elemental 05 - inferno by Larissa Ladd Read Free Book Online Page A

She had seen the way she’d looked after the potion, and it had been bad enough—apparently she had looked worse before. She took a deep breath and another sip of her coffee, trying not to let her excitement leap at the thought of Aiden in bed with her—even platonically, as she firmly told herself it would be.
    “So you think this is going to help?” she asked, carefully keeping her voice level.
    “Well, all I can say is that it’s helped before. Until we can figure out what’s happening, it sure as hell can’t hurt.” Dylan paused, and then his eyes lit up. “Hey, if you actually have sex, maybe you’ll cancel out the poison altogether!” 
    Aira’s face flooded with blood and she groaned.
    “No,” she said firmly, glancing hurriedly at Aiden to see that his reaction—like hers—was uneasy. “No sex. I’m—I’m going to stay abstinent for a while. I seem to make bad life decisions regarding sex.” She heard a snort and looked over to see Aiden pressing his lips together to suppress his laughter. “Shut up!” she said, scowling at him.
    “Well, you’re the one who said it, not me.” 
    Aira sighed, closing her eyes for a moment and rubbing at her forehead. 
    “I definitely need to learn how to not have sex with jerks.” She took another deep breath and looked at Dylan once more, ignoring Aiden’s half-uttered protest—once he realized that she was classing him as one of the jerks in question.
    “You don’t have to have sex,” Dylan said, raising a hand in a conciliatory gesture. “But close contact will probably help a lot. Aiden can’t really be harmed by the poison that’s in you—since it’s earth-aligned, he’s practically immune to it, and it’s in your body anyway, not his.” 
    Aira nodded, starting to consider the idea seriously. “We’ll still need to get the poison out of me, though,” she pointed out. 
    Dylan nodded.
    “I’ll be researching the rest of the day. And tonight. And tomorrow if I have to.” Dylan gestured to a pile of books, water elemental-written tomes on healing and poisons. Aira nodded, feeling tired and achy all over.
    “And we have to figure out who’s behind this—who put Alex up to it.” 
    Aiden grinned slowly as Aira glanced at him. “I can find that out,” he said. “After all, Alex did say it was a fire elemental. I’ll get some information.” 
    Aira made a face. “I feel completely useless,” she said with a sigh. “My own life and I can’t do anything to help myself.” She shook her head and finished her coffee. 
    Dylan’s look was sympathetic.
    “We’ll figure this out, then you can get rid of Alex once and for all and you’ll move on to what needs to be done next.” 
    Aira nodded, disbelieving but not willing to argue the point. 
    “I’ll just… get some work done, I guess,” she said, at a loss. The two men turned to their own tasks and Aira wondered how long the potion would allow her to even stay awake and conscious.

 
     

    C HAPTER 5
     
    AIRA WAS SURPRISED AT HOW nervous she felt as she sat on her bed in her pajamas, fresh from the shower, waiting for Aiden. Her hands were shaking slightly, her heart racing at the thought of spending an entire night alone in bed with him. She told herself firmly that they were going to keep the contact platonic—they had agreed to that before going to their separate rooms to shower. Dylan was still awake, consulting the pile of books he had taken from her grandmother’s house weeks before; he had originally brought them as curiosities, to study water-based lore and information, but they were coming in handy. 
    Aira fidgeted as she sat, feeling the ache and fatigue of the poison still eating away at her. She had taken Dylan’s strengthening potion before her shower, but it didn’t seem to be working as well as it had initially. Aira was worried. In two days, she would have to put a man to death; she had been so locked into the limitations she felt from the poisoning