Surviving Passion (21 page)

He shook his head.

She turned to leave, but still, he did not release her hand. “Tell me what to do so you’ll stop running. So you’ll stop fighting.” He reached out to lift her chin and draw her eyes to his. “What are you afraid of?” he murmured.

It took her several moments to isolate the truth.

“You.”

Dan swallowed hard. “What would change that?”

She sighed, closing her eyes before answering, “Can we start over and wipe out the past?”

His brows drew together as he answered. “No.”

Their hands slid apart as Selena turned and walked out into the night.

Lying in bed that night at Blaire’s cabin, Selena felt like a weight had been lifted. Although her pride, sense of security and grip on her life altogether seemed to have shattered since she met Dan, everything suddenly looked simpler. The situation was what it was. Her new understanding helped make her feel like she could more easily live with her weakened state and deal with the person she had become.

For once, Selena didn’t fault herself for being afraid. Not only did she have every right to be, but it was probably a very good thing that she was. Fear was an important part of survival. Being tough hadn’t gotten her anywhere so far and, for some strange reason, seemed to attract more trouble than it deflected when all these men were around.

The only true problem that Selena had now was the knowledge that Dan was not a bad man; much to the contrary.

He was no happier about the situation than she was. Selena felt a pang of guilt. He had made it clear to her that law, order and some semblance of a civilized humanity represented his highest ideals. It was like he’d said. She had drawn out his primitive nature again and again until it overcame his will. The kind of intensity she knew raged within him would have to be difficult to control on a normal day.

This revelation made Selena sad, but until a sense of normalcy was established between them, she could not imagine being comfortable in his presence. She knew this would never come to pass. Like the rest of them, the harshness of the new world had moulded him into a hardened survivor. They each went about living in their own way and had simply become what they had become. Dan was just … something more. That was the only way she could explain it; and the person who Dan was happened to be far too much for her. He was too powerful, too overwhelming and too perceptive.

When she closed her eyes, haunting visions of him savagely bringing down his enemies in a dark forest danced behind her eyelids. Despite the distance that had lay between them and the darkness at the time, she had seen a sharpness in his eyes that screamed of danger. It wasn’t just the look of a man who
was
dangerous, but of a man who was constantly aware of the danger around him. It was as though he were predator and prey at once. Only now did Selena realize that this was what was so troubling about him: it was
always
in his eyes. It lingered when he took his meals, when he moved from one place to another, when he spoke to her. It was no wonder she could never hold his gaze for long. Life and death was always lurking behind it. She now knew that of the two of them, his instincts raged with immeasurably greater force. She wondered if he was even aware of this, or if he was too accustomed to realize it.

Selena stared at the wooden rafters above her bed, trying to figure out why she couldn’t simply adjust to the way he was. The tenuousness of survival was no new thing. She herself had killed, without a second thought. Furthermore, her long isolation should have erased her sense of human normalcy, shouldn’t it? He had been the first person she had known in years. But what if that alone was responsible for the strange pull that she felt towards him?

Selena thought back to her earlier days, starting before the Crash and ending with the death of her father. Her parents had wisely adapted to the change, but remained civilized. Their lives had been so different from Selena’s. She couldn’t imagine growing up as they had, in front of a television or a computer. Perhaps it was their normalcy that set her standards still.

She remembered in a brief flash what Blaire had muttered during the storm when Dan had come up silently behind them.
“Makes you glad he’s on our side don’t it?”

Selena quirked a smile in the darkness.
It’s a strange time when the safest place in the world is in the arms of the person who frightens you the most
.

She was exhausted, but it was a long time before sleep claimed her.

Someone shook Selena’s shoulder quietly, not long after she had fallen asleep. She opened her eyes as a hand clamped over her mouth. In the darkness she could barely make out Clint’s features.

“Did you miss me?” he whispered sweetly, and then brought a hand down. A shattering pain racked her head, and she was out again. Clint mopped the trickle of blood with her blanket carefully, then lifted her and quietly slipped out of the cabin, closing the door behind him.

