The Hunted

by Anna Leonard

  Almost. But not quite.

  He had to protect her. Even from himself, if need be.

  He pulled away and smiled down into her now lust-bright eyes, the black lashes wet and spiky. “Swim,” he told her, and pointed. “That way. Trust me.”

  She groaned, but followed as he let her go and started stroking out at a diagonal, away from the shore.

  Hoo boy. Just…hoo. Boy. For the promise in those brown eyes, Beth would have swum the length of the pool at the Y a dozen times. Ocean swimming couldn’t be that much harder, could it?

  It could, and it was.

  Beth was pretty sure that her arms weren’t going to fall off, and her legs hadn’t really turned into lead. It only felt that way. On the plus side, her worry about sharks had turned into a vague wish that one would come by and put her out of her misery. And she wished that the shark would take the man swimming alongside her first.

  Then her body warned her that the water was warming, the bottom coming closer. They were coming up on a bank of some sort.

  By the time her exhausted brain processed that, her legs had kicked sand rather than water, and her hand came down on something hard. Land. Rock, crumbling under her fingers. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she chanted under her breath, crawling on hands and knees onto the solid surface, not caring how the rough edges tore at her sodden jeans or the skin of her palms.

  Once she was entirely out of the water, she collapsed onto her stomach, too tired to even roll over. She spent a few thoughts toward trying to figure out where they were, what outcropping of rocks they had come up on, but the effort was too much to continue. Much better to lie there and just breathe. At this point, someone could have come along with a gun, and she might have welcomed being put out of her misery.

  There was the wet slapping noise of someone flopping down beside her. Dylan. She knew, even without opening her eyes. That warm body, already instantly recognizable to her, even cooled by the water, could be no one else.

  “Talk,” she said, not looking at him. If she looked at him, talking might not be all they did.

  “Now?” He sounded surprised, and not even a little winded, the bastard.

  “Now.” It wasn’t like she had the strength to do anything else other than listen, anyway. No matter what delicious sinfulness his eyes might be promising. “Who were they? Why were they after you? After me? What’s going on?”

  “You’re not going to believe me.”

  She almost laughed. “Do they teach you guys that line in guy school, or something? When we’re off learning about tampons and breasts, you guys learn lines?”

  From the corner of her eye she saw a supine shrug, and a piece of wet black hair flopped into his eyes. “I don’t know. I’ve never been to school.”

  That didn’t surprise her, entirely. He didn’t give off college-guy vibes at all; too…not hard, hard was the wrong word—or maybe not, she thought, remembering the feel of him in the water—but rough, ragged. Smart, but like it all came firsthand, burns, bumps and bruises. Now that she let herself get past the immediate reactions his presence brought out in her, she could feel it in him, like the texture of leather when you expected plush.

  She never thought that she’d find a guy like that appealing; she had always, carelessly, demanded a certain level of sophistication and education from the men she dated, even casually.

  But Dylan didn’t seem uneducated, either. And he had to have taken art classes, to draw the way he did, even with natural talent. But then why…

  “You’re trying to distract me,” she realized, finally finding the strength to turn her head to glare at him.

  He made a soft, silky noise that came from deep in his chest. “I am. It almost worked.”

  “Almost doesn’t count,” she retorted automatically, ignoring the desire to reach out and touch his skin, or run her fingers through his still-wet hair. The words had the feel of an old argument, one she had never had before. Now that she wasn’t running from him, he wasn’t not-chasing her, it all felt so familiar, so well-established, so…weird.

  He didn’t seem to notice anything, weird or otherwise. “They were Hunters. I think. I’ve never run in to them before but I’ve heard of them. We’re warned about them, when we go inland. It’s always a risk, I just…I don’t know how they found me.”

  He sounded frustrated and annoyed more than scared, as though having someone shooting at him was an annoyance, not a threat. And yet, he had dragged her off into the water in a damn-sure hurry, and she didn’t think it was just to avoid talking.

