“Let go.” The second I dropped my hands from her h*ps she slammed down onto me, impaling herself to the core.

“Sod of a bitch.” When another wicked smile split the tricky bitch’s lips my c*ck seemed to harden even more, if that was possible. Slowly she elevated herself until only the head remained inside her, and then she slammed down on me again. “Jesus, Sam.” She did it again, and then it seemed as though her restraint had snapped and control became nothing more than a distant memory. She rode me hard and fast, slamming down on me over and over. Nothing had ever felt better.

Needing to touch her, I squeezed her br**sts and tweaked and pinched her ni**les. It wasn’t enough; I needed her lips again. Fisting a hand into her hair I dragged her down and ravished her mouth as she continued to ride me so hard I thought my c*ck would snap. So close to the edge now, I gripped her h*ps and began lifting to meet each of her downward thrusts. Seizing her gaze, I growled, “Come for me, baby. I want to hear you scream my name for me again.” I sank my teeth into her neck, groaning at the taste of her.

Her body tightened and jerked and her muscles spasmed around my c*ck as she screamed my name. I slammed her down onto me one final time and then held her there as I exploded inside her, growling, “Mine”. With my body then totally replete, I sank into the mattress as she flopped down over me, flaccid against my chest. I curled my arms around her, panting and shuddering with the aftershocks. This here and now was the ultimate definition of sated.

After a couple of minutes of comfortable silence she spoke. “I’m working the front line with you and the squad whether you like it or not.”

Playing with her incredibly soft hair, I sighed. “Is it really that terrible that I want you safe?”

“If I asked you to cover a safer position, would you?”

Dammit the woman knew what cards to play.

“I wouldn’t ask you to because I know that hiding in the back isn’t who you are. And if you honestly think I’d leave our squad to cover the front without me then you’re an extremely dense individual.”

The protectiveness in her voice made me smile. I released a groan of surrender. “If you let anything happen to you I’ll strap you to this bed for a month.”

“Tell me how I lose in this situation.”

Laughing, I lifted her chin with my finger and mashed my lips with hers. “Come on then, let’s go gather up our squad. We need to inform them about the upcoming attack and go over the plan for tomorrow evening. Then we eat.”

Needless to say, none of the guys took it well. Each and every one of them wore the most determined look, however. And they were especially jovial about the news of them covering the front line. In the past both Sam and I had, separately of course, taken the guys through the rainforest many times so they were familiar enough with it by now but still we took them again. What they were not familiar with was she and I putting up a united front and I could see how awkward they felt, as if not knowing who to focus their attention on. God that made me feel like shit. I’d done that; I’d actually let my pride get in the way of the guys’ training.

Thinking about the way I’d acted, it was a wonder that Sam even entertained my existence, let alone slept with me. I refused to let myself hope that there must therefore be feelings involved on her part. I’d told Sam I cared about her, but she hadn’t said the same. Nor had she expressed the same protectiveness over me that she had over the squad. It hurt more than I cared to admit. But, then again, she’d said it was only me she wanted, right? She didn’t dispute that she was mine. Even if it was all physical for her it was enough for now. It had to be, because there was no goddamn way I could give her up.

Chapter Sixteen

(Sam)

God bless the excellence of vampire night vision. The forest floor was generally dark even in daylight due to the canopy overhead, so right now it was pitch black. The humidity was bad as well; if it wasn’t for the natural glamour that came with vampirism my hair would be frizzy and wild. Currently I was crouched beside the buttress roots of a canopy tree, letting my eyes scan through the scattered, interlaced hanging lianas and vines and climbers. I knew I’d hear anything before I saw it, but still I had all my senses on high alert.

The animal sounds that I usually loved about the rainforest were gone tonight. There was a tense hush; like each and every creature was holding its breath, waiting for the war to start. I knew that Alora – who hadn’t spent a single second away from Evan since that meeting in the conference room – had already whispered news of the upcoming attack to some of the animals so it would seem that word had got around fast.

