Through the moving weeds and grasses, I glimpse black uniforms and the glint of bayonets. Imperial soldiers are scouring the forest for us, with Owen leading the search. I can hear his angry shouts coming nearer and nearer, until finally I catch sight of his scowling, twisting face.
At the sight and sound of Owen, Jaxon instinctively puts a hand on my arm to steady me. I glance at Jaxon to see his eyes trained on Owen with a dangerous, murderous look. His jaw and fist are tightly clenched, his whole body coiled with tension and wrath.
This time, it is my turn to put my hand over his, to remind him not to give in to this blind, destructive rage.
He turns to me stiffly, his dark eyes flashing and mouth: I will kill him!
I start to shake my head, but he is already taking aim with his gun. My eyes fly between Jaxon and the soldiers below. Is he really going to do it? Shoot Owen, and then have hundreds of rifles firing at us? There is no way we can outrun so many soldiers. They are too near, and too many.
I grip Jaxon's shoulder, and his eyes flick to me, almost viciously. For an instant, I see the soldier, the fighter, the Commander in him. I see how he is on the battlefield, focused, intense, deadly. He knows where the enemy is, and all he needs is one shot.
I hold his hard gaze for just a few heartbeats, but everything seems to recede from us for that few seconds, leaving us clinging to each other at the every edge of the abyss. His eyes seem to darken until they are completely black. The abyss stares right back at me.
I reach out to hold his hand. No, we are not going there. We will not go into the abyss.
I swallow and my lips slowly form the words: Don't.
I love you.
His eyes flicker with pain, and he closes them for a moment, his emotions warring, his two halves raging and battling as he struggles for control. The warrior, the avenger, clashing against the lover, the protector. Finally, almost imperceptibly, he nods. His better half has won.
I exhale, not just with relief, but with pride and love.
Tensed and alert, Jaxon continues watching Owen and his soldiers, his eyes flicking to and fro, anticipating their every move.
At Jaxon's signal, I quietly flatten myself against the ground, blinking furiously between the waving blades of grass. I peer down the incline to see the flash of white hair as Owen stomps past his men, swearing at them as he shoves them roughly out of the way. He tilts his face up at the sky, and I almost gasp at how much he seems to have changed in the last twenty-four hours.
When I last saw him, as my captor in his tent, he was bursting with pride and power, full of roaring rage and lust. There was purpose, cruel passion and a wild animal hunger in his green eyes. I see none of that raw power and emotion in those upturned eyes now. His eyes are now hollow and sunken, ringed with dark shadow. The fire that I saw burning in the depths of his eyes seems to have been extinguished, leaving nothing but ashes. He stares directly at the overhead sun, as if challenging the sun to scorch his eyes and blind him. But his posture is not that of a proud warrior. His broad shoulders are no longer thrown back, but hunched and lowered. Even his torso seems to be caving in on itself, as if he is about to bend over in agony. At a glance, he might look the same, with that shock of white hair, those angry, green eyes and that broad frame.
But I have seen him up close. I have seen at close quarters and experienced first hand his lusty, untamed wrath and desires. This man before me is not the same Owen who has indefatigably and obsessively hunted me down for months and ravaged me endlessly and mercilessly in his tent the whole night. The fiery passion and purpose that I saw in those piercing emerald eyes has been replaced by a crazed, feverish look of impotent panic and rage. This man is just a shell, a shadow of his former self.
Despite his violent stomping and raving, he looks lost and broken. Even his soldiers don't fully understand his mad, unintelligible commands.
Obeying his violent, senseless commands would be suicide. But disobeying their crazed commander would be even more destructive.
What can cause a man to deteriorate and disintegrate so quickly, and so suddenly?
“Find her!” Owen bellows, swiping at the nearest soldier. “She is mine! Find her, or I'll kill every last one of you! Useless, fucking idiots! Move!”
My parched throat constricts, making it near impossible to breathe. I had expected Owen to fly into a rage when he discovered my empty cage. But I didn't think he would suffer a complete meltdown. It was my disappearance that caused his disintegration, the realization that he has lost me again and this time, forever, that has shattered all his senses and his mind.