When Selena came to, her mouth was bone dry and her head throbbed fiercely. The constant sensation of rocking had her completely disoriented. When she opened her eyes in the muted early morning light, she realized that she had been slung across a horse’s saddle and tied down. In a flash, the night before came back to her. Selena’s gasp was muffled by a strip of cloth that had been used as a gag. Her eyes darted about frantically so that she might know where she was, but only a sea of redwoods surrounded her. They seemed to be climbing among upward-sloping hills, which meant they must be northwest, but that was all that she could gather.

Testing her bonds, Selena found them painfully tight. She couldn’t even try to untie the complicated knots, at least not without being obvious, and she wanted to look unconscious for as long as possible. Stealing a glance at the horse she was strapped to, she found it unfamiliar. She discerned that Clint rode ahead, and held the tether to her horse. She cast a hateful stare at his broad back, wishing she could disintegrate him with her eyes. Soon, her anger was replaced with terror and a sense of doom. She had no idea what he was going to do.

They rode on for a long time, and it was very difficult for Selena to hide her horrible physical discomfort. Despite the passing of the hours, she could come up with nothing to solve her predicament and wondered desperately why no one had intercepted them yet. Neither Blaire nor Tim were light sleepers, she realized. He had managed to get her out quietly in the early night. That meant they had been traveling for at least six hours. The sky was still dim. When would they realize she was missing? Selena fought the urge to cry. Clint had been clever about this, and struck surprisingly fast. It was her fault, she realized miserably. If she hadn’t kept his predatory nature a secret, more precautions would have been taken. She should have been honest. Dan, Cal and Shane should all have known.

“Mornin’ honey,” Clint leered from up ahead.

He stopped the horses a few minutes later at a small stream.

“Glad you’re awake. We’ve got a hell of a fun couple of days planned.”

He roughly untied her from her mount’s back, and she slid off, tumbling to the ground. Her head swam as the blood flow tried to correct itself from hours spent in the wrong position. Clint was bent down at the stream, filling the water skins as the horses drank. He capped one and threw it at her. Selena’s hands were still bound, so it smacked into them and fell on the ground. She uncapped it and drained it in moments, despite the gag. Clint wrenched it from her and filled it again, looking displeased by the inconvenience. He rose to fish around in her mount’s saddlebag and flung a pouch at her.

“Eat,” he commanded. “Can’t have you dying on me just yet. Not gonna get any more food until tomorrow, so don’t go and be picky.”

He strode over to her and she cringed away, but he only tore off her gag before returning to the stream. Selena opened the pouch tentatively and found strips of dried meat inside. She did as he asked so as not to provoke his volatile temper. The food didn’t go down easily. When he came towards her again, she tried to scoot away from him.

“Don’t be silly, sweetheart,” he taunted, tying the gag back on her. He picked her up easily and carried her to the horse while she struggled.

Grabbing a handful of her hair, he jerked it back and growled, “I’m not your cock-sucking Dan. You fuck around and I will knock your head off.”

Tears squeezed from the corners of her eyes then, but she had the strength not to sob. Clint threw her into the saddle, upright this time, and violently tied her bound wrists to the saddle horn.

“I’d keep your seat if I were you,” he warned. Grabbing her horse’s tether, he mounted his again. This time, he kept a much shorter lead and the animals walked almost parallel.

They rode on for another hour or so before Selena realized that Clint was strangely silent. This was the first time he had kept his mouth shut since she’d met him. He looked on edge.

Sometime in the mid-afternoon, they stopped again. Clint tethered the horses to a branch and roughly untied Selena, pulling her down. He yanked her gag off and tossed it to the ground, pushing her down next. She shrank away until her back came up against the trunk of a tree. He stood smirking down at her.

“No time for that now, honey, but soon we’ll have some real fun.”

He kicked the gag that lay on the ground, disrupting the duff beneath his feet. Selena was staring in confusion when he dropped down to lean against his own tree trunk. He stared back silently for a while. The malice in his eyes was constant. A smirk slowly spread across his face as he watched her, and finally Selena broke the silence.

