Present Day
The downpour assaulted the supposedly waterproof tent as Lily cursed Donovan’s existence for the millionth time. Not only had she accidently ripped a hole in the top of the tent trying to pitch the thing on her own, but Donovan left her stranded in the middle of the Blue Ridge Mountains. She would have duct taped the shit out of the tear to solve the leak issue, but of course the tape was in his pack, not hers. He also had the map. She lost her compass, and her cell phone had fallen into a mud puddle and wouldn’t turn on anymore.
The cherry on top of the worst camping trip from hell? The one she was supposed to be reimbursed for when she turned in the nature photos she’d taken for a supposedly amazing freelance job? Not happening. She’d never make it back to get paid. Probably wouldn’t even make it out of the mountains.
Instead, she’d been dumped that morning. Donovan couldn’t have done it before the trip or waited until they got home. No, he saved it until they were in the middle of the wilderness, on foot, with only two days left of provisions. Maybe he thought if Lily murdered him, she’d be sure to be caught since people knew where they were and when they were supposed to return. But if he went home without her, he could hide her absence for at least a few days.
That’s Donovan, the party pooper extraordinaire, and wringing his scrawny neck would have been so stress relieving. Lily didn’t even have to murder him exactly—she just wanted to watch him suffer. Not that she was a violent woman or anything, but ugh!
Unscrewing the cap of her canteen, she asked the air around her, “What kind of man abandons a woman in the middle of the freaking woods?” The howling wind and rain answered her. She jumped as a massive thud hit the top of the tent and the canteen landed heavily on her bare foot.
“Ouch!”
Lukewarm liquid cascaded between her toes, forming a puddle at the end of her sleeping bag. She heaved an impatient sigh as she put the cap back on the canteen and tossed it on top of her backpack. There wasn’t much water left to drink, so she would refill it in the morning with the rain accumulating in the cup she put outside and the compact frying pan collecting rain from the hole in the tent.
Several more thumps, which sounded like a storm of pebbles, pounded against the nylon. A nickel sized ball of ice dropped into the frying pan with a clack as it slipped through the tear. Lily scooted to the center of the tent, away from the sides in case a particularly nasty piece of hail struck near her head; the last thing she wanted to do was suffer a concussion from a miniature cannonball made of frozen water.
The meteorologist who said clear skies all weekend would definitely receive hate mail when Lily got home. Strange, though, the weather seemed to worsen the angrier she became. That’s silly. You’ve had a bad day, so of course you would think things were worsening to spite you. Turning off the lantern to conserve the battery, she watched the shadows of the trees sway through the clear plastic opening on the side of the tent, letting enough moonlight in to creep her the hell out. Lily told herself she wouldn’t think about camping horror movies. She wouldn’t do it. Nope.
She totally thought about them. Every single last one: Blair Witch Project, Wrong Turn, hell, even Friday the Thirteenth and all the werewolf and creature features ever made. She even envisioned the giant killer ants from the black-and-white Them carrying her off to their anthill in the night even though, as far as she remembered, it wasn’t about camping. Ants attempting to off her seemed legit since they were plentiful out there. A bite on her ankle itched at the thought and she scratched it. Put an anthill on a path and she was sure to step on it. Every time.
I’m gonna die here. Alone.
If she heard footsteps, should she risk calling out or staying silent? It was the paradox from hell. And she felt chicken enough to let help bypass her until morning out of fear they were a psycho murderer on a slaughtering rampage. It wasn’t that Lily couldn’t trust people; it was more like she had to get the feel of them before she’d be willing to drop her guard. She’d trusted Donovan with her life, and look where she’d ended up.
Clunk! Another ice ball in the frying pan near her feet. What she wouldn’t give for superhuman powers so she could teleport herself out of there. She braided her long black hair as the hail died down, the disembodied wailing of wind the soundtrack of the night. Her thoughts ventured back to that morning, and she hoped to irritate herself enough to make the horror movie montage in her mind go away.
