But it was too damn late when it came to Jade. That realization pinged around loudly in his head, until a feeling, warm and light, settled in his chest.
He was in love with her. Had been, probably, since that night around the fire when they’d first shared pieces of each other. Every day spent together, every touch, every wound shared, had just deepened it.
She looked up, caught him staring, and they held each other’s gazes for a few heartbeats.
He stood and held out his hand. Would she take it?
She did, and he led her wordlessly to his tent. Once inside, mysterious in the glow of the lantern light, she smiled and stood up on her tiptoes, wrapping her hands around his neck. She kissed him, and kissed him again. And again, drawing him backward toward the bed.
He sent one last probe of power toward the portal, found it quiet, and then fell to the bed on top of Jade.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
MICAH PACED ACROSS the rocks, unable to stand still today. The mountain was restless, and so was he. There was something different about the Earth, about what she whispered to him. It held an edge of warning. But why? Against what? Every muscle in his body said something was coming. And he couldn’t be sure whether it was the enemy or the weather or the mountain. If he smelled the Chaolt, if he felt the Chaos buzz, he could attack. But there was none of that, only that undefinable sense of disquiet.
Micah examined Jade’s claim and the mountainside for the millionth time. And this time, he sensed something new. A change in the state of Jade’s mine, a tension between the grains of dirt that might be released slowly, or all at once.
Her hole was on the verge of becoming unstable.
He could dedicate a small bit of power to holding it in place until she finished, but that wasn’t the point. She was in a hurry and desperate and taking too many risks. She could die, crushed under the weight of the mountain she loved. And even the possibility of that made him sweat, made him grind his teeth. Made him angry. She wasn’t listening to her instincts. Or her scientific knowledge, her previous mining experience. Either desperation over her mother blocked all that out... or she wasn’t thinking clearly from him extracting power from her at every available opportunity.
There was no way for him to be sure. He’d have to pull back on draining her again. Which meant the only chance of keeping her safe from the Chaolt long-term was getting her off this damn mountain, soon and for good.
Almost every night, he smelled the scent of Chaos. Almost every night, he left Jade’s side and went to the portal. Each time he would kill whoever was there and rebuild his barrier. It was only a matter of time before they tried to break through in the daytime. It was only a matter of time until too many broke through for him to handle himself. And who could he call for help? Walker still hadn’t returned. Levi was still busy with Brooke and the imminent birth of his child. Would Ajax be able to come? If he had to take Jackson to Emory, would he arrive in time to protect Jade?
Micah must do what he could alone, and so he continued to fight the Chaolt and build up the stone blocking the cave so she could continue to mine. But they were running out of time. Their deadline seemed to be a dark, dangerous storm on the horizon, much like the line of pewter clouds along the skyline that heralded the beginning of the winter storms and moved closer every day.
Jade grasped the shortness of time, too. She mined from dawn until dusk, allowing him to lead her on the trail in the semidarkness. They spent a few glorious hours in each other’s arms, and then she would drop to sleep and he would steal from the bed to go to the portal.
Only for them each to do it again the next day.
Micah paced over to Jade again, who sat on an overturned bucket. She’d pulled out a few more crystals and was cleaning them with a small brush and some water, and then wrapping them in sheets of newspaper.
“You’re in my light,” she grumbled, and then looked up with lips twisted into a half smile.
He backed up without a word, scanning everything behind her, above her. His senses told him nothing, his powers told him nothing.
But he still felt uneasy.
“You’re pit looks dangerous. Like it might collapse.”
Eyebrow up, Jade swiveled to look at it. After a moment of study, she said, “It’s more sound than it looks. And it looks okay to me.”
It only looked that way to her because she didn’t have the depth of powers he did, and because she was ignoring her senses.
He pivoted away with a growl.
“Micah.”
He turned to Jade, who had dropped her work on her knees and was staring at him.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Are you sure? Because you seem... pace-y today. I’ve never really known you to pace,” she added, forehead wrinkling.
“There is danger near.” He glanced around again and then zeroed in on her. “I think we should leave for the day.”
Jade sat her work down and stood, looking around too. “Where? What?”
“I’m not sure.”
She looked at him, brows raised. “Then how do you know?”
How could he explain? How could he say that it was nothing he could pinpoint, there was just something that whispered warning down his spine?
“Instinct,” he told her.
Jade looked away and rubbed her hands together.
“I—. Listen, Micah.” She took a few steps toward him. “I can tell that something is agitating you. You’re telling me there is danger, but you can’t tell me where or who, or anything about it? I’m sorry, but that’s not enough for me to leave.”
“Jade, you need to go. The mountain isn’t a safe place anymore.”
“Are you leaving too?”
“I can’t, I still have a job to do—”
“So it’s too dangerous for me, but not for you? Your job is more important than mine?”
“Yes—”
She clenched her jaw and crossed her arms, green eyes brightening with anger.
“No.” Micah put his fingers in his braids and tugged. His job was more important than hers. It meant her safety, her life, and possibly the lives and safety of many more. His job affected the balance of the entire universe.
