Camellia turned away from him, not willing for him to see how much that news affected her emotionally. Rose had made it out, was safe and had a little boy. She was married. “Who did she marry?” she asked Jonas deliberately. Another test.
Rose had told Camellia that she had begged Whitney to pair her with Kane after Kane had been transferred away from the laboratory. She didn’t want Kane to be the only one living in the hell of needing to be with just that one person physically when she felt she had been the one to ask Whitney to bring Kane into the program after she’d refused every other partner. Rose had watched him, a guard on the grounds, from her window for weeks before she decided on him and had asked Whitney to partner her with him.
“He’s on the third GhostWalker team, and he is the biological father of her child. He was a guard assigned to the base where Whitney was conducting his experiments. At the time, it hadn’t been discovered. Kane, along with another member of that same team, brought out evidence against Whitney. Unfortunately, Whitney had too many friends in high places, and he was tipped off and was able to go underground. In any case, Rose is married to Kane Cannon.”
Relief swept over her. Not once had Jonas lied to her. She honestly didn’t know how to trust him, but she wanted to. She wanted to just be a normal person and have a conversation about what was going on in the outside world.
“I believe the reason Whitney didn’t send anyone to get you is because once it was discovered the tattoos had the tracking devices in them, the trackers were jammed,” Jonas continued.
That made sense. “Do you live in one of those homes down below me? I just discovered them about a month ago. That’s the steepest side of the mountain, and I had never explored in that direction before. I caught sight of those compounds and ran like a rabbit.” She forced a laugh, trying to cover up the fact that while she was telling the truth, a part of her didn’t want to talk about the GhostWalkers. “I had no idea anyone was so close to me.”
“You’ve been up here a long time. You must have gone down into town for supplies,” Jonas said.
Right away, she noticed he hadn’t answered her question. She took another couple of steps away from him. Distance was good. She didn’t want to keep breathing him into her lungs. It was too intimate. Standing close to him in the night was too intimate. And the sound of his voice was too addictive. The more he spoke, the more she wanted to get close to him, to beg him not to leave. The chemistry between them was pretty explosive.
“There’s a much easier route for me. I go straight down on the other side. I can’t take a chance of breaking a leg, so until I had everything in place, I didn’t explore too far from home.”
He visibly winced at the idea of her breaking a bone. “It must have been difficult the first few winters you spent up here without supplies.”
She shrugged. “I was free, Jonas. Freedom makes up for a lot of things.”
He nodded. “We were put in cages for a brief period of time, nothing in comparison to what any of you or the other women have gone through, but it was enough to let me know I would never do well in prison. Not to say I haven’t gone into a cage a time or two to get a fellow GhostWalker out since then.”
They stood for several minutes looking at each other, and finally Jonas nodded toward her porch hidden behind the Middlemist Red Camellias. “Can we sit there and talk for a while?”
Her porch was small, and it would be extremely intimate surrounded by the draping branches of flowers. She nodded because there was no resisting those eyes. She turned and led the way through the camellias to her home.
3
Camellia Mist was beautiful. Just looking at her robbed Jonas of his ability to breathe. Who knew that when he’d set out to find the source of the threat to their team he’d find his other half? Jonas knew that, even without Whitney’s interference, she would have been his first choice. Probably his only choice for someone permanent in his life.
Her looks, as gorgeous as they were, weren’t the source of his attraction, though he found her utterly beautiful, from her lush curved body to the dark hair that blended in with the night to those eyes, blue like cornflowers or darkening into a turbulent sea, hinting at the cat in her before she turned her head to lead the way to her cabin. No, the real attraction was everything else. She had survived on her own for a very long time. Not only had she survived, but she had built this incredible, beautiful garden, a little piece of paradise that provided sustenance and protection as well as beauty. A revealing reflection of herself.
Clearly, she was highly intelligent, resourceful and no doubt lethal. She was everything a man like Jonas could possibly desire in a partner. He found her sexy. What she might not know, he was absolutely certain he could teach her. He was more than willing to learn from her.
She walked without a sound. Completely silent. Her hips had a feminine sway that drew his attention, as did the fact that the Middlemist Red parted her branches as they approached.
“So many growing free and beautiful,” he commented, touching one of the limbs gently in a kind of reverence. He felt a curious sensation in his veins, a rush of power close to the towering shrubs as they formed an arc over their heads. “Look how unbelievably healthy they are, when they usually only exist in a greenhouse. You’re amazing, woman.”
Camellia looked over her shoulder, a small smile lighting her eyes, throwing more silvery blue into the dark blue. “She’s truly beautiful, isn’t she?”
Jonas looked at the wealth of flowers on the shrubs. The branches were covered in them. Each blossom was large and looked more like a rose with fresh, tight petals, as if they’d just blossomed, a brilliant pink.
“What’s your secret with these plants? Do you talk to them? I’ve got a small place of my own now, but I haven’t exactly got your way with plants, although I’d like to.”
She sent him another look over her shoulder. When she half turned, her hair swung, a gleaming, thick mass of dark strands, flying in the air and cascading down her back. Her eyes glittered a strange silvery blue again, reminding him of a jungle cat, and her mouth—that generous mouth of hers that gave him one too many fantasies—smiled at him.
“Of course you can. How do you think you managed to tap into both networks?”
He raised an eyebrow, uncertain what she meant. She had waved her hand toward the single chair on the porch. He shook his head and indicated she take it.
“I’ll get another one. Give me a minute.” She disappeared into her house.
The moment she was gone, his gut reacted, hard knots developing. He found himself pacing, adrenaline flooding his system. He wasn’t a man to get attached to a woman. He didn’t think about them after spending time with them or want them in his bed all night. He never took one to his home. He knew Whitney had manipulated them with his “pairing,” using pheromones and some kind of virus he put in their bodies so they were physically attracted, but already Jonas knew he was connected to Camellia on a much more emotional level. That made no sense.