Wolf’s Heart (21 page)

“GI Jackass meets James Paranoid Bond?” 

When the door opened, JT stepped inside and Lou followed. As Carlee tried to get out of the car, Ryden insisted on carrying her inside. He didn’t stop as they passed by JT in the kitchen. His voice was commanding as he spoke.

“I’ll take my old room. Keep the woman with you until I decide if she is needed.”

JT started making coffee as Lou plopped herself into a chair, not bothering to hide the sarcasm in her voice. “Well, isn’t this going to be fun?  Do you have hearing loss?  Have you two taken one too many hits upside the head? I am
not
a doctor.”

JT voice was smug as he replied, “Then I guess you better hope we don’t need one.”

Carlee was looking over Ryden’s shoulder as he walked through the house. She was wondering if Lou and JT would both be alive when they came back. Ryden wasted no time getting to the bedroom, kicking the door closed behind him and laying her down on the bed. He removed the blanket and his hands gently moved over every part of her body, looking at every scratch, every bruise. She winched a little as his finger trailed along her incision line where they had taken the skin. That had Ryden growling and his eyes flashed that golden color.

His body seemed to tremble with anger and his teeth clenched as he spoke. “Just seeing the marks on your body makes me wish I could kill them again. No one, Buttercup, no one will touch you again. No one fucks with what’s
mine
.” 

“Peach, look at me. I’ll be fine.” She saw his jaw tighten and jumped in while she knew she still had a chance. “Ryden, I had to go. Why did you come for me? Of course, it’s not that I’m complaining that you did but, why?  I told you to stay away.”

His eyes narrowed. It was one of those angry, oh-shit-you’re-in-deep-trouble kind of looks, and she found herself averting her gaze but kept babbling on. “This isn’t your fight. They were never supposed to find out about you.”

As much as she found herself wanting to just climb into his arms, there was more at stake here than just her own wants. She didn’t even want to think about Kyle and her parents.

“Peaches, I can get more answers from Lou, but I know some of the answers already. Your saving me put a price on your head. The MedVision people are doing some crazy shit. They’re looking at you like you’re the freaking fountain of youth. They found strange enzymes in the healed wound on my belly and took…” 

Her words were cut off at the mention of the wound as she heard the growl rumble in his chest.

“Okay, so let’s skip that part. Ryden, they know about you. They injected me with sodium amytal and I sang like a choir girl on Sunday about how my wolf lover healed me. I tried not to, I swear, but I couldn’t stop myself from telling them. The worst part was, the crazy doctor believed me! Said she had read about stuff like that in books and, well, with the samples they took as proof, she planned on using them and mixing it with some eggs and trying to clone it. She figured since you were able to heal the wound that I would be able to help them. If it wasn’t for G thinking I wasn’t mother material and injecting me with birth control, well, that and you finding me, they were basically going to use me as a baby wolf-making petri dish. Do you get it?  Do you get what they will do if they find you? Did you ever
see
the movie
Alien
, or
ET
, or wait…
Men in Black
? That is what we are dealing with here. I won’t let you do that.”

He leaned down slowly and she found herself moving back. Part of her wanted to take what she knew he offered—safety, strength. She tried to name the emotions she saw in his eyes. There was hunger, but there was something more. Love? How the hell was that possible? She
had once dreamed that he loved her, despite all of her imperfections, that he would want her just as she was. She thought that could have been Ryden until he suddenly broke off the relationship.

She found herself wishing it was true. She felt her heart pulling. She realized that she had never stopped loving him. That had been the problem over the last three years, the reason she insisted on the distance between her and G. There was a standard Ryden had set that no man would ever be able to live up to.

“Ryden, you don’t love me. You’re Peaches, bright eyed, bushy tailed. I know, literally on the bushy tail part now, but remember? You’re not
that
guy. You’re Mr. Travel-The-World-And-Save-The-Universe. You don’t even know me. I’m a freak, a geek. I’m nosy, I talk a lot, and I’m just not that lovable, if you wanna be honest. I know now that you broke it off because of what happened, but if you look at it objectively, I would have eventually driven you crazy and you would have done it anyway.

Ryden stood there and let her get it all out. When she got like this, it was best to let her speak her mind. But when she tried to tell him that he didn’t love her?  Well, that didn’t sit well with the man
or
the wolf. They had both heard enough.

She lay under him, trying to scoot back, but he was having none of that. He grasped both her hands and pulled them over her head, angling his body so that he was positioned right between her thighs. The blanket fell away, and there was only her bare skin. She was so damn soft to his hands, her skin still pale and beautiful. Every inch was his, and he planned on never letting her forget that again.

His gaze moved over her, watching as she bit down on her lip. His hips rocked against her, pressing his hardened length against her core. Small moans rose from her mouth, and the scent of her arousal permeated the room. But it wasn’t enough to take away the scent of that place, the smell of those people, or the man he had killed. He smelled them on her and he could still smell the blood on himself.

Without a word, he stood up, leaving her on the bed. She watched, taking in every movement, and when the scrubs slipped over his hips, his throbbing cock released from the confines, she licked her lips in anticipation. He knew what she wanted, what her body needed, even if her head was telling her otherwise. He had every intention of taking his time and showing her exactly what she needed, what her life would be from this point forward. And as much as he and the wolf wanted to crawl back on the bed and fuck her brains out, he managed to keep control.

“Shower first.” He held out his hand. She looked at it and then him before she took it hesitantly. He wasn’t having that. Leaning down and scooping her up into his arms, he carried her to the bathroom. It didn’t take the water long to get hot and they were both under the spray. She picked up the soap to wash, but he took it from her. “I’ll do this.”

She stood there under the water as he lathered up the soap and washed her from the neck down, using only his hands. He took care not to hurt her new wound. The small site would heal on its own just fine, but he couldn’t stand the thought of what had been done to her. It needed to be gone. Leaning down he let his tongue lap gently across the site. He held back the groan at the taste of her on his tongue. As badly as he wanted to care for her, to heal her, it was nothing compared to the demand of the wolf to claim her. The man struggled, he had to get the blood and scents from the battle at the lab off of them.

When that much was done, he instructed her to wet her hair and he picked up the shampoo bottle.

“Ryden, I can do this myself.”

“Please, just let me do this, baby. I need to take care of you.” She looked at him and then nodded. He could sense his wolf was looking through his eyes.

With her hair wet, she turned and let him lather her long dark tresses, combing his fingers through the strands and massaging her scalp with his fingertips. She moaned and then laughed a bit. “A girl could get used to this, Peach.”

“I’ve only done this for one woman.” She turned and looked at him. He could see the jealousy in her eyes. “That one woman is standing right here in front of me.”

The jealous look disappeared and was replaced with a look of longing. He was hoping she would realize by his actions that he did, in fact, love her deeply. There would be time for those words again later, for him to argue his point, but for now his actions were doing all the talking.

“Rinse while I wash off.” She nodded, speechless for once and did as he instructed.

It took him a bit longer to get all the blood off. Some had rinsed away, but much had dried, crusting on his skin. He hated she’d seen that part of him, but if she stayed with him, she had to realize his wolf was half of who he was. There was no denying that fact, and the sooner she could come to terms with it, the better.

When they were both washed and rinsed, he pulled her out from under the spray and dried her wound gently with a towel.

“Stand still, baby. Let me take care of this.” He felt her watching as he began nuzzling, cleaning the wound with his tongue before he bit down on his wrist, piercing the skin with his canines that