watching the exuberant, slightly uncoordinated dragon like a lion mother would indulgently supervise the antics of her cub, but realizing that it had set a tree branch on fire and that the flames were well on their way to spreading over the whole tree.
The shock made her unable to think rationally or move.
Do something. But what? And how?
The fire dragon must have enjoyed all the flames and heat it could produce, because it sucked in a breath and made to blow out another little arrow of a flame. Before it could do so, it froze.
It took a second for her to notice the air around them had cooled down markedly. When the dragon baby turned its head, she followed the direction of its gaze and gasped.
Both of them watched as a wispy hand dived into the river and cradled some water inside its big palm. Traveling through the air to the burning tree, it splashed the water onto the flickering flames, and threw itself at the biggest of the flames to extinguish them. A blanket of ice laid itself over the glowing heat.
Before she knew what was happening, the dragon collapsed in on itself and got sucked back into her body as though responding to a magnet inside her, all of this accompanied by a tiny wail that she was sure was only audible to her own ears.
It was over.
The ensuing silence was punctured by her ragged breath, a quiet sizzle from the snuffed out branches and the triumphant rushing of the river.
She could feel the fire inside her, but in a way different from usually. An image flickered in her mind of a frightened animal curling itself into a ball.
Robbed out of energy, she sank onto the tree trunk, her gaze darting from the blackened, half-burnt branches to the river and back, avoiding to settle on the place where a terrible cold shook the air like a miniature snow storm.
While she wrapped her arms around herself and tried to process what had happened and what could have happened, it got warmer gradually. There was no sound from Joshua. No movement. Inside her, there was silence, although the fire’s subdued siz
zling now had more of a sulky feel to it.
When she lifted her head and looked right at the man who had once again stepped up against fire to save the day, the look on his face made her bristle.
“If you say ‘I told you so’ now, I’ll kill you,” she said in a tone bordering on belligerence.
After a long moment of silence in which his frown deepened, he replied, “That’s exactly the problem. I don’t think it’s implausible that you could kill someone.”
She had to swallow hard. Her first impulse was to laugh it off or take a stab at him for being overly dramatic, but somewhere inside her, the baby dragon dreamt of becoming huge and fierce and invincible, and the fear was still raw.
“I won’t let it happen,” she replied, hating how uncertain her voice sounded, although the determination was there inside her.
Almost imperceptibly, his features softened.
“I won’t let it happen either.”
Her eyes widened and her heart beat quickened. There was a promise in these words. They ran over her body like a caress, and fuelled hopes she didn’t know existed.
However, there was this weakness inside her that made it hard to concentrate on anything. She felt spent, the way someone might after running a marathon or fasting for a day. Her batteries badly needed recharging.
Slumping forward and burying her face in her hands, she wished she were alone in her room, preferably surrounded with some candles.
She heard footsteps, and moments later, she felt a cool hand on her back, rubbing softly and rhythmically up and down. The caress was so soothing that all the knots inside her untied themselves. All of a sudden, being alone in her room was much less enticing.
“It takes its toll on us when we let our essence take us over. Controlling it won’t.”
“What can we do?”
With his hand now on her shoulder, massaging expertly with the right amount of pressure, she could feel him shrug.
“I don’t know. An energy drink or a granola bar might help. I haven’t tried anything. I focus on not letting such things happen. And yes, I told you so indeed. Your gift might be fascinating, but it’s also dangerous. I asked you to envision your fire, not to let all hell break loose, or to be the bystander instead of the controller. You need to realize how important it is to have the upper hand and to think before you act. Prevention is better than cure, you know.”
She groaned inwardly. There was the smugness again that crawled into so many of his statements. Surprisingly, she found it less irritating now. Maybe because his hands felt so wonderful. Maybe because he was the only one who understood her.
“Don’t you think you should give me some credit? I’m a bloody beginner after all. Still green behind the ears.”
He chuckled softly. The atmosphere changed. His hand moved ever so slowly from her shoulder to her neck and under her hair, leaving a trail of goose bumps behind. His index finger inched upward and touched her behind her ear, feather-light and electrifying.
“No green detected,” he said, his voice deeper than usual.
His hand wrapped around the back of her head, cold fingers sliding sensually through her curls and massaging her scalp.
Gone were exhaustion and insecurity.
Her nerve endings were on fire.
When he lifted her head and tilted it slightly toward him, her tongue flicked out to lick her lips in anticipation of a kiss she longed for with all her body, her heart and her soul.
His gaze shot to her mouth and she could feel his body tense, fingers still, breath held. He drew closer until their faces were barely a couple of inches apart, his gaze lifting to meet hers.
“I’m giving you a lot of credit. For all kinds of things.”
The way he said it made a delicious shiver run down her spine. His icy blue eyes were unfathomably deep and sparkling with an invitation she wanted to meet with fiery passion.
“You have an odd way of showing it,” she countered, her voice no more than a whisper.
“Any suggestions of a better way?”
There was a hint of humor and a sexy promise in his voice.
Her pulse hammering in her throat, she answered, “I think I do.”
Without waiting for his reaction, she bridged the gap and kissed him.
Her lips barely touched his at first, but the mere contact was enough to make her limbs turn liquid. Before she knew it, their kiss was passionate and deep and hungry, his fingers pressing her head closer, one of her hands coming up to squeeze his hard, cool arm.
Thinking was a thing of the past as the fire dragon inside her purred and stretched its limbs and grew bigger.
Yet again, he was the one to break the kiss.
With a groan so soft she wasn’t sure she had heard it, he backed away. Withdrawing his hand from her glowing red curls, he ran his fingers through his hair and stared at the ground for an instant, visibly pulling himself together.
When he looked at her next, there was a small smile on his face, and his eyes were still sparkling magically.
“Better?”
Fighting with her emotions and the light tremor in her voice, she answered, “Better.”
Chapter 10