by Katee Robert
“Okay.” Cami caught her under the armpits and awkwardly pulled Envy from the water. She lay her on her back and started CPR.
It took Luca two tries to pull himself back into the cavern. The knife might have missed anything too vital, but it still hurt like a bitch and affected the strength in his left arm. Damn it, he had to wrap up this Hunt sooner, rather than later. Taking on the remaining competitors would be tough, and that was if he operated at full strength. To do it while being cut up?
No use thinking about that.
“I think I just cracked her ribs,” Cami murmured. She leaned down and breathed into Envy’s mouth.
The woman seized and then water spilled from her lips. Cami immediately turned her onto her side as she coughed up water. Envy moved, but he moved faster. He grabbed her wrist and pinned it to the ground. “Tap out or next time I take you under, you die.”
Her dark eyes burned with hate. “You’re making a mistake, Famine.”
“Wouldn’t be my first,” he answered easily. “You knew the rules when you signed up. You’re leaving the Hunt either way, in a body bag or on a boat back to the casino to have a doctor look at those ribs that Cami just cracked. Decide.”
Envy reached up with a shaking hand and pressed the button on the necklace hanging around her neck, holding it long enough to register her fingerprint. “You got lucky.”
“Without a doubt.” He glanced at Cami. “Time to go.”
She nodded and wordlessly handed over his pack. He stood and glanced at Envy. “You’re welcome to stay here, but your best bet is to make your way to the coast.”
“Fuck off,” she hissed.
He nodded and motioned for Cami to precede him around the waterfall. He waited until her shadow on the water disappeared before he looked back at Envy. “This was a fair fight, and you know it. Don’t think to come looking for revenge—or sending one of your sisters to try for it.” The last thing he needed was to have the Virtuous Sins on his ass.
She looked at him for a long moment and struggled to sit up. “If I disagree?”
“Then it would be safer to kill you and be done with it. It’s common knowledge that not all the competitors make it out of the Hunt alive. A risk we all took when we signed up.”
Envy gave a tight smile, though her dark eyes were still furious. “Then you have nothing to worry about, Famine.” It wasn’t even in the same realm as a promise, but it would have to be good enough. He gave a short nod and followed Cami’s path out of the cavern.
He half expected her not to be there when he emerged into the sunlight.
But Cami stood there with arms crossed, her expression worried. “You didn’t kill her, did you?”
Luca stopped short. “You think I sent you out so I could off her without an audience?”
A shrug. “Even with her beacon triggered, she’s still a threat.”
He studied her, trying to figure out which way she landed on this. “Would you have killed her?”
“Not in cold blood,” came the prompt reply. “In self-defense … I don’t know. I’ve never killed a person before.”
Of course she hadn’t. Even with the training she possessed, normal people didn’t practice watching the light fade from another’s eyes. Most people never experienced it, went out of their way to avoid experiencing it. Luca cleared his throat. “She’s alive. Furious and probably planning my death, but alive.”
“Oh. Okay.” Cami pressed her lips together. “Should you change before we get moving?”
Just like that. She didn’t question him further, didn’t demand an explanation or his reasoning. She just … moved on. “Yeah, give me a minute.” He moved a little farther into the trees and changed quickly out of his wet pants and into his spare clothes. They were the last clean thing he’d brought onto this island, so short of washing his shit, he was out of luck for the next couple days. Luca tried not to let that knowledge bother him, tried not to curse himself and Amarante and Kenzie and even Ryu for his being in this situation to begin with.
The wet heat pressing against his skin made it difficult. So did the quiet movement of bugs and small animals in the trees around him. And the knowledge that he’d be sleeping on the hard ground again tonight.
Never thought I’d go through this again.
He made his way back to Cami, his mind embroiled in the past. “The last time I fought in the water like that, I was the only one who came back to the surface.” He hadn’t meant to speak, to divulge one of his many sins, but the words sprang up and wouldn’t be denied.
Cami looked at him a long moment. “How old were you?”
No use closing the door on that memory. He wasn’t sure he could even if he tried. Luca didn’t have to close his eyes to immerse himself in that morning, of being yanked from his cell and dragged outside. No weapons handed down that time. Just him, dressed only in a pair of shorts, and the other kid, who looked much the same. Too skinny, too afraid, too determined not to die. The fight hadn’t been quick, and the moment the icy water closed over his head … Luca shuddered. “Ten. Maybe eleven. The weeks and months blurred together while we were in hell.”
She nodded, all business. “You survived.”
Would she still look at him like that if she knew how many kids had their lives ended by him in those years? He must have earned something of a reputation, because the fights came more and more often toward the end, the audience of suited businessmen approaching the numbers of an actual crowd. Luca knew that fighting pits weren’t the only thing they’d peddled in, but he’d been lucky in a way.
He almost laughed. Lucky? It sure as hell didn’t feel like that. “Some days I wonder if it was worth it.” If he’d gone down in the first fight … Yeah, he’d be dead, but he also wouldn’t have to carry this weight, day in and day out.
