Page 43 of Darkness Defined

“Who said it was going to stay a ball?” I gathered more shadow material and willed the simple sphere into a large spiked morning star, sans handle. It would be a lot harder to catch if he couldn’t touch it.

Matt’s eyes widened as I sent it sailing over to him. Rather than even try to catch it, he dodged. “Are you out of your mind?”

“Who can really say? Now hold still and catch it.”

He spun out of the way again as it veered straight for his head. “I can’t catch that!”

“That’s because you aren’t even trying.”

“You’re insane.”

“Just catch the damn thing.”

Matt’s back pressed into a corner of the room. He had three options left: he could shadow out of the way, take control and eliminate the spikes, or stop it. The sphere sailed towards him. He held out his hands defensively, and the ball stopped in midair. He cracked open an eye and let out a relieved breath.

“I wouldn’t have let it hurt you, you know.”

Matt looked between me and the floating weapon. “What? Did you stop it?”

“You tell me.” I held up my hands. The sphere stayed put.

He reached out carefully to touch one of the spikes, then yanked his hand back and glared at me. “Those things are sharp.”

“It had to be believable.” The spikes instantly vanished into a perfectly smooth sphere.

He took hold of it, removing it from where it was hovering above the ground. His voice filled with wonder as he bounced the over-sized ball in his hands. “Never in a million years did I think I’d ever be able to do something like this.”

My traitorous heart fluttered. Sometimes he really looked like some innocent kid eager to see the wonders of the world. I was too busy staring at him to realize the sphere was now hurtling right at me. I blinked in alarm and it blasted into streams of shadow. When the room cleared, Matt was almost right in front of me. Again, with the lack of personal space.

“You checked out a minute there,” he commented.

I played at smoothing my hair to hide my blush. One of these days, I was going to get caught for real and my goose would really be cooked.

Matt shifted his weight. “So, how do you want to do this?”

“Do what?” I asked, still trying to pull myself together.

“Shadowing out. That was the deal.”

“Right. I mean, however. You’re the expert.”

“I wouldn’t say expert. Okay, let me think.” He tapped a finger against his bottom lip thoughtfully, which did absolutely nothing for how I wasn’t supposed to be thinking about how plump that lip was or how incredible it would feel between my teeth. “The way I do it is all instinct based. It’s like what you told me before with the spoon trick. You justneedto be somewhere else.”

“But I’m not really motivated like that.”

“Then I guess we’ll need to motivate you.” Without warning, he swung at my face.

I caught his hand before he could actually hit me. “What do you think you’re doing?” I asked, incredulous.

He gave an evil grin. “Motivating you.” His fist shifted in my grasp and suddenly he was holding my wrist.

I didn’t even have a chance to react before he sent me flying. My feet barely got under me in time to spin around and catch another swing. He seemed genuinely surprised that I’d caught him and his smile grew. His leg swung out to kick me and I shadowed out before I could lose my stance. He struck again, and I dodged. Every move he made was lightning fast, without restraint. If he hit me, it was going to hurt like hell.

I shadowed out of the way just in time to avoid another smart punch and materialized a short distance away. I braced myself, expecting him to slam into my back like he had at the dorm, so was completely unprepared when he came at me with a frontal assault. He slammed into my chest and I grunted as we both went down.

When the stars cleared, I was staring up into ice-blue eyes. Laughter danced in their chilly depths and my hormones started doing their own jig at realizing Matt was on top of me. Mercifully, he rolled over to lie on the floor, where he chuckled to himself.

“See, you don’t need practice.” The back of his hand smacked my stomach and I let out an oof. “You’ve got it just fine.”