Page 6

Coughing delicately, I try to dislodge it, but Lucky’s face has already turned bone white, his eyes snapping to mine in raw panic.

“No, Lucky, don’t?—”

Gunshot-fast, he yanks his canteen out of his pack, then leans back over Jasper’s thigh to shove it against my lips, tipping it up urgently. I open my mouth with a muffled squeak so I don’t get doused, then choke on the stream—in earnest this time.

Droplets splatter on Jasper’s thigh, and he hisses, flinching back.

“Eden? Eden, are you okay? What are you doing? You have to take smaller bites than that,” Lucky lectures anxiously. “Can you breathe? Eden, I need you to breathe.”

I shove the canteen away before he drowns me. My eyes water, and I try and fail to hold back my glare.

Don’t snap, don’t snap, don’t snap. He’s worried. It’s sweet. Remember it’s sweet.

A fit of coughing overtakes me, and I struggle to find air.

No. It’s not sweet. I’m going to kill him.

Lucky has been glued to my side since we left Cyanide. Just hovering like an overzealous sheepdog over his idiotic flock. A tiny flock. A flock of two .

Thankfully, my flock-mate and I seem to be of a similar mind.

Jasper stands abruptly, and Lucky collapses to the ground.

His mouth compressed in feral displeasure, Jasper wedges his boot under Lucky’s chest and kicks him onto his back with one blunt, brutal shove.

Lucky lands hard, gasping. He stares up at Jasper, his eyes wide and stunned.

.. and Jasper moves his heavy boot to rest against his vulnerable throat.

My lips part.

Jasper looks unrefined. In Lucky’s uniform, his hair falling over his forehead, free of its usual, elegant curves, his mouth curling in disgust, he looks vengeful. Lucky is helpless underneath him, his delicate Adam’s apple at the crushing mercy of Jasper’s boot.

It’s difficult for me not to notice how hard Jasper is. The disgraceful, pretty flush in his pale cheeks.

I don’t know what it says about me that I’m more intrigued by Jasper than I am worried for Lucky.

“You are treading very close to a line you do not want to cross, dear boy,” Jasper warns.

Lucky’s throat bobs against the dirty rubber, and to my surprise, his mouth sets into a mulish, unhappy line.

Jasper studies him, then uses his boot to tilt Lucky’s chin up and waits for those reluctant blue eyes to lift.

“I know, love. I’ll give you what you need very soon.

But I won’t tolerate you suffocating Eden in the meantime. ”

He doesn’t wait for a response. Jasper rakes his hair back into its neat, studied curve and examines me next.

“Eden, I think it’s time we had a talk. Would you take a stroll with me?” He says it casually, like he couldn’t crush Lucky’s larynx with a simple shift of weight, but his dark eyes etch their way into my skin, and they’re not casual at all.

He wants to talk .

I try not to let apprehension take me. I’ve been waiting for this—for another “session.” For Jasper to start prying open my secrets and unpacking every reason I locked them down so tightly in the first place.

He’ll be kind, I’m sure of that much. I know he wants to help.

But even Jasper’s kindness hurts . Being alone with him is like walking barefoot and naked into an inquisitor’s chamber.

I’m invariably left emotionally bloody. A shaky, distraught mess.

So it takes far more effort than it should to nod.

Jasper removes his boot from Lucky’s throat and steps over him without glancing down. He offers me a hand, and I’m so startled that I stare at it for a full thirty seconds before I shove my half-eaten strip of jerky into one hand and slip the other into his grasp.

His fingers close around mine—gently, but they might as well be thumbscrews. The casual contact is riveting. Merciless. He leads me toward a moonlit path, but my attention is torn, caught between the glancing touch and the abrupt flood of anxious thoughts.

I wonder where he’ll start his dissection.

On my lies? He’s read my journals. He knows how I felt about “A&M” and my messy battle between obedience and my own certitude.

Will we go over the position I’ve left us in?

Or maybe he’ll dig in deeper. He knows my fear of being cast out.

How that frigid, dark expanse of lonely nothing haunts every decision. He knows my engulfing, bilious guilt.

So many delightful emotional entrails to slip around in.

The back of my throat grows hot, and I’m suddenly on the verge of tears. I don’t want to cry in front of him, but a disapproving word will shatter all the composure I’ve forced myself to build this week. My fingers grow sweaty in his hand, and I try to gather myself.

I’m a prisoner on her way to the gallows, my executioner at my side. Jasper’s steps are fateful, resonant...

And accompanied by a light musical patter.

“ Lucien .” Jasper stops, turning, his hand squeezing a brief silent command for me to do the same.

Behind us, Lucky’s eyes widen innocently. “Hm? You want me to walk five steps behind you, pookie?”

Shadows coalesce around us, and Lucky’s dimples bloom.

Jasper arches a sharp, unamused brow. “I don’t recall inviting you.”

“Okay. Rude.”

“It’s a private conversation. We are allowed those, are we not?

” Jasper bites out. Lucky opens his mouth, but Jasper cuts him off.

“I seem to recall you pestering me: ‘Have you spoken to Eden? When are you speaking to Eden? Do you want to hang out with Eden?’ Consider this me accepting your offer, dear . Now, shoo.”

Lucky’s offended expression almost draws a smile out of me. He glances between us, taking in my resigned expression, and sighs. “ Fine .”

