by Eva Ashwood
As I looked back up at the strong lines of his face, heat flushed my chest. Our vicious fight had left me seriously turned on, and it was confusing the fuck out of me.
I wanted to hate him with everything in me… but I couldn’t.
Finally, I rolled my eyes and nodded. “Fine, but get the fuck off me.”
He grinned and stood up putting his hand down to help me to my feet. I let him, but yanked my hand away quickly, brushing the rocks and pebbles off my clothes. We’d both gotten a little scratched and bruised during our fight, but neither of us had sustained worse injuries.
A sudden thought occurred to me.
Did he hold back? Did he deliberately not go hard enough to seriously hurt me?
And even more terrifying, was it possible I’d subconsciously done the same with him? He had taken me by surprise, but back in the ring in Boston, I’d taken down guys bigger than him in less time.
Oh, gods. I need my fucking head examined. Maybe my vagina too, since it seems to be making all my damned decisions these days.
Shaking off the thought, I stalked over and grabbed the pack from where it had skidded, then sat down near the fire. Lachlan sat down next to me, much closer than was necessary—big fucking cave, plenty of room—and I shot him a glare before continuing to rifle through the pack.
At the bottom of the bag, there were several more packets of dry rations.
Not exactly the most lavish meal, but it would do.
We sat in silence, eating the food and watching the magical fire. I was never big on small talk, but after a few moments, the quiet began to wear on me. It gave me too much time to notice the heat of his body next to mine.
So I cleared my throat and asked the first thing that came to my mind.
“Have you ever been in a place like this?”
Lachlan looked over at me and snorted.
“Nah. I was born in Ireland originally, raised there, and then did some travelin’. Back in my normal life, I was part of a motorcycle club. Great life. Good people. I was with ’em when the magic came on. It happened out of nowhere—I was at a pub, drunker than hell, about to get into a brawl to back up one of my boys. Then all of a sudden…”
He glanced down at his hands, a look of something like wonder on his face. I could relate.
“Your magic origin story sounds a lot like mine,” I commented. “I wasn’t in a pub, but the brawl sounds familiar.”
He chuckled, one corner of his mouth lifting. “You? Brawlin’? Why am I not surprised?”
I arched a brow. “I dunno. Should I have been baking instead?”
For a second, Lachlan’s green eyes narrowed, a spark of remembered anger lighting in them. That was what he’d told me after the first time I’d beaten him in sparring in class. He’d been a fucking sore loser about it then, and I almost expected him to get all pissy again now.
But instead, he surprised the fuck out of me by throwing his head back and laughing.
“Touché.” Then he waggled his eyebrows at me. “Think of the crazy shite ye might’ve baked though. You could’ve blown up the fuckin’ oven.”
“I wasn’t baking,” I reminded him with a roll of my eyes. “I was kicking ass, just like you.”
“Aye. I know.” He nudged me with his shoulder, his eyes still glittering with amusement. “I may have been a little hasty with my judgment. Ye’re good. I’m not surprised ye made it into the challenge.”
I had no idea what to do with the unexpected compliment, or the way heat curled in my belly at the look of respect and hunger in his expression.
“Yeah.” I glanced away, looking into the fire. “You too.”
He shrugged his massive shoulders. “Eh. The competition is fun and all, but I’d give anything to get back to my life. I miss my home, I miss my bike, and I miss my club brothers. I didn’t really sign up for fuckin’ wilderness survival.”
I chuckled, taking another bite of my dry ration. It tasted like an extra stale, extra hearty granola bar. “Then why did you sign up to compete?”
He shrugged. “Dunno. Something to do. Fuck. Bein’ at that academy is like bein’ back in high school all over again. I’m a twenty-year-old man, I got no need for high school bullshite. I needed to shake it up a bit.”
He finished speaking, and I could feel him staring at me, waiting for me to take my turn.
I kept my lips zipped though. I didn’t want to offer any information about myself—not that my history was top secret or anything, but it was an instinctual survival instinct to play things close to the chest.
We were silent for several long moments, and when I thought he’d finally given up waiting for me to answer, I glanced at him again.
As soon as I did, he grinned. “So? What about you?”
Godsdammit. Fine.
I swallowed another bite of stale granola bar and stared at the fire.
“I’ve been on my own for quite a while. I’ve been fighting since I was a kid and went pro with it—or amateur, I guess you would call it, since it’s mostly underground—when I got older. I could beat just about anybody in the ring, and my career was pretty awesome. I fought, went home, did whatever I wanted to do, and came back. I trained all day, and I never really dealt with anyone other than the thieves and crooks in the back alleys of Boston.”
He shook his head, dusting his hands off on his pants and standing up. “Well, it doesn’t surprise me. I was pretty impressed when I saw ye fight the first time. Not that I’d admit to ever sayin’ that,” he added with a lopsided grin.
I snorted with a chuckle. Maybe it was just an effect of being trapped in a small, dark space with the guy when we had nowhere else to go and a threatening landscape full of strange creatures lurked outside, but in the flickering firelight of the cool cave, he didn’t seem all that bad.
He put his hand down toward me, and I glanced up at him.