I blink and the forest before me ripples and morphs into a tent. I stare at the scene unfurling before my eyes. I am watching Owen as he returns to camp after a frantic, fruitless search for Jaxon. With wild, burning eyes, he rushes back to his tent, and stares at my empty cage for a heartbeat. Charging at my cage, he flings the door open and grips the bars, roaring in fury and heartbreak. I can see the torment, the hatred, the twisting rage in his face as he flings the cage across the floor with superhuman strength. Tearing around his tent like a crazed beast, he rips the blankets off his bed and sweeps all the papers and weapons off his desk, bellowing and screaming and cursing. His captain and some soldiers rush into his tent, weapons drawn, but duck and back away quickly when he hurls knives and broken furniture legs at them. “Where is she?” he screams. “She's gone...gone! Where? Why? Why! Where is she! I...can't! I can't...lose...her...again...” He staggers back, clutching his head in both hands. Tearing out fistfuls of his white hair, he roars, “No!”
He draws his sword and slashes madly, slicing the air, the walls of his tent, and runs his sword through the mattress, again and again. The blade of his sword clangs against the bars of my cage, as he hacks at the cage over and over again, taking his anger and frustration out of that blasted thing that was supposed to be holding me, securing me, imprisoning me. But still, I am gone, gone from him. When his captain tries to approach him, he lashes out. His captain stumbles back in pain, as Owen's sword cuts across the man's arm. Clutching his wound, the captain tries to reason with Owen, but Owen draws his gun and waves it at them, laughing and screaming hysterically before raising his arm and firing into the air. The sound of a gunshot brings more soldiers into his tent, with rifles trained on him. “You want to shoot me?” Owen taunts his soldiers, pressing his face against the barrels of the rifles. “Get out...” he drawls, slapping at the rifles. “Get out of my tent! Get out, all of you! I want her found! You hear me? Hunt her down. Find her! Bring her to me! This is an order! Do you understand?” he screeches. Owen abruptly straightens up, panting and leans hard against a pillar. The sword and the gun drop from his hands as he sinks to the ground. Cautiously, the captain orders the soldiers to lower their rifles and takes a step towards Owen. When Owen raises his head, his face is no longer a mask of hysteria and blind, destructive rage. Something seems to have broken in him, yet he pushes himself up and commands his wary soldiers, his gaze fixed on a distant point above their shoulders, “The girl is with Jaxon Ryleth. He is armed and extremely dangerous. Shoot on sight. Kill him! But capture the girl...alive.”
Owen turns and his emerald eyes seem to stare right into mine just before the vision fades and the forest returns. I am no longer in his tent, but back in the forest, on my belly, blinking the sweat from my eyes as I squint through the grass.
Still shaking from my vivid vision, I try to erase the last image of Owen from my mind. The haunted, hollow, hopeless look on his face when he turned his face from his men to stare into my eyes through the speeding, spiraling distance and time between us. The abyss between us yawns ever wider and deeper. He should stay away, far away from me. Coming after me, chasing after me, clinging to the dream of me, will just bring him closer and closer to the precipice, and sooner or later, he will plummet into that swirling darkness. And he means to drag me down with him.
I snap my eyes open and look towards Jaxon, who is holding his gun stead
y and following Owen's every movement like a hawk.
Go, Owen, just go. Go far, far away. From me, from us.
I know that Jaxon can put a bullet in Owen's head with just a squeeze of his forefinger, but I also know that Jaxon won't pull the trigger unless Owen discovers us and attacks first. I snap my eyes back to Owen, who is ordering his soldiers to move off in another direction, even as he shrieks and shouts, shoving his soldiers dangerously off the narrow track and kicking everything and everyone in his path.
I close my eyes and plead silently. Please, just go Owen. Leave me. Forever.
A part, a large part of me, wants him to go so that Jaxon won't have to kill him. I don't want to watch Jaxon shoot him. Not because I feel anything for him. But because I don't want Jaxon to destroy someone, someone that is already broken, and dead in all respects. It just feels wrong, to kill someone like that. And I don't want Jaxon to commit a wrong, for me. The main reason Jaxon has murder on his mind is because he knows what Owen did to me. He wants to kill Owen for me.
As the soldiers start to move off, I see Jaxon's gun waver slightly, as if he is debating if he should take Owen's head while he is still within range, or let him go. After a few tormenting heartbeats, Jaxon's gun lowers and he exhales a slow, shuddering breath.