“Someone will come after us,” she told him hoarsely as her eyes flicked to the disturbed ground he had left in his wake.

“Not just someone,” his smirk broadened.

“Dan,” she whispered.

Clint nodded with a smug expression, “I’m counting on it.”

He was clearly enjoying the confusion and fear that his answer elicited. He leaned forward and tapped a finger to his head, “You see, I learned a thing or two about that bastard the past few years. So I know that he’s coming alone. You know how I know that?”

Selena shook her head compliantly, feeling the first stings of panic. If she was a casualty, that was something she could accept, but anything beyond that ….

“Because he’s an arrogant prick,” Clint answered with venom. “I couldn’t have done it without you, you know? You really should take a bow for your little part in this.”

Selena’s eyes widened as his words sunk in, and she waited to hear anything he might give away that she could use to foil his plans.

“See, your little emotional entanglement is the only thing that could make him forget to cover his ass.” Clint explained with relish, “This very second, all he’s thinking about is what I might be doing to you now. What I might have already done that he couldn’t stop from happening. God, it’s fantastic to fuck him up so completely. I’d give anything to see his face.”

Selena felt a wave of nausea sweep her insides.
There’s a trapand Dan is the target.
Her heart was galloping.

“Now he can’t bring nobody along on this little chase, see,” Clint went on with obvious satisfaction. “There’s not a one of them wouldn’t slow him down, an’ he knows it. Shane could have kept up, but how wonderful for us that he’s still healing. Yeah. He’ll come alone.” He leaned back again and cradled his head against his arms, looking frighteningly sure. “That’s just the start of it,” he continued. “You ready for story time?”

Selena sat motionless, never taking her eyes off her captor. A sense of dread had taken root in the pit of her stomach and she had a feeling that things were a lot worse than she knew.

Clint shot her an appraising half-smile before going on, “Look at you, and that incredible body of yours. It’s perfect. You thought this was all about you. Don’t lie and tell me you didn’t. Sure, I was having a little fun with you at first, but I was fucking with you to fuck with him. When you were so quiet about it and all, things turned out even better. He still has no idea. Far as he knows, I just don’t like him. There’s so much more to the story though, sweetheart. Did ya know Dan’s father was in the United States Army, Special Forces?” he asked, spitting on the ground for emphasis. “Well, my daddy was out scouting a ways from our clan when I was fourteen. Couple of days later, a few clans met up with ours for a little gathering. My dad gets back that night and Dan and his dad are with him. I didn’t meet ‘em. I saw ‘em, but that was all.

“My dad starts having a good time with a feisty girl a few hours later, and Dan’s dad starts a fight about it, sayin’ how he ain’t bein’ proper or some nonsense. Holds a blade to my dad’s throat. Tried to walk away after that, passing off the girl for Dan to take care of, but my Daddy had a temper,” he grinned. “So he smashed the bastard across the back of the head and he fell onto the side of a fire pit. Cracked his neck on a rock. Wasn’t no one’s fault he died. What do you think Dan did, at seventeen years old? He cut my daddy’s throat open, like he wasn’t even trying. My daddy wasn’t lookin’ to kill nobody. It was an accident and that cocksucker murdered him in cold blood.”

His eyes went distant as he continued the grim tale. “When my dad went down, I just stared for the longest time. Couldn’t believe none of it. When my head caught up, I knew I was gonna kill Dan, but I also knew I couldn’t beat him yet. I was still a scrawny kid. Excellent how things change, eh, darlin’? My luck turned just a few days later. Shane and Jimmy were at that gathering, looking for capable young people to help start a community. They found Dan, who didn’t know what to do with himself. I managed to join up with ‘em too, saying how I was an orphan and lying about how it happened. God damn, it was hard not to cut his throat on that first trip, even though I knew I’d only get one shot. If the fucker wasn’t so spooky, I damn well mighta tried anyway.

“So here I am. And I’ve been livin’ with him for years waiting for the right time to get him back worse, but he has all this fancy training. Didn’t save his daddy though,” Clint laughed savagely. “And it damn sure won’t save him now, neither.”