Clayton's Jade (Runes Stone Series) Page 7

  “What the hell do you think you are doing?” Both Vie and I asked at the same time.

  “I ummm needed to relieve myself.” He had needed to go for a while now. However he was running into the problem of getting out of bed. He thought it would be easy enough, but found out it was easier thought than done. “Could you help me Kaylee?” He hated to ask for anything, he just didn’t see any other way around it.

  “Yes, I will help you get up and get to the bathroom.” Ok, this was going to be the most embarrassing thing she had ever done. She was not going to stand in there while he took care of business. She would wait outside the door and he could yell when he was done. She sat Vie on the end table and went to help Clayton. She had to give him credit, he had asked for help. He didn’t seem like the type that would have asked for it.

  She tried to be very careful about where she put her arms. He would stiffen up if she moved to fast or put her hands in the wrong area. By the time she got him to the bathroom he was sweating. That was not a good thing. “Are you going to be ok in here by yourself?” She hated asking but she had to.

  “I will be fine. I will yell when I am done.” He seemed to be turning a little red in the face from her asking that question. She shut the door and leaned against the wall on the opposite side of the hallway. How many times was she going to have to do this today? Then the other question was how was she going to help Brad? Life was so not being fair to her lately. Maybe between her and Vie they could come up with something that would work for him.

  She heard running water so he was almost done. It was another two minutes before she heard him call for her. When she got in there she realized that he had brushed his teeth while he was in there. “Let’s get this over with and you back in bed.”

  “Sounds good to me.” He seemed a little too happy about that. His eyes scanned over her body. The way he looked at her made her pulse jump.

  “Alone. I have to practice on my new ability and some fighting techniques. You get to recuperate in bed and keep Brad company.” She had to smile, it made her feel good to know that he wanted her.

  “He is not very good company right now. I guess I could do some work on my computer while you are practicing. I don’t want anything to happen to you, so get your butt out there and work hard. I will be checking you out when I feel better.” He didn’t want to tell her that he would be watching via cameras that were in place.

  “Working on the computer would be a good idea. That will keep you out of trouble while we are outside. We will come in every hour and check on you and see if you need anything.” She bent down and picked up his computer and set it on his lap. Then she found the power cord in the case and plugged it in for him. “Ok, you are all set now.”

  “Thank you. Have fun and be careful out there.” Kaylee picked up Vie and they headed outside to start working on some skills for fighting. She didn’t know if fun was going to be the right word for it. For the next hour Vie had her ducking, squatting, bending backwards, blocking, jumping, she also learned a few different stances. When it was time to check on the guys she was ready for a nice cool drink. As she learned these new moves she realized it was harder than any workout she had done. Her legs were shaky by the end of the hour and she thought she was in good shape.

  She poured three glasses of ice tea and took them down the hall to the guys’ room. She didn’t know how much she would be able to get into Brad, but some was better than none. Clayton on the other hand looked like he had been up to something, but she couldn’t figure out what it was. She handed him one of the glasses then went over to Brad and put a straw into one of the glasses and held the glass close to him. “Not right now. Maybe in a little while. I can’t believe how sore I am. I am glad that Clayton showed up when he did though.”

  He still didn’t look very good, but at least he seemed to be healing. “Rest is the best thing you can do right now. When Vie is able to she will heal you some more. You have to be somewhat healed before you can to shift. Vie is still recovering from last night, but this evening she should be able to give you another dose. I don’t know what else to call it." She would be glad when he wasn’t in so much pain.

  “So what are you doing on the computer? Do you need anything?” He had everything minimized on his computer so she couldn’t see what he was working on.

  “I’m just working on some business stuff. How about a kiss before you go back out. Are you working with holding a knife yet?” He knew that all she had worked on was avoiding getting hit with anything yet. Though truth be told, until she actually sparred with one of them it wouldn’t really sink in.

  Smiling she decide to give him a little tease. So she leaned down and kissed his forehead. She made sure it was quick then pulled back out of his reach. “See you in an hour.”

  “That wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.” He called out as he heard them down the hall. Brad started laughing. He turned his head and glared at him. “Not funny.” Pulling up the cam that viewed the back yard he went back to watching her.

  “What are you watching?” Brad was watching the different reactions on Claytons face as he asked the question.

  “Kaylee’s training. If you don’t tell her I will let you watch. It’s better than looking at the walls.” He turned the computer so that Brad could see what Kaylee was learning. Vie was making her use a knife this time. This should be interesting to watch.

  “You realize when she figures out that you have been watching her you are going to be in big trouble.” Kaylee had a tendency to get even.

  “Let’s just say I owe her one already.” He was not going to give him details. He was sure the word would get out on its own without any help from him. So they both settled in to watch her work with a knife.

