Crush (Elemental Hearts, #3)

by Morgan, Jayelle

  Thank you. He always thanked Erratics in his mind because they didn’t know what they were giving up. It was safer for them, safer for the world. However, it added to his own power, and for that he was appreciative.

  Suddenly Jade seemed to stumble, to lose her footing though the path was more level here. She was still holding on to his hand, and she recovered quickly, so Micah only paused a second and then kept walking. But...

  Had he drained her too much, too fast? Maybe he had, and she felt weak. Or maybe she was overly fatigued from the day’s work and wasn’t paying close attention. He cut off the flow of power from her just in case. Balancing her physical and mental health against his need to drain her was challenging. Maybe she couldn’t tolerate being drained tonight when she was already mentally and physically depleted. That was what he’d worried about, the physical danger she could be in from draining and mining at the same time.

  Micah sighed. She was finally letting him touch her, and yet it was too great a risk to drain her.

  At the grassy, even part of the path, somewhat visible in the light of the rising moon, he expected Jade to release his hand, but she didn’t. And even though he wasn’t draining her anymore and she could likely make it all the way back on her own, he didn’t let go either.

  When they got to camp, faintly lit by the porch light on her trailer, he stopped. Jade looked up and around, like she hadn’t realized they were there yet. And then she tugged her hand from his, their fingers sliding across one another in a way that sent soft static up his arm.

  “Thank you.”

  He nodded, and then started building a fire, expecting her to go past him into her camper as usual. To his surprise, she dropped her pack with a thud and sat with her arms crossed on one of the logs by the fire-pit.

  Micah stood until the wood caught with flame and then sat across from her, both staring into the fire. He glanced up at her often, noticing how the firelight made her look softer, and yet more exhausted, at the same time.

  Something was in her eyes. A sorrow, a hopelessness that pulled at him. He couldn’t stand when people were hurting, and Jade was definitely in pain.

  Was it that pain that made her exhaust herself chipping away at a mountain for crystals? Or did she simply need the money?

  And why did he care so much? He needed to drain her and go back to his original mission.

  Jade showed signs of trusting him some. Her allowing him to lead her down the mountain was a big one. But it still wasn’t enough.

  You know what helps to earn the trust of a woman? Talking to her.

  Ajax’s words were the only reason he opened his mouth to ask. Or at least that’s what he told himself.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “WHY DO YOU DO WHAT you do?”

  Jade looked up at Micah, surprised out of her vague thoughts by his sudden question. Surprised enough to give him an answer.

  “I need the money,” she scoffed. “Why do you?” Wasn’t money everyone’s motivation?

  “I feel a bond with the earth, with the mountain. It gives me comfort and solace.”

  In an instant, she understood that Micah was not talking about his job, about security. Just like her, he’d be here even if he didn’t need to be.

  “It’s like a friend that never dies.” He dropped his gaze from hers, looking down at the ground beneath his feet.

  The raw loneliness in those simple words scraped at her, scoured open the place in her heart where her real answer hid.

  She looked into the fire, only seeing the past.

  “My dad used to bring me up here as his mining partner.” Jade had spoken before she realized it, but Micah’s undemanding silence made it easy to keep going. “I was always interested in what he did, even from a young age. I couldn’t wait to look at the cool rocks he brought home.

  When I got older, summer was our time. He’d take me on short mining trips, and though it was hard work, it was the most fun I’ve had in my life. The digging, the nights around the campfire with s’mores and stories.

  When the trip was over, we’d come home and my mom would be waiting for us. And even dirty and muddy and smelly, she’d give us the biggest hugs. And then we’d all sit around the kitchen table after we’d washed up and eaten, and show her all the cool things we’d found. Gardening was more her thing, but she would get excited over the gems too.”

  Jade couldn’t speak for a minute until the squeeze in her throat and her chest loosened a bit.

  “My dad died of a heart attack five years ago. And then my mother came down with Alzheimer’s a short time later, and it’s advanced enough now that she needs constant care.”

  Losing her father had been a shock, but she’d passed from the actively hurting part of grief to the coping part relatively quickly. With her mother, the actively hurting part never seemed to end. Every time she regained some lucidity, only to lose it again, was crushing. She was losing her mom in excruciating increments, instead of all at once, like her dad.

  She honestly couldn’t say which way was worse.

  Jade looked from the fire up to the peak behind Micah, visible in the dark only because of its outline against the stars.

  “Now the only thing left of my parents is this mountain.”

  The mountain, and the memories. But now she couldn’t even trust that she’d get to keep those. Alzheimer’s had a genetic component. What if she lost every memory of her parents? Her childhood? Her identity? The thought gutted her, but the possibility confronted her every Saturday at Shady Oaks Nursing Home.

  There was some comfort in knowing that, if nothing else, this mountain would remain long after they all were gone.

  “If I lose my memories too, maybe the mountain will remember us all.” Jade half smiled as she looked up to see what Micah thought of her ridiculousness.

  “Fire burns away,” Micah said, his somber gaze on hers, “Water flows away, air blows away. Earth stays.”

  The flames reflecting in his eyes made them do that thing again where they flashed a glowing gold over the clear brown.

