smile. "Looks like we'll need a raincheck, princess. Don't die on me out there."
I wrinkled my nose at him. "Seriously, dude? Not cool. You don't just put my death out in the universe. It needs no challenge, trust me."
He patted me on the head. "You'll be fine. Looks like you've drawn the attention of the big bad, and trust me, he's the best fucking guy to have at your back. Never seen anyone as good at this survival stuff as Dylan, and I've been in the game for most of my life."
He shot a worried look the big bad's way before he said a quick "bye" and hurried off to his new assignment. I didn't bother to rush, because what was the point? I was going to be yelled at either way.
Hauling the backpack up, I groaned at the weight. What the fuck was in here? Bricks?
"Come on, Brooklyn," Dylan said, his face somewhat amused now that Ben was nowhere near me. "You have some surviving to do."
I snarled at him, in no mood for his bullshit. "You better sleep with one eye open, dude. You're starting to piss me off."
He chuckled and swept an arm around me to get me moving along the path, straight into the wilderness. "No plans for sleeping when I get you into bed," he said softly, right near my ear, and just like that, my anger turned into horniness. One point to Dylan.
No time for anything fun though. Today, I apparently had to learn how to hunt and survive.
16
Turned out it wasn't entirely hunting; the first thing we learned was plants—which ones were dangerous, which ones held liquid we could drink, and which ones were edible and could keep you alive if you were lost in the great outdoors.
“Clovers are completely edible,” Dylan explained to me. “But they’re perennial, so they’ll die off in winter and return in the spring. In winter your options will be limited, but there are cattails, rose hips, and chickweed. Pine can be boiled into a tea, and the inner bark is edible.”
He showed me exactly what he meant with each plant, and I had to sketch each and every one as we uncovered them. Ben hadn't been kidding about Dylan. Once he stopped being a pretentious prick, he was so fucking smart, and his knowledge of survival was second to none.
"How does a billionaire know shit like this?" I asked after he stopped me from breaking my ankle in a hole hidden in the rocky ground.
He let out a long exhalation, looking one hundred percent a mountain man as he tilted his head back and took a good look around the landscape. "I wasn't brought up the way you might expect,” he finally said. “My family... they were pretty fucked up. I just had my friends, and we had to learn to survive, or the life we lived would have killed us."
We’d never discussed our lives or families before. I knew a little about his through news articles, but I enjoyed having him confide in me. It felt like I was finally getting to know the real Dylan behind the strong, silent sex-machine facade he'd always presented to me on our nights together.
"So... this camp was different when you guys came here?" I’d already heard this from someone else, but I wanted his take on it.
He shot me a somewhat amused look. "About as different as Club Med versus Guantanamo Bay. It really was the torture-level camp that saw some kids go home in body bags. But I guess, for those of us who survived, it taught us all the skills we needed to conquer the shit we went through in life, so it wasn't all bad."
I chewed my lip, thinking on that. I felt so sorry for preteen Dylan and his friends being thrown into life-threatening situations, forced to make the kinds of decisions no adult should ever have to make. But he was right. Without that horrific training at such a young age, maybe he wouldn't be here today. If they didn't know how to survive in the wild, would he and the other Delta heirs have died in that plane crash a few years ago?
"So, you're trying to teach us the same things without the trauma?" I gave him a soft smile to show I really was trying to understand because I was interested in what his goals were, here at camp and in a broader sense.