Rise (Elemental Hearts Book 2) Read online

  Of him.

  What the hell? Why the sudden change?

  “Emory?”

  There was no way he’d misinterpreted her reaction just now. She’d been moaning into his mouth and rocking her soft body against his erection. And yet now she was backing away from him like he was going to attack her?

  He scrubbed a hand across his lips. Had he rushed it more than he realized? Been rougher than he intended? Shit. The last thing he wanted to do was scare her off. He’d spent a year wishing he could see her just one more time. Dammit, she’d ruined him for other women.

  Ajax walked to the back door and pushed it open, holding it for her as she slinked past him and then walked a few feet away. She flinched when he let go and the door slammed shut.

  “Emory, what’s going on? What do we need to talk about?” He put his hands in his pockets, resisting the urge to touch her.

  Arms wrapped around her waist, she turned toward him. “Our night together. It was… It was wonderful and special. But I can’t do it again.”

  “Then what the hell was that about?”

  She shrugged, unable to meet his eyes. “I’m sorry, it was stupid. I just wanted to see…” She trailed off and shook her head.

  “Why are you here?” Disappointment made his voice gruff.

  “I didn’t know where to find you, so I’ve been coming here in the evenings, looking for you.”

  “Why?” If not for a replay of their one night together?

  When she didn’t answer, he strode to the door and grabbed the handle, clenching it until his hand ached. He’d had something special with Emory, and it had killed him a little bit to walk away. He’d thought she’d felt the same, but now she was playing some kind of game. He’d never been so disappointed to be wrong about someone.

  “Please don’t leave, Ajax! I need you!”

  Something in her voice stopped him. A breathy desperation that made him pause before he walked away, her words coming out in a rush.

  “I came here for…for help. And you’re the only one I know who can give it to me,” she finished softly.

  He could hear her fear. Tensing, he peered up and down the dark alley. “You’re in danger?”

  “No! No, not… not me.”

  “Emory…” he warned. He was getting sick of playing the guessing game.

  She rubbed her hands together like they were cold. “I’m sorry, this is hard for me. Please just give me a minute.”

  He let go of the handle and turned around, hands in his pockets. Her face was pale, her eyes wide and earnest.

  “You have five.”

  She seemed like she really did need help, so he would stick around until he found out what she wanted. Because it didn’t seem to be him.

  With a silent prayer and a big inhale, Emory stepped off the proverbial cliff she was standing on. For her son.

  “Ajax, I know your secret.”

  He stilled, the air around them getting heavy, oppressive. But then it lifted, and he gave a little chuckle. “Oh yeah? And what secret is that?”

  She swallowed, her nails digging into her palms as she clenched her hands together. “About your superpower.”

  “Aww, you flatter me. Our night together was good, but I wouldn’t call it a superpower, really. Just a highly developed skill.”

  He said the last part with a sneer, and she tamped down on the jealousy she didn’t deserve to feel. He wasn’t her boyfriend, and she wasn’t here to ask him to go steady.

  But he was so blase’, so confident. Queasiness made her skin damp. What if she was wrong? What if Jackson’s powers were some kind of genetic mutation instead? Where would she turn next? And what would Ajax do with her secret?

  But she had to try.

  “I don’t mean your questionable skills in bed,” she hissed, lying through her teeth, “I mean the other…powers!”

  The last word seemed to echo up and down the walls in the quiet alley.

  “What ‘powers’?”

  The deadly quiet tone of his voice, the predatory way he moved toward her… The eerie greenish-blue light from his eyes. The way the air got heavier, harder to breathe. All of that told her she was in grave danger.

  She was right about him.

  Tears sprang to her eyes, the relief momentarily stronger than the fear. If she could just convince him…

  Her hands started to tingle, her skin prickled, and her head felt light. She couldn’t seem to draw a breath.

  Oh, no. No, no, no. If he killed her, even accidentally, she wouldn’t be able to raise, to protect her son.

  Her chest tightened more, lungs and throat beginning to burn with the fire of suffocation. As her vision grayed and her eyelids got heavy, she used her last breath to gasp out the only thing she could think of to say.

  “The powers you’re killing me with!”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Mother. Fucker.

  Ajax caught Emory as she crumpled to the ground, forcing the air back into her lungs. He hadn’t meant to hurt her, hadn’t even realized he was using his powers.

  He brushed the wisps of hair away from her pale cheeks, her eyelids beginning to flicker.

  So, now he was getting power leaks. Shit. Not only that, but he’d also revealed himself in a big way.

  His commander was going to be pissed. But since it sounded like maybe she already knew beforehand, maybe Walker would focus on that fact instead.

  It was all he himself could seem to do.

  Emory’s eyes opened and she blinked, gaze fuzzy. When her vision cleared, she tried to push away from him, pulling herself up the wall.

  He grabbed her arms and got in her face.

  “How did you know?” he ground out, the sound of his breath sawing in his ears.

  She swallowed, but didn’t reply.

  Into the silence between them, the sound of the back door opening drew Ajax’s attention. Levi stepped through, sharp gaze traveling back and forth between them. “Everything cool, Ajax?”

