Braving the Elements (Darkness #2)(28)

Raising my chin and pushing down my insecurity, while muffling the link with Stefan—hoping he wouldn’t notice if I didn’t cut it off completely—I tried to keep a hopeful expression from my face. I’d been getting closer and closer to Jessiah over the past few weeks, learning heaps, but also just having someone to talk to who wasn’t hell-bent on keeping me prisoner. He was kind and thoughtful, often giving me a flower and a smile when we met for the lesson.

And right now, he counted as a savior, because I knew Darla wouldn’t make fun of a student in front of another teacher. She was vindictive, not stupid.

“I was told your class would be finishing about now?” Jessiah asked with a gleam in his eyes, touching Darla with just enough sex appeal—which he had in droves—to get his way, but not so much as to distract him from what he’d come to procure. Me!

I nearly gushed like a twelve-year-old!

“Just finished, yes. The human created a giant plant that had to be destroyed, cutting my teaching time in half.”

“Ah.” Jessiah’s eyes twinkled as they beheld me. “She excels in creativity.” He winked.

“Hmm.” Darla’s eyes roamed Jessiah’s body, lingering on his arms and stopping for a brief moment between his legs. Her gaze returned to his face, heat kindling.

“I’ll just be escorting her out, if you don’t mind?” Jessiah stepped toward me and away from Darla.

That move right there, which made him the only person besides Charles who would say no to the tramp, endeared him to me. At a spiteful nod, I took his warm hand and let him lead me through the door, Charles hot on my heels.

“Wait, you, I want that mess cleaned up.” Darla stopped Charles with a flaying stare.

“That’s not my job. She is my job.”

A red haze blocked the door, that protection spell Charles still couldn’t figure out how to work was locking him in. As I hustled away with Jessiah, I heard her harsh laughter.

“Do we need to wait?” Jessiah hesitated.

I tugged him along. “Nah. He’s around constantly. I doubt anything’s waiting in the woods to accost us. And if it is, I can blow up a plant to attack it. Or us.”

He laughed merrily, tucking my arm around his.

“So, what do I owe the pleasure?” I asked as we sauntered toward the trees, the night silky and warm on my face.

The soft moonlight caught his beautiful blue eyes as they beheld me, soft heat infusing them. “I never get to talk to you. It seems like you’ve always got somewhere to be or something to do.”

“Or Charles nudging me away?”

Jessiah grinned, threading his fingers between mine to hold my hand. “He doesn’t trust me with his women.”

I laughed because it was so true, even though I wasn’t Charles’s woman.

“He is a tiny bit jealous, yes. I’ve noticed.”

A powerful surge blasted through the link, Stefan extremely uncomfortable about something. Given that he was always irritated in some way about his duties, this was par for the course. I stopped the link altogether, wanting a freaking second to myself to figure out this attraction to Jessiah.

No, I couldn’t even feel a fraction for him what I did for Stefan, but I wanted to see if this interest was returned—healthy and reciprocal without an arranged agreement with other women. It tipped the balance.

“You’ve come a long way in your elements. Do you have any other help?”

“Just you. I like your teaching style. I am a hands-on learner, so how you show me helps.” I blushed a little. Granted, sometimes his hands wandered a little too close to personal areas, but he always apologized with that devilish smile, the scoundrel side of him making me laugh.

As if thinking along the same lines as I did, he smiled. “Hmm. So, where do you stay while you’re here? I haven’t seen you around the mansion after light.”

We walked through a canopy of trees, heading deep into the woods. The leaves draped across the sky, hiding the approaching dawn. The last traces of night called to me, the silken feel of darkness reaching for my body and caressing my senses.

“I’m tucked away,” I answered, leaning against his shoulder as we walked. “Where do you stay?”

He paused next to a tree, directing my back toward the bark. His eyes looked down into mine, the woods still and quiet in the pocket of time when night animals tucked into their beds and the day animals got the urge to wake up. His hands lowered to my hips.

“On the first floor of the main house with all the other minions,” he said in a husky voice.

My hands traveled up his arms, smaller than Stefan’s. He didn’t have the medieval tattoos to make him seem exotic and wild, either. Or the giant width of shoulder from fighting and surviving in the world, keeping his people safe and protected.

With effort, I ignored all that, glancing back to his face. He was handsome, surely, but not devastatingly so. His eyes didn’t hold the same wicked intelligence, or the same soul-touching depth. My heart didn’t pound, or lurch, or even flutter. My stomach didn’t tingle or fill with butterflies.

Damn it!

Jessiah leaned in, his mouth brushing mine softly. A pang of guilt rocked me, unexpected. This wasn’t wrong logically, but my soul didn’t know that.

This man wasn’t the one I truly wanted. He wasn’t my ground; my other half.