Page 69 of Reaper’s Curse

Except his brain seemed to be presently trapped somewhere else. I dipped my gaze briefly to his pants. Could I handle and curtail his unfiltered advances? Could I keep him in check?

My chest heaved, and I stepped to the side, granting him a better view of the bed. His potential destination. “You can stay with me tonight if you swear to extract every last frozen drop of your magic before morning.”

19

“What did you do to it?” Winter murmured, gliding his fingers and lips across my collarbone.

I held against a shudder and blinked upward.

“It’s scared. Trying to find safety and burrow deeper.”

“I didn’t do anything.” And that was the truth.

Chace had been the one to use the collector’s eye. I’d merely been on the receiving end. The magic apparently hadn’t appreciated the confrontation.

Thoughts of Chace pushed at the recesses of my mind, yet I refused to give them space. Not while I lay beside a drunken prince who was attempting to extract his magic from my body. I kept my stare locked on the ceiling while mentally fixed on tracking every movement he made.

Sober Winter, I liked and mostly trusted. Inebriated Winter, I was yet undecided.

“You’re so gorgeous,” he whispered against my neck as his fingers drifted a line across my stomach.

I deftly relocated his hand to the surface of the bed. “Focus.”

Tiny tingles of exiting magic danced along my skin. Transferring from me to him before faltering once more. He’d been experiencing a lot of fails since we began an hour earlier, and I was seriously rethinking my not-so-brilliant plan. Clearly his intoxication was not helping the process at all…and mostly served to make his hands extra roamy.

“But it’s so hard,” he replied. “When you’re here, like this, wearing my clothes, looking so terribly sexy and feeling so soft…so warm…so magical.”

A wayward touch skimmed along the edge of my breast, and I jolted, smacked his hand away. I parted my lips, preparing to reprimand him, but he bolted upward and captured my mouth, inhaling my words, my breaths, and…

A glacier careened through my body, ice chips collecting into frozen balls, rolling through me, swelling larger and larger, crashing through my operational systems and senses. My limbs wouldn’t respond to my demands. I couldn’t move, and my lips… They were becoming frigid. Were they blue? Was my entire body blue? Was I frozen to the bed?

The mystical drag sucked and sucked, pulling not only the winter magic but, I feared, pieces of myself. My bones and muscles stiffened as sharp, icy nails raked over and through me. Scraping and clawing in search of something. Stray clusters of magic?

Winter shifted, and without breaking the connection, swung his leg over my body, straddling me. His weight pressed against my hips, pushing me through the mattress. His hands clamped onto the sides of my face, holding me to him, lips locked as he inhaled endlessly. Summoning the magic to him. Except it fought his call, sinking anchors into my organs and soft tissue.

My body began to shake and convulse.

This won’t kill me. As uncomfortable as the process was…it won’t kill me.

A knock sounded at the apartment door, but Winter didn’t halt in his efforts. The sensation of the magical extraction was shifting between crashing balls of ice, a torrid avalanche, and a sandstorm choked full of icicle daggers.

A second set of knocks, and Winter acted as if he hadn’t heard a thing. In fact, he acted as if he’d forgotten I was anything more than a bottle to be drained dry. I wanted to scream, kick, and punch, yet I couldn’t move. My body was too heavy, trapped in a block of ice.

Only it was magic that held me still, and magic could be overcome. The mystical powers of the citizens populating the citadel were not absolute. Not like the powers granted in the transitions of souls. In death.

Inwardly, I pushed against the prince’s relentless force, at all the bits and pieces of magic fighting to stay with me. I swept them up with star-dusted fingers of nightly power and thrust them into the cyclone being consumed, absorbed by Winter.

And still, Winter drank from me, even though I felt nothing more to give. Had he not taken all the magic? Or did some still hide, buried in dark crevices inside of me?

Didn’t matter. He’d done enough. I needed him to stop. I needed to breathe.

But…I couldn’t move, and I couldn’t talk, and…I needed him to stop. Needed him extracted then knocked straight.

I mentally reached out in the same way I had when confronted by the Watcher in the underground tunnels. When I had managed to move the chain wrapped around the child and the chair. Only no chain was present in the bedchamber to call to my aid.

A creak came from the next room, followed by a thunderous crash and rattle. The door to the outer hall banged open, and heavy footsteps dashed into the room.

“Good gods,” someone expelled.