The Tempting Touch Of Fire (Elemental Awakening, Book 1) Read Online Free PDF

stop me from living my life. And if Theo did turn up at the deli again, spouting off about someone potentially taking my head, well, I'd call the cops.
    But even as I climbed numbly between the sheets I knew that Theo, despite appearances, was tied up in what had happened to me. He understood it, or at least recognised what I had become. None of it made sense, all of it threatened to consume me with panic. But part of me acknowledged that if Theo did turn up with more deathly threats, I'd face him and not run.
    Because I needed answers to what had happened to me and for now, even though the doctor certainly proved there were more like Theo around, he was all I had. And he'd been... scared of me, threatened by my appearance. I saw it in those beautiful eyes of his, a wariness and shock that spoke volumes about the man. Whatever had blind-sided me, had absolutely thrown Theo Peters for a loop. And as bizarre as it sounded, despite the strange threats, a part of me still trusted Theo. Still believed he wanted to protect me and not do me any harm. Why else would he warn me of his Guard?
    So, he was my best bet, I think. Maybe together we could work this all out and return me to what I used to be.
    It was a loose thread to hang on to, but I was determined to cling to it for all I was worth.
    I slept fitfully, unsurprisingly, but every time I woke with nightmares of my time buried in the dirt, the trees outside would rustle, the sounds of tinkling soothing to my nerves. As though they sang a lullaby, I'd roll over and let their music lull me back to sleep. I must have woken a half dozen times throughout the night, but finally found a deep sleep at some early hour before my alarm went off.
    The dream coalesced around me; vibrant and alive, a real sense of this place I stood in existing. It was an unusual sensation. I knew I was asleep. I knew I was dreaming. But the dream was absolutely real.
    Despite the fact that my dead grandfather stood several feet away, running his fingers over the leaves of a Moreton Bay Fig Tree. The exposed roots making a striking pattern in the early evening sun. Reds and golds and crimsons and oranges filtered through the bending boughs of the tree, onto the dips and curves and ridges of the finger-like roots that crawled over the surface of the earth beneath his feet.
    He turned when I gasped, such a familiar and welcoming smile on his slightly aged face. My grandfather had been sixty when he'd died. Lost at sea while fishing one evening in his eleven foot dinghy. For some reason, he'd not been wearing his life-jacket, it had been discovered in his empty boat. A fact that I'd always found so hard to accept from a man who taught me everything I know about personal safety.
    I drank in his features, surprised at how well my mind had reconstructed his handsome face. Even if I found it hard to remember how he looked or sounded when I thought back on our times together, my dream mind hadn't forgotten a thing. At sixty, he'd looked fifteen years younger. He swore it was diet and exercise, something he instilled in my brother from an early age. Mark had followed Gramps around everywhere .
    His blond hair was flecked with patches of grey, his cheeks smoothed of stubble. His intelligent blue eyes searched mine, as his thick lips twitched into a grin. Amusement laced his features. Gramps had always been laughing about something, as though only he knew the joke that was life. Before he died, Mark had started laughing along with him. I'd always felt left out because of that. My brother knew what made my grandfather smile, but clearly Gramps had not felt that he could share the joke with me.
    "Gramps?" I heard myself say aloud.
    "Casey, sweetheart," he rumbled. So familiar. So grounding. So right. "It's about time you visited," he added, making me frown with confusion.
    I glanced around the space we were in. It was an empty field, just blades of grass swaying in a soft wind, and the Moreton Bay Fig Tree. I didn't