Evan Elemental (The Evan Elemental Series) (14 page)

I can
feel Lex's eyes burning into me from across the room. The booze and the heat
from Ezra's touch has me reeling. An untapped rage is slowly building from a
fizzle to a rolling boil just beneath the surface of my skin. I reach up and
pull the few slender bobby pins from my hair causing it to tumble down past my
shoulders. I stand back up and stretch leisurely, ignoring the various looks in
the room. I'm beginning to feel restless so I ignore the coffee and head to yet
another bar cart- this place is full of them- to fix myself a drink. This time
I go for vodka, straight up.

Lex
clears his throat loudly. I
glance at him over my shoulder and give him a flirty little smile before
continuing to fix my drink. When I'm finished, I walk over to where Ezra is
sitting on the settee and perch on the arm. As I take a sip of the burning
liquid, I sneak a peek at
Lex
. He isn't looking at me,
but a small smile plays on his lips. As if he can feel my eyes on him, he looks
up. I cross my legs causing my hem to ride up a few inches; a few inches that
it can't really spare. Lex's eyes widen slightly and he looks away again.

"So,"
Rodger says loudly, breaking the tense silence, "how have you been
enjoying the states,
Matilde
?"

"It's
lovely." Mattie looks up briefly from her lap before her eyes drop. Her
lack of self-confidence is almost painful to watch.

"What
my sister means to say, is that we are very grateful for Ms. Price's
generosity. The last week has been a welcome reprieve." Ezra gives us a
breathtakingly beautiful smile and lands his gaze on me.

I start
to flush but then what he said cuts through the gin soaked haze in my brain and
distracts me from how good-looking he is. "The last week?"

Ezra's
smile widens, as if he knows exactly what his words mean to me. I level a glare
at
Lex
before turning back to Ezra; the previously
untapped rage is now flowing freely. I'm going total crazy girl and I'm not
doing anything to stop it.

"Yes,"
Ezra replies with another devastating smile. "Ms. Price has been gracious
enough to take us on a tour of the Northeastern states. Maine was particularly
lovely
but,
I have to say, not as lovely as
Price."

I scoff
without trying to hide it. "I'm sure you haven't seen enough of it."
Rodger gives me a shocked look so I clear my throat and continue, "What I
mean to say, is you haven't seen enough of it to make a fair and accurate
assessment, I'm sure."

Ezra
beams at me and laughs. "Ms.
O'Fion
, the last
two days have given us plenty of time to experience Price to the fullest."

It's my
turn to look shocked. "Two days?" I choke, my question directed at
Lex
. I finally understand the meaning of "seeing
red."

Lex
shifts uncomfortably, rubbing
the back of his neck with his left hand before answering.

"Yes.
We arrived in Price two days ago,"
Lex
replies.

"I
thought my grandmother arrived today," I snap back.

"She
did." I can hear in his voice his silent plea for me to "calm
down" and "we'll talk about this later," but I'm too drunk and
too mad to take the high road. I cock an eyebrow and wait for him to continue,
which he does after an awkward beat.

"Ms.
Price arrived today. The Holloways have had the pleasure of hosting us since we
arrived."

I feel
my features go blank.
Lex
has been in Price for two
whole days and hasn't made any attempt to contact me. And what's worse is that
he's been holed up with my unofficial mortal enemy. A deep chill runs through
me; it's heightened by Ezra's presence at my side. Where
Lex
seems to continually emanate a soft and steady calm, shadows and barely
controlled power seems to cling to Ezra. It's too abstract for me to be able to
focus on and being drunk doesn't help. I shake the hollow, edgy feeling off the
best I can and stand to leave.

Lex
stands, too, but makes no move
to stop me. What I want to do is go upstairs, crawl into bed, and sleep for the
next two days until I know I can confront him in a somewhat rational manner.
Instead, I stroll out of the room, summon Anders who is there waiting in the
wings, and ask him to drive me somewhere once I know where that somewhere is.

Anders
goes to get a car ready and I head upstairs and grab my cell phone. Without
giving myself time to think, I pull up Jessie's number and shoot her a text.
"Where's it at?" is all I need to say. Within seconds Jessie is
sending me the details for a party at a summerhouse on the edge of town. I
leave my room and nearly smack into
Lex
.

"Evan."
He says my name in that way of his, like a whispered prayer to a pagan god. The
gin still clouds my perception but the sight of
Lex
cuts right through the haze. I give him the best smile I can manage, but I
can't quite keep the pain from my eyes. I watch as he catches his bottom lip
between his teeth.

