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“Hello, lady.” The voice was male and sounded about as old as I’d figured, college-aged maybe.
When I whirled to face him, I was greeted by a smiling Adonis with predator’s eyes. A torch flickered in his right hand, and he had a hungry look that made my stomach do a weird little somersault.
His deeply tanned skin gleamed in the orange fire light, highlighting the thick muscle layering his bare chest. Save for the battered board shorts he was wearing that looked vaguely homemade, he could have stepped right out of a magazine.
Drool-worthy—I think that was the right term—like he’d been plucked from a college swim team and dropped in that magical forest to play out all my darkest sexual fantasies. If not for that gleam in his eyes.
I could get on board with shirtless and shoeless, but I drew the line at soulless.
I squared my shoulders. “Are you one of the lost boys?”
He didn’t say anything in response, only stared at me like I was a plate of warm chocolate chip cookies and he’d been neck deep in a keto diet for three months.
Maybe he hadn’t heard me?
I kicked my voice up a notch. “Where is my brother?”
His eyes flickered at that. It was a tiny, almost imperceptible twitch of the lids, but I saw it.
My system was in overdrive, caught between running and fighting, while that base, primitive part of my stupid brain seemed perfectly happy focusing on the last of the four F’s: fight, flight, freeze, or fuc—
He took a slow, measured step toward me before I could finish the thought. Finally, the part of my brain that wasn’t trapped in my panties took over. It was only then that I realized I was clutching the pendant again. I dropped my hand and reached for my blade, but at the sight of the temperamental trinket around my neck, he stilled.
His voice was low and dark, rumbling through the air. “Where did you get that?”
I glanced down at the shiny stone resting against my breastbone. “A friend.”
He nodded slowly, shifting his grip on the torch and running his tongue over his bottom lip. “Give it to me and I’ll let you go.” His voice had a sensual, conspiratorial edge to it, but I knew better.
“Take me to my brother,” I demanded, sliding the blade from my belt and bringing it into view.
His gaze flicked to it, his lips curling in a half-smile, half-snarl. “Give it to me now.”
I lifted one eyebrow at him. “Have you ever heard of the art of negotiation? I’m thinking not, because you clearly suck at it.”
The soulless Adonis tilted his head to one side, then gave it a little shake. “Have it your way.” He cupped his free hand and held it beside his mouth. The sound that left those plump lips turned my blood cold. He didn’t just look like a predator; he sounded like one too.
Run.
I spun and took off through the trees again, but the light his torch threw from behind me created strange, living shadows in my path, making it harder to navigate than if I were just moving in the dark. There was no noise behind me, no cracking branches or heavy footfalls, and when I glanced over my shoulder to see if I’d lost him, I swear to the gods, he was silently pacing me.
“Boo!” Another boy leapt into my path, and a squeak escaped me as I whipped back around.
A fucking squeak, like I was a mouse and the big bad cat of the house just caught me by the tail. That was about how it felt too. They were playing with me.
The universe apparently took their side, sending all the shitty karma I’d ever put out in the world back to bite me in the ass with a single step. Literally.
The ground fell away beneath me, and my stomach floated up to my throat for a split second before gravity took hold and wrenched me down. I couldn’t tell how far I fell, but I sure wasn’t ready for the ground when it rushed up to meet me.
The collision was bone-rattling, and my ankle gave out on the uneven ground, sending a jolt of white-hot pain up my leg. I collapsed in a big, pathetic heap and rolled onto my back, slamming my eyes shut and clenching my teeth. My upper lip curled involuntarily as I let out a silent snarl.
I dug my fingers into the ground, anchoring myself to the cool, damp earth until the first searing wave of pain passed. Pain like that always passed. The human body was weird like that. It would fire off the message up to the brain, pulsing and relaying the pain and damage, but eventually the brain numbed to the feedback. The damage was still there, but it was like the brain was already over it. It got the message, took the notes, and now it had other shit to do.
Yeah, I was an old pro at twisting my ankle. It was one of the benefits of earning a severe sprain as a teenager, and then not actually doing the exercises my doctor gave me to strengthen the joint. Why? Because I was a stupid kid, and the doctor seemed a little too nice to be trusted.
For a fleeting moment, I wondered if I would have followed through with the exercises if I’d had some drill sergeant hard ass giving me the instructions. Probably. Even back then, naïve as I was, I’d learned the hard way that kindness was a currency, and the cost wasn’t always worth the benefit.
Vicious laughter filled the air above me, pulling me out of my thoughts. My breath was coming in shallow pants as I worked through the pain, but it caught in my chest at the sound. I opened my eyes and gripped the ground beneath me harder, digging my nails in until I could feel the soil packing in beneath them. Three sets of inhuman eyes peered down at me from the mouth of the hole. The very unnatural, obviously planned, hole.
