Total pages in book: 153
Estimated words: 140965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 705(@200wpm)___ 564(@250wpm)___ 470(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 140965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 705(@200wpm)___ 564(@250wpm)___ 470(@300wpm)
She pushed off the ground and Draden reached down to help her up. Is it safe to talk?
She didn’t want to be in his head when they entered the hut. He couldn’t blame her. They both had to face their greatest fears. Once inside, they would know if they had any kind of a chance to defeat the virus. He held out his hand to her. She hesitated, just for a moment, and then her chin went up and she sent him a brief, humorless smile and held out hers.
“Yeah, sweetheart, we can talk.”
Draden closed his fingers around her much smaller hand. She moved gracefully, all fluid like a cat flowing across the ground. They didn’t bother to hide. Neither of their warning systems had gone off and both were confident that they were alone there in the forest.
He had an unfamiliar … no, not just unfamiliar—completely alien desire to protect her. He wanted to wrap her up and keep her so close to him that she was wearing his skin. He needed to keep her safe and his reluctance to enter the hut was centered around the fact that he didn’t want anything happening to her—certainly not for her to die of a horrific virus. He was grateful she’d been the one to ask for privacy. He didn’t want her to think he didn’t believe she was his full partner and could handle what had happened to them every bit as well as he could. He might very well lose his mind when the symptoms began to show up. It was early yet and being infected didn’t seem real.
They strolled through the clearing as if they were lovers walking through a park. He was aware of everything. The birds singing. The sound of cicadas droning on and on. Rodents scurrying in the vegetation. The wind whispering through the trees. The way the scent of her was so delicate, almost elusive. It could have been that he’d spent the happiest days of his youth in the nursery, after his mother died, far from everyone, breathing in the perfume of peonies, and Shylah’s natural fragrance reminded him of the flowers he associated with that time.
He’d had a shit life, and not of his own making, in the beginning. He’d learned rage at such a young age, and how to push everyone away from him. He didn’t trust, and he really hadn’t learned—nor had he wanted to until he’d found the GhostWalkers. He’d been betrayed by just about everyone he’d ever known, including Dr. Whitney. He’d been lucky enough to find a home with Team Four of the GhostWalkers in the Pararescue Unit. In his life, those men had been the first he’d ever given his allegiance to, and that had been hard-won.
He realized Shylah’d had the same shit life, thrown away by her parents and sold to a doctor who believed that all experiments on throwaway female children were justifiable, no matter what he did to them. Draden had grown cold and something had broken inside of him. Shylah had grown warm and strong, refusing to let Whitney’s evil poison her.
He stopped abruptly, just outside the door of the hut, and turned to her, framing her face with his hands. Her skin felt petal soft. Her bone structure delicate. She looked elegant, there in the forest in her camouflage cargo pants, a gun in her side holster, hair braided and wound into an intricate figure eight, and those long lashes fanning her cheeks. She would tempt a saint, and he was far from that. Even acknowledging he was physically attracted and that attraction was strong, he knew he just plain liked her. Admired her. He didn’t admire many people, especially women. Too many had come at him for all the wrong reasons.
Draden knew he shouldn’t, but he touched her mind, just to see if she was falling apart. To his shock, she wasn’t. He expected to hear screaming. Crying. She knew she was going to die. She resolved to save a bullet for herself—and for him, if he was too far gone to do so for himself. She also was certain he would do the same.
He’d almost forgotten she’d been raised military. He’d joined the GhostWalker program knowing he’d be put into situations where there was no way out. He’d joined anyway. He believed serving one’s country was a decent way to go. All along, he knew he’d been the one to make the choice and he had his reasons.
Shylah hadn’t been given a choice, but she’d been raised military and she was as much a patriot as he was. She also knew she was going to die at some point. She had resolved to get away from Whitney, and that meant death. That was the price. Still, she was willing to pay for her freedom, but she wanted to choose how and when. She’d chosen. It was that simple. There weren’t going to be hysterics. Once she’d gotten past the initial shock, she had made up her mind to be his partner and get as many desires checked off the list as possible—just as he had done.