A Taste of Ice (The Elementals) Read online

  PRAISE FOR

  LIQUID LIES

  “Martine delivers an ingenious plot filled with plenty of unexpected twists.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “With her debut novel, Liquid Lies, Hanna Martine is poised to make a huge splash with her hot, steamy tale.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “I found the plot new and different and it kept me reading into the wee hours of the morning!”

  —Kindles & Wine

  “Liquid Lies is an intriguing beginning and I wonder what will happen next in this alternate world.”

  —Romance Junkies

  Berkley Sensation titles by Hanna Martine

  LIQUID LIES

  A TASTE OF ICE

  A TASTE

  OF ICE

  HANNA MARTINE

  BERKLEY SENSATION, NEW YORK

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) • Penguin Group (Australia), 707 Collins Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3008, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) • Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) • Penguin Books (South Africa), Rosebank Office Park, 181 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parktown North 2193, South Africa • Penguin China, B7 Jiaming Center, 27 East Third Ring Road North, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100020, China

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  A TASTE OF ICE

  A Berkley Sensation Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Berkley Sensation mass-market edition / January 2013

  Copyright © 2012 by Hanna Martine.

  Excerpt by Hanna Martine copyright © 2012 by Hanna Martine.

  Cover art by Tankist276/Shutterstock.

  Cover design by Rita Frangie.

  Interior text design by Tiffany Estreicher.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-61858-5

  BERKLEY SENSATION®

  Berkley Sensation Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  BERKLEY SENSATION® is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  The “B” design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is

  stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the

  author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  ALWAYS LEARNING PEARSON

  To my beautiful daughter.

  Look what you can do when you have a dream

  and do everything in your power to fulfill it.

  You can be anything you want in this world. Anything.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Everyone says that writing your second book is much harder than writing the first. A Taste of Ice is actually my fourth book, but Xavier didn’t give me any less of a challenge. I am indebted to the following people for pulling me through and demanding the words were as good as Xavier and Cat deserved. My deepest thanks to:

  Miles Lowry and Sharon Radzienta, for giving me time when I needed it the most.

  Ellen Wehle and Erica O’Rourke, for very early comments about these characters and their goals.

  Holly McDowell, for barroom word sprints, and for saying, “That’s not enough.”

  Clara Kensie, for asking the most brilliant questions.

  Eliza Evans, for personal motivation, and a killer critique.

  Cindy Hwang, for helping to mold Xavier into a true hero.

  Every reader of Liquid Lies who contacted me to say how much they hated Xavier at first, but then were so excited to hear he’d get his happy ending.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Sneak Peek

  ONE

  Xavier Jones lingered on the edge of chaos, and about a thousand people stood between him and his knives.

  The first morning of the Turnkorner Film Festival and already he could throw a rock and hit a celebrity. For two weeks each winter, that’s exactly what he wanted to do. He hadn’t moved to White Clover Creek, Colorado, for the swarms of film lovers, the squealing fans, or the demanding Hollywood types. He’d come here for the other fifty weeks of the year, when the insular world of the historic mountain town wrapped its arms tightly around his life, and helped him forget what needed to be forgotten.

  Today, however, the sidewalks teemed with strangers. Waterleaf Avenue, the main thoroughfare through town, had been barricaded on either end to disallow cars, and the central square had given birth overnight to several white tents. Music pumped from unseen speakers, the beats rising above the buzz of the shuffling crowd.

  Shed, the restaurant where he’d been working for the last three years, was two blocks up, straight through a mass of people in sunglasses and down coats. More than half of them women. Xavier’s fingers twitched, eager to wrap around the comforting handle of his favorite chef’s knife. His mind burned, anxious for him to get to wo
rk, bend over his station, and tune out the world for the next fourteen hours.

  He could do this. The first day of the festival was always the hardest. If he just got through this one, the next thirteen would be all downhill.

  He left the relative safety of the residential neighborhood and punched through the crowd. Head down, shoulders hunched, he soldiered forward, concentrating on the sting of arctic mountain air as he sucked it deep into his lungs. He loved the cold, the pain of freezing toes. Anything to remind him of what he’d missed his whole life.

