Darkness Bound (12 page)

Like a rat nibbling the toes of a drunkard lying unconscious in a dark alley, something was worrying the edges of Jack’s sleep.

It was a slipping, sliding, ambiguous sort of unease, a presence that took a shadowy form beneath and behind the surface of things, ghostly and teasing and altogether unwelcome.

What was it?

Or who?

It was just out of reach, this maddening specter, but still it had weight. It had heft, and . . . warmth. Yes, warmth, and a sinister sort of gravity, so that she felt pinned beneath an invisible entity, unable to free herself from its grip.

No—she had to get free. She had to get away. She had to save herself from this unwanted pressure, slowly threading its way down through her pores into the meat of her cells.

In her dream, Jack began to run.

It was the horrible, sticky-syrup run of nightmares, where even the strongest push of muscle gained only the most meager effect. She pumped her legs, desperate for escape, desperate to gain traction, but felt glued to the ground. The warmth turned suffocating. The weight bore down harder and harder, until finally Jack knew she would be crushed beneath it like a bug beneath a shoe.

No . . . no . . . not again!

A scream tore from her throat. She jerked upright, blinking into humid darkness.

Then there were hands on her shoulders, a gentle shake, a low voice, urgent beside her ear. “Jacqueline! Wake up! Wake up—it’s me! It’s Hawk!”

Trembling, breathless, frozen in fear, Jack stared up into Hawk’s face—handsome and shadowed, his brow crumpled into a frown—and let out a sob of despair.

She buried her face into her hands.

“Hey. Take it easy. Just breathe, all right?” Hawk’s big hand settled on the small of her back, tentative and calming.

Safe. She was safe. It had only been Hawk’s warmth she felt in the dream, Hawk’s presence. Hawk’s weight.

Not . . .
his
. The one who could never be banished, no matter how hard she tried.

Exquisitely aware of Hawk’s hand on her back, Jack exhaled a long, shuddering breath. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” His voice was gravelly with sleep. “I think you were just having a bad dream.”

A recurring nightmare, more like.

“Yeah.”

Avoiding Hawk’s penetrating gaze, she looked around, seeing nothing but endless, restless green. It was still dark in the forest, but far above in the treetops, a faint sheen of lavender glimmered, the promise of morning.

It would be daybreak soon. Even now, the first notes of birdsong were echoing through the trees, trills and warbles of a million varieties that flavored the air like so many exotic spices.

They’d climbed high into the spreading boughs, and Hawk had made an ingenious bed at the junction of the trunk and two wide branches. After gathering smaller limbs—that he ripped away from their moorings with such ease it looked as though he were pulling weeds instead of the thick, leafy offshoots they were—he’d lashed them together to form a hammock of sorts, secured with strong, rope-like vines, overlaid with a thick weave of palm fronds and the moss that draped from the tallest branches, feather light and downy soft. It was a snug, effective resting place, and to top it all off, it was safe.

Safe being a relative term. She wouldn’t have to deal with any forest floor predators, but there was an even more dangerous one sleeping right beside her.

Much different from the first night we spent together, that’s for sure.

Hawk quietly asked, “So, who’s Garrett?”

It became almost impossible to breathe.

She found his gaze in the dark, looked into those glittering, preternatural green eyes, and shivered in horror. “What did you say?”

He absently brushed away a strand of hair that had fallen into her eyes. “You were screaming that name. That and . . . other things.”

Jack squeezed shut her eyes, blocking the sight of his face. “Please don’t tell me what other things. Please don’t. And don’t ever say that name to me again.”

There was silence for a moment, then she heard his deep inhalation. His hand on the small of her back flexed slightly, his fingers spreading father apart, as if trying to impart more comfort.

Hawk said, “
Você está seguro comigo
.”

Without opening her eyes, Jack whispered, “What does that mean?”

He removed his hand from her back. When she finally looked at him, he was staring back at her with something like compassion in his intense gaze. But Jack knew that had to be wrong, because he’d made it perfectly clear he felt nothing for her but disgust.

“It means . . . okay.”

They both knew it meant far more than that, but they both pretended it didn’t. Since she was an expert at pretending, this suited her just fine.

With swift grace, Hawk stood. For the first time, Jack noticed he wasn’t wearing a shirt, and the knowledge that he’d been sleeping right beside her half naked for the entire night made heat rush to her face. She glanced away, heartbeat fluttering, mouth dry.

“I’ll get some food, and then we’ll get going again. I’ll only be a few minutes.”

As swiftly and silently as he’d arisen, Hawk disappeared over the side of the suspended boughs. She heard the slight rustle of leaves, then nothing more.

When she was certain he was gone, she lay back down into the leafy comfort of their makeshift bed, put a hand over her face, and cried.

Hawk took longer than necessary gathering food for their breakfast, for two main reasons. One, he sensed she needed to be alone. Two—

He was having a tremendously difficult time marshaling his fragmented emotions.

This wasn’t like him at all, this nurturing stranger who felt things like pity and understanding and the urge to offer comfort. Especially to someone like her!

She’s your enemy
, he reminded himself every time she pinned him with the raw force of that blue, blue gaze.
She’s evil. She’s a danger to us all.

Only she didn’t
feel
evil. Or dangerous. Or like an enemy. She irritated him, yes, she angered him, yes—he thought she had a long way to go in the open-mindedness department—but she also sparked an emotion he’d never felt before in his life. Not for a woman, not for anyone.

Protectiveness.

In a show of completely irrational, testosterone-driven idiocy, he felt protective of this walking contradiction under his charge, and he was supremely pissed off at himself for it.

