Blue Moon (25 page)

Jason's baby fine hair moved gently in the breeze. I heard him take a deep breath, then he touched my arm. He spoke low. “I smell the man that I threw into the truck yesterday.”

We kept walking as if nothing were wrong. “Are you sure?” I asked.

I saw his nostrils flare as he tested the air. “He smelled like peppermint Lifesavers and cigarettes.”

“A lot of people smell like peppermint and cigarettes,” I said.

We kept moving, his hand on my arm now. “I also smell gun oil.”

Great.

Jamil was waiting for us just up ahead. The three
wereleopards waited among the trees. Jamil came back to us, smiling, and enveloped both of us in a big, hearty hug. “You guys are so damned slow tonight.” He hugged us against him and whispered, “I smell two, maybe three, to our left.”

“One of them is a guy I beat up yesterday,” Jason said, smiling as if we were talking about something else entirely.

“Revenge maybe?” He made it a question.

“How far away are they?” I asked.

He drew back with a big very un-Jamil grin. He whispered, “A few yards. I can smell the guns.”

I encircled his slender waist with my arm and whispered against his chest. “We don't have any guns. Any suggestions?”

Jason leaned in, laughing, and said, “I don't feel good enough to outrun them.”

I patted his arm. “Me, either.”

“If they're here for revenge,” Jamil said, “then maybe, they'll settle for just the two of you.”

I drew back from him. I wasn't sure I liked his reasoning. “So?”

“You stay here and make out. They move up to get you, and I get them.”

“They've got guns. You don't.”

“I'll send Zane and Cherry to the others. They'll bring reinforcements. But we can't let them follow us to the lupanar. We can't take danger there.”

“Some werewolf rule?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“All right,” I said. “But don't let them kill me, okay?”

“What about me?” Jason said.

“Sorry. Him either.”

Jamil leaned into both of us. “I suggest the two of you get a lot more cozy, fast, or they're not going to buy it.”

I transferred my arm to Jason's waist, but said, “How long have they been watching?”

“Make them think you're drunk, just in case they saw the screaming. Make out, but get on the ground as soon as possible in case they just decide to shoot you.” With that comforting thought, Jamil went back to the others. He walked away into the dark with the wereleopards. Zane looked at me as they walked away, but I nodded once, and that seemed to satisfy him. He turned and let Jamil lead him away. I really was going to
have to find the leopards a true alpha. They were all so damn submissive.

Jason pushed me up against a tree.

“Watch it,” I said.

He grinned at me. “We want it to look real, don't we?”

“I thought we had a moment of real friendship bonding back there,” I said.

Jason leaned in towards me as if he were going to kiss me. “Just because we're friends doesn't mean that I don't want to sleep with you.” He kissed me, a soft brush of lips.

I frowned at him, not kissing back. “Please tell me that you don't want to sleep with all your female friends.”

He put a hand on either side of my head, propping himself against the tree. “What can I say? I'm a guy.”

I shook my head. “That's not an excuse.”

He leaned his whole body into me in a sort of standing push-up. The muscles in his arms swelled with the effort. “How about because it's me.”

I smiled. “That I'll buy.” I put my hands on his waist. He was leaning against me but not too hard. He could have been taking a lot more advantage of the situation than he was. I realized that he was being a gentleman. There was a time not long ago that Jason wouldn't have made the effort. We were friends. But we needed to get down on the ground, and this wasn't getting us there.

I glanced, as casually as I could, at the others. I could still see Zane, and Cherry's hair gleamed through the trees. I had a sense that Jamil and Nathaniel was still with them, but it was all that blond hair that made them so visible. If the bad guys had a high-powered rifle, they could shoot us both through the tree. Once the others got out of sight, they might do just that.

I slid my hands up Jason's chest. The skin was soft, but underneath, he was very firm. I knew what that smooth flesh felt like shredding under claws. It wasn't the munin coming back. It was just me flashing on the vision. I balled my hands into fists and forced my hands to his face. I didn't want to do anything that would remind either of us of what we'd just shared. There was always the extra danger that it could bring Raina back. No, I didn't want to be channeling Raina with armed goons in the woods.