  Anything to remind him he was free.

  The crowd thickened the deeper he went into town. Strangers jostled him from all sides. Salt and ice crunched under his boots. Noise, noise everywhere.

  It’s okay, he told himself on a loop. You’re okay. No one’s looking at you.

  “Excuse me. Pardon me. Excuse me.” The pleading, reedy voice cut through the white noise of the festival goers.

  For once, Xavier was thankful for his height. Straightening, he found the crooked little man, his silver hair partially covered by a tweed cap, trying to pick his way against the crowd flow, toward the stairs of the Tea Shoppe. Mr. Elias Traeger, as much a local fixture in White Clover Creek as the bronze statue of the work-hardened miners in the middle of the town square. The old man had worked at the Tea Shoppe for twenty years and would probably totter from local job to local job until his life gave out. Crazy, but that’s what Xavier dreamed of. So normal, so everyday.

  Xavier was still getting used to the sight of people with wrinkles and brittle hair and bones. In the Plant, where he’d been conceived and raised, no one had ever lived that long.

  A chorus of happy screams went up, meaning someone famous had just shown his or her face. The crowd shifted. A tourist with a cell phone plastered to his ear shoved hard into Mr. Traeger’s shoulder and the elderly man tipped to one side. His eyes went wide, his thin arms scrambling for purchase on the smooth brick of the shop.

  Five years ago, Xavier would’ve let Mr. Traeger go down. He would’ve walked on without a second thought. But Xavier wasn’t that man anymore. Despite everything else, at least there was that.

  Xavier lunged forward and caught Mr. Traeger under his arms before his knees could hit the ice. The old man found his feet, righted himself and blinked into the bright sunshine.

  “Ah, Mr. Jones.” Traeger’s slight British accent trickled through. “My thanks. Reaction times aren’t quite what they used to be.”

  Xavier nodded, surprisingly pleased that Traeger remembered his name. “You should’ve taken the day off. The first day is always the worst.”

  A wave of the hand and a flash of false teeth. “Never sit idle, I always say.”

  Well, if that wasn’t the truth.

  Taking Mr. Traeger’s elbow, Xavier helped him up the steps, which were blocked by two young women holding steaming paper cups of what smelled like Earl Grey.

  Xavier cleared his throat. “Excuse us.” Over the years, he’d perfected the art of speaking to people without looking at them. The women moved slightly to one side and Xavier gestured for Mr. Traeger to go up and enter. Through the glass door, Xavier watched the old man remove his cap and tip it in thanks.

  The two women were staring at him. The blonde smiled, slow and obvious. “Hey,” she said.

  Three seconds. That’s all the time he allowed himself to look. That’s all that was safe. Three seconds to look at a woman. To note the shape of her mouth or the intelligence in her eyes. To make assumptions about her character. You could learn a lot about a woman in three seconds, not the least of which was whether or not she wanted to sleep with him.

  The blonde did.

  “Do you live here?” she asked as her friend laughed low.

  He’d never get used to this, to the bold women of the outside world who lusted on their own terms and displayed that lust for all to see. Before, inside, he’d been the one with the desires. His captors, the water elementals called the Ofarians, had done a damn fine job of creating that monster, and he was still trying to exorcise it.

  Xavier swiveled away, the three seconds over, his body aflame with need. He was so well trained, such a good pet, and it would take a hell of a lot more than the passage of years to break his conditioning. Five silly words from a girl and every muscle in his body, no matter how small, had tightened with expectation. Every blood cell raced faster. He wanted. He needed sex.

  And yet he ran.

  Man, he was messed up. He was still learning about the world outside the Plant, but that much was pretty clear. Normal Primary guys didn’t sprint the opposite way when a hot woman showed interest. Normal Primary guys didn’t spend more than half their days either cooking or thinking about cooking, and the remaining hours pounding the ever-loving shit out of a boxing bag, just to avoid getting naked with someone.

  But then, he wasn’t Primary. He wasn’t entirely human.

  And even though he wanted nothing more than to be “normal,” he certainly wasn’t that either.

