Jared by Sarah McCarty Read Free Book Online

left his prints all over the
important parts. He really needed to work on clean up.
    Jared’s right eyebrow went up. “You wouldn’t by any
chance be humoring me would you?”
    “Absolutely not.” She was lulling him into a false
sense of security. “That goes against every one of my principles.”
    “Then why exactly are you praising a barrier that
obviously didn’t work?”
    She looked around for a way to escape. There were
woods on two sides, a meadow behind Jared, and a cliff behind her.
    “Because you’re bigger than me, faster than me,” she
answered honestly. “And I’m hoping that if I put you in a good mood, we’ll be
able to shake hands and part friends.”
    “Really?” There was something in his voice, and it
wasn’t making her rest any easier. “You think a little sucking up will get you
all that?”
    She shrugged. “It doesn’t hurt to try.”
    That “something” spread to a note she recognized as he
drawled, “No, it doesn’t.”
    Humor. The irritating man had a sense of humor, and
her honesty was apparently stroking it.
    “But in this case, you’re doomed to disappointment.”
His drawl stretched a bit to accommodate his amusement. “No amount of honesty
or sweetly feminine placating is going to convince me to let you strike out
alone.”
    God, he was still stuck on that. She slapped her hands
on her hips. That was really too much. “Who on earth appointed you my
guardian?”
    He didn’t even take a breath between her question and
his answer. “The Renegade Council.”
    “You’re Renegade?” She took a step back. A quick
glance over her shoulder showed a clear shot to the cliff.
    “Yes.”
    “Well, I’m not, which means your council has no say
over me.”
    “Unfortunately, one of the drawbacks to being female
is you’re either Sanctuary or Renegade with no point in between.”
    “I don’t agree with your philosophy.”
    Another discreet glance and another step. Not all
vampires could fly. As big as he was, it went against logic that Jared could.
That skill seemed to be relegated to the smaller-boned, lighter vamps. She
couldn’t fly, either, but she might be able to trick him over the edge.
    “Your agreement isn’t necessary,” he told her, his
energy pulling into tight focus.
    “So you say.” It was now or never. The winter-burned
bush on the edge looked like it could hold her weight. She gathered her
strength and shifted her grip up to her backpack.
    Jared waved a hand toward the cliff. “You’ll never
make it. I’ll have you in two steps.”
    A little primitive shiver of awareness went through
her at his use of the word “have.” There was something so elemental in the way
he said it, a hint of possessiveness that wasn’t hitting her sense of
independence with the note of discord it should. Good grief, had the Sanctuary
messed her up more than she was aware? Had the mental manipulations taken a
deeper hold than she’d thought?
    “What’s wrong?” He took a step toward her, reaching
out, a frown on his face. With a blink she realized she’d projected her
distress straight into the waiting arms of his energy.
    She pulled the wayward emotions back. “I don’t like
your attitude.”
    His chin angled down, the shadow from his hat hiding
the color of his eyes, only leaving the flickers of energy at the edges of his
irises dancing like flames in the darkness. “That panic went a whole lot deeper
than annoyance.”
    “Maybe you should try looking at the situation through
my eyes. A self-proclaimed bad-ass vampire kidnaps me—”
    “Rescues you,” he corrected, the flames in his eyes
becoming more noticeable.
    As if she cared if he got annoyed at this point. Men
with as much arrogance as Jared carried around deserved to have it tweaked now
and then. “As I was saying, I get kidnapped, locked in a tiny airless cell—”
    “It wasn’t airless.”
    She waved away his interruption. “The reality is, I
have trouble with small spaces.”
    “I didn’t