The Wilds (Reign and Ruin 1) (23 page)

I took a second
to twist my head around and look into the air past Lucan's
shoulders. He had his eyes closed to the wind and his head ducked
down into my neck. Beyond him was only white. It was an extremely
surreal feeling, like we were falling down a blank page. The wind
whistled up and over my ears and filled my jean legs with a cool
wind.

Eventually, as
we slowed down, hues appeared in tiny drips of paint and merged
together as they had the last time I found myself falling through
the quiet. The colors found contrasts and depths and finally shapes
until I felt my feet land gently on solid ground. As my stomach
settled and I took a long, relieved breath, the sounds and smells
of a warm, sensuous forest enveloped my senses.

Lucan gingerly
removed his arms from around my body and stepped back. His face
looked white, definitely ill, and his hands shook as he drew them
through his brown locks. I watched him lean against a tree and
slide down to sit on the roots. His knees trembled like leaves in
the wind.

"Just . . .
give me a second," he shuddered.

I raised my
face to the sky and fought back a wave of dizziness at the height
of the trees – which were, to say the least, epic. The tallest one
could have been the middle camping point of a mountaineering
expedition. The leaves were large and thick enough to float a small
child and tinged with traces of blue, reminiscent of a butterfly's
wing under the sunlight or the ethereal beauty of a stained glass
window.

Running my
hands along one of the trunks, I allowed my fingers to follow the
vines of their own accord, green spirals that crept up the bark so
intricately that in places the tree was completely concealed in a
covering of French lace.

The top of the
jungle prevented me from seeing any sign of Cirrus's purple cloud.
It must be hovering somewhere above me, between the beginning of
the horizon and the edge of the Wilds. But unless the Moth decided
to follow us down here, there went my chance of a free ride to
Cirrus.

"What did you
think you were doing?!" I said suddenly, turning back to Lucan. He
raised his head and regarded me tiredly. "If you hadn't pushed us
both off that cliff, we could be stealing his symbol right
now."

"We're in the
Middle Canvas, Maggie. We're out of the Wilds. Stuck up there, you
would have been helpless."

"Have I ever
come across to you as ‘helpless'?" I spat, kicking a tree and
pacing back and forth across our small clearing. I fumbled angrily
with my jacket and threw it roughly onto the leaves. "When did I
ask for your help, by the way?"

"When you got
me down off that pole," Lucan answered. His eyebrows knitted
together slightly and I could see I wasn't that far off from
touching a nerve. Well, fine. I was going to poke the dog until it
bared its teeth.

"Yeah, when I
got you down off that pole. When I saved you. And remember when I
saved you a second time, when I
shot somebody
?" I stilled to
face him. "You couldn't even beat up a man with the intellect of a
three year old."

"Timothy was
stronger than ten men, you know that!" Lucan gripped his knees and
I watched in cruel satisfaction as a tendon in his neck stiffened.
"I have protected you as best I know how."

"So what now?"
I yelled. "What now? We had three days, or what looks like two
now," I corrected, waving my hands around at the morning sunshine.
"We keep skipping time! If we don't win I will burn. And I won't
burn for a world as shit as this."

"If you think
it's so shit, maybe you should burn," Lucan bellowed, standing up
and thrusting his face close to mine. I could see every hair on his
chin and the scattered specks of indigo in his eyes.

"I don't see
why anyone would kill themselves over a world filled with so much
pain," I retorted. Lucan released a frustrated snort and turned
away. The muscles in his jaw worked and moved. It looked like a
hundred different comebacks were flying through his mind. But when
he turned back a minute later, his face had softened. He didn't say
anything smart or biting. He simply took a moment to study my set
expression and the hard line of my lips.

My anger
simmered just below the surface, not growing but retaining its heat
for the moment when he did decide to keep up the battle. But I felt
like crying and I certainly didn't feel like fighting anymore. I
don't know why I had even started.

Lucan
tentatively raised a hand to my chest and stroked the gold circle
hanging just above the crevice of my breasts. He drew in a measured
breath as he looked searchingly into my eyes, seeking something
deeper than just my anger and my resentment of everything.