  Out back she was trying to understand how to grip the knife so that she could work with it in an actually fight. It was not very easy when she was just hitting air. It was not very practical at all. She figured it would be easier if she had something to hit. So she walked towards the trees at the edge of the yard. She thought if maybe using a tree as a dummy would help. At least she would hit something solid.

  When she got to the tree, she tried a couple of thrust and swipes. Vie was telling what she was doing right and wrong the whole time. In a way it, was annoying, but probably better than what Clayton would do. She practiced like this for about a half an hour then she stopped to catch her breath for a minute. Every muscle in her body was hurting. Muscles that she didn’t realize would hurt were screaming at her. At least it was almost time for a break. After this she was done with the physical part and now just had to work on the new mental ability.

  She had been hearing a noise while she was out here, but she didn’t know what it was. Deciding that she was, going to find what it was she let her cat ears detect where the sound was coming from. A normal human couldn’t hear it, because of how high pitched it was. When she was just about ready to give up, she looked up into the trees and saw the camera. Well, now she knew what Clayton had been doing.

  “Vie, do you want to have some fun with me?” She was looking at the ground as she talked. She didn’t want to take a chance that he could read lips.

  “I am always up to some fun. What’s up?” She said as they headed back towards the patio.

  Sitting down at the table with her back towards the trees she looked at Vie and told her what she had seen. “So how can we mess with him? There has to be something we can do to scare the shit out of him and teach him a lesson for spying on us.”

  “Give me another hour and we can just disappear for a little while. I know we will get coffee from Starbucks.” Vie suggested.

  “There are not any Starbucks around here.” she had heard that it was good coffee.

  “Not around here, we will go to Seattle they are on every corner, at least it seems that way.” That was a good idea they could come back with coffee for them but not the guys. That only seemed fair since it looked like they were having fun watching her practice.

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nbsp; “Let’s go check on the guys and then we can work on my new ability since it doesn’t affect you. You know the thought of freezing the guys is sounding better every minute.” As they walked into the house to check on the guys she knew that they had to pretend that they were not on to them. Somehow she knew that Brad was in on it.

  “So how are you guys holding up?” She wanted to ask them if they would like some popcorn to go with the show but, she refrained from doing so.

  “I think we are both fine.” Just go back to working out that was fun to watch. Actually it turned him on and there wasn’t anything he could do about it right now with Brad sharing a room with him. What he really wanted to do was drag her into this bed and feel every sweet inch of her against him.

  “Ok. Well we are going to go work on my new ability. Maybe I should try it in here first just to see how it works, what do you think Vie?” Now that was just plain mean. She was proud of herself for thinking of it.

  “Nope, don’t want to be a Ginny pig, but thanks for thinking of us. Go outside and freeze some birds and rabbits would you.” Just the thought of being frozen with a hard on was not a pleasant thought.

  “You are no fun.” The corners of her mouth turned down in a pout. It was fake, but everyone knew it. “Fine we will practice outside.” Walking out the door they went outside so she could practice. She tried yelling, screaming, and just loud talking nothing seemed to work.

  “What am I doing wrong?” She didn’t freeze anyone the other night, but something had happened both Vie and Clayton had felt it.

  “It might be an emotion trigger. You were upset the other night so maybe if you were in a high danger level it would happen. You will just have to keep working on it every day until you find the trigger and then figure out how to keep it so that you can always use it.” Vie made it sound so matter of fact. Right now there was nothing they could do about it. “So are you ready for some coffee?”

  “Hell yes! Are we close enough to the cameras?” She wanted to make sure they were in full view of the guys when they did this.

  “Yes.” Then they were in Seattle. “Just so you know ordinary people can’t see me. If you talk to me you will look a little crazy, but then again it is Seattle and it is somewhat expected. There are a lot of amazing artist that live in the area.” They had appeared in an empty bathroom stall. That was a good thing at least no one would see them. After walking around for a little bit she finally found a Starbucks coffee shop. She ordered two caramel macchiatos with two shots. She decided that she didn’t want to go back yet. She had heard about this place that tossed fish and wanted to watch them work. It sounded kind of interesting. She stood mesmerized by the workers. It looked like they were having so much fun interacting with the people that were looking at the fish. They made it seem like a place where you would want to work.

  There was so much to see that she really didn’t want to leave, but they had to check on the guys. They were probably frantic by now. When they had arrived back at the bathroom they had to wait as there were so many people waiting to use the bathrooms. When they finally got into a stall she just closed it but didn’t lock it so that a person could still get into it after they had left.

  Vie popped them into the kitchen area so they guys wouldn’t know they were back. Kaylee threw out the empty cup and started to work on the full one. There was no way she was sharing with the guys. Besides she had earned them with the training she had done today. Walking back to the guy’s room yet again, she actually was not looking forward to the whip lashing she was going to get from them.

  “Where the hell have you been? We have been worried about you since you and Vie up and vanished!” He was almost yelling but not quite there yet. That might just be because of his injuries though.

