[Project Nemesis] Jungle Fever (16 page)

            Sitting with Armando
in the little area they´d declared as their own, they rested in silence.  The
quiet wasn´t an uncomfortable one.  She wanted to talk to him about his
parents, but wasn´t sure how to bring it up or if he’d be comfortable with
sharing with her.  She couldn´t help but feel sad for that little boy who had
lost his parents and had scarred himself forever in the process.

            Hesitant, she
swallowed a lump in her throat.  “My mother abandoned me when I was a baby,”
she confided in him.  “I never met her.  I spent the majority of my childhood
alternatively hating her for leaving me, then making excuses for her when I
wanted to believe she´d come back to me.  I know they say that it´s better to
love and lost, but I don´t always think that´s the case, do you?”

            “No. Did she
leave you with family?”

            “She left me at
an orphanage, the typical dustbin baby.  When I was thirteen, I was sent to a
foster family that lived on a farm.  They´ve been my family ever since.  My
dad, David, taught me how to hunt and track.  He used to be a bounty hunter,
had retired when they got me, that´s how I got into the trade.  I suppose that
good things do come to those who wait.  I´d waited bloody long enough for a
nice family.  All the crap I went through, all the abuse and anger.”

            She shrugged.  “Did
it feel better after you´d killed them?” she asked, referring to the men from
the cartel who had shot his parents down in cold blood.

            “No, they were
still dead.  It didn´t bring them back, I just got my satisfaction from knowing
that they couldn´t orphan another little boy.”

            He turned towards
her slightly.  “But then, there are so many more cartels in South America that
will take over their territory, and the whole thing will start over again.”

            He laughed
coldly.  “It´s a vicious circle.  But then anything to do with drugs always is.
 You know, I´ll never forget my parents, I can still see my
mama,
I can
probably remember more about them than many people, who have lost their parents
at my age now.  I was lucky that my
tios
took me in.  They´re like a
second set of parents, plus I had Rafe who has been like a brother to me.  I
was, I suppose, one of the lucky ones.  Didn´t feel like that, at the time
though.”

            “Never does.  A
girl at the same orphanage as me was raped by one of the men in her foster
family.  I was lucky too, that never happened to me. Strange thing to feel
lucky about, isn´t it?”

            He nodded.  “We
should get some sleep while we can.  You were pretty tired today.  You need to
rest.”

            “Shouldn´t we
light a fire? What about snakes and rats and bugs?”

            “You´re going to
sleep surrounded by three cats, what kind of rat or snake is going to go into a
camp with the three of us here?  Pretty dumb ones at any rate, don´t worry.”  He
leaned over and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “You´re safe with us.”

            She nodded,
pressed into him slightly, then watched as Rafe and Remy came out of the small
brook, and almost sighed in pleasure at the sight of their glistening bodies.  Water
droplets trickled down their hard bodies.

            God, they were
gorgeous and so unaware of their masculine beauty.  It seemed incredible to her
that they weren´t all assholes, believing that they were God´s gift to
womankind.  They were just genuine guys; when really their looks were enough to
make any woman stop in the street, stare and then sigh over what she could
never have.  It seemed incredible to Yvonne that they even wanted her at all,
sure the pheromone helped, but they were strong and had been able to resist the
pull all day when the chemical was at full strength.

            That suggested to
her that they wanted
her
, not just an easy or quick fuck, but
her.

           
Especially yesterday, when she´d been the biggest
bitch in the jungle, because she´d been trying to trap them and send them back
to that hell.
 
Maybe she was looking deeper into it than necessary, but
she couldn´t help but feel as though they were attracted to her.  She started
to lie down, then nuzzled into Armando, turned into his arms and pressed their
bodies to the floor.  She draped herself over his chest, and cuddled into him.  Remy
lay down on her other side.  She shivered in pleasure at lying between them
again.  Remy nestled against her, getting comfortable, and Rafe stood guard
over them, she fell asleep knowing that she was safe and secure in their care.

Chapter Eight

            Sighing in
relief, Yvonne washed the back of her neck and dunked her head into the small
brook beside the camp they´d settled into last night.  She then proceeded to
scrub her face and rubbed her scalp to try to clean her hair as well as could
be done given her surroundings.  She’d be lucky if she ever got all the tangles
out of her long, thick tresses when she finally did get out of this place.

            Maybe she’d just
cut it all off and start over with something short and cute.  It’d been a long time
since she’d had something easier to manage.  Tyrell had always liked her hair
long—most men did, which was why she’d kept it up.  But it was a bitch to
maintain and keep tame.  The humidity made it frizz like a lion’s mane.

            Rinsing the backs
of her wrists and then walking into the water, she smiled in pleasure as she
felt not only a little cleaner but fresher and more rejuvenated than the day
before.  Her muscles no longer ached like they had the previous day.

            Some soreness
from sleeping on the floor remained in her back and hips, but she was back to
peak fitness.  It was odd that it had taken only a small amount of exercise to
wear her out, but likely that was a lack of proper nutrition and water.

            Yvonne was very
fit—she had to be in this business.  She trained daily, had to keep in peak
physical condition for her job.  It was ridiculous really.  She wasn´t a laze about. 
She worked damned hard to keep herself not only trim and slim, but strong and
prepared for any eventuality--be it a fight with a two hundred pound biker, or
a martial arts expert.  She shouldn´t have felt so exhausted after so little
output, but she could only believe that it was the humidity that had caused her
to overtire.

            The heat was
manageable, just barely, but the humidity was unbearable.  Think having a
shower, without the shower head, taps, and tap water!  She wished that she
could bathe herself more, cleanse away the dirt from the day before, but the
pheromone was too important to their plan to just wash it all away in the
brook.