I cradled Jason's face in my hands, moving just my head
towards him. As I leaned into him, he leaned more into me. I was suddenly very aware that his body was pressed down the length of mine. It made me hesitate, but when his lips brushed mine, I kissed him. I ran my hand back through his hair, until I had a handful of it.

I whispered into his mouth, “We need to get on the ground as soon as possible.”

He kissed me harder, hands dropping to my belt. He slid his fingertips inside the belt, and knelt in front of me, pulling me down with him. I let him. He fell back into the leaves and pulled me down on top of him. I propped myself on my scraped forearms against his chest, sort of startled. I just wasn't a good enough actress for this.

I could feel his heart thudding under my hands. He rolled me suddenly, and I let out a little yip of surprise. He ended very firmly on top, and I didn't like it.

“I want on top,” I said.

He put his lips next to my cheek. “If they shoot us, I can take a bullet better than you can.” He rubbed his cheek along my face, and I realized he was doing the werewolf greeting. Maybe it was their version of a handshake, but I'd never been tempted to shake hands while making out.

I whispered into his ear, which was very close to my mouth, “Do you hear them?”

“Yes.” He raised his face enough to kiss me.

“How close?” I kissed him back, but we were both listening, straining to hear. Here we were, lying on top of each other, bodies perfectly matched up, and we were both tight enough that I could feel the muscles along his back knotting.

“A few yards,” he said. “They're good.” He rested his cheek against mine. “They move quietly.”

“Not quiet enough,” I whispered.

“Can you hear them?” he asked.

“No.”

We were both just staring at each other. Neither of us was making much of an effort to kiss or anything else. I could feel that his body was happy to be pressed up against mine, but it was all secondary. Men with guns were coming. Men who didn't like us very much.

I stared up into his eyes from inches away. I knew they were pale blue, but by moonlight they looked almost silver. “You're
not going to do anything stupid like shield my body with yours.”

He pushed just a little with his hips and grinned. “Why do you think I'm on top?” The grin and the hip movement were to distract me from how very serious his eyes were.

“Get off of me, Jason.”

“Nope,” he said. He propped himself up on his arms, pressing into me, leaning over like we were kissing. “They're almost here.”

I slid a knife out for either hand.

He whispered against my mouth. “We're supposed to look helpless, remember? Bait doesn't go armed.”

I could feel how very smooth his cheek was, smell his cologne. I stared past the pale halo of his hair. “We just trust that Jamil and the rest will save us, is that it?”

He licked my chin, then my mouth. I realized he was doing the submissive greeting. He was begging me to go along. His tongue was very wet and very warm.

“Stop licking me, and I'll do it,” I said.

He laughed, but it was high with an edge of tension to it. I couldn't resheath the knives with him pressed on top of me, so I laid them down in the leaves. I kept my hands on them, lightly, but tried to relax and look harmless. With Jason pressed on top of me, kissing down my neck, it was easy to look helpless. The relaxed part wasn't going to happen.

I heard them now, moving through the dry leaves. They were quiet. If I hadn't been listening for it, I might have thought it was wind, an animal moving through the undergrowth. But it wasn't. It was men moving heavy and secretively through the forest. Hunting. They were hunting. They were hunting Jason and me.

I saw the first one round the tree, and I wasn't a good enough actress to look surprised. I just stared up at him with Jason on top of me, still kissing the side of my neck.

He'd looked big yesterday. From flat on my back, he was enormous, like a two-legged tree. The rifle in his hand looked long and black and hostile. He didn't point it at us, just held it in the crook of one arm. A big smile split his pale face.

I heard the second man before he touched Jason's shoulder with the tip of a double-barreled shotgun. The moment I saw the shotgun, I knew they'd come to kill us. You didn't go after
people with shotguns if you just meant to scare them, not as a general rule, anyway.

If it were silver shot at this range, he could have killed both of us. I wasn't scared yet. I was pissed. Where the hell was our backup?

