Free Genesis by Christie Rich Page A

face.
    He smiled. I imagined something like
love lingered in his eyes, but that couldn’t be it. He blew me a
kiss. “Until next time…”
    Then he vanished.
    I woke with a start, my pulse still
pounding from Heath’s kiss. I brought my trembling fingers to my
swollen lips. They tingled as if the dream had been
real.
    A new ache for him settled into my
limbs. Even though I knew it would be nearly impossible, I had to
keep it from taking root in my heart.
     
    The daylight met me like a fierce
warrior. Taylor barged into my room, pulled back the curtains and
ordered me out of bed. At least he let me stop for
breakfast.
    When the last bite barely made it past
my lips, he insisted I follow him to the back of the house. We
faced each other and he clasped my hands. “Close your eyes,” he
commanded.
    I complied immediately, listening for
further instruction. If there was one thing I wanted out of this
deal, it was to know how to manipulate air. I put my whole focus
into it despite my fatigue. Taylor didn’t comment on my sleepless
night, and I was thankful I hadn’t inadvertently kept him up with
my worrying. “Why won’t you tell me what’s wrong? Am I in some kind
of danger?” That was a stupid question. I had so many people after
me I didn’t have the nerve to actually count.
    He didn’t say anything for a really
long time. I peeked at him, but he didn’t seem to notice. I wasn’t
buying it, though, because he knew everything I did when I did it
whether he could see me or not.
    “ Deep breath,” he
instructed. He still wasn’t going to answer me, which just made me
worry worse than if he told me Godzilla was about to crash through
the roof. “Hold it,” he continued, “for the count of five, four,
three, two, one. Release. Tell me what you feel right now. Describe
everything you notice within and without.”
    I shook my head. “The room is cold.”
Now that I noticed it, a shiver of goose-bumps worked up my
arms.
    His soft words startled me. “Is it the
room or the air that is cold?”
    “ The air.” It was like a
blanket of ice coating my skin. That was when I realized he was changing
it.
    “ How can you be sure it is
me?”
    I folded my arms across my chest,
partly out of frustration and partly because I wanted to conserve
what warmth remained in my body. “Well, it isn’t me.”
    A sly smirk twisted his lips. “What are
you going to do about it?”
    It should be simple. I thought about
warming the air around me. Nothing happened. I didn’t understand.
Hadn’t I been able to control air before?
    “ Manipulation and control
are two different things, Rayla.”
    Shivering, I scrubbed my hands over my
bare arms. “Okay, I get it. This is unbearable, Taylor. I need
heat.”
    He looked at me pointedly. “Good thing
you have access then.”
    He wasn’t going to bail me out of this.
I had a choice. I could scurry back to my room and give up, or I
could stay here and figure it out. Rocking to the balls of my feet,
I jogged in place.
    Did he mean that I had access to fire?
I didn’t think so. We were talking about air. Even with all his
wisdom, he couldn’t exactly be an expert on fire. At least, I
didn’t think he could.
    This was getting me nowhere. His casual
stance had me more than a little irritated. It had to be below
freezing now. As I walked closer to him, I stepped into a bubble of
warmth. “Hey,” I said. “That’s not fair.”
    “ What in life ever is, my
lady?” Not so subtly he pushed me away from him.
    The second I was out of his shield, my
body convulsed from shivers. Fine. He wanted to be that way. I
thought back to science. Heat could be made by several different
reactions—the simplest, at least in my mind, was
friction.
    I closed my eyes again, imagining the
tiny molecules surrounding me. What they needed to heat up was some
vibration. In my mind what I saw was countless balls banging into
each other.
    Within seconds the air around me
heated. Faster, I commanded. I was