  Levi wouldn’t know what had just happened with his powers, because each Elemental could only sense their own kind. And if he was careful, Levi wouldn’t know any more than that either. Ajax let go of Emory’s arms, instead looping his arm around her shoulders and pulling her close. She let him, and didn’t try to move away or ask Levi for help. Why?

  “Everything’s fine. Can you get Micah to pick you up?”

  Levi’s eyes narrowed, his gaze moving from him to Emory.

  “I’m going to take her home.”

  Levi’s snicker as he finally nodded relieved the pressure in Ajax’s chest. Because Levi saw exactly what he wanted him to see; the two of them going off to spend the night together.

  “I guess Brooke was wrong. See you in the morning,” he said before he shut the door.

  Emory shrugged out from under his arm and backed away, arms crossed.

  Now that he was calmer, Ajax asked again. “How do you know about me, Emory? Who told you? And who have you told?”

  She took several deep breaths. “Take me home first. And then I’ll tell you everything.”

  Except for her soft-spoken directions, Ajax drove in silence. Her comments about his questionable skills in bed. The fact that she knew about his powers. The fact that he was starting to lose control. All of that swirled into a nasty mix in his gut that tasted like bile and kept his lips pressed into a tight line. She sat as close to the door as she could, tossing quick glances in his direction.

  How did she find out about him? They hadn’t seen each other in a damn year.

  Walker and the Premiers, the rulers of their world, had tolerated Brooke knowing about them because she’d needed to know to be part of the plan, to be protected. And later on, because she’d developed powers of her own. By then her and Levi were an item anyway, so there was no changing things by that point.

  Emory was not an Erratic, she had no latent Elemental powers in her blood. All of his fellow soldiers had been in the bar that first night, and if she had been,
one of them would have known. They would have taken steps to protect her, drain her like they did with every other human with latent Elemental powers they ran across. Like sensed like, and he didn’t sense Air in her. If one of the other Warriors had sensed their element in her that first night at the bar, something would have been done then.

  How had he revealed himself? Hands clenching the wheel, he studied every memory from that night, looking for an answer.

  All he got was pressure in his chest and an aching hard-on. But she knew about his powers and was afraid of him. There would be no sating that particular ache with her again.

  This was so fucking far from how he saw the evening going when he walked into the bar and saw her again. For a second there, he’d had some kind of weird feeling like he had another chance, like things would work out between them. Like maybe he could have a little bit of what Brooke and Levi had, if only for one more night. Now, knowing it wouldn’t happen, it made him feel like punching something.

  He swore loudly as he made a turn, and she flinched. With a deep breath he yanked back on his anger, the threat of unintentionally harming her if he lost control again heavy in the air.

  He pulled into the end of her long driveway, and threw his truck into park. He wasn’t going to take her the rest of the way yet. He wanted answers first.

  She moved to unbuckle her belt and he put his hand over hers until she looked up at him.

  “Tell me how you know.”

  She nodded and loosened the hand on the buckle, and he took his back. She took a deep breath and sighed, looking out the window. “I’ve been looking for you for months, but we didn’t exchange numbers, and I couldn’t find anything about you on the internet. Or in the phone book. Or anywhere.” She turned and looked at him then. “That’s why I was at the bar. I’ve been going back hoping that you would too, since that was where we met.”

  “That doesn’t tell me anything.”

  “I know your secret because—” She puffed out a breath and started again. “I have a child, Ajax, I have a baby. From our night together.”

  “Bullshit.” His response was immediate, anger frosting his skin. What the hell kind of game was she playing?

  Elemental Warriors couldn’t breed with humans, though supposedly other Elementals could. Centuries ago, before the war with the Chaolt ramped up, Elementals who could cross into the mortal world sometimes produced offspring with humans. Which cause a whole bunch of shit. But the Warriors were sterile, which is why they were allowed in this world in the first place. Everyone else was forbidden from crossing without consent from the Premiers, and mating with humans was strictly forbidden. And even on their own plane, there was no physical breeding. The new of their kind were simply born from the nebula surrounding their world. If Emory had a baby, it wasn’t from him.

  He swallowed the bitter thought of her jumping right from his bed into another’s. He done that exact same thing many times, but not after Emory. It stung to think she could so casually move on when he’d had a year of abstinence, focused only on the memory of her.

  “It’s true. I know you said you were sterile, but—”

  “I am sterile,” he gritted out.

  “—But we didn’t use protection! And that’s how things happen, you know?”

  He couldn’t speak past his clenched teeth and instead focused on keeping the power needling along his skin under control.

  “I didn’t intend for it to happen, but I don’t regret it. I just need your help with him.”

  She’d had him fooled into thinking she was special, that she never did that kind of thing normally. That had been part of her charm, his attraction. That resistant innocence and the way she’d melted just for him. How wrong he’d been. She obviously did it more than once, and didn’t wait long.

  But somehow worse was that the woman he’d been distracted by for a year, had some kind of agenda.

  She must be pretty desperate to come to him, to try to get him to claim the child, if there even was one. Because there was no way it was his baby.