  “ummm we went to Pikes Place Market and got a Starbucks coffee, then watched some guys throwing fish around. It was quite fun you should have been there.” That last part was mean even for her. “So maybe next time you won’t spy on us with your camera that you put up for protection not for your enjoyment.” She watched as he swallowed what he was getting ready to say. He knew he was busted and couldn’t figure out how to get out of it.

  He could not come up with a good reason as to why he was watching her. “Fine, what I did was wrong, however, what you did was also wrong. What were you thinking of? You know what is going on out there.” He really had been worried about her. He knew that Vie could vanish like that, but not knowing where they were was not a good feeling. It was like a big ball of stress sitting in the middle of his stomach and not moving an inch. Granted Vie could get them out of any situation quickly, but if they were in public that could cause some problems with the general population that didn’t know about them.

  “What, just because of what’s going on I’m supposed to put my whole life on hold? I will learn how to be a better fighter, but I am not going to give up my freedom. No matter what there are always going to be bad people in the world and they don’t have to be like us to be bad. I have to hide part of what I am out of necessity, not because I like it. I will not hide away in my house for the rest of my life just because of what’s out there. If I do that, then they win.” She had an understanding of what was going on out there but that didn’t mean she had to give up her freedom along with it. She knew that there would be enough changes in her life, she didn’t want to give it all up.

  “I’m sorry, your right. I just don’t want anything to happen to you and right now I am stuck in a bed due to injuries. I can’t even protect you if something happens. When I first decided to watch you it was just to keep an eye on you and to watch what you were learning so that we could just pick up where you left off today. I should have told you what I was going to do instead of trying to hide it from you.” By the look on her face she was starting to see where he was coming from at least in part. They were going to have to work on their communication skills if this was going to work. That had to start here and now. “From now on I will tell you what is going on and what I am up to and you have to do the same if this is to work.”

  “I will agree to that. No more secrets between us.” For a peace offering she handed him the rest of the coffee. “It really is as good as they say it is. Try it.”

  Reaching out with is left hand he grasped the cup and took a sip. It was a warm, sweet, caramel cream that was just a little bit thicker than regular coffee. These could get addicting, they were really good. “Wow that is amazing. I have had their plain coffee with cream and sugar but not this.” Reluctantly he handed back her cup. “So what are you going to do for the rest of the day now that you are done scaring the shit out me?”

  “I need to go down to the lab and get some work done. Before I go there though I will lock the doors and Vie will make sure I am done in enough time to get dinner going. I am just going to grill some fish tonight and steam some veggies. Nice, quick, and easy.” She really did need some time to herself.

  “Have fun working. I have to go through my emails so that will give me something to do while you are busy.” He smiled as she walked out of the bedroom. It was going to be a long afternoon.

  When they heard the door shut to her lab Brad turned his head towards Clayton, “So I have more of this to look forward to?”

  “I wish I could say you didn’t but I can’t. Some fights will be easy and some will be worse. We have two things in our favor one Vie can heal and the second is we are all naturally fast healers.” Looking over at Brad he could already see a big improvement over yesterday. He had been worried if Brad was going to service or not. “In another day or so you should be back to normal.”

  “I hope so. I hate not being by the water let alone stuck in a bed. Tell me you killed that SOB.” Brad looked down at his body he could see the wounds that the shark had inflicted on him. He ran his hand over the top of a few of them. He was going to have some scars from this. He was just glad that women like scars. His first badge of honor. “How many different creatures are out there that we are no
t aware of?” He could tell by the way Clayton looked at him that he didn’t want to say.

  “More than you realize. For the time being we will leave it at that. You have enough on your plate for time being.” He could have just scared the shit out of him and told him that the things that go bump in the night really do go bump and most of them are not nice. He had found out over the year that, a little bit of information over time is better than overloading people.

  “I can accept that for now but over time I expect more information from you. Now why did you come down to the ocean when you knew I was supposed to come here for dinner? Don’t get me wrong I am glad you showed up when you did.” He wasn’t going to tell him he had never been so happy to another person in his life. There were just something’s you keep to yourself.

  “I was going to talk with you about how your fighting skills were. I didn’t want Kaylee around because you get very protective and defensive around her. I am going to go out on a limb and say not good in seal form…so how about human form?” He got a got to hell look from Brad. He wanted to say something smart but reformed from doing it.

  “There is really not a lot of fighting I can do in seal form. I can swim very fast if I need to. There was nothing I could do when I was caught by surprise like I was with that shark. The damn thing came at me from below. I never saw it coming. I was doing good to get to shore after that bite. From now on I will on the lookout.”

  “I knew that would rile you up. By the way you can use your powers while in shifter form. We will teach you some water fighting as soon as we can. Until you get some good fighting skills you have to more careful in the water.”