She gave a sad smile. “That’s because you didn’t lose your soul in the process.”
“Don’t be so sure about that. Maybe I didn’t have any control over what went down in that place, but I have had control since then. I’m not a good man, and I’ve done shit that is flat out unforgivable.”
She didn’t speak again until they’d found a good spot to stop. Cami pulled out a med kit and ordered him to the ground with an imperial motion of her fingers. As she examined his wound, she finally spoke. “You survived. Before you got out of there and after. There are no saints in this world. If a person claims otherwise, they’re selling something.”
He wasn’t so sure about that. Not anymore. Cami might not be as innocent as he’d originally thought, but she was a good person. She hadn’t killed anyone, hadn’t dragged herself through life with blackmail, lying, and cheating, all in the name of revenge.
He had.
He’d do worse before this was over.
14
Cami had never stitched a live wound before. Embroidery? Yes, because of course being a princess meant she had to learn that outdated technique of biding her time that women used before they had access to the internet. She’d resented those lessons as a child, had been more than grateful to leave them behind when she was finally old enough to argue and win with her father.
Look at her now.
It turned out that skin was nothing like cloth, and embroidery did not prepare her for what it took to stitch Luca’s wound back together. He’d brushed off her questions about the slash on his forearm, but there was no denying the shoulder would needed stitches to hold it together.
So here they were.
He talked her through it in a low voice that was only the slightest bit strained with pain, instructing her how to clean the wound and the rest. By the time she sat back, a not-so-neat little row of stitches marked the wound. “It’s going to scar.”
“Another to add to the collection.”
She wrapped it in a bandage and put her kit away. “We should get moving.”
“Now’s the time to bolt if you’re going to. You might actually get away.”
Cami didn’t roll her eyes, but
it was a near thing. “I’ll bolt if you agree to engage your beacon and get someone with actual medical experience to look at that.” She nodded at his shoulder. “Infection is a real risk on this island.”
“Guess we’re stuck then.” He climbed to his feet, not nearly as fluid as he’d been yesterday, and pulled his pack over his good shoulder. He caught her looking and lowered his brows. “Don’t you dare offer to carry this.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” That was exactly what she’d been trying to figure out—how to take that burden from him for a little while. Cami glanced at the sky, barely visible between the intertwining branches and vines. “We’re more than halfway through the Hunt. Three competitors down.”
“Four.”
She glanced at him. “What?”
“Four down. There was an altercation on the beach with our friend Vann.”
“An altercation,” she repeated. “I see.”
“I told you I’m not a good guy, Cami.” He started away from her, seemingly picking a direction at random.
She watched him for a moment, and then followed. “You know, you’re not exactly putting together a good case for working with you until the end of this Hunt. You keep telling me that you’re not a good guy. It’s enough to have a woman doubting her choice to have really hot cave sex with you.”
He shot her a glare over his shoulder and, god help her, she laughed. “That expression is quite forbidding, yes, but it might work better if you hadn’t made me come like a dozen times in that cute little pool behind the waterfall.”
“Cami—”
“I get it.” She cut in before he could give her yet another well-meaning lecture on what a terrible person he was. “I’m playing the part of the fool, but I do understand. Your allegiance isn’t—and never will be—to me. Just like mine can’t be to you. It puts us at an impasse that will no doubt blow up in our faces on the last day of the hunt, but in the meantime, there’s no reason to repeatedly remind me that I’m being an idiot for sticking by you for a few days.”
“You’re insufferable,” Luca grumbled.
“You say the sweetest things.” She had to fight to keep her smile in place, though. Luca might be the king of mixed signals since she met him, but she knew better than to believe the lie their bodies told them. Words—thoughts, plans, alliances—held more weight than something as fickle as chemistry, and no matter how much she liked the way they fit together physically, there was no future for her and Luca. He would betray her to win this thing. Or she would do the same to him for the same reason.
Neither one of them would forgive that betrayal.
They walked for a long time, and she was content to let the silence stretch out. Better to hear if someone else approached if they weren’t making enough noise to summon the other competitors. She had no idea what kind of skillset the remaining people brought, but Cami had to assume they’d put in at least some training before throwing in their lots to compete in the Wild Hunt. She couldn’t afford to underestimate them.
Luca moved through the trees as if he was one with them. He might hate it out here, but whatever lessons he’d learned as a child in that horrible place had stuck. The man made even less noise that Cami did.
There were only three competitors left. Dolph and Liam and Edward. Surely that meant she could secure this victory? Again, her gaze slid to Luca. He was the wild card. Would he wait to make his move until the last day? Or would he try before then?
“Stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
He didn’t turn around. “Like you’re wondering if I’ll notice if you take off tonight. I’ll notice, Cami, and I’ll come for you.”
She shivered in a way that wasn’t entirely unpleasant. “Pass.”
“This island is full of dangers.”
Oh good lord, she’d thought they’d move beyond this. She knew this island was full of dangers, just like she knew Luca wasn’t an upstanding citizen, just like she knew what she risked by competing. His insistence at seeing her as something fragile and needing to be guided was enough to have her stalking up to poke him in his good shoulder. “That’s enough of that.”
