Every muscle in Quinn’s body tenses. Astrid can feel it—him—more than she could before taking the drug.
“You think this is a bad idea?” she asks him.
“No, just, well, a little scary.”
“Tell me about it,” Owen agrees. He raises his hand and a towel stacked on the counter next to Astrid lifts and floats through the hair. He catches it and wipes off his face. It’s an impressive move, but the way his chest heaves is a tell that the activity wore him out.
“So you can not only alter objects and people’s mental perceptions, but physically fuck with time and space.” Casper sounds more impressed than she’s ever heard him.
“I think so,” Owen replies. “And now that we can use our powers with one another, it may be a huge benefit.”
Astrid hands him a bottle of water and looks at Quinn. “You have anything to share with the class?”
He moves to the middle of the room and he looks extra bad ass with the split lip and bruised face. “So you guys got me thinking the last time you experimented. I was able to learn to use my skills when I was younger. At first, I was very dangerous—to myself and anyone else in a five-mile radius. Honestly, there were times I wondered if I was the one that caused the explosion at the group home.” Astrid frowns. “It was possible. An electrical fire or some kind of major surge. I don’t know, but it was enough to make me face my power.”
He pushes his sleeves over his elbows and, similar to Owen, holds his hands out. “The power comes from inside—not just out. I can blow fuses or knock out a transformer with touch, but the current runs in me too.” A charge zaps between his hands, blue and cold. It spreads like a spiderweb of lightning, twisting and alive. Astrid has felt this energy before, but she’s never seen it, and she can’t take her eyes off of the beautiful light. “The idea of protection intrigued me, and I started playing around.”
Quinn moves his hands apart and the current spreads with them. The further they go, the less visible the energy. The charge is still there, raising the hair on her arms. Owen flattens his with his hand.
“Throw something at me,” Quinn says.
Owen doesn’t hesitate and grabs the green bottle of soda and tosses it at Quinn.
“Hey!” Astrid yells, watching her precious drink go flying by. But her outrage is short-lived when the bottle sailing toward Quinn’s face stops in mid-air and bounces back.
“Holy shit,” Casper cackles. “Holy. Fucking. Shit.”
Owen doesn’t hesitate and picks up three more things: a weight ball, a can of disinfectant, and his bottle of water, and rapidly tosses them at Quinn. The lighter two bounce off. The heavier ball actually pushes Quinn back a few inches, but he holds—the shield holds—and the weight falls to the floor with a thud.
His hands drop and it’s obvious from across the room that his arms shake from exhaustion, but there’s the curve of a proud smile on his face.
“That was amazing.”
“Come here,” he says to her, and she walks over. Taking a deep, steadying breath he makes the shield again, this time with Astrid behind it.
“Take your best shot, Owen,” he says.
Owen doesn’t pick up anything, instead he uses his hands and turns the room into a darkened jungle. Vines ripple off his body, twisting across the floor, up the walls and covering the ceiling. Dark smoke fills the room and Astrid feels the hammering of her heart. It all looks so real. Snakes slither toward them and Owen moves his hands, pushing them into an attack. Their jaws widen, their fangs glisten and the hissing echoes in her ears. She knows they aren’t real, but her mind can’t push back. Owen is good, very good, at this manipulation and for the first time she feels the full onslaught of it, mentally as well as physically.
“Fucking snakes,” Quinn mutters and pulse kicks into high gear. “You know they freak me out.”
“Yeah, that’s why I made them,” Owen quips, not the least bit sorry to be challenging Quinn. But what Quinn is experiencing isn’t normal—he usually doesn’t panic, but she feels it rolling off of him and that fear is going to make him fail.
She makes a decision.
Ripping off her gloves, she drops them on the ground, reaching for Quinn’s hands. He wavers for a second, and the shield falls but she says, “Don’t drop it. Hold on.”
He closes his eyes and clenches his jaw. Fear races through her. Absolute, terrified panic. She swallows it back and thinks of something good. Something happy, and channels everything she has back on him.
Saving the kid from the fire. The first time he and Astrid spoke. His smile. The ring. Their fight. The way his body feels beneath her hands.
The last one seems to do it, sparking something in him, and the fear fades entirely. She removes her hands, confident he’s got it.
The snakes and darkness ascend, crashing into them, but the shield holds, keeping them at bay. Quinn envelops them, moving his arms wide. They’re encircled by his protection and no matter how hard Owen tries, he can’t get through.
The darkness blinks, fades—his strength is waning. Quinn grits his teeth, trying to hold on. Astrid watches as their eyes connect and they both give at the same time. The shield falls, the manipulations vanish. Both men gasp for air.
Astrid wraps her arm around Quinn, holding him upright.
“I can’t decide if I should be turned on or terrified,” Casper says over the speaker.
Owen exhales and looks up at the ceiling. “Dude.”
“Why do you have to make everything weird?” Quinn adds. His eyes dart to Astrid. She can feel her lingering effects on him. She may have to find something better than lust that makes him happy.
Astrid just smiles, almost buckling under Quinn’s weight.
“I’m not sure what your friend Draco is up to,” Casper adds, “but he just gave you all a massive advantage.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Quinn
Exhausted from experimenting with their powers, they agree to take a break. Owen crashes on the couch in the game room. Astrid heads to her bedroom and Quinn follows.
She’s not getting away so easily.
He stops in the doorway, watching as she kicks off her shoes. Without turning, she says, “You know I can hear your heartbeat a mile away. Especially now.”
“Yeah, that’s not the only thing you got wound up in there,” he replies. She hit him with a hard dose of lust during the test. One he could handle while fighting off Owen’s creatures, but now that it’s over, he’s left with the lingering effects of her empathy and a painful hard-on in his shorts.
She turns and eyes him in the doorway. “Sorry about that. I’m going to have to figure out a better way to motivate you.”
“Your power is strong,” he says. “More than I realized. Like, I thought I understood, but what you pushed into me? It dominated my mind and body as much as Owen’s snakes.”
“Yeah, he really scared the shit out of you. I felt it.”
“I hate snakes.”
She laughs. “You never should have told him that.”
He wills away the desire while they talk, but it’s impossible. She got in his head. Both of them. “Yeah, so—” he’s about to tell her he’s going to take a shower when she cuts him off.
“Now you know what I go through.” She holds up her hands. “Why I protect myself.”
“I want you to learn how to control it.”
She wrinkles her nose. “What if I can’t?”
He steps into the room, holding up his hands, and raises an eyebrow. She doesn’t exactly say yes but she also doesn’t run. He takes her right hand in his but doesn’t take off the glove, not yet.
“We can’t go back from this,” she tells him. “The way we were before. You know me now.”
“I’d like to think I knew you before.”
“I’m a bundle of walking nerves, Quinn. Raw and untethered. Doesn’t that scare you?”
He works his jaw, trying his hardest not to scare her. Scare himself.
Linking up to her like this—now he gets why she and Owen have become closer lately. Knowing Astrid like this builds a bond that can’t be easily shattered.
“Do you want to go back? To before? Before we found one another?”