“We need to get some sleep,” he said. “If tomorrow’s anythin’ like today was, we’re gonna need all the rest we can get to be ready for it.”
Good point.
I was exhausted and sore. And this was just the end of day one.
I shoved the last bite of my rations into my mouth and brushed the remnants of my dinner from my palms before letting him pull me to my feet. When I looked up at his face, I swore I could still see heat lingering in his gaze.
Ignoring it, I looked around for a place to sleep as Lachlan stepped away from me.
“I guess I should put out the fire before we go to sleep. I don’t know if the glow can be seen from outside, but it doesn’t seem worth it to risk it.”
He had already laid down on a flat surface of stone. “Good idea.”
I put up my hands and concentrated, pulling the energy from the fire back into my palms. It was a bit warm as it surged through my arms, but the heat felt nice. It was cold in the cave—colder than I had thought. I shivered, looking around for a good spot to crash.
Lachlan tapped the floor next to him. “Here. Sleep close, at least for a little while. There are no fuckin’ blankets in that pack, and I can tell you’re freezin’. It’s only goin’ to get colder in here too.”
With a sneer, I continue to pretend to look around the cave, not wanting him to know that the idea actually held some appeal. But he’d taken the best spot, and he was right. Now that the fire was out, goose bumps were rising along my arms.
Eventually, I gave in and lay down next to him, turning away and curling into a ball.
I didn’t know if it was his body heat or the heat that flared between us, but my skin was suddenly burning hot.
Chapter Twelve
Faced with the prospect of sleeping on a rock-solid surface in some strange world, with no idea what I’d be up against in the morning, next to a guy I half hated and half desperately wanted, I assumed sleep wouldn’t come.
But strangely enough, after curling up next to Lachlan and feeling the warmth he was radiating seep into my body, I passed out pretty fast.
Waking u
p the next morning felt like one of those wake-ups after a night of too many shots and far too many bad decisions.
I couldn’t seem to will my eyes open or straighten out my brain at first. I could feel a heavy arm draped over me, but in my groggy state, I really didn’t connect the dots about what it was… or who it was connected to.
Still half asleep, I stretched, letting out a little groan at the soreness in by body. The larger body behind mine was pressed close to me, and as I moved, something hard and hot pressed against the soft flesh of my ass.
I’m not really sure what I was thinking at the time—probably still halfway in a dream that I was sleeping in my bed with whatever random guy I’d picked up from the fight the night before.
Momentarily transported out of the cave and back into my life in Boston, I did what any self-respecting woman would do when she woke up with a half-hard cock nudging her ass. I started to grind back against it, shifting my body closer to the warm wall of solid muscle behind me.
The large arm draped around me tightened quickly across my chest, and hot, heavy breath gusted against my neck.
Lachlan’s deep Irish accent purred in my ear. “If ye don’t stop doin’ that, you might get more than ye bargained for, sweetheart.”
It took my sleepy brain a half-second to process what he’d said.
Then I snorted in a deep breath, and my eyes shot wide open. I looked down at his hand draped across me and threw it off, scrambling to my feet. He laughed at me as I yanked down the fabric of my shirt, which had ridden up on my stomach as I slept.
My skin still tingled from the feel of his large palm on my stomach and his breath on my neck, but I steadfastly ignored it—and him.
Stumbling over to the pack, I began to pull out some of the food. We needed to eat before we left, and as irritated as I was, we’d agreed not to end our truce until we stepped out of the cave. I wasn’t going to go back on my word.
Not necessarily because I had honor, but because I didn’t want to waste energy fighting him for the pack again. It was guaranteed to be a long, deadly day, and I needed to save my strength.
Turning around, I tossed him a packet of rations, and he caught it against his chest. He sat up and began to eat, looking around the cave. There was a crack near the top that allowed sunlight to penetrate, filling the small space with gray light. I hadn’t even realized that the orb I’d sent up to float near the ceiling had dissipated at some point during the night.
Lachlan stretched his arms out wide and groaned. “Nothing like sleeping on a hard fuckin’ surface to make your back straight.”
My lips twitched into a not-quite-smile as I shoved another bite of food into my mouth, wishing I’d been able to find a way to transport water from the stream with me yesterday. I’d have to find another water source soon.
“Nothing like getting ready to venture out into some strange world to keep your reflexes sharp. I half expect to walk out of this cave and be in a completely different place. It’s so wild, the gods live in a completely different space than us.”
Lachlan cocked an eyebrow. “Ye didn’t pick up on that from the way everyone calls it the ‘godly realm’?”
“You asshole.” I threw the last bite of my food at him, and it bounced off his face. He snatched it out of the air before it could hit the cave floor and popped it in his mouth.
Worth it.
“It is pretty fuckin’ wild,” he muttered after he swallowed, glancing toward the cave entrance with a serious expression on his face.
Lachlan seemed like the kind of guy who liked to laugh and who tried to make the most out of whatever situation he found himself in.
But right now, he looked about how I felt—pensive and on edge.
Just the thought of having to go back out there and move on with the competition without any extra rest time and all by myself made me a bit frustrated.