It’d been after breakfast when Donovan began acting sketchy. He would finger-comb his curly brown hair when he was nervous. He’d done so to such an extent that the curl had come out on one side, leaving behind an Albert Einstein appearance of disarray. He’d kept glancing around too, like he’d expected strangers to advance on them at any moment though they were completely alone.
Ugh. Did she really want to think about what he said to her again?
Thunderous crashes nearby made her consider squirming under the damp sleeping bag and staying there until daylight. Lily assured herself it was a tree limb coming down, not a murderous dinosaur from Jurassic Park about to have a midnight snack of scorned woman. Something was shuffling about nearby, but she couldn’t see anything out of the tent’s window anymore. The humidity and the rain had caused the plastic to fog over in the Georgia heat. She glared at the water dripping through the rip.
What had she been thinking about? Oh yeah, Donovan’s betrayal. She’d asked him what he’d been so anxious about, and then he’d dropped the bomb. Of course she hadn’t believed him. Not slightly wimpy, dweeby, “safe” Donovan, who, despite all his flaws, was a nice guy. He didn’t act out, he didn’t act tough and macho, and he’d never looked twice at other women as far as she’d noticed. So when her heart was being cleaved in two, Lily thought Donovan had made an attempt to be funny. He’d never had the best sense of humor, so it hadn’t been a total stretch. But, damn, his words would hurt her for years to come.
“Let me get this straight. You didn’t want to upset me, so you tagged along on my photography trip despite the fact you were planning on dumping me? What aren’t you saying? There has to be a reason why you can’t wait until we get home tomorrow.” Lily blinked again. She would not cry and give him the satisfaction of knowing he hurt her. “Couldn’t you have cancelled on me if you didn’t want to go? I could have called someone else to buddy up with me.”
“See, I knew you’d be upset, I—”
“Really? Was I supposed to be thrilled?”
“—tried to make it through the whole weekend, I did.”
Like it was her fault he couldn’t man up or weasel out of camping. Donovan always did hate the outdoors, and he’d had to take a tutorial on compass use and map reading before they left, worried that she’d get them lost; while she wasn’t the most skilled, she could read a map and compass well enough. His sudden interest should have been a tell-tale sign something was amiss. That and he’d never been keen on camping and had only gone with her because she had pushed.
Lily loved nature. Loved being outside. When she stayed cooped up indoors several days on end, she’d get twitchy. Especially when she traveled away from her apartment near the marsh in Charleston. Even though she had the poolside view rather than the marsh view, there was something about being next to water. The musty scent of marshlands—it put her at ease.
Suffering through a break-up in the southernmost part of the Blue Ridge Mountains, with Donovan acting like a total ass, caused her to rethink the whole at-ease-in-nature aspect. Lily crossed her arms and gave him the look he dreaded. The one which signified she was about to say something he really didn’t want to hear.
“Lil, please, it wasn’t even supposed to happen.”
Shit. The dam constructed to stop the tears dislodged, snapping in half by the conflicting anger, despair, and mortification. Lily didn’t know how to react to the devastating blow of realizing he’d do such a thing after five years of the happy, healthy relationship she thought they’d had—not to mention the fact they’d had sex every night they
set up camp. How could betrayal happen to her? What had she done wrong?
“Do I know who she is?”
“No.”
“Oh. Is she prettier than me?”
“Damn it, Lily, I refuse to dignify it with an answer.”
Lily snorted. That meant she was.
They hiked in silence for a few hours before she could stand to speak to him again. She should have continued licking her wounds instead of taking more blows to her pride by bringing it back up, but she didn’t understand how he would want someone else when she gave him everything. He had friends who were jealous of him because their sex life was so good. She knew Donovan had told them because they’d propositioned her and earned a hearty facial slap in return. Just because she liked sex did not mean she gave it away to everyone.
“Answer me this, and I’ll stop badgering you.”
Donovan inhaled sharply, like he was the one being ripped apart from the heart outward. “What’s that?”
“What was so wrong with me that you needed to go to someone else?” She couldn’t look at him when she asked it. Instead, she watched her feet while she ambled onward, hoping the final two days of their trip would pass quickly so she could escape him. At first, it didn’t seem like Donovan would reply. After a long pause, he did.
