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She looked up from stirring, feeling his gaze on her. “Grandma taught me this back before I could even see over the stove. I’ve tweaked the recipe slightly.”
Dylan saw what she meant by a “tweak” when Alma 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 Alma’s snub, but he knew she would want privacy to talk. They stepped onto the patio that connected to the living room, and Alma took her favored chair while Dylan took the other. He waited for Alma to decide what it was she wanted to talk about.
“So, Finn 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 Alma’s face redden with a blush.
“Of course, our bickering turned into something else, 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 Finn had experienced similar dreams with a similarly mysterious woman. He didn’t know for sure that there was anything to it.
“You know,” Alma 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.
Alma laughed and Dylan raised his mug to her.
“In seriousness, though,” Alma said, after she had clinked her mug against his, her smile dissolving into a more solemn expression. “What do you think about Finn and me meeting the two cousins?”
Dylan hesitated. He was still uncertain about the situation. While he could appreciate both Finn and Alma having needs, and that Alma’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 several 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 Alma. 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 signup 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 living.
“I think you should be careful,” Dylan said slowly. “I mean, obviously Finn 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 someone would be so interested in a newcomer so quickly.”
Alma nodded, looking thoughtful.
Dylan continued. “I wouldn’t be against your meeting them just generally, but you should both be prepared if something happens.”
Alma 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.” Alma blushed a deep red, but she was chuckling. “I think I might finally warm 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.
fourteen
Alma 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 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 maintained control when she became a full elemental. But the power surges she had experienced were a portent that made Alma 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 stories elementals told about their final transition. While most laughed off the power surges and other symptoms, Alma 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 utterly could not 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 spiking. While she had found Dylan and Finn 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 Finn in only 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 Finn’s hip above his drawstring pants was more than enough to send Alma into an arousal so intense she bit her lip to keep from speaking.
She avoided looking at them, reminding herself she would see 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 Finn’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 Alma felt around Finn 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 Finn’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. Alma decided that she would just 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 primp, so she would look her best. Instead, as the hot water coursed over her body, she had found it impossible not to run her hands all over herself, let them linger where her fingertips would do the best, and watch the revolving door of potential lovers in her mind—Dylan, Finn, Alex, men she barely remembered from earlier dalliances, characters from TV. The cold water jolted her from her sensual reverie. Alma 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 Alma’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 midthigh in softly pleated black cotton, paired with a T-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?” Finn called through.
Alma grabbed the earrings that went with her necklace and rushed to the door, opening it to admit Finn while she brought the first of the pair of earrings up to her ear to fasten it.
Finn 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.
