Aira was shivering, but seemed unaware of it. Dylan wondered if he had gone too far in correcting the flow of energy running through her body, countering it with the weight and calm of his own.
“I feel cold…and like I shoved a fork into an electrical socket.”
Dylan chuckled, knowing the description was probably an apt one. Only a few days out from her birthday, when she would assume her full powers, Aira was expected to experience a great deal of power. Electricity was an odd manifestation for air-based elemental sensations, but Dylan knew from his studies it wasn’t impossible.
“I might have overdone it a bit with the spell,” Dylan admitted. “It was pretty intense. Do you think you’ll be able to go back to sleep? Or would you rather not with the broken window?”
There were security concerns to be considered; while a window wasn’t a huge barrier to entry, the lack of one definitely created a vulnerability if someone was watching the house. It would be stupid of Dylan and Aiden to be there to defend Aira against other elementals, only to have her fall prey to a regular human burglar.
“I can sleep on the couch. Might be better.” Aira continued to shiver, pulling the blankets around her more tightly. Dylan was concerned; he glanced at Aiden, on the point of asking his brother to use his magic to correct his overzealous use of power to calm her.
“Just make sure you don’t wreck the windows downstairs too,” Aiden suggested with a little grin. Aira scowled at him, for a moment looking hurt then stuck her tongue out at Aiden.
“At least a window isn’t as embarrassing to replace as a bed,” she retorted. “I think I’m going to make myself a hot chocolate before I go back to sleep. Would you like one, Dylan?”
Dylan grinned, knowing it was Aira’s intent to snub his older brother, and agreeing with her both in principle and practice.
“I’d love one.” Dylan stood, gesturing for Aira to precede him out of the room.
She climbed out of bed, deliberately avoiding Aiden as she pulled on a thick bathrobe and padded out of her bedroom. Aiden shrugged, but Dylan knew that he was frustrated with himself. He couldn’t be angry at the snub—he had earned it—but he couldn’t not feel slighted. While Aiden wasn’t the most thoughtful of people, or the most introspective, Dylan knew his older brother wasn’t unintelligent.
“You know, big bro,” Dylan said with a little grin. “Considering the lust you have, and how much charm you have with the women, you are really, really striking out with Aira. Maybe you should think about why that is.” Dylan left his brother to contemplate in silence.
He was fairly certain he knew something neither Aira nor Aiden could see; that if they would get past the barrier of their tumultuous tendencies, they would actually be quite good for each other. It was odd for him to realize that he was the “mature adult” of the three of them. He understood where Aira was coming from—she loved her freedom and was too self-determined to comfortably settle for an arranged marriage, or for a relationship that didn’t stimulate her.
At times Dylan was surprised at how well he was able to get along with her. Although he had a diplomatic tendency, he’d found most air elementals to be all style and no substance, to be very flashy and charming but ultimately very shallow and frequently annoying. While Aira certainly wasn’t without flaws, he admired that she put work into becoming a respected translator and that she had ambition and motivation as well as enough discipline to back it up. She was flighty in her personal life and in her emotions, but from a professional standpoint she was an entirely different creature.
Dylan watched Aira move around the kitchen with absentminded grace, reaching without looking for items she needed. He smiled to himself, noticing she preferred to make her hot chocolate from scratch— which didn’t align with what he thought he knew of her speed-oriented personality. She took out a small saucepan and rummaged for items she needed in the pantry: unsweetened cocoa, sugar, salt, vanilla extract, and milk from the fridge. Dylan appreciated Aira’s culinary skills; he had a basic ability to cook, and his brother Aiden managed to make dishes without burning them, though he still occasionally mixed up salt and sugar, which didn’t always bode well for coffee. Aira had spent sufficient time with her grandmother, growing up steeped in a family that loved food, she was both proficient and comfortable in a kitchen. In some ways, Dylan thought Aira was contradictory; he had seen her settle for peanut butter on saltine crackers for lunch in the midst of work, bringing the food to her mouth and eating it without tasting it, he had seen her devour the worst greasy spoon hamburgers he had ever managed to eat while they were traveling, but certain things—like hot chocolate—seemed to have an importance to her.
