Clayton's Jade (Runes Stone Series) (5 page)

CHAPTER 5

Bacon.  Why do I smell that?  Not really wanting to move for the bed was soft and the heavy blankets on top of her acted like a cocoon, she turned her head and looked at the clock.  She flew out of bed in shock when she realized it was ten am in the morning. Paying for moving fast after last night, the wounds had healed but the skin and muscles were still tight.  She never slept that late, at least not since she was a teenager.  Yesterday must have taken a bigger toll on her than she thought.  Throwing on some clothes she rushed into the kitchen to find Clayton cooking breakfast. He had on a nice pair of jeans and a white tee-shirt.  He arched his back to avoid getting hit with the grease spitting from the bacon.  The shirt outlined every ripple on his back as he moved.  She had to admit it was kind of nice to have someone else in the house.  Not that she would admit that to him.

              “Good morning.  So how was your night?”  How she kept from laughing was beyond her.  However she was curious as to how he was going to answer it.

             
“Morning.  I must have slept really well because I had the worst nightmare ever.”

             
“That bad huh.  Did it by chance include a bottle of tequila and a roll of duct tape?”  Ok, so now she couldn’t help the uncontrollable laughing that was bubbling out of her. The egg that he had had in his hand fell to the floor as he stared at her stunned.  He didn’t know what was worse, the fact that he had actually done that or the fact that she had seen what he had done.

             
“How in the hell did you know….OH SHIT!  You mean it wasn’t a dream that I really did…..”  Looking at his arms and knowing that the particular area was ok.  Mainly because it was the first thing he checked when he woke up this morning. “How?”

             
“In one word, Vie.  She healed you.  However the cost to her was fifteen hours of down time.  You really owe her, Patchwork.”

             
“You mean she saw me like that too?  Are you crazy?  You are not calling me that.”  Bending down he cleaned up the broken egg just to avoid looking at her.  How was he going to deal with this?  Life was so unfair sometimes.  On the other side of that coin, not many men would have had the guts or stupidity to do what he had done.

             
“Yes, the door was locked, no, I am not crazy, and the bacon is burning, Patchwork. Why did you climb a redwood? Only idiots do that or they wear gloves, pants, and a heavy shirt. I hope it was worth it.”  Even though he had been missing patches of hair all over his body she could still picture him without clothing and he was even better in real form than he had ever been in her dreams.  Of course she had never imagined him nude either.

             
“I was putting up some surveillance cameras for a warning system, so yes it was worth it.  Besides I thought a light t-shirt would work as for the other, the pants I had ripped when it got caught on a branch.  I hope Vie keeps this to herself.”

             
“Good luck with that considering we have pictures.”  Ok, so maybe she went a little too far by taking his picture last night, but who could blame her.  Any red-blooded girl would do the same thing in her place.   By the look in his eyes it might not have been the wisest.  As he got closer, she stepped back.  Even when he was angry he was cute.  He had cute dimples that he couldn’t hide even when he was mad.  As he was stepping towards her he was pointing at her with a spatula.  Between the dimples and the spatula it was almost impossible to be mad or afraid of him.

             
“Where are they?”  How could she do that to him? 

             
“I think Vie took the camera with her.   You will be happy to know that we covered one area up.  I am amazed that you could do that to yourself even with alcohol in you.  So on to better topics what’s on today’s agenda?”   Hopefully he would let it drop.

             
“Well thank you for a little dignity.  What the hell were you thinking?  Odin will tell the rest and I will never hear the end of it. As for this afternoon, I need to go see Brad this afternoon without you present.  Maybe without you there we can come to an understanding.  I need him to be on the same page as I am.  When you are there he feels the need to protect you like a big brother would.”   They had some things to go over before they came back to Kaylee’s house.

             
“I wanted the picture for something to look at later on down the road and have a good laugh.”  Corn, peas, or green beans, what would go better with dinner?   She could figure that out later.  Right now she needed to eat and get going.  “I need to grab some water samples and run some tests on them.”  She grabbed a couple of crisp slices of bacon off the plate and a granola bar as she talked.  “See ya this afternoon.  Have fun with Brad” Then she headed out the door to her truck. 

             
As she opened the door to her truck she was spun around.  “What do you think you are doing?  Did you forget about what happened yesterday?  There is a Tasmanian out there and you carry on like any other day.  Do you have any idea how dangerous it is for you now that you know?  You have been identified and Odin has come down to see you himself.  From what I have seen so far you are not that good of a fighter. What is so important that you need to leave?”

             
“My job.  How do you think I pay the bills around here?  What did you think was going to happen today?  Just because you showed up and disrupted my life doesn’t mean that it stops.” This was ridiculous.  She would not sit around the house and neglect the other parts of her life while chaos ruled one part.   It was all the parts of her life that made her whole.

             
“The first thing you need to do is eat breakfast.  After that I will go with you to get samples of the water.  Until we have more people here and better protection I will be with you when you go to work.”  His hand had moved up and brushed the few strands of hair back behind her ear.  “I don’t want to lose you now that I have found you.” He whispered and he leaned in closer.  She tilted her head to look him in the eyes.  She could see that he meant what he said.  Reaching up, cupping her hands round his head and neck she pulled him toward her. Slipping her tongue out she licked her lips in anticipation and invitation.  The next thing she knew he was thrusting his tongue into her mouth. As he explored ever curve of her mouth she felt the drive to do the same. This need for more raced through her entire body creating sensations that she had never felt before, and she wanted more.  It was like liquid heat running thru her veins. Every place his hands touched left her wanting for more.  She felt a sense of loss when he pulled away.  “I wish we had more time this morning, but we have a busy day ahead of us, starting with breakfast.” With an arm around her waist he guided her into the house and sat her at the table. 