I tear
my eyes away before I can cave completely. "
Lex
.
I'd stay and chat, but I have plans."

"Oh?"
he asks with a hint of a grin in his voice. He can see straight through me.

"Yes.
Now, if you'll excuse me," I say gesturing for him to move aside.

"Please,
Evan," he pleads softly, stopping me with a gentle touch to my shoulder. I
can feel the heat flow between us, but I'm too angry to acknowledge it.

"Please?
Please what,
Lex
?" I ask
,
all the fight stripped from my voice.

"Let
me explain..."

"No,"
I say simply.

"No?"

"That's
what I said. I don't want to hear your explanations. I don't want to know why
you haven't contacted me in over two months, or why you didn't bother telling
me you were back in town, or why you showed up with Hansel and Gretel..."

"Ezra
and
Matilde
."

"Jesus,
whatever. I don't have time for this. Get out of my way, or I'll make you. You
know I can."

Lex's
eyebrows shoot up. He looks like he doesn't know whether to laugh or to get
angry in return. I don't give him time to make up his mind. My cellphone buzzes
in my hand as I wobble down the hallway and then the stairs. Anders is waiting
at the bottom, eyeing me with a distinct wariness.

I
saunter past him and through the front doors as they are opened by yet another
set of identically dressed maids. I can feel
Lex
watching me leave from the top of the staircase. I don't turn around and I
don't miss a step. Anders hurries around me and opens the back seat door to a
sleek black sedan.

"
Uhm
. What?" I say brilliantly. This whole night just
got a hell of a lot weirder. It was crazy enough that Anders just agreed to drive
me someplace without giving me the third degree, but acting like some sort of
servant instead of bossing me around is too much.

Anders
clenches his jaw and then laughs. "Yeah, well, new orders."

I raise
an eyebrow. "Go on."

"When
Ms. Price is out of town, we're to consider you the lady of the house,"
Anders answers reluctantly.

"Again,
what?"

Anders
opens his mouth to answer, but I interrupt him.

I shake
my head. "
Nevermind
. Fuck it. I'm too drunk to
process. Take me here." I show him the address Jessie texted to me and
then slide into the backseat of the car. Anders shuts the door behind me and
takes his position in the driver's seat. As we pull away from the house, the
growing darkness swallows us up.

Jessie
still hasn't showed. I dodge stares and down jungle juice to distract myself
from how alone here I really am. Anders trails me like a Secret Service agent
but I don't bother telling him not to. This whole "lady of the house"
thing is totally working out: Anders leaves me alone, because I'm suddenly
allowed to do whatever I want. I don't trust this, of course, but I'm willing
to milk it for as long as I can.

"Don't
you think you've had enough?"

I eye
Anders over the lip of the red cup I'm draining. "Nope." He clenches
his jaw but doesn't say anything else. "Hey, have a drink." I hold
out a fresh cup teaming with the red sickly sweet liquid. He just shakes his
head.

"Oh,
I'm sorry, I forgot. Have a drink. That's an order." Anders bites the
inside of his cheek to keep from grinning. He takes the cup and I can't help
but smile. I've moved past my anger at
Lex
and have
now entered that rare, perfectly happy state of drunkenness.

Music
pulses through the airy house and I let myself be pulled along. After a while,
girls stop giving me dirty looks and the boys start to flirt with me. I dance
with a few, but none of them really interest me. I still want
Lex
. He's like a poison I can't and won't drain from my
system.

I spot
Anders being chatted up by a perky blonde. He's drinking heavily from what I
suspect isn't his first cup. He catches my eye and gives me a slow sexy smile.
The blonde glances at me and her face falls. I turn away and lose myself to the
heavy beat of the music, my hips and shoulders gyrating in time. It isn't long
before I feel Anders come up behind me, his arms snaking around my waist, his
own hips matching the pace of mine. It turns out that we communicate better
when we’re not speaking.

My
heart hammers against my chest. Even before our conversation earlier I had
begun to suspect that Anders had feelings for me that weren't quite
professional, and now I can feel them pressing into my back. It's wrong not to
stop this, but I don't. His breath pours onto my neck, hot and fast. When his
lips press to the curve of my neck an electric shock shoots through me that has
nothing to do with my necklace.

"Evan,
if this is your way of trying to make me jealous, it's working."

I stop
dancing, but Anders doesn't let go; he grips my hips like I'm the last lifeboat
on the Titanic. When I glance over my shoulder I find
Lex
glaring at us, his lips twisted into a bemused smirk. Gingerly, I pry Anders'
hands from my body. I ignore his protests and Lex's stare and make my way past
them to the deck outside.

