Chapter 12

That next move didn’t come by the time nightfall came to their campsite. In fact, the stars were out in full force, their fire was on its third round of new, fresh wood, and they still were sitting and waiting. Lana insisted they couldn’t move on without the entire group and kept shooting glares at Drake and Erik as if they somehow had something to do with the disappearance of her fellow conspirators. Lana was someone who didn’t trust a single soul beside herself. Alessia wanted to break through that mold, just a little bit. They’d been a strange sort of friends during her time as captive and Lana’s role as captor.

But maybe that was just for show because it was gone now. Lana was nothing but tense and glaring and Alessia felt like she lost the one friend she made during this whole excursion. Maybe that’s how Stockholm Syndrome attacked; they play good cop and bad cop until she find herself missing the comforts and safety of that cell she’d been shoved into.

She wouldn’t mind if Lana gave her a kind look right about now. But everything was quiet and Drake was in her lap. He winced, every so often, in pain. She assumed it was pangs of residual hurt and she monitored the wound carefully to make sure infection wasn’t settling in. It was irritated and painful looking but it wasn’t any angrier looking than it had been before, even after Lana had gone digging to pull out the bullet. Alessia took that as a good sign. Maybe one of their missing group members was the medical expert to complete the Mission Impossible group they’d somehow fallen into.

Eventually, Drake stirred. He got up without a word and stretched out, his muscles rippling as he reached for the sky and pulled on his arms to work out some loud pops and kinks in the quiet echo of the night, bouncing off the trees and rocks. Alessia really needed to control that whole being-turned-on-by-everything-he-did thing that had started the second his shirt had come off.

Her emotions were just high and her adrenaline was all over her body, making her skin simmer and feel hot. She watched him walk away, his ruined and stained tee shirt was clumped up in his hand. Alessia had a choice as she watched him walk away. She could sit there and stew in her own frustrations and hope that the heat of her skin shimmered out and she could get some sleep. Or, she could follow him and see if there were other ways she could work out that frustration, see if there was any sort of path to follow that involved her, and Drake, and their bare skin.

She really shouldn’t be thinking about these things and giving into carnal desires while they were on the run. But people did it all the time in movies. Why shouldn’t she get her own moment of fantasy and escapism?

She stood on impulse and followed him. She saw the slight quirk of his head, the fleeting view of his smirk and sidelong wink. He knew what he was doing. He wanted her to follow. She wondered if that meant she should turn this into a game. Maybe she’d walk off in another direction and see if she couldn’t get him to follow her down the path. But, then again, they weren’t exactly in familiar territory and she saw enough horror movies to know what happened when white people decided to do dumb things for sexual temptations or other vices. Best to just swallow her pride and let it happen. He could be in control for a while, she’d get him back eventually.

***

She never saw herself as the type to get a thrill out of public sex. Though the forest wasn’t exactly a place that she would consider particularly racy. It wasn’t like it was a Disney World bathroom or he had his hands down her pants at a dinner party held at her mother’s house or anything. But this was still the most erotic thing she’d ever done in her nearly three decades of life. And it was with a professor, of all people. Granted, they hadn’t set foot in a classroom together in weeks but in the fantasies of her mind, the fact that he was technically her superior and an academic who walked around in tweed.

She’d followed him into the forest, just deep enough that the trees could cover them in the density of the fading light. The small glow from the fire wasn’t so far away that it wasn’t visible. In fact, she could see the orange glow hitting his skin with a sharpness that cut a beautiful image that might have been an angel in the night. Their proximity to their own camp was another reason this made Alessia’s blood race, just a bit. Their friends were so close and so capable of overhearing them, or maybe even seeing them if they got too close. She wasn’t an exhibitionist or anything but she could see the thrill of nearly being caught.

Silently, he’d turned and put his hands on her hips; his skin so incredibly warm, it was almost swelteringly so. He backed her up until she felt the rough surface of tree bark through the fabric of her shirt. She felt the solidness behind her and melted against it, encouraging it to push her back into him as they instantly moved together. She could feel the hardening bulge in his pants already and shamelessly rubbed against it as he kissed her with a hot and eager mouth. She let out breathy moans, grateful that he was there to swallow her sounds before they got too loud and too far away.

