Variant Lost (The Evelyn Maynard Trilogy Book 1) Page 15

  There was nothing I loved more than a good experiment, and here was a big, muscly, dimpled one standing right in front of me.

  Twelve

  When I was living a quiet, pretend life in Nampa, if someone had told me I was a Vital and would one day be standing by a massive pool on the grounds of a mansion in Bradford Hills, about to test the limits of my power, I would have suggested they get psychiatric help. But there I was, the calm blue water glistening in the bright sunshine as I stood next to my Bonded Variant with a rare and powerful fire ability, getting excited to see what we could do together.

  Ethan had the same look on his face as I assumed I did, just as enthusiastic to find out what this connection really meant. He was even bouncing a little on his feet.

  “No. Don’t even think about it. What did I just say?” Alec’s voice was beginning to sound more like a growl.

  “We really must be cautious with this. It would be best to explore your connection in a safe, controlled environment.” Tyler looked all kinds of wary.

  Josh was standing back slightly from our tense group, looking amused, his hands in his pockets. I could tell the exact moment when the idea hit him: his eyebrows raised, and his head tilted slowly, eyes drifting to the water. “We do have a—”

  “Pool!” I shouted over the top of him, unable to contain my excitement. He laughed, a little surprised at my outburst.

  I spun to face Alec and Tyler, who were standing shoulder to shoulder, both with their arms crossed, both wearing disapproving expressions.

  “It’s a perfect controlled environment,” I reasoned, hoping to appeal to Tyler’s academic curiosity. “What could contain fire better than a large pool of water? Plus this is probably the best time to try this safely. We’re both still kind of weak from last night, so neither one of us will be firing on all cylinders. Right? Pleeease!” I pressed my hands together in supplication.

  Tyler dropped his arms, his resolve wavering.

  Behind me, a giant splash spattered my calves. At Tyler’s first sign of weakness, Ethan had jumped in the pool.

  Alec was still glaring at everyone. “This is a bad idea.”

  “Maybe.” Tyler sounded wary again. “But we have to try it sometime. And she does make some good points. Might as well get it over with while there’s no one home.” He looked down at his watch, checking the time.

  “Yes!” I fist-pumped and spun around, running toward the water before he could change his mind.

  I dropped the borrowed shorts from my hips and stepped into the pool, opting to take the steps instead of jumping in. Ethan was standing in the middle, water dripping off his wet hair and down his broad chest. The water only reached a few inches below his sternum, which was moving up and down rhythmically as he breathed, slightly winded from his dive. His eyes were trained on the spot where the water met my body, following it up as I waded farther in.

  While he watched my progress, I took in his tattoo. I’d noticed the little match on his left arm peeking out from under his T-shirt a few times, and I’d been vaguely aware last night—and when I’d seen him shirtless in the bedroom—that the ink covered a much larger area, but my full focus had been elsewhere. Now, I was paying attention. Coming off the little wooden match was a massive flame, the fire licking up Ethan’s arm and over his shoulder in vivid reds and oranges that seamlessly blended into one another. It was beautiful and suited him perfectly.

  Behind me, everyone else had gone silent too. The sudden hush gave me a twinge of nervousness. As Alec had pointed out, I had no idea what I was doing.

  Thankfully, Ethan took the lead.

  “Come here.” He held a hand out, beckoning me forward.

  “The Light transfer is triggered most easily if her emotions are running high—a physiological reaction will stir it naturally.” I knew Josh was thinking about our kiss as he spoke. I was too.

  “Perhaps that’s not the best way to go forward though.” Tyler sounded a little uncomfortable. “Maybe we should try a more controlled transference, a smaller dose, if you will.”

  Alec sighed loudly. He was not on board with this, but he was clearly outnumbered, and outranked by Tyler.

  “All right. Let’s start slow then.” Ethan held out his other arm in invitation. “See if you can feel the Light and push it through your hands. OK?”

