Felicia exhaled and whispered a command. Her fire dragon whooshed out of her body and soared high into the sky, turning joyful cartwheels. Although made of fire and energy, it looked nearly as solid as a real dragon, gleaming and shining. She had made it understand that it couldn’t draw too much attention to it, so it shrunk itself to the size of a big bird. Sailing as high as it could, it would look like a shooting star or a plane’s light to anyone who would glance at the nightly sky.
After watching her dragon fondly for a while, Felicia breathed another sigh of relief. She relished every minute of these nightly walks with Joshua during which she could let her true self come to the fore.
Although the night was decidedly chilly and anyone in their right mind would have worn a jacket and maybe a hat, Felicia was dressed only in a knee-length denim skirt and an orange top. She carried enough heat within her to keep warm at all times, and she’d never been one to like being bundled up in and restricted by too many layers of clothes. Joshua, walking beside her and holding her hand, was more suitably dressed, in a black turtleneck sweater and light grey jeans. He felt the cold and enjoyed it, but was as usual the more sensible and careful of them.
Felicia squeezed his hand before letting go. She removed her hairband and threaded her fingers through her fire-engine red hair, unbraiding it. She shook it loose, letting the wild curls bounce and caress her skin, falling down to mid-back. Maybe she’d really grow them longer, down to her waist. She liked how much they reflected her fiery personality.
With a spontaneous laugh and a small whoop of joy, she started dancing to an unheard tune, stomping her feet and twirling on the spot and shaking her head to make her hair fly around her like banners glowing in the night. She invited the fire inside her to come alive, and it lit her skin up from inside. A human-sized firefly.
Joshua’s laughter rang out not far behind her, and she turned to wiggle her hips at him enticingly. He didn’t laugh often, her serious ice king, but when he did, she felt like bursting with the love she felt for him.
Felicia held her arms out to him.
“Come on, dance with me,” she called, sashaying her hips and flashing her legs, increasing the heat inside her so sparks zinged along her hair.
He grinned indulgently and shook his head. “You’re crazy,” he teased, but he walked closer and took her hands.
She felt that delicious shock of electricity that always shot through them when ice met fire. He shook himself slightly and his icy energy crawled across his skin like mist. Felicia pulled him closer and flung her arms around his neck. They danced for a while, with no music to be heard but the beating of their hearts and their slightly ragged breath.
She reveled in the feel of his tall, slim, hard body against hers, basked in the feeling of safety he always radiated. Gone were the times when she had found him too detached and emotionless, although he was still a loner at heart. With his ice-blue, greyish eyes and his white-blond hair, his finely chiseled face and his air of quiet, regal confidence, she had compared him to a Norse god many times. How fitting that he was now in Iceland, a country not unlike the Scandinavian territories once ruled and ravaged by ancient gods and fierce Viking warriors.
And still…she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was happier here than him.
His cold lips against the pulse throbbing at her neck made her snap back to reality and stop dancing. She shivered when he trailed a line of kisses up her neck until softly biting her earlobe.
“You’re so sexy when you’re wild and crazy like this,” he whispered, and the flames of desire inside her shot higher.
She turned her head slightly and sought out his lips. They kissed with abandon, their mouths dancing and dueling, their tongues delving deep to explore.
Passion was always present when they were together, lurking in the background, simmering and sizzling beneath their skin. Although they were polar opposites, fire and ice, they were made for each other. The contrast between his cold and her heat never failed to thrill her and fuel her need for him. When they came together, it was more than two bodies becoming one, it was also two spirits battling before uniting, fighting but also loving.
Felicia let one hand glide lower and lower, slipping under his sweater to brush over his wintry, stone-like chest. Her heat left behind a singing trail on the thin layer of ice covering his skin but didn’t succeed in melting it. She felt his hands slip underneath her top, his icy fingers brushing over every dip and ridge of her spine and raising goose bumps in their wake. They trailed higher and he broke the kiss to chuckle softly.
“Naughty witch,” he growled deep in his chest because he had found out she wasn’t wearing a bra.
Grinning, she licked his skin before biting down at the juncture of neck and shoulder and feeling him become harder and colder against her.
“Make love to me,” she demanded more than begged.
Joshua tensed, the way he always did when she brought him close to losing control. She felt the power of his emotions and his magic ripple through him and make her tremble with want. Taking one step back, she pulled the top over her head and shivered with excitement when she read the unmistakable desire in his icy eyes.
They came together in the middle of the nightly emptiness on the border of town, their passion so intense that the magic inside them broke loose and marked the ground. Glowing fire and a misty haze of frost surrounded them in a circle, scorching and freezing at the same time.
It had taken them a few shocks and bad experiences—including damaged hotel rooms and destroyed clothes—to learn that they couldn’t afford losing control like this when inside and among people. They seemed to affect the atmosphere and their surroundings, leaving destruction in their wake. So the only way to make love was out in the open where everything was as wild as they were.
