The Color of Jade (Jade Series Book 1) (19 page)

He pressed his forehead against mine and his eyes closed softly as he released a sigh. He moved slowly to his back and pulled me into his arms. My head rested on his shoulder as I placed my hand over his bare chest, the very cause of my earlier undoing. We lay there still, words unsaid. Both of us knew how dangerous this could be, us alone, together with no one to sensor. My feelings were so new, so raw, so strong, raging inside me like nothing I had felt before and it scared me, yet I felt safe with him and knew I could trust him.

Slowly, the burn inside me waned and I felt myself drift in and out, as the tenseness in my body softened and I relaxed. The peacefulness of our surroundings grew more apparent with the song of the birds, the flutter of butterflies and the light breeze that cooled our skin as we lay in the shade of the trees.

The sun moved gradually, just in time as I started to feel cold and I appreciated its warmth as we talked the afternoon away.  Eventually, the lazy afternoon sun drifted further into the horizon. The chill in the air returned and we walked back to the cabin.

His fingers entwined in mine. He skimmed his fingernail softly, back and forth along the palm of my hand. I gasped, an electric sensation coursed through my body. My skin prickled with goose bumps caused by his touch. My eyes flicked up to his, warm and inviting with a heated desire written in deep blue. Without a word spoken, I understood what his gesture meant. I rubbed my finger along the smooth skin of his palm. I felt the same way.

Later that night, I sat with him outside by the fire and reflected on the day, a beautiful day, and to spend it with Gage made it even more so and to be here now by the fire made for a beautiful night. The night air was calm. The clouds lifted and stars shone vibrant, brightly in the fresh clean air with their fascinating luster, like millions of little diamonds tossed into the nights’ sky.

The fire danced and cast long dark shadows in the dense pine trees, nothing but inky blackness behind them. The hoot of an owl called out as crickets sang in the distance.

He caught me as I looked at him through the flickering light of the fire. As he held my gaze, he walked over and sat next to me. My breaths increased as my heart pounded in my chest. An ever so slight tingling moved over me, increasing as the hairs of my arms stood on end at the thrill of what my heart told me.

“I had a good time today,” I said.

“Me too.”

Tired from the day, worn out really, I felt I could fall asleep right then. I leaned into him and rested my head against his chest as he tightened his arms around me in the crisp mountain air. I curled up, huddled closer to him and enjoyed his warmth in the light of the fire.

***

I woke during the night to the sound of rain, soft at first but soon the large drops came rapidly, pelting against the window and I wondered if the old glass would shatter. The breeze turned into gusts of wind that whistled through the cracks of the cabin. A bright light flashed and illuminated the sky and revealed the dark silhouette of the whirling trees as the thunder crashed overhead immediately after.

Violent thunderstorms in the middle of the night fascinated and terrified me at the same time and an uneasy feeling settled in like Jack the Ripper would crash through the door at any second. That was if he wasn’t already lurking in the black corner or under the bed. I looked over at Gage and cuddled closer. Still asleep. How could he possibly sleep through the rain?

The dampness in the air chilled me to the bone. An orange ember glowed in the fireplace with barely a flicker. Shivering, I quietly climbed over him and set my feet down in spite of my childish fear of what hid under the bed.

The cold, wooden floor creaked under my bare feet as I tiptoed to the wood box. I moved slowly, hinges squeaked as I opened the door of the stove and winced at the noise it made. I stirred the embers and put a few logs on. It didn’t take too long before the wood was hot enough and caught a small flame. It grew and I stared into the brightness for a minute and absorbed the warmth.

“I could have done that,” he said sleepily.

I looked over at him. My eyes adjusted slowly to the darkness and I watched him as he turned onto his side and looked at me through sleepy eyes.

“I know. So could I. You were asleep… Scoot over.”

He pulled open the blanket. I prayed the bed didn't collapse as I jumped across the floor onto it and slid down into the blanket next to his warm body in one quick move as the old springs of the bed squeaked loudly. He looked at me watchfully and laughed.