  “Hunters. On Nantucket?” She wasn’t quite buying that. “Not many deer out here. Unless they were hunting rabbits?”

  “Only two-legged ones.”

  She felt her own mouth twist in an unwanted smile. They had rabbited pretty fast, true.

  He sat up and pulled his T-shirt off, grimacing at the clammy fabric, and tossed it onto a rock to dry in the sunlight. “I hate clothing.”

  The sight of his bare chest, and the thought of him shedding all his clothing and reclining in nothing but that creamy-smooth bare skin, sent her mind somewhere that had nothing to do with their current situation, and she forced herself to stop wondering if his legs had that same muscled sleekness, and what they would feel like pressed against her own.

  “Distractions. Not working,” she told him.

  They were, all too well. But she was going to stay focused.

  Dylan was still talking out loud, and she got the feeling that he was running it through in his own mind more than he was explaining anything to her. “You had never seen her before. She didn’t know who you were, didn’t greet you. I’ve only been around here for a few weeks, but even I know that meant that she was a stranger—not even a regular tourist. And she was looking for me. By name. Something about how I reacted to her was what she was looking for, but she didn’t approach me until then, until she was ready to make her move.”

  “And that—the fact that she was pretty much stalking you—made you nervous. Hell, it made you run. Way before she brought out the goons with guns. Who are you?” Beth swallowed, suddenly aware that she was on a totally isolated islet with a man she knew nothing about—not even if the name he was using was actually his own. “Who the hell was she?” What have you gotten yourself into, Elizabeth?

  “Don’t be afraid.” He didn’t look at her; in fact, he was carefully looking away as he said it. “You should never be afraid of me. I could never hurt you. I would die for you.”

  The words were so simply, so sincerely said, Beth found herself believing him. She believed that he would die rather than hurt her, die rather than allow her to be hurt. Insane. He was probably insane, and she had to be, to trust him, but what other choice did she have?

  I would die for you, beloved.

  She refused to listen to her imagination, instead focusing on what he was actually saying.

  “That woman, the men with her, they’re Hunters. And they hunt my people.” He paused, as though he was going to say something more, and then shook his head. His hair was still wet, unlike hers, which was drying quickly in the light breeze. An advantage to short hair.

  Yeah. Insane. But play the cards you’re dealt, Beth. “Your people. Why?”

  “We have something they want. Something they hunt.”

  God, it was like pulling teeth with a string! She snapped. “Dylan, I just got shot at! I just had to swim—what, two, three miles?—out into the ocean with a total stranger. My cell phone is ruined, my wallet is a soggy mess, God knows if my shoes will recover, and okay, that’s shallow but it bothers me! So, damn it, I want answers!”

  He let out a strange bark that might have been laughter, or annoyance. “They want our skins.”

  Whatever she had been expecting, it wasn’t that.

  Chapter 7

  Dylan’s words echoed over the sound of the wavelets riding the shore, and the wind, and the distant screaming of the gulls overhead.

  Skins.

&nbs
p; She was being hunted for her skin. By people. Those people. That woman. For her skin.

  The weight of that statement sank into her brain, and despite the fact that she knew all the words, and they were in a perfectly reasonable order, spoken in clear English, she didn’t quite comprehend what he had said at first. She just sat there and blinked at him, waiting for the punch line to arrive, for someone to step out from behind the curtain and explain what the hell was going on.

  It didn’t come, not the punch line or the explanation. Dylan just sat there as well, perched on the rocks in his damp jeans and irritatingly, enticingly bare chest and beautifully arched bare feet, and watched her watching him. In the two weeks since he had arrived, his pale skin had turned a faint caramel from the sun, toffee and cream with only the faintest dappling of hair across his chest and down his arms. Not quite a six-pack under that smooth skin, but firm and flat, and as she watched a muscle twitched across his abdomen, as though flinching from the touch of her gaze.