She was on unsteady ground with Erik, the last thing she needed was for him to overhear this. Not to mention Lana would never let her hear the end of it. So she tried her best to control her sounds but all that energy went into her body instead. Her nails bit at the skin of his back, trying to be careful of the sensitive flesh where he’d been shot. Everything else was fair game, however, as her hands moved freely, leaving red trails in their wake. When his lips moved to her neck, she bit down and sucked on the flesh of his shoulder and it was his turn to groan. His was a low rumble that sounded not at all unlike the growl of an animal.

It only turned her on more and she’d have to evaluate later if there was some sort of fucked-up bestiality kink of hers hiding beneath the surface of her thoughts. But for right now, he was human and he was strong and he had her pinned to a tree and it was the hottest thing she’d ever done in her life. Her hips continued to move against him and he responded in kind—perhaps with even a bit more force. She was pinned between his strong muscles and the solid tree.

It was incredibly dizzying and she never wanted it to end. Eventually, her hands found their way to the waistband of his pants. Her fingers dared to peek just below the border between pants and skin, feeling the beginning of his boxers there waiting for her as well. She teased at the sensitive skin there, soft and untouched by the hardships of daylight and work. He shuddered and she kept up her ministrations, feeling that hardness push even more as she teased at the sensitive nerve endings that had been so starved of attention recently.

He decided to take matters into his own hands when he licked the button of his pants open and she got the message instantly. Before she had been hesitant and a little bit nervous. Now she wasted no time in diving her hand down into his pants and gripping him. His hips moved with urgent rhythm as her hand worked to meet his thrusts into the air.

One thing, as it does, turned into another. She wasn’t sure how they ended up on the ground, with leaves and grass to their backs, but she wasn’t complaining once he was inside her and moving, and everything in the world that had been so terribly wrong suddenly felt right. She knew it was hormones and the rush of endorphins from orgasm but she felt, in that euphoric moment, like there was nothing to worry about anywhere in the world and everything would be okay.

It was a feeling that wouldn’t last and would go away just as soon as it came. But, as far as she was concerned, it was just incentive to chase that feeling more and more any chance they got.

***

Lana had no way of knowing what they did. They’d been quiet and had been covered by darkness but her narrow eyes and ghost of a sneer told Alessia that she knew exactly what they’d done while they were out together. She ignored her. She didn’t feel like putting up with it and it wasn’t like she needed to explain herself to Lana of all people.

She dropped down to stare into the fire again and remembered the last time she and Drake had been together, he had spent the moments after shifting into that beautiful, shimmering dragon form and flying free like a victory lap. There would be no time or place for that here and it was clearly getting to him. He squirmed where he sat, by the edge of the fire. His shirt was back on but she could see how tense he held himself anyway. His back was ramrod straight and the muscles of his forearms were flexed.

She tried not to smile too much. Maybe she was immature but knowing she had that effect on him was a bit of an ego boost to her, and made her giggle on the inside (and maybe on the outside too). He was a brilliant man, a brooding intelligent person and the kind of guy that would have been built out of some modern Bronte novel. And there he was, frustrated and tense and wanting her just as much as she wanted him.

How would she not get red in the face and smiley about that?

“So how long are we keeping ourselves in this holding pattern?” Erik asked. He didn’t look any more pissed off than normal, which Alessia felt boded well for whether or not he knew what they’d done, but he also refused to meet Alessia’s eye.

“Why? You getting antsy?” Lana asked.

“Yes, actually,” Erik said. “I got roped into trying to find this guy. We found him. I ended up a prisoner for two weeks and now I’m God knows where with a group of people I really wouldn’t consider friends. I’m tired, I’m hungry, I want a shower, and I want my bed.”

“What high aspirations you have, you really must be a catch for your future wife,” Lana said and Erik turned to give her a deathly glare.

“Being captive has a way of changing your priorities,” he said.

She snorted and leaned back onto her elbows, lazily staring up at the sky. “You can do what you want, guy, but I’m waiting for my people. It’s not like we’re really on the same team anyway.”

“Why wouldn’t we be on the same team?” Alessia asked and regretted it. She really didn’t want to get into a full conversation with Lana, but she couldn’t stop herself either.

“Do you need me to spell it out for you?”

“Well, we have the same enemy.”