  I nodded as I closed the distance between us. The water was just below my shoulders as I stood in front of Ethan and reached my hands out, placing them in his. We watched each other, curiosity mixing with excitement, and prepared ourselves.

  Except I had no idea what I was supposed to be feeling.

  Obviously I had channeled the Light before. Obviously I had access to it. I had pushed enough of it to both Ethan and Josh to know that it was there, coursing through our connection. But I hadn’t done those things on purpose. They’d just happened. How was I supposed to replicate that now?

  That familiar soft, tingling feeling flitted over my skin where our hands met. Was that what it was? Should I be trying to increase that somehow? And where did the Light come from? Should I try to . . . get more of it from somewhere?

  I was no longer meeting Ethan’s eyes. I was staring at our joined hands, my view of them distorted by the water, a frown of concentration on my face. Why was this so difficult? It had come easily the last few times.

  I looked to the side of the pool, searching for guidance from the person who always seemed to be ready with knowledge.

  Tyler stood with his hands in his pockets, a thoughtful expression on his face. Next to him, Alec was crouching down, his face level with mine and his disapproval written all over it. His body was poised to jump into action, as if he was expecting the worst.

  “She’s overthinking it,” Josh said from behind me. He didn’t sound worried or frustrated. He was just stating the fact—as he had when I couldn’t remember what I was doing in bed with Ethan.

  I didn’t have a chance to ponder how he’d figured me out so quickly, because Ethan was apparently in agreement with him.

  “Stop overthinking it.” He tugged on my hands and pulled me closer.

  For the millionth time in the past twenty-four hours, I found myself in Ethan Paul’s arms. His right arm banded around the middle of my back, pulling me up and firmly against him, my feet leaving the bottom of the pool. My hands instinctively went to his shoulders, and our proximity demanded that I meet his eyes again. They still held excitement, the amber almost dancing, the sun reflected off the water making them light and free.

  He lifted his right hand out of the water, and his fingers gently caressed the back of my neck, making their way up into my hair. He leaned his head forward as though to kiss me, and—though I briefly considered the fact that we had an audience—my body reacted immediately. My breathing shallowed, my heart pattered inside my chest. I felt lost in his eyes and found in his arms. My lips had parted of their own volition, my brain remembering the last kiss we’d shared.

  I wanted more.

  But he didn’t kiss me. He lowered his head until our foreheads were touching, and then he told me what I needed to hear.

  “You can do this, Eve.” He whispered it so softly that I don’t think the others even heard, but I felt it inside of me as surely as I felt his breath on my face.

  That’s when I felt the Light.

  I didn’t have a name for it before, but now that I knew what it was, I was sure that was the unbridled power I was feeling. Every spot on my body where we touched—my hands, my forearms, the front of my thighs, my forehead—was tingling pleasantly, as it always had when we’d made contact, but now it was so much more than a tingle. The energy was almost audible, like a buzz.

  I could feel the power coursing through me and flowing into him, and it felt incredible!

  Ethan’s eyes went wide. He pulled his head away and looked at me in astonishment. He’d never felt it before. The last time I’d pushed any Light at him, he’d been passed out, nearly dead. Neither one of us had known or been
able to really appreciate what had been happening.

  But he was feeling it now, and by the look of pure serenity on his face, it felt just as good to be on the other side. He lifted his head toward the sky and closed his eyes.

  That pure look on his face tugged on some invisible string within me. Even though we were pressed against each other, I wanted to be closer. I needed more of him. It was easy to lift my legs in the water and wrap them around his middle. I used my hands to pull myself higher, wrapping my arms around his neck.

  That’s when things got really hot. Literally.

  Ethan’s arm around my waist stiffened, and his eyes snapped open. There was heat in his stare now, a new intensity.

  Our moment was interrupted by panicked shouting and a lot of obscene language coming from outside the pool. The water was on fire.

  The water was on fire!

