The trees themselves seemed to whisper in the breeze all around her and the sounds of nighttime life hiding in the forest was a calm call. None of it was familiar like the things in her dorm or even that cell she’d called home over the past few weeks. But the newness here didn’t bother her. In fact, it excited her. She wanted to see more of this world, as if being kept in the dark for so long now had made her crave things that got to touch the light without condition. No one would ever imprison a tree.
She walked a bit through the forested area, touching the bark and wondering why she’d never bothered to travel this far before. Who would have thought that all it would take was a chance encounter with the wrong people and a little bit of wrongful imprisonment would lead to some self-realizations?
It was around the time that she was thinking she really needed to find out if anyone had a cell phone she could use to call her mother that a sound in the woods, distinctly not part of the quiet and calm sounds of the night, caught her attention.
It was the snap of a twig, the cliché sounds from slasher movies and thrillers that alerted someone that something was wrong. She paused. She stiffened like the proverbial deer caught in headlights. She didn’t dare even turn to look in the direction of the sound for fear of what it would mean. She kept still for follow up sounds, waiting to hear if anything even more threatening would follow.
So perhaps a nighttime hike in woods that she had never been to before wasn’t exactly the smartest choice she ever made. But she could get herself out of this situation. This wasn’t like the jail cell and waiting for help to break her out. She could actually do something about this. She was in a bit more control of her surroundings than she was before. She could do something with this.
More sounds. She strained her eyes in the darkness to try to see who or what her intruder was. She had no idea if they’d been followed out of the base because Lana had failed to give her any details and kept her completely in the dark, literally, the entire time afterwards.
And then more sounds. They were getting faster, closer together, louder. Someone ran towards her. She turned into the direction that the sounds came from, fists clenching at her side, ready to take on whatever it was.
It was something very, very familiar. It was Erik.
He slammed into her at full force, knocking her over because she still managed to keep herself as incredibly still as possible. Her legs seemed ramrod straight and her feet cemented into the ground. Until he hit her hard and knocked her to the ground with such force she felt all the air push out of her lungs. The empty vacuum left behind was uncomfortable. Then her still throbbing head smacked into the ground, rattling the teeth in her mouth.
She tasted blood. She’d bitten her cheek. She groaned.
“Alessia?” Erik coughed out. “Holy shit. They fucking—are you okay? What happened?”
“Take a breath,” Alessia said with a struggle, laughing internally at the obvious irony of that as she, herself, struggled to get a breath out without wheezing and pain. “Just, calm down for a second.”
“Did they fly you here too?”
“Fly?”
“Do you even know where the hell we are?”
Well, at least she wasn’t the most uninformed person anymore. Erik seemed wild eyed and terrified as he turned around violently and quickly, trying to find some grounding around him. Alessia kept her hands on him, trying to anchor him to something before his brain exploded or he took off in another dead sprint.
“I don’t know,” she said, honestly. “But Lana is with me. Is anyone else with you?”
“Drake—he—holy crap.”
“What?” She was suddenly very worried. Was he alive? Was he hurt? Was he somewhere far away?
“Big, dragon,” Erik managed to huff out, still trying to regain his breath. “We—fuck.”
Alessia put both her hands on Erik’s shoulders and squeezed until it probably hurt but she didn’t care. She needed him to concentrate. She squeezed until he looked her in the eyes and nodded, taking a breath and slowly blinking. She felt some of the tension inside him release but she didn’t loosen her grip.
“We ran into some trouble on the way out,” Erik said. “I don’t know who is who but at least one of Lana’s guys was a double agent or some Benedict Arnold crap because he totally turned on us as soon as we got outside.”
Alessia swallowed thickly and nodded. She wondered if Lana knew. Maybe that slight complication was the reason she very nearly left Alessia behind.
“Drake got the brunt of it—”
“Brunt of what?”
He looked grim. Alessia felt her insides clench. She nodded but felt the color drain right out of her. That was enough for now and she pulled Erik along back towards the camp. Lana was still there, glaring into the fire and looked up with mild interest to see Alessia toting a shaking, worried version of Erik.
