Pursued(99)

The smile softened the worry lines on her face, making her so beautiful his heart ached. “Something funny?” he murmured, coming up behind her.

Elise jumped away as though he’d burned her. “Oh, uh…” She turned to look at him, her eyes wide and startled. “You scared me,” she said, as though trying to explain her sudden get-away.

What else is new? Merrick thought. Aloud he said, “Right. You hungry?”

Elise looked at him, as though trying to figure out which meaning of the word he was using. Merrick could feel her anxiety through the bond. Wanting to put her at ease, he held up a dried protein strip.

A look of relief and understanding crossed her face. “Yes. Thanks.” She took the strip from him and looked down at it. “Um, is it okay to wash in the stream? I’m all hot and sticky.”

“Hot and sticky, huh?” Merrick’s voice sounded slightly strangled in his own ears. He couldn’t help himself—her innocent words had evoked a whole set of images he’d been trying to repress. The memory of her spread out on his lap, her thighs open, her head thrown back as he fingered her sweet pussy to orgasm came flooding back, making him hard. Making him want her.

Elise looked at him curiously, no doubt hearing the strain in his voice. When their eyes met, Merrick could feel her body reacting to his. The hunger inside her surged to life, turning almost immediately to lust. Her nipples peaked and he could tell from the shift in her scent that her little cunt was suddenly creamy and hot and ready. Ready for him to touch her, to taste her…

He wanted to kiss her again, wanted to taste those sweet, pink lips once more, to crush her to him just as he had at the start of their trip. Even more than that, he could feel Elise wanting to be kissed. She craved this—ached for his touch the same way he ached for hers. Merrick leaned toward her…

And she turned suddenly away, a look of misery on her face. “Um, so the bath?” she said, not meeting his eyes. “Okay or not? I mean, are there any poisonous fish or reptiles I should watch out for?”

Merrick let out a sigh and tried to curb his lust. Inside his tight black pants his shaft ached, the mating fist throbbing with need. Even his fangs had joined the chorus, begging to pierce the soft flesh of her neck as he pierced her pussy down below.

“Not in a stream this size, no,” he said at last, forcing himself to regain control. “You go ahead and wash—we can reapply the camouflage later. Just don’t get too close to the Deep Blue. Once you cross over, things get a hell of a lot more dangerous.”

“Will we be all right in there?” she asked, wide eyed. “I mean, how hard do you think this skrillix plant is going to be to find? And what does it look like anyway?”

Merrick frowned. “It’s a vine—a creeper about as thick as your wrist. It winds itself around tree trunks and it has other, smaller branches sticking off of the main one.”

Elise looked with dismay at the Deep Blue. “But…there are hundreds of vines and they all look the same. They’re all that deep indigo blue.”

“The skrillix has two distinguishing characteristics,” he said, feeling a little like he was giving a lecture. “First: long, curving thorns about as long as your finger.” He held up one of his own fingers to illustrate. “Whatever you do, don’t get scratched. They secrete a hallucinogenic compound that’ll make you wish you’d never been born—it’s why the skrillix is called the ‘pain vine.’ The Ancient Ones use it as a kind of truth serum sometimes.”

“Wow. Okay, got you.” Elise nodded. “What else?”

“Bright red berries as big as the end of your thumb,” Merrick said. “Those are the key—we need to bring some back with us, still attached to the branch.”

“Why still attached?” she asked. “It seems like it would be much easier to bring back a pocket full of berries than a whole entire branch.”

“It would,” Merrick admitted. “But it’s not possible—they begin to rot the minute they’re picked. The only way to keep them fresh enough to be useful is to keep them on the branch.”

“And do you think the skrillix will be hard to find?” she asked, repeating her earlier question.

Merrick frowned. “It's sacred to the Ancient Ones, so they keep a pretty close eye on all of the skrillix in their territory. But they keep mostly to the center of the Deep Blue. If we’re very lucky, we might just find a stray skrillix growing around the perimeter and get back to town without meeting them at all. That would be our best case scenario.”