The
storm has passed and the air is humid from the rain earlier, but it feels cool
on my skin after being in the house full of sweaty, writhing bodies. White
Christmas lights are strung from the awning and people mill about in the
shadows clinging tightly to each other.

I lean
against the railing and lift my face up to the sky, closing my eyes. I
shouldn't be able to, but I can feel the clouds part and the stars shimmer. It
feels like a slight breeze dancing across my face. When I open my eyes,
Lex
is there.

For
weeks I've been imagining this moment. Nothing I could have dreamed up compares
to the feeling that overtakes me. When I saw him back at the estate, he had
been keeping himself in cool detachment. Now, with just he and I, his focus is
solely on me. I am consumed and reborn under the fire of his gaze.

"Evangeline."
He steps forward closing the last shred of distance between us and takes my
hand. He raises it to his lips giving it a soft kiss before lacing his fingers
in mine. An unending stream of energy flows between us.

"Do
you feel that," I whisper.

"Always."

I look
up from our entwined fingers and desperately search his face.

"Yeah?"
I watch as wonder flashes across his eyes chased by the familiar hunger. Desire
rips through me.

"Evan,
I've travelled thousands of miles in the last couple of months and I never once
stopped feeling you. We're linked in ways that I can't possibly understand,
that I don't need to understand. I..."

"
Lex
," I say stopping him, "I need to know. Did
I..." I trail off terrified of the truth.

Lex
cocks an eyebrow. "Manage
to travel across space and time for a surprise visit in my hotel room in
Russia?" He gives me a sly grin and pulls me close wrapping his arms
around my waist. "Yes."

I sink
into him, relief flooding my body. For the first time since I opened the box
and found the necklace I can feel myself relax. Maybe I'm not crazy after all.
A slower song comes on and our hips automatically began swaying to the soft
beat.

Lex
presses into me so that I'm
wedged between him and the railing. His hands skim down my sides stopping when
he reaches bare skin.

"You
know, it took all of my willpower to not pick you up, throw you on the dining
room table, and rip this dress off of you."

My
heart leaps to my throat and my body goes molten. "
Lex
..."

He stops
my words with a kiss. It starts off with a certain amount of measured control,
but that quickly dissolves. Our bodies respond to each other in ways I didn't
know were possible. I wrap my arms around his neck and somehow manage to pull
him closer to me; his hands grip my thighs just below my ass. There is
absolutely no space between us but it still doesn't feel close enough.

I break
away from our kiss and look up into his dark eyes. "Take me home," I
whisper breathlessly. My entire body is consumed with an ache that can only be
satisfied by
Lex
and his nearness.

Lex
pulls back slightly. "You
want to leave?" he asks with a hopeful, hungry glimmer in his eye.

I nod,
my lips twisting into a wicked grin. "Take me back to the guest
house."

Lex's
eyes darken. "Okay," he says in a throaty whisper.

We turn
to leave and find Anders blocking the doorway back into the house. The look on
his face is pure steel. He saw everything that happened between
Lex
and me and it doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to know that
he's not happy about it. I instantly feel guilty about jumping from him to
Lex
in less than fifteen minutes. I selfishly brush the
feeling away.

"Anders,
Lex
is taking me home," I say coolly.

Anders
gives an incredulous laugh and rubs his jaw. "I figured as much."

"Look,"
I say taking a step toward him, "you've had too much to drink, come with
us." As hard as I'm trying to ignore how shitty I feel about leading him
on and blowing him off, I can't.

The
look in his eyes is cold when he answers. "Nah, I think I'm
gonna
stay a while."

We
follow him as he stumbles inside. The chipper blonde from earlier comes out of
nowhere and Anders scoops her up; she giggles. The pang of jealousy that
bubbles in my stomach is somehow unsurprising.
Lex
slips his arm around my waist and the feeling is forgotten.

"Let's
get out of here,"
Lex
whispers gently nipping my
ear with his teeth. I look up and our eyes lock, the world drops away. Even so,
I can still feel Anders' eyes on us as we leave.

Some of
the boozy courage is starting to wear off. I had envisioned a steamy scene
where we would rip our clothes off the second we were through the door.
Instead,
Lex
deposits me on his sofa and makes me a
cup of coffee. He's always bragging about his lack of nobility, but I'm
starting to have my doubts.

"Here
we go," he says interrupting my thoughts to hand me a white porcelain mug
filled with steaming black coffee.

