Emily quickened her pace trying to catch up with Jasyn as he stormed ahead through the crowds at the station. Growing up in New York she was used to the rat race that had her feet moving on fast auto pilot, but Jasyn was inhumanly fast. Emily rolled her eyes, he wasn't human. Duh! Neither was she, so why was she huffing and puffing behind him?

Because you're not tapping into your powers!

Emily growled and lugged her holdall higher on to her shoulder; she felt its hard plastic covered corner dig into the soft flesh of her side, causing her to curse. Finally getting so frustrated Emily simply stopped trying to catch up with Jasyn and concentrating on doing something that could possibly make her life easier.

"There are wheels on this damn thing for a reason," Emily murmured under her breath, crouching down and trying to pull the extended handle from the holdall. People cut around her like a school of angry sardines making irritated, gruff noises at her for blocking their path before swarming together again as they raced for their train.

"Ha haha haha," Emily sang delightedly when the stubborn handle popped out, Emily stood quickly, flicking her hair over her shoulder. "There we go."

Emily looked ahead and saw Jasyn's tall, broad shoulders above everyone else's, he was rapidly putting distance between them and Emily felt a little irritated that he hadn't even bothered to see if she was with him. She started through the crowd, running as best as she could in her heels, when suddenly she felt a hard tug on the spiked heel of her boot, her other leg attempted to move even though she was stuck, her foot slipped inside the shoe but didn't come out of it and Emily went sprawling. She landed hard on her knees, hurting them on the cold, hard concrete, her palms hit the floor and that made her cringe more then the pain. Emily firmly believed that the New York City subway was going to one day be confirmed to be the source of plague. Emily looked behind her to see the heel of her shoe scuffed and trapped in a drain, she looked around and saw to her dismay that no one even looked at her, but moved around her like she was some homeless beggar they wished to ignore.

Emily tugged again and cursed herself for wearing heels, she knew there would be walking involved today, with the chance of running should they be late for the train, as they were now. But she'd relished the feeling of walking out of her apartment in her skirt, slightly tight sweater and ankle high siren boots. She liked seeing Jasyn's eyes flare and blithely pretending not to notice, right now she couldn't care less what Jasyn thought since the bastard wasn't about to stop and help her. Emily could curse herself for going to all the effort to make him notice her when he barely spoke more then a few words to her all morning. He had changed so dramatically from the chatty Cathy he was last night that Emily wondered whether there were deeper psychological issues at work there.

"What happened here?" Emily looked up at a kindly, laughing voice, an extremely handsome brindle haired man smiled down at her. His matching coloured goatee was neatly trimmed and was strangely alluring, considering Emily preferred her men clean cut. He's black suit was cut perfectly and moved with him as if it had been made for him. His light brown eyes sparkled with obvious amusement and Emily felt a crimson blush flow like a wave from her neck to her forehead. Before she could answer him however, Emily heard a foul curse from behind her and turned her head. Jasyn was steaming back through the crowd, pushing waspish looking yuppies out of his path as if they were made of nothing more solid then cotton candy. He reached Emily who covered her head with her arms, certain from the look on Jasyn's face that he was going to jump the guy.

"Get away from her!" Jasyn snarled at the guy, the man flicked his lovely eyes up to Jasyn, his face didn't lose its smile but it lost any real warmth that it had once held.

"Well, well, Jasyn, I didn't realise you were prepared to bring others into our game," the man admonished like a disappointed father. "I must say I'm rather saddened by the news. I think I rather liked having you all to myself."

"Fuck you, Arion!" Jasyn snarled and Arion threw back his head and laughed.

"Witty as ever, my enemy."

Emily raised a disbelieving eyebrow, he said enemy with a fondness that others would use with the term friend. Were the pair of them insane? There was an unspoken connection between the pair of them that made Emily wonder how they knew with each other. Emily stopped wondering when Arion looked down at her.

"Emily move!" Jasyn demanded, when she simply sat there he toed her leg, "now!"

"I can't," Emily snapped back as if he were dense.

"Ever the gentleman, I see," Arion commented dryly, before his voice became cold. "I'm surprised at you, Jasyn. Isn't it bad enough that you kill every Arcadian that crosses your path? Now you kidnap our women?"