Taking advantage of our intimate knowledge with this area, Jared and I had placed the squad members on different levels of the forest. It wasn’t the same for all rainforests, but here it could be broken up into five vertical layers. At the top you had the overstory which was the crowns of scattered trees; up there were David and Butch seen as they had better agility than the others. Next you had the canopy which was the ceiling of closely spaced trees; there Stuart and Denny were perched because they had the next best agility. Then there was the understory which was the layer of trees that were spaced further apart than those above; there we had Salem and Max as they were the best climbers. Then there was the shrub layer which was made of even more widely spaced trees, all of which were much shorter; covering that were Harvey and Reuben merely because Chico and Damien didn’t like trees – or, more specifically, they didn’t like the insects that crawled along them – so I had to put them on the forest floor. Jared was supervising the overstory, canopy and the understory. I was covering the shrub layer and forest floor, but both of us were keeping in contact using his telepathy.

It was comforting to know that he was just a, well, thought away. I knew that no matter what he was doing or what was happening if I called for him he’d come straight away. That was why I had no intention of calling for him if I needed help. Another person would weigh the situation wisely and if the situation was that I’d need to wait, I’d be left waiting. During an attack like this that was how it needed to be.

The idea that he’d come for me like that though gave me a warm feeling. Just as it had when he’d told me he saw me as his. Just as it had when he’d been inside me that last time before we fell asleep; every thrust had been leisurely, deliberate and sensual. He’d held my gaze with his the entire time, and nothing in my life had ever felt more intimate. It had scared me as much as it had electrified me.

I couldn’t work out whether when he said he thought of me as his he meant he actually wanted me to be. He’d said he couldn’t shake the feeling off, but he’d said it in such an aggravated voice that I didn’t know whether to take that as him meaning that he wanted to shake it off and it annoyed him that he couldn’t, or that he wasn’t going to try. There was a big difference between someone saying they felt like you were theirs and them wanting to claim you as theirs. Once a vampire claimed someone for their own they bound themselves to them with a Binding Ceremony (a vampy wedding) and they never took anyone else after that. I couldn’t envision Jared making that kind of commitment with anyone.

God, if anything at all happened to him…

Even the thought of that was a lot to bear. I already knew exactly what it would feel like to lose him because I’d felt it with Bryce. But I suspected that it would hurt more with Jared. What I knew for a downright fact was that if I lost him tonight to Bennington’s crew I’d kill every last one of them. Where the hell were they? It had to be around midnight now.

You okay? Jared. I guessed he must have sensed my mental restlessness.

Just wishing we could get this over with. Patience isn’t a quality of mine.

Oh but you do have plenty of qualities to compensate for that. There was no mistaking what kind of qualities he was talking about.

How you can be thinking about sex right now is anyone’s guess.

Thinking about you makes me think about sex.

I had to smile at that. Then don’t think about me.

I already tried that, failed miserably.

Try harder.

After about ten seconds he came back with, No, it’s still not working.

Please don’t tell me you have a hard-on, I joked. But there was no response. Nothing. It made the hush about the rainforest feel even worse. Jared? No answer. Jared, don’t ignore me you’ve got me nervous now.

A few seconds later he responded: They’re here. That was Evan contacting me. A few of the animals told Alora that a load of vamps have just been teleported to the outer edge of the North.

That meant they were no less than a hundred feet away. Stretching out my senses, I searched our surroundings. I can hear them. Alert the squad. I waited while, telepathically, he relayed to the recruits what he had told me. We’ve been over this formation a thousand times so they better remember it or I’ll jam bamboo up their arses.

As the vampires neared, the tension in the rainforest seemed to increase. There were eight in total. Most had red tints to their irises whereas two had amber. Their nervousness and apprehensiveness was apparent in the air. I watched as, wearing clothes as dark as ours, they moved separately and stealthily through the trees. No covering each other’s backs or working as a team? This couldn’t be Bennington’s real army of firecrackers then; these were obviously the expendables sent in to test the waters.