I blow
across the surface before taking a sip.
Lex
sits next
to me, brushes my hair over my shoulder, and kisses my neck.

"
Lex
, how am I supposed to drink this if you keep
distracting me?" I feel him smile against my neck but he continues to
trail soft kisses until he reaches the neckline of my dress. I gulp down half
the mug.

"Okay!"
I exclaim. "Sober now."

Lex
laughs. "We have all night,
love."

"Do
we?" I ask turning to look him in the eye.

"What
does that mean?" He brushes away a strand of hair that fell across my
face. His hand curves sensually around my neck.

My
breath is shallow, making it difficult to speak. "It's just, now that I'm
here and less...intoxicated, I can't help but wonder if this is a good
idea."

Lex
starts to speak, but I stop
him. "I'm just afraid that you'll have to leave again."

Lex
presses his eyes closed for a
second and takes in a long, ragged breath. When he opens his eyes again, I can
see endless regret and longing in them. "Evan, I am so sorry. You know I
didn't want to leave."

"Or
call?" I pull away slightly and take a long sip from my mug.

"No,"
he answers with a shake of his head, not taking his eyes off me, "I wanted
to call. I just couldn't. There's so much to explain. But not tonight."

"But..."

"Not
tonight. Let my kiss be my apology. Let that be enough, for now."

All of
my concerns melt away at the raw, barely contained desire in the depth of his
eyes and set of his mouth. It's as if he never left and broke my heart. I set
the mug down on the rosewood coffee table, stand, and walk over to the
fireplace.

"
Wanna
see a trick?" I ask glancing at him over my
shoulder. He nods slightly, his eyes full of curiosity. "Watch."

I turn
back to the fireplace and focus on the log inside. It takes barely any effort
for it to burst into flames. I feel
Lex
instantly at
my side.

"It
gets better." I breathe in and really concentrate. It takes a bit more
effort for this part,
but,
seconds later, I watch as
the flames flicker unnaturally before slowly darkening to a deep blue. The blue
bleeds into purple before finally settling on pink. Unconsciously, I find
myself toying with my pendent. I pull the cord away from my neck and look at
the heart finding it the same dark shade of pink.

When I
look back up,
Lex
is staring at me with wonder.
"Neat trick," he says smiling.

I cock
my head to the side and give him a playful smirk. "You're not freaked
out?"

"Of
course not," he answers pulling me into his arms. "Astounded, yes.
Amazed, definitely. Enamored, absolutely."

I wait
for him to kiss me but he doesn't. Instead, he steps back from our embrace,
takes my hand, and leads me upstairs. Nothing has changed since the last time I
was in here, but it still feels alien.
Lex
switches
on the lamp on his bedside table and sits on the bed. He gestures for me to sit
beside him but I do him one better, choosing instead to straddle his lap and
wrap my arms around his neck.

"So,
what was that you were saying earlier, about ripping off my dress?"

Lex
slides his hands up my thighs
and along the curve of my hips. "Ah, well, I wouldn't want to destroy
something that looks so damn good on you."

"True,"
I say glancing down at my dress. "It does look amazing."

Lex
gives me a wolfish grin and
wraps his arms around my waist. He lies back on the bed pulling me with him so
that I'm lying on top of him, our faces inches apart.
Lex
traces the side of my face with his thumb, leaving soft, torturous kisses in
the wake of his touch.

"Evan,"
he whispers, "I want to ravage you. I want to do every delicious thing
that I've imagined doing since I met you. But, tonight I just want to hold you
and kiss you and keep you close. You have no idea how badly I need you."

"Show
me," I whisper.

After a
while I lose track of where he ends and I begin. All the time I'm vaguely aware
of the soft buzz of electricity in the air. With every kiss and every fevered
embrace I can feel it building and growing.

"Evan."

I open
my eyes and look at
Lex
who is now on top of me, his
hair a mess and his shirt askew.

"Yeah?"
I ask giving him a goofy, contented smile.

"You're
glowing?"

"What?"
I push him off of me, hop off the bed, and head straight for the mirror over
his dresser. I don't need to get close before I know what he's talking about.
It's quickly fading but there is a distinct blue glow emanating from my skin.
The pendent lies dormant at my throat. There is no denying that the necklace
isn't to blame. It's all me.

"Holy
shit."

It should
totally freak me out but it doesn't Instead, I felt exhilarated. My power is
growing and it seems like
Lex
brings it out in me. I
turn to look at him. He's leaning back on his elbows looking lost in thought.