A wave of
lightness swept over my brain, momentarily blowing away the searing
glow of anger that had been coursing though my veins. The edges of
my limbs felt fuzzy and grew numb but from somewhere I felt his
other hand gently reach up to cup my cheek. His thumb wiped a tear
snaking down into the corner of my mouth and the touch of his skin
on my lips drew my breath out with a sigh. My lips parted slightly,
like a flower opening to the advances of the daybreak.

"You think this
is a world of pain," he whispered, his gaze darting from my eyes to
my nose and lingering on my mouth. "But it's just another world. A
world like any other. But it's yours. By birth and by right. And
the minute you get that into your pretty, stubborn head you'll
realize it's worth saving. I know you will."

The sounds of
our breathing filled the space between us. Lucan's hands stroked
along my arms, up and down, up and down; pushing away the tension
and pressure of my fury. The rough tips of his fingers sent shivers
down my spine.

The
dreamcatcher pulsed and my eyelids fluttered closed, like the
shutter of a camera. Lucan was playing dangerously close to my off
switch, and I leaned forward to let his touch continue up my arm
and along my collar bone. His breath hitched. My stomach clenched.
Every inch of my skin felt like it would split open in tightly
wound ecstasy when the soft whisper of lips gently kissed my
neck.

"You are worth
saving, Maggie."

His whisper
rippled lightly over my ear. I could hardly think what he meant.
All I wanted to concentrate on was his hands drifting down to
tangle with the edge of my top and the skin around my hips. The
fever in my belly licked my insides as his mouth made its way
slowly along my bare shoulders.

His fingers
brushed lightly at the tender area under my breasts, torching the
ache that was centered below my stomach and danced deliciously up
and down my chest like the sea.

Holy shit, this
had never . . . never happened to me before. Why I was letting it
happen now was beyond me. But it felt like a gift and I couldn't
make myself stop him, if I deserved it or not.

I groaned
softly and felt his purr of approval resonate through my groin. He
shifted his body so that the tight curve of his erection was pushed
against my stomach. It was not enough. I wanted to taste him, smash
this twisted seduction and let the small fragments embed themselves
deep in my hot skin.

When the heat
of his sigh washed over my face and one deft finger worked its way
along the top of jeans, a throaty gasp pushed its way from my
throat and my eyes snapped open. I was awake. And I swear to all
juries that I lost everything. Every ounce of control I was holding
onto, every thought of free will or sensible, rational thought
escaped my mind and fell through my scrambling hands to the floor.
There was nothing I wanted more than to let go of my irrational
anger and pound hard onto something even more irrational.

I lunged like a
beast at Lucan, my lips finding his and moving against them with a
fierce lack of control. To his supreme credit, Lucan didn't blink
an eye at the sudden change of energy, but lifted me from the waist
and twirled me around to slam my back against the tree. It
momentarily knocked the breath out of my lungs. Lucan released a
throaty chuckle and ran his thumbs quickly over my nipples. I could
feel the hunt in his touch. My back arched and I needed to taste
him again. I had poked the dog and Jesus, the dog had bite . .
.

We kissed. Oh,
we kissed. It was painful and surprising and felt like a battle:
two stubborn warriors vying desperately for dominance over the
other, tongues sparring, lips dancing and fingers roaming over
every bit of exposed skin that soon each inch of me screamed with
the sting of sex. Lucan grabbed my head with both hands to twist
his fingers deep into my hair. They were strong and gripped like a
vice. It hurt, but I could not pull away because it felt like an
anchor more than anything.

I was a dancing
flame. I could taste blood in my mouth. His or mine, I didn't care,
but it felt so good to be equal with someone who possessed so much
passion. Our hips rubbed together deliciously and slowly, one hand
of Lucan's straying from my head to settle at the curve of my lower
back. He guided me up and down, our movements growing more frantic,
and his other hand working its way under my shirt.