“Honestly, I feel like I should turn in my man card for even saying this, but you are way too high maintenance in bed.”
The ground reached up and grabbed her foot, flinging her into the dirt. At least, that was how it felt during her crash with the earth. The top of her pack knocked her in the back of the head as she fell, and she stared dumbly when her compass rolled out of the pack, over her head, and into a nearby bush. Lily turned and glared daggers at the tree root still wrapped around her foot.
“Are you okay?” Donovan practically peeled her off the ground.
She grimaced and blew the dirt out of her scraped palm. Her knees and her pride were bruised, but her hand bled. “First aid kit, please.”
She’d tend to her hand before commenting on his revelation. She took off her pack and the contents poured out like a piñata of hatefulness. Better and better. She cursed as she began shoving things back inside the bag, glaring at Donovan. She realigned the zipper on the track, and it seemed to hold. Donovan handed her the first aid kit and stood off to her left, hands in his pockets, appearing deep in thought—a terrifying thing in itself.
She poured water on the wound from the canteen and dug into the kit for the tiny bottle of peroxide to disinfect it with a grunt against the sting as she applied it. The cut was on the center of her palm, so Lily opted for one of the large adhesive bandages instead of gauze and wrapping. While she didn’t need stitches or anything extreme, she could do for some ice cream to make her feel better.
Lily handed back the first aid kit and waited until Donovan tucked it into his pack before she could no longer bite her tongue and stay silent. “Please, enlighten me how I am high maintenance in bed. Here I thought having sex practically every day for five years, minus a few days a month, was what a guy considered good fortune.” She hadn’t meant to sound so bitter, but there was really no other way for it to sound. From the obvious tensing up of his shoulders while he put his pack on, he’d apparently hoped she had forgotten the earlier topic.
“I love that you love to have sex. Really, I do. The problem is most of the time it takes too long for you to climax. I feel like I’m a total dick if I come but you don’t. And if I don’t deliver, you’d stop needing me. You already use way too many batteries a month, so I know you use your vibrator almost daily. How do you think it makes me feel, knowing I’m not satisfying your needs?”
She blushed. “Er... I don’t use it daily. Maybe once or twice a week when you’re at work and I’m too fidgety to focus.” Maybe every other day. Certainly not daily. And she inwardly scoffed at the notion she took too much time. They were lucky if the act lasted more than seven to ten minutes with him. Okay, sometimes that wasn’t enough time. But did he need to rush for it? Where was the passion in the “wham, bam, thank you, ma’am” approach? She had no desire to be one of those passionless couples who scheduled lovemaking into their calendars like a dentist appointment and then wanted to get it over with and return to normal. Furthermore, what guy used the word “climax” in a sentence? Douche.
“You’re horny all the time!” Donovan stopped in his tracks, closed his eyes, and turned his head upward. As if God himself may send the angels down from Heaven and reward him for his rebellion against a sinfully wanton girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to say it like it was a bad thing. It’s not. It’s fantastic and every man’s fantasy, but it’s just, sometimes I feel like you’re a succubus, and you’re draining all I have in me to appease your needs.”
Wow.
“Yeah, you are so lucky you beat me to the punch in ending this relationship. That comment would have ended it without a doubt.” What kind of man cheated because he got too much sex? Didn’t that make absolutely zero sense? Trading too much sex for more sex. What a hypocrite! Maybe having it every night made her too easy. Oh, no, that’s right. He didn’t want to work for anything. He wanted to spray his man juice and call it a night. Good thing he shot blanks.
“Don’t be mad, Lily. You wanted to know.”
“Oh, I’m not mad. I’m too busy thinking horny little slutty thoughts about the next man to use my succubus wiles on. Don’t mind me. Maybe the ranger on duty would like a quickie.”