Jason raised his face slowly. The shotgun tapped his cheek almost gently. “My brother Mel sends his regards.”

I rolled my eyes to look past the shotgun. The man was wearing a black T-shirt with a Harley logo on it. His belly hung out over his belt. There was a family resemblance.

I said very calmly, each word careful but not scared, “What do you want?”

Mel's brother laughed.

The first man joined him.

They stood over us with the guns and laughed. Not a good sign. Where the fuck was Jamil?

“Get off of her real slow,” the first man said. The rifle was at his shoulder now, snuggled against his chin like he knew what he was doing.

Jason leaned over me until I was as hidden as I could get under his body. Being short made it hard for him to shield me completely.

I told him. “Get off of me.”

“No,” he said. He'd seen the shotgun, too. And I realized he understood what it meant. I was not going to let him die a hero. I was certainly not going to let him die by spattering his brains all over me. Some things you recover from. Some things you don't. Wiping Jason's brains off my face might be one of the latter.

I let go of the knife in my right hand, letting the blade lie in the leaves. It took everything I had not to tighten my grip on the one in my left. I tried to keep my hand very still. In the dark, they might not notice. They hadn't, so far.

“Get off of her,” the man repeated, “or I will shoot you both where you lay.”

“Off, Jason,” I said softly.

He moved enough so we could see each other's eyes. I looked to my right at the rifleman. Then I touched my chest and looked at Mel's brother. I was trying to tell him that the rifle was his problem and the shotgun was mine. I hoped he understood. Either he did, or he had his own plan, because he raised very
slowly and got to his knees. I sat up, not too fast, not too slow. I kept my left hand in the leaves, knife gripped tightly.

The rifleman said, “Hands on your head, boy.”

Jason didn't argue. He just clasped his hands on his head like he'd done it before.

No one told me to put my hands on my head, so I didn't. If we were lucky, they'd treat me like a girl. The rifleman had been unconscious when I hurt Mel. The one with the shotgun hadn't been there. What had Mel told them?

The rifleman said, “Remember me, asshole?”

“Is he asking you or me?” I asked. I scooted in the leaves a little closer to the guy with the shotgun.

“Don't get cute, chickie,” the rifleman said. “We came here for both of you, but I want my piece of this one first.”

Jason flicked his eyes to me. “You must be losing some of your charm, Anita. He wants a piece of me instead of you.”

The rifleman had the rifle aimed very steadily at the middle of Jason's chest. If it were silver ammo, he was gone. The rifleman said, “Chuck.”

Chuck, the one with the shotgun, grabbed my left arm. I opened my hand and let the knife fall before he raised my hand free of the leaves. The rifle was too steady on Jason for me to try stabbing Chuck. If I were lucky, I'd get another chance. If I wasn't, I was going to come back and haunt Jamil.

Chuck's hands were big and meaty. Thick fingers dug into my arm enough that if I lived, I'd be bruised.

“If you don't do exactly what I say, your girlfriend gets it.”

I wanted to say, “Who writes your dialogue?” but I didn't. The shotgun hovered about an inch from my cheek. Pretty clear what
it
was. I could smell the oil in the gun barrels. It had been cleaned recently. Nice to know ol' Chuck took care of his weapon.

The rifleman did two things almost at once: He stepped forward and reversed his gun. The rifle butt smashed into Jason's chin. Jason swayed but didn't fall.

The rifle stabbed at him again, catching him high on one cheekbone. Blood spilled in a black line.

I must have moved, because the shotgun was suddenly pressed against my cheek. “Don't do it, bitch.”

I swallowed and spoke very carefully with the cool metal against my face. “Do what?”

“Anything,” he said. He jerked my arm for emphasis, grinding the shotgun into my cheek.

The rifleman said, “The doc said you could have broken my spine. Said I was lucky. I am going to hurt you, asshole, then I'm going to kill you. If you take it like a man, I'll let the girl go. You wimp out, and I do you both.” He smashed the rifle into Jason's mouth. Blood and something heavier flew shining in the moonlight. The beating began in earnest.