It would have
gone further. I hold no qualms in saying that I was close to
begging, imploring him for something that felt so good, so filling
and bright. I had been falling and knocking on the sides as the
hole got deeper and deeper. And suddenly this man caught me. It was
rough and I was frightened. But at least I was still, for once.

I nearly missed
it, but at the edge of my hearing there sounded a faraway gun shot.
Lucan's lips froze and he pulled away slowly. We stood absurdly
still against the tree, panting like teenagers. We must have looked
ridiculous. Lucan quickly untangled himself from our embrace and
threw me a dark look. His eyes were hooded and blurred over with
desire.

"This . . . I'm
so sorry," he murmured. A small whimper escaped my throat as his
hands left the sensitive skin beneath my shirt. His bulge pressed
against his trousers, but he was already walking away, picking up
the backpack and looking cautiously through the trees.

Well, great, I
thought, taking a moment to smooth back my hair and find steady
ground again on shaky feet. My mind was still reeling, my body was
screaming and my skin felt so conscious I could explode with one
touch of his tongue. I was just about to ready to jump him from
behind but he wanted to cut it short to go investigate a gun shot.
Doesn't the possibility of some action usually trump the near
certainty of death?

But then we
heard it again, louder and closer this time. Whatever or whoever
made the noise was coming closer and the shock of gunfire finally
made its way into my brain. The cold ring of my recollection rushed
back to my mind, the silent backdrop after the Ringmaster's fall to
the floor and how hot the gun was in my hand. I was suddenly
shivering.

A hand clapped
me hard on the shoulder and I jumped. Lucan put a finger to his
lips.

"Pull yourself
together, Maggie. We need to keep moving." He patted my arm and
nodded towards our right where I suppose he had calculated the
sounds were coming from.

Leading the
way, he started to step quietly through the trees, taking care to
tread carefully over twisted roots and trying not to get tangled in
the creepers that hung like giant spider webs from the forest's
canopy. Every so often we would hear another gunshot; Lucan would
freeze, raise his hand like a commando, and then wave us
onwards.

There was
suddenly a gigantic thump. I jumped back in surprise as the tree in
front of us shook and upset away a flock of white birds that
chirped at the annoying disturbance. A person roared in anger so
frighteningly close that I instinctively ducked down to my knees in
case the attacker decided to fly out of the brush in my
direction.

I can safely
say, if it wasn't already entirely obvious, that I thought about
turning around and running. Even Lucan took a step back. Whose
crazy idea was it again to go searching for the source of the
shooting? Oh, yeah. My incredibly ripped but insanely stupid
protector.
Bloodshed? I like the sound of that! Experience? Gun?
Protective shield or at least a sharp, pointy stick? No? Aw, heck,
let's go!
Watching Lucan lower himself carefully to the ground,
I crawled awkwardly through the dirt to join him at the edge of the
tree line until I could see through the brush into the
clearing.

A man was
grappling with a woman. He grasped her neck with his bare hands and
was struggling hard to keep her fingers from clawing out his eyes.
Every so often one of them would kick a discarded firearm,
presumably knocked from one of their hands, and it would get pushed
further and further away from the fray. The man was dressed in a
sleek, black ensemble while the woman could have blended in quite
well with the trees. Even her face was streaked with green. But
right now all I could see was the white gleam of her teeth as she
snarled and fought to reach the man's face with her nails.

It seemed to be
another rite of passage for me – I was having loads of those lately
– but this is one they always tell you about. You know the one
where you watch a man strangle a woman to death? They teach you
that in personal development? Yeah, me neither, fuck that.

"We need to do
something!" I started to hiss at Lucan, but I stopped when I saw
the smile that was stretched across his face. He glanced at me
momentarily, reluctant to tear his eyes away from the fight, and
chuckled.

"Nah, don't
worry. Cassandra knows what she's doing."

"Cassan –
what?" I sputtered. "You know her?!"

At that I heard
an almighty crack and whipped my head back around. The woman,
Cassandra, was pushing the man away from her as he slumped to the
ground like a wet sandbag. His head lolled grotesquely from a
broken neck. For a few seconds, everyone was still, until the
noises of the wild crept back into our awareness.