His free hand finds mine and he grips my hand tightly in the grass, as he squeezes his eyes shut. In his mind, he thinks that he has just let a monster go, simply watch him walk away when he could have buried a bullet in his head and have him drop dead where he stood.
He turns to face me, his eyes searching, questioning. I lace my fingers through his and whisper, “He is already dead. But we...live.” We must. We have a future—together.
He reaches over and touches my face tenderly.
I love you, our hearts beat the same words.
We remain unmoving in the grass until the entire forest has gone silent.
After Jaxon has made doubly sure that the soldiers have truly gone from us, and we are safe to move from our hiding place, he helps me up and pulls me in for a quick hug. With a kiss to my forehead, he leads me deeper into the forest, burrowing into the gathering shadows.
The sunlight is rapidly fading as we make our way relentlessly through the forest. When I ask Jaxon softly if we are going to join up with Irin and the rest of the resistance fighters, he shakes his head, his gaze hardening.
As before the light disappears completely from the sky, Jaxon unearths a trapdoor hidden under a cluster of thorny weeds. After crawling into the tunnel after me, he pulls the rusty trapdoor shut and prods me from behind. “Go on,” he whispers. “Move forward.”
“I can't see,” I whisper back. “I don't know where we're going!”
“Just keep moving forward. This is an old, abandoned bunker. I discovered it when I was on the run. This is the route I took.”
I frown, but I start creeping forward cautiously. His words echo through the tunnel. The route he took? When he was on the run? So what are we doing? Are we actually going back to where he escaped from? Why?
I stumble out of the tunnel, and Jaxon's switches on his flashlight behind me. We are in the middle of a musty chamber. The chamber is empty and the ground is sandy but thankfully dry.
“We'll rest here,” Jaxon says, shrugging off his backpack. “Eat, drink and catch what sleep we can.”
As if in response, my stomach lets out a fierce rumble. Jaxon chuckles and roots around his backpack for his energy bars. He hands me one and I can hear him unwrapping another one for himself. I tear the wrapper open and just sit cross-legged on the floor. Now that I have stopped walking, I suddenly feel the ache in my legs. In three big bites, my food is gone, washed down with two mouthfuls of water.
I burp softly. Jaxon does the same, only unabashedly louder. Too much air in the stomach with too little food.
Sitting side by side on the floor with the flashlight between us shining up at the low ceiling, I close my eyes and listen to our steady breathing. Finally, I blurt out the questions that have been ricocheting through my mind for the last few minutes, “Where are we going, Jaxon? Why are we not meeting up with the other resistance fighters? What about Irin? If we are not going to rejoin the cell, then what are we...?”
At the mention of Irin's name, Jaxon stiffens and lets out a snarl. “She shouldn't have done it! I won't forgive her.”
“Done what?”
He turns to me, his eyes narrowing. “I will never forgive her, for sacrificing you.”
My mouth rounds to form a silent “o”.
I am about to tell him that I was the one who'd insisted on going to the Red Lantern, that Irin is not to blame, when he snaps, “She knew! She bloody knew. She knew that you must have been so worried and so scared when you heard that I'd gone missing. And she used that, used your fear and your love for me. She used you, Zoey! Used you and sacrificed you for her cause...”
“But isn't her cause the cause of the resistance?” I sputter. “Isn't her cause, your cause as well?”
“Yes. I fight for the resistance, for freedom, for the people,” he says, his eyes glimmering in the light. “But I will never sacrifice anyone, or use anyone for the cause. Irin used our love against you, to manipulate you, to trick you into going to the Red Lantern, seemingly of your own free will.” He puts up a hand to silence my protest. “She could have found out about me through other sources. She was trying to use you, and...get rid of you at the same time.”
I shake my head. “Why...does she hate me? It's not like I...”
“She doesn't hate you. Irin doesn't hate anybody. Nor does she like anyone. She's too practical for that. You are a newcomer to the cell, and Irin has had to accept you into her cell because of me. You have not been trained as a resistance fighter before, and there will be limited missions she can send you on. Anyone who cannot be of use, is a liability to the cell, according to Irin. So—”
“So I'm a liability,” I finish softly. “But I was a Siren in the Palace, so she figures that since I was a sex slave in the Palace, I would fit right in at the Red Lantern. That was the best use she had for me. The only mission that I could be sent on.”