There was a small part of me that didn’t really want to split up, but I knew we had to.
We were competitors, for fuck’s sake. Not to mention the fact that for the first few weeks of school, he, Merrick, and Trace had all been dicks to me, going out of their way to give me shit just because my presence threatened their fragile masculinity or whatever.
But does any of that matter now? a small voice in my head asked. Isn’t surviving the challenge more important?
Well, yeah. Surviving—maybe even winning—the challenge was the most important thing. But that was the exact reason why teaming up was such a bad idea. At least on my own, I wouldn’t have to worry about being betrayed when it mattered most.
I’d just have to worry about being eaten by some monster that was too big for me to fight off on my own.
Great.
When we were done eating, Lachlan didn’t even try to scam the pack from me. He just helped me put everything back inside, and we headed out into the humid heat of the jungle again.
After scrambling up the three-foot incline into the jungle brush, we stood there staring at each other for a moment. Then Lachlan shrugged. “Well, good luck to ye, Aria Banks. I’m sure we’ll run across each other again.”
He gave me a head nod, his red-brown hair glinting in the early morning light, then walked off in the opposite direction of where I was headed.
I had no idea if he knew where I’d been planning to go or not—our conversation in the cave had been civil, but we’d carefully avoided talking about our strategies or plans.
Not the kind of stuff you want to share with your competition.
I waited until he was out of sight, wanting to make sure that he wasn’t going to come back around to try to steal the pack. He didn’t, which was good considering I was still slightly thrown off from the night before.
One more round of sparring with him, and I might’ve made a seriously stupid mistake.
I spent the next few hours trekking through the jungle, just like the day before. The morning became a monotonous blur of brushing sweat off my brow, shoving vines out of my way, and listening to odd animals make strange sounds from the trees above me.
At one point, the babble of rushing water drew me off course, and I found another stream and sucked down water gratefully.
My head felt clearer as I continued on, but with no one to talk to, my thoughts spiraled around and around in my head.
Frustratingly, they seemed to land on a certain Irish mountain of a man way more often than they should’ve.
Did Lachlan know about the structure off in the distance? If he did, he’d obviously decided it wasn’t worth checking out, since he had gone off in the complete opposite direction of me.
Was my hunch completely wrong?
It was nothing but a hunch, an instinctual feeling that if there was a structure of any kind in this wild jungle, it meant something.
Hopefully there’ll be a clue there.
Otherwise, I’d be back to square one with no leads.
After hours, and at least three fights with vines that seemed to wrap themselves around me with their own snappy personalities, I finally reached the structure.
It was much larger than I’d originally guessed when I’d seen it from the top of the tree. It was a huge dome, so big it took me almost twenty minutes to walk around the entire thing. And as I came back to the spot where I’d started, I realized that there was no entrance.
Or at least, none that I’d seen around the perimeter.
I scratched my chin, thinking about what I had seen from the treetops. It’d been hard to tell from so far away, but I was pretty sure there was a hole on top of the dome.
Of course. Why would anything in this godsforsaken place be simple?
“A door with a handle? Nah. Too easy! Let’s put the door at the top.”
Fucking assholes.
I glanced around, suddenly a little nervous that maybe the gods could hear me talking shit about them in my head somehow. It seemed unlikely, but what the hell did I know? This was their realm. Who knew what was possible?
Well, no
help for it. I had to at least check.
I pulled my pack off, grabbed the rope out, and tied it around my waist. I had never been climbing, but I had watched climbers before, so I knew that it would probably be smart for me to tie myself along the way, just in case I fell. Of course, I had no real idea how to tie a rope strong enough to hold my body weight if I fell, but it was better than nothing.
Until I could figure out how to use my magic to fly, which was very unlikely, I needed to remember I was human—and breakable.
After putting my pack back on and tightening it down, I began to climb.
The surface was slightly slick from humidity that hung in the air, so I used my magic to create a layer over my fingers and palms that adhered to the surface like a suction cup. Once I did that, I began to move faster.
As I reached the crest of the dome, I looked back, and my eyes flew wide.
Movement caught my attention down on the ground, and as I squinted, I realized there were several other contestants making their way through the jungle toward the dome.
Shit. And I thought I was the only one who decided to come here.
They saw me at the same moment I saw them, and my heart lurched in my chest. I’d been unsure if coming here was the right call, but the fact that others had headed this way too made me a lot more certain I was on the right track.
Which meant I couldn’t let them get ahead of me.
Immediately, I began to climb faster, glancing back down to see the others using their magic in different ways to move up the side of the structure.
I stopped tying myself every few feet and just let the rope dangle from me. There was no time for that—I had to get to whatever was inside before anybody else did.
The others were catching up to me pretty fast, and they were all much more in control of their magic than I was. I’d made it through the qualifiers on scrappiness and fighting ability, but my magic skills weren’t exactly top of my class.
Still, I wasn’t gonna let that stop me from trying.
I sent the energy down to my legs and put a layer of magic across my boots. This helped to keep my feet from sliding as we raced up the side. About three feet below me and fifteen feet on either side of me, I could see that Trace and Merrick had arrived.