“Well, there’s one,” she said lazily and sat back to stare at the fire while tossing an acorn into it and waiting to hear it pop as it heated up and then exploded from the force.
Alessia glared as she set Erik down in a seat by the fire and moved to stand over Lana who lazily blinked and looked up at her with a smirk and mild interest.
“One of your goons betrayed us,” Alessia said.
“First of all, there is no ‘us,’” Lana said, sitting up and resting her elbows on her knees. “You’re here as a guest, not part of the crew. Second of all, I don’t have goons. I have friends. And some just happen to be less loyal than others.”
“So you knew,” Alessia said, crossing her arms.
“By the time I figured it out, there wasn’t much I could do about it, could I?” Lana shrugged. “I was in the same boat as everyone else but please, by all means, keep judging me, lady.”
Alessia shook her head and walked away. She spent the rest of the night glaring into the dark and huffing loud enough to get Lana to roll her eyes when she heard it.
Chapter 11
Drake showed up in the morning and he was hurt. He woke them as he stumbled into their camp. Lana yelled at Erik who was meant to be the awake one on the lookout, but had fallen asleep from exhaustion that Alessia really couldn’t blame him.
Drake was covered in bruises and dried blood. The most prominent spot of wound came from a spot of deep red in his back where something had clearly inflicted quite the wound against him. He stumbled over the small batch of firewood they’d set up to keep the flames going into the night—though Lana insisted it was dangerous, Erik argued with her that they were nons and couldn’t exactly form their own warmth.
“Drake,” Alessia sighed out and rushed to him while Erik and Lana were both on guard at the sounds of being disturbed.
“Alessia,” he breathed out and it might have been the first time she heard her name falling from his lips.
She crashed into him, feeling bad for the sounds of pain he made, but that didn’t stop her from holding him incredibly tight and not wanting to let go. He smelled of smoke and blood and sweat and dirt and several other things but she didn’t care because each smell meant that he was alive and well, and in her arms. He slumped forward, putting as much as she could take onto her and she held fast.
“Are you okay?” she whispered into his ear, not knowing what else to ask.
He’d always seemed like the strong one, the silent professor with the constantly crossed arms and the loud, disapproving sighs. Now he was a crumbled mess in her arms and she was the only thing keeping him on his two feet.
“I’ve been better,” he laughed and then she felt him wince when he immediately regretted it.
She led him over to the spot she’d used to sleep. It wasn’t comfortable and it wasn’t what he needed, but it was all she had to offer him at the moment. He gently lowered himself to the ground and gave her a grateful, if very tight, smile. She didn’t move away as soon as his back gently hit the ground. She hovered over him, pushing some wayward hair from his forehead. He’d always kept his hair rather sh
ort but their time in the cell had caused it to grow almost into his eyes.
“You need a haircut,” she giggled, just a bit.
“Are you offering?”
She smiled and Lana scoffed. “Really? Right now? Where are the others, Tekkin?” Lana asked, coming over with a lot more force and a lot less kindness.
“We were separated,” he said, his somewhat good mood disappearing quickly.
“I can vouch for that,” Erik said, coming over. “We got outside, we got betrayed, and then we basically scattered.”
“Just what I like, having no fucking clue what’s going on,” Lana said, stalking off to pace angrily somewhere else while Alessia turned all her attention back to Drake.
“Where are you hurt? What can I do?” she asked and his face turned unfortunately serious.
“We don’t really have the tools to deal with the help I need,” he said in a grave voice and she knew he was giving into the worst-case scenario. She rolled her eyes. He was a drama queen sometimes. “I mean it. The bullet is still lodged in my back.”
Okay, that would be a bit of an issue for her. She cringed, without meaning to. He sat up and pulled his shirt off without preamble at all and Alessia completely forgot that they weren’t alone in this little campground as she gawked openly at the ripple of muscles that had been hiding under his shirt. She was no stranger to his bare skin, but it had been so long since she’d seen it and somehow, the additions of blood and sweat made it that much more tantalizing to stare at.
