“That must make you Captain Obvious.” He shook his head with a snort. “It was a kiss. Get over it. I manhandled you a little, and I let you go as soon as you started to struggle. More importantly, it gave you the shock you needed to get the job done. Now, I have a breakfast meeting with the mayor in the morning and a major new investigation to start. Do you have any more tips for me?”

Still breathing hard, she shook her head. She didn’t trust herself to speak. She wanted to plant her fist in his arrogant, unrepentant face.

“All right,” he said. “Remember, do it at least five hundred more times. Do it until it becomes second nature and you don’t have to struggle to access that part of you. Practice it on different targets—on moving targets, if you can find any. Practice it when you’re exhausted and when you first wake up. Good night.”

With that, he turned and strode to his car, leaving her standing alone in the parking lot, staring after him. Her lips still throbbed from the hard pressure of his mouth, and adrenaline pounded through her body.

Just a kiss, he said. Get over it.

But it had been more than just a kiss. It had been her first delicate exploration beyond her dead marriage. Her first hint of pleasure with someone other than her husband.

But he hadn’t meant it.

And for the space of a moment when she had struggled against his strength, she had been very aware that he could overpower her with little effort. And that she couldn’t get free of him unless he chose to let her go.

As her blood cooled in the evening chill, she calmed enough to think. Maybe that wasn’t what he had intended. Like he said, he had let her go as soon as he felt her struggle.

Yet for that one moment she had felt what it was like to be overpowered by someone larger and physically stronger than she was.

She took another beer bottle, set it on the asphalt, and walked several yards away.

As she eyed her target, she whispered, “I’m not going to get over it.”

Then she concentrated on pulling up her magic and focusing it like a weapon.

Another beer bottle shattered.

Four hundred and ninety-nine more to go.

Chapter Six

He shouldn’t have kissed her.

That thought dominated as Josiah pulled onto the interstate to Birmingham. He sped through the deepening night, his mood turning savage.

What the fuck had he been thinking? He’d meant to get her riled, but there were a thousand other ways he could have done it, and the desire to explore her beautiful lips had mingled disastrously with the urge to knock her out of her shackles of self-doubt.