Silas (21 page)

“
Well,” I said, “we’re, um,
not exactly together.”

He shook his head. “It
really was not about trying to make the moves on her.”

“
Yeah, she’s, um, not
exactly the kind of girl who needs you to make a lot of moves.” I
rubbed my face.

He cleared his throat. “You
know, let’s just drop it.”

I didn’t figure there was
much else to say.

Christa reappeared and sat
down with us again. “So, I guess we’re not having a
threesome?”

I glared at her.

Emmett got up. “I think I’m
gonna try to get some sleep.” He took off to a spot about fifteen
feet away from us and laid down.

Christa raised an eyebrow at
me, grinning wickedly. “You want to snuggle, Silas?”

“
Um… that’s okay,” I
said.

I curled up by myself and tried not to
think too much when I was falling asleep.

* * *

I floated in the sort of
half-awake, half-asleep place where everything seems a little bit
unreal. I was hovering in sensation
—sweetness radiated through me, starting at the root of my
cock and flowing through the rest of my body.

My eyes were closed. I
wasn’t quite awake. So, at first, all I knew was a fervent throb,
my body grasping for deeper pleasure, yearning for
release.

A minute later, I realized
that someone was touching me. There was a hand on my cock, gripping
it tightly, dragging itself up and down over my sensitive flesh. I
was rigid and huge, so fucking aroused.

I sighed.

It was good.

It was really good.

Instinctively, I reached out
for the person touching me and was rewarded by the softness of
female flesh. My hands wandered over her body, finding the springy
give of her breasts. I closed my hand around one, gently
squeezing.

My hand was moved. A soft
voice whispered, “Shh, that’s okay.”

What the hell was going on?

The hand on my dick was
moving frantically on me, tugging me in the most pleasant of ways,
urging my desire along. I groaned softly. I felt like I might burst
at any second. I was lost in how thrilling it felt.

I struggled to open my eyes.

Christa was next to me. It
was dark. There were dry leaves under my body, shadowy trees
blocking out the night sky above.

We were in the woods.

We were in the woods, and
Christa was jerking me off. She looked straight into my eyes as she
did it, but I didn’t like her expression. There was something odd
in it—a mixture of triumph and derision.

I wanted to stop her.

But I was too caught up in
it, then. I couldn’t.

Her expert hands moved on me, clutching
me tightly, slamming back and forth.

My climax had already been
building, and it washed over me now, before I had the chance to say
or do anything.

I grunted, my entire body going stiff
as rapture jolted through me.

Christa pressed my cock against the
ground, and I spilled out onto the leaves, spasming again and
again.

She let go of me, and I
gasped for breath, stunned and confused.

I watched her wipe her hand off on the
leaves.

I rolled onto my back, away
from the place where I’d just ejaculated. I stared up at the
shadowed leaves of the trees overhead. I tried to steady my
breathing.

What the hell?

With trembling hands, I
tucked my cock back into my pants, zipping and buttoning myself. I
felt…

She was close, but I reached up with
both hands to ward her away.

She sat back, resting on her knees,
watching me.

I sat up, pulling away from
her. “Why?” I whispered.

“
You didn’t like it?” she
asked.

I shook my head.

She raised her eyebrows. “It
seemed like you liked it.”

“
Get away from me,” I
breathed. “I am not your toy.”

She gave me a funny look,
but then she nodded. Once. And she got to her feet and left
me.

I shut my eyes, thinking of Sylvia,
thinking of the other women like Sylvia, thinking of that same
triumphant look in their eyes when they had me.

* * *

I awoke to a delicious
smell.

Emmett had a fire going.
He’d caught three fish, and they were roasting over an open
flame.

I sat up, stretching.
Christa was still asleep several feet away from me. I got up and
went over to the fire. “Hey, you could have woken me up. I would
have helped you fish.”

“
Nah,” he said. “Kind of
would have messed up my gesture. I’m trying to apologize
here.”

“
Apologize?”

“
For, uh, last night,” he
said.

“
You don’t need
to—”

“
You know, I really wasn’t
trying to move in on her or anything like that. You have to believe
me.”

“
Hey, I told you that she
and I are not actually together. I’m only trying to keep her
safe.”

“
I’m not that kind of guy.”
He looked into the fire. “And, you know, I wish like hell that I
hadn’t done what I did to Diane.”

“
Diane your
wife?”

Emmett nodded. “She didn’t
deserve what I did to her. You know, when I remember it, it’s
almost like someone else was doing it. Like I’m watching myself
from outside of my body. It’s all hazy and strange. And when I came
to, afterward there was blood everywhere, and she was dead, and I
couldn’t take it back.”

Emmett took a deep breath.
“It kind of didn’t bother me that they were going to kill me. I
felt like I deserved it. And I didn’t want to go on without her.
Everything was fucked,” he continued. “Getting dumped in the woods
like this, trying to survive… I almost forgot what it was like to
want to live. But now that we’re out here, I realize I don’t want
to die. Nothing like running for your life to make you appreciate
it. When they kill you in jail, it’s all sterilized. They take you
to a room and they do it. They don’t let you take off. They don’t
let the adrenaline run in your veins. They don’t let you remember
what it’s like to be free again.”

I wasn’t sure what to say.
I’d been free before I’d been dumped in here and forced to run for
my life. But I knew what it was like to be imprisoned. That was
what Op Wraith had been like. Stuck in a place, my free will taken
away.

