Bound by Earth: The Nature Hunters Academy Series, Book 1

by Quinn Loftis

  “This has been a complete bust,” said Shelly. “Did you see those two from Riverbend? The girl was such a snob. Did you hear her ask about my SAT score? C’mon, chick. It’s Riverbend, not Harvard.”

  “And the guy? Yikes,” offered Tara. “He looked like a Juggalo crossed with an elephant.”

  “Exactly. If that’s all Riverbend has to offer, then I might have to reconsider my choice,” Shelly said as she tapped her chin thoughtfully. “Maybe we should circle back around to the Walmart booth.”

  “Shut your mouth,” said Tara. “Don’t even joke about that. You know I worked there part-time last summer. It’s like purgatory, only with greeters.”

  “You were the hottest cart pusher they ever had,” said Shelly as she waggled her eyebrows.

  “I don’t see how that’s rele—” Tara’s words froze in her throat as they turned down the next row of booths. There, a couple of booths down, was a banner that read Tellus Geological Testing and Extraction, Inc, with a logo bearing stylized letters TGTE with a picture of the earth in the center of the G. And beneath the banner was the large man who’d been at her soccer game. Tara gasped. As if he’d heard her over the noise that filled the gym, the man’s head turned toward her and their eyes locked.

  “Hey.” Shelly tugged on her sleeve. “Isn’t that the mountain man from the game? Gah, he’s even hotter up close. Think he’s too old for me?”

  Tara would have rolled her eyes if she could have moved any part of her body, because, yes, he was definitely too old for her. He looked to be in his late twenties, maybe thirty. Not that those ages were old, but that would be a ten-year age gap. That seemed like a lot when the younger party was only eighteen.

  “Hello?” Shelly asked. “You planning on standing there and drooling all day, or are we going to ask the handsome, yummy mountain why he was at our game?”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Tara finally managed to get her mouth and brain to work in tandem. “I’m worried you’ll attempt to climb over the table and lick the mountain.”

  Shelly snorted. “There we go, straight into bizarre again.”

  “It’s our thing,” Tara reminded her as she forced her feet to move. The man kept staring even as they approached. When they reached the booth, Tara had to tilt her head back to look up at the handsome man. He really was something. Shelly sighed next to her in what felt like a silent agreement with Tara’s thoughts.

  “Hello, I’m Jax,” he said in a deep voice that held a hint of gravel.

  “I’m Tara.”

  “And I’m Shelly.”

  “Are you two seniors?” asked Jax.

  They nodded in unison. Tara glanced at Shelly and saw the girl’s mouth hanging open. Then Tara realized her mouth was hanging open, too, so she snapped it closed, hoping she didn’t look like too much of an idiot but knowing she absolutely did.

  “Are either of you interested in geology?” he asked.

  “We’re interested in something,” Shelly murmured under her breath.

  Tara stomped on her friend’s foot. It was obvious by Jax’s chuckle that he’d heard Shelly’s comment. “Like what? Digging up rocks and stuff?” Tara asked, attempting to move past the embarrassing statement.

  Jax chuckled. “Something like that. Our firm is primarily engaged in research. We study the elements and try to find ways they can be used to enhance the quality of human life.”

  “Sounds like a bunch of scientific, technological mumbo jumbo to me,” said Shelly, apparently having decided not to cross the table and lick Jax.

  Jax chuckled again so loudly and so deeply that Tara wondered if it would cause the building to shake. “There may be some science involved, but it’s not mumbo jumbo. Our employees work hard to improve human life.”

  Tara frowned. Human life. Such an odd phrase to use. And he’d said it twice. All of a sudden, the tingling feeling she’d gotten when she’d been playing soccer came back to her. She could’ve sworn she’d seen this man before somewhere, even before the soccer game.

  “Is there a reason you were at our soccer game?” she asked suddenly, as if watching a high school soccer game was somehow against the law.

  “Oh, you two are on the soccer team? Oh, yeah, now I remember. You’re the one who collided heads with that other girl. Knocked her out of the game but didn’t seem to faze you much.”