“Do we?”

Alessia turned to look at Lana then, really look at her. Lana was challenging her with her eyes, with her entire body. She wanted to make a point to Alessia and it was in their physicality. She held herself a specific way, making herself seem bigger. She looked down on Alessia in a way that was different from before. This wasn’t about arrogance and teasing, this was about power. Lana had power in her body that Alessia could never match, she had physicality that could completely rip Alessia to shreds and they both knew it.

But she wouldn’t back down nor would she let herself be afraid of Lana of all people. In this, however, Lana seemed to sense a challenge because she stood up. Her full height in her human form wasn’t exactly towering but the power that seemed ready to ripple from her body was more than a little bit daunting. Alessia held her stare though, from her spot on the ground.

“You and I aren’t alike,” Lana said.

“No, but neither of us are interested in getting caught by Damien Orlando,” Alessia said. “Or James for that matter. So, it wouldn’t hurt for us to actually work together.”

“You’re dead weight,” Lana said. “Tekkin and I are the next stage in human evolution and you’re going to get trampled or get us killed if you try to keep up. I’m cutting you loose the second we have all our pieces back in place.”

“You’re not cutting her anywhere,” Drake said, standing up, not without a grimace.

“Oh please, you could fuck anyone. Let it go, Drake,” Lana said, rolling her eyes and dismissing him with a wave of her hand.

It might have ended there, with Alessia’s beet-red face, Lana’s snarky last word, and Erik looking more uncomfortable than he ever had before. But Drake decided he wouldn’t let that stand. He moved towards Lana with unimaginable speed and took the hand that she had used to have him off by the wrist, holding onto it tightly and squeezing; even from where Alessia sat, she could see the white of his knuckles as he exercised his grip.

“Watch yourself,” he said. “Just because we share some outsider DNA doesn’t mean I’m not above tossing you off a cliff.”

“As if you could.”

“You want to test the theory?”

They were at a dangerous stalemate and Alessia wasn’t sure which way any of it would go. She was afraid to breathe too loudly and catch their attention. They were a pair of dangerous predators, staring each other down. She was the piece of meat they fought over, trapped between them. She could turn and run, but she was frozen in her spot where Drake defended her and Lana tried to prove she could swat her like a fly.

Erik was silent, across the fire, the entire time. But his face was tense, his eyes were hard. He watched everything incredibly carefully. He was the tense one now and looked like he might be ready to leap forward and defend her in whatever way she needed defense as well. But he stayed put, just as afraid of disrupting the air, making himself known, making whatever was about to happen any worse.

“You don’t want to get into a fight with me,” Drake said to Lana, inches from her face. “And you know it. So, calm down and back off.”

“I liked you better when you were ripping humans to shreds instead of defending them.”

“I never killed anyone.”

“No, but you certainly came close, didn’t you?”

Alessia gasped before she could stop herself. She clapped her hand over her mouth and tried to look away but Drake’s desperate eyes found hers, asking her to look at him. She swallowed and tried to regain the neutral expression she had moments ago. She took a breath and let it go. She knew he had a past, she knew he was part of things that weren’t exactly kind or good. But the imagery was something abstract.

How many people had he hurt in the past? She brushed it away, but he continued to stare at her with the eyes of a puppy dog that had been kicked. She turned to look at the fire instead.

“We don’t need to be fighting each other,” she said. “We should focus on our next move.”

“That’s the problem,” Lana said. “There is no ‘our.’”

“Until you kick me out of here, there is,” Alessia said. “So, we need to start thinking what’s best for us in the long term.”

With that, Alessia effectively ended the conversation and crossed her arms. She wasn’t interested in any comebacks from Lana or even any comforting words from Drake. She was sick of the fighting and wanted it to stop. She just wanted rest. Everything for the past few weeks had been uncomfortable and miserable and Erik had the right idea: she just wanted home where things made sense. She got wrapped up in something and was continually at the mercy of others.

She was done with that. So, she made herself comfortable and curled up as best she could on the ground. Her posture didn’t invite any comfort from Drake. Minutes ago, they had been skin to skin and now she didn’t even want to look at him. The only person she trusted right now and could tolerate was herself. So for now, she’d keep her own company and let the others deal with their squabbles. She’d escape to dreams for a few hours.