Free Braving the Elements by K. F. Breene Page A

compliment.
    He held his hands out, palms facing each other. In that strange language, he began chanting. Well, he could’ve been spitting and hissing for all I knew, but I felt the magic collect and pull, fanning that heat in my chest. Pale red formed between his hands—now green—now red again. He straddled the cusp of power, but I felt more available within him.
    “Can you just stop for a sec?” I asked as politely as I could.
    His eyes flicked up with a glower. “Why? I’m not going to show you what I’m doing. You should have been here at the beginning of class for that.”
    I grimaced to prevent myself from retorting like a wiseass. This guy could kick my ass —bad news with Charles on the other side of the room. “I just want to help.”
    “How the hell can you help?”
    Darla hung around near Charles, occasionally petting his muscles or rubbing her fingers across the base of his neck. She was occupied.
    “Look, I’m an idiot, yeah, and I largely haven’t a clue, but I do somehow know how to help others grasp magic. At least, I can with Charles and Master Bert. And, uh, Jessiah.” This was not a time for my face to turn red when I mentioned a new crush.
    His frown intensified. “What?”
    “Just…do it again, and let me put my hand on your skin, that’s all.”
    “Is this some weird attempt at seduction?”
    “I can assure you, no.”
    Frustrated—he didn’t seem to have a lot of patience—he shrugged me off with a, “Whatever.”
    He started again, not allowing me to touch his arm, since that would distract him, so I put it on the side of his stomach. I really tried not to feel his bumpy lateral muscle.
    It wasn’t me doing the seducing.
    “Okay.” He concentrated, his intensity blocking off some of his magic flow. Charles did it constantly. Too uptight.
    I closed my eyes, focused on his block as I drew in magic, and gradually pulled, forcing more magic through to break that block. “Loosen up,” I murmured.
    He gasped. When I opened my eyes, the magic hovering in front of him, waiting for a command, was deep red.
    “What is going on?”
    Damn it.
    Darla took her hand away from Charles’ butt so she could put it on her hip. Her cold gaze leveled us from across the room.
    “I was just helping him with his—“
    “ You help someone? You can’t even help yourself. Stand in front of him where you’re supposed to be so he can put the spell on you.”
    I trudged to my place, my head lowered, and waited while he summoned that red haze again. It got paler and paler as he worked. “Loosen up. You’re struggling to control it. You need to partner with it. Join with it.”
    Those weren’t the right terms, but I was largely learning by feeling it, and I didn’t know how else to describe it.
    He worked harder, his power level staying in the red, but the intensity of it fluctuating. Finally, after another minute of trying, Darla appeared behind him. “Here, let me help. Next she’ll be offering blood for protection to you, too.”
    She slid her hands down his arms, giving him goose bumps and entwining her fingers in his. “Now, say the words with me.”
    Her steamy voice entranced him as her breasts squished against his back. Red pulsed between their hands, and then floated over me into a box similar to what Stefan had put me in when trying to protect me. As the box solidified into a translucent, red cage, I touched the side and got the expected shock.
    Darla backed away with an evil smile, her hands feeling down the side of Adnan. “That’s all for today, class. Charles, you can get your charge out of this predicament. I have faith in you.”
    I’d never gotten so many smirks in my life.
    Charles stood in front of me uneasily as the rest of the class filed out merrily. “I have no idea how to make one of these, let alone how to undo one.”
    “Oh great . I’m trapped. God, she’s a bitch!”
    Charles nodded, surveying my cage. “Shall I throw a chair at it?”
    “I doubt it. How