She looked like she was going to pee herself.
It probably said something about my group, the fact that most of us were looking forward to the fight that was about to ensue. My muscles were tight, and I was ready to rumble. Deception was going to be the name of the game. I had to make my father believe that I was fighting for his team, which meant I got to shoot Chase.
I was looking forward to it.
“Be there or be square,” Travis said in response to our agreement to meet at the clearing in the woods.
“God you are lame,” I mumbled.
His grin lit the shadowy forest.
I didn’t know these woods like Travis and Chase did, so I let Travis take the lead, something that went against my nature. He moved silently beside me as we split off into groups, dodging trees, hanging branches, and bristly underbrush. The forest was never a safe place as far as I was concerned.
I could tell Travis was holding back for my sake, not wanting to leave me alone. As touching as that was, I could handle myself. “You can go all light-speed if you want. Don’t worry about me. I got this,” I told his back.
He stopped and gave me a you’re-whacked-for-suggesting-it glare. “We stick together.” There was a hulk-quality to his voice.
“Jeesh. No need to go all wolverine on me.”
“Don’t make me tie you to a tree.”
I snorted. “I’d like to see you try to tie me up again. You won’t find me so accommodating this time.”
His eyes twinkled in the sun. “Promise.”
I gave into the knee-jerk response and smacked his arm. “Thinking like that is going to get you shot,” I warned.
“Chase isn’t the only one with moves.”
Oh good grief.
The fact that we had stopped to have this ludicrous conversation was nail-biting. He was distracting us from the mission at hand—distracting me. I started moving along the off-beaten path. “We are supposed to be providing backup, not flirting.”
He gave me a come-get-me grin. “Yeah, but this is more fun.”
The flirting ended there. Travis put a finger to his lips, and for a second I thought he was trying to be cute, but then I realized that he heard things that my human ears couldn’t detect. My heart began to jackhammer. This was it. Travis tracked the low murmur of voices until we broke through to a clearing. Oh. Well. Shit.
The entire area was surrounded by men in camo with a slew of weapons aimed directly at us. I didn’t hesitate as I pulled the dagger from inside my boot and let it fly. It sliced through the air, the blade glinting off the starlight and embedded into Chase’s shoulder. Hardly a fatal wound but at least it would make the hunters think that I was rollin’ with them.
“God that was hot,” Travis declared, staring at me.
“Shut up,” I replied, shaking my head and giving him a steely glare.
His sunny grin only widened.
Angel’s reaction, however, was priceless. She did not take well to me wounding Chase. “You stabbed him,” she exclaimed.
I wanted to shake her. She was blowing my cover. “It won’t kill him. Trust me. This has to look real, Angel,” I said in low tones, trying not to make it obvious that I was talking to her. “They have to believe that I am with them.”
Angel of course couldn’t hear reason. She could only see that I had caused her precious Chase harm. Pitiful. Her eyes did some kind of freaky color-deepening-mojo before she lost her shit. “You stabbed him!” she yelled, and then she attacked me.
I was pretty damn tired of her tackling me to the ground. Lucky for her, Chase was uber fast. With death defying speeds, his arms swung around her waist in mid-tackle and pulled her against him.
“Damn it!” Chase swore in a growl. He whispered something in her ear that had her relaxing in his embrace.
Angel took one look at Chase’s shirt stained with a bit of blood and went as white as a snowflake. Chase held her steady, murmuring sweet nothings. Okay, so they weren’t actually words of love, but I found it hard to believe that Chase was capable of more. His voice was soft and reassuring. “Don’t even think about it, Angel Eyes. I’m fine. It is just a scratch. Stay with me.”
Apparently only Angel was blessed to see the softer side of Chase.
Regardless, we didn’t have time for Chase to baby Angel. She needed to put her big girl panties back on, so I spoke in a language Angel understood with clarity: smartass. “Wuss,” I said under my breath, but loud enough that she could hear.
And it worked. Angel perked right up, color flooding her pale cheeks. Of course I got the evil eye from lover boy, but hey, it did the trick.