Page 11 of Emerald Rising
Chapter 6
EMMY
My mind awoke with a start. That was the weirdest dream I’d ever had. Demons and angels? Wow, my imagination was overactive. I turned on my side and realised I couldn’t move. Something had me pinned.
I flung my arms out to try to escape but it took me a few moments to realise that I wasn’t in my bed and I wasn’t dreaming.
Shit.
My head was on someone’s shoulder and I could feel a very firm set of thighs beneath my ass. Opening my eyes, I found a set of shimmering silver orbs staring down at me with something that almost looked like concern. I squirmed in Blaze’s hold, but his arms just tightened around me.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Ash overwhelmed you with too much information.”
I looked to the source of the voice and found River eyeing me with worry. Ash sat next to him looking like he’d had a serious telling off. Poor guy. He was only trying to give me answers and it was me who’d reacted badly. I wanted to go over and wrap him in a hug, but I knew Blaze wasn’t about to let me free. He seemed to have taken hold of me possessively and even now I could feel his lips nipping at the soft shell of my ear. I tried to brush him off, but he just growled and bit me. He was clearly reminding me that I shouldn’t piss him off and just let him do what he wanted. Otherwise, he’d punish me. The stupid part of my brain was wanting to push his buttons just to find out which one released that darker side of him. Man, was this night making me crazy.
“Why don’t you start at the beginning?” I asked River, hoping my voice didn’t betray how terrified I felt. I was worried that they were going to give me answers to the questions that had haunted me all my life and that I wasn’t going to like them at all.
“Okay,” River replied, settling back in his chair comfortably. “It all began twenty-one years ago. We were approached by the King of the Underworld with a mission. A mission that was so secret, no one could ever find out about it. We were told the whole balance of the universe depended on it. We weren’t even given all the facts about what we were dealing with. All we knew was that we had to protect you at all costs. The three of us were put into a deep sleep and hidden away until you summoned us.”
Wait a minute. “You think I’m responsible for keeping the balance of the universe? How’s that even possible? I don’t even know who I am!”
“Neither do we. We’re just following orders.” River looked at me with sorrow swimming in his eyes. He knew he couldn’t answer the one question that had plagued me my entire life: who are my parents? If these three didn’t know then I would never find the answers I sought.
Blaze was still holding me close to him, and part of me was grateful. I did feel comfort in the arms of this brute, and as he rubbed his thumb back and forth across the curve of my hip, I felt my anger settle a little. “So, if you’re sworn to protect me, what exactly are you protecting me from?”
Ash leant forward, a grim expression twisting his beautiful face. “We don’t know. But we will protect you with our lives. Anything that comes for you, we will be ready, and we will defeat it even if we have to sacrifice ourselves to do it.”
“But that’s crazy.” I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that I had these men willing to die for me. I was a nobody. Someone no one even wanted and now they were going to die for me.
“Crazy or not,” Ash continued, “we are bound to you, heart and soul. We’re yours for all eternity.”
“What?” I sputtered.
“The summoning you did,” River said while pointing to the circle that was still clear as day on my wooden floor, “pulled us from our dreamless sleep and irrevocably bonded our souls to yours. We will always be with you until we die.”
My stomach dropped through the floor. This was all way too much. This was crazy. Insane. Madness.
My heart was racing. My mind was going a thousand miles a minute. My chest was rising rapidly with every manic breath I took. How was this even possible?
“Shush,” Blaze whispered in my ear, cutting off the trail of thoughts leading to a nervous breakdown. The sound shivered up my spine and instantly had my thoughts turning in another direction. His fingers clasped my jaw tightly and his eyes found mine, holding them with unrelenting contact. They burned through me and I felt ensnared in the harsh gaze that captivated my attention completely.
“Listen to me, baby girl. I need you to calm down.” His fingers tightened their grip on my chin. “You’re stuck with us. We aren’t going anywhere, so you’re just going to have to get used to us being around. Got it?”
I nodded. My ability to speak seemed to have vanished with his gravelly voice and smooth words. The way he called me baby girl should have felt demeaning, but it just made my insides squirm. Now my heart was racing for an entirely different reason. Blaze sparked fear deep within me. He felt like he was always on the cusp of rage and I could feel it in the way his muscles were always tensed and ready to spring into action at the drop of the hat. But that edge of danger had a delicious thrill traipsing straight to my core. I wanted to see what would happen if he ever snapped. It was a wicked thing to think but, boy, did it set my heart fluttering and my mind running wild with dirty images.
There was a groan from the corner of the room, and I turned to find Ash wincing.
“You need to stop thinking those thoughts, princess. It’s very distracting,” he said, his face twisting in what looked like pain.
A blush crept up my neck as I shrank back into Blaze. I could feel him smiling against my skin as he pressed his lips to my temple.
“Don’t listen to him, baby girl. If you want to think dirty thoughts of me and torture the poor demon, I’m all for that,” Blaze whispered huskily, his lips caressing my skin with every word he uttered. I shuddered as his words washed over me. I wasn’t normally like this. This was all so sexual and dirty and wrong. I was a good girl, apart from the propensity to buy expensive whiskey, and this was so far out of my comfort zone.
But I also felt alive. For the first time in a long time, I had a sense of being part of a unit. A family. Was it this bond? Part of whatever I had created by summoning them to me? Could I trust this new sensation?
God, this summoning was supposed to give me answers, not more questions. Now I just felt more frustrated than I was before.
