Page 52 of Beautiful Prey

The cold seeps up through the clay and into my knees. I feed another piece of root-wood into the fire and sit across from him, wrapping my arms around myself, but within minutes my teeth start giving me away.

His eyes stay shut. “Come here.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re shivering loud enough to wake the forest.” One eye opens. “Come here before I have to collect you.”

It’s practical. That’s all.

That’s what I tell myself as I cross the hollow and fit myself carefully against his good side. His arm wraps around my waist and settles there, heavy and warm.

I lie very still.

The wet patch inside my trousers has gone cold, and the shame keeps coming back in little waves. I angle my hips away from him and pray he doesn’t notice.

If he does, he keeps it to himself.

His breathing evens out. Somewhere between one gust and the next, the monster falls asleep, his hand still heavy on me, and his face, this close, is just a face. A tired one, with ridiculous lashes.

The firelight catches the silver bar when his mouth parts on a breath. The storm keeps moving over the hillside above us.

I should sleep. Tomorrow needs my legs.

But as I count my breaths to steady myself, I lose count at one.

INTERLUDE

I wake cold, already out from under his arm, the place where I slept still holding its shape.

For a moment I only look at him.

His hair has fallen across his forehead. Without the visor, without that grin, he looks younger. His mouth is slightly open, ridiculous dark lashes resting against his cheeks, one hand loose beside his face.

Beautiful.

Light.

Then I remember his mouth on mine. His hand in my hair. The heat twisting low in my stomach, my hips grinding against him harder and harder until I stopped pretending I wanted to get away, until I lost control completely. My face burns.

I get up before he can wake and see it.

Outside, the storm has left another world behind.

Sand lies deep between the trees, pale beneath the grey morning, with fine grit still hanging in the air and drifting down in slow, restless sheets. Broken branches stick through it at strange angles. Every so often, another soft spill of sand slips from the pines overhead, hissing through the needles. Everything is quiet enough that my own breathing sounds wrong. Farther down the slope, a row of black posts leans out of the sand, lengths of snapped cable hanging between them. Whatever trial stood there yesterday is gone. Two bodies remain beneath it, one half buried to the waist, another facedown beside a shattered marker. A third lies farther into the trees with one arm stretched toward a pack he never reached.

The storm has covered most of the blood.

Then a light flickers between the trunks, and I freeze.

Another beam sweeps farther down the slope, then a second, cutting through the haze of hanging sand.

Black figures appear and disappear inside the haze, visors flashing whenever the light catches them. A transport hangs low above the trees, almost silent, white lamps sweeping the ground beneath it.

They’re looking for Ash.

Ducking behind a fallen trunk, I watch one of the lights sweep over the shelter behind me.

My heart starts hammering.