Braving the Elements (10 page)

Ho—
ly hell.

All this time, I had no idea what sex was really supposed to be. What a true orgasm could really feel like. It was… I was…

I’d never be the same.

Stefan
lay over me, limp, his face buried in my neck.

“Please tell me you are
satisfied, because it might take a miracle to get me hard again,” Stefan mumbled into my neck.

“No. G
ood. Wish this was a bed.” And I did. How the hell would I get back to my room? I didn’t want to ruin this feeling by walking.

Then I didn’t have to.
Stefan climbed off, wobbling, grinning, and scooped me up.

“Clothes?”
I asked sleepily, curling around his upper body and laying my head between his neck and shoulder.

“It’s late. Nobody will notice.”

“Nobody will notice two naked people wandering through the halls?”

“We’ll take the hidden t
unnels to the far-eastern door and exit directly outside; but then, no, they won’t notice. Plus, no one is out there.”

“Right, I forgot which house I lived in.”

“My house.”

“Yes, sweetie, that’s right. This is your house
.” She patted his arm.

Stefan
chuckled. A cozy walk later in Stefan’s arms, I felt the bow of magic as we passed through the wards of my hidden residence.

“Hey Boss,
whatcha got there?” I vaguely heard Charles moving around.

“I
found your charge.”

“You certainly did. You also
serviced
my charge. Thank the merciful gods. Maybe now she won’t be so wound up.”

“Please be careful how you address my pet.”

“Not funny.” My voice didn’t have much conviction. My body was too busy trying to shut down.

As
Stefan laid me down, he said, “Sleep tight. Have pleasant dreams of me.”

“Cad.”

And he was gone, shutting my door with a soft click.

“Run!”

A giant mouth made by petals swooped down, trying to catch me. I scrambled back, terrified, my magic winked off as I stared at my
fifteen-foot-high creation. The goal was to
coerce
a natural element to grow. I created a plant beast.

Charles dashed forward, glowing sword in hand. He ripped me out of the way, hurling me back to the center of the classroom. He slashed at the monster, swiping half a flowered mouth off, only to curse when it grew back.

“Sasha, what the hell did you do?” Charles yelled, dodging a lovely smelling chomp.

“Made the plant grow!”
I screamed back, my own dagger in hand, glowing a bright orange.

“You weren’t supposed to—
“ he feinted and struck, slashing off a giant, reaching leaf, “give it an agenda!”

“Maybe they naturally have agenda
s.” I sprinted to his side, bobbing and weaving, looking for an opening. I’d made some great strides at stabbing things. I was quick.

I felt my arm yanked, hurtled back behind Charles again, this time by Adnan, his sword
glowing a pale blue.

“Don’t fire magic
at it, it might make it bigger,” Adnan yelled.

Yeah, I was also great at setting magical fire to my opponent accidentally.
Gabe said it actually felt good half the time. He was such a trooper.

Adnan
, the ninja, darted with such speed, I stood in awe. He whipped around, almost dancing, and then retreating before the curly green shoots of the plant could capture his legs. Unfortunately, his blade didn’t do a dang thing. I’d created the beast with a strong red power and he was only using blue, two steps down; his eagerness suffocating him.

“Relax, Adnan! Open up to it.”

I focused on the elements in the room, feeling the currents, sampling the percentages. There was always a healthy amount of air, of course, but the other elements were often disguised within the life around them. A humid day held good doses of water, so did pipes and toilets, and other household areas. Fire existed in electricity, in sparks. Earth, of course, was all around, but often so far beneath me or removed, I couldn’t work with it easily. I felt it was my greatest weakness, as did Charles, but Jessiah didn’t seem perturbed, so I didn’t fret too heavily.

I felt everyone’s magic around me, but honed in on Adnan. Like someone with asthma, he wasn’t drawing enough because his receptors were tightened.

I sucked in a big draw, connecting with his flare of magic and billowing it higher. I did it to Charles, too, since I was taking the time. Sweet essence pumped into me, fanning the other boys higher as their magic tried to flirt and play with mine.

“Good times, Sasha,” Charles said, darting in between angry green stalks to slash at a thick green stem.
“Don’t do that when you actually have to…work magic…though. You’ll be weaker.”

“Yes, professor obvious
. I figured that.”

Adnan’s blade glowed orang
ey-red. He was in business.

