He sat at the table and stared out the bay window into the woods that butted up against his condo. Dawn crested the trees. The clock ticked, the sound a hollow echo as he tried to make sense of what had happened.
Kenna had yet to metamorphose into her element. Yet he’d burned as fire inside her. His cock thickened with the memory. Never had he experienced such force with another Element—and before the
Giris
. How was this possible?
“What of me
?” Airiana whispered from deep within his psyche.
Pain slashed through him. The veil of memory lifted, and the years rolled back to 1930, the Chicago speakeasy the
Harrison
, and Hailey Hopewell. Her sultry voice poured through the microphone as smooth as the fifteen-year-old rum Erion kept aside for his best customers. He’d stood behind the bar opposite the stage, mesmerized as he had been every night for the past six months. The low-cut, white flapper dress Hailey wore glittered against the soft light around the crowded dance floor in contrast to her dark Nubian skin. He’d never known a woman like her—young, wise, and beyond beautiful. His elbow jostled, and Erion shifted his attention to Burt.
The head bartender grinned. “You been drooling over that dame for six months. When you gonna make a move, boss?”
He’d made a move, all right, that very night, only to discover the young singer was Airiana, an eighty-year-old, full-fledged Air Element. He’d been only twenty-nine, a man old enough to recognize a woman he wanted, yet too young an Element to recognize the physical clues that gave away one Element to another. She
had
recognized his Air Element, but hadn’t understood his strength. She, along with her gift, had been snuffed out when he’d consumed her during their merging.
Darkness drew the memory back into the corner of his soul where Airiana’s core remained. Erion swallowed the lump in his throat. Her call had commanded him—he felt as if he’d taken a hit to the gut. Airiana had commanded him, but Kenna could own him. Which explained why he’d made the mistake of answering the call of her fire.
“Fool,” he snarled.
Until tonight, no one had moved him as Airiana had. He’d seen to that. He’d known other Elements, had loved other women, but none of them were Airiana. No other Element would be risked because of him.
Yet, if he didn’t return, Aiden would claim Kenna’s fire and worse, enslave her. Wind raged in Erion’s core. As Element, the compulsion to claim her and partake of her fire would be too Herculean to resist—he’d proved that last night. Could he resist even in human form?
What would it be like to touch her as a man? To caress her supple flesh, alive and heated, beneath his fingers? His hands clenched, the weight of her smooth breast filling his palm still so real. As air, he’d caused her nipples to pucker. But to tease with nips and tongue, to seal his lips around the raised peak and feel her fiery flesh heat within his mouth…
He closed his eyes. How easily he could feel her power…the pleasure. A vision of him sweeping out the window, headed for her bedroom, relaxed his body into the sense of weightless separation of body from element that preceded transformation. His atoms began to fall in on themselves, and his clothes loosened on his body. Erion jerked from the trance, heart racing.
He jolted from the chair and grasped the coffee cup sitting on the counter, then paused, the same chill he’d experienced last night when the Fire Element had arrived, creeping over him. She needed him. Erion shook his head. Not him, just someone. When Aiden showed up last night, he should have withdrawn, but the thought of Kenna with another man only minutes after he’d left her bed had filled Erion with unreasonable jealousy. Yet he had no right to her, was dangerous for her.
Despite the fact the current of his wind had shifted when Aiden arrived, Erion hadn’t recognized Aiden’s element. He’d been too damn caught up in
her
. Aiden’s predatory reaction when he sensed Erion was what had revealed his element
and
his intentions.
Aiden.
The Fire Element flaunted his arrogance by being called by his Element name within society. He should protect his secret.
The eddy of wind in Erion’s core swirled faster. Aiden meant to possess Kenna. No fully formed Element took from a youngling before the
Giris
. The first metamorphosis into Element had to be free of energy drain. To absorb the emerging Element’s energy enslaved their element in psychic bondage.
Erion dumped the now cold coffee from his cup and poured a second one. Kenna was young, an infant not yet formed in her element. Yet their brief connection had betrayed her potential. That strength must have been what drew Aiden, just as she had pulled Erion to her during the night. The fact that her emerging element naturally called to Elements didn’t curtail the sudden jealousy. Had she summoned Aiden the same way? Had Aiden touched her as he had?
