Darkness Bound

37

“I knew you wouldn’t be interested. Even if I’d cooked it.”

When she looked up at him, laughter glimmered in the depth of his emerald eyes.

He’d eaten it—whatever it was—raw? Ugh. Nasty times one thousand.

“How do you know I wouldn’t have been interested in . . .” Her nose wrinkled. “Meat?”

He lifted one dark brow. “Generally vegetarians aren’t.”

She frowned at him and asked, “How did you know I’m a vegetarian?”

Hawk looked away and for a moment Jack thought he wouldn’t answer. He stared off into the canopy of trees, a muscle in his jaw jumping. “Veggie burger,” he said, his voice empty. “No cheese.”

How he’d remembered that small detail from the night they’d met became insignificant compared to the grating realization that this macho, George of the Jungle carnivore probably thought her an i***t for choosing not to eat meat.

Something he had in common with her father.

Anger began its familiar march across her nerve endings, advancing with breakneck speed.

Jack said acidly, “Yes, I think it’s unethical to consume sentient beings. Especially when there are so many other choices that don’t involve the systematic torture and murder of millions of animals every year. But I can see how someone like you wouldn’t get that, what with your big fangs and all.”

Hawk turned his attention back to her, and it was so focused and menacing it was like being caught in the crosshairs of a sniper’s rifle. “You’re lecturing me about ethics? Hypocrite.”

Blood rushed to Jack’s face, but before she could respond, Hawk continued.

“I happen to agree with you that the way your species deals with feeding itself is disgusting. My species, on the other hand—the one you so despise—has no need for slaughterhouses and meat-packing factories and fast-food restaurants that serve poison packaged as food. We consume what we need, and no more. We hunt when we’re hungry, not for sport or entertainment, and we respect the lives we take—lives, I might add, that were spent the way Nature intended. Outdoors. Not in a cage, awaiting a painful, horrible death. So don’t talk to me about ethics, Red. Your entire race is unethical.”

He shot to his feet, turned his back on her, and went to stand at the far edge of the hammock of boughs he’d constructed using nothing but his bare hands. He raked those strong hands through his hair, and stood there like that for several long moments, fingers clenched, back rigid, silent, and quite perceptibly seething.

Jack watched him with the sinking feeling she wasn’t on the right side of this argument.

Her anger fizzling, she looked down at the food he’d brought her, and sighed.

What did it matter if she’d offended him? He’d tricked her. He’d used her. She should be the one filled with righteous outrage, but somehow it had gotten so turned around that she felt . . . what? Sorry? Guilty? Why should she feel guilty for upsetting him? She hated him!

Jack stared at the muscled, rigid lines of his back. I do hate him . . . right?

She pinched the bridge of her nose between two fingers, realizing that what she felt for him wasn’t what could accurately be called hate, and that was unacceptable.

When did all her convictions go squishy in the middle? Why did this man/not-man continue to confuse and confound her?

More important: Why on Earth did she care?

Too many questions, not enough answers. Jack supposed she could go round and round with herself like this for days, without getting anywhere. In the interim, it seemed there was only one right thing to do.

“Hawk,” she said softly. When he didn’t turn or respond, she said his name again.

“What?” The word was hard, wintry cold.

“I apologize.”

Slowly, he lowered his hands to his hips. His head turned a fraction, and he stood there in silent profile, waiting, a breeze ruffling his dark hair. The rising light gleamed soft off his bare back and broad shoulders, and she thought he looked like a pagan god in a sky kingdom of green and gold and sapphire blue.

“That wasn’t nice of me. That comment about your . . . um . . . fangs.”

Wishing he’d put his shirt back on so she wouldn’t have to wrestle with the compelling desire to ogle his spectacular physique, Jack dropped her gaze to the fruit. “My dad always ridiculed me for not eating meat, and it sort of felt like . . . like you were doing the same thing.” After a moment, in a voice slightly less frigid than before, Hawk said, “I wasn’t.”

For some reason, Jack actually believed him. She said, “Okay,” and sat there with her shoulders rounded in a posture of defeat, wondering if the world would ever make sense again. She heard a low, vexed exhalation, the sound of feet brushing leaves. Then he was standing before her once more. He crouched down and put a knuckle under her chin, forcing her to meet his eyes. He said solemnly, “We’re not all like Caesar. We’re not all bad. Most of us just want to be left alone to live our lives in peace.”

Jack whispered, “Ditto.”