“Concentrate. Bring it fully into your mind, the details, the shape, the structure.”

She nodded, closed her eyes. “I am.”

He chose the chest first as he sensed it held the most power. Its magic would aid him in the task. He circled it three times, then reversed, circled again while he said the words, while he opened himself to the power.

Glenna struggled to fix her focus. There was something deeper, richer about his voice, something erotic in the way it spoke the ancient tongue. She felt the heat of what he stirred on her skin, and in her blood. Then a swift and solid punch of air.

When she opened her eyes, the chest was gone.

“I’m impressed.” More honestly, she was amazed. She was capable, with considerable preparation and effort, of transporting small, simple objects some distance. But he’d simply and efficiently poofed a two-hundred-pound chest.

She could picture him now, in billowing robes on the cliff he’d spoken of in Ireland. Challenging the storm, charging himself with it. And facing what no man should have to face, with faith and with magic.

Her belly tightened with sheer and simple lust.

“Was that Gaelic you were speaking?”

“Irish,” he said, so obviously distracted, she didn’t speak again.

Once more he circled, focusing now on the cases that contained her photography and art equipment. She nearly yipped a protest, then reminded herself to have faith. Calling on it, she closed her eyes again, brought the guest room back into her mind. Gave him what she could of her own gift.

It took him fifteen minutes to accomplish what she was forced to admit would have taken her hours, if she could have managed it at all.

“Well that was... that was something.” The magic was still on him, turning his eyes opaque, rippling through the air between them. She felt it like a ribbon wound around both of them, tying them together. Her own arousal was so keen, she had to step back, deliberately break the bond between them.

“No offense, but are you sure they’re where we want them?”

He continued to stare at her with those fathomless blue eyes until the heat in her belly grew so strong she wondered it didn’t shoot fire from her fingertips.

It was nearly too much, this pressure, this need, the mad beat of it at every pulse. She started to step back again, but he simply lifted a hand and stopped her in her tracks.

She felt the pull, from him, to him, with just enough play for her to resist, to snap that lead and escape. Instead she stood, kept her eyes locked with his as he closed the distance between them with one easy stride.

Then there was nothing easy.

He yanked her to him so that her breath expelled on a quick hitching gasp, and that gasp ended on a moan when their mouths met. The hot, drugging kiss spun through her head, through her body, sizzling in her blood when she clung to him.

Candles she’d left in the room flashed into flame.

At once aggressive and desperate, she dug her hands into his shoulders and plunged headfirst into the storm of sensation. This, this was what she’d craved from the first moment she’d seen him in dreams.

She felt his hands on her hair, her body, her face, and everywhere he touched quivered. No dream now, just need and heat and flesh.

He couldn’t stop himself. She was like a feast after the fast, and all he wanted was to gorge. Her mouth was full and soft, and fit so truly to his it was as if the gods had formed it for only that purpose. The power he’d wielded had snapped back on him, inciting an impossible hunger that ached in his belly, in his loins, in his heart and cried out to be sated.

Something burned between them. He’d known it from the first instant, even ill with fever and pain while the wolves stalked beyond his fire. And he feared it nearly as much as he feared what they were fated to face together.

He drew her back, shaken to the bone. What they’d stirred was alive on her face, sultry and tempting. If he accepted and took, what price would they both pay for it?

There was always a price.

“I apologize. I... I was caught on the tail of the spell.”

“Don’t apologize. It’s insulting.”

Women, was all he could think. “Touching you in that way isn’t?”

“If I hadn’t wanted you to touch me that way, I’d have stopped you. Oh, don’t flatter yourself,” she snapped out when she read the expression on his face. “You may be stronger, physically, magically, but I can handle myself. And when I want an apology, I’ll ask for one.”

“I can’t find my balance in this place, or with you.” Frustration rippled out from him now, as the magic had. “I’m not liking it, or what I’m feeling for you.”

“That’s your problem. It was just a kiss.”

He caught her arm before she could turn away. “I don’t believe, even in this world, that was just a kiss. You’ve seen what we have to face. Desire is a weakness, one we can’t risk. Everything we have must be charged toward what we have to do. I won’t risk your life or the fate of the world for a few moments of pleasure.”

“I can promise it would be more than a few. But there’s no point in arguing with a man who sees desire as a weakness. Let’s chalk it up to the moment, and move on.”

“I’m not after hurting you,” he began with some regret, and she aimed a single, quelling look.

“Apologize again, and you’re on your ass.” She picked up her keys, her purse. “Put out the candles, would you, and let’s go. I want to make sure my things arrived safely, and we’ve got to arrange for flights to Ireland. And figure out how to smuggle you out of the country.”

She grabbed sunglasses from a table, put them on. A great deal of her irritation faded at the baffled expression on his face. “Shades,” she explained. “They cut the glare of the sun, and in this case are a sexy fashion statement.”

She opened the iron gate, then turned, looked back at her loft, her things. “I have to believe I’ll come back here. I have to believe I’ll see all this again.”

She stepped inside, pushed the button for the ground floor. And left behind much that she loved.

When Cian came out of his room, Glenna was in the kitchen cooking. On their return, Hoyt had taken himself off to the study adjoining the living room, hauling his books with him. Now and again, she felt something ripple out, and assumed he was practicing some spells.