“Fuck this,” Gage says as he pulls his cord.
Damn, he could only hold out for a few hundred more feet.I silently judge him.
Damian’s head moves to each of us before he quickly pulls his next without saying anything.
Cameron’s voice fills my headset. “Pull your rip cord, Emery.” I know he won’t lay off me until I do, so I pretend to shift my hand up to tear at it. Cameron pulls his, and I can instantly hear the panic in his voice when he sees that I was faking. “Emery!”
Sorry, Cam.I smile and bite my lip with the excitement that thrums through my veins.
I turn my head to stare at Wraith. His black helmet glares the sun and I know he’s doing the same with his eyes beneath it. “Twenty-four hundred feet.” He sounds as jittery with terror as I feel.
“Waiting on you, princess,” I snap back.
“Emery, this isn’t a fucking game. Deploy your parachute!” Cameron sounds angrier than I’ve ever heard him. It does somethingto me, excites me even more than I already am. Heat pools in my core.Oh, this is new. I swallow the lewd thoughts of what Cameron would be like in punishment sex.
Wraith curses and hurriedly pulls his rip cord.
I laugh as I wait one second longer before pulling mine. The rush of being yanked up by the backpack makes blood race through my veins and thunder through my head.
Cameron starts shouting again over the headset, so I turn off my receiver, smiling guiltily because I know he’s going to be furious with me, and I’m hoping he’ll do something about it.
I’m enjoying this too much.
It reminds me of the good times that Reed and I used to have. God, we were truly the worst. We’d go from reading poetry and history out on the eighty-acre lawn to stealing one of my father’s old sports cars and driving down to Malory’s old abandoned barn to see how long it took for the world to notice we were missing.
By that time Reed had already found the bunker my father built there. Reed was fond of them. He was so much smarter than me and loved to find out the passcodes from spying on Greg when he was unsuspecting.
Carlton, Reed’s father, wanted him to go into engineering like his forefathers, but I knew Reed would never follow one path. There was always something dark within him, and he took to me because he saw some of the same shadows lurking in my gaze. He was tired of people who were too wary around him, and he saw curiosity in my eyes when I didn’t mean to show it.
I smile at the past, enjoying the moment of pure silence as my feet hit the ground.
Cameron snuffs out that moment when he stomps over to me, unclips my helmet before throwing it to the ground, and glares into my eyes. He’s already tossed his helmet, and his wild hair onlymakes him look angrier as he grabs me by my shoulders and shakes me enough to make my heart leap into my throat.
“What the fuck, Em! That was way too low. If there had been trees or a hill you weren’t aware of, a goddamn gust of heavy wind…” He inhales laboriously, sweat beading down his jaw.
Oh shit.I try not to focus on how hot he looks right now, out of breath and pissed off. He instantly picks up on my thoughts as I suck in my lower lip.
His anger vanishes instantly and his sage eyes flicker with hunger.
“Fucking brat,” he murmurs, bringing his lips down over mine and kissing me hard. Our parachutes are still attached to our backs and everyone is watching, but Cameron couldn’t give a shit less. “You make me fucking crazy, you know that?” he says in a lethal tone over my lips.
I inhale his birchwood scent and press my thighs together as need heats my core. “You’re already insane, remember?” I whisper back.
He chuckles, and what a dark, tasteful thing it is as he kisses me once more, sucking in my lower lip and biting it. “I guess you make me sane then, and somehow I find that a terrible mindset to be in.”
I laugh and shove him back playfully. “Why is that?” I unclip my parachute pack and unzip my jacket. The sun and adrenaline have effectively made me sweat my ass off and the idea of a shower with Cameron sounds like the exact thing I need right now.
“Because all I seem to do is worry incessantly about you.” His voice is smooth as he lets his pack slip from his shoulders and fall to the ground.
The others move around behind him, talking to us, I’m certain, but they are a blur and their words don’t meet my ears. All I see is Cameron, sweaty with a wild glint to his eyes.
Two hands come down over his shoulders and break the trancebetween us. Gage shakes Cameron’s shoulders. “I thought you were going to fucking lose your shit again!” Then Gage looks at me, hardly containing his amusement before muttering, “I’ve never heard him that pissed off before.” He laughs. “Not even when he’s psycho killing and throwing eyeballs.”
Damian’s eyes go wide and he gives me a horrified look. “And youlikethis guy?”
“Hey,”Cameron snarls and Damian flinches, hiding behind Wraith.
Thomas shouts at us. “That was dangerous!” I assume he’s talking to all of us who ignored his deployment order, but he stares hollowly at me more than the rest of them.
