Second Nature (When Seconds Count)

by D. L. Roan

  Chapter Sixteen

  The crisp snap of another twig sent Thalia crouching to the ground, her last breath seizing in her lungs as she listened through the darkness. Despite the cooler night air, beads of sweat ran down her neck and trickled between her breasts, the thin cloth of her shirt sticking to her back. She ignored the ache her position caused to her still sore thigh and peered into the pitch black expanse where the noise had come from. Something was stalking her.

  The moon had been hanging high and bright in the sky when she snuck out of the compound hours ago, calming her anxiety over not being able to find a flashlight. Thick clouds had settled in and now she was lucky to see her hand in front of her face. Shit. Her head snapped around, her fingers tightening around the gun in her hand at the sound of the leaves rustling behind her. Make that two somethings.

  She had no clue how far she’d gotten. At this rate she would reach the service road she’d seen on the map she’d pulled up on Grant’s computer sometime near her thirtieth birthday…if she lived that long. Her skin prickled under the heavy weight of the eyes that were watching her. For the last half hour she’d felt them zeroing in on her, stalking her like the prey she knew she’d become.

  She’d foolishly thought that facing whatever predators lurked in the darkness would be easier than facing the one that was stalking her heart. She lowered her hand and searched the ground around her feet for a rock, her eyes still focused in the direction of the sounds in front of her. Her stomach tightened as an almost claustrophobic feeling swirled around her. Was this what a gazelle felt like just before a lioness pounced? That final moment when they raised their head from grazing to have a four hundred pound beast lunging for their jugular?

  I should have stayed with him. She just couldn’t. She knew what was happening between them. The way he looked at her earlier, she recognized the emotion swirling in his eyes. Gone was the dominant, controlling killer who took command of her mind and body to fulfill a mutual sexual need. In his place was a caring, tender lover who was intent on reaching her heart. He’d watched her face and her expressions, determined to make her feel what he was feeling, and she had felt it. It frightened her to her core. He demanded everything. She could give him nothing. It isn’t fair. There was nothing left of herself to give. She had already promised her life to Issa. She owed him that. Grant was going to take that away from her. He may not outright deny her revenge, but making her want more than that would garner the same result. Now that she was staring down the dark path to certain death, she wasn’t so sure she’d made the right choice.

  Thoughts of her time with him floated through her mind as her fist clenched around the rock in her hand. She could see his golden eyes, narrowing in on her thoughts as if he could pick them right out of her head. And the fire that blazed in those eyes as he hovered above her, possessing her body with his. She almost giggled as she pictured the goofy grin on his lips when she paid him a compliment, as if he’d never had one before and didn’t quite know what to do with it.

  I’m such a fool. Her entire life had consisted of nothing but one bad decision after another since Issa had died. No! He didn’t just die. He was murdered, and Jauhar deserves to pay for that. She repeated the familiar mantra in her head, but she could feel her resolve weakening as the faint whisper of Grant’s voice rolled through her memories – You heal my soul.

  She swallowed back the lump in her throat as she slowly raised her arm above her head and prepared to throw the rock in the opposite direction of where she would run. She had no clue if whatever was stalking her would come after her or go for the rock. She readied her gun and prepared to sprint as fast and hard as she could, praying she would find somewhere to hide until the sun came up. Hopefully, if her plan didn’t totally work, only one of them would follow her. She had a full magazine, but it was hard to aim when you couldn’t see what you were shooting at. Her legs tensed, her feet shifting inside her shoes as she prepared to run. Another twig broke in front of her as she took in a few deep breaths and cocked her arm back as far as she could.

  “Thalia, don’t move.”

  Grant’s deep voice filled her ears and blazed through her body like a violent bolt of lightning. A loud, high-pitched growl sang through the night air. Less than a second later, a bright burst of muzzle-flash exploded into the darkness behind her, a deafening boom rattling her bones as she was pushed to the ground by an unseen force. A scream lodged in her throat and she pushed against the weight of the animal, unable to free herself from its heavy weight.