"She's nothing to do with this, Arion, and if you touch her I swear there will be nothing of this earth that will keep you safe."

Emily looked up at Jasyn in surprise but he was staring venomously at Arion, Arion himself looked completely dumbfounded, his eyes flickered from Jasyn to Emily and back again. He sniffed up.

"You aren't mated," he stated firmly.

"Don't be ridiculous," Jasyn snarled at him, "now leave, before I forget that about exposure and rip your ass to shreds."

When Arion spoke again his face and voice were no longer mocking or amused, they were both dangerous and hard.

"You hand her over now, Jasyn. No innocents are allowed to be brought into this and you know it. You take one of ours and you'll pay for it, there will be no reprieves, no second chances. This time I will fight to kill you."

"And you'll lose," Jasyn stated with deadly purpose, Emily winced when Jasyn's hands closed around her collar and under her arm and hauled her up. Her boot heel came free as if she had never even caught it. Arion looked incensed and growled low in his throat.

"This isn't over," Arion warned and Jasyn scoffed at him, Arion turned to walk away.

"Just for the record," Jasyn said, knowing Arion would hear him, "I fought to kill. Every time."

Arion didn't look back as he paused to hear those words then he casually continued walking again, Emily looked at Jasyn who was watching after Arion with a look of disgust on his face.

"Who was that?"

Jasyn ignored her; instead he grabbed her hand and yanked her along behind him, parting the crowd like a king. Emily pulled her holdall along on its wheels and tried not to wince when she caught sight of her grazed and bloody knees.

Emily and Jasyn didn't speak again until they had settled on the train that would take them to New Orleans, stopping off at Washington and Atlanta on the way. This was making Jasyn nervous; he hadn't thought for one second that Arion was going to track him down here, though Jasyn was more then ready for a confrontation with the bastard. He wanted to kick his smug, human ass. But Emily effectively tied his hands behind his back; he couldn't go after Arion without leaving her stranded and in danger. Perhaps taking her to Sanctuary really was a smart thing to do? He hadn't thought so in the beginning, but now …

He sat them at the back of the first class carriage and was thankful that there did not seem to be a lot of people travelling with them. The carriage had very few people and they were all sparsely spaced out, Jasyn sat in the roomy seats beside Emily, who was by the window. Jasyn looked down at her lowered head; she was fiddling with the bottom of her skirt, which incidentally was far too sexy for a woman to wear outside the bedroom. Without meaning to Jasyn took a deep breath and inhaled the fragrance of her hair, "what are you doing?" he asked.

Emily flicked her hair out of her eyes as she sent an irritated glare up at him, she held up at bloodied tissue and gave him a duh kind of expression.

"How did that happen?"

Emily absolutely refused to dignify it with an answer and so just ignored him and carried on dabbing at her knees that were suddenly stinging a lot more then they were before. Jasyn watched with his head tilted as she used a bottle of water to dampen the tissue and then try and wipe away the dirt without aggravating the grazes and cuts. She worked in silence, but as roomy as the seat were, there was not enough space for her to stretch her legs out and cleanse the wounds lower on her legs.

"Oh, come here!" Jasyn snapped irritably and yanked at her knee, Emily hissed at him when his hand accidentally touched her stinging knees. Jasyn looked sheepish and a tad contrite, which surprised Emily a little, "didn't mean to do that," he said gruffly. Emily allowed him to pull her legs over his knees and then went as limp as a doll as he began to gently smooth away the black grit that had settled on her flesh. Jasyn found it hard to breathe all of a sudden; he smoothed his hand up her calf ... it felt so warm and soft in his palm. It was so shapely. He wrapped his hand around her ankles which were delicate and small, so small in fact that he could wrap his entire hand around it and still have finger space. Smoothing his palm up her calf once more Jasyn felt his eyes drift closed, her skin was as silky as feathers.

"Jasyn?"

"Mmm?"

"Are you feeling me up?"

Jasyn's eyes flew open and blood flushed his cheeks, he immediately snarled at her, "no!"

"Sorry," Emily said not meaning it, "you were just fondling my leg a lot."

"I wasn't - I was helping you - do it yourself!" Jasyn gave her legs a shove.

"Okay, okay, sorry. Jeesh!" Emily tried to keep her lips from twitching, she kept her legs where they were and Jasyn went back to dabbing at her cut knees, though his hands were far less free and it was something Emily was sorry for.