What felt a small eternity later, Felicia and Joshua embarked on the long walk back home. They were lucky that their special gift not only enabled them to see well in the dark and to handle different temperatures, but also to make do with only a few hours of sleep. Every night after Felicia returned from the shift at the hotel, they wolfed down a quick dinner and ventured out into the wild. Sometimes they took their sandwiches out with them, wandering across the hills and through the grass or following the Ölfusá River on whose banks the town of Selfoss was situated.
Joshua took her hand, and Felicia half turned to smile at him. She was suffused in soft golden light radiating from within her, giving the term afterglow a whole new meaning. He gave her fingers a squeeze but didn’t smile or look at her. Instead, his gaze was fixed ahead, and she could see that his face was a mask of thoughtfulness.
“Why so serious?” she asked.
He didn’t answer straight away, but she was used to that. Joshua wasn’t one for spontaneous outbursts like her. He thought over things before putting them into words. In fact, he thought all the time, and rather too much for her liking.
“Something is worrying me,” he finally said.
A jolt of apprehension coursed through Felicia, but when he felt it he gave her hand another squeeze.
“What’s the matter?”
He shrugged, which was an uncommon gesture for him.
“I can’t put my finger on it. I only know that something is amiss. Maybe that something is going to happen.”
Felicia frowned and brushed some hair strands out of her face to get a better look at him.
“How do you know? Is it connected to us?”
He lifted his head to glance at the comet-like form of her fire dragon high up in the cloudy night sky.
“Yes, I think it’s connected to us. Connected to you.”
That stopped her in her tracks, and the tug at his hand stopped him to and made him turn to look at her. His grey eyes were unfathomable, but she sensed hidden distress under his protective layer of ice and detachment.
“Stop beating about the bush and tell me what the matter is!” she demanded.
He scowled. “I would if I knew, but as I t
old you it’s only a vague notion, a sense of foreboding.”
Felicia suppressed an exasperated sigh and plonked herself down on the ground unceremoniously.
“I’m not going to move from this spot until you spit out the details. If you want me to go to work tomorrow without a wink of sleep, stay quiet. Otherwise let me know what’s worrying you.”
She knew he cared too much for her to torture her, and she was right. Although he looked none too pleased with her behavior, he settled down next to her, graciously folding down from his height to cross his long legs.
“Remember what I told you some months ago on the hill when I talked about my job as a private investigator and how I had found out about you?”
Drawing her legs closer to her body, Felicia wrapped her arms around them, her frown intensifying. If there was one moment in life that she didn’t want to relive, it was that damned night that seemed a lifetime ago now.
She shivered when she remembered it all. They had gone hiking and spent their first night together, only to have her react to the pull of a fire form a burning building in a village nearby. Joshua had tried with all means to keep her from running there, and she had burned him badly in the process. Her fiery hands had left burn marks on his chest, but with his ice magic and ability to heal, he had overcome the injuries. Nothing more remained apart from two fainter than faint scars in the shape of her two hands—and a stronger bond between them. He had confessed that night that they hadn’t met on coincidence. The city’s police had hired him to investigate a serious of unexplained fires, and he was suspecting her of arson. Another shiver went through Felicia when she remembered that she had indeed been at each and every site of burning buildings. She was still not sure whether she had unconsciously caused those fires because of her wanton magic or whether the fires had attracted her.
“What do you mean? You told me many things that night.”
She thought of how betrayed she had felt, but then she drew strength from the fact that he had also pledged his support and confessed his love. Looking back now, she knew that he had done all he could to protect her, guide her and prevent further damage to anything or anyone. It hadn’t been his fault that the authorities had investigated the investigator and ended up at her doorstep to have her arrested for arson.
Joshua’s voice pulled her back from the past into the present.
“Remember that I told you I’ve always had this strange stirring inside me whenever I am close to…to supernatural beings like us, to humans who are not normal, and to those who are not human?”
She nodded, and her brows rose. In a mix of alarm and anticipation, she said, “What, do you feel it again? Do you mean to tell me we’re not the only freaks hiding here?”
He glared at her before slipping into his serious but neutral expression again that fit his ice personality so well.
“I wish you would stop calling us freaks.”
“But we are,” she interrupted, always eager to get her point across. “We’re as far from normal as could be, and we should be proud of it. Until I know who has made us or what we really are or what our place and purpose in life is, I’ll stick to my mutant theory and wild speculations and call us freaks. Freaks of nature or freaks of someone, maybe some god or ancient species or aliens.”
Joshua chuckled mirthlessly and shook his head. As usual, he was the one to give in and smoothen out the mood.
“Anyway, the answer is yes. I have been getting that eerie feeling, that inexplicable pull again. It started last week and it’s been getting stronger ever since…as if said someone was travelling toward us.”
They stared at each other for a moment, letting that sink in. Felicia’s eyes grew wide. A paranormal or supernatural being on their way to them? Would it be a man or a woman? Was it one of the vampires Joshua insisted lived all over the world? Someone with elemental powers like the two of them? Someone like those heroes and villains from Marvel comics and blockbuster movies that she admired and envied so? It took some time for another piece of information to register.
