Accidental Magic (21 page)

“Yeah, it really was. And you’re awesome, too.” Slowly, Ken bent to her. His kiss was sweet and questioning and very, very gentle. In other words, it was everything Summer believed she’d wanted in a kiss from the man she’d been fantasizing about for years.

She didn’t feel a thing in response.

Give him a chance,
she chided herself.
This is what you decided you want. He fits in the plan.
Summer leaned into Ken and put her arms around his neck, returning his questioning kiss with an exclamation mark.

She felt the surprise in his body, and then he parted his lips and followed her lead, kissing her deeper, longer. Summer thought he tasted, weirdly, like wine and lemonade. She wondered vaguely why he always reminded her of lemons—not the tart kind, but the supersweet Country Time Lemonade lemons, with lots of sugar. Lots.

Ken was still kissing her, softly and sweetly, while Summer’s mind wandered. She was thinking about what she was supposed to teach her sophomores the next day as she absently looked over his shoulder at the dark edge of the forest. She thought she saw something move there, just inside the boundaries of her yard, and wondered what it was. The moon was
high and insanely bright and almost about full. Could it be one of the town’s many werewolves?

And then it hit her; she was thinking about school, and werewolves, and the moon while Ken was making out with her. That just couldn’t be right. When Colin had kissed her, she hadn’t been able to think of anything except him. His touch. His mouth. His taste. His kiss. Ken’s kisses made her want to compile a shopping list or maybe fold some laundry.

No. This definitely was not going to work. Time to change the plan.

Instantly she pulled away from him. He gave her a sweet, boyish smile. “Sorry, Sum. Did I get carried away?”

“No, Ken, honey.” Summer patted his cheek gently. “I got carried away. I think it’s best if you and I stay good friends and don’t mess that up with trying to be more than that. Do you know what I mean?”

Ken’s smile didn’t falter. “Sure, whatever. That’s fine with me. Hey, do you think I could have some of that awesome spaghetti sauce to take with me so I could snack on it later?”

“Sure Kenny-benny,” Summer said and, laughing, made him up a quick to-go package, patted him on his head, and said good night. Before she closed the door, she heard the distinctive giggles of several female fairies who had obviously been waiting to escort their Kenny-benny home. Or wherever.

She was still shaking her head at herself while she cleaned up the dinner dishes. “Jenny was right. I might be insane.” Ken
was so not the man for her. Actually, if she was being totally honest with herself, Kenny-benny was so not a man yet, and clearly, he might never be. Rinsing the dishes, she laughed out loud. She should be upset at having her fantasy of the Perfect Man blown to pieces and her future plan messed up, or at the very least she should have been disappointed, but she wasn’t. She definitely wasn’t.

Her hands slid through the warm, soapy water making her think of slick, naked skin sliding against slick, naked skin…of heat…and passion…and a kiss that could seem to stop the world…

No! She couldn’t want the vampire.

And then, while washing Kenny-benny’s very empty plate, she looked up at her reflection in the dark window above the sink. Her face was flushed, and her eyes were big and dark with desire.

“Am I absolutely positive that I can’t want the vampire?” she asked herself.

Yes, you’re absolutely positive,
her reflection seemed to reply.

“But his kiss was—”

Reason one you can’t want him
, her refection interrupted,
is that he is a carnivore, and that makes you want to throw up a little in the back of your throat.

“I don’t have to eat what he eats. Oh, Goddess, I don’t, do I?” Did one share one’s blood with a vampire, or did one’s vampire eat solo?

Reason two
, her reflection continued,
his flesh is cold, dead, hard…

“Well, what’s wrong with hard?” she argued with herself. “Plus, he touched me before we were in the painting, and it really wasn’t that bad.”

Reason three, he’s not your type!

“Okay, look,” she told herself sternly. “Up until about ten minutes ago, I thought Kenny was my type. Maybe I need to change my type!”

Reason four
—her conscience ignored her—
he makes you feel out of control, and you don’t like feeling out of control.

“Well, that’s because he was unexpected. He’s expected now, so I won’t have a control problem. I left my purse at his gallery.” Silently she thanked the Goddess for that slip, Freudian or not. “I have to see him one more time.”

“Yeah, so, tomorrow I’ll just swing by the gallery after school and pick up my purse,” she talked around her toothbrush to her reflection in the bathroom mirror. “No big deal. No enormous ulterior motive,” she lied. “Just getting my purse, saying a quick hello, then coming home. There won’t be any more kissing. None at all. It wouldn’t even be appropriate. Really.”

Summer crawled into bed, thinking about the difference between Ken’s kisses and Colin’s kisses.
What a difference…

Why had she ever thought passion and heat were bad things?
Okay, she knew the answer to that, even if she didn’t like to admit it. She was scared of too much passion, that it would cause her to lose control, and if she lost control, she’d get burned. Summer had learned that lesson well with her stupid out-of-control magic. Maybe it was smart of her to be scared. Was playing with a vampire like playing with fire? Or ice?