It didn’t take long for the fire to warm the cold cabin a few degrees. I cuddled up to him to stop my shivers. His arm tightened around my waist and he pulled me close. He kissed my head softly. I looked up at him.

“I’ve always wanted to kiss you during a thunderstorm,” he confessed with a roguish smile as he leaned over me.

“Always?” I asked, as I teased him, not yet letting him.

“As long as I’ve known I wanted you to be mine,” he groaned with torment and his lips moved inches from mine as he gave a low, husky laugh.

“Really?”  I whispered, breathless. I tempted him more as my glance moved between his lips and his eyes, letting him know his yearning matched mine.

“Yeah.”

The storm raged heavy in the air as it pelted the window, rapid like the beat of my heart. Chills ran through my body at the thought of him. I wanted him to kiss me. I saw him want me through the shadows of the night and I pulled him closer.

Gage moved over me and rested his body on mine. His biceps bulged at the sides of my head as he propped on his elbows above me. His lips traveled up my neck with soft, gentle kisses and worked slowly to the lobe of my ear. I ran my hands over his rigid muscles across his back as his breath, hot against my neck sent a rush of chills over my skin. A sudden, intense ripple surged through me and stole my breath as he crushed his lips against mine. He felt so good, yet dangerous, like I walked on thin ice, nearing a point that I couldn't turn back. A deep burning reached into my heart, I needed him, wanted him. Terrified of how I felt, I wanted him to continue, even though I knew I shouldn’t. The urge burned inside me, already so strong and hard not to want more of him, more than his amazing kiss. How could I feel like this so quickly after yesterday, after one day since we’d let our feelings be known, since our first kiss.

But it hadn’t been one day, not for him, not for me. Each day before yesterday, each week, each month that passed over the time of almost a year, he pulled at my soul. I felt like unknowingly, I searched for him. I watched him, waited and wondered what it would feel like to be in his arms.

Amazing.

I couldn’t control it, I couldn’t stop it and I didn’t want to.

“Gage,” I asked softly, “what are you doing?”

“Do you want me to stop?” He whispered, as he continued to kiss me tenderly.

My heart raced. I didn’t know what I wanted. I held onto him tight. I didn’t want to let go and I kissed him back. I heard him breathe, his breaths harder and faster. His hand ran down over my leg and gently squeezed my thigh. I bent my knee, nearer to him as he consumed the space between us. What was I doing? I can’t. I should stop. I should ask him to stop.

Suddenly, a flash of light pierced through the dark night and ended with a deafening crash of thunder. An intense charge jolted through me, caused by him or the wildness of the night, I didn’t know. Startled, I jumped as my heart leaped out of my chest and I gasped, at the coincidental or maybe divine intervention by crack of thunder and lightening.

“Are you okay?”

“Not sure...”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I smiled, as I tried to catch my breath, “I’ve never felt like this before. You take my breath away, Gage.”

“I’m sorry… I shouldn’t have done that. It’s just that,” he sighed, as he rested his head against my forehead and smiled, “you do the same to me.”

A low, deep moan surfaced from the bottom of his throat as he wrestled between anticipation and restraint. Restraint won and he rolled onto his back, took in a deep breath and sighed as he mumbled something under his breath.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing…”

“You said something.”

“I said screaming kids and dead kittens.”

“What!” I laughed, and looked at him cautiously.  “Why?”

“I've seemed to have the need to think about screaming kids and dead kittens a lot lately, to get you off my mind.” A low, devious laugh emerged under his breath.

“Oh…” I giggled. “Is it working?”

“It seems to have the same effect as a cold shower, but, at the moment, not really,” he paused, his voice sounded strained. “You're too close to me.”

“I didn't think so,” I grinned.

Curled in his arm, I buried my face into his chest and breathed in his masculine scent that I loved. I kissed his chest through his shirt softly and then looked up at him.

“I’ll control myself… Sorry, Jade. We could get into a lot of trouble up here, alone.”