  He slipped back into the slow-moving crowd. Away from the women, who’d probably already sidled up to another guy, his body cooled.

  Shed’s entrance was tucked into the back of a cobblestone alley that ran alongside the nineteenth-century Gold Rush Theater, now used as the festival’s main venue. The alley was barely forty yards away, but the crowd had completely stopped and Xavier was going nowhere. He bounced on the balls of his feet, willing himself not to duck his shoulder and barrel through the tourists. Willing himself not to have a panic attack in the close quarters. What was the holdup anyway?

  Craning his neck above the sea of bobbing heads, made taller by colorful hats, he saw that two massive pockets of people—gaping at two different things—had converged, and no one could get through.

  Some young, grizzled guy stood under the triangular theater marquee, a half-moon of five camera teams surrounding him and angling for a shot. A gaggle of fans shouting his name—a name Xavier didn’t recognize—fought with the laughter and cheers coming from the crowd closest to Xavier. A giant circle had formed around a street performer.

  A middle-aged man wearing a beige North Face jacket and a cheap, felt jester’s hat danced along Waterleaf’s yellow divider. Xavier’s first instinct was to just lower his eyes and try to press on, but what Jester was doing froze Xavier in place.

  Jester juggled a mass of colored balls, his hands blurring, a rainbow in the air. Some seemed to disappear then reappear. The audience gasped. Xavier did, too.

  Was this guy like him—a Tedran, a Secondary human—capable of true magic, true illusion?

  No. That would be impossible. Xavier was the last.

  He peered closer, intently following the intricacies of Jester’s hands. When Xavier caught the deft slip of Jester’s fingers into the folds of his coat, he exhaled. He watched a charlatan, nothing more. He started to turn away, to head back into the thick of the crowd, then stopped. He wanted to be normal, right? If this was the sort of thing Primaries did, then maybe he should suck it up and try it, too.

  He planted his feet. Closed his eyes. Shoved away the feel of strangers around him and pretended he was weightless and invisible. He drew in a deep breath through his nose and pushed it out. Opened his eyes.

  Jester was storing the balls in a suitcase to the sound of applause. He pulled out a deck of cards from his coat pocket and shuffled them in an impressively high arc. He started to go around the circle, asking random people to pick a card, look at it, then put it back in the deck. His marks all happened to be women.

  With a hand flourish, eyes deliberately averted, Jester offered the deck to Xavier, then finally looked up at him. “Whoa, sorry. Not you, big guy.” Jester tried to play it off for laughs, but the nervous shock on his face was nothing Xavier hadn’t seen before.

  Since escaping the Plant, he’d put on a good thirty pounds of muscle on his already six-foot-five body. No one knew how horrible it was to be the person who stood out more than the person wh
o actually stood out. But that’s not usually what made people react when they saw him.

  Pam, his boss at Shed, said it was because his eyes were the color of guns—shiny, silver, and full of don’t fuck with me.

  Xavier thought they were the color of death. And they were.

  Jester offered the card deck to the person standing to Xavier’s immediate left. “Well, hello, beautiful. Care to pick a card?”

  Three seconds. Ready…go.

  The woman watched Jester with genuine excitement. Laughter cast her in a spotlight. She clapped her mittened hands like a kid about to get a cookie. Her deep brown hair, streaked with gold and wavy like the ocean, streamed out from beneath a knitted red hat topped with a pompom. She was tanned, like so many Hollywood people traipsing around White Clover Creek right now. A fine layer of freckles covered her whole face and neck. A price tag stuck to the sleeve of her green, fur-trimmed coat.

  She radiated joy, so unlike those women on the Tea Shoppe steps who were clearly here to see and be seen. This one was…so unlike any woman he’d stood this close to before.

  He forgot how long a second lasted.

  Vaguely he sensed his skin start to tighten. Just barely did he notice a heat rising from deep inside. Then a hard, throbbing pulse kicked up that had nothing to do with his heart. It felt goddamn amazing. Like someone had chained him to a rock for centuries, and now he’d been given the go-ahead to jump from an airplane. Too fucking long to deny himself this rush—this want and need—day after day. What had he been thinking, going all these years without?