  “Get it off me!” Her heels dug into the dirt and pushed her backwards as Grant peeled the smelly beast from her body. Her fingers grasped and clawed for purchase before she grabbed onto Grant as he lifted her into his arms. “Oh, shit. Oh, shit.” She panted for breath as her head spun to look into the darkness around them. “There was another one. Where’d it go?”

  “Shh. I’ve got you.” She felt the coolness seep into her backside as he set her down on a nearby boulder. “There was only one.”

  She shook her head, but before the protest could pass her lips, understanding flooded her fear soaked brain. “It was you?” She squinted and held her hand up to shield her eyes from the bright, blessed beam that shone from the flashlight he pulled from his backpack. “You were following me this whole damn time?”

  She didn’t need to see his face to know she had just unleashed another lethal beast. She could feel his anger rolling over her like an ominous fog. “You do not want to have this conversation right now,” he spat through his clenched teeth.

  His hands never stopped moving over her body as he glared at her. It was making her already frantic heartbeat do funny things. She tried to swat his hands away, but he grabbed her arms, giving her a gentle shake to get her attention. “Are you hurt anywhere, in any way?” He crouched down and cupped his big hands around her face, forcing her to look at him. “And so help me God, Thalia, you better not lie to me.” She paused a moment and took a mental inventory of her condition, then shook her head in a silent reply.

  The last threads of his sanity snapped and Grant was on her in an instant, feeling her rapid breaths of life against his skin. “You scared the shit out of me.” Her heartbeat pounded beneath his lips as he buried his face into the crook of her neck and breathed her in. She’s alive. She’s okay. The words in his head, repeating in a constant loop, did nothing to sooth him. His hunger for her was completely beyond his control, and his hands moved with reckless abandon, the sound of ripping fabric barely audible through the pounding of his own heartbeat against his eardrums. Fucking hell! Seeing that leopard stalking her every clumsy move through the brush had nearly been his end. If he had caught up to her even a minute later…

  He squeezed his eyes closed against a barrage of horrid mental images. Her shirt lying in tatters on the ground, he filled his hands with her soft, warm flesh. Driven by a fear he had never known, nothing else existed beyond his need to feel her, alive and thriving around him. The salty tang of her sweat burst over his taste buds as he flicked his tongue along the slender column of her neck, over her bare collarbone to the soft swell of her breasts. A sudden euphoric sense of belonging and possession washed over him.

  “Ahh!” She hissed as he forcefully peeled away any remaining barriers of clothing between them and crushed his body to hers. Each of her muted cries drove him closer to some undefined edge of an abyss he knew without a doubt he would never return from. His teeth scraped over her nipple as he ground his aching cock against her, pressing her into the unforgiving rock and drawing out another string of hisses and moans.

  “Why did you leave?” He wrapped her bare legs around his hips, then fisted his cock and slid it between her slickened folds.

  “Grant, I…oh God, please.”

  “Tell me!” He held himself there, pressed against her but not allowing her to feel him inside her. He was a selfish bastard for making her say it, but something inside him was breaking under the weight of his need to hear the words fro
m her lips. Somewhere deep down in his soul he could sense their world unraveling, and he needed to have this one thing from her before it all fell apart. Gathering her wrists in his other hand, he held them above her head as he devoured her mouth with a punishing kiss, allowing his tongue the pleasure his cock had been momentarily denied.

  She writhed beneath him, struggling against his hold. Her hips canted and bucked, her legs tightening around him as she tried to pull him into her. “Tell me,” he growled as he fought against her attempts, his cock throbbing in his fist as he held himself at bay. “Tell me why you ran.”

  “You know why!” She released a whimpering sob into his mouth and he pulled back to see the faint glow from the discarded flashlight reflect off the unshed tears in her eyes.

  “Say it, Thalia.”

