AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Alma felt herself blushing; she had noticed an increase in her libido, as her grandmother said. She kept reading.
I considered advising Finn and Dylan, but Finn, I assume, would know already and I trust your intelligence and sense of self-preservation. Please remember that as an unstable elemental, you are more likely to find it difficult to control yourself. I love you, and I look forward to seeing you once you’ve assumed your full powers; I still have a great deal to teach you.
She set the letter aside and considered the message. Alma told herself she had no interest in either Finn or Dylan. She was sure even a sharp increase in her libido, beyond what she was already experiencing, would drive her into either man’s arms. Talking with Finn about it crossed her mind. He would know what she would experience—but she was wary of talking about her sex life with him. She considered going to Dylan. He wouldn’t be able to empathize with her from experience, but he was the person she trusted most.
She thought about it more and put the concern aside until she had a better idea of what the extent of the problem might be. Feeling her cavalier attitude returning, she assured herself it was possible she could control her lust just fine. Even if she couldn’t control her lust, what would be the worst possible outcome? She would satisfy it with some man she didn’t care about and move on with her life, in possession of her full abilities. If she could not disconnect herself from a situation like that, she would consider herself a poor elemental.
* * *
Alma worked hard over the next two days to get as much work done as possible; she didn’t want any assignments hanging over her head for her birthday, or for the week following it. Dylan and Finn amused themselves practicing guitar and martial arts, playing video games and watching TV—and in Finn’s case, talking to Dolores. Alma tried to ignore the slight stab of jealousy his attention to Dolores incited.
She reminded herself she had no interest in him. Just because he had the dark-haired, light-eyed look she preferred in men, and just because his every touch against her skin sent a burning, sharply desirous sensation through her body did not mean she had any intention of inviting any advances from him. Not that he made any. She thought about that fact as she glanced at him grinning and typing away on his laptop.
Watching him, she considered how from the time she had been safely extricated from the earth elemental who kidnapped her, Finn had been increasingly distant. He avoided being alone with her, avoided talking to her at any length about any serious subject. In fairness to him, Alma realized her actions—grabbing for him and kissing him hungrily in the ecstatic aftermath of achieving her freedom—had implied she was interested in him. He was communicating that what he saw as her interest was not reciprocal. Alma tried not to let it bother her, despite knowing she had never failed to charm a man she wanted.I’m not interested in him,she reminded herself.
She had to believe her lack of a social life was driving her crazy if she was regretting men she didn’t even want to be involved with. That can change—will change, she thought. Once she came into full possession of her abilities and learned how to master them, she knew she would be a match for anyone who might come after her. She would let Finn and Dylan remain her bodyguards, but she would not curtail her activities anymore.
Alma contacted her friends, working out a plan for her birthday. She wanted to go out, drink, and make a fool of herself. Approaching twenty-three, she knew there would be few opportunities left to enjoy being foolish and getting drunk. She wanted to enjoy the time she had left before she was consumed with responsibilities or a “mature” relationship with a “stable” elemental who would likely get her pregnant in a matter of months. The idea of “settling down” had always been an enigma to Alma, and never more so than when it loomed and seemed more necessary than ever before.
She planned an evening to rival the level of partying she had achieved during her college days. The evening’s festivities included her favorite bar, which hosted karaoke on the night of her birthday eve, a strip club, and an afterhours location she had only partied at rarely, but knew stayed open until almost dawn. Dylan and Finn could handle her security, and she knew she didn’t need to worry about a ride home—Dylan was responsible enough to make sure they got home in one piece.
Alma thought it would be nice to invite Alex, if he didn’t turn out to be less interesting and charming in person than he was over the computer. She and Finn would meet him two days before her birthday celebration, which should be ample time for him to clear his calendar and have the night free, if she decided she wanted him to be part of her revelry.
The four of them—Finn, Alma, Alex, and his cousin Dolores—were going to meet for lunch. The prospect was inviting, and Alma didn’t even need to consult her lust to know that a desire for intimate contact was strong inside of her. She was tired of being careful, of avoiding her social life fearing being attacked or kidnapped. She wanted to live a little, to enjoy herself.
twelve
Finn woke up during the night, frustratingly aware of the stillness of the apartment around him. In the days since being awakened abruptly by the sound of Alma’s screams, he had found himself repeatedly jolted from sleep with the anticipation of another crisis. He remembered coming into his full powers and the week before that birthday. He had told Alma about lighting his bed on fire twice, but he had not told her about what had provoked the fires. He wondered if he should talk to her about one of the side effects of the power surging through her. He had experienced it himself. The lust he had felt starting a week before his full possession of fire abilities had never abated. He had learned to control it, to push it aside when it wasn’t convenient, but he knew it would take something very intense to satisfy the desire he still felt.