He dodged in, jumped with a neat flip, and landed on the other side of the evil plant. He stabbed it through a petal,
and then hacked off a vine. Charles met it from the front, slashing again at the stem.

In another few minutes
, it was over. My cute but violent flower lay in a puddle of plant parts, the room looking like a weed whacker went wild on a garden. Charles stood in the middle of the melee, sweaty and loving it, his smoky eyes bright. He flashed Adnan a triumphant smile, striding over to shake the younger man’s hand.

“With fighting like that, the Boss would welcome you in the Command with open arms,” Charles boomed, swagger fit for a prince who’d just slain a dragon.

Adnan returned the compliment with a sheepish grin, his eyes briefly flicking to me. He’d always had the ability in movement, just not the power to back it up. Apparently he realized I wasn’t such a useless jerk after all.
Hah!

Well,
maybe the jerk part was right enough, but still.

A slow, jarring clap echoed through the room. Darla stood against the far wall near the door, a mocking expression on her face. “Yes-oh-yes, let the little dog create a magical nightmare to show off, then let her big tough
bodyguard
take it down. Quite a spectacle. Maybe they were thinking no one would notice how weak they are in spells and chanting, hmm? Well, maybe we should—“

The door swung open,
thankfully halting Darla. She always had creative ways to put me on display. Jessiah stood framed in the doorway, his wide shoulders making his upper body look like a triangle. My heart fluttered weakly, wishing Jessiah had the same effect on me Stefan did. But then, Jessiah wasn’t attached to the slinky, long-haired beauty next to the door, with her perfect breasts nearly falling out of her tube top, and her long, slender body draped just so—a weak flutter was better than nothing.

Raising my chin and pushing down my insecurity,
while muffling the link with Stefan—hoping he wouldn’t notice if I didn’t cut it off completely—I tried to keep a hopeful expression from my face. I’d been getting closer and closer to Jessiah over the past few weeks, learning heaps, but also just having someone to talk to who wasn’t hell-bent on keeping me prisoner. He was kind and thoughtful, often giving me a flower and a smile when we met for the lesson.

And right now, he counted as a savior, because I knew Darla wouldn’t make fun of a student in front of another teacher. She was vindictive, not stupid.

“I was told your class would be finishing about now?” Jessiah asked with a gleam in his eyes, touching Darla with just enough sex appeal—which he had in droves—to get his way, but not so much as to distract him from what he’d come to procure.
Me!

I nearly gushed like a twelve-year-old!

“Just finished, yes. The human created a giant plant that had to be destroyed, cutting my teaching time in half.”

“Ah.”
Jessiah’s eyes twinkled as they beheld me. “She excels in creativity.” He winked.

“Hmm.”
Darla’s eyes roamed Jessiah’s body, lingering on his arms and stopping for a brief moment between his legs. Her gaze returned to his face, heat kindling.

“I’ll just be escor
ting her out, if you don’t mind?” Jessiah stepped toward me and away from Darla.

Th
at move right there, which made him the only person besides Charles who would say no to the tramp, endeared him to me. At a spiteful nod, I took his warm hand and let him lead me through the door, Charles hot on my heels.

“Wait,
you
, I want that mess cleaned up.” Darla stopped Charles with a flaying stare.

“That’s not my job.
She
is my job.”

A red haze blocked the door
, that protection spell Charles still couldn’t figure out how to work was locking him in. As I hustled away with Jessiah, I heard her harsh laughter.

“Do we need to wait?” Jessiah hesitated.

I tugged him along.
“Nah. He’s around
constantly.
I doubt anything’s waiting in the woods to accost us. And if it is, I can blow up a plant to attack it. Or us.”

He laughed merrily, tucking my arm around his.

“So, what do I owe the pleasure?” I asked as we sauntered toward the trees, the night silky and warm on my face.

The
soft moonlight caught his beautiful blue eyes as they beheld me, soft heat infusing them. “I never get to talk to you. It seems like you’ve always got somewhere to be or something to do.”

“Or Charles nudging me away?”

Jessiah grinned, threading his fingers between mine to hold my hand. “He doesn’t trust me with his women.”

I laughed because it was so true, even though I wasn’t Charles’s woman. “He is a
tiny
bit jealous, yes. I’ve noticed.”