“I liked that, way too much.”

“Yeah, me too… It’s not what’s
under the bed
that you should be afraid of.”

I laughed at the notion. The thought that he totally understood me when I jumped into bed earlier, brought warmth to my heart.

“I’m not afraid of you, Gage.”

He squeezed me and kissed my cheek as he spoke softly in my ear. “I don’t really mean that… I don't want you to ever be afraid of me.”

I smiled as I pulled his arms tighter around me. I dozed in and out of sleep while new love’s desire and the sound of the rain lingered distantly in the back of my mind. The sky turned grey as morning came and the heavy rain turned to a soft steady drizzle and I finally drifted off to asleep.

I woke as cold air rushed in from outside. Gage rubbed his hands together briskly as he walked through the door and quickly closed it behind him. The fire blazed nicely and it didn’t take long for the small cabin to warm up again. It rained all day and we had no choice but to sit inside.

I never felt this way about anyone before, the way I felt about Gage. He was different, interesting and fun and I looked forward to his kisses. How would I explain this to my brothers? For some reason I felt like I didn’t have to. It seemed like they already knew.

I felt comfortable with him. We played made up games and talked a lot and I laughed at his silly jokes while we waited for the rain to pass. After a while, I dug through the pack and found a deck of playing cards that kept us busy the rest of the afternoon until the rain let up. The clouds disappeared and the sun came out. Except for the wet ground, the sky left no evidence it rained at all.

We went outside and sat on the rock ledge that become our place to sit and talk as the sun set. The rocks, damp and the ground still wet in places from the rain. The air, quite cool and I ran back in to the cabin for the blanket. I looked out over the valley as I returned and sat next to him. It was so beautiful up here.

“It looks so quiet from here,” I said. “What do you think is going on?”

“Preparing for a war… if they haven’t moved forward already.”

“You think there’s no way out of it? Are they fighting now?”

“We’re in the beginnings of a Revolution, it’s already happening back east. It’s going to happen here, especially now that Quinn is dead. That was all Morrison needed for an excuse,” he paused for a moment, revealing his apprehension over what he wanted to say. “He wants control and he has set everything up so he can get it.  War was bound to happen eventually. Morrison was just waiting for something to happen.”

“I feel bad I caused this.”

“You didn’t cause this… at least not in the way you’re thinking. Damian deliberately looked for you. He followed you. He was waiting to get you alone. I found this out when I followed him. He planned to cause a problem. Something would have happened regardless, because it was their intentions to start something.”

“When did you follow him?”

“The day of the assembly, I watched him go down the trail towards your house, so I followed him. There was only one reason why he was on that trail… To catch you by yourself.”

The idea nauseated me. I remembered that day and the eerie feeling that I wasn’t alone on the trail and the few times after that as well. He must have seen my apprehension.

“I’m sorry, Jade, I guess when you asked me if I was following you and I said no,” he paused, “it wasn’t completely true. I was following Damian, while he was following you.”

“That’s okay,” I reflected back as a shiver ran up my spine. I already knew what Damian was capable of when he got me alone. I was glad Gage was there. “Where would I be right now, if you hadn’t shown up?”

“I don’t know,” he sighed, “no one knows where Morrison is hiding out. I don’t know what Damian had in mind for you. I don’t even want to think about it.”

“I don’t understand what he wants with me to begin with.”

“He wants you, period. Morrison is using Damian’s obsession with you to get to Kane… It was clear that Damian had a thing for you early on. He would make comments about you and one day he said too much. It made Kane mad and they got into it. Kane put Damian in his place. If he can get you, Morrison knows he can get to Kane.”

“What did Damian say about me?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Yeah, I do.”

He shook his head as his jaw flexed with tension. “I
really
don’t want to tell you.”

“Okay.”

“By March, it was clear that Morrison’s intentions weren’t good. Now he’s formed this Militia. The problem is, there are a lot of them and they are getting quite powerful. Too well organized and too many people still think we are the United States... I mean, America still has a chance, barely, but people think someone is going to come and fix the problem. I know it's hard to swallow, but… no one is coming to help.”