The two times he had lit his bed on fire, he had been in a deep sleep. Dreaming. The first time, Finn had found himself in an impassioned argument with a woman whose face was not clear to him; no matter how many times he recalled the dream, he could never remember what she looked like. When he tried to remember what had started their argument, he was never able to. The dream began in the midst of the argument, past the point where something as mundane as cause was irrelevant. He and the woman were shouting at each other for no real reason, simply venting their frustration. In the dream, Finn felt his anger transform into something else: pure, unadulterated lust. He had no idea what his connection with the woman in his dream was, but there was the suggestion they were involved somehow—though the idea was vague. He reached out and grabbed her, silencing her words with a deep, passionate kiss. The woman in his arms froze for an instant in shock, and then her body relaxed against him. She responded, deepening the kiss as her hands explored his body.
The heat rose inside of Finn. He knew he should control himself, pushing it back, but her touch made it impossible for him to do anything but give his inner fire free rein. He peeled her clothes off slowly, his hands too slow for what he wanted. With a rising sense of urgency he needed her naked immediately and in his arms, her skin pressed against his, every inch of their bodies touching. He wanted to be inside of the woman he had been arguing with just moments before, to feel her power surging through him; somehow he instinctively knew that she, like he, was an elemental.
He had managed to get her naked, to touch her exposed skin, when the smell of smoke woke him out of the dream abruptly. Finn’s eyes opened to flames rising around him, burning the sheets and the frame itself, digging into the mattress. He contained the fire before it reached the walls or floor, but the bed had been destroyed. The dream had remained with him. His want for the woman he had been fighting with, their passion for each other, was something that still stimulated everything within him. It was exactly what Finn wanted—a person who wasn’t afraid of him, a woman willing to stand up to him, who would fall into his arms when his mind shifted from frustration to lust. The woman he had been wanting his entire life, only available in his dreams.
The second dream had been similar. He had been dreaming of a woman whose face he couldn’t see—in this case, they weren’t fighting. He was comforting her. Finn had never been comfortable with the prospect of extending comfort, but in the case of the woman in his dreams, he had put forth the effort, murmuring things he couldn’t remember the next day, touching her and soothing her grief. He couldn’t remember what she was upset about, what it was that had caused her so much pain. But he knew she trusted him—completely and totally—by the fact she would cry in front of him. He had wrapped his arms around her, and she had turned to him, pressing her lips to his in an impulse he could understand. The kiss transformed from an expression of the woman’s need for comfort into something deeper; she was touching him everywhere, her warm tears rolling onto his face. Her hands, small and deft, slipped under his shirt, and Finn knew that the comfort she wanted was something much more visceral and much less gentle than he had been giving her.
Once more, clothing was shed and both of them were touching each other, hungrily kissing every spot their lips could reach. Finn had been so turned on it was agonizing, his whole-body tense with anticipation of release. The smell of smoke had pulled him out of his deep sleep, and once more the bed had been destroyed. The incidents had since stopped, not because he had gained control of his abilities, but because Finn’s dislike for lighting his bed on fire prompted him to wake up from the increasingly erotic dreams before they became so intense that his abilities kindled everything around him. He had never been able to recognize the woman in his dreams, but Finn knew if he ever met her, he wouldn’t be able to handle himself. He would have to have her—he would have to win her, convince her that no other man could give her what he could. Of course, remembering that resolution, he knew it would be a good idea to keep his fiery impulses under control to avoid lighting another bed on fire when, and if, he won the woman of his dreams.
Thinking about the dreams distracted from the larger point. His lust had been nearly insatiable and was still difficult to control. Alma would go through the same thing. He had never asked what happened before her power surge. He wondered what she had been dreaming of and he suspected it would not be an isolated incident.
He recalled being yanked from a relatively sound sleep by Alma’s screams and rushing into her dark bedroom as the wind howled outside. Seeing her thrash around the bed, struggling against the power running through her body, Finn knew at once what she was experiencing. He recognized the agony of the sensory overload and being consumed by the energies transforming her body, everything so intense. He had acted without thinking, pinning her down to the bed, trying to get through to her; in retrospect he understood his mistake thoroughly. It still grated on him that Dylan had been better able to calm her than he had. In fact, in some respects, he thought he had somehow made it worse, judging by the lightning strikes that had occurred while he’d had her pinned down.
One part of that night replayed in Finn’s mind. He had purposefully avoided mentioning it, and had even tried to avoid thinking about it, but the image of Alma sprawled out on the bed, her body exposed to her hips, leaving little to the imagination, had remained with him. The sight of her breasts moving as she panted, her creamy skin, the pale, dusky pink of her nipples, was forever impressed in his mind. He had never known Alma slept in the nude; he wasn’t even sure it was a normal occurrence for her, but having her in the room next to his and knowing she might be had been in his mind every night since.
