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“You, Ranger, have an annoying tendency to avoid direct questions.”
I couldn’t help the edge creeping into my tone and his amusement got stronger.
“It’s undoubtedly a result of hanging around a witch too long. As to the question—it remains a battle between the brain and the loins.”
“Then stop throwing suggestive comments my way, because it’s not helping.”
“Then decide what you want, Tiger, so that we can both move on, one way or another.”
“I wish it were that easy.”
“It is that easy.”
“No, it’s not.” Not for someone like me. I might have been created with the gift of thought and free will, but I wasn’t entirely sure I was given the courage to go after something I truly wanted. Not after all these years. Because it wasn’t just about sex, but rather emotion, and a connection. And maybe that was something Jonas could never offer, but until I took the risk and explored what might lie between us, I would never know.
“From the very beginnings of time itself,” he said, “enemies have become friends, and friends have become lovers. It is not beyond the realm of possibility, even if history and experiences might be against it. Against us.”
And they certainly were against us.
I wearily scrubbed a hand across my eyes. Why was it so much easier to decide to go to war against the vampires and the people who were in league with them than it was to accept the advances of one man?
“Jonas, I—”
He held up a hand to silence me. For several minutes he didn’t say anything, but tension rolled from him, the feel of it so thick it made it difficult to breathe.
He swore and flattened his foot. The solar vehicle immediately leapt forward, the trees around us quickly becoming a blur as our speed grew.
“Is it the range
rs?” I twisted around to look behind us, but there was nothing in the sky and nothing on the ground. Just trees and dust.
“No. Worse.” The look he briefly cast my way was grim. “Rift.”
I swore, even as fear leapt into my heart. I scanned the countryside again but still couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. “Are you sure?”
It was a stupid question, because I already knew the answer. Thanks to the fact that he’d already survived one rift, he was now sensitive to their presence. But part of me was hoping he’d say no.
That part didn’t get the answer it wanted. In fact, he didn’t even answer. He just kept his attention on the road.
“This thing should be able to outrun it, shouldn’t it?”
“I don’t know. It’s fast, but the rift is moving at almost double our speed.”
And we were in the middle of a damn forest. Rhea help us . . .
The trees seemed to go on and on, an endless sea of green. I had no idea how close the rift was, and no desire to ask. Some things were better not to know—and it wasn’t as if I could do anything about it if it was close. All I could do was hope that the rift changed course and went on to destroy something else. That it left us alone and alive.
Even if the gathering tension and fear emanating from the man beside me suggested it was a rather forlorn hope.
With an abruptness that was startling, the forest gave way to vast emptiness. Something within me relaxed, if only slightly. At least we had a chance—a very minor chance—of surviving the rift in one piece and untainted by trees and rocks if it did hit.
The vehicle seemed to increase its pace in the open air—no surprise, given the sun was no longer being filtered through the canopy of the trees. I twisted around and studied the fast-disappearing forest fringe.
And saw the rift touch down.
It ripped up the road as it barreled toward us, a tornado of unseen energy that was twisting, unraveling, and remaking everything it touched before tossing it aside.
“Jonas—”