Erion’s fingers tightened convulsively around the cup. He shouldn’t have gone to her, shouldn’t have savored the sweet essence of her body. He had no right. Neither did Aiden. Coffee swirled faster and faster until the liquid splashed over the rim and onto his hand. Erion cursed and tossed the coffee into the sink, then set the cup on the counter and snatched up the folded towel on the counter. In one swipe he cleaned the spill, then wiped his hand and tossed the towel aside.
Aiden couldn’t be allowed to imprint upon Fiera. Erion would blow him to the far side of time if necessary. No other Element could be permitted to interfere with her natural metamorphosis. She had a rare gift that she couldn’t yet conceive. Erion stilled. He would protect her from the Fire Element. Who would protect her from
him
?
Anguished regret squeezed his chest. He would never be more than an elusive breeze caressing her simmering flesh, making her come with a stolen touch in the night. Blood rushed into his shaft with the memory. His hardened flesh resonated with an echo of the fire that had singed him. Kenna had offered herself to him without reserve.
Erion’s heartbeat spiked. Legends whispered of their ancestors commingling in unnatural ways. He wanted like hell to
commingle
with Kenna—in every possible way. His cock throbbed, and his balls ached. He closed his eyes, the feel of her nipples as he swirled around them vivid. Blood pounded in his ears. The fragrance of her cream had driven him higher.
He unzipped his jeans and eased the tight pressure on his cock. He slid a hand into his briefs, wrapped his fingers firmly around the base of his shaft, and stroked the heated length. Beads of moisture seeped from the tip of the engorged crown. Erion shoved jeans and briefs past his hips and widened his stance. Would her eyes glint with desire at the sight of how aroused he was for her?
Another firm stroke.
He pictured Kenna kneeling before him, her eager mouth watering for a taste of him.
Faster. He squeezed, intensifying the pleasure, yet holding back the orgasm. His fingers were rough. Hers would be long and slender, caressing his cock while she worked the rigid shaft and sucked the head, lips and fist meeting in the middle.
Erion thrust forward. He pressed his thumb along the thick bulging vein running the length, imagining it was her hot, soft mouth taking all of him. With his free hand, he cupped his sac and rolled his balls in his palm, wishing it was her sweet lips surrounding them, flicking them with her tongue.
If she were kneeling before him, he’d tunnel his fingers into her fiery hair. Ah fuck, he was close to coming. He stumbled forward, barely catching himself on the counter before he crashed to his knees.
Erion thrust again. The tang and musk of his desire scented the air. He pumped harder, faster. The fantasy vivid—real. Her fire would blaze in a swirl around him, rubbing, massaging his nipples, the tip of his cock. Erion groaned. He drove into the fire, caught and consumed in the current. He threw his head back, clenched his jaw, and hissed out a sharp breath. Jets of hot cum spurted and drizzled over his fingers as his cock pulsed with pleasure.
He collapsed against the counter, gasping for breath. His heart pounded too fast. He fought the urge to shift so he could escape the rushing roar in his ears.
Fuck. Erion shook his head. He had to pull himself together. He had to forget her fire. He thought of her, alone in her shop. Aiden would return for her. So would Erion. He had to. She wasn’t safe.
****
Heat crashed over Erion in a wave. He swirled the energy in his vortex, his wind sucking oxygen from Aiden’s fire in a tight string. The drag unexpectedly went slack, and Erion spiraled backward across the parking lot behind the art store and slammed into an SUV. The monstrous vehicle shuddered, and the car alarm blared like a sick heartbeat as he bounced off.
The shimmer of heat that was Aiden rocketed toward him for another strike. Erion shot upward, the rim of his wind funnel narrowing as he climbed higher. Aiden neared, and Erion yanked the tip of his funnel up, then drove the sharp point into the now glowing blanket of Aiden’s heat. Fire blazed in a howl of fury, the fringe of flames snapping around Erion as if freed from ties that had held it taut. Translucent orange and yellow banded around him and squeezed.