  “Emory, I know the baby’s not mine. How can you tell me you know for sure?”

  Emory felt her cheeks heat at what he was implying, so far from the truth, but her pride was not the important thing right now. “Believe it or not, I don’t make a habit of one-night stands. I’ve only had one man in bed in the last few years. He’s definitely yours, and I just… I’m desperate. I don’t know where else to turn. I need help with him.”

  Ajax sneered and shook his head, taking out his wallet. He was thumbing through bills when she finally realized he thought she wanted money. She swallowed the additional blow to her ego, determined to get information from him.

  “I don’t want your damn money, Ajax. I just need some information.”

  He glowered at her from beneath the hair that fell over his face, and then put his wallet back in his jacket pocket.

  She had the strongest urge to brush those strands away, despite her fear of him, despite the situation. He wouldn’t allow that, the situation wouldn’t allow that. But she’d seen that bitter look on his face once, and that was when she was walking out of his hotel room.

  “What kind of information?”

  His hands were tight on the wheel, and it creaked under his hard grip. She was still breathing fine, so she swallowed the urge to run away.

  “About your powers.” The questions flowed out in a rush powered by her desperation. “Where do they come from? How do you control them, normally? Is there something specific that makes them go crazy? How do you hide them?”

  His eyes slid sideways to her, the barest glow from them visible in the dark of the cab. “Who are you working for, Emory? Or did the Chaolt somehow get to you? How long ago? Was that why you were there in the bar that night? Or tonight? Was it some kind of set-up?”

  Who was she working for? Chaolt? Was that some kind of government thing?

  “No,” she insisted, confused. “I’m not working for anyone. I need that information for my baby, because he’s—”

  “Stop it.”

  The ice in his voice seemed to thicken the air, and her heart dropped like lead into her stomach. He didn’t believe her. How could she convince him?

  “I don’t know how you found out about my powers, but for your own safety, you’d better not mention it to anyone. And I don’t know whose baby you had, but it wasn’t mine. I’m sterile. End of story. I wish you luck finding the real father.”

  “Please, Ajax.” Her voice came out breathy with panic. “Please just—”

  “You need to go.” A muscle ticked in his jaw as he stared straight ahead, not looking at her.

  All these weeks waiting, waiting for Ajax to come and give her answers, give her hope. Waiting for him to tell her what she needed to know to give Jackson something resembling a normal life. And he was kicking her out of his truck without giving her a real chance, without even meeting Jackson.

  He didn’t believe her, wouldn’t believe her.

  The night they’d met, he’d seemed like he could be a jerk. She’d kept expecting to see that side of him. But part of her initial attraction had been that she never did. He’d only ever showed her his funny, charming side. Until now.

  Shock made her unbuckle and get out when she should have argued more, should have refused to leave until he relented and went in to meet Jackson.

  “He has your eyes,” she said, before closing the door.

  Ajax sped away as soon as her door closed, a loaded look thrown her way through the glass.

  Emory trudged into the house, feet and heart heavy. The one thing that could have saved them, the one person she’d been waiting on for months, wasn’t going to help them. Wouldn’t even believe her.

  The babysitter was on the couch watching t.v., but waved and turned it off, and stood. Thank goodness Jackson slept so well. Once she put him to bed for the night, he slept deeply and soundly until his one feeding. That small blessing is what had allowed her to go wait for Ajax all
this time. And what kept the babysitters from finding out that there was something different about him.

  Emory paid the babysitter and walked her out. Then she crept to the nursery and opened the door. With the dim light from the hall guiding her, she walked to the crib and peered inside.

  Her precious little boy was sound asleep, arms and legs splayed as he laid on his back in the crib. His mouth moved with dreams of nursing. He was almost sleeping through the night, but would wake in just a couple of hours to nurse.

  She almost couldn’t wait. Stroking the downy hair on his head, she found the urge to pick him up in her arms overwhelming. She wanted to reassure him that everything would be okay, no matter what. To reassure herself.

  But he needed his rest, and she did too.

  Heavily, she sat down in the rocking chair. She would just sleep here until his feeding, and then go to her own bed. It was just easier on these nights when she had waited at the bar.

  She leaned her head back and yawned, eyelids as heavy as her heart.

  At least she wouldn’t have to do that anymore. Maybe she could get herself into some kind of normal routine now, get a little more sleep. Not be a zombie all the time.

  And then she gave a little laugh as tears welled in her eyes. No. She’d have to think about what to do next. Find a place they might be safe. A place where she could keep their secret…

  Ajax ground his teeth harder with every mile he put between him and Emory’s house.

  He shouldn’t have kicked her out of his truck without more information, but he’d just been so damn angry. Angry at her lies. Angry that she wasn’t truly the same person he’d been stuck on all these months. Fucking pissed that Levi got his woman, and the little bit of hope he’d had when he saw her in the bar again dissolved into nothing.

  The whole situation was shit, and he had no idea what to think.

  The woman who’d haunted him all this time had knowledge she shouldn’t have. She was either playing a deadly game, or telling the truth. Either way, shit was serious.