Our Rising Tide

The tide is lower at the beach tonight. The bases of the pillars are above water so you can see they're engorged with barnacles. Aiden takes my hand again where the long, stripped trunk of a tree arches, half-submerged in the sand, while everyone else is still distant.

"I don't feel like sharing you tonight," he says with a glance up the beach. "Let's hang out here, instead." He pulls me over to take a seat on the log. When I don't sit, he pats the space next to him.

I examine him. His normal intensity is warm tonight—his eyes pools I could dive into. His hair flutters in the breeze off the sea, tossing over his forehead, back and forth as he stares at me.

"What?" I ask him.

He shakes his head, smiles, leans forward, elbows on knees, staring at what must be the newly started bonfire in the distance, because I can make out thin, flickering slivers of orange and yellow reflected in his eyes.

I know I'm staring, but I can't stop. I haven't met anyone like him before. Is it because of his power? No. Something tells me Aiden's a guy who draws the eye whether he's channeling or not.

I give up and sit next to him, thigh to thigh, his arm sliding around my waist when he isn't using it to point something out. Chatting, we watch the crowd grow, the noise of a party building from a few voices, to thirty, to fifty strong. The fire is even bigger than last time. The flames started small, peeking out from the bottom of the pile. But now they're licking up and up, flaring, lighting the dock even from this distance. The crowd around it hoots and yells. The music crashes to drown out the numbers surrounding it and I have a sense of déjà vu.

I'm back.

It's three weeks ago. I haven't been bound, lost a night, or been grounded. I haven't spent weeks with Aiden sneaking in my window. I'm not obsessed with him—or itching to ask him to bind me...

Then Aiden takes my hand. "You're craving," he says quietly.

I blink. "You can tell?"

He shrugs, still staring where our hands at joined. "I have a kind of . . . affinity for it." Then he murmurs something, the air hums, and that soothing warmth starts in my palm then works its way up my arms to my chest. I take a deep breath and relax.

"Thank you."

"Anytime. You should just ask me."

We sit for another minute, his thumb tracing back and forth on my hand, until I give up on staying cool tonight and blurt, "I can't stop thinking about getting bound."

Aiden's expression dims, but he nods. "That amazing feeling never goes away. It's always worth it."

"Does it work the same here as back in my bedroom? I have to be home by midnight tonight." Butterflies surge in my stomach. "I can't afford to be late again. My parents would ground me until my twenty-first birthday."

The touch of his hand raises the hair on my arm. He doesn't look at me while he talks. Just messes with the sand under his boot, his forehead lined.

"Channeling is like turning on a hose," he says quietly. "You have to know where the faucets are. You have to connect to one. And you . . . open the valve. If you don't know what you're doing, you'll open it too far, and then you've got a wrestling match to contain it. I didn't pay attention last time we were out here because I was thinking too hard about channeling right to think about you." He watches me for a reaction. "But now I know I have to be careful. So I've been making sure you can't get a hold of the faucet. I don't know how to say it better than that."

"Open the valve to what, though?"

His eyes are black in the soft glow of the distant flames. His hair casting blurred shadows over his face. "It's the source. It's everything. It powers everything. It's like tapping into the universe, then forcing it to do what you want." He must see my skepticism because he frowns directly into the distant flames so I can see them dancing in his eyes. It's an eerie image. "It isn't easy. But it's real. You've felt it, Kate. You know it's real."

"Sure. But I don't understand it."

Aiden smirks. "None of us do. We learn how to use it. Sometimes we screw up—like I did that first time. It never occurred to me you'd be able to take control from me."

"I don't remember doing that. I didn't know I could."

"Don't worry. I know how to stop it now. You haven't been able to get it from me any of the other times, right?" He waits. I lick my lips, ready to say yes, when his eyes drop to my mouth, our lips mere inches apart.

"Kate." He brings his free hand up to trail my cheek. "You know I'm not doing this with anyone else, right?"

I blink, uncertain whether we're still talking about the binding. "It's fine, I wasn't . . ."

He leans closer, electricity snaps between our skin. "I'm not crawling in anyone else's window, or binding them. You don't need to worry about that."

A knot of tension unravels. "That's . . . good." I can't look at him. I hadn't even thought about this since he asked me out. Is he trying to make sure I'm not to kissing anyone else? He doesn't need to worry about that. He's the only person I've met who makes me even remotely interested in conversation, let alone sex. Chase's startling eyes shimmer in my head and I shove them away. I've never had sex sober. I don't know if I'm ready to face that yet.

"Okay." I lick my lips to soften them, to tell him this. But the look on his face--like he wants to devour me--sends electric jolts to all the places in me that I want to share with him. While I try to get myself under control, his eyes drop to my mouth again, and when he wrenches them back up, they're black. The reflected firelight dancing in them calls to me.