When she’d awakened—screaming and thrashing out of her dream—his guarding instincts had gone into overdrive. If he’d had a sword in hand at that moment, he was sure he’d have chopped the tree in half before coming back to his senses. As it was, he’d barely restrained himself from leaping from the hammock, Shifting into panther, and snarling bloody murder into the darkness to keep the proverbial wolves at bay.

But there were no wolves. There was only Jacqueline, wild-eyed, pale, and shivering, looking as if what she really needed was a hug.

He’d had to restrain himself from that, too.

“
Você está seguro comigo
,” he’d told her in a moment of foolishness.
You’re safe with me.
What had he been thinking?
Was
he thinking? No, he decided, he wasn’t thinking. At least not with the head atop his neck.

Violently yanking the plum-shaped yellow fruit from the low-hanging boughs of a camu camu tree as if it had personally offended him, Hawk mused over what his strategy should be. Obviously he needed a plan to move forward; he couldn’t just march ahead blindly, allowing his emotions to take charge. What he needed was distance, but that was an impossibility in their current circumstances.

Physical distance is an impossibility
.
But emotional distance . . .

Right. Emotional distance. Keep the walls up. Don’t talk about anything personal. Stop wondering what was going on in that mind of hers.
Don’t look at her, either
, he chastised himself. Every time his gaze lingered too long on that incredible mouth, that fiery hair he’d gripped fistfuls of as he’d shoved himself deep inside her—

Hawk stilled, closed his eyes, and hissed an aggravated breath through his teeth.

This was going to be harder than he thought.

By the time Hawk returned half an hour later, Jack was in much better control of herself. She’d dried her face, combed her fingers through her hair, and smoothed her wrinkled clothing; and she was sitting with her back against the trunk, legs crossed, with what she hoped was a cool, unreadable expression on her face.

Hawk was carrying an enormous, glossy monstera leaf, the scalloped edges gathered in one fist, center bulging. He set it in her lap.

“Eat as much as you can,” he said curtly. “You’ll need the energy. We won’t be stopping for another break until late tonight.”

Jack looked down at the big leaf unfurling between her legs, and gasped in surprise.

Orange and red and green and yellow, smooth skinned and freckled and shiny and rough, the variety of fruit and berries he’d gathered was astonishing. There were passion fruit, figs, mangoes, and prickly pear; there were bananas, Brazil nuts, and purple-blue acai berries still on the vine. There was a dozen more varieties she’d never seen before, all of them unblemished, as if he’d selected only the most perfect specimens and left the rest to the birds.

“This is amazing!” Jack inspected the bumpy skin of a canary-yellow star fruit with awe. “Do you know how much this stuff costs in a grocery store? What’s that one? And that?”

Hawk took a seat across from her. “There are more than three thousand different kinds of fruit in the rainforest. The vast majority of them are unknown in the Western world.” He pointed to each in turn. “That’s chirimoya, and the small red ones that look like cherries are capulin.”

Jack’s mouth began to water. Her stomach grumbled its discontent.

“Okay, well . . . here.” Eager to dig in, she lifted the leaf and its contents from her lap, spread it on the hammock between them, and picked up a fig. “I’m a good eater, so you better dig in before it’s all gone.”

“No.”

Surprised, she glanced up at him. He shook his head and gestured to the food.

“That’s all for you. I already ate.”

“Oh.” They stared at one another. “What did you eat?”

One corner of his mouth quirked. “I doubt you’d want to know.”

Of course. He was a carnivore. Her appetite vanished when she pictured the poor little animal that had been his breakfast, and was now being digested inside his stomach.

“Well.” She cleared her throat. “Thank you for not making me have what you had.”

“I knew you wouldn’t be interested. Even if I’d cooked it.”

When she looked up at him, laughter glimmered in the depth of his emerald eyes.

He’d eaten it—whatever it was—raw? Ugh. Nasty times one thousand.

“How do you know I wouldn’t have been interested in . . .” Her nose wrinkled. “Meat?”

He lifted one dark brow. “Generally vegetarians aren’t.”

She frowned at him and asked, “How did you know I’m a vegetarian?”

Hawk looked away and for a moment Jack thought he wouldn’t answer. He stared off into the canopy of trees, a muscle in his jaw jumping. “Veggie burger,” he said, his voice empty. “No cheese.”

How he’d remembered that small detail from the night they’d met became insignificant compared to the grating realization that this macho, George of the Jungle carnivore probably thought her an idiot for choosing not to eat meat.

Something he had in common with her father.

Anger began its familiar march across her nerve endings, advancing with breakneck speed.

Jack said acidly, “Yes, I think it’s unethical to consume sentient beings. Especially when there are so many other choices that don’t involve the systematic torture and murder of millions of animals every year. But I can see how someone like you wouldn’t get that, what with your big
fangs
and all.”

Hawk turned his attention back to her, and it was so focused and menacing it was like being caught in the crosshairs of a sniper’s rifle.

“
You’re
lecturing
me
about ethics? Hypocrite.”

Blood rushed to Jack’s face, but before she could respond, Hawk continued.

“I happen to agree with you that the way
your
species deals with feeding itself is disgusting.
My
species, on the other hand—the one you so despise—has no need for slaughterhouses and meat-packing factories and fast-food restaurants that serve poison packaged as food. We consume what we need, and no more. We hunt when we’re hungry, not for sport or entertainment, and we respect the lives we take—lives, I might add, that were spent the way Nature intended. Outdoors. Not in a cage, awaiting a painful, horrible death. So don’t talk to me about ethics, Red. Your entire
race
is unethical.”

He shot to his feet, turned his back on her, and went to stand at the far edge of the hammock of boughs he’d constructed using nothing but his bare hands. He raked those strong hands through his hair, and stood there like that for several long moments, fingers clenched, back rigid, silent, and quite perceptibly seething.