A powerful surge blasted through the link,
Stefan extremely uncomfortable about something. Given that he was always irritated in some way about his duties, this was par for the course. I stopped the link altogether, wanting a freaking second to myself to figure out this attraction to Jessiah. No, I couldn’t even feel a fraction for him what I did for Stefan, but I wanted to see if this interest was returned—healthy and reciprocal without an arranged agreement with other women. It tipped the balance.

“You’ve come a long way in your elements. Do you have any other help?”

“Just you. I like your teaching style. I am a hands-on learner, so how you show me helps.” I blushed a little. Granted, sometimes his hands wandered a little too close to personal areas, but he always apologized with that devilish smile, the scoundrel side of him making me laugh.

As if thinking alo
ng the same lines as I did, he smiled. “Hmm. So, where do you stay while you’re here? I haven’t seen you around the mansion after light.”

We walked through a canopy of trees
, heading deep into the woods. The leaves draped across the sky, hiding the approaching dawn. The last traces of night called to me, the silken feel of darkness reaching for my body and caressing my senses.

“I’m tucked away,” I answered, leaning against his shoulder as we walked.
“Where do you stay?”

He paused next to a tree, directing my back toward the bark. His eyes looked down into
mine, the woods still and quiet in the pocket of time when night animals tucked into their beds and the day animals got the urge to wake up. His hands lowered to my hips.

“On the first floor of the main house with all the other minions,” he said in a husky voice.

My hands traveled up his arms, smaller than Stefan’s. He didn’t have the medieval tattoos to make him seem exotic and wild, either. Or the giant width of shoulder from fighting and surviving in the world, keeping his people safe and protected.

With effort, I ignored all that, glancing back to his face. He was handsome, surely, but not devastatingly so. His eyes didn’t hold the same wicked intelligence, or the same
soul-touching depth. My heart didn’t pound, or lurch, or even flutter. My stomach didn’t tingle or fill with butterflies.

Damn it
!

Jessiah
leaned in, his mouth brushing mine softly. A pang of guilt rocked me, unexpected. This wasn’t wrong logically, but my soul didn’t know that. This man wasn’t the one I truly wanted. He wasn’t my ground; my other half.

That man was promised to someone ten times prettier with a long list of accolades. And I’d thought I’d always been lucky?
Yeah right.

I pushed back, moving my head to the side to escape the kiss.
Regardless of Stefan’s attachment, I didn’t want Jessiah. At least not right then. I wasn’t ready.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, his head still bowed to mine.

“I should probably get back.”

His eyes delved into mine, making me shiver in a way I wasn’t expecting. Before I could identify the weird thrill of
—apprehension? Fear?—a rustling caught my attention. Adnan stepped through the foliage.

“Sasha, sorry to interrupt, but do you have a minute?” Adnan nodded to
Jessiah in acknowledgement.

For a race of people
who had sex while carrying on conversations, I wasn’t sure why this intrusion surprised me. I was equally confused as to why it relieved me as well.

“What’s up?” I stepped away from
Jessiah smoothly, using Adnan as an excuse to head toward dinner.

“I wondered…” he hesitated, his gaze flicking back to
Jessiah, who apparently did not intend to follow. I hoped he wasn’t mad. “You helped me today—thanks—and I wondered if you would continue to help me if I helped you in turn? Maybe if I taught you some sword and chanting, if maybe you’d work with me on keeping my power open when I fight? Without that, I can’t get into the Watch Command, which is the one thing I’ve been training for my whole life.”

Ah, the dramatics of youth. Still, this sounded like a sweet deal! Maybe I’d eve
n get a friend out of it. “Sure.”

We got within sight of the mansion. I scanned the
back wall, looking for my pissed off bodyguard. “Where’s Charles?”

“He got worried when you took off
, so he sent me after you.”

“Why didn’t he come after me
himself?”

“He went to look for the Boss, I think.”

“Oh great, he’s telling on me, that butt-head!” I shook my head as we walked through the door. I might as well just use the time to my advantage.

To that end, I snagged some dinner
from the dining hall and headed straight for my room. Eat, shower,
alone
time. I still had Stefan on the brain.

*****

“I had her, where were you?” Jessiah barked into the phone. “It’s not easy to get her alone!”

A growl filled the line. “You think I can get people to you in five minutes? That I can mobilize the right equipment from a random text you send? You have to plan it out
! You need to coordinate this.”