Things were going exactly as Jared predicted then.

As he’d suggested earlier, we let the group of expendables pass by. Letting Bennington believe he’d found himself a safe passage was the way to draw him out. An effective method to getting to people who were difficult to reach was to make them come to you. We knew Evan’s and Lou’s squads could take care of the expendables.

Minutes went by but there were no more vamps. I wondered if any had teleported to the South, East or West yet. We doubted that Bennington would attack from all sides; he was too much of a Bulldozer. He liked to just barrel right into the thick of things. But his allies were a different matter.

Evan’s just been in touch; the expendables are nothing but ashes now, Jared told me.

Good.

It was a few minutes later before there was more movement. This time it was a group of ten and they were all Pagoris. I literally held my breath as I waited for the squad to act as Jared and I had instructed. Suddenly, the ten stopped dead and swerved their heads slightly – and I knew that Max had stolen each of their senses. Quick as anything Chico appeared from behind a protruding tree trunk and shot the ten with thorns, and because Reuben had amplified Chico’s gift the thorns had placed the vamps into a long but temporary coma. Of course we could kill them but we didn’t want the scent of blood in the air or a lot of noise going on and we especially didn’t want to waste time and energy on people in comas. Besides, Antonio had expressed a wish to have some live captives.

Before the ten vampires’ bodies could flop to the ground, Max, Salem, Reuben, Harvey, Stuart and Denny were there silently hurling them up on to the tree branches to be hidden. A silent sigh of relief left me. It was over in seconds. So far so good.

More minutes of nothing passed and I started to wonder if something had tipped Bennington off. Then I heard a large number approaching.

Twenty heading this way, announced Jared. I knew that each time he announced something to me he was also informing the squad. We let them pass us and then pick them off from behind using the formation we went over at dusk.

This cluster of Pagori vamps was more covert than the others. They each moved fluidly and silently, covering each other and reaching out with their senses. As such, they got a terrible shock when Max stole them. Before they could blindly use their gifts and hint at what was happening, Chico was there again exhaling his thorns while Salem dealt some psychic punches and Denny reached out from the canopy, shooting green, sticky ooze out of his hands to trap some of the vamps and bounce them up to him. Again the squad hid them in the trees and again I gave a silent sigh when all went effectively.

It was only about forty seconds or so before more came. Thirty this time. Because they were all slightly spaced out it meant that Max couldn’t encompass all of them to steal their senses. Shit. Do you think if we let them pass Evan could take care of the first ten or fifteen and then we’ll pick off the rest from behind?

That was exactly what I was thinking. If they pass they can’t retreat. Five seconds or so later Jared informed me, Evan’s squad will be taking on the first half.

Just as covert as the last lot, these Pagoris noiselessly made their way along the forest floor. One came dangerously close to where I was hid and then halted. The amount of energy I had absorbed was begging to be released, and I was expecting that I would need to do exactly that to defend myself. But then the tall, stocky Pagori continued onwards. Relief coursed through me. If we could get rid of this group without drawing attention we would have gotten rid of fifty eight in total and that was bound to make Bennington feel confident and secure and get him moving.

I hadn’t wanted to use David so early; he was only young and I knew this was his first ever battle. Not that I thought he wasn’t up to the challenge; I just wanted him to have a chance to get a grip on his nerves. However, it was imperative that we completely assassinated this lot discreetly and so I needed David’s gift.

Jared, tell Harvey to telekinetically bring David down here after Max has done his thing: we’re going to need him. Then he can take him back up.

Roger that, baby.

The very second the last Pagori intruder had passed, Max did his thing. Then Chico, Salem, David and Denny were there as quick as anything. Chico and Salem put their targets into a coma while Denny wrapped his in ooze. David, as Reuben had amplified his gift, put an end to the life of his own targets. It was done and dusted in the space of three seconds. Thankfully there was no chance of us running out of trees and so were we able to successfully hide the fifteen vampires.