by Katee Robert
No matter that his cock was already getting hard again. No matter that she lay there mostly naked with his come marking her pale skin. No matter that he craved hearing that sexy little whimper she made when she came. If he started fucking her now, he wouldn’t stop until dawn, and they both needed their sleep and their focus. Should have thought about that before you fingered her … again.
Damn it, he was fucking up.
“Luca?” A thread of something unidentifiable in her voice.
He slowly withdrew, but he couldn’t stop himself from pressing a soft kiss to the spot where her neck met her shoulder. “There’s still a few hours left to dawn. Get some sleep.”
Cami rolled away from him and to her knees. If he expected her to blush and stammer and fumble back into her clothes …
Luca should have known better by now.
She stared at him for a long moment, her cheeks and chest flushed, her eyes heavy-lidded with pleasure. “If this place is bringing out your nightmares, you shouldn’t be here.”
Luca blinked. “What?”
“That’s what was happening, wasn’t it? Nightmares because this place reminds you of that place in some way.” She shook her head and pulled off her shirt to clean up his mess. If he thought Cami’s breasts were perfection in that little tease of a swimsuit, they were even better without anything shielding them. Small and perfect, with rosy nipples he had the sudden urge to taste.
“Luca, stop staring at my breasts.”
He jerked his gaze her to face. “Sorry.” She didn’t look turned on, or even pissed. She looked … worried.
Cami refastened her pants and tossed her ruined shirt toward her pack. “There’s working through your issues and there’s being an idiot. Would you like to know which category you fall into?”
He sat up, suddenly less concerned about her being half naked and more about the words she lobbed at him like grenades. “That’s none of your fucking business.”
“You made it my business when you stalked me here.” Cami started to say something else, but abruptly shook her head. “You know what? This conversation isn’t worth the energy it takes to have it. You made your choice. Bully for you. I’m going back to sleep.” She marched to her pack and pulled out another shirt. “You’re welcome, by the way.”
He watched her settle back in, completely at a loss. Luca might not be interested in opening himself up for this near-stranger—for anyone—but she had woken him before his nightmare reached its inevitable conclusion. He flopped back down onto his sleeping back and stared up at the starry sky. Even in the warmth of the night, he couldn’t shake the biting cold that followed him into waking. He shuddered.
No matter what Cami thought, she was wrong. Some things a person worked through and got over. Some things followed a person to their deathbed. Maybe beyond.
What happened in hell was the latter.
He didn’t have to sleep again to be back in the nightmare. Some nights it was more real to him than the room he slept in and called his own. Those were the times when Luca took to stalking the passages between rooms in the casino, watching monitors and doing everything necessary to remind himself that he was no longer living on the knife’s edge. He had a place of his own. A chosen family who didn’t ask more from him than he was able to give. The kind of security only massive amounts of money could supply.
Tonight, that wasn’t an option.
He made himself close his eyes. The only thing more unforgivable than having nightmares about what was done to him in that place was letting those feelings of fear and lack of control bleed over into his waking hours. He refused to allow it.
Instead he walked back through his nightmare. One step at a time.
The feeling of the splintered wooden handle of the knife pressed into his hand. The icy-cold packed dirt of the pit against his bare feet. The murmur of spectators in the private stands placing bets.
And the terrified blue eyes of the first boy he’d killed there.
The nightmares weren’t always of the pit. Sometimes they were the organized hunt that left yet more children dead. The ones who weren’t fast enough, weren’t clever enough—the ones who were tired of living in that place.
It had a name. Camp Bueller.
For Luca, it was and would forever be hell.
Luca took one breath. And then another. Piece by piece, he walked through their escape, how Amarante had managed to get all four of them out alive despite it being the dead of winter, and how they’d kept each other alive in their desperate trek out of the forest surrounding that place.
But it wasn’t Amarante’s face that came to mind like it normally did when the past rode him hard. No, the features formed in his mind’s eye were paler, wide blue eyes, cropped dark brown hair, pert little lips …
Fuck.
Even as he tried to stop himself from using Cami as a grounding image, his body relaxed into it. The iron band around his lungs eased, and his head stopped throbbing. Fuck, he thought again. She wasn’t supposed to mean anything to him. He wasn’t certain she did mean anything to him. He wanted her safe, but looking deeper into that … No. Luca couldn’t do it.
Then you shouldn’t be on this island, and you damn well shouldn’t be touching her.
He knew that. He could ignore things he didn’t like, but he didn’t make a habit of lying to himself. He wanted Cami. He felt protective of her. He even admired her for surprising him. None of those things were uncomplicated on their own. Together?
It spelled a whole shit ton of trouble for Luca.
He blinked a few times into the near-darkness and let out the breath bottled up in his lungs. It didn’t matter what he thought of her, because the plan had to stay the same. This whole thing was bigger than him, bigger than this hunt and this group of people.
Fifteen years, they’d waited for their revenge. First, because they were too young and nowhere near strong enough. Then later, because their fledgling business was too new to accomplish what they set out to do.