Erion bucked in resistance to the sudden vacuum. Pain ripped through him, his edges singed by fiery licks. The eddy slowed. Fingers of fire snaked around the outer rim of his funnel, climbing higher, tightening and choking like a massive python. Erion relaxed his shape and began to slip through the thick spider web of red-orange tendrils. Aiden intensified his heat. White-hot blues appeared in the thick mass.
A door banged open, loud enough to be heard over the incessant rise and fall of the car alarm. “Whose goddamn car alarm is that?” a man said. “What the hell?”
Aiden flickered. Erion sucked his air inside the whirlpool, yanking the Fire Element into his churning center. Aiden snapped back in a shimmering wall of heat and slammed down onto him. A dizzying current sucked air from his center. Erion gasped for breath.
Kenna.
He glanced toward the man still standing in the café doorway, staring in their direction. If he could escape inside…Erion concentrated his core inward, drawing his wind into a smaller and smaller mass, then, in one mighty blast, jettisoned through the wall of fire. Heat scorched his edge, then broke off when he blew past the man into the café.
Erion whirled, then stilled, the throb of his center a deafening roar. The man standing at the door shifted, and Erion realized he was watching Aiden leave. Erion moved to the door, fluttering past the stunned man in a cool breeze, and spotted Aiden’s shimmering heat in the distance. The Fire Element’s sudden attack betrayed his desperation. If he wanted Kenna badly enough to launch an open clash, what else was he capable of?
Rage swelled Erion’s wind. Kenna was close enough to the
Giris
that a trauma could trigger her transformation. If that moment came at a time when Erion was weakened from being in element form too long, Aiden could kill him. Kenna would have no defense. Aiden would claim her fire. Erion cursed and headed for his BMW, parked where he’d been sitting when Aiden attacked.
He had to stay close, not as Erion the Air Element and sure as hell not as a stalker, but as Eric Gray, art collector and—God help him—friend.
****
Erion pushed through the door of the art store and nearly ran down the aisle in his hurry to find Kenna before realizing the clerk’s eyes were on him. Erion slowed and shoved his hands into the front pockets of his black jeans. He scanned a shelf filled with diamond hand pads, files, pliers, tweezers, scraper, and—he squinted at the tag on the shelf below a pile of screwdriver-looking objects and read
Bead Reamer
. What the hell was
that?
He turned the corner of the aisle and nearly tripped over Kenna. She squatted on her haunches, a small valve in her hand as she studied similar pieces of equipment on the shelf. She twisted and stared over her shoulder at him. Their eyes met. Erion removed his hands from his pockets. The blush coloring her cheeks reminded him of the glow that colored her skin when she came. Wind swirled in his center, and his body began to dissolve in on itself in readiness for transformation. He slammed down the invisible wall between his wind and the fire that sparked within her core.
She smiled. “You look a little lost.”
“I am.”
Tension eased in his shoulders, but anxiety churned in his stomach. His first words would lead him down a path of lies and deceit.
For her protection.
Desire slipped through his veins. Whether or not she knew it, she needed him, and he was too damn close to being glad for it. He was lying to her, deceiving her—for noble reasons. Yeah, he was some fucking knight in shining armor.
“Do you work here?”
She chuckled. “No, but I should. The employee discount would save me a fortune.” She stood and extended a hand. “Kenna Lang.”
He took her hand in his, and his head lightened. “Erio—Eric Gray.” With Kenna, he ached to be his element, but today he was just a man.
Eric Gray worked and lived within society—where he needed to be with Kenna. Her hand, warm and soft, felt as natural entwined in his as a rainbow to rain. Intoxicating adrenaline flowed through his veins, and blood rushed into his cock at the sensation of flesh against flesh. He had only experienced her touch as air but had glimpsed the heated demands those fingers could make. He released her. Her blush deepened. Had she felt the connection as strongly as he had?
Her brows furrowed. “Have we met?”
“I’ve seen your work.” He wasn’t likely to forget the pieces displayed in her garage. “Brilliant use of color.”
“Brilliant?” Her smile faltered, then broadened. “I like that. Thank you. I have a show coming up at the Michael Laird Gallery. If you want to come…”