I’d realised it the second I teleported into the office and saw her with Max. Or, I should say, I saw Joy with Max. It explained so much: why I hadn’t been able to shake her off, why I’d wanted her so badly and so completely, why I sensed her and her emotions. I didn’t know when it happened or if it had been a gradual thing that had only crept up on me today. I just knew that it was real and that if anything at all ever happened to her I’d never be able to get through it.
I also knew that I couldn’t tell her.
Sam had told me that time in her apartment that she didn’t want to love anyone ever again, that she didn’t want anything complicated. Telling her I loved her would be a sure-fire way to make her keep as far away from me as possible. I was going to have a hard enough time getting her to calm down for me after what went on in the meeting so mentioning the word ‘love’ was out of the question.#p#分页标题#e#
Sick of twiddling my thumbs and procrastinating, I teleported from my apartment to the office to see her and face the music. I frowned at the empty room. Next I tried her apartment. No Sam there either. Was she staying away from the obvious places because she didn’t want to see me? She had to know that all I had to do was tap into that link we had and use it to find her. Unless she wasn’t aware of the link...?
Sighing, I reached for her through the link and immediately teleported myself to her. Suddenly I was at the arena which was empty apart from Sam. She was pacing at the Northern side and smiled evilly at me when she saw me.
“Took your bloody time,” she snapped.
Then I watched as she sucked the surrounding energy into her palms and shaped it into her silvery-blue energy whip. Oh shit. She’d known about the link, she’d known I could use it to find her, and she’d been counting on me doing it.
Chapter Fifteen
(Jared)
“Sam,” I drawled in a calming tone, “let’s talk, I don’t want to duel with you.” She cracked the whip at me. I jerked back a few steps and it missed me by inches. “Look, I know you’re mad at me but -”
“I’m not mad, I’m pissed.” She cracked the whip at me again. This time it caught the hand I had held up in a white-flag gesture, and it stung like fuck.
“Jesus, Sam, will you just listen.”
“What’s the point? There’s honestly nothing you could say that would change the fact that I want to whip your arse around this arena until you beg me to stop. Not that I will stop.”
Again she lashed the whip and again it caught me; this time on my ear. Even in spite of the pain, I couldn’t help noticing how sexy she looked right now with her eyes smouldering and that whip threading through her fingers. “Baby, just listen to me -”
“Oh no, you don’t get to call me that. I’m not your baby.” As if to punctuate that, she cracked the whip again and it slashed my chest, tearing my t-shirt and also the flesh underneath. It burnt even as it healed itself. What burnt more were her words.
“Like hell you’re not.” With that I released a stream of electric sparks through my fingers, zapping the ground near her feet. I could tell by the maddened expression on her face that she knew I’d purposely missed.
“Fight me!” Abruptly she cracked the whip hard; it sliced along my cheek, lips and jaw. It hurt like a bitch! Without giving me time to recover, she cracked it again. A sharp stinging-burning pain ran along my thigh.
“I told you, I don’t want to duel with you! Now will you just calm the hell down so we can talk?!”
“About what, Heir Boy? About how I’m okay to shag and feed from but I’m not good enough to lead alongside you? About how you’re cutting me out again? About how you’re a sexist, lying, backstabbing bastard?” The whip slashed through my t-shirt again so there was now an X running through it.
“It wasn’t that I was trying to cut you out.”
“You’ve been trying to cut me out from day one!”
This time the whip cut through the flesh of my shin. Jesus, this woman was merciless!
“You know what’s funny? Last night at the gathering when everyone was looking down on me ’cause I’m a Sventé, I wondered if you’d go back to being like that after you’d shagged me. Hmm. Seems like that was more of a premonition really.”
“Dammit, Sam, I don’t look down on you.” The whip caught my earlobe so hard I jumped. “Goddammit!”#p#分页标题#e#
“I can’t believe I ever thought you might just respect me. Not that I thought you respected me as much as the others do, but I thought you might just be getting there. But no, you’re still the sexist twat I met at the pool.”