  He watched as she shook her head and blinked back her tears, her chest heaving beneath him. “Being in love with you changes nothing. I’m still going to die…ahh…”

  Grant’s body bowed against hers as he released his cock and entered her in one long hard thrust, sending sparks dancing along his spine that made his toes curl inside his boots. “Fuuuuck!” This wasn’t about making love. Every molecule in his body raced to claim her. Mine! Every stroke was made with the determination to erase all who had come before him and lay claim to what was now and would forever be his. All…fucking…mine!

  “Grant....I…oh, God…ahh…don’t stop!” There was no way he could even if she had begged him. His cock swelled inside her as thrust after thrust, her body coiled tighter and tighter around him. His scalp tingled as his muscles began to burn. Every tendon in his arms and legs strained against his skin as he fought to hold out for one more thrust, then another until everything seized with one last drive, flinging him over the edge as he came deep inside her, filling her over and over as the sound of his own primal cry filled the night air surrounding them. All. Fucking. Mine!

  I don’t deserve her. Wrapping her in his arms, he rested his forehead against her shoulder and tried to come to terms with his new reality as she continued to tremble and pant beneath him. She loved him. He had no idea what to do with that concept, or the fact that he was so far gone for her he would never be the same.

  There was one thing he knew for sure. He lifted his head and tilted her face toward his. “You’re wrong, Thalia,” he breathed against her lips. “It changes everything.”

  They lay there panting, their breaths mingling together as he traced the contours of her face with his fingertips, soaking in the similarities to the innocent child he’d seen in that folder full of tragedies. No matter what had happen to her, she had won. She’d beat them at their own game and would never be broken in his eyes.

  “Grant,” she breathed against his lips. He closed his eyes as her fingers trembled over his brow. “I’m so sorry.”

  He pushed himself up and pulled her into his arms, the fear he’d felt for her still fresh and raw, lying just beneath his skin. “Don’t ever run from me again, fossa.” He’d been hell bent on nothing but reddening her ass when he found her, but he was completely unprepared for the rush of fear and relief he’d felt when he’d finally gotten his hands on her. “So help me woman, if you ever do that again…”

  Her arms tightened around him. They stood there together in the silent darkness as his body caught up to the knowledge that she was okay. He wasn’t completely sure he’d satisfied his need to hold her when he felt a shiver run through her thin frame. “Christ, woman. You’re freezing.”

  He was such an idiot. Seeing the tattered remains of her shirt on the ground behind her, he pulled his own shirt over his head and handed it to her. “Put that on.” He pulled up his own damn pants and retrieved hers from the ground, shaking them out before he handed them to her. “I’ll collect your boots.” Hell, he’d been in such a frenzy he didn’t even remember removing them. He handed them to her then collected the flashlight and his backpack, reaching into hers to retrieve his sat phone.

  Flipping it off standby, he scrolled through the call log and bit back a curse when he saw the last dialed number. “You called Jauhar.”

  She bit her thumbnail and nodded. “But I didn’t talk to him. One of his men picked up and I…I just couldn’t do it. I hung up without saying anything.”

  “Fuck!” Grant pulled up his pant leg and drew the knife from his boot, ignoring the flash of panic that washed over her face when she saw it. “Well, at least you only have half a death wish.” He stepped over to the dead leopard and sat the two backpacks down in the dirt next to the animal.

  “What are you going to do?”

  Ignoring her for the moment, he grabbed ahold of one of the big cat’s front legs and rolled it onto its back. With the point of his knife he made a long slit in its skin, straight up the middle of its belly, careful not to cut past the flesh and fur. He pulled the skin away and emptied the carcass of its inner contents. He took the sat phone apart and removed the memory stick which held all the tracking data and then stuffed it and the phone inside the animal.

  “Grant, why…?”

  He turned and motioned toward his backpack. “There’s a bottle of water in the outer pocket. Get it and open it up for me.” He held out his hands as she poured the water over them, washing off the traces of the animal’s blood. “If we’re lucky, something bigger then she is will eat the phone whole, and Jauhar’s men will be chasing their asses out here long enough to give us time to get the fuck out of here.”