“Where does Kane go?”

“Kane, Joel and Mike go to find weapons, gain support. They’ve hit abandoned military bases and
sites off the map
that Mike knew about. They started to get a pretty good arsenal together which they’ve managed to keep hidden. If Morrison finds it, we’re done.”

This was so much to think about, so many people were dead. My mom and dad, Uncle Raymond, Gage’s mom, so many friends and relatives we haven’t heard from were gone, and we were on the verge of losing what little we had left.

“Some states are worse than others...Us being one of them. We're zoned as Militia Territory now. The Western States are from Kansas and Oklahoma over.”

“Why don’t the other states send help if they’re better off?”

“They are having a hard enough time keeping the border between them and the Militia. They can’t afford to send us backup right now… there’s no one to send.”

“What’s going to happen now? They are looking for us.” I forced a vacant expression to mask the sudden fear I felt. I glanced at my hands as I twisted anxiously at the hem of my shirt.

“It’s started… There is no turning back. I’m glad Quinn is dead, he got what he deserved. I’m sorry you were involved. There is going to be more of that to come, Jade. On both sides. It won’t be long before we are in a full-blown war.  We knew it would... Mike just hoped to delay it as long as possible… But we all knew it was coming.”

“More death?”

“I’m afraid so,” he answered. My eyes lifted to his. I didn’t realize I posed the question out loud. Why did it have to come down to people dying?

“Have you ever killed someone?” I asked, unsure of what I wanted his answer to be.

“No.”

His eyes locked on mine. Relief bubbled in my chest at the concern in his eyes and seriousness of his expression. The value of a human life seemed still important to him. Something he would not take lightly if he ever had to take one.

“Could you?”

“Yes,” he said without hesitation, “if the situation called for it and there was no other way out… to protect you, us, our home.”

“But,” I sighed. My voice wavered and I looked away, out into the darkness. “Aren’t you afraid you will lose yourself? Or… worried it will change you? It’s against the…”

“Against the law?” He asked. His voice slightly raised with a sternness in his eyes under furrowed brows. “Jade… there is no law. Not anymore.”

“Yes there is! What about a moral law,” I said as I slipped off the rock and started to pace. Gage followed my movements with his eyes. “Thou shalt not kill! Love thy neighbor! You know… honor your parents and stuff like that.”

“If you want to bring morals and ethics into this… have you ever read the bible?”

“No… not all of it, have you?”

“Yeah… and it’s full of battles,” he said, he stood and walked towards me, each step, slow and precise. “With men like Morrison… men who are not in it for the greater good of humankind. They want to gain power… suppress people like us. Get rid of us if they see fit. There’s a big difference in why I will kill and why Morrison does. He is forcing our hand. Kane has tried to reason with him.”

My shoulders slumped with discouragement at what our future would hold. I wiped at my cheeks and tears that I hadn’t realized were there until just then. If Gage saw them, he didn’t lead on that he did. The look on his face, not of sympathy or pity but as if I were justified for feeling the way I did.

I knew he was right. For men like Morrison, killing and coercion became a whole lot easier with no higher authority to keep them in their place. He would continue on his tyrannical rampage until someone stopped him.

“I understand what you are saying,” he said as he stood inches from me. “I just have to believe that god is on our side. That’s all I can do, keep reminding myself of that and why I fight… to keep those I love safe. That can’t be wrong, Jade… It will be hard, maybe the hardest thing I’ll ever have to do, but it won’t be wrong.”

I offered him a joyless smile. The depth of right and wrong ingrained so deeply into him sent a shudder through me. Right and wrong, good versus evil. It was never that simple or that easy and over the last eight months grew increasingly harder. If there was anything my heart told me, it was that Gage was good. His heart, his mind, everything about him was good. He would never fight on the wrong side. I believed that.

