I chuckled. “So that was an expression of love, was it? Throwing a ball of fire at my face and scaring me half to death?”
He grinned. “You weren’t scared. You hardly even flinched. That’s what made me want to know you.”
He cut off my witty reply with a soft, gentle kiss. I tightened my arms around his neck and wrapped my legs around his waist, drawing him impossibly closer. We made slow circles in the water, moving deeper into the pool as his tongue waded into my mouth and he waded further and further into my very soul.
We broke apart, panting, and I opened my eyes to see beautiful flames covering the entirety of the pool’s surface. They licked four feet into the air, banishing the cold wind.
I looked around us in wonder, smiling, warm and fuzzy on the inside and outside. It was almost exactly like the day we’d first tested our Bond connection, except this time, the flames weren’t raging as high, didn’t have that jerky, uncontrolled, volatile energy. Ethan was in perfect control; the fire was only high enough to hide us from view, an even height all over. He was doing this on purpose.
“What—”
My question was cut off when he leaned forward and started kissing and sucking my neck, then moved his hot mouth up to my ear.
“I want you,” he whispered, and I groaned at his words, my thighs tightening around him reflexively.
I kissed him again, pushing my tongue into his mouth. With one hand, I undid his swim trunks while he nudged the fabric of my panties out of the way. Our movements weren’t jerky or desperate—we knew we had the rest of our lives to spend together—but we weren’t taking it painfully slow either. Neither one of us wanted to wait much longer to start that life.
Within minutes of declaring our love, Ethan was inside me, filling me up in every way. We both sighed into the feeling—warm, safe, and so fucking good. It was the first time I’d had him inside me without a condom, feeling every inch of silk-covered steel as he slid in.
We made love in the pool, staring into each other’s eyes as his bright flames lit up the water around us. I’d never felt closer, more connected, to him.
We came at the same time, our foreheads together, our soft moans mingling as we watched each other unravel in the sweetest kind of surrender, our souls bare.
I rested my head on his shoulder, and he just held me as the flames flickered out completely. It was now dusk. A gust of wind reminded me we had no business being in a pool at night in April unless we wanted to freeze, but I didn’t care. I was safe and warm in my fire fiend’s arms.
When we finally got out of the pool, Ethan froze, his back tense as he turned to me, wide-eyed. “Shit! Condom.”
I chuckled and took his hand in mine. “It’s OK. I got the implant over a week ago, remember? We’re safe.”
He took an exaggerated sigh of relief. Tyler had used his ability to make sure we were all clean before I had the procedure.
Another chilly gust of wind made my teeth chatter, and Ethan wrapped a big towel around my shoulders. We headed back to the house hand in hand.
“Maybe I’ll do the moussaka after all,” he mused. “I think I have enough time. I’ll have to get more eggplant though.”
“Sounds perfect.” I smiled up at him.
Nine
I forced myself to sit up straighter in the lecture theater seat. The coffee Josh had brought me after lunch just wasn’t cutting it.
It had been nearly two weeks since Zara’s capture—or surrender, depending on how you looked at it—and I was trying to maintain a routine, refusing to let her disrupt my life any further. But the Variant history lecture, a compulsory unit for all students with Variant DNA, was not holding my interest. Shaking my head to clear away the fuzziness, I noticed I wasn’t the only one having trouble concentrating.
It started with a few whispers, pockets of people shifting in their seats, bending their heads together. Then it spread farther. People were getting louder and looking at their phones.
The professor shushed them, a stern look on her face, but whatever was happening had them ignoring her. People were starting to get downright rowdy.
A pang of worry shot down my spine, and I looked to the back of