It was the only outcome, but my heart still sinks. Around Lucky, Jasper is lighter. Indulgent. Around me, he’s thawing frost.

We start toward the shadows again, and still...

Tap , tap , tap .

Lucky is still strolling along at our heels with a far too cheerful bounce in his step.

He winks at me, and I roll my lips in to hide a smile.

My heart flutters too fast, and that cheeky glint in his eye does something warm and smoldering to my insides.

I need to calm down. I feel like an anxious flame—a hearty gust right now will either snuff me out or start an inferno.

Jasper hesitates, then keeps walking, pausing only as we exit the camp to pick up a length of the coarse rope we’ve been using for our tents on rainy nights.

I peek at his glower and wonder where Lucky finds the nerve. Surely, anyone sensible knows you can’t melt an entire avalanche with dimples alone? Then again, there’s still dirt on Lucky’s throat. Anyone sensible clearly doesn’t include overdramatic masochists with absentee survival instincts.

Mine, however, are delightfully intact.

The rope is coiled around Jasper’s wrist like a dangerous promise, and the dread in me deepens. Ropes are a hard limit for me. My wrists are still pink with fat scars from where the Sinners restrained me, and it throws my mind into bleak, glacial nights tied beside Heather.

Lucky, on the other hand, brightens considerably the longer he eyes the coarse length of rope.

I toy with the leftover jerky in my left hand, debating with myself. I might as well have something in my stomach for my upcoming emotional surgery. I lift it... but can’t bring myself to take a bite.

Jasper’s eyes are back on me, and I ignore, ignore, ignore.

But I also lower the jerky.

I’m not eating it, darn it. I’ve had all I need for today.

The path begins to widen out, and Jasper squeezes my hand again in the silent stop . I slow, and he inclines his head. “Just one moment, sweet girl. Let me deal with him.”

Then the polite calm breaks, and he turns to shove Lucky against a tree.

He wraps his hands in his kit and slams his mouth over Lucky’s.

My hand flies to my throat at the sudden punch of violence, but Lucky’s already making a raw, needy sound deep in his chest. Jasper captures his hands, pinning them over his topknot and scraping them against the bark.

Their mouths are a battle. Fierce and beautiful, soft and punishing, and the flickering, anxious flame in me billows higher.

I can’t take the press of their bodies. It hurts how much I want to be between them.

But if I were between them, I wouldn’t be able to see , and they’re scalded into my brain.

Bubbling into my veins. My nipples tighten painfully, and I need to wrap my arms over my chest to try to make them stop.

Jasper begins wrapping the rope around Lucky’s wrists above his head. It’s intricate, and without meaning to, he’s somehow creating art from the crude cord. He captures Lucky’s lower lip between his teeth, and I suck mine jealously into my mouth as Lucky lets out a broken groan.

Suddenly, Jasper pulls back and flips Lucky so his face is pressed into the bark. He grinds his hips against Lucky’s ass, and it’s me who whimpers this time. At the sound, the muscles of Jasper’s back tighten. He ties off the rope swiftly, then steps away, pulling Lucky back by his collar.

I look between them, and when Lucky staggers around, his wrists bound tightly in front of him, his hair half undone, he looks just as confused.

Jasper takes the long tail of the leash, then walks back toward me with a polite nod, as though his pupils aren’t blown, and his mouth isn’t smeared slick and rubbed red from Lucky’s beard.

He tugs Lucky along behind him, and they both walk past me.

Haltingly, I follow—and try not to let my dizzy brain cross my feet underneath me.

It only takes a few more steps before Dom comes into view, leaning back against a large boulder, his gun at the ready. When he sees Lucky being walked, one sable brow lifts.

Lucky is less pleased to see Dom. He digs his heels in.

“Hey, no. No. Jasper, I was just walking the same way! It was a coincidence.” Jasper yanks his rope sharply, and Lucky staggers forward, spluttering.

“Okay, mostly a coincidence. You can have privacy. I was just going to keep watch—if you’re talking, you’ll be distracted.

You’re outside camp, so you should have someone watching your back, that’s all. ”

Jasper places the long end of the rope in Dom’s hand. “Mind this for me, please.”

“ Jasper . Come on, don’t—” Lucky backs up hard, his wrists straining, and I wince in sympathy. “This is so unnecessary.”

Dom’s arm strains, holding him in place. His gaze shifts between Lucky and Jasper, then lingers on me. He sighs, then starts dragging the rope in, wrapping it around his thick forearm. Lucky curses as he slips forward.

“Half an hour, then I’m shooting him,” Dom warns. “I don’t want a pet.”

I flinch. Dom’s eyes find me again, and for just an instant, they lose the full, tarnished sheen and turn molten again. He grimaces and looks back at Jasper.

“I don’t want your pet.”

It must be my overactive imagination, that dip, the emphasis on your . I’m not Dom’s anything anymore. If I ever was.

“Jasper. Sweetie. Lover. Baby. Hey! No! I didn’t sign up for G.I. Jackass. Hey, where are you going?” Lucky tugs at his ropes, looking incredulously at Jasper’s retreating back.

Dom tugs back. Hard. “G.I. what ?”

The small, satisfied smile on Jasper’s face is positively chilling, and he holds out his hand again. “Come now, darling. The babysitter’s sorted. Let’s take a stroll.”