But he couldn’t say that, couldn’t explain that to her. And for her, her mother was her universe. Jade wouldn’t leave until she was forced to, or she got what she came for.
He could only see two options; overpower her, kidnap her and get her away from here... or let her be. Let her mine her gems, and be extra vigilant.
The first option was safer for everyone, but she’d be frightened, wouldn’t understand, and he couldn’t explain. She’d lose her trust in him, and he’d lose her. And when everything was over, she still wouldn’t have the money to take care of her mother.
Micah closed his eyes and sent his power down into the ground. Straight down, deep enough that he could feel the shifting of the layers of the earth. Then with a deep breath, he brought it all back inside.
He opened his eyes and turned to Jade.
“I could stop you, but I won’t. But you need to know your decision puts you in direct danger,” he said, voice deepening into a growl, “and I don’t like that.”
“I hired you to guard my claim, not to father me. I will make my own decisions.”
With low, rasping words, he advanced on her. “You hired me to protect you. I care about my job. I care about your safety. I care—” Mich shut his eyes, teeth grinding. He opened them again, hoping they weren’t glowing from the force of emotions that threatened to crush him. “I care.” That was the closest he could come to telling her how important she’d become to him, how much she meant. How much danger to her scared him.
His last words vibrated through the space between them and the stubbornness on Jade’s face dissolved into a soft look.
She dropped her arms and walked to him, cupped her hands on his face. “I know you do. And I care about you too.” Her words soothed some of the
rawness inside his chest. “But I have to do this, and you haven’t given me enough to just throw away the rest of my mining season. I’m close, Micah. So close to getting it all out and being done. And besides,” she patted his chest, “I have the best security there is. There’s nothing I’m afraid of when you’re around.”
She touched her lips to his, and he had to close his eyes as her kiss lingered.
She pulled back slightly and smiled at him. “You’ll keep me safe until I get those gemstones out, and then we’ll high-tail it out of here, together. I still owe you dinner.”
She went back to her work with a wink and he looked up at the mercury sky. She might not have time to get the gemstones out either way. The next storm would be here soon. And at some point soon after, the storms would keep coming without a break until spring.
But there was no logical, human method for him to rush the process for her except heavy machinery. He was very strong, but heavy machinery he was not. There was no way she’d believe he could carve the earth open with his bare hands.
Even if he could.
If only he could really help her how he wanted to. Use his powers to free the pocket of gems from the bedrock, to bring the entire thing up from the bedrock. But he couldn’t do that without exposing what he was. Even if he slipped from her bed in the night and came here to do that, there would be no reasonable explanation for doing weeks worth of work in one night. He could feign ignorance, but there was no one else here, no one else who knew what was within her claim. She would suspect him, rightly, and with her analytical mind, her search for answers might somehow lead her right to the ones he wished to conceal.
And maybe she would be scared of him, a being who defied her logical, scientific explanation. Maybe she’d take her gems and leave and he would never see her again.
He’d told her he cared, and he did. More than he could say. She was inside him in a way that no woman—no human, no Elemental—had ever been. He preferred her company to anyone else’s. Preferred it even to solitude. The thought of her knowing what he was, fully knowing him, was a terrifying sweetness through his mind. But...
She rejected her instincts. She rejected the magic and the sensations, the power, that had helped her find the very pocket she was chipping gems from.
The risk of her rejecting him was too great to reveal what he was. Maybe in time...
But time was the one thing they seemed to be running out of.
JADE NOTICED THE CHANGE in Micah. He was quieter, more on edge. He continued to pace and prowl, walking from one end of the claim to the other, only to stop and stare into the peaks.
Something was up with him, but the sun was setting, and taking with it the warmth and light she needed to extract these crystals. She’d crawled into her hole and got back to work. She had less than an hour left, and her hands shook from fatigue and from fighting the urge to hurry. Because if she hurried, she could make a mistake that would knock several thousand dollars off the value of this large plate of crystals.
And this crystal plate? This was the one that would ensure her mother’s care for the next decade or two, or however long she had left.
“Just hang on, Momma,” she muttered as she chipped at the hard stone cementing the crystals to the earth. She chipped until her muscles burned and locked up and she had to drop her head and arms and let her shoulders and neck relax.
She was out of time. She wouldn’t get this out today.
Jade lay there in the dirt for a moment giving herself a pep-talk. There was still time. It would be worth it. Everything would work out. She’d found the crystals, all she had to do was extract them. She’d have plenty of time to clean them once winter hit.
With a few deep breaths, she corralled her emotions. Leaving the tools where they were, she shimmied backward out the hole.
Micah was waiting when she backed out, holding out his hand. Would he have dragged her out if she took longer?
One eye on the heavy, iron-gray sky, she figured he probably would have.
As frustrating as it was, it was because he cared. She couldn’t be mad at that. And, she wasn’t sure she had the strength left in her arms to pull herself out, anyway. She gave him her hand and let him pull her up and out.