Fire, she decided as her body heated the cool sheets. Colin’s passion had been exactly like fire. Her hands touched her lips, remembering Colin’s caress, and then slid slowly down her body, pausing to cup her breasts. Her nipples ached. Summer squeezed them, gently at first, and then she craved more, and her touch got rougher as she teased her ultrasensitive nipples. She moaned. Almost as if she couldn’t stop the impulse, one of her hands moved down between her legs. Summer gasped at the slick heat she found there. She was liquid with desire. She closed her eyes and stroked herself. As her orgasm built, Summer imagined hands on her body and lips against her skin, and when her release came, it was Colin’s intensity that she was thinking of and his touch she yearned for.

7

Colin had never felt like such an utter fool. What in all the levels of the underworld was he doing walking through the moonlit forest carrying a purse?
I know exactly what I’m doing. I’m being a gentleman
, he thought.
I may be dead, but chivalry isn’t. Summer left her purse at the gallery, and I’m returning it.
A woman’s purse was a sacred thing. Goddess knows what all was kept in one; Colin would almost rather take a long walk outside at noon than actually look in the damned thing. Thankfully, it was zipped closed, but he still held it gingerly, like it might explode if he handed it too roughly. There wasn’t much he could do except return it. The sooner the better. Sure, he could hang on
to it and wait for Summer to realize where she left it and then come claim it. But she’d been through a lot. It might take her a day or two, hell, even three, to get around to it. Until then, what about all that important stuff inside the purse? The only thing he could do with a clear conscience, was to return it to her right away. Or at least that’s how he rationalized his overwhelming need to see her again—immediately.

The package carefully wrapped in the gallery’s chic, black, hand-pressed paper was a damn sight tougher to rationalize away.

Or maybe not. Colin shrugged his broad shoulders. Why hide behind rationalizations? He was courting a woman. That was nothing to feel foolish about, even if it meant carrying her purse through the woods while pink love petals fell from the sky and fairies giggled annoyingly as they played naked hide-and-seek among the trees. Goddess, fairies were irritating!

Colin glared at a silver-winged, pink-haired fairy who had frolicked close to him and given the vampire a coquettish smile that was a clear come-hither invitation.

“Not interested,” he said firmly, giving the naked creature a dark look.

Not at all offended, she shrugged her smooth shoulders and scampered off.

Colin scowled after her. Fairies had never interested him. Actually, now that he was thinking about it, it had been a long time since any woman had caught his interest. Were he completely honest with himself, he would admit that no woman had affected
him as this one had. And it wasn’t simply because she was beautiful and interesting. Summer had brought him sunlight!

Summer…Colin felt the urge to laugh aloud. The name fit her perfectly. Sure, he knew she’d said the whole sunlight thing had been because of how her magic worked on spells, but she’d been wrong. He’d smelled sunlight on her, felt it in her touch, since the moment he’d taken her hand.

After living in darkness for so long, there was one thing he definitely recognized, and that was the touch of the sun. He had to have more of that touch. So he was going to woo her until he won her.

“You’re so different here,”
she’d said of him on the balcony, and she’d seemed to like the difference. Colin had been different. He’d been himself again—or at least his prevampire self. Unending night had worn on him until he’d become as dark as his surroundings. Even his ranch had become a black place for him. He’d never been able to go out on his land, work his horses, or care for the cattle in the daylight. He hired hands to do that for him. But for decades he’d found solace in roaming his land at night—in chasing the last rays of sunlight as day reluctantly gave way to night, and then, in turn, giving way to the sun as it inevitably reclaimed the sky. Not so recently. Recently his life had seemed nothing but unending darkness, his beloved ranch not freedom and open space, but just another gilded cage where night continued to imprison him.

Living a life of shadows had worn on him and darkened Colin’s personality as well. But that wasn’t really
him
. It was
what this damn vampire curse had turned him into. Summer could change that; Summer could change everything, and he wanted her to. He wanted to be the Colin who laughed and lived and loved again.

So he’d put in an overseas call to his brother who was still sleeping his way around gay Paris, and Barnabas had told him Summer was staying in her sister, Candice’s, cabin, which sat in a clearing at the southern edge of the pine forest surrounding Mysteria. Which is why he had just trekked through said forest with Summer’s purse and a gift for her and why he was now standing just inside the edge of trees facing the brightly lit little cabin with its homey, wraparound porch.

Colin drew a deep breath. Sunlight and honey—he could scent her from there. She had to be home. He started forward, telling himself that the jittery feeling in his stomach wasn’t nerves, it was just anticipation. Which was only natural; it had been decades since he’d been interested enough to actually consider courting a lady. He just needed to remember that he used to be good with the ladies. Charming—that’s how they used to describe him. Out of practice he may be, but he’d dig deep and put back on that old charm, and Summer would see that—

The door to her cabin opened, and Colin came to an abrupt halt when a man’s body was silhouetted clearly in the doorway. Summer joined the guy, and Colin’s gaze focused on her, blocking out the man and the night and everything but this amazing woman who was, to him, a waking dream.