We walked on through the trees, neither of us speaking as we listened out for sounds of approach and I worked to ignore the prickles and stones which poked into my bare feet and gave me little owchies.
The crack of twigs sounded somewhere off to our right and Jack pulled me behind the cover of some bushes, the two of us crouching low. I noticed he had a knife in his hand which he must have taken from the cabin and my fingers got twitchy for one too. It looked like a boring Brenda of a knife. She was organised, got the job done. Someone you could rely on, but would write you a snooty email or two when she didn’t get her way. She’d do, I guessed. Though I kinda lamented my need for a Kevin – the kind of knife who stayed home without his family and killed for shits and giggles, not needing anyone to boss him about.
The dog was off sniffing in the tress, lingering close, but not moving to hide with us as he took his time peeing on stuff and things.
Another crack sounded somewhere ahead of us in the woods and I held my breath, picking up a rock from the ground. You could say I was a bit of a rock star today. Damn, the press would have lapped that up. I should write them a letter, so they make sure I sound really cool in the news report tomorrow.
I felt eyes on the back of my head and whipped around, hurling my rock with a growl leaving my throat and Niall appeared, lurching out of the way of it before he leapt on me. In the same moment, a huge figure collided with Jack and they fell into a furious tussle.
My eyes widened as Niall’s hand stamped down on my mouth and I realised it was Mateo fighting Jack, as free as a bird with his luscious, long hair and beard now cut short and his face peeping out for all the world to see. Jack punched him so hard in the chest, he was forced onto his ass, but Mateo had gotten the knife and he held it to Jack’s throat in the next heartbeat. Oh Brenda, you two-timing whore.
I couldn’t figure out why Mateo had come here, wasn’t I just his BFF BJ buddy? Hadn’t he just been using my mouth for pleasure like Niall had said, and really, I meant nothing to him at all?
Niall was straddling me, keeping me down and I gave him a venomous look as he peeled his hand off of my mouth. My big bastard of a psycho was here, but the whys and the hows and the whats weren’t clear to me. He’d come all this way and he’d actually found me in the deep, dark wood like the wolf who’d come to huff and puff down my little piggy house.
“The cops are close,” he warned in that gruff Irish accent of his, and I could see the wildness of his ancestors in his eyes and smell the heather on him from the hillside of a craggy village called Killooney where they’d resided. But I wasn’t going to be tempted in by his Celtic soul, not again, not after he’d flushed me away like an all-American turd. “We need to go, Spider.”
“I have two words for you, Hellfire,” I hissed. “Fuck and you.”
“That’s three words,” he said.
“It’s two. The ‘and’ didn’t count.”
“It does too,” he insisted.
“Does not.”
“Does too.”
“Does not.”
“Does too.”
“Stop,” Mateo snapped in a whisper shout. “I’ll cut up this one’s legs so the cops find him and give us a head start.”
“No,” I gasped in horror as Jack gave Mateo a murderous look and I got the feeling he was about to take a stab wound just so that he could aim his own demons at Mateo and fight back.
I tried to get to Jack, shoving at Niall’s chest while he forced me harder down beneath him.
“Stop wriggling, Spider,” he growled. “Yer not getting away again.”
“If you hurt him, I’ll scream. I’ll scream until the cops come to take us all away,” I said passionately.
“What do you care about the giant fella?” Niall demanded, his fingers winding around my throat and making me look at him. His green, green eyes swallowed me up like two beasties come to eat my flesh from my bones.
“He was the only one I ever had when I was locked up in that place for all those years,” I hissed. “And when I was sent back there, he was waiting for me like he’d never once doubted I’d return. Plus, he killed Small Willy Norman and he saved me,” I said simply. “So now I’m returning the favour.”
“So, what do ya want me to do with him?” Niall pushed. “Because you’re coming home with me, whether you like it or not.”
I glared at him, fury bubbling in my chest. “You’re the one who told me to leave in the first place. You don’t get to just show up like a friendly axe murderer and whisk me away to your murder lair - again.”
“And why not?” Niall asked with a manic gleam in his gaze. “That sounds exactly like the sorta thing I’d do.”
I slapped him across the face and he instantly slapped me back. I gasped, slapping him again and he slapped me in return, the two of us falling into a furious slapping frenzy until Mateo kicked Niall in the thigh and we were left panting, nose to nose and wide awake from the slap war.
My cheeks were burning from his touch and a high was buzzing through my veins from that little fight, my hair fluttering before my eyes and my heart on overdrive. Holy tits, I forgot how much I liked playing psycho with Niall.
“We need to move,” Mateo snarled.
“We came to save ya. This is a rescue mission,” Niall told me. “Don’t that count for somethin’？
I considered that with my lips pursed, but he was clearly too impatient to wait for my answer, rising to his feet and dragging me after him. He locked me to his side with one large arm and I leaned down to bite it, digging my teeth in deep but it only made him laugh in return like he liked it. And dammit, I liked him liking it. And double dammit, I liked liking him like it.
Mateo rose to his feet, gesturing for Jack to get up with the knife and Jack did as he was commanded, glancing from Mateo to Niall with raw death in his gaze. Ooh, I liked that. It gave me the shivers. He was all hell beast right now and that was my favourite flavour.
“It’s okay, Jack. I know them. They’re my…” I didn’t have an end to that sentence. Friends? No, friends were squishy and these two didn’t fit that description. Mateo had made me come a lot and Niall had made me want to come a lot. So I guessed we were…
“Hers,” Niall decided for me. “We’re hers. And we’re here to collect her. So you can skedaddle off into those trees if it suits ya, lad. Or you can follow her and see where it leads ya. But I can’t promise it won’t be to yer death in the end.”
Niall pulled me away from Jack and I glanced back at him, my heart a stampeding wildebeest about to kill Simba the lion cub as I saw the hesitation in his eyes. Mateo was huge, but Jack somehow had almost another half foot on him. He was a titan forced to sleep beneath the earth, but I’d woken him now and I wanted him to stay.
“Jack,” I breathed in desperation and I saw all hesitation fall from his gaze. He wasn’t going to be leaving me, I could tell. We were bonded him and me through death and destruction – my favourite kinds of bonds.
“Rook,” he answered, taking a step after me and Mateo walked at his back, angling the knife at his ribs.