It was almost painful to leave with an empty pack today, but she’d been working on the main plate rather than individual crystals because it was the most important. But that meant she had nothing to show for all her tired muscles and grubby skin. While it also meant she didn’t have anything to make her pack heavy, she would much prefer that comforting, promising weight.
Micah led her down the mountain in the half-darkness and when they got to camp, Jade went to clean up.
When she came out again, he stood up from his place by the fire and came to her. Hauled her close and kissed her like he’d never had sugar before, and she tasted sweet.
And just like that, her physical exhaustion lifted, and she pulled him closer, kissed him harder. He kissed her back with a frenzy that was unusual for him, a man of his precise control.
And she loved it. Gloried in it.
There was little in this world better than mining out crystals all day and spending all night in the bed of a man who couldn’t keep his hands off her.
If she still had both parents, her life would be pure joy. But because she couldn’t have that, she clung to Micah harder. She encouraged his hands to roam as hers traveled over his hard muscles, into his hair, and back down to his waistband.
As romantic as it would be to make love under the stars, experience taught her she would pass out immediately afterward. So she led him willingly into his tent, helped him lift his t-shirt up over his head, and pulled him onto his much-larger bed, on top of her.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
MICAH WOKE IN THE MIDDLE of the night with that familiar, dreaded smell in his nose.
Chaolt.
Carefully, quickly, he untangled himself from Jade’s side. She slept on, and with a grateful breath, he dressed silently and grabbed his sword. Using his powers to soften the soil and mute his footsteps, he left the tent and ran up the trail. Sure and fast with the aid of Earth, he charged up the steep path and over boulders and crags.
He couldn’t pinpoint the Chaolt, wherever it was, but it wasn’t close enough yet to drain his powers. So he ran for the portal, sure he would find them there. And he’d stop them.
Hand tightening around the hilt of his sword, he rounded the corner of the cave.
All the rocks he had placed there were removed, and five Chaolt stood before the glowing gateway, talking.
Not saying a word, he entered the cave and stood there, arm and weapon and breath at the ready. When they noticed him, they rushed forward as one.
Determined that not a single enemy would get to Jade or back through the gateway, Micah swung and stabbed and sliced, blade hungry. Where before he had sent the boy Chaolt back, now he had no mercy, and soon black dust was filtering through the air. Some of it caught the sickly light from the portal, glinting as it drifted down.
Breathing hard, Micah holstered his sword. He pivoted and picked up the closest boulder to re-form his barricade, and his hand slipped off one side, causing him to drop it. Dark blood coated his palm, and he turned his hand over to find the source. A gash went vertically up his forearm, gaping the skin, with blood pouring out of it.
Put pressure on the wound, Micah heard Emory say in his memory, the time she’d stitched him up after the Chaolt attack on the base.
Micah ripped a strip off the lower part of his t-shirt and made a tourniquet, compressing the wound and slowing the flow of the blood. It would heal when he was done and got far enough away from the opening to the Chaos plane.
He wiped the wet blood off on his pants and got back to it.
Though he was out of breath, he turned back down the trail after he placed the last stone. There was no longer any trace of burning plastic in the air.
He glanced at Jade’s claim as he walked by, recognizable ev
en in the moonlight. And then he stopped, an idea seeping into his brain. He untied the make-shift bandage on his arm, dropping it to the ground. The cut was almost healed. Which meant he was far enough away for the portal to no longer be affecting him.
He jumped down into her pit and held his hands out, sending power through the rocks and dirt until he could feel the crystals vibrating. Then, gently, slowly, he split the rocks that held the crystals in place, releasing them. The sound of it crackled through the air. Power pulsing through him, he lifted the gemstones into the air and one by one pulled them out of the hole, setting them lightly beside him. Gold light from his glyphs and eyes mixed with the silvery moonlight on the rocks as he worked.
Gems safe, he withdrew his power, and Jade’s mine collapsed.
For a moment, he stared at it. He’d been warning her that it could happen, that it wasn’t safe. The cave-in could have easily happened if she’d been the one extracting the gems.
That just meant he was doing the right thing. He was saving her from the Chaolt, and saving her from endangering herself in her desperation.
With a lift of his hand and a steady flow of power, Micah floated the gems to a new spot. He opened a new hole, and reburied them where he could get to them easily, quickly.
He would tell her he got them out, somehow, if he could figure out a way to keep from revealing himself, what he was, and the other Warriors. Or, he would just lead her to this new spot now that hers collapsed. She could dig the crystals out in a few days tops from this location. He’d only buried them under a loose layer of shallow dirt.
Or maybe he would have to tell her who he was, what he was, to get her to believe. There was no fear at the thought of telling her now. She might be angry at first, but once he explained everything, once he showed her what he was, she would understand. Jade would understand that he did it for her. That he did it... for love.
Standing there in the moonlight, heart pounding, he admitted the truth to himself.
Crush (Elemental Hearts, #3) Page 13