“That’s terrifying…or maybe terrific, I’m not sure.” Before he could react, she ploughed on, “But why do you say it’s connected to me? I sure as hell haven’t put up a Facebook post calling all freaks to come and find me.”
She grinned half-heartedly, but Joshua stayed silent and solemn. After some time, he said reluctantly, “Because whoever or whatever it is, it’s coming for you and not for me.”
While a part of her brain shrank at the use of the words “coming for” instead of “coming to”—as if she’d been singled out and hunted down to be punished—another part was thrilled. Was she finally getting closer to finding out why she had fire magic, and how she could use it on a greater scale?
She pushed the tempting thoughts aside, partly because she knew Joshua had never understood her eagerness to learn more and her readiness to openly be the freak she claimed to be.
“How do you know?” she asked instead, a bit of worry creeping into her voice after all.
“I didn’t know it before, but I am sure since this morning. It caught me completely by surprise. I was just scanning the area, had half convinced myself not to worry because it’s too much of a coincidence that someone…special…apart from us seeks out this place. But when I zoned in on the feeling today, I suddenly knew that he or she was right in this city.”
Felicia’s eyes widened even more. Confrontation time? Was she really ready? She had no chance to think about it some more, because Joshua went on, staring straight into her eyes with the strangest expression on his face.
“The…being…was with you, or near you at least.”
She gasped and frowned. “How can you be sure if you just sense the presence? Can you locate it so precisely that you know its exact place?”
Saying “it” seemed wrong, for wasn’t she an “it” too then?
Joshua shook his head. “You’re not thinking logically. If…”
“No, I’m not,” she interrupted, bristling at the reproach. He still hadn’t gotten over the patronizing teacher role he used to play when they had met. “In case you haven’t noticed, you’re the thinker of this relationship.”
Narrowing his eyes at her, Joshua retorted, “Oh believe me, I notice it all the time. I only wish you fire witch would at least sometimes use that red-haired head of yours.”
They glared at each other, but the moment passed and righted itself quickly. They grinned at each other ruefully, recognizing that they kept falling back into this form of not so harmless banter. They were opposites after all. And although opposites did attract, it didn’t make them a perfect match made in heaven.
After mumbling sorry at the same time as her, Joshua sobered up and explained, “If I can sense some other preternatural being, it’s only logical that I can sense you too.”
She stared at him as if he had dropped a bomb. But of course. Why hadn’t it occurred to her? It was how he had found her in the first place, although he hadn’t known that the mysterious, gifted being and his suspect were one and the same. It was kind of creepy and fascinating at the same time that he could ‘see’ her like that, knew her special presence as if she were a blip on his radar.
“I can actually feel you much stronger ever since we…bonded. And it’s a different feeling,” Joshua went on. “Something familiar and welcome. But that other presence now, it seems even more unfamiliar and unwelcome because of that.”
He was frowning again, and she wondered why he was so worried. Was he hiding something from her?
“Felicia, haven’t you sensed anything today? Didn’t anything out of the ordinary happen?”
She shook her head, her curls flying. Setting her jaw, she made to rise, but Joshua reached for her hand and tugged her back down. He looked straight into her eyes, in that probing way he had that made her feel as transparent as glass.
“Are you sure? Nothing out of the ordinary?”
“No. Don’t you think I would tell you if something had h
appened?”
He stared at her a moment longer before nodding once, but she could feel the tenseness inside him.
“Darling?” he asked.
It was her turn to stare. He wasn’t one for using endearments, so what had brought this one on? Was he really so worried although nothing had happened yet? On impulse, she leaned forward and pressed a quick, reassuring kiss to his icy lips, letting her warmth linger.
“Yes?”
He licked his lips unconsciously before locking gazes with her again.
“Promise me you’ll be careful. I…I have a very bad feeling about whoever or whatever is headed our way.”
She liked it that he said “our way” although he had implied it was all about her. And oh how she liked it that he cared so much. He, the loner of so many years, the detached observer, the ice king. She must have really melted some of his reserve with her fire…or maybe with her love.
Squeezing his hand, she nodded. “Promised. Now stop being such a worrywart. Let’s go home and share a glass of that quaint Icelandic Single Malt whisky we discovered last week.”
He let her pull him to his feet and all but drag him across the field and to the main road leading past farmland to the outskirts of Selfoss.
“Whatever is meant to happen will happen,” she said, feeling uncharacteristically philosophic and making him smile lopsidedly for a second.
She called out to her dragon to reign it in. The moment it slithered back inside her and transformed into a core of fire energy inside her belly, a realization hit her.
Hadn’t her dragon been unduly excited today? And hadn’t that been connected to the cocky stranger showing up at the hotel?
But no, that was just a weird quirk of life and a man too full of himself, nothing like a supernatural presence looming close and setting Joshua on edge. Felicia put it out of her mind and asked Joshua how his day spent at the city library had gone.
Chapter 4
Playing with Fire (Book 1 of the FIRE Trilogy) Page 44