"Are you - um," Emily found she lost track of her thoughts whenever Jasyn touched her or fixed his bright green eyes on hers; shaking her head she cleared her throat. "Will you be alright on here tonight?"

Again he brought his head up and beamed her with those bright green marbles of his, Emily blinked.

"What do you mean?" he asked in his naturally deep voice.

"Well, you won't be able to sleep without, you know …" Emily let her voice trail off with a knowing look; a miniscule smile tugged at Jasyn's lips but was gone before he spoke.

"I wouldn't ever sleep out in the open like this anyway," Jasyn said and threw her a look that was both smug and reprimanding, if you can imagine it. "You have a lot to learn about survival as a Were, doctor. You've just become fair game to the merciless Katagaria that haunt this world."

Something in his tone suggested he was being sarcastic but his very expression told Emily he was speaking truth. Emily didn't know where she was with him; he was such a bundle of contradictions, a mixture of truth and lies, mercy and cruelty, human and animal. His dual personalities sifting into one another so frequently and without announcement that he confused her, and his unpredictability, which he would have attributed to his being an animal, was a little unnerving for Emily.

"You're going to stay awake all night?" Emily asked with an edge to her voice that Jasyn noticed; his smile when it came was edged with malice.

"Do you trust me to watch over you?" he asked tauntingly, Emily looked in to the eyes of a natural born killer and could not quite find an answer, for to answer affirmative might not necessarily be the whole truth.

"I can never sleep on these things," Emily answered, keeping her voice neutral, "I'm not tired anyway."

It was a lie and Jasyn smelt it, she didn't trust him which pleased Jasyn to some extent, it showed she had a measure of self-preservation.

"Liar," he breathed, staring at her without blinking, Emily flushed and looked away from him out the window. Jasyn sat back in his seat with a satisfied smile twisting his lips, he didn't let go of her legs though, he held them in his lap, his hand settled over her ankle like a manacle.

Jasyn knew that Emily had fallen asleep by the sound of her heart beat and her breathing; her body had lost its tenseness and relaxed more fully into the seat, her legs becoming dead weight in his lap. Still Jasyn did not remove her legs from him, her weight to him was slight and he didn't mind it, he looked into her face in its quiet repose as she dreamed. Her unnaturally coloured hair fanned out over her shoulders in soft waves that were more the effect of how many times she tucked it behind her ears, or screwed it up at the base of her neck rather then any actual style she was trying to achieve. Jasyn looked down at her knees, they were completely healed, the soft, smooth honeyed skin mended as if it had never been broken. He knew they would be, Emily evidently hadn't, there was so much she didn't know and it made his world all the more dangerous for her. She was an innocent really, perhaps more then any other were-hunter he'd ever known, she just caught up in a world that she knew nothing about. She had been brought into a war not of her making, simply because she had won, or lost as the case may be, the genetic lottery.

She obviously knew nothing of who she was ... her clan, her parents; she'd grown up very much alone. Jasyn couldn't help feeling a certain amount of disgust towards her parents; surely they would have seen the damage leaving her in the care of unaware humans could have wrought. And may already have wrought unless he got rid of that tape. But then it may not have been their choice, like many were-hunters they may have simply died fighting against their Katagaria cousins and hadn't lived long enough to store their child in a stable, safe environment amongst her own kind.

From what little conversation they'd had Jasyn deduced that Emily had only just hit puberty, which was strange as young were-hunters, those that had just hit puberty specifically, in general were very immature. They were still like teenagers in their twenties and it took until they were at least a century old to be considered full grown. Yet Emily was a mature woman, she was independent, lived by herself, took care of herself, was from what he could see fairly intellectual and emotionally mature, not to mention sexually mature. That was the biggest surprise for Jasyn Weres rarely reached full sexual maturity so soon after full puberty, and never before. The direction of his thoughts had Jasyn's eyes flicking higher then her knees, perhaps Emily was a case study for the whole nurture vs. nature debate, either way Jasyn felt a little strange for checking out a woman so young - in were-hunter years that is.