Fifteen years of building their own little empire in order to be strong enough to take on the demons of their shared past. It was finally time. He couldn’t let a little thing like infatuation get in the way of justice.
Revenge.
Justice.
Two sides to the same coin.
The end result remained the same—they would cut the head off the snake that was the organization that stole them as children. They would kill those responsible and burn the remainder to the ground. They would salt the metaphorical ground behind them, ensuring the big players thought twice about trading in children.
Would it take the flesh trade out at the knees?
No. He wasn’t naive to believe that.
But it would cut off part of it. And then … They might not have talked about what came after, but he didn’t think for a second that any of them would be satisfied. There were always monsters to fight, to drag down into the darkness and never let loose again. It might be thankless work, but it was important. Vital, even.
It all started with the Bookkeeper. He held the key to the organization. He had the names, the locations, and most importantly—the money.
Getting him onto the island was the only thing that mattered, even if it damned Luca’s chances with Cami in the process.
He almost smiled. His chances with Cami? When the hell had he gone from wanting her to get the hell back to her safe little palace to flat out wanting her around? She was a princess in need of protection, and if he’d been good enough for her by birth when he was a child, he’d since become tainted beyond all recognition. Cami even understood that—it was why she really hadn’t intended to marry him when she came to the island.
Luca set it aside. He needed to be focused and on his A game. Anything else was inexcusable. Slowly, oh so slowly, his body got the memo that they weren’t in the middle of a fight, and relaxed muscle by muscle. He drifted into sleep sometime soon after.
Only to wake up to the sun grinding against his
eyelids.
He blinked and sat up, already knowing what he’d find before he registered the empty spot where Cami’s sleeping body had been only a few hours before. “Fuck.”
She’d gotten the drop on him.
Again.
10
Now that Cami knew Luca had the skillset to track her—that he was there on the island—she took great pains to cover her tracks. No matter how attracted she was to him, she couldn’t trust him. Not during the Hunt. Maybe after …
After didn’t matter if she didn’t win.
Nothing mattered if she didn’t win. She’d come too far to be distracted now, even by Luca.
Especially by Luca.
She figured he’d expect her to either cut into the island or continue south. She went north instead. The route would take her dangerously close to one of the extraction points, but it was a risk she had to take. No one would expect her to skirt so near the very location she needed to avoid. Hopefully. The entire morning, she kept looking over her shoulder, half expecting Luca to appear, charging after her like a maddened bull. As the hours stretched through the morning and into the afternoon, she refused to acknowledge the sinking feeling in her stomach. It wasn’t disappointment. It couldn’t be.
By the time the sun started its slow descent toward the horizon, Cami made herself set aside thoughts of Luca. At some point she’d have to deal with him, especially if her plan to remove the other competitors played out like she hoped. Eventually there would be no one left but her and Luca and, no matter what he said about protecting her, she didn’t think for a second he’d allow her to win.
No, her only option was to ensure her victory herself.
That meant she had to leave the relative safety of the beach. If there were any traps near the water, she hadn’t come across them yet. Cami would never win in a fair right. She could shoot relatively well, but that wouldn’t help her in a place where guns weren’t allowed. Besides, she didn’t really want to kill anyone if she had a choice. She could win without drawing blood.
She hoped.
Of her opponents, only one left was a woman and though she wasn’t particularly large, Cami still didn’t like the look of her. The assassin moved like the specialized security forces Yael had brought in at one point to teach Cami some of the finer bits of hand to hand combat. Those mercenaries had raised the small hair on the back of her neck. The other woman competitor did the same. She wouldn’t underestimate Cami the same way the men would, and the usual tricks wouldn’t work, either. It would require a different technique.
Worry about her later.
In a test of brute strength or brawling, every single one of the men would outmatch Cami. She could grapple a little, but her skills lent better to sneak attacks and ambushing than head-on combat. She could use that. She just had to be careful.
No two ways around it, though. She’d have to go deeper into the cloying green to find the tools she needed to win this thing.
This is what I trained for.
She stopped and drank some water, thinking back to the moment when her whole life changed. The moment when Lady Nibley first acknowledged her. It was the summer after Cami turned eighteen. The old woman traveled to the palace to attend the wedding of Cami’s middle brother, and she’d pulled Cami aside.
Those dark eyes had held knowledge Cami could only begin to guess at. Your brother failed to bring my boy home. She’d clasped Cami’s shoulder with one of her gnarled hands. Are you content here, girl? A nightingale in a cage, singing prettily. Off to marry someone—not my boy, of course, he’s never coming home and an old woman has to make her peace with that. Some equally pretty noble who’ll get pretty children from you. They’ll never see the throne. Not with your two older brothers intent on breeding like rabbits.
Cami pressed a hand to her chest, smiling now at the shock she’d felt back then. What are you saying?
You get tired of playing the princess, you come see me, girl. Could be you were destined for greater things. She’d shrugged. Or could be that you’re just as useless as everyone seems to think. Pretty and weak and in need of shelter.