“I want to go back home… Emery… Damian said…”

“Emery is safe… I’m sorry but I can’t let you. Not yet,” he said with firm resolve that sent a shudder through me. “Kane said to give you at least two weeks to recover and you need that time whether you think you do or not.”

“What are you going to do?
Make me stay
! Why would you? If what you say is true and we are on the brink of a revolution, then they need our help!”

“You're staying, Jade. Don’t think I don’t want to be down there, because I do. I don’t want my sister to grow up in a world of war out her front door either, and more than anything, I want to make sure Damian is held responsible for what he did to you! What exactly do you expect to do once you get down there? I know it’s hard to be up here, but right now, you need to be here getting better.”

“I’m fine!”

“You still get headaches, you get dizzy and whether you admit it or not, you pass out… You’re not fine,” his voice softened as he moved in front of me. His hands reached out and softly gripped my arms. He pulled me towards him. “We’ve been here nine days. Just see how you feel in another week, okay? You won’t be any help if you aren’t feeling better. In fact, you could make things worse. Besides, they are after you, and it won’t be good if they find you.”

It infuriated me that they used me as a pawn in their game. I wanted my life back. I had no control over anything anymore. With my anger towards Gage unjustified, I suppressed it inward. The pressure built in my chest almost unbearable because I couldn’t release it on the ones who deserved it. My chin trembled as I felt the sting in my eyes. I blinked as Gage blurred before me. The onslaught of tears followed, my only means to release the negative energy inside me.

I turned away from him, frustrated he saw me cry so much. He moved behind me, put his arms through mine and kissed the side of my head.  I leaned back against the warmth of his chest. The air felt chilled from the rain earlier and goose bumps traveled up my arms as a light breeze blew my hair off my face.

“I’m sorry I’m crying.”

“Don’t be… it only means you understand how desperate our situation is. Kane is wrong not to include you. I think it’s important that you know… and I want to know how you feel about it. That’s important to me.”

“You do?”

He turned me to face him. His hands slid up my arms, up my neck. His fingers tangled into my hair as he cupped my cheeks. “Yes…”

“Thank you,” I breathed, barely above a whisper. My eyes drifted closed as my hand covered his. I leaned into his touch and pressed my lips into the smooth skin of his palm.

I felt my insides tense as my heart twisted painfully in my chest. Gage wanted me to understand, to know what was going on. Kane still treated me like a kid. He would never give me that much information or that much respect.

Gage valued my opinion and I felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude because of it. He would never know how important his words were, how badly I needed to feel included, understood.

A strangled sob escaped me as my emotions became too much to contain. My body trembled under the pressure of trying to restrain them. I released a verbal sigh. “I’m going inside,” I mumbled through tears that dripped onto his hand.

He didn’t answer as I pulled away from him and walked through the darkened doorway. Uncontrollable tears came in a silent stream as I found the bed, frustrated with the uncertainty, not knowing what tomorrow or next week or next year would bring and I hoped that I would be strong enough to deal with it.

Sleep eluded me as thoughts of Damian, Morrison and his Militia invaded my mind. I let my eyes drift closed, heavy with the burn of old tears. My cheeks tight from where they dried. I fell into a restless sleep, lost somewhere between what was real around me, and the reality of my dreams. I struggled to differentiate between the two.

I wasn’t sure when I fell asleep but I woke with a start, still alone in the small cabin. Sweat drenched the back of my neck and I wiped it away. Moments later rusty hinges creaked slowly as the door opened into the early morning hours when Gage finally came inside. The clouds were gone and the moon enlightened the night sky through the window.

I heard the whipping sound of his shoelaces as he untied them. He pulled off his boots, but didn’t move from the chair. I turned my head so I could see him. He stared out the window, and from the glow of the moon, I saw his face. The heaviness of our heated discussion weighed on my mind. I knew he wanted to be home so he could help as much as I did, probably more so.

“I’m sorry,” I said softly. He turned and looked at me.

“It’s okay… I thought you were asleep?”