  Skin. Her skin. Not her, not Beth-who-was-a-person. Just the shell, the sausage casing. Beth looked at her arm, at the still water-wrinkled fingers, the chapped and sun-pinked skin of her forearm. Skin?

  Four hours ago she had woken in her own bed, in her own home, and the world wasn’t perfect but it made sense. A lot could happen in four hours.

  Everything could change, in four hours.

  Her shoulders shook, and she wasn’t sure if she was holding back hysteria, or hysterical laughter, but it was definitely bubbling up inside. On the plus side, she wasn’t twitchy or out of sorts anymore. That had to be something, right?

  “I’m sorry.” Dylan made a movement as though to touch her, then changed his mind and reached over and tested his shirt instead. It obviously hadn’t dried enough to satisfy him, because he adjusted it in a different way on the rock and then turned back to her. The wet denim clung to his ass in ways that really should have been illegal. Even reeling from what he had just told her, impossible as it was, and jolted by the excess adrenaline from their swim, to say nothing of the shock of being shot at, Beth couldn’t help wishing he had taken off his jeans, as well. Were his legs more heavily furred, or smooth? And did that make a difference to the value of his skin?

  The thought was totally insane. Her mind and her body had clearly parted company a long time ago.

  No, not so long ago. Just two weeks ago when this crazy man washed up on the beach of her town and started chasing after her. Except he hadn’t actually done any chasing. What was it he had said, that Nathan—that turncoat—had said she would be easier to entice than chase? Hah! Nathan was going to get kicked in the shin, next time she went into Apollo’s.

  Right now she was pissed off at everyone who had anything to do with Dylan Meridith and his seemingly out-of-the-blue obsession with her.

  Oddly enough, all the apprehension she had felt earlier, the feeling of being trapped and hunted, had disappeared the moment someone actually was hunting her. Sitting next to him, bedraggled, confused and wondering if she had lost her mind, her reaction to that crazy man was totally undiluted by distrust, either of him or herself. All she wanted to do was find a patch of softer sand somewhere, and…

  And do things that were totally, insanely inappropriate, all things considered. What was with her hormones? Apparently, being threatened and dumped into the ocean with a crazy man was what got her juices going. If she’d only known that in college…

  Definitely hysterical laughter, yes. A burp of sound escaped her, and she stuffed the back of her hand into her mouth to keep anything worse from coming out.

  Focus, Miss Elizabeth. She could almost hear Ben’s voice, implacable as the rocks they were sitting on. Live, first. Figure out what’s going on, and how to get out of it, skin still attached. Then worry about your crazy hormones.

  “Right.” She shoved the laughter down and used both hands to swipe at her hair, trying to finger-comb the tangled strands before they dried too badly. “Sorry for what?” she was finally calm enough to ask Dylan, focusing on his face so that she wasn’t staring at his body. Not much help there—she was still in overload. “You didn’t shoot at me. You dragged me out here, yeah, but there was no shooting involved.” No, why the hell was she excusing him? He was the one who got her into this!

  Beth placed the heels of her palms against her eyes and pressed, as though that would make everything fall back into shape when she looked at the world again.

  “I got you into this,” he said, echoing her thoughts. “If I hadn’t come here, they would never have found you.”

  She risked looking. He was slumped on the edge of a rounded rock and, as she watched, ran his hands through his own hair, a gesture of frustration and annoyance. “That’s my fault. I didn’t think. It was all rush and rush, and wanting and not thinking. I always do that. And that’s probably why they found me, because I forgot everything I knew except finding you.”

  He turned his face up to her then, and the sweet brown of his eyes made her want to forgive him everything he had ever done.

  She wasn’t that far gone, though. He might be sorry, but he wasn’t wrong. It was all his fault. Focus on that, Beth, she reminded herself. Don’t lose sight of the facts.