  All around us were flames, flicking twelve, thirteen feet into the air, blocking the other guys from view. I couldn’t see the bottom of the pool. I couldn’t see the water at all.

  I shrieked and pulled myself impossibly closer to Ethan, lifting my body even higher onto his and burying my head in his shoulder.

  He chuckled and playfully squeezed my sides. “It can’t hurt you, Eve.”

  Now that he mentioned it, it wasn’t actually hurting me. It looked mean and scary, but I was not being burned alive in the pool.

  I slowly extracted my face from the safety of Ethan’s neck and looked around. The flames were dying down already. Ethan was reeling them back in, a focused expression on his face.

  As the flames disappeared completely, Tyler and Alec came back into view. Both were crouching by the edge of the pool, wearing matching horrified expressions.

  Josh stood behind them, grinning. “Told you she was fine. It can’t hurt her. It can’t hurt me either, now that we’re both in her Bond,” he drawled, rolling his eyes.

  “Why can’t it hurt me?” I directed the question to the fire fiend between my legs. I wasn’t quite ready to let go.

  “It’s a self-preservation thing. I’m able to do what I do because of the power you provide. We’re connected now. Your Light and my ability know each other. They recognize each other. My fire couldn’t hurt its power source if it wanted to. Same goes for Josh’s telekinesis. We can’t harm each other with our abilities anymore because that would cause you pain.”

  “Cool!” I’d have to delve into the theory of that later. Right now I had the practical application in front of me, and I wasn’t about to waste this opportunity. “Show me.”

  I adjusted my grip so I was more on the side of Ethan’s body, my right arm slung around his neck. I lifted my left arm in front of our faces, wiggling my fingers in a demonstration of what I wanted him to do.

  He flashed me his brilliant grin and lifted his hand up beside mine. Just as I’d seen him do when showing off for his friends, he formed his hand into a loose claw, then flexed his fingers, opening his palm flat. But what emerged this time was not a little magic trick fireball.

  It was a flamethrower. The fire whooshed from his hand and climbed into the air, fast and intense, the center of the blaze a dangerous blue.

  “Whoa!” Ethan’s look of surprise morphed into a focused expression once again as he reined in the inferno.

  When the giant flamethrower had shrunk to a moderate-sized flamethrower, I tentatively reached my hand out. Logically speaking, sticking your hand into a raging fire was a reckless thing to do, but there was no longer any apprehension in me. In fact, I felt a strange kind of affection for that fire.

  The complete lack of any sensation as the flames engulfed my hand was mind-blowing. There wasn’t even any heat as I touched my palm to Ethan’s, pressing each of my fingers against his much bigger ones.

  I have no idea how long we were in that pool, both of us staring, transfixed, at our hands pressed together and enveloped in flames. But eventually I felt a gentle touch on my shoulder, and then someone was extracting me from Ethan’s grip. For a second, Ethan’s hold on me tightened possessively, but when we both realized it was Josh in the pool with us, he came back to himself and released me.

  Josh pulled me back against his chest, both arms looped around my front, and dragged me through the water a few steps away from Ethan and the fire that was still flying off his fingers. He held me against him as we both watched Ethan slowly contain the flames.

  Only then did Josh release a heavy breath and let me go. Apparently everyone had decided it was time to pull us apart before we lit something up that wasn’t impervious to it as I was. Since Josh was immune to Ethan’s ability too, the task of breaking us out of our trance had fallen to him. Although, as I turned around, I saw Alec had his shirt off and looked ready to jump into the water. I knew he would do anything to protect his cousin, but I questioned his self-preservation instincts, even as I took in the many tattoos covering his chest and arms.

  Tyler was standing a bit farther back, but his posture was radiating tension as well. Our little fire show must have been as anxiety-inducing for them as it had been mesmerizing for us.

  I cleared my throat, praying it didn’t sound as awkward as I was suddenly feeling. “I’m going to go dry off.”

  Murmured agreements chorused around me as I moved to get out of the pool, avoiding eye contact with all of them. Alec cursed under his breath, pulling his shirt back on.