“No!” Jaxon answers fiercely. “No! No one should have been sent to the Red Lantern! No one! Not you, not anyone! You understand?”
I look away. “Someone has to go...to try to find out what happened to you. And that someone has to be me.”
“You?” Jaxon sucks in a sharp breath, preparing to launch into a lengthy argument or rebuke. “That is just...”
“Yes. Me.” I turn to face him. “Because I love you. And without you...” My voice quavers before breaking completely. “You don't know how it was like, how I felt, how I feared...not knowing, not being able to do anything, to help, to find out...you have no idea...”
He folds me into his arms and shushes me, rocking me gently as I sob into his chest. “I know,” he whispers into my hair. “I know, Zoey...I...would have done the same,” he says at last. I lift my face to stare up at him. “Yeah,” he smiles, brushing away my tears. “I would have done what you did.”
I sniff and let out a heavy sigh. “And I would have been so mad at you! If you had...had...other women...” My jaw works furiously but no words come out at the unbearable thought of other women all over him, leering and clapping at his naked body and running their eyes, hands and mouth all over him. “I'll kill them! And you!” I grate at last, punching him in the arm.
“Ouch! That hurt...and didn't.” Jaxon's lips quirk up, a mischievous glint in his eye. “If you hadn't wanted to kill me and all those imaginary women, then that—would have hurt.” He puts a hand over his heart and gives an exaggerated grimace.
“You!” I put my hands around his neck and mock strangle him. Laughing, he leans in and kisses me full on the mouth. The kiss is light and playful at first, but starts to deepen as our lips part and we take each other with more urgency and hunger.
I knock over the flash light, and reach down to flick the switch off. “Conserv
e energy,” I whisper against his mouth.
“Mmmm, I like groping you in the dark,” Jaxon murmurs, his lips curving.
Still kissing my lips, tasting me thoroughly, his hands move down my shirt and start to undo the buttons one by one. Pushing the two halves of my shirt open, he nuzzles my breasts and slips a nipple into his mouth. I moan as he begins to suckle me gently, licking and teasing with his tongue. He plays with my breasts, his lips, teeth and tongue taking turns to pleasure me, until I begin to pant with desire.
Pushing me up, he bends me over so that I am on my hands and knees. My shirt is still over my shoulders, hanging wide open. Running his hands over my breasts and hard, wet nipples, he moves down to unbuckle my belt and undo the zipper on my pants. Sliding my baggy pants down my hips, but not removing them from my legs so that my pants and belt pool around my knees, he puts one hand on my back and pushes me forward gently. I hear the sound of his zipper, and immediately, I feel the head of his swollen cock pushing into the crack of my butt. He strokes his cock up and down, smearing my wetness all over. Breathing heavily, he bends over me and starts to fondle my breasts with one hand, while he guides his cock into my aching pussy with the other. I groan with pleasure as his cock inches slowly and smoothly into me. Dropping on his hands and knees over me, Jaxon kisses my mouth when I turn my face to him. His hand moves to my breasts and rubs my nipples in tight circles with the flat of his palm. “Harder,” I pant. “Harder!”
He takes my nipples between his thumb and fingers and squeezes, gently at first, then harder, until he is pinching my nipples and the flesh around it in quick, sharp nips. “Ah,” I throw my head back and cry out.
Feeling my muscles start to clench around his cock, he straightens up and grabs the two globes of my butt, spreading me open slowly. “Touch yourself,” he grits out, rolling his hips as he slides in and out of me.
My shaking fingers rub my clit as he increases his pace. The sound of our flesh slapping together reverberates round the dark chamber, and the scent of sex fills the stale air around us. Jaxon leans forward and grabs my breast, flicking my nipple with his thumb. When he captures the tip of my ear between his teeth and licks, I shatter completely. My orgasm crashes through my body in a pounding wave, ripping the ground out from under me. I cry out, closing my eyes at the sudden weightless sensation, as every nerve in my body comes alive with pleasure. Collapsing on my elbows, I blink rapidly and push myself up. Jaxon's arms are around my waist, supporting me, keeping me from falling flat on my face.
Release In The Dark (DARK erotic romance series) Page 13
