The protectiveness in her voice made me smile. I released a groan of surrender. “If you let anything happen to you I’ll strap you to this bed for a month.”
“Tell me how I lose in this situation.”
Laughing, I lifted her chin with my finger and mashed my lips with hers. “Come on then, let’s go gather up our squad. We need to inform them about the upcoming attack and go over the plan for tomorrow evening. Then we eat.”
Needless to say, none of the guys took it well. Each and every one of them wore the most determined look, however. And they were especially jovial about the news of them covering the front line. In the past both Sam and I had, separately of course, taken the guys through the rainforest many times so they were familiar enough with it by now but still we took them again. What they were not familiar with was she and I putting up a united front and I could see how awkward they felt, as if not knowing who to focus their attention on. God that made me feel like shit. I’d done that; I’d actually let my pride get in the way of the guys’ training.
Thinking about the way I’d acted, it was a wonder that Sam even entertained my existence, let alone slept with me. I refused to let myself hope that there must therefore be feelings involved on her part. I’d told Sam I cared about her, but she hadn’t said the same. Nor had she expressed the same protectiveness over me that she had over the squad. It hurt more than I cared to admit. But, then again, she’d said it was only me she wanted, right? She didn’t dispute that she was mine. Even if it was all physical for her it was enough for now. It had to be, because there was no goddamn way I could give her up.
Chapter Sixteen
(Sam)
God bless the excellence of vampire night vision. The forest floor was generally dark even in daylight due to the canopy overhead, so right now it was pitch black. The humidity was bad as well; if it wasn’t for the natural glamour that came with vampirism my hair would be frizzy and wild. Currently I was crouched beside the buttress roots of a canopy tree, letting my eyes scan through the scattered, interlaced hanging lianas and vines and climbers. I knew I’d hear anything before I saw it, but still I had all my senses on high alert.
The animal sounds that I usually loved about the rainforest were gone tonight. There was a tense hush; like each and every creature was holding its breath, waiting for the war to start. I knew that Alora – who hadn’t spent a single second away from Evan since that meeting in the conference room – had already whispered news of the upcoming attack to some of the animals so it would seem that word had got around fast.
Taking advantage of our intimate knowledge with this area, Jared and I had placed the squad members on different levels of the forest. It wasn’t the same for all rainforests, but here it could be broken up into five vertical layers. At the top you had the overstory which was the crowns of scattered trees; up there were David and Butch seen as they had better agility than the others. Next you had the canopy which was the ceiling of closely spaced trees; there Stuart and Denny were perched because they had the next best agility. Then there was the understory which was the layer of trees that were spaced further apart than those above; there we had Salem and Max as they were the best climbers. Then there was the shrub layer which was made of even more widely spaced trees, all of which were much shorter; covering that were Harvey and Reuben merely because Chico and Damien didn’t like trees – or, more specifically, they didn’t like the insects that crawled along them – so I had to put them on the forest floor. Jared was supervising the overstory, canopy and the understory. I was covering the shrub layer and forest floor, but both of us were keeping in contact using his telepathy.
It was comforting to know that he was just a, well, thought away. I knew that no matter what he was doing or what was happening if I called for him he’d come straight away. That was why I had no intention of calling for him if I needed help. Another person would weigh the situation wisely and if the situation was that I’d need to wait, I’d be left waiting. During an attack like this that was how it needed to be.
The idea that he’d come for me like that though gave me a warm feeling. Just as it had when he’d told me he saw me as his. Just as it had when he’d been inside me that last time before we fell asleep; every thrust had been leisurely, deliberate and sensual. He’d held my gaze with his the entire time, and nothing in my life had ever felt more intimate. It had scared me as much as it had electrified me.
I couldn’t work out whether when he said he thought of me as his he meant he actually wanted me to be. He’d said he couldn’t shake the feeling off, but he’d said it in such an aggravated voice that I didn’t know whether to take that as him meaning that he wanted to shake it off and it annoyed him that he couldn’t, or that he wasn’t going to try. There was a big difference between someone saying they felt like you were theirs and them wanting to claim you as theirs. Once a vampire claimed someone for their own they bound themselves to them with a Binding Ceremony (a vampy wedding) and they never took anyone else after that. I couldn’t envision Jared making that kind of commitment with anyone.
God, if anything at all happened to him…
Even the thought of that was a lot to bear. I already knew exactly what it would feel like to lose him because I’d felt it with Bryce. But I suspected that it would hurt more with Jared. What I knew for a downright fact was that if I lost him tonight to Bennington’s crew I’d kill every last one of them. Where the hell were they? It had to be around midnight now.
You okay? Jared. I guessed he must have sensed my mental restlessness.
Just wishing we could get this over with. Patience isn’t a quality of mine.
Oh but you do have plenty of qualities to compensate for that. There was no mistaking what kind of qualities he was talking about.
How you can be thinking about sex right now is anyone’s guess.
Thinking about you makes me think about sex.
I had to smile at that. Then don’t think about me.
I already tried that, failed miserably.
Try harder.
After about ten seconds he came back with, No, it’s still not working.
Please don’t tell me you have a hard-on, I joked. But there was no response. Nothing. It made the hush about the rainforest feel even worse. Jared? No answer. Jared, don’t ignore me you’ve got me nervous now.
A few seconds later he responded: They’re here. That was Evan contacting me. A few of the animals told Alora that a load of vamps have just been teleported to the outer edge of the North.
That meant they were no less than a hundred feet away. Stretching out my senses, I searched our surroundings. I can hear them. Alert the squad. I waited while, telepathically, he relayed to the recruits what he had told me. We’ve been over this formation a thousand times so they better remember it or I’ll jam bamboo up their arses.
As the vampires neared, the tension in the rainforest seemed to increase. There were eight in total. Most had red tints to their irises whereas two had amber. Their nervousness and apprehensiveness was apparent in the air. I watched as, wearing clothes as dark as ours, they moved separately and stealthily through the trees. No covering each other’s backs or working as a team? This couldn’t be Bennington’s real army of firecrackers then; these were obviously the expendables sent in to test the waters.