  Tara narrowed her eyes. She got the feeling the man knew exactly who she was before she ever walked into that gymnasium and hadn’t suddenly just realized who she was. “You didn’t answer the question.”

  “Um.” His brow lowered, and he gave her a look as if she was acting extremely paranoid. Forget the fact she probably was. “I was there to watch a soccer game,” he said, his words coming out slowly as though the question confused him.

  “Did you know anyone playing?” Tara asked.

  “No.”

  “Why would you come to watch a high school soccer game, not to mention, one of our games? No one comes to our soccer games,” said Shelly.

  “Yeah, we suck,” added Tara. That was a brilliant thing to say to the job recruiter.

  “I just like soccer, that’s all. I was in town for the career fair and decided to catch a game. I don’t think you sucked at all. As a team, you worked really well together, and a few of you seemed to have some real talent. You guys had some tough luck there at the end. One in a million shot that was. You were clearly the better team.” Jax seemed genuinely impressed with them.

  “So where’s this TGT whatever place located? Must not be local if you were ‘in town,’” asked Shelly.

  “Tellus Geological Testing and Extraction,” he said. “TGTE. We have offices all over. The closest one is in Charleston, West Virginia.”

  “Why would you come here?” Tara asked. “They don’t have high schools in West Virginia?”

  “Of course, they do, and I’ve visited most of them. But we are a growing company. We need lots of new employees—the right employees—to meet demand. As a recruiter in this territory, I try to make it to as many high school career days as I can, even at the small schools. One never knows when he might find a diamond in the rough.”

  Tara couldn’t help feeling the look he gave her was extremely poignant.

  “And what are the right employees, exactly?” Shelly asked. “I suck at science. And don’t you have to have a college degree or something?”

  “Not to work for us,” said Jax. “Not at all. In fact, sometimes we find our college graduates make the worst employees. We have to spend the first six months un-teaching them everything they supposedly learned while in college. We require particular aptitudes in our employees, skills that cannot necessarily be learned from a book.”

  Shelly lifted a brow at him. “Is this that whole detail-orientated, team player, go-getter type stuff?”

  “Sort of. We require certain personality types. The work can be very grueling. Long hours. Hard on the body and mind.”

  Tara frowned. “Grueling work in a laboratory? That doesn’t seem right.”

  “No, no, no,” said the big man. “Our employees spend very little time in the lab. It’s mostly fieldwork.”

  “What does that mean, fieldwork?” asked Tara.

  “You know, getting out in the field, collecting samples.”

  Shelly’s face scrunched up. “Samples of rock?”

  Jax nodded. “Rocks, minerals, crystals, gems, you name it. Anything that can be found beneath the earth’s surface.”

  “How much does it pay?” asked Shelly.

  “I’m not exactly at liberty to discuss salaries at this stage of the recruitment process, but I assure you, our employees are well taken care of.”

  “So minimum wage?” said Tara.

  Jax chuckled again. He seemed to do that a lot. Even when he was simply talking it felt like everything was amusing to him.

  “No, I’m serious. The pay is more than adequate.”

  “And I wouldn’t have to go to college?” asked Tara
with narrowed eyes. What this man was saying was too good to be true.

  “Do you have some aversion to continued education?”

  “I have some aversion to paying for it,” Tara said.

  “This I can understand. I assure you, I myself come from modest circumstances. I was not even allowed to attend high school. My parents were killed when I was young, and I was forced into work in the barley fields. Yet, through hard work, I managed to rise from my humble beginnings.”

  Tara’s heart jumped into her throat when the man said his parents were killed when he was young. She stared long and hard at him. There was something unspoken in his eyes, a shared understanding there. Somehow, she knew that he knew more about her than he was letting on.

  “No, college is not necessary,” he continued. “Would you like to start the application process?”

  “Hmm.” Shelly tapped her chin, as she was prone to do even when she was simply pretending to give something thought. “Spend all day outside in the mud digging up a bunch of dumb rocks? Thanks, pal, but no thanks. We’re gonna pass.”