“Enough of what?” His tone said the question was merely to placate her, and that only had her anger spiking hotter.
“You are insufferable. Do I have to remind you that of the four people no longer in this competition, I managed two of them—without your help?”
He stopped and turned to face her. “You wouldn’t have managed Envy alone.”
It didn’t matter that he was probably right on that score. He kept treating her … Treating her the way the people back in Thalania did. As if she was the slightly stupider, much less sturdy, and infinitely less capable version of her brothers. “You can fuck right off.”
“Are we really going to go through this song and dance again? You can’t run away from me because I’ll find you. You might as well accept my help—”
Cami kissed him. It was the only way to shut him up, or at least that’s what she told herself as he staggered back a step until a nearby tree stopped their motion and held them steady. That space of a breath was the only hesitation in Luca. He spun them, divesting her of her pack in the process, and pinned her against the tree. And then he took control. He dug his hand into her hair and tilted her head back, punishing her with his mouth.
She wasn’t in the mood to be punished.
Cami grabbed the waistband of his pants and yanked him closer. “I am so mad at you.”
“I got that,” he growled against her lips.
She rubbed him through her pants. He was large and hard against her palm, and she had every intention of …
But then Luca had never cared much for Cami’s intentions. He spun her around and waited until she caught herself on the tree to shove her pants to her knees. “You think you’re in control. You’re not.”
He palmed her between her thighs, his hand careful despite his rough words. If ever there was a moment that summed up Luca, it was this one. Angry and muttering dark words against the back of her neck, but still touching her with a borderline reverence. She pushed back against the strength of his body at her back, needing him, and he answered by sliding two fingers into her. Doing it out here, frustrated and in the open, was so much hotter than she could have dreamed. Cami clung to the tree and pushed back, taking him deeper yet. “Yes, like that.”
“Impatient.”
“Frustrated,” she corrected.
Luca gave that dark chuckle she loved so much. “Can’t have that.” He stroked her clit. “This doesn’t end how you want, little princess. There is no happily ever after. There is no anything after this.”
She hated the words even as she loved what he was doing to her body. Pleasure rose in waves, nearly drowning out the truth. “I don’t believe in happily ever after.”
“Liar,” he murmured against her temple. “You want to paint me in a soft light and pretend I’m something I’m not. It won’t work. I’ll just hurt you in the end.”
Her breath sobbed from her throat, but she refused to bend in this. “Luca?”
“Yeah?”
“Shut up and make me come. The only thing I want from you right now is an orgasm.” Liar, her mind whispered, but she ignored it. No matter what he thought—what a small, secret part of her thought—she didn’t actually believe that they had future together.
She couldn’t afford to.
Luca responded her to words, his fingers keeping up that delicious stroking in exactly the way she needed to come apart at the seams. She wanted to hold on to that moment, to unspool time and create a space where nothing real could touch them. It wasn’t meant to be. He pressed down on her clit and she came with a low cry, only his hold on her keeping her off the ground.
And then there was nothing left to do but breathe.
What are we doing?
She knew the answer, even if she didn’t want to admit it.
Making a mistake.
Luca
stepped back and she righted her clothing. Her chest felt tight and she really, really didn’t want to examine why. Cami was many things, but irrational wasn’t one of them. She’d worked hard to be impervious, and she couldn’t afford to falter now. She smoothed down her shirt. “I get it, Luca. I really do. We don’t have a future, and this is just fucking, and your only loyalty is to your people. You really don’t have to keep reminding me every ten seconds.” She finally worked up the courage to look him full in the face, and his expression was just as conflicted as the feelings slicing through her chest. “Or were you trying to remind yourself?”
“I never expected this to be so fucking complicated.” Luca glanced away and ran his hand over his face. “Cami …”
“As delightful as this show has been, I’m going to step in now,” a voice said almost directly behind Cami.
Before she could turn, a hand closed over her shoulder …
And a blade pressed against her throat.
Luca held his breath as Liam Neale stepped behind Cami, his blade at her throat. He looked like he’d seen some shit since they were dropped on the island. Dried blood caked the side of his face, and he moved with a slight limp. None of that detracted from the fact he had a blade at Cami’s neck. Luca held up his hands slowly. “Let’s be reasonable.”
“Reasonable stopped being a possibility the second we landed in this nightmare.” Even Liam’s voice was different, raspy and holding a deep rage Luca understood all too well. Liam took a step back and then another, dragging Cami with him. He towered over her smaller frame, could easily do her lasting damage, even by accident.
“What do you want?”
Liam stopped and really looked at him. “You act like this isn’t the whole point of the Hunt. Would you be this protective if it was Kenzie in danger?”
Shock froze Luca in his tracks. He had used Kenzie’s real name casually with Cami, but that was a different situation. No one knew the Horsemen’s true identities. Even with Luca originating in Thalania and having that dog and pony show arriving at the island as a result, there was still a relatively small pool of people who knew his given name. Only his.
