Worth Dying For Read Online Free PDF

more?”
    “Yeah, that’s what you’re saying but why else would you bring me along when I made it so clear I was into you?” She flinched at the accusation and her reaction showed David his words had hit home. Bane watched him plough on recklessly. “There’s nobody here to judge you now. Why not drop the act and stop pretending you’re some frigid widow?”
    Amber laughed, surprising both Bane and the man pinned to the spot by her icy green stare. “Frigid?”
    David smiled back at her, too stupid to understand the reason for her laughter. The idiot actually thought he’d amused her. Bane grinned and crossed his arms in anticipation. Didn’t the man know women at all? This would be good.
    “Frigid?” she repeated, this time without humour, as she took a step closer to David.
    Realisation dawned on his face as he finally understood what he had done and he put his palms up as if to placate her. She slapped them away, glaring at him until she spoke again in a quiet voice quivering with restraint.
    “You’re a colleague and a friend, nothing more. That’s all I want.”
    “Oh really?” he snorted, as if dismissing her words, but a slight tremble at the edge of his smile betrayed him.
    “Why is it so hard for you to believe that I really don’t want you?” Amber seemed unrepentant. “If it was ever meant to happen between us, you wouldn’t have to try so hard.”
    David’s handsome face contorted in spite. “Hey lady, I can only work with the tools I’m given. Is it my fault you’re a cold bitch?”
    Amber slapped him hard, the sound of it reverberating through the trees and seeming to hang there for a moment as a vivid palm print formed on David’s cheek. At first, he didn’t react, but then the hand hanging at his side curled into a fist. Bane leapt forwards into a crouch, his lip curling back in a soundless snarl. David would never get a hand to her.
    Bane’s sudden movement and barely restrained rage alerted the birds in the neighbouring trees that something was amiss. They took off in a cacophony of screeching, dislodging leaves and scattering feathers as they fled. The couple below turned towards the disruption and Bane held his ground until satisfied that the danger to Amber had passed.
    “What in the hell was that?” David asked, the argument forgotten.
    “I don’t know.” Amber staggered backwards as if preparing to flee. “You see, I told you there’s something on this island.”
    David edged towards her. “Maybe you’re right.”
    “Do you think it’s following us?” she whispered, reaching out and grabbing hold of his T-shirt.
    “Could be.”
    Bane relaxed and crawled back into the shadows, his anger replaced by simple annoyance that the idiot boy had confirmed her worst fears and made her more afraid. He sensed an air of triumph emanating from David and caught on to his game immediately. He would use her fear as a way of controlling her. Until that very moment, Bane thought he’d been watching unrequited love or lust playing out in front of him. But the expression on David’s face chased that idea away. He looked now to be nothing more than a needy child, using whatever he could to get his own way. The only thing he had invested in winning her seemed to be his ego.
    Bane kept watch as they moved back towards their camp, his attention fixed on Amber.   Maybe David would not have hit her but Bane wouldn’t have waited to find out. Had he really been about to throw away everything he had worked for, and the one small thing he had claimed from eternity, for the sake of a woman who looked like someone he loved once?
    He had to get them off his island.
     
    * * * *
     
    The rain started a mile from base, sending Amber and David running to shelter under a densely vegetated part of the forest to wait it out. The smell of the surrounding woodland grew almost overwhelming as the moss and mulch under their feet got wetter and the dark, oppressive canopy of green above Amber’s head