Chapter 27 #2
I got a momentary bark of laughter back when I took a skipping stride to up my pace. I wasn’t even sure where I was taking her. All we had was a tent for privacy and people were nosy as fuck. One rustle of that slippery fabric and we’d have people gathering around us like we were zoo animals.
Voyeurism was not among my known interests and I did think, down to my very core, if anyone saw Esme in that vulnerable of a state, there would be teeth on the ground and bones sticking out of a few choice locations.
Maybe the storage cabins were open. There were plenty of nooks and crannies and places to perch Esme while I—yep, that was good.
My legs burned as I all but ran up the hill to the outer line of cabins, but not nearly as much as my stomach was burning. There was a nonzero chance everything below my lungs had turned to molten lava.
Esme started to struggle as we got close, unable to stay still.
“I know, baby, I know,” I said, a near-painful feeling of urgency in my chest. I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a heart attack and the pressing need to get Esme alone, not for a while. Maybe not ever.
The Bond rustled in the back of my mind, its hackles starting to rise. In a different way than the abject terror at seeing that file or from the excited thrill of getting Esme alone.
In no more than a few strides, we’d be at the cabin. We’d be alone and the Bond could say its peace.
As if to taunt me, at that very moment, the door to the cabin I was aiming for opened, revealing a huddle of people playing cards. Someone threw an empty bottle out on to the floor, joining a pile I hadn’t noticed until now, then shut themselves back in.
Though my own annoyance skyrocketed, the Bond quieted.
“Fucking gambling,” I muttered, redirecting to move around to the back of the cabin. We weren’t going to get any fucking privacy, were we.
“Ooo, I want to play!” Esme said, surely just to piss me off. Thankfully, I’d made it around the back of the cabin by that time and was able to drop her off my shoulder and back her up to the wall, caging her in.
The sight of her, pink-cheeked and bright-eyed, made a thousand different thoughts slam into me at once.
Anger, for a time where she was pale and bruised and drained of life.
Lust, a sharp punch in my lower stomach.
Confusion, because I had no idea what I’d done in my past life to deserve her in this one.
Most pressing, however, was love. To the point where I nearly blurted out that I loved her.
My tongue was tied in knots, so I had to rely on touch. My hands came up to cradle Esme’s face, brushing my thumbs over her cheeks and finding no small relief in the fact that her skin felt smooth and warm under my touch.
Her hands moved to my wrists, wrapping around tightly. She must have felt my pulse, realized how hard my heart was beating, because her eyes widened with concern.
“Ford…” she said, trailing off as her eyes started to take on a telltale sheen.
“Esme, if you cry right now, I will lose my mind.”
The too-serious tone in my voice might have scared someone else, but Esme smiled. Just that was enough to kick my heart rate down several notches.
“Then distract me,” she said, her focus zeroing in on my lips.
She was playing me like a fucking fiddle, but I didn’t care. She could pull song after song from me for the rest of our lives and I’d go out happy.
She understood, maybe more than I did, that I needed something to focus on right now. Something to center me, pull me out of the thought of her hurt, and remind us that we were both alive.
If there was a healthy side effect of making Esme feel very good over and over again, then it sounded like a plan to me.
My body still didn’t quite feel in control, my instincts still rattled and shaken, but my mind was stronger and it had something very worthwhile to focus on.
All the sounds of the forest around us seemed to zap into silence, right as a cloud slipped over the sun, diffusing us with soft afternoon light. Distractions dulled, so that Esme was all I could see.
My whole world seemed to zero in on her, taking in her physical form and the energy wafting off of her, curling around me like a thousand tendrils of smoke, but with all the pressure of real skin.
Her eyes were like pools of pure sunlight, the kind that only materialized in an early sunset where the light diffused into a pleasant golden brown.
It was those eyes, so distracting, so imprinted in my mind.
So much so that I could still see them, even when I was no longer looking at her.
Still see them clear in my vision while the skin of my hand burned like it was on fire and something warm trickled down my arm.
Still see them like the hazy screen of sunglasses as my hand came into view and I saw the arrow sticking out of it, clenched in my fist in an image that shouldn’t have been as familiar as it was.
Though this time, there was something seeping through the blood, a thick, viscous material that, quite unfortunately, was also rather familiar to me.
Instinct took over entirely then, pushing me to the background of my own mind and making me watch through a window as my body took over. Whipping back to Esme, struggling against increasingly sluggish limbs as I tried to reach for her.
Knowing I wouldn’t be able to do anything to get her to safety in time, not when there was a paralytic seeping through my bloodstream and on its way to my spinal cord to shut down every muscle in my body.
And certainly not when she reached for me, horror tightening her expression, instead of trying to run. Moving closer and down, right as an arrow skimmed the top of her shoulder, not enough to puncture but enough to open a wound for the poison to sink into.
Enough to damn us both to hell, either from our own demise or the people who would suffer for this.
A comforting thought, as my body finally gave out and my consciousness slipped away with it.