Emily moved in her sleep, she made a little noise and turned her face into the chair, Jasyn watched her mouth eagerly, her lips parted ever so slightly and Jasyn felt his own imitate them. In her sleep she moved her leg, cocking her knee slightly so that they were parted by a few scant inches; it left an enticing darkness in the gap of her skirt that made Jasyn breathless. It housed the mysteries of womanhood that drove men wild, Jasyn stared at her knees and wondered whether she had gone into her mating season yet? Who, if anyone, had assuaged her urges to mate? Jasyn felt himself begin to harden, felt the tell-tale tingles that accompanied being turned on by a very sexy female. He just wanted a taste of her, shameful though it was for she was Arcadian, but he was being badly tempted. Just to press his lips to the skin of her legs, and let his tongue taste it, perhaps trail up towards her thighs, and then he would stop. He had to stop, otherwise he'd take her in the seat where she was laying, oblivious to his lascivious thoughts. Jasyn was ashamed of himself, he may be a lot of things but he would never take advantage of a woman, not while she was asleep and helpless, it just wasn't right. Yet he growled when he thought of how good she would taste, before he could stop himself the hand resting on her leg began and slow, firm massage of her shapely calf. Just the feel of that innocent part of her body sent him into overdrive and he became breathless and hard from it. Emily woke slowly to the feel of someone working her leg in a very skilfully erotic way; she opened her eyes and found Jasyn staring at her, his mouth parted and his breathing heavy. Jasyn felt his rock hard erection give a throb when he saw that her cheeks were flushed from sleep and her eyes were heavy and sexy looking as they stared back at him in mild surprise. Jasyn didn't think about whether he dare do what he wanted, he just did it, his hand smoothed up her leg, pushing her skirt higher as it went and began to repeat the erotic massage on her thigh. Jasyn watched her face intently, her lips parted and her eyes became more intense, the smell of her arousal was potent.

"You like this," Jasyn stated, even he heard the slight surprise in his voice, he knew he was handsome and most human women begged him to sleep with them, but for some reason he thought Emily may have reservations about him. Be it his acerbic personality or the fact that he tried to kill her yet she responded wonderfully, sitting up and leaning forward, Jasyn's eyes flared when he realised what she wanted and he wasted no time complying.

Emily tried to keep down a moan that escaped her when Jasyn surged forward and kissed her, his hand didn't leave its spot on her thigh, but his grip got harder as the kiss became more urgent. There lips and tongues pushing and fighting with each other, their breath mingling and all the time their bodies strained to touch and be closer, yet there was the background knowledge that they were not alone.

There was a very deliberate cough from behind Jasyn which he chose to ignore but Emily pulled back abruptly, her face was the colour of her hair. Jasyn sent a glare over his shoulder at a middle aged woman who gave him a withering glare of her own.

"Young man, I believe you are aware of such things as public decency laws?"

Jasyn raised an eyebrow at her and she mimicked him, "we weren't doing anything wrong," he remarked a little sullenly. The woman gave a pointed look to his hand on Emily's thigh, Emily blushed a deep shade of red before removing her legs from him and trying to press herself into the corner of the seat, as far away from him as it was possible to get. The woman made a meaningful noise before passing on giving them an obvious I-am-keeping-my-eyes-on-you look, Jasyn sneered and turned back to Emily.

She had her head down looking at her lap, her hair falling forward to cover her face, she peeked up after the woman had passed and gave him a guilty look. Jasyn looked completely unrepentant and leaned back in his seat; he gave the woman a sarcastic wave as she glared at him suspiciously from the other end of the carriage. Emily let out a guilty giggle she tried to stifle with one hand and with the other she grabbed at his arm.

"Don't give her reason to have us thrown off!"

Jasyn didn't say a word, he didn't even look at her and Emily had the typical female reaction of wanting to know what he was thinking, she wanted to ask but he didn't seem in the mood to speak.

"So …" Emily broke the silence awkwardly, Jasyn turned to look at her.

"It was a mistake, nothing more," he said abruptly and went back to staring down the aisle, Emily was shocked into silence. Her urge to snap at him was dampened by a sudden feeling of hurt; she squelched it immediately, reprimanding herself. She wasn't here for smooching and cuddles; she needed him for one thing and once that was done their business with each other was finished as far as she was concerned. Plus he so wasn't her type. Emily laid her head back on the head rest and stared out the window, trying to force her mind into pleasurable blankness to take the sting from his rejection.