He had been trying to suggest Alma take a more proactive approach to finding a mate; but after that night, he couldn’t help the surge of jealousy at the thought of any man having full access to her curves. He told himself he was simply a connoisseur—that he appreciated her body as a lithe, nubile woman. But he knew if he was honest with himself, he was perilously close to losing his objectivity about Alma.
When she had hesitantly told him and his brother she had joined one of the elementals-only forums, he had been both relieved and a touch jealous. She could find someone there more suited to her personality. Despite his increasingly difficult-to-ignore hunger towards the woman, Finn knew deep down he and Alma would not make a good couple. He distanced himself from her after the night he rescued her, when he had overheard her talking to Dylan in a way he realized was more flirtatious than friendly. Nothing had come from it, which confused Finn. His brother was objectively attractive and had a lot to offer a woman. But Finn also knew that all air elementals found it as easy to flirt as they found it to breathe. Emotionally, he felt a little bad for Dylan because his brother hadn’t felt confident enough to press his suit. He hadn’t broached the topic, but Finn knew that it would be difficult for any man that Alma had her sights on to ignore her or disregard her charms.
When Finn investigated Alex’s family, he had no intention other than probing to see if there was any possibility of danger to her. However, Finn quickly found himself drawn into Dolores’s subtle, wry charm. Dolores had used the wits that embodied her air alignment that Finn’s interest in information was more than casual. He had not admitted he was set to guard Alma until she found a mate, but he admitted to a sort of brotherly interest in her well-being.“Our families are close,”he had explained to Dolores.“I’ve known Alma since we were kids and I just want to make sure…you understand.”It was a little lie, but he reasoned that if a time for the truth came, Dolores shouldn’t fault his intentions.
Increasingly Finn chatted with Dolores, not just to get more information about the family—what kind of politics they were into, their position among the elementals, things that might raise a red flag—but because she was interesting to talk to. Both Alex and Dolores were musicians, like his brother and himself. But they had made a living from their music. They performed in separate bands that often toured together throughout the United Kingdom. A year before they had settled stateside, wanting a change of pace and were happy to find things “less stuffy” in the US for elementals, as Dolores had put it. When she had suggested they chaperone the first meeting between her cousin and Alma, Finn had been happy to agree, interested in meeting the distracting woman in person. He welcomed her high energy and humor. He needed something to take his mind off of the woman he was guarding, to keep him from compromising himself. When Alma mentioned she was thinking of inviting the two cousins to celebrate her birthday, assuming all went well at the first meeting, Finn was happy to give his consent.
Dylan, Finn noticed, was less than pleased with the development. Finn understood his brother’s position. It wasn’t entirely safe for them to encourage Alma to meet new people, particularly elementals. But it was also part of their responsibility to see that Alma found a mate successfully. Her safety in the world of elementals depended upon allying herself with another family, or at least another person of good standing in the community. Once she did, there would be fewer attempts to subvert her, and whatever attempts that came up, she could handle with the help of her mate. Finn noted to his brother that if they didn’t let her meet anyone, they would guard her indefinitely, a prospect none of them were fond of. Dylan conceded, keeping his reservations silent, but Finn knew even if he was being dazzled, his brother was not—and that was important. As long as they were not both overtaken by the intrigues of another elemental, they could collectively keep Alma safe.
However, Alma’s growing power, the possibility of another freak weather occurrence, and Finn’s certainty that she was experiencing lust easily as strong as his, kept him on his toes, despite Dolores’s distractions. Finn wondered again if he should talk to his charge about the side effect. He had watched her reaction when she had received a letter from her grandmother that made her blush and wondered if it was a warning of the symptoms. When he picked it up later while Alma was with Dylan running errands, he found two pages scrawled in a language he couldn’t begin to interpret. He didn’t know for sure that the letter was about the full power side effect of lust, but he didn’t know that it wasn’t. He knew her grandmother would have every reason for cautioning Alma. The idea of discussing something so intimate was intimidating. Finn himself didn’t even want to think about lust in conjunction with his charge, much less talk to her about it. He reassured himself as he tossed and turned in bed, waiting for another windstorm or a scream to puncture the night’s stillness that she would talk to him about it if she needed to. He knew she would more likely talk to Dylan about it, and Dylan would bring it to his attention. He told himself, directing his thoughts back on the beautiful and enigmatic Dolores, he was there to protect Alma and he wouldn’t let himself get any more involved than he had to.
thirteen