  “You guys go ahead.” Ethan’s voice drew my eyes away from their intense examination of the pavers around the pool. “I need a minute.”

  I turned my head just in time to see him disappear under the water. Alec cursed again and stalked off toward the house.

  I marched in my underwear and white tank top, which was definitely see-through by now, into the pool house in search of towels.

  I found some in a bathroom and dried off, putting my remaining dry clothing back on. Testing my connection to Ethan had been exhilarating, but the events of the past few hours were beginning to catch up to me. A lot had happened, a lot of information had been dumped on me, yet there was so much I still didn’t know. It couldn’t have been more than an hour or two since I’d woken up in Ethan’s arms, but I was exhausted.

  I was ready for a break and some proper clothing; it was time to head back to my res hall and rejoin the real world.

  I felt more than a little uncomfortable walking out of the pool house in just a cardigan and oversized T-shirt, pulling the hem down constantly because I’d decided not to keep my wet underwear on. Of course, the person I least wanted to see me naked in this scenario was the one waiting for me outside.

  The others had disappeared and left Tyler to deal with me.

  Thirteen

  Tyler was sitting on the edge of one of the loungers, his head bent over his phone, typing rapidly. He must have changed at the same time I did, and he was now in jeans and a T-shirt. It was the first time I’d seen him dressed in anything other than slacks and a button-down.

  He was easily one of the most intelligent people I’d ever met, and I genuinely looked forward to speaking to him whenever I had the chance. After last night, though, things were going to be different between us. How could they not be? I had just become permanently, supernaturally glued to two people he considered family, right after one of them nearly died. Those kinds of events forced a certain intimacy between people.

  I didn’t necessarily mind the idea of being closer to Tyler; I had been developing a serious crush on him since we first met. I just hoped it didn’t ruin the relationship we already had.

  On the other hand, I didn’t even want to think about what it meant that I was still crushing on him despite having an attraction to both Ethan and Josh—an attraction that was more than just the Light-fueled connection between us. How did this work in Variant Bonds with more than one Variant involved? I would need to broaden my research to include Variant-specific sociology and psychology instead of just focusing on the hard science.

  As I approached him tentatively, he looked up,
swiping his messy hair out of his eyes, and gave me a wide and genuine smile.

  “You did exceptionally well, Eve.”

  “Thank you.” I ducked my head as I replied. I wasn’t a blusher—my cutaneous blood vessels happened to be deeper in the skin, so when I got embarrassed, my cheeks didn’t get red—but if I was, I would have been blushing. Why was his praise making me shy? He had praised me before, and I hadn’t felt embarrassed.

  “I was just texting the others to let them know I would drop you back at the Institute. I think we’ve all had enough excitement for the day. Plus, I don’t want to risk Beth coming back here and making a scene. We need to keep a low profile.” He stood, and we started walking back toward the house.

  “Oh shit! Beth!” I had completely forgotten about my new friend and how she’d followed my crazy ass all the way here last night. She’d stuck with me, and I’d completely forgotten about her. I was a terrible friend!

  “It’s all right. We covered for you. We managed to convince her you were safe with us for the night, but she’s going to have questions. That girl can be . . . forceful.” He chuckled, as amused with Beth’s strong protective instincts as I was touched by them.

  As we spoke, Tyler led the way through a side door off the house’s massive entrance hall, down some stairs, and into a cavernous garage with at least half a dozen cars.

  “I’m sure she’ll understand when I explain it all to her. She’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.”

  “I’m glad you’re making friends, but Eve, you can’t tell her anything.” He stopped and faced me fully, making sure I could see the seriousness on his face.

  “I don’t understand.” Why would he want me to keep my newfound Vital status from my new friend—one of my only friends? “I thought this was a good thing. You were all so excited this morning. I’ve read up a little on American Variant history. I haven’t come across anything that indicates it’s bad to be a Vital.”