He eyed me. “You think we’ll
make it? Seriously? That we’ll get out of here?”

I settled down next to him
at the fire. “I think we have to try.” I paused for a minute. “I
think I kind of know what you mean.”

“
What I mean about
what?”

“
About it being hazy when
you remember killing her?” I said. “The first time I killed anyone
it was kind of like that. I don’t exactly remember doing it either.
I got through it because Sloane needed me to do it. Sloane’s my
sister. Anyway, they recruited me as an assassin because I was so
good at it. I was never good at anything before that. Being good at
killing is kind of the way I’ve defined myself for a long
time.”

“
Yeah, I kind of get that
too,” he said. “That’s what combat’s all about. Being good at
killing.”

“
Look, let’s just forget
about last night entirely,” I said. “We need to focus less on this
shit and more on what we’re going to do now.”

“
Well, we keep running,
right?”

“
We can only do that for so
long,” I said. “The hunters are going to get to us eventually.
They’re well rested and well fed, and they have guns. We’ve got
nothing out here. We’re going to get too tired and too weak
eventually. We need a better plan than running.”

“
I agree,” he said, “but I
don’t have a plan. I thought the power lines was a good
idea.”

“
And it was,” I
said.

“
But beyond that, I’ve got
nothing.”

“
Rolf’s the key,” I said.
“If Rolf was out of the picture, the others would scatter and give
up. They do what he says.”

He nodded. “Cut off the
head.”

“
Exactly,” I
said.

“
But how are we going to get
to him?”

“
They’ve got to have
someplace that they’re staying, right? A hunting cabin or
something? And they’ve got to sleep. If we could find that place,
and we could strike when they were vulnerable—”

“
With pointed sticks?” he
said. “They’ve got guns. They’d kill us all.”

I sighed. He was right. I
didn’t know what we were going to do.

He reached out to test one
of the fish. “This seems almost done. We shouldn’t let the fire go
on for too long. Too conspicuous.”

“
True,” I said.

I helped him get the fish
off the fire and laid out on a rock to cool. Then, together, we
kicked dirt up on the fire until the flames died into smoldering
embers.

We stomped on the smoking branches
until they went out completely.

“
You want to wake up
Christa?” he said. “I don’t know about you, but I’m
starving.”

“
Hell yes,” I said. We’d
only eaten fish and nuts yesterday, and we hadn’t had anything
since around noon the day before. I was weak from
hunger.

I started towards Christa.

There was a sharp pain in the back of
my head.

I reached up to touch it.

I was bleeding.

And then, I heard the shot. Like it was
delayed.

I brought my hand in front of my
face.

“
Silas, down!” yelled
Emmett.

Too late, I thought. I turned around to
look at him.

I was unsteady on my feet. I stumbled
and fell to my knees.

Another shot exploded through the
air.

Emmett’s neck burst open in
a spray of gore.

He screeched in pain.

I reached out for him.

But his eyes were going glassy, and he
was falling.

And the world was going out for me,
like paper burning at the edges.

CHAPTER
FOURTEEN

I woke up to jeering laughter. I opened
my eyes.

I was lying right where I’d
fallen. I could see Emmett’s body lying on the ground. His eyes
were wide open, and he was staring blankly at the sky. There was
blood everywhere.

He wasn’t the one
laughing.

I pushed myself to my feet, looking
around.

The laughing
stopped.

“
You really don’t die, do
you?”

I turned around.

The hunter was standing over Christa.
She was lying on her back, gazing up at him warily, her hands up in
a protective gesture.

He had a shotgun. He whipped
it up to point at me. “Rolf said you didn’t die, but I don’t think
I really believed him. Sure, I
thought
I saw you go down that first
day, but there were so many of you guys then. It was hard to keep
track of who was who.”

Well, this was it, then. He
had a gun on me. He’d killed Emmett. He could shoot me again, and
I’d be all right, but what would stop him from shooting Christa
while I was dark? We weren’t going to make it out of
this.

And the hell of it was that
that damned fish Emmett had been cooking still smelled so good. I
was really freaking hungry.

The hunter leered at me.
“Rolf said a lot of things, you know. He said that we had to save
you two for last, and he said that we had to save you two for him.
He said he wanted to take you both down personally. And he’s got
plans for this one.” He nudged Christa with the toe of his boot.
“All kinds of plans.”

I swallowed. “Why don’t you
just let her go? I’m the one Rolf wants.”

“
See, I don’t know if you’re
getting it. I don’t care what Rolf wants. He and the rest of the
boys are sleeping off a hangover right now. I’m the only one
actually out here doing any hunting. And I think that makes me more
dedicated. I think that means that I deserve the spoils. So, fuck
what Rolf wants. Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to shoot
you, and then I’m going to have some fun here with the little lady,
and then when you wake up, I’ll shoot you again. And again. And
again. And—”

A low growl escaped the back of my
throat, and I ran for him.

He was startled. The words died in his
throat. He pulled the trigger on his gun.

His shot went wide.

He had a McFarland Pump Action. I knew
the weapon. It was a standard issue from
Dewhurst-McFarland.

It meant he had to reload.

He was fast though. He had a
line of shells on the gun, and he grabbed one, reaching around the
gun and popping it into place without even looking.