She looked up from stirring, feeling his gaze on her. “Grandma taught me this back before I could even really see over the stove. I’ve tweaked the recipe slightly.”
Dylan saw what she meant by a “tweak” when Aira added a healthy amount of whiskey to each mug of hot chocolate, handing one to him with a grin. Dylan sipped the thick, rich drink, able to both smell and taste the whiskey, but not too strongly. He suggested they sit outside to talk. He didn’t know what decision his brother had come to regarding Aira’s snub, but he knew she would want privacy to talk. They stepped onto the patio that connected to the living room, and Aira took her favored chair while Dylan took the other. He waited for Aira to decide what it was she wanted to talk about.
“So, Aiden wasn’t that far off, actually,” she said, glancing down into her mug.
Dylan smiled faintly to himself.
“I was having an erotic dream when the power surge happened, but it wasn’t Alex. At least, I don’t think it was. I couldn’t see the person’s face clearly in the dream. We were in the middle of some kind of fight—not exactly with each other, although we were bickering between dealing with other people—and then the fight was over, and we were alone.”
Dylan watched Aira’s face redden with a blush.
“Of course, our bickering turned into something else entirely, and right about the time you woke me up, it was at the best part.” She sipped her whiskey-enhanced hot chocolate.
Dylan felt her working to consciously suppress her feelings of embarrassment. “From everything I know, intense lust and eroticism is not unusual when you’re coming into the last part of the transition,” Dylan pointed out. “Some people suggest that if you haven’t already found your mate by that time, you get some indications of who they might be.” He didn’t tell her that Aiden had experienced similar dreams with a similarly mysterious woman. He didn’t know for sure that there was anything to it.
“You know,” Aira said softly, sitting back in her chair and looking across at Dylan with a little smile. “My life would be so much easier if we were attracted to each other.”
Dylan chuckled. “I think all of our lives would be easier if you and I were attracted to each other,” Dylan commented. “Your grandmother would get off your back, you’d be able to do what you wanted, and we could just wait for me to reach my elemental peak next year and be set.” Dylan shrugged. “I’ll try to work on becoming attracted to you, if you’ll work on getting the hots for me,” he joked.
Aira laughed and Dylan raised his mug to her.
“In seriousness, though,” Aira said, after she had clinked her mug against his, her smile dissolving into a more solemn expression. “What do you think about Aiden and me meeting the two cousins?”
Dylan hesitated. He was still a bit uncertain about the situation. While he could appreciate the fact that both Aiden and Aira had needs, and that Aira’s life had been essentially turned upside down – her social life suppressed by the danger incumbent upon her development into a full elemental – there was something about Alex and Dolores that rang a quiet alarm in his mind. He had been on the forums before and spoken with a number of members—learning tricks from water elementals, getting to know earth elementals and their strange ways, getting information from air elementals, and obtaining tech rumors from fire elementals. It
wasn’t normal for a member of the site to take a sudden intense interest in a newbie the way Alex seemed to have taken in Aira. While she had been discreet, and Dylan knew he could trust her to do so, there had been some verification of her lineage as part of the sign-up process. There was no way to be sure how many people knew she was not only an air elemental, but that she was a staggeringly powerful one whose grandmother was possibly the strongest water elemental currently living.
“I think you should be very careful,” Dylan said slowly. “I mean, obviously Aiden and I can’t cover you in bubble wrap and expect you to ever find a mate. That’d be pretty conspicuous, and I’m not sure you could pull off the look.” He grinned. “But from my experience, it seems strange that someone would be so interested in a newcomer so quickly.”
Aira nodded, looking thoughtful.
Dylan continued. “I wouldn’t be against your meeting them just generally, but you should both be prepared in case something does happen.”
Aira glanced down at her mug. “I’m kind of between a rock and a hard place,” she said wryly. “I need a mate to keep people from trying to force me into marriage or kill me, but I have to deal with those very people in order to find a mate to protect me from them.” She laughed, the sound slightly bitter. “I just wish I could have been a run-of-the-mill elemental, nothing too extraordinary—like my cousins. Not a one of them has this problem.”
