Page 7 of Into The Green

"Oh, relax," Jasper said and you could practically hear the eye-roll he was giving me. Then his weight lifted off me, his hands grabbing the material of my bunched up skirt and yanking it roughly down to cover me. "I have no interest in... that," he said, sounding disgusted at the idea of touching me.

And, well, it was irrational of me, but I felt insulted. I mean of course I didn't want to be ravaged in the woods, but he didn't exactly have to make it sound like I was a heap of toxic waste he had no interest in being anywhere near.

His hand reached down and snagged my wrist hard, yanking upward, and dragging me back onto my feet. "Let's go," he said, still holding my wrist. "We're here."

Here was, well, nothing as far as I could tell. There was just the tree line. That was it. Granted it was dark and I couldn't see much so maybe there were people inside the woods doing... well... God knew what. I couldn't tell.

Jasper started to pull me along and I raised my free hand to hold out, trying to feel for some kind of structure or other people or... anything. All my palm came into contact with was tree bark after tree bark.

Maybe Jade had taken off on some sort of camping trip? That seemed right up her alley. Maybe The Green was the name of a campsite.

I could have asked Jasper, but his bruising grip on my wrist seemed to suggest he wasn't inviting questions. And if I pissed him off, I was pretty sure he would just leave me there to fight it out with the bears.

That totally seemed like something he was capable of.

THREE

Jasper

I kept my head ducked as I walked, the girl, Cece, trailing behind me and, at that point, I was more dragging her along than anything. I could feel the waves of anxiety and fear buzzing around her and, beneath that, her bone-deep distrust of me. If she had just done what I said and left the fucking cell back at the apartment, I wouldn't have needed to wrestle her for it. And, apparently, make her think I was going to assault her.

Of all the ridiculous ideas.

I had just crossed into The Green, acclimating to the climate change, when I had realized she wasn't behind me. I'd had a momentary surge of panic, thinking I'd somehow lost her already, before I realized she must have been holding something she shouldn't have been.

I'd pushed back out of The Green, having images of bears invading my head and I realized she had been having some kind of panic attack about being mauled.

Bears were the least of her worries.

I had wrestled the cell from her and pulled her onto her feet, wasting no time and pulling her across the threshold.

I knew she would get in. I had a feeling about her, and I was rarely wrong about that kind of thing.

As usual, The Green parted easily for me. But to my surprise, it practically sprang open for her.

Underneath my hold, her skin was cold, her body rigid. It hadn't even really occurred to me that she couldn't see as easily as I could. But, sure enough, she was walking with her free arm stretched out like she was trying to feel for her surroundings.

She was slowing me down. I don't know what the hell I had been thinking in bringing her along. Obviously, she was clueless about what was going on, and I wasn't exactly the 'hold your hand and coax you through a completely life-altering revelation' kind of guy. But Jade was gone. The apartment was ransacked. And, if I wasn't mistaken, and I fucking wasn't, the air in their apartment reeked of Dark, and I wasn't cold-blooded enough to leave her to fend for herself.

I shook my head. What was done was done. She was with me. And it was too late to turn back, and there was no way in hell I could leave her naive little ass alone in The Green where something, anything could get to her, and she would be none the wiser about the whole thing. I didn't know shit about the woman, but Jade seemed to like her judging by the insane amount of gemstones she had scattered around the girl's room. And, well, knowing how much she cared about my sister and her wellbeing didn't hurt either.

I felt my arm being tugged roughly backward, turning to see her looking right at me, but still unseeing. "What?" I barked, cringing a bit at how gruff I sounded.

"I don't know what is going on here, but it is hot as hell all of a sudden," she told me in that bedroom-sexy voice of hers. And, sure enough, when I looked, the sweat was beaded up slightly on her brow as she wriggled uncomfortably in her woolen jacket. I released her, and she quickly stripped out of the material, tossing it down and fanning herself. She lifted her thick hair that had already dried off her neck. "Freaking global warming," she mumbled to herself.

"We have to keep going."

"We've been walking forever," she complained, flexing her feet in her moccasins.

"And we have a lot further to go," I said, snagging her wrist and getting a move on already.

She was silent for a long couple of minutes, her frustration building by the moment before she finally tugged her wrist and declared, "You could at least tell me where we are going."

"I'm not sure," I admitted, the not-knowing making me feel completely and utterly useless.

"You don't know?" she shrieked, her voice getting a bit hysterical. "But you're just going to keep dragging me around aimlessly."

"Yes," I said, not giving her any further explanation as I quickened our pace.