             
They went back into the house and Clayton finished cooking breakfast.  She decided as they sat down to eat that is was good idea that he had stopped her.  She did not really know how to fight and she did not know enough about the opposition to know who was good from who was bad.  After they finished their breakfast and did the dishes they grabbed her bag that had supplies in it and headed out to the truck.  In the seat between the passenger and driver was a box that had her vials and labels in it.  She had about ten different locations to get samples from today.  Backing the truck out she thought that this would be good for Clayton.  He would get to see the area.

             
They drove in silence to the first stop. Then she parked the truck, turned off the engine then took two vials and labels from the box between her and Clayton.  She wrote on the labels putting the location down and the date then stuck it on the vial. After getting out of the truck she walked down the river’s edge bent down with an open vial in her hand collected some water. Then she stood up capped it off and walked further up river to a different spot and did the same thing.  Going back to the truck she put them back in the box. Most of the areas that she had to go to were popular for fishing or family day trips.

             
“Since my life is getting turned upside down, how about you tell me a little bit about yourself. I know it’s not going to be quiet around here for a long time and that I am going to have to learn how to fight, and what better person to teach me than a berserker.  So how did you become a berserker and a warrior of Odin’s?”  She wanted to know more about him and she was tired of the silence in the truck while she was driving.

             
“I was a warrior before I was a berserker.  I fought in several battles and never got seriously hurt. It seemed like I had more energy during a fight and then was exhausted afterwards.  When I was in my twenty’s is when the wolf’s head appeared on my arm.  I didn’t know what it meant at the time or at least until another warrior saw it and explained it to me.  I watched berserkers come and go over the years.  Then I found the stone and Odin appeared to me. The hardest thing to deal with is leaving the people that you grow to care about behind.  When you don’t age you have to leave before they notice.  Then with the other berserkers some of them die in battles and that loss is even harder to deal with.  With the other berserkers they have each found their own stones so they have the same long life that I do, so over time I have come to care for them more.  All of us found our stones before 1015AD they outlawed berserkers so we were the last of our kind.”

             
The first time he had lost one of his men had been a shock.  They all knew that iron and fire would not hurt them and for the most part neither would steel. However steel tempered with silver was a different story and so the weapons of the Ragnarok were created. Then over time they figured out how to detect the weapons so that they could not carry them.  Odin then put the weapons on them in the form of a tattoo to be called upon when they were needed.  The swords and daggers that they carried were all tempered with silver which would kill or hurt most creatures that were in this word with the exception of ghosts and demons and for that they used iron.  Some of the stories were right and some were wrong, it was challenging to know which was which.  There were more creatures out there that Kaylee did not know about and he wasn’t ready to tell her about.  He would just feed her a little information at a time until she had it all without overloading her. 

             
“I have seen the rise and fall of different civilizations and the extinction of animals throughout the years.  Some of the things the history books got right and some of it was wrong, but then again history is written by the victors of war and or the ones that make the policies and decisions of that time.  I have seen more that person should see and would forget most of it if I could.  At times I try too.  Then you meet the people that make you want to keep going and fighting for what’s right.  People like you, Kaylee.”

             
By the time he had said that she had stopped at her next stop which was a good thing.  She had not been expecting that.  “For once I don’t know what to say.”  It was probably the nicest thing someone had ever said to her, not to mention the most meaningful.  She was starting to see a different side to him one that appealed to her.  The things he must have seen over the years must have shaped him into the man that he was today.  Getting out of the car she went and collected her samples labeled them and went back to the truck still not knowing what to say. 

After she had put the samples in the box he leaned over putting his hand under her chin and tilting it up, then she felt his lips on hers.  It was gentle kiss, not the demanding ones that she had had before.  Wanting more her lips parted allowing him to deepen the kiss.  His hand moved from her chin to her hair at the back of her head just cradling her there.  She didn’t want him to stop.  She could feel warmth spreading through her body and her pulse speed up.  She could feel herself getting wet and all just from a kiss. Then they heard another car arrive with shouts going go for it man. With fast reflexes she pulled back turning red as she did.  She was not used to losing control of herself.  There was a part of her that was disappointed that it ended so abruptly that was also the same part of her that wanted more.  She watched him as he leaned back against the seat. “So where to next?”  He asked trying to put her at ease.

“We go back to the main road and up about ten miles till the next turn and repeat. This is the easy part and the fun part then I go back to my lab and turn into a geek.”  She smiled at him as she backed the truck out and drove out to the main road.  The rest of the morning was uneventful and passed to quickly from her point of view.

             
By the time they got back to the house it was time for Clayton to leave and meet up with Brad.  It was nice to have someone with her to share information with as she gathered samples of water.   She would do the rest in the lab she had built at home. She needed to see how much silt was in each sample.  That would help calculate the erosion percentage that was happening due to past logging.  Then there were several pollution tests that had to be done and one for quagga and zebra mussels.  She would start some of the test this afternoon while he was gone.

They made it home by noon so that he could eat and check the surveillance cameras that he had put up the night before.   No one had been around the house while they had collected the samples. “Unless you know who is at the door, don’t answer it.  When I get back we will work on your fighting skills.”