So now she was caught in a strange state of being attracted to an injured man, one from whom she needed to pull a lodged bullet. She didn’t understand how this was some kind of turn on; maybe it was the manliness of being shot? She didn’t know and she wanted to banish those feelings because she felt more than a little bit gross over the situation.
“Okay,” she said. “So… how do we do this?”
“You sure you want to get involved here, princess?” Lana asked. “It’s gritty stuff.”
“I can handle some blood,” she snapped back.
“Can you handle digging your fingers into a bullet hole to pull out the debris?”
Okay, maybe she couldn’t quite handle that. She tried not to gag at the imagery of that. It was more than a little bit disgusting. She wouldn’t show her weakness, not now that Lana had issued her such a challenge.
“I’ll do what I need to do,” Alessia said with a huff and walked around behind Drake.
A deep red spot had bloomed out over his shirt and had been there long enough that it turned brown with age and air. She could smell the metallic, salty air around the wound. If they didn’t get to work healing it soon, it would fester and then a whole new world of smells would come from the flesh on his back.
She took a breath and placed her hands on the shirt. She felt the muscles under her fingertips for the first time and tried not to shiver too obviously. The last time she’d touched him so closely they’d been alone in her apartment with the world outside, no barriers between them. He’d held her while they shared a cell together but this was something different. She looked over his shirt, working to remove it. If it wasn’t for the pairs of eyes on her from the others at their campsite, she would be sure to feel this as an incredibly intimate moment.
He groaned as he maneuvered to help her get the shirt off his back. It stuck tightly to the parts of his skin that surrounded the wound. He winced as she pulled the fabric free, watching his skin pull with it until it was finally willing to separate from the shirt. He was bare in front of her once more. His muscles cut shadows, even in the dim light. His skin was covered in a sheen of grime and sweat that honestly shouldn’t be as attractive as it was but there was very little she could do about that right now.
The picture-perfect muscles, however, gave way to a rather unsightly wound in Drake’s back. The skin around the puckered spot was red and irritated, only getting darker and coarser the closer to the wound it got. The hole itself was dark and weeping blood and it took all of Alessia’s energy not to vomit on sight. She’d only seen things like this in TV shows and movies. But now a real, bleeding bullet wound stared back at her in the middle of a forest in Northern California and she just had it out with someone over how much she totally could one hundred percent handle digging this bullet out of the back of her friend—well, lover. Somehow that made this all the more complicated.
“Whenever you want to go for it, there girl,” Lana said from across the way and Alessia didn’t even have to look at her to know she was smirking.
She had no idea how to do this. The wound looked so small. Was she supposed to just take her fingers and… Nope, can’t do it.
She backed away, not caring about her pride. She couldn’t bring herself to shove her hand into the open wound of anyone, not even Drake. She put her hands in the air in defeat and moved away from him.
“Thought so.”
Lana came forward and took her vacated spot behind Drake. She kneeled down and put the flat of her left hand against the plane of his back while she readied her left hand for the expedition. Alessia decided to make herself useful by moving around to Drake’s front and taking his hands in hers. His face was already pained and he gave a tight smile that sent wrinkles all over his face. She let one hand cup his cheek just in time for him to let out a yell.
Alessia pressed her forehead against Drake’s so he wouldn’t see her closing her eyes to avoid seeing what Lana was doing behind him. Her imagination was probably far worse but she didn’t need to add visuals to it, something she could never unsee. He continued to groan and yell as she moved around, trying to get a hold of the bullet. He panted and panted and let out the loudest yell just as Lana whooped in triumph and moved away with a hand covered in dark red stains.
“See? Easy as pie,” she said and tossed the item to Alessia who dodged it as if it were a bug. Lana snorted and moved back to the fire while Drake struggled to regain his breathing.
“Are you okay?” Alessia asked quietly, feeling useless with the question but trying to do her best all the same.
“I will be,” he said with a tight smile and she moved to take his shirt and press it against the wound at his back which was now bleeding freely from the manipulation on it.
She let him lean back into her and she held him close while they sat and waited for their next move.
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 lou
d 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.
Hero's Bride (Alien SciFi Romance) (Celestial Mates Book 7) Page 51
