Hope filled my chest as I reached the border of the trees, my feet slipping for a second on the skinny dregs of pine needles, and searched the darkness for a shadow—a figure, a person that might have wandered away from the hunting party. And the beat of my heart thumped so ferociously I could hardly breathe, but I took a gulp of the icy night air, shaping it to scream, “Hel—”
“Nice try.”
My body shot backward, like a lasso had snagged my neck. The iron grip of the vampire cut any hope of rescue, muffling my scream; only a whimper escaped, lost to the empty silence of the dark night. No one would hear it. I was too late.
I dropped to my knees, trying to loosen his hold around my throat.
“You cannot outrun a vampire. It is pointless to even try.”
A series of consonants rolled from the back of my tongue, trapped by his stranglehold, my nose and cheeks pulsating with blood—like they were about to pop open.
“I want to kill you, right here, right now,” he said through his teeth, his voice quivering. “But I will not show you such mercy.”
Nearby, the hunters finally came so close that I could hear their private chatters and the instructions being called out to each one from the voice of my fiancé. If they’d only been there two seconds ago they might have heard me.
Jason squeezed my throat tighter as I wormed my fingers under his.
Please, Jason, I thought, You’re hurting me.
“Do you think I care? If I had any compassion for your adversity before, you just destroyed it,” he said, his grip easing. “Your blood will no longer be enough to satiate my thirst for revenge.”
He moved quickly, folding my chest across his arm while the other hand tore the back of my dress open, leaving my skin bare to the prickly grass beneath it as he threw me down onto my back.
“No!” I coughed the air from my lungs, nudging my elbows into his chest, but he separated my hands in his tenuous grip and forced them onto either side of my head.
“I wasn't going to do this to you, Ara, but I need him to see you suffer, and this is the only way.”
“Please—please don’t!”
“Keep begging, human—” He slipped my dress quickly down my waist, jolting my hips upward as he tore it past my legs and tossed it away. “It turns me on.”
I wedged my knees tightly together. “This is rape, Jason. This is worse than murder.”
“I thought you said death was the worst one could suffer,” he said cynically, winning the battle to compress me into stillness.
I shook my head, panting heavily beneath his weight, my teeth so tightly knitted I felt a chip come loose and fall under my tongue. I never even contemplated this. I never even imagined he would be capable.
I searched the grounds for a distraction, digging deep for the training Mike gave me—for the times he laid on me just like this and wouldn’t back down until I broke free. But it was gone—all of it. I couldn’t sidestep the paralysis of fear enough to think straight.
But I wasn’t about to let him have me, either.
I kicked my heels into the ground, rocking my whole body from side to side.
“Stop struggling.” Jason jammed the full force of his elbow onto my shoulder. I cried out, my upper body locked into submission. “Shut up or they will hear you.”
“I don’t care,” I cried. “I don’t want you to do this to me.”
“I know.” His palm forced me into silence; only a weak sign of terror survived in the back of my throat. “But I promise, if you lie still, I will only hurt you enough to make you cry. After all—” He pushed his knees into my thighs, forcing my legs up and open, “You are a virgin. There are bound to be a few…rips.”
My soul drew away inside me; Oh, please, no. Please don't. I closed my eyes—tried to escape to someplace else in my mind.
“I’m going to enjoy this.” He repositioned himself, then froze, looking up as a yellow beam of torchlight flashed across my face for a single second. “Shit.”
“Look over here,” called a stranger. “I thought I saw something.”
“Ara?” Mike called.
My heart skipped. I looked up just as Jason looked down at me. Please don’t kill him, Jason. Please don’t. Oh God. I wished he’d just taken me far away. I couldn’t die knowing Mike would too.
“If he finds us, he has to die. All of them do.” Jason released me.
“Please. Please, don’t kill them! Do what you want with me, but, please just let them live?” I begged, staring into his softening eyes.
His brow pulled tightly together. He gently took my wrist, tugging it to roll my shoulders off the ground and cradled my face close to his chest. “Shh. Okay, just hold tight.”
Before I had a chance to react, he flung like a rocket into the trees outlining the field. My stomach dropped into my hips; I wrapped my fingers firmly around his jacket, letting go once we landed on the long, scratchy limb of the tallest tree—what seemed like miles off the ground.
“Thank you,” I said, breathless.
“You just remember this when I come to lie between your legs again.”
I shivered all over, everything south of my hips going tight. The air up here was cooler, thinner, making the cloud in my head fizzle away a little. My heart was so confused by the combination of terrors that, if I was afraid of being this high up—of looking out across the city and the steep valley of trees beyond the gardens, feeling as though I could land on the ground miles from this spot if I fell—I didn’t notice it, even though my only beams of safety right now were the splintery shelf of branch, only as wide as my hips, and the secure grip of the predator’s fingers around my arm.
Jason watched the men scour the scene below, then looked back at me. “You know, I’m in the mood for a little game.”
“What? Flesh-bombing hunters?”
He turned and smiled at me. “You’re funny when you’re frightened.”
“It’s a common emotional reaction,” I said, kind of embarrassed by it.
Jason just laughed through his nose, his eyes filling with fondness before he looked back down at Mike, standing a few hundred feet away—talking on his phone. “If I were a human attacker, he’d have found you by now.”
“I know.”
“Let’s have some fun with him, shall we?” he said in an unsettlingly smooth tone, then reached behind my back. “And since you won’t be needing this.”