Dylan shrugged. “Yeah, but not one of them can knock out a window with a sex dream either, I bet.”
“Good point.” Aira blushed a deep red, but she was chuckling. “I think I might finally be warming up! Ahh, the powers of hot chocolate and alcohol.”
Dylan shared her grin, but he couldn’t quite shake his sense of unease about the planned meeting the next day, even though he knew without concrete evidence, it wouldn’t make sense to openly oppose it.
Chapter 5
Aira woke up with the tremors still dancing up and down her arms and legs, the lingering evidence of her late-night power surge reminding her that she’d come into complete possession of her abilities as an elemental in less than twenty-four hours. In some ways, she was excited—in others she was filled with dread. She knew her entire training as a child had been aimed at making sure she was able to maintain control when she became a full elemental. But the power surges she had experienced were a portent that made Aira uncertain of how much she could realistically control herself once the full elemental power came into her. She wanted to be out drinking and having fun the eve of her birthday, because on the day of, she had no idea what she would be like.
On the forum, she had read some of the stories elementals told about their final transition. While most of them were able to laugh off the power surges and other symptoms, Aira thought there were some situations she wouldn’t know how to handle. What if she developed a fever? Or went into a coma? Those things could happen. What if the power overwhelmed her, and she was utterly unable to control it?
At the back of her mind, in the part not occupied with worries about the possibility of a near-death experience during her transition, her lustful urges were beginning to spike. While she had found Dylan and Aiden attractive enough since she had known them, it hadn’t been too difficult to be around them. That changed after she woke up on the living room couch. Only hours after her conversation with Dylan, where she had joked that her life would be so much easier if only they were attracted to each other, those words came back to haunt her. As she tried to work on an assignment, one of the last two she needed to complete, she found herself uncharacteristically hot and cold all over, distracted by Dylan walking across the living room to the kitchen, and again by Aiden in nothing but a pair of pajama pants. Normally she was not even inclined to notice what her houseguest-bodyguards were wearing or not wearing, but the slight indentation of Aiden’s hip above his drawstring pants was more than enough to send Aira into an arousal so intense she bit her lip to keep from speaking.
She avoided looking at them, reminding herself she would be seeing Alex in a few hours and that he was a much more acceptable target for her lust. But it was impossible to ignore Dylan when he asked her a question in a soft voice, or to avoid the rush of sensation she felt at the brush of Aiden’s fingers against her skin when he handed her a mug of coffee. She pulled up a picture that Alex had sent her and focused on the air elemental; he was as intensely attractive as before, but somehow didn’t inspire the same immediate need Aira felt around Aiden and Dylan. Her mind was playing tricks on her; she wanted nothing more than to get her work completed and meet with Alex and his cousin. Instead, her mind kept leading her on tangents, providing oh-so-helpful images of what it would be like to see Dylan naked, to be wrapped tightly in Aiden’s arms while he touched her everywhere. She tried working isolated from the two men on her patio and then in her bedroom. But even without their presence, her imagination was in overdrive, more than happy to supply her with fantasies that made translating from Russian into Mandarin an impossibility. Aira decided that she was just going to have an unproductive day, and that she might as well take advantage of the opportunity to spend as much time as she wanted getting ready for her meeting with Alex.
She realized her delusion in the shower when the hot water run out and was replaced by a frigid spray. She had intended to get herself clean and then start to primp, so she would look her best. Instead, as the hot water coursed over her body, she had found it utterly impossible not to run her hands all over herself, let them linger where her fingertips would do the most good, and watch the revolving door of potential lovers in her mind—Dylan, Aiden, Alex, men she barely remembered from previous dalliances, characters from TV. The cold water jolted her from her sensual reverie. Aira clamped down on her lust-filled thoughts, taking a deep breath and stepping out of the shower, determined to finish getting ready and be on her way. She focused on her makeup and hair before she faced a quandary: what to wear? It was a casual lunch, nothing fancy, but Aira’s stomach roiled with impatient uncertainty as she looked through her closet and drawers, picking up an item and then casting it aside just as quickly.