            The men had let
her come to the brook by herself, if they really looked then they could see
her, but she was partially hidden from view by foliage, even more so if she
went further downstream.  It showed that they were starting to trust her, which
was something.

            She had to admit
that she didn´t like them thinking badly of her.  She didn´t want them to think
of her as an angel, because she sure as hell wasn´t one of them, but she wasn´t
the she-devil they´d tried to make her out to be either.  She wasn´t perfect,
who was?  But she liked to believe that she was a good person.  She had a lot
of friends, was well-liked by most people and her staff too.

            Although she
wasn´t obsessed about being liked or approved of, she wanted them to like her.  It
was like being at school and suffering agonies over your first crush, even if
you knew that you had not a chance in hell of scoring a date with him, it eased
the anguish if he liked you slightly, considered you a friend.  You could swab
your wounds with that and make the best of a bad situation.

            That was how she
felt.  She wanted them, needed them to like her.  She felt like a lovelorn
teenager, pathetic really, but the emotions they inspired in her, made her feel
that way.  She couldn´t help it.

            She remembered
craving approval with her earliest of foster families, wanting to please them and
make them happy, but that desire had soon gone, eventually turning to a craving
for attention of any kind.  She´d been like that for so long, it seemed odd for
her to want their approval, a new experience.

            Yvonne waded
closer to shore.  At the camp, she could hear their muffled voices and knew
that they were discussing something, but she wasn´t sure what.  She tried to
keep hidden and thought that she succeeded.

            Sloshing slightly
through the water, she winced at every sound she made.  But there were too many
other noises in the jungle for them to hear that slight sound above all the
others.  She knew that their cat´s ears would be perked up for animal movement
rather than human movement. She knew and they knew that she couldn´t outrun
them--she wouldn´t want to anyway, but they didn´t know that, they might not
trust her one hundred percent, but they had to know that she wasn’t stupid
enough to run away again.

            She wanted and
needed to help.  Yvonne truly meant what she’d said, when she said that she
didn´t approve of the government facility on the island, and that she wanted
them to escape it.  Her conscience dictated that she must do this.

            Approaching the
bank, she crouched down low and strained her ears for their voices.  She heard
them almost immediately.  It wasn´t very clear, her hearing wasn´t as acute as
theirs.  With their supernatural abilities, they might have been able to
distinguish between birdsong, the rustle of leaves and the wind rippling
against the water, but she couldn´t.  She could hear the majority of their words
though, she just had to strain to hear them.

            “Didn´t you hear
that damned cat last night?  It was stalking us the whole fucking night,”
Armando said loudly.

            She could just
see Armando´s frown in her mind´s eye.  Suppressing a grin, she concentrated on
Rafe´s reply.

            “I heard
something, didn´t think it was a cat though, could have been in human form.  I
didn´t scent his cat and couldn’t find a trail this morning.  Mighta been your
paranoia overworking.”

            “Nah, if
something´s going to prowl around at night, it´s going to be cat.  But you´re
right, I didn´t smell it either.  Wonder why he didn´t make himself known to
us?  That´s more worrying than being stalked, I´m used to being stalked, it´s
their fucking reaction to being caught that´s the pisser.  They always act
shocked, when you catch them, and
toujours
, always, with some bullshit
excuse.  Either that, or they try to claw your throat out,” Remy complained.

            “Well they could
be friend and not foe.  There´s no reason to think of the guy as an enemy
though, if he controlled himself enough when Yvonne was asleep then I can´t
foresee there being a problem with him.  If he´d been fucked in the head from
the virus, he´d have jumped into the camp, attacked us instantly, then would´ve
shifted and raped her.  But he didn´t, so either he´s just curious and looking,
or he wants her and is working out a plan.  If he´s here though, then that
means that there may be more with him.  If we can convince them to help us,
then we can all get off this fucking island,” Armando told them both.

            “If we use the
pheromone then we have to risk putting Yvonne in danger, which I don´t want to
do, but I don´t think there is any other way to proceed.  Using the pheromone
is the only way I can think of to gather the cats, if there aren´t so many of
them, then it´s OK, we can protect her.  But if we come across a fucking mini
army of the bastards, then we´re in the shit,” Remy said. “I don´t want to
endanger her life to save our fucking necks.  We can survive in the jungle,
even if we get caught we can always try run off again, but Yvonne can´t.  She
can´t heal quick enough either, we´ve got to keep her safe, I just don´t know
how to do it.”

            “Maybe the cat
can help us, you never know he may be a valuable ally, let´s look on the
positive side, we´re damned strong cats, and can beat the majority of the
weaker ones.  If we fight together, then we´ll definitely be able to protect
her.  We´re one of the strongest packs on the island, there´s no reason to
think we can´t handle the others.  Of course, we can.  She´ll be safe with us,
even if we do have to use the pheromone,” Rafe answered.

            “Not all of the
cats have gone crazy, Remy, some are like us: our bodies may have been altered
but our minds haven´t.  We´re still the same guys as before, with just a little
cat thrown in.  There´s nothing that says we won´t come across a pack, and that
we won´t be able to discuss our escape plans with them, calmly and rationally.  Because
we´re going to need some input from whoever is willing to join with us.  Our
plan is too basic to work yet, and it all depends on the amount of guards the
Project has protecting the island, we´re super soldiers, not superman.  It´s
vital how we take the ship.  We have to do it so that no one thinks oddly of a
ship going off, if it looks suspicious then we´re fucked, they´ll radio in,
discover we´re the cats they´re trying to contain, and boom, we´re dead.  Until
I get nearer to the port, I can´t make any concrete plans either.  We need to
speed up, so that I can start planning,” Armando told them both.