lighter zz

“Yeah, I liked it too much, and that it why it’s not going to happen again,” she said with perhaps too much candor. I stepped toward her and hugged her. She put her hands against my chest as if to push me off, but then changed her mind and let me hold her. Her fingers played with the placket of my shirt. I lifted her chin to face me. “We can’t…” She looked frightened but pressed her lips against mine as we shared another amazing kiss. I dropped my hand and cupped her pretty ass. She didn’t resist. I slowly lifted her short dress and reached inside her lacy panties and caressed her baby smooth ass cheek.

She formed two more rings and used them to parry his thrust, then tried again to slash his throat. Noah conjured an illusory handgun and shot her in the arm, leaving it numb and breaking the spell. Shocked and worried by the sensation in her afflicted arm, the assailant launched a blast of explosive wind with her other hand, launching herself up and away like Bower with his fire magic. She flipped through the air, landed gracefully fifty feet away, and then hurled another ring at Noah. He shot it out of the air, shattering it like a clay pigeon, along with each subsequent ring after.

Should he do it? Just forfeit the match? To admit before the crowd that their prince was too weak to fight back? After everything that had happened to him, he had no pride left, nothing to lose. Maybe it was better to accept his failure and resign himself to his shame. Lying on the ground, he raised his arm, about to surrender, but stopped, thinking back to a conversation he had with Tarnas. It was during the year of training, the two of them sitting around the campfire on an autumn night. Seraph was staring deep into the flames, into the light and warmth, but all he felt inside was cold darkness.