They hadn’t spoken much afterward. They’d hiked until the light had faded enough to force them into making camp. Donovan then volunteered himself to gather firewood while she’d been in the bushes taking care of business. When she set up the tent on her own and he’d still not returned, she’d been mildly worried, but glad for a reprieve. Sometime later, she’d realized he’d taken his pack with him. With the map. She also discovered her compass had never been retrieved when she dropped it, and Donovan had taken his with him. He left her there, and it had been premeditated.
Lily knew she should stay put, but what if he was the one lost? Yet it didn’t explain why he took all his stuff with him without saying anything to her. Did he really leave her in the woods and go home? Or did he want to scare her? Lily always had a pretty decent sense of direction. If she used the placement of the sun as her guide she would do okay. She’d go in enough of the right direction to find a ranger tower or highway and for help. If not for her dead cell phone, she could have called someone or have had a working GPS or digital compass. But Murphy’s Law was a terrible thing, and Lily was currently its bitch.
Chapter Two
“You are an idiot.” Adonis rubbed his thumb over the cool, steel band on his right ring finger. He was sorely tempted to transform his thyrsus into a dagger and end Donovan’s wretched existence on the spot. He’d wanted Lily Anders scared and lost in the woods, but she should be focused on surviving, not doubting herself as a lover. “I told you to sneak away and leave her isolated in the mountains. What part of those instructions meant break up with her and make her cry?”
He really, really wanted to stab the man. Luckily for the human, Adonis wasn’t a murderer. Donovan O’Donnell, owner of a redundantly alliterated name that screamed Irish so loudly it was surprising the man didn’t have red hair and freckles, shoved his map and compass into the pocket of his khaki shorts and opened his mouth as though he meant to bite out some smartass retort.
Yet Donovan shut his mouth and blinked, gaze honing in on what he’d not expected to see. His eyes grew huge as he stared at Adonis’ horns, letting his flashlight shine on them with a trembling hand. Sorry, human. They aren’t a trick of the light. The rain had slowed the human down, who wasn’t much of an outdoorsy type considering how long it took to hike to the rendezvous point. At least he could read a map and compass and had, eventually, arrived.
“Do you mind not shining that thing in my eyes?” Adonis asked, squinting. The light dropped, but didn’t turn off. As expected
, the human gasped in surprise when the lowered beam highlighted the other satyr attributes. Yes, hooves. Ooh, ahh. Scary. I must be Lucifer. I must be evil. This gets less amusing every time. Adonis bore the name that had become synonymous with male beauty, yet those who saw him without glamour quaked with fear and repulsion. I didn’t deserve this. I wasn’t even supposed to be on the mountain that night. Ariston had told him about Dionysus’ offering, and Adonis made Ariston take him there. Had he not learned of it, had Ariston never given him an opportunity to seek a method of making Aphrodite jealous, Adonis would never have gone. He narrowed his eyes at the memory, his glare locked onto Donovan and his shaky flashlight.
When the mortal backed up several paces, Adonis grew impatient. His human glamour had worn off when the sun set hours ago and there was no way to hide his true nature at night. While he’d observed the humans earlier, Adonis hadn’t stuck around to watch the fallout after the fool had called the nymph a succubus, fearing he’d interfere if he heard another word out of the human’s mouth. But Donovan didn’t show up at the meeting place on time, and Adonis had searched for the nitwit, expecting Donovan to have gotten cold feet. He hadn’t, which only proved his stupidity. The nymph was a beauty to be cherished.
“I didn’t mean for it to happen,” Donovan answered, backing up only to trip over the uneven landscape. Where the hell had the nymph found this pathetic wimp? It’d been all too easy for Adonis to pay him to abandon his girlfriend, and Donovan had been bought off cheap compared to Bach Industry standards. Ten thousand dollars was the price of emotionally scarring his girlfriend for life. Ten grand and Lily Anders became but a memory to the guy. Donovan hadn’t negotiated a higher price or even acted offended.
“You may not have meant for it to happen, but it did. I’ve half a mind to pay you nothing. Now I have to clean up your mess, which is hard to do when I can’t waltz up to her and assure her she’ll be all right.”
The Cursed Satyroi: Volume One Collection Page 29
