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had happened.
    “Come on,” he growled at Gwen, tugging her through the crowd, ready to crush anyone who tried to stop them. He should have known mixing with the Komolvo was a dangerous idea. Why the hell he brought Gwen there with him, he didn’t know. But it had been stupid, that was for sure. He shouldn’t have put her anywhere near the danger.
    As she followed along behind him, he knew he was lying to himself. He didn’t truly believe they’d been in danger just then. No one would have been able to hurt her with him there, spell or no spell. For them to put him in that trance, he had to have half wanted what had happened.
    He laughed and shook his head again, ignoring Gwen’s questioning look. Half wanted was a load of shit. He’d wanted her in his arms, wanted to taste her, to drink from those lips again, with everything he was. There was no halfway about it. It had only been a day and he was losing himself to Gwen again. And that was something he couldn’t afford to do.
     

Chapter Six
    “Stop. Gideon, stop.” Gwen pulled her hand from his and stopped when they’d reached the center of town. He’d been dragging her behind him with no explanation for the better part of a half-hour, and she was tired of it. “We need to talk about what happened back there.”
    “You. You happened.”
    “What is that supposed to mean? You know as well as I do, no one would have been able to spell either of us if we hadn’t wanted that to happen on some level. It would have been impossible.”
    Gideon let out a frustrated breath and ran a hand through his hair. She closed her hands into fists to keep from reaching toward him. It seemed her body was fighting her, wanting to reach for him, to touch him, and she wondered if this was something witches and warlocks experienced a lot. A feeling that the flesh of their forms wanted to act without their consent. Not that she wouldn’t consent to it. She had no problem consenting.
    But she could see Gideon wanted nothing to do with her now that he was back in control. He couldn’t make that clearer to her if he wrote it across his chest in big block letters.
    His chest… No! She needed to focus here, not get lost in a fantasy that wasn’t going to take place.
    “I don’t understand what that was, Gideon. What happened at the Komolvo camp?” She understood the magical part of it, but not what was going on between them. Why did he seem to want her and hate her all at once?
    “Magic, Gwen. Old Komolvo magic, nothing more.”
    Nothing more. The words cut through her. The hard part was, something more had happened for her. She didn’t have a name for it, and she didn’t know what to do about it, but she was feeling something for Gideon. It was powerful, which didn’t make sense, since she’d only just met him. But there was something oddly familiar about these feelings. As though she’d felt them before. As though she knew them. Knew him.
    And she did know one other thing. Whatever this was, he wasn’t feeling it back. His body might want her, but his soul didn’t. Not the way her soul cried out for him.
    Gwen nodded, swallowing a lump in her throat as she walked past him. “Okay.” She crossed the street and headed toward their hotel, a small, broken-down old building in the center of town.
    She’d been fooling herself all this time, trying to convince herself the rundown old building was romantic. That its age made it special, somehow. That was crap. She could see that now. In fact, she saw a lot of things now, as if the lifting of the magic spell the Komolvo had cast had also lifted away the false veil she’d been throwing over everything.
    This world wasn’t the wonderful, fun place she’d been telling herself it was. Being in corporeal form hurt. It hurt to have a heart and feelings, and apparently to be able to feel things. Things for Gideon she couldn’t have.
    “Gwen, wait.”
    But she didn’t. She wrapped her arms around herself and kept right on going.