  “I need to get you somewhere safe,” he went on. “We need to go somewhere safe. But I don’t know where. I can’t take you home—that will lead them right to the colony. I can’t do that.” He stood and started pacing, muttering to himself. “Damn it. Damn, damn. Think, second-born, think!”

  Hunters. After her skin. His skin first, from what he said, and hers as an added plus. Those were facts, too, if she bought into his story. She looked at her arm again, wondering what it might be worth, and to whom. And why. It made no sense. None of this had ever made any sense.

  But there was something beyond the confusion, something deeper than the sexual zing she felt every time she looked at Dylan. She had been scuttling around it, avoiding it the way she had avoided him. Avoiding the dreams that had only begun the night he was washed up on the island, the restlessness than began with the storm that brought him into her life, too.

  Something was happening. She couldn’t avoid it, deny it, any longer.

  A connection. Something between the two of them… Something that made her believe…not in his story, exactly, but that he would not hurt her. That whatever he was doing, it was to protect her. That he knew her, and she knew him. Not just now, but always. Before they were born, and long after they died, cycles upon cycles.

  It was a strange feeling. She had been independent since she was sixteen, and Ben and Glory agreed that she was capable of running her own life. She had taken care of herself, done everything she needed on her own. Even Jake had never taken care of her—he assumed that if she wanted something, she got it or did it herself, or did without.

  The knowledge—and she knew, now—that Dylan would do anything for her, would go miles out of his way to satisfy her, was…humbling. Sweet, and terrifying.

  “You’re in danger,” she said, as though it were a sudden revelation.

  “What? Yeah. We have to go somewhere safe. Somewhere they won’t think to look for us. But I don’t know…” He looked up again, his eyes now anguished. “I don’t know your world. I don’t know where to go, that they won’t anticipate.”

  “Inland.”

  She spoke without thinking, then closed her eyes and shook her head, thinking it through. That was her strength: if he rushed and reacted, she sat back and thought. “You went to the sea, instinctively. They didn’t expect that, or they were unprepared, otherwise they would have come at us with a boat, too.”

  “They didn’t think I’d risk it, changing voluntarily, where they could reach me,” he said softly, but it didn’t make any sense to her. She waited, but he didn’t say anything more.

  “That woman, you said she was playing by rules, that she needed to follow procedures?”

  Dylan nodded, his entire body leaning forward now, as he listened intently to her t
hought process.

  “If that’s the way she thinks, she’s used to going by what’s done, not improvising. So now I bet she’s thinking about nothing except the water routes, thinking that since it worked once, you’ll stick to that. They will expect you to feel comfortable out here. So you won’t stay out here.”

  “We won’t,” he corrected her.

  “What?” Her eyes opened suddenly, and she slewed around to stare at him.

  “You missed the part when they included you in their agenda?” He tried for joking, but didn’t pull it off. “We’re in this together. You and me.”

  The words were tough, but the look in his eye suddenly was anything but. The anguish was still there, and the worry, but something sharper, with more spice, turned the brown into hot gold that made her think of other things—more pleasurable things—they could do together. You and me. Whatever she was feeling, she wasn’t alone with it. Getting dunked and shot at turned him on, too. She supposed that was good to know.

  Suddenly it was very important that she know one thing for certain. “Dylan. When you say skin, do you mean that metaphorically, or…”

  “Actual skins. Without us in them,” he clarified for her, his brown eyes watching her steadily for…what? She hadn’t given him enough of a reaction already?

  “Oh.” Yeah. That was what she had thought, but she had wanted to be sure. The “why” suddenly seemed less important—she had a strong suspicion she wouldn’t care about what they were going to do with her skin, once she was out of it.

  Beth sat for a moment longer, then stood, wincing as her socks still squelched wetly inside her shoes. That whole skinless image put a kibosh on her libido for the moment, anyway. Nice to know.

  “Are you…all right?” the object of her libido’s exertions asked, looking at her from his rock-perch, those brown eyes still liquid and irresistible.