  “What?” She looked at the cat and then back to him. Even in the darkness he could see her confusion. “How would they know where to find it?”

  He reached into his backpack and pulled out the other satellite phone, keying up the GPS locator application. “Same way I found you.” He handed the phone to her and grabbed the bottle of water from her hands. Wiping down his knife, he nodded to the slain leopard. “We need to get moving. The smell of that blood will have this place crawling with scavengers before dawn.”

  He slipped the knife back into its sheath and slung his rifle over his shoulder. Grabbing up his backpack, he handed hers to her and kissed the tip of her nose. The look of shock on her face was almost as entertaining as when she was angry. Almost. “You got your gun?”

  Thalia nodded and took the backpack from his hand. He laughed and shook his head. Yeah, speechless was a damn good look for her. If they weren’t mired in the middle of a shit storm, he might take a few moments to enjoy it. As it was, they’d be lucky to get through the next day alive.

  He took her hand and pulled her past the leopard, further into the brush, holding back a disgruntled groan as she pulled against his hand. “Where are we going? The compound is the other way.”

  “Can’t go back there.” He’d thought about it, but it wasn’t a smart idea. “It’s the only structure within forty miles in any direction. This close to the satellite signal, it won’t take them long to put two and two together and hit the compound.”

  He hated leaving the chopper behind. It would be a hell of a lot quicker and safer than trudging through the brush, but he couldn’t chance that Jauhar hadn’t already closed in on the place. Players like him had men everywhere, forces that could be mobilized and deployed in minutes to almost any location. If they’d been anywhere but out in the middle of nowhere he wouldn’t chance moving out at all, calling in for a pick up instead. As the first bright rays of the sun pierced the early dawn sky, he could already see the buzzards gathering overhead. He just might need to do that anyway. Telling her about her father would have to wait.

  Chapter Seventeen

  As she waited in the stolen, dilapidated jeep for Grant to return, Thalia reached up and scratched her scalp. Her entire body itched, and the funk wafting from her dirty clothes was nothing less than disgusting. She’d never craved for a shower so badly in her life. She didn’t once question her sanity as she imagined herself wrestling the crocodiles out of her way if they by chance passed a decent stream before they found a place to crash.

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sp; Her eyes closed against the hot sun which had sliced its way across the sky and now teetered on the edge of the horizon, mocking her undeniable thirst and withered skin. She would have wandered around in that godforsaken brush for a month before eventually dying of dehydration at best if Grant hadn’t followed her. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Depressingly, yet again, he had been completely right. The decision to leave was reckless on so many levels, but she had panicked and wasn’t thinking straight at all. Aside from her complete lack of wilderness survival training, he’d also pointed out that several of her wounds were still fresh enough to attract a predator’s attention from a mile away. Thank you once again, Captain Obvious-To-Everyone-But-Me.

  The terrain they’d hiked through to get to anything even resembling a road was nothing like what she’d imagined when she map searched it on Grant’s computer. The brush was eight feet tall in some places with huge muddy ponds surrounded by animals she’d only seen in pictures. It was a wonder anything could smell their scent over the wild animal stench that permeated the open air, but Grant was careful to lead them in a wide circle around the gathering animals, which seemed to make their trek through the wilderness a never ending venture. She had been a nervous wreck when they passed the first pond, scared to even breathe. Of course, almost passing out from lack of oxygen every ten steps hadn’t worked too well either. She didn’t think she would ever miss that crazy monkey, but by the time they passed the third group of rhinos and Grant had pointed out a lion pacing in the not too distant brush, she craved Winston’s silliness and hint of domestication.

  Voices in the distance caught her attention, and she opened her eyes to see Grant approaching the car from the ramshackle roadside market, a man who she presumed to be the owner waving him off. Her eyes were drawn to Grant’s wide shoulders and thick chest. She studied how stealthily he moved. Even walking next to him in the brush, she had rarely heard him make a sound. How was that possible?