After a few minutes, Tess lifted her eyes and raised the book higher between us. She began to move her right index finger in the air while keeping her eye on the pattern. I only had to stop her twice when she made a slight error that would have kept the spell from activating. Of course, there’s always a small chance that the error would have created some other spell, but the odds were against it.
It took her nearly ten minutes to complete the pattern from start to finish without a mistake. She spoke the three words, and I felt the snap of energy. I monitored her focus to see what she was going to do with the wind.
A second later, I felt my hair start to move.
Uh-oh.
Suddenly we were sitting in the center of a dust devil. Sandy grit blasted at us, gathering speed in just a few seconds.
“Kill the spell,” I ordered.
“How?” Tess shouted. It was rapidly getting noisy inside our circle.
*Just think of ending it.*
*Okay.*
A second later, I felt the energy leave the spell. The dust devil continued to bombard us. I triggered my own wind tat and pushed energy into the opposite direction. In another couple of seconds, the air inside our circle was once more still.
I looked at Tess’s wind-tossed hair and knew my own was just as bad. I could feel the grit that had gotten against my scalp and down my collar. Every tiny movement rubbed the grit between my clothes and skin. I needed a shower. I could get it out without one, but that would require me to strip naked, and I wasn’t in the mood, no matter what my emotions were beginning to tell me.
“Ick,” Tess said pulling at the back of her collar.
I waited to see what she would say next.
She looked at me, her blue eyes warm, and her breath coming a little faster. “Well, I apparently did something wrong.”
My own pulse was increasing with hers. It’s a requirement in meshing for your pulse and breathing to synchronize.
I tried to tap down our emotions again and saw that Tess noticed it immediately.
She opened her mouth to say something, and I cut her off.
“Let me guess. You were trying to create a dust devil,” I said.
She frowned but nodded. “Yeah, but not inside the circle. I thought it would form outside it.”
“Did you specifically concentrate on it being outside the circle?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
She looked chagrined. “Well, no. I just assumed that it would be outside.”
“And that’s why magic isn’t as easy as it looks when I do it.”
Tess shook her head. “I’m sorry. I feel stupid for doing that wrong.”
I shook my head. “Don’t, I made plenty of my own mistakes when I was learning. That’s one of the reasons we always train inside a circle. If I’d been following your thoughts closer, I would have noticed that you hadn’t concentrated on the dust devil being outside the circle. It’s as much my fault as yours.”
“Then it’s your fault that my clothes feel like they’re made of sandpaper?” She squirmed and pulled at her crotch.
I laughed. “Consider it an object lesson to pay more attention before you activate a spell.”
“Hell,” Tess said as she flexed her shoulders. “How am I going to concentrate on training when I feel this miserable? That damn sand got everywhere.”
I resisted laughing, but she felt my amusement through the mesh.
“Okay, Boss, how do we get the sand out?”
“I prefer to take a shower, but a dip in a cold stream works just as well.”
Tess made a point of examining our surroundings. “I don’t see either one on top of this mountain. Got any other suggestions?”
“Well, we could strip, and you could try blowing the sand off of us,” I offered.
She pursed her lips, and I could feel that she was seriously considering the idea. After a few seconds, she shook her head. “No, with what I just did, I don’t think I’m ready to try blowing sand off of my bare body. With my luck, I’d end up sandblasting our skin off.”
She stood up and unzipped her jacket.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Stripping,” she replied shrugging out of her jacket and unfastening her pants.
“But you just said–”
“I know, but then, I realized that you can control the wind so much better than I can. Come on, I won’t be able to concentrate until you get this sand off of us.”
I sighed and started removing my jacket.
Chapter 6
Therese
I was in a hurry to get out of my clothes, but it certainly wasn’t for the reason I’d have preferred. My carelessness with the wind spell had left grit in every crevice of my clothing. Even without moving, I felt like I was wearing sandpaper. When I moved, the feeling amplified. I kicked off my boots, even though they were the least affected by my dust devil, I had to get out of them to get my leather pants off. I’m not the type of girl who normally wears leather pants, regardless of how good they make my legs look, but these pants had a lining that kept the leather from sticking to my skin when I started sweating.
After I got out of my boots and socks, I slipped off the pants and underpants, and then picked up everything I’d taken off. Rafe was still getting out of his boots. Either his skin was tougher than mine or he was playing at being bashful. It could hardly be the latter; we’d been sharing a bed for the last week. Granted, we’d only had sex once, but we had each seen the other’s junk enough times that it shouldn’t be an issue with him.
I stood there inside the shimmering bubble of energy that formed our practice circle and watched Rafe shuck off