  Earth stays.

  It was a nicely poetic remark, but technically untrue if you factored in tectonic movement or erosion or any other number of things that made the earth move, but... she still felt like he understood. Somehow, he got it. “Yeah,” she said, smiling though her eyes were stinging.

  All she knew was her mother needed care, and Jade needed the mountain to cooperate to make that happen.

  “My mother’s health care is expensive. My teaching job doesn’t cover it. I need to hit a claim worth enough to make sure she’s cared for before school starts up again.”

  “That is why you work so hard.”

  Jade nodded. She would work herself to the bone if it meant another year of good care for her mom. Rubbing her hands on her thighs, she said, “But so far I haven’t been able to find anything of real value. I’m worried I won’t.” Admitting it out loud was hard, soul-crushing. There was still time, of course, but it felt less likely every day.

  “Why do you not listen to your instincts?”

  “What?” She looked up at Micah, the sudden change of topic confusing her.

  “They are strong, but you ignore them. Or you would dig in a different spot.”

  Jade bristled, no longer amused by his foolish comments about mining. Mining was science, not sorcery.

  “Instincts are useless for finding gems. You look for identifiable geologic signs, and you follow those. Sometimes they lead to something, sometimes they fade to nothing. Intuition has nothing to do with success or failure.”

  “Wrong. You have powerful instincts that would lead you to success if you only paid attention.”

  She swallowed. Her dad had always said the same thing about her. Your instincts are very strong, Jade. He’d believed it, to the point that he would ask her input when she was as young as ten years old.

  “Where should we dig today, Jade?”

  “Over here Daddy, under this big rock.”

>   “Are you sure, Jadeite?” he’d asked, using the scientific name for the precious mineral she was named after.

  “Yup,” she’d nod. Confident with no logical reason to be. And they’d always found something, hadn’t they?

  But where had her instincts been when it came to her ex? She’d seen nary a red flag, never had a moment’s suspicion or hesitation toward Tony. Until the day she’d come back to their claim after taking some time off after her mother’s diagnosis and found the whole thing picked clean. She’d tried to call him right then. His phone had been disconnected, and she’d never seen or heard from him again. She’d lost four months of hard work, a year of income, and her naivete’.

  “My instincts can’t be trusted,” she ground out. Instincts, hunches, whatever people called it. No one should trust it. Intuition was in the same realm as metaphysics; a bunch of emotional, mystical woo-woo with no scientific basis.

  His grunt in reply was vague.

  She raised an eyebrow. “You don’t look like the type of guy to give intuition much weight.”

  He shrugged, eyes intent on hers. “Maybe not in all situations, but when the Earth speaks, I listen.”

  “Yeah, well, I’d rather it be the other way around.” Jade ran her fingers through her hair, weariness settling over her like a lead blanket.

  Micah’s head tilted. “If the Earth listened, what would you say?”

  She looked up at him, the stinging beginning again behind her eyes. Damn the tears, they were never far away these days. “I’d tell her thank you for all the great years with my parents, and I would beg it to be generous so I could care for my mother, who loved it, too.”

  Her voice came out hoarse, and she ducked her head from Micah’s intensely clear gaze.

  “You love the Earth?”

  “Yes, I do.” Her eyes lifted to follow the line of the mountain against the stars again, the shadows of her past absent this time. She did love the Earth. She loved this mountain, loved rocks and minerals and the beautiful gems that seemed to be created simply to be discovered. Why else would all that beauty be hidden just within reach?

  “Every amazing stone I pull from millennia-old dirt feels like a gift.” Other than being rich or a jeweler, mining was the only way a normal person got to hold fistfuls of gemstones. Sure they were rough, uncut. Some might think they were ugly, but she much preferred their natural shapes, the magical light that glowed from within the facets. She loved her job, even with all the hard labor and frustration. “I would still do it even if I didn’t need the money from it for my mother.” Just slower, on her own time. And the outcome wouldn’t matter nearly so much.

  “So what about you?” Jade said, wiping her eyes dry.

  Micah shut down right before her, jaw tightening and expression locking down tightly.

  “Oh no, you don’t.”

  His eyebrows went up in question.

  “You’ve got me bleeding out words all over the place, talking about myself. And I know nothing about you. So it’s your turn. It’s only fair.” She added a sniffle for good measure, staring at him.

  She knew a little more about him than she let on. Her livelihood depended on good observational skills, and she’d studied him too. Probably more than necessary if she was honest. But at least it had a purpose.

  She knew that he was kind and polite, chivalrous even, always offering to help or assist her in his silent way. He took his job seriously, sometimes too seriously, though she was thankful for it. She felt safe with him watching her claim, guarding her camp. Leading her down the mountain in darkness. Him protecting her safety left her free to focus on the most important thing; the mining. And she was even more thankful for that.

  But she also knew something haunted him.

  No one stared silently into the distance as long he did without a ghost in their mind to keep them company. She knew he didn’t like to talk. They’d spent weeks together now, most of it in silence. Tonight, she just wanted to know him a little better.

  “I’ll make it easy on you. Just tell me one thing I don’t know about you and I’ll be happy.”