  Before Tara could stop her mouth from opening she’d blurted out, “Yes. I’ll do it.” She didn’t know what was going on, but somewhere deep inside Tara felt she had to find out more about this Jax person. If that meant applying for a job at this weird geological place, then so be it.

  “What? Tara, are you kidding me?” asked Shelly. “No way, uh-huh. Not doing it. I’m Riverside bound.”

  “It’s not exactly an application, Tara,” said the man. “It’s more of an aptitude test. Something like a personality test, if you’ve ever taken one of those.”

  “Oh, you mean like ‘Do you prefer the color green over the color red? Do you like fluffy clouds instead of storm clouds?’ That type of thing?” asked Shelly.

  Again came the chuckle. “Yep, exactly that type of thing.”

  It’s like the guy had a secret and found everything Shelly said amusing because of how it related to something only he knew.

  “That’s fine,” said Tara. “I’d still like to fill it out.”

  Shelly huffed next to her. The whine that followed would make a four-year-old proud. “Tara, c’mon. This is not my scene. Let’s go.”

  “You had your say over at the military table, sergeant,” Tara reminded her. “I humored you.”

  “Actually, I think I was the one doing the humoring. You were being a sourpuss.”

  Jax handed Tara a pen and said, “One of our interns, Elias, has gone down to the teacher’s lounge to make some copies of the test. I’m sure he’ll be back any minute. Oh, here he comes now.” Jax pointed across the gym to a young man walking toward them carrying a stack of papers under his arm.

  The air whooshed out of Tara as her eyes met aquamarine ones so intense she felt as if staring at them too long might burn her retinas.

  “I think I just got pregnant,” Shelly whispered as she took a step closer to Tara. “He’s that hot. He literally impregnated me simply by existing in the same square footage as me.”

  When his eyes darted to Shelly, Tara knew he’d heard her. Dammit all, could the earth just open up and swallow her? Just at the end of that thought, the floor beneath her feet began to shake. It was slight, like a tremor, but the room went silent as everyone there began looking around at each other.

  She could feel Jax’s eyes boring a hole into the side of her head, but Tara couldn’t tear her eyes from the newcomer. His presence sucked all the oxygen from her lungs and demanded her attention. He hadn’t even spoken a word, and yet she couldn’t stop staring. Maybe Shelly’s stalking tendency was a contagious illness and Tara had finally caught it.

  “Was that an earthquake?” Someone from behind her asked, which seemed to be the cue for the rest of the room to begin speaking again.

  The guy who had Tara’s complete attention had stopped and was staring. Is he staring at me? She couldn’t be sure, but the chatter of voices around them seemed to snap him out of his own trance. Tara tried not to drool as he walked over.

  The man—Elias, Jax had called him—stood next to Jax, and the difference in their appearance was striking. The older Jax was big and bulky, like a bodybuilder, whereas the new guy was trim and muscular like a swimmer. His shoulders were broad and large, and his chest was obviously sculpted based on how his shirt clung to him. Jax’s face was warm and inviting, ready to smile at a moment’s notice. Elias was dark and brooding, and he caused shivers to race up and down Tara’s spine.

  His hair was dark, almost black. His eyes were a beautiful shade of aquamarine and practically glowed. He had a heavy brow, straight, aristocratic nose, strong cheekbones, and lips that were so full they looked ripe for biting … which she totally didn’t want to do. Yeah, right.

  “I didn’t think it was humanly possible to look that flawless,” Shelly said quietly.

  “Maybe he’s not human,” Tara muttered back.

  “Oh, right, right, right,” Shelly said quickly and nodded. “Definitely not human. Oh, snap, what if he’s like y—”

  Tara slammed her foot down on Shelly’s.

  “Bloody Mary on a magpie, that was not necessary,” Shelly growled.

  Tara shot her friend a glare.

  Shelly raised her hands apologetically. “Okay, maybe a little necessary. But it’s not my fault my brain is short circuiting. No one that hot is supposed to exist. It’s a rule. Somewhere. I’m sure of it.”

  “Ladies,” Jax interjected. “Let me introduce you to Elias Creed. He’s new in the extraction department at TGTE.”

