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Cohen held his breath as she took a step forward. Her pale and freckled hands were coming all the way up, up, up until she pressed her palms to his cheeks. She took a deep breath as her eyes flickered closed. Her long lashes curled up from her cheeks, and her lips were barely parted to let in and out the air she breathed. It blew over him gently, making a certain part of his anatomy very aware that there was a woman holding him.

Not just any woman, either.Alana Wixx. His enemy. Or at least the woman he had thought was an enemy since the moment he laid eyes on her.

Alana’s breathing became a little bit more erratic, her eyes moving behind her closed lids. Her face reddened, and her frown puckered with concentration and focus. Cohen was mesmerized by her, and soon the scent of magic filled his nostrils. It tickled him before the gentle aroma was replaced with a terrible burning reminiscent of sulfur.

She gasped and stumbled back; Cohen reached out and caught her shoulders just before she fell back. He pulled her into him until their bodies might as well have been glued together. Alana’s eyes were wide open and full of fear.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “What have you seen?”

She shook her head. “Nothing,” she lied. “Nothing I can explain. I need to do some research, okay? But …”

“There is something? Some magic around me?”

She nodded. “It’s not by my hand.”

“I know,” he admitted. “I can tell when you lie, Alana. You’re not lying. You’re not doing this to me.”

This could only mean that he was doing it to himself.

SIX

ALANA

Alana never thought she would be in Sheriff Cohen Pierce’s arms like this. He held her close, his large palms spread out on the small of her back protectively. His breath came out in short bursts, and his eyes were full of emotion.

She wanted to either press closer into him or give him a good hit in the crotch. The jury was still out on what she wanted, but that wasn’t even the weirdest thing that was happening today. It started when she asked Cohen for a truce, then continued when he showed up on her doorstep, and now it was achieving a kind of oddness Alana just wasn’t prepared for.

Therewasmagic woven all around Cohen, but it wasn’t a spell she recognized. There was more to it than that, too, though.

There was the very real sensation crawling up her back that Cohen was about a second away from kissing her, and Alana really didn’t know if she wanted to stop him.

What would it be like to kiss Sheriff Cohen Pierce? Would it be good? Terrible? Would he blame her for it? After all, he was wondering if she had spelled him.

Was this the kind of spell he feared she had cast on him? A love spell? It was laughable, but the laugh didn’t make it out of her. There was nothing actually funny about the way Cohen was holding her and looking at her.

“Cohen,” she whispered softly.

“Alana,” he responded without missing a beat.

“What’s happening here?”

“Honestly?” he sighed, his eyes never leaving hers. “I have no clue. Do you know what’s going on right now?”

She shook her head. “I have no clue. I’m not the best witch out there.”

“I doubt that.”

Alana laughed dryly. “And here is my enemy, defending the strength of my power.”

“Alana,” he spoke her name so gently that if his lips hadn’t basically been pressed to her ear, she wouldn’t have heard him. “Stop me.”

“I don’t think I can,” she murmured back.

For the rest of her life, Alana would wonder who kissed who first, but in the end, it didn’t matter.

They kissed each other.

It was a mutual decision to lean closer to the other, to part their lips and let their tongues explore.