Page 53 of Tracked
“Calder ...” Want baked into her breathless plea, desperate and needy. And god, did I want to give in. To take care of her the way she wanted.The way I’d always wanted.
I went stiff—some parts of me more painfully than others. There were some things in nature humans weren’t made to survive; the smartest survivalist recognized those things. Respected those things. And retreated from those things.
For me, Lara Crane was one of those things.
There was no having or taking, touching or kissing my fake girlfriend. There was no coming away unscathed from succumbing to the ache for my ex-girlfriend’s little sister.
And I couldn’t do that to her. Or to me.
“There is no off button,” I grunted and loosened my hold. Every inch of her body, as it slid along mine, left only scorched earth behind until her feet touched the ground.
Even if there was a way to turn it off, I didn’t trust whatever—or whoever—might be lurking to not take note that we’d silenced the very coaching we’d paid for.
“I’m sorry—”
“I’m going to step outside for a few minutes. Excuse me.” I took myself, and my raging hard-on, through the flap to our tent and as far away from her as I could justify.
Shit.
I scrubbed my hands over my face and then adjusted my throbbing cock, heading away from our tent as the last dregs of dusk filtered through the trees.
For several long, assessing minutes, I did nothing but pace and listen to the breeze whirring the leaves. The rustle and crack of branches giving way under the scamper of small animals. The howls of wolves galloping over the open expanse in the distance.
What the hell was I doing?
I closed my eyes and saw Lara’s face looking down at me again. Hoping ... Wanting ...
No. I turned in the direction of Maxwell’s RV, clinging to my directive.Finding Rachel—not falling for her sister.The sooner we left here, the better.
We hadn’t even made it a single night—with one bed—“Dammit.” Another bridge we would need to cross soon. There wasn’t room for someone to sleep on the floor. I’d admit that I’d toyed with the idea of sharing, respectfully, the bed, but now there was no way.
I’d sleep outside; it wasn’t like I hadn’t done it hundreds of times before.
Cassius and Mom had engineered countless “sleepovers” when we were younger. Not sleepovers at friends’ houses like most kids. Sleepovers in nature.Survival sleepovers.
They’d started short, a night or two in the wilderness. Then they’d gotten longer, with no shelter. No prepared food. Nothing but what Cassius and Mom had taught. How to track. How to forage. How to hunt. How to find or make shelter.
The final “sleepover” was ten days in the wilderness. Ten days, at fifteen, to prove we were capable of survival. Callum’s ten days were spent almost entirely in straight sequence of severe thunderstorms; we’d always said that was the crucible that had turned him into a storm chaser.
Mine had finished the day before Mom was murdered.
“Calder?” Lara whispered, and I turned, though not enough to get a good look at her; my body was still raw from the burn of having her against me. “Dr. Julia’s done,” she said like I had any interest in returning to my own personal purgatory.
“Okay,” I acknowledged, but didn’t move.
Of course, she didn’t move, either. “Can I ask you something?”
All kinds of warning sirens went off in my head, and I ignored them.A new, bad habit of mine.“Yeah.”
She quietly came over and stood beside me. “If Rachel isn’t here. Do you think she’s ...”
“No.” I wasn’t going to go down that path. First, because a tracker’s rule of thumb was alive until proven dead. And second, because I wouldn’t—couldn’t—do that to Lara.
Lara didn’t say anything for a beat, her eyes drawn to the indeterminate shelter of shadows around us. I tried my damnedest not to look, but it wasn’t very long at all before my gaze slid to her profile.
The button curl of her nose. The bow of her lips. The freckles that charted constellations over her cheeks.
Beauty wasn’t a survival skill except in the most figurative of ways, and so it was something I rarely took notice of beyond an objective assessment. But Lara ... she was the kind of beauty I couldn’t ignore. The kind that stopped me in my tracks.