After four changes of clothes, she finally felt like she had struck the proper balance: a skirt that fell to mid-thigh in softly pleated black cotton, paired with a tee shirt from a band she loved, a light jacket, and a pair of ankle boots. It wasn’t too fancy, she thought looking at herself in the mirror, but it showed off her best assets without overemphasizing them. She slipped on a bracelet and necklace, and heard a knock at her bedroom door.
“Aren’t you ready yet?” Aiden called through.
Aira grabbed the earrings that went with her necklace and rushed to the door, opening it to admit Aiden while she brought the first of the pair of earrings up to her ear to fasten it.
Aiden let out a low, appreciative whistle at her ensemble. “Why didn’t you dress up like this to meet me?” He asked with a wolfish grin.
Aira rolled her eyes. “In case you don’t recall, I didn’t meet you willingly.” She fastened the other earring and looked at Aiden; he had taken the same approach that she had—fitted jeans, a pair of comfortable but well-maintained shoes, and a button-down shirt in a deep red that contrasted his bright eyes. “That’s a subtle piece of psychology,” she said, pointing to his shirt, “matching your clothes to Dolores’ hair.” She gave him a smirk, throwing a lip color into her purse along with her powder compact. She hadn’t gone overboard with the makeup; just enough to enhance her bone structure and give her eyes depth—certainly not what she would wear the next night to go out.
Aiden rolled his eyes at her. “Let’s hit the road. You don’t want to be late to meet your mate, do you?”
Aira scowled at the sarcasm in Aiden’s voice. “I am NOT meeting my mate. I’m meeting…a very interesting and charming elemental who I might want to have sex with sometime.”
Aiden snorted at her characterization, gesturing for Aira to precede him down the stairs. She had chosen a soft, slightly floral perfume; an old fashione
d scent she had long ago decided was perfect for such occasions.
Dylan was waiting downstairs, dressed casually in jeans and a tee shirt, and he echoed his brother’s commendation. “Just so you know,” he told her with a grin, “If Alex is too much of an idiot to sweep you off your feet, it won’t take much to convince me.”
Aira blushed slightly, biting her bottom lip. “I will keep that in mind,” she said, giving him a flirty smile.
Aiden brushed past her, making every inch of her skin feel electrified, heading for the door.
“Come on, guys. We’re going to be late.”
Aira’s anxiety mounted as they arrived at the café where she and Aiden planned to meet Dolores and Alex. She felt her hands shaking, echoing the vibration she felt moving through her bones – an intensely electric feeling she knew was the power working its way through her, changing her. She fidgeted in the passenger seat, wondering how she had somehow been convinced to let Aiden drive. As she shifted around, feeling almost an almost itching sensation, she thought it was for the best. Dylan followed behind in the car he and Aiden had bought for the duration of the time they were staying with her. Dylan intended to hang out and wait for the meeting to be over, to make sure they were safe. He and Aiden had also equipped Aira with one of the contact buttons they each had. Failing that, Dylan’s water-aligned intuition would enable him to track them.
Aira couldn’t imagine Alex and Dolores would go to such an extreme as kidnapping or attacking them in public. It would be bad for elementals as a whole, and they’d face a dire punishment—potentially even death—if they attempted such. She considered that she hadn’t thought she would be abducted, or that one of her clients would have allowed her abductors near her. She understood the need to be cautious, but as power buzzed through her veins and along her nerves, she couldn’t help feeling as though she could handle anything Alex or Dolores could throw at her and Aiden. She also couldn’t help entertaining lust-filled thoughts about the man she had been talking to, her mind rejecting the possibility that he might attack her. At least, she thought, if he was unsafe—if he had ulterior motives—his air alignment would ensure that he wouldn’t move directly. It would be something sneakier. She reminded herself, charmed as she was by him, she had to keep in mind he very well could be her enemy.
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