Wicked Souls Read Online Free PDF

oozed from his pores. Like
always, he was manipulating me, sounding as if he truly cared about
my boyfriend, my sister, and my best friend, when in reality, he
just wanted to get me in bed.
    The magic in my chest strained to unfurl and
go to him, eager as always to do his bidding. My skin tingled and
my pulse throbbed in my ears… yes, yes, yes . I reached for
another Dove. “Stop it.”
    He looked at me, perplexed. “Stop what?”
    Take me, take me, take me , the pulse
continued its raging chant. I bit off a piece of chocolate, chewed
it and swallowed. Usually chocolate calmed me. Today, with every
bite, my nerves hopscotched, my fingers shook.
    I crumpled the wrapper and threw it in the
garbage can with a little more force than necessary. It pinged off
the rim and shot across the room. “Pretending you care about
anybody but yourself.”
    He stopped scratching Cain and went still,
his black-as-night eyes locked on mine. He set the cat down, strode
the two steps across the short expanse of kitchen and pinned me
against the counter, hands on either side of my hips. “I’ll do that
when you stop pretending you don’t care about me.”
    Yes! Yes! Yes! Now my magic was in
cahoots with my raging pulse. He had me on that statement, both
figuratively and literally. I couldn’t budge from his encompassing
stance nor could I fudge the truth with any degree of
believability. And like earlier that day, I saw the worry in his
eyes, the sincerity I didn’t want to believe.
    Up close, the stress in his face was also
visible. Lines that hadn’t been there six months ago, even four
months ago, cut across the corners of his eyes. His body strained
against mine, not just from lust, but from real emotion. Emotions
he didn’t quite know how to handle.
    Heat engulfed me as if someone was pouring a
bucket of warm water over my head, desire running from head to toe
in a rush. His fire magic commanded my air magic to respond and it
did, breaking free and reaching for him as energy popped and
crackled along my nerve endings. Cain meowed and ran from the room
as my hands lifted to follow my magic.
    Before I could touch Luc, though, he jerked
away, stumbling backwards three steps until the stainless steel
fridge brought him up short. Chest heaving in time with mine, he
held up a hand as if to ward me off, his eyes wide and fierce in
his strained face.
    For several minutes, we stayed that way,
staring at each other in a haze. My mind whirled with conflicting
thoughts. My heart, with conflicting emotions. I tried to bring up
Adam’s face, but the moment it appeared, pressure filled my head,
and the image morphed back into Luc’s.
    Three feet away, he started to say
something, shook his head, tried again. Nothing came out.
    With the physical distance between us, the
energy tingling my nerves began to abate and I whistled softly
under my breath. It was still there, ready to leap and arc with his
magic if he let go and allowed his emotions to surface. However, by
the look on his face, I could see that wasn’t going to happen again
anytime soon.
    Which was good, right? I certainly didn’t
want to blow my magic-free lifestyle or my relationship with Adam,
and that kind of power, that kind of magic, was impossible to
fight. I knew it, and judging by Luc’s response, so did he.
    Luc and I had always shared a potent brew of
magical energy and lust, but I’d never felt anything like this
before. A witch drew magic from her emotions. I’d never realized,
however, that Lucifer’s magic might do the same.
    We stared at each other across the tile
floor, neither of us comfortable with what had just happened and
yet wondering what exactly could happen if we let it. I
swallowed the ball of fear and excitement in my throat and cleared
it. I forced myself to think of Adam. There. I could at least
picture his tattoo from that morning, the muscles moving under it. “You’d better leave.”
    Luc’s face cleared, his eyes going hard and
flat again as he