Page 66 of Tracked
Chapter 16
Calder
Rule #8: Rehearse for the worst-case scenario until it becomes routine.
Being in over my head wasn’t the kind of thing I was used to. From free-climbing rock walls and hiking twenty miles a day in the Wyoming mountains to night hunts with Cassius and my older siblings—practicing stealth, evasion, and hunting—there were very few scenarios I’d admit to being unprepared for.
But kissing Lara Crane was one of them.
I’d made the right decision last night. As soon as I’d heard Ben’s approach, our choices were limited, and every other option had the lowest probability of success. So I’d kissed her.Fuck, had I kissed her.And fuck me, had that kiss rewrote my DNA and destroyed me from the inside out. Not since childhood had a decision based on trained instinct still managed to feel so wrong.
Now my survival instincts screamed to pull away. To retreat. Like I’d been caught in a trap—a carefully concealed snare I hadn’t seen coming. I needed to create distance before there was no escape. Before I revealed not only my weakness for wanting her but also risked the kind of devastation Cassius had barely survived.
Lara stopped beside me at the edge of the tree-rimmed clearing.
“Ready?” I grunted.
“Yeah,” she said, but I heard the quickening of her breath and the hesitation in her voice, and felt the slight tremble of her body next to mine.
I reached back and took her hand, feeling the familiar jolt to my senses. I didn’t have to hold her, but I needed to. Lingering rage over Ben’s intrusion—his borderline assault and the pure panic he’d caused—had mangled all my better judgment. Mine and hers, apparently, as her fingers tightened in mine.
I led us into the clearing, following the direction Sarah and her partner had taken.
“Welcome, my dear wild ones.” Maxwell stretched her arms wide. “Welcome to the gathering place where we will all come together this morning for our first group exercise.”
Lara slowed as soon as we had a clear view of the space and the people in it. We both knew Rachel wasn’t here, but it didn’t stop Lara from scanning every person for her sister. But that was hope. The smallest light in the most impossible darkness.
“This way.” I pulled Lara close to me, guiding her to an open spot and murmured, “She’s not here. Stay focused.”
The words might as well have been a gun to her head; her attention slammed forward, and she immediately engaged with every couple we passed.
“Please, if every couple could take a seat on one of the blankets I’ve placed down.” Maxwell roamed the center of the arrangement like the guiding sun to her captive galaxy. “Matthew will be coming around with matcha-smoothie shots for anyone who would like one.”
Not a chance.
I let Lara sit first, giving the stoic guard a firmnowhen he paused with a small tray of tiny recyclable cups of that same damn welcome smoothie. Once he moved on, I lowered to my knees behind Lara and carefully examined the other dozen couples, all of them younger; I’d say roughly their late twenties to late thirties. All with expressions varying from eager to bored to irritated.
“Welcome,” Maxwell said again, with an edge in her voice.
Something must have happened at the Garden last night with Adam and it was affecting her. Yesterday’s mask of pure calm was now striated with strain.
“Congratulations to all of you for making it through the introductory portion of Wilderness Within. As we’ve talked about in your private sessions, the part of you we’re trying to reach—to activate—is the wild core. And the wild core can’t be coaxed or lured out. It must be driven.” She moved slowly around the circle as she spoke, meeting every pair of eyes. “I used to offer traditional couples’ therapy many, many years ago. It was the kind of therapy that clawed for inches of relief over months and months, sometimes years, of treatment. It wasn’t until I came here, until I felt the powerful connection of ourselves to nature, that I realized there was a better way. Not because it was faster, but because it was more honest.”
There was a sound—a snort—that suspiciously came from the corner opposite Lara and me, where Trent and Sarah sat.
“When moisture evaporates and collects in the clouds, Mother Nature doesn’t portion out raindrops a few at a time to make it more palatable for the land to absorb. No, she drenches the earth. She releases everything she has, and the earth takes it. It adapts. Absorbs. And in the same way, that is what we must do with our emotions and with those of our partner or partners. We must unleash the totality of our wild core, and our partner must adapt to those urges.”
I disagreed. There was no adapting to the way I wanted Lara. No adapting to the urge to kiss her. To touch her. No adapting to the urge to strip her in the woods and take everything I could like I needed her to survive.
“So today we take another step in that process with our first session on intimacy.”
Lara went as stiff as a statue, and if she’d turned to look, she would’ve seen that I’d done the same.Some parts of me stiffer than others.
Maxwell continued her revolution, stopping to look directly at us. “Now, if everyone could turn so you are facing your partner.”
Lara scooted around on the blanket, her eyes colliding with mine, two verdant pools with uncertainty skimming their surface and something more fervent rippling underneath. Something that caused her pulse to trample along the smooth column of her neck.
She was too close again.
