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I reached for him. “Adrian…”

“Wait,” he said, cutting me off and pinning me with a deadly stare, this time far more frantic. “Did you justjump through that portal after me?”

“Oh.” I mean the answer was yes, but I wasn’t sure if lying to him or answering him honestly would evoke a less intense reaction. “Yeah, um, I did.”

Adrian was in front of me in one long stride of his legs. “Neverdo that again, do you hear me? Do you know how dangerous that is? If the portal closed too soon it would have left whatever part of you was through on my side and the other half in your house.” As soon as he finished saying it and the image of what he’d described fully materialized, his face drained of color. For a moment, I thought he was genuinely going to be sick. “You can’t do that. You can’t do that to me.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, grabbing onto his wrists over his suit. It was soaked through with rain, the same way my dress was. Although the thin fabric of mine left little to the imagination while Adrian was still hiding behind his suit. “I just couldn’t let you leave me.”

Lightning struck again and Adrian closed his eyes, his jaw set into stone.

“What’s happening, Adrian?” I asked, keeping myvoice just above a whisper.

Adrian shook his head, his eyes still closed. He released a heavy breath, bringing his hands to my face. He didn’t fumble, his hands finding the curve of my jaw and gripping the side of my face like it was his lifeline, even without opening his eyes.

“Reyna,” he breathed out. His fingers pressed harder into my skin. “You shouldn’t be here.”

I reached up to grab his wrists again, placing my right palm right where I knew he had a tattoo of the sword and vines. The only I’d seen. “Why?”

Adrian swallowed roughly. “I’m the cause of this storm.”

I smiled, even though he couldn’t see it. Though when his grip grew an inch more desperate, I thought he maybe could. “I could have figured that out.”

“Honey,” Adrian grumbled under his breath, something close to a warning. All that did was make a bolt of desire shoot through my midsection. Then he said louder, “This is what I meant. This is what my power does when I can’t contain it.”

I looked around to the mountains as best I could, with heavy rain still falling down on us. The storm was dark, haunting around the peak we were standing on. Besides that, though, it was affecting nothing but this rocky, arid part of an otherwise lush mountain range. “You are controlling it, Adrian. No one is hurt. Nothing is damaged.”

It was the simple fact of the matter and I hoped the logic was enough to cut through his cloud of stress.

Adrian shook his head again. “I can’t.”

I pulled a little on his wrists, practically begging him to open his eyes. Anything to stop the rapid rise and fallof his chest. It was twisting a hot form of panic through my stomach, desperate to do anything to ease his pain. “You can. You can control this.”

Lightning struck again, followed shortly after my a loud clap of thunder, like Adrian’s power had heard me and firmly disagreed.

“What do you do?” I asked softly. “How do you stop it?”

“I let it all out until I feel like I’m going to pass out,” Adrian said, voice hoarse. “If I can’t do that, then I try to distract myself.”

I could distract him. I could do that for him. And the only way I knew how to do that was to pull softly on his forearms, bringing myself up onto my tip toes. I leaned forward, pressing a soft kiss to his mouth, barely a brush of my lips against his.

I couldn’t see behind him, not when I was studying his eyelashes and the crease between his brows, but lightning struck again. Another warning.

Adrian jerked back in time with the thunder hitting, but didn’t peel my hands off him. His eyes opened and his face went tight with panic. With my hands still on his wrists, he ran his palms over my shoulders and upper arms, brushing over the soaked fabric of my dress. “You’re soaked.Idid this to you.”

I smiled despite myself, unable to resist a reaction to the slight innuendo in his tone. To anyone else, I’d probably miss it. But in Adrian’s deep rasp, I felt it like a shot through the stomach. “I don’t mind a little rain, Adrian.”

He heaved in a breath. “No. You need to leave me.”

The wordnorang through my head with such force it should have stopped me in my tracks. But instead, I said, “I’m not leaving you.” I looked past him, spying a cabin nestled against a slope of rock. The rain slapped against the dark wood of the roof, falling over the windows. “You can either come inside that cabin with me or we’ll keep standing in the rain.”

Adrian took my hands in his, squeezing hard. “I’m not in control right now, Reyna. If I—” He cut himself off with the shake of his head.

I pulled a hand softly from his grasp, reaching up to run my fingers along his jaw. “That’s okay. You can take mine.”

Adrian’s eyes flashed with a bolt of lightning as clear as the one that hit the ground behind him and a growl whipped out of his chest from somewhere deep. “You don’t mean that.”

I was so close to snapping his self control. I could see it. I just needed to push a little harder and I’d distract him. I also needed to do something with the violent desperation running from my chest down to my core.