  “The pleasure is all mine,” Elias crooned as he glanced at Shelly and then turned those lethal eyes on Tara. “All. Mine.” He repeated holding her gaze, almost daring her to say something or look away.

  Tara wanted to growl, gnash her teeth, or do something else animalistic. He had a British accent. Of course he did. It was deep and rich, and it washed over her like warm honey. Not that she’d ever poured warm honey on herself, because, who does that? But she imagined if a voice could feel like something, that is what his would feel like. To her anyway. She hoped it didn’t feel like that way to Shelly because for some reason that made Tara want to throat punch her friend. Because that was healthy.

  “Elias Creed?” asked Shelly. “Wait, hold the hell up.” She placed her hands on her waist and eyed the guy like he’d seriously done something wrong. “You’re not only a walking orgasm, but you have an accent and a sexy, mysterious name as well?” She turned to Jax. “Does anyone else in the extraction department look like him? If so, I want in. Forget I said rocks are boring. I love rocks. Rocks are the best. Yay, rocks! I want to be a part of … whatever you called this place … now. Give me the personality test, too. No, skip it. Whatever personality you’re looking for, I’ve got it. If I don’t, I’ll change it. Just sign me up.”

  “Does she have an off switch?” Elias asked. His forehead was pinched into a sharp V as he frowned at Shelly. Even his frown was hot. How can a frown be hot? And when did the word “hot” suddenly become the only adjective she was capable of using?

  “Nope,” Tara said. And she suddenly had the urge to explain. She wasn’t a talker, especially not to someone she’d never met, but, for some reason, she just kept right on going. Maybe it was because it annoyed her that he thought Shelly needed an off switch. “She tends to just say what she thinks. It’s actually quite refreshing. Most people give lip service and just say what they think others want to hear. But not with Shelly. She just tells it like it is. You never have to worry about wondering if she’s telling you the truth. She’s loyal to a fault and the least judgmental person I know. She doesn’t need an off switch.”

  “Wow, T,” Shelly said, her face lit up as if it were Christmas morning. “I never knew you thought all that about me. Pretty sure this just upgraded us to some other level of friendship. Now, we need to make a blood pact or something.”

  “Or we could forego the blood pact,” Tara suggested.

  Through this entire ex
change, Elias’s eyes stayed on Tara. He didn’t seem offended by her rebuttal. In fact, he looked pleased. His right brow rose, and his full lips turned up slightly. “And what about you, luv?”

  Tara loved his accent. He dropped the t’s off the ends of his words, making the lilt of it even stronger. Adding ‘love’ to the end of his sentence … well, that was the icing on the proverbial British hotness cake, wasn’t it? Yes, she’d just referred to the guy standing in front of her as a cake. For shame.

  “Are you asking me if I need an off switch?”

  Elias shook his head as he licked his bottom lip. “No. I’m asking if you give lip service? Or are you truthful?”

  Tara tried not to shiver. She really did. But he said “lip service” as if he were physically tasting the words and enjoyed their flavor.

  “I’m truthful. But I prefer to keep my thoughts to myself.”

  “We can’t both be verbal vomiters,” Shelly said. “One of us has to be the logical, level-headed one. Otherwise, we’d end up in jail for molesting mysterious guys who show up at soccer games for no reason.” She cast a sideways glance at Jax. “Tara keeps us legal. I keep us weird. Everyone else can put their lips on it and inhale sharply.”

  Yep, that was Shelly in a sentence, and it would probably be on her gravestone—not too far in the future because she was going to piss off the wrong person and Tara might not be there to keep the whole situation legal.

  Elias narrowed his eyes. “I’m not sure I follow.”

  “She means she is who she is and everyone else can suck it,” offered Tara.

  “Charming,” Elias quipped, never taking his eyes from Tara. “Glad to hear you are an honest woman. They seem few and far between these days.”

  “Ouch,” Shelly said. “Someone has been burned by a vagina. Best not jump this one, Tara-Bear. Brooding is hot. But brooding with past vagina issues is a no-go.”