Cami had barely waited a month before she accepted Lady Nibley’s invitation to spend the summer in her country estate. And so had begun her secondary education in a variety of things that a sheltered pretty princess wasn’t supposed to know.
She gave herself a shake. She was finally here, finally doing the one thing Yael had asked of her in exchange for the invested years and resources. Find answers. Yael had made her peace with his not wanting to return to Thalania. Now she just wanted answers. Answers to what happened to Luca all those years ago. Answers to who was responsible. Answers to what he intended to do with the rest of his life.
Once she delivered that information to Yael …
She didn’t really know what would be next. She would have her freedom in a way she had never experienced before. Not even Theo could argue that she wasn’t able to take care of herself after she’d won the Wild Hunt. And with Death’s favor in her pocket, he’d have to let her go.
Getting ahead of yourself.
First you have to win.
She wouldn’t manage that while mooning about, thinking about things best left alone. Yael wasn’t here, and if Cami missed her as if the old woman had actually been her grandmother, then that was a strange form of homesickness she needed to put aside. It wouldn’t serve her now.
She took a slow breath and ducked into the trees. Searching the island wouldn’t work, because she needed the traps more than she needed to find her opponents. They would find her. Cami simply had to be ready when they did.
It took her another two hours before she found the first trap, and by then the light had dimmed into something too close to night to risk moving farther. This one wasn’t a cage like the last. It was an actual pit in the ground. She carefully shifted the clever mat—a heavy cloth with dirt and leaves and branches attached to it—away from the opening. The only reason she’d noted it in the first place was that it had the faintest outline showing in the long shadows of the setting sun. At any other time of day, she likely would have missed it.
Maybe she would have even walked right over it.
Cami pressed a hand to the smooth wall. Metal. There would be no chance at all of scaling it. She guessed it had to be at least ten feet deep, sheer walls a little too far apart to successfully leverage a person’s body against to inch up. She studied the gap. It was a leap, but if someone chased her, if she was sprinting, she could make it. She just had to ensure she didn’t jump too soon.
It took several minutes to get the mat back over the opening and another few to ensure it wasn’t readily apparent that the pit existed. By then it was dark enough that she shuddered.
She couldn’t risk a fire tonight. If she could guarantee that someone approaching would do it in the direction of the pit …
But no. It was too great of odds to attempt. Better to tuck herself up into one of the trees and wait for the light of morning. Cami sighed. She would kill for a shower and a soft bed, but five more nights lay between her and that particular goal.
Just five nights.
She could do this.
She shook her head and scaled a nearby tree, climbing until she couldn’t be reached easily from the ground. She wedged herself in between two branches near the trunk. Two power bars were her only dinner, and then there was nothing left to do but think.
She hadn’t wagered on her attraction to Luca. She definitely hadn’t wagered on his attraction to her. No matter what his reason was for participating in the Hunt, Cami didn’t doubt for a second that he wanted her.
Just like she didn’t doubt for a second that he absolutely didn’t want to want her.
Complicated did not begin to describe their situation.
Maybe it was just sex?
Maybe she was the only one complicating things. Surely Luca didn’t actually feel the protective urges he claimed, surely it was all part of Death’s ultimate game.
Surely, surely, surely.
Cami couldn’t be certain, though, and because she couldn’t be certain, she couldn’t quite make herself let it go. He was just so … conflicted. Big and dangerous and so damn furious at her because of the desire he obviously felt. For all that, he’d touched her in a way that almost felt like caring, had prioritized her pleasure over his own not once, but twice. Cami had had lovers, albeit not many. Most of the eligible men in her country feared both her brother and his Consorts too much to touch her. It didn’t matter that Theo had never pulled that misogynistic protective older brother bullshit. All he and her brother-in-law had to do was look at a guy talking to her and he scurried away. They weren’t even glaring. And while her sister-in-law, their third, wasn’t nearly as large or imposing, Cami had caught her casually threatening a particularly jerky ex of hers.
Somehow she didn’t think Luca would be scared off by a look from her family. Or even a threat. He’d probably glare at them and then do whatever the hell he wanted. That was more in line with his snarly personality than any of the simpering power plays she was used to.
She smiled into the darkness. It didn’t matter. All this was fantasy. The truth was that, no matter how many orgasms he doled out, she couldn’t trust Luca. What was more, she couldn’t trust herself to stay logical where he was concerned, not if she was already indulging in fantasies of how he’d deal with her brother. No, Cami had to avoid Luca at all costs.
Her very future depended on it.
Luca spent a very frustrating day and night searching for the princess. He’d expected her to continue south down the beach, but before noon, he’d realized that wasn’t her route. There was no evidence of her along the tree line, either. Nor to the north on the beach.
She’d successfully evaded him.
Hell if that didn’t make him like her even more. It wasn’t a convenient feeling. He had no space for liking her. Protecting her? Fuck yeah. Wanting her? Inconvenient, but not entirely unexpected. Liking her paved the way for the kind of complication that could sideline a plan fifteen years in the making.