  He dropped his gaze and stayed silent. Disappointed, Jade sighed. Where did this sudden urge to get to know him come from, anyway?

  She was about to stand and say good night when he finally spoke.

  “I like to sing.”

  Now it was Jade’s turn for her eyebrows to rise. “Singing?” Huh. Not only was it completely unexpected from a man that looked like him, but she’d never heard even a whisper of a song from him in the weeks since they’d met.

  “Yes.” He smiled, an abashed smile. An adorable smile. A smile that turned him from fierce to endearing in an instant. “Russian chorale music.”

  Her brain couldn’t seem to form words for a minute, and she had to swallow her heartbeat back down into her chest.

  “Russian choral music. Huh. Really.” Russian church music, from a man who looked like a primitive island warrior. Just another way he was a remarkable contradiction. “Why Russian?”

  He shrugged one big shoulder. “It seems to say things that I don’t have words for in my native language.”

  “I see.” Curiosity was positively killing her. “May I hear you sing?”

  “I’m not—I don’t sing in front of people.”

  Disappointed, she nodded. If he was a clam, then she didn’t want to be a crowbar. She was pretty happy he’d shared anything at all.

  “Thank you, Micah. For sharing.”

  He nodded with a tiny uptick on one side of his lips. Not quite a full smile, but enough. Enough to make her stomach flutter, to make her chest warm. Enough to let her know it was time for her to go to bed. She was dangerously close to... liking him... and she didn’t mix mining and relationships. At all.

  “Okay, well good night, Micah.” She gave him a small wave and stood up. Micah leaned back like he was surprised at her sudden departure. Oh well. She walked to her trailer door and opened it, but stopped there with her hand on it and her back to him.

  “I hope someday you’ll let me hear you sing.”

  He was silent, and she looked back at him. His smile was full-blown now, dangerous, alluring and heart-stopping.

  “And I hope someday you’ll let me give you a hand up without an argument.”

  Jade breathed out a laugh. She was stubborn and independent to a fault, and he’d noticed. Of course, he’d noticed. But he’d come out of his comfort zone a little for her, so maybe she could do the same...

  “Someday,” she said with an answering smile, and went in her camper.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ONE ARM BEHIND HIS head, Micah stared at the ceiling of his tent, trying to ignore the throb between his legs and redirect his thoughts.

  He’d had another dream, hazy and vague, but enough for him to awaken with a fast heartbeat and a dose of disappointment that it hadn’t been real.

  In the weeks since their talk around the fire, Jade had been more relaxed, more trusting than before. She would accept his hand, his help, now and then.

  So he watched and he waited for opportunities to help, to earn her trust, to touch her for just a moment and take a small sip of her power.

  The whole situation caused unintended consequences, however.

  The more he watched her, the more he noticed the way she licked her lips in the dry mountain air, the way her body curved under her clothes. He noticed the difference on her face between a good day mining, and a bad one. And the more he touched Jade, the more he wanted to. Even the possibility of her grabbing his hand sent his heart thumping. He was having dreams now, dreams where he woke sweating and hard, the phantom feel of her skin on his fingertips. It was getting harder to crank down on the urges that had been no trouble for decades.

  All the Warriors, at one time or another, had sated the baser appetites of their bodies with human women. At least until recently, when Levi and Ajax found mates.

  He himself had put lust and desire away long ago, learned how to co
ntrol them, suppress them.

  Why were they resurfacing now, for Jade? And what about the dreams? Those were new. It had been a long time, but he couldn’t remember having those about anyone before... before.

  Day or night, there was little relief from the desire he had for Jade, and it was getting worse.

  What would it be like to touch more than her hand? To caress her arm, her shoulder... more? To sweep her long, glossy hair to the side and brush her neck with his fingers, with his mouth. What would she taste like?

  He clenched his eyes shut, the image and feeling of Jade in his arms—her lips softening, opening, allowing him to sample her—invading his mind.

  With a heave, he threw the blankets off and sat up on the side of the bed. There was no going back to sleep and leaving his brain idle to fantasize more about Jade was useless. And torturous.

  He’d get dressed and go back up the mountain until dawn and then return to escort Jade back to her claim.

  Quietly, using his powers to mute the sound of his boots on the ground, he made his way out of camp and up the trail. He went to his usual spot, though his eyes couldn’t see far in the starlight. He tried to concentrate, to keep his mind blank, to reclaim the solitude that had soothed him before a certain green-eyed woman had come along.

  Time crept by, the night darkening to its deepest black when sunrise was still just a promise.

  As soon as he smelled the sharp, burning scent of the Chaolt, he ran for the cave where the portal was hidden. Even though he couldn’t pinpoint where the enemy was, instinct told him he was right.

  And he was.

  He skidded to a stop as he rounded the corner into the cavern. In front of him was a boy. The boy he’d tried to save from being taken months ago when he’d first discovered the portal while trying to rescue him from the clutches of the enemy.

  He hadn’t succeeded.

  A Chaolt must have brought him back through to this side. The boy wasn’t a child, but not yet a man either. And something was wrong.

  Micah stepped closer, holding a hand out, keeping his movements slow and his voice low.