Page 104 of Ember Rising

Pax

“I have to admit, you intrigue me.”

Abby gives me an appraising glance, her upper teeth sinking into her lush, pink lower lip.

I’ve definitely still got it.

“Oh yeah?” I give her the flirtatious smile that got me into many a woman’s pants on the island. “I feel the same way about you.”

We’re on a train heading to Carson City. It’s a train loaded with supplies, our seats wooden benches attached to the side of a freight car. But it’s time alone with her, and I don’t care about our surroundings.

There’s something sexy and adventurous about consummating a relationship in a freight train while it’s rolling down the tracks. James Bond must have done it in one movie or another.

I spot a waist-high stack of crates that’s the perfect height to bend her over—after lots of foreplay, of course. Abby is a package I want to unwrap slowly, savoring every new discovery.

“I read the briefings about the island you were on, and I have so many questions.”

A single bulb flickering in a fight for its life on the ceiling is the only illumination in our car, which, honestly—mood lighting. It’s just enough to see the soft glow of Abby’s skin, the thick, long, golden hair piled over one shoulder onto her chest, and her slightly widened blue eyes.

“Ask me anything,” I say.

Just please don’t ask how many women I had sex with and got pregnant. Massive mood killer.

“Okay, so there were two different groups, right? Which one was yours?”

“Rising Tide.”

She smiles. “Right, that’s it. And you were the leader there, right?”

“Coleader.”

“Oh.” Her brows shoot up. “There were two leaders?”

“Yeah, at least until ... my coleader was killed.”

Her mouth turns down in a hint of a frown. “What happened? Were the two of you close before that?”

I sigh, trying to figure out how to succinctly untangle all the threads of it.

“Virginia and I were close. We were very yin and yang. She would have liked us to be more than friends and coleaders, but we never were. She was strong—a little too strong sometimes. That’s what got her killed. We had something called The Circle in our camp. Anyone could challenge another Tider to a fight to the death. Virginia was called into the Circle by my friend Briar, and she lost.”

“Was that hard for you?”

I don’t like remembering that night. Virginia was such a steady presence in my life for so long that I lost my shit when she died. All I wanted after that was for Marcus and Briar to suffer.

I was the one who ended up suffering, though, along with the rest of my people, when the island’s volcano erupted.

“Everything was hard on the island.”

I lean closer to her, about to walk through the door I just opened for myself about things being hard, when she turns to the side, moving her legs in front of her and folding them so she can see me better.

“Your briefing said you have a telepathic link with snakes? That’s wild.”

“I did. I think it’s just on the island, and most of the anacondas were killed when the volcano erupted?”

“Wow. What was that like?”

I shake my head. “A living hell. I saw things happen to my people that I can’t forget. We lost most of the kids in our camp. That’s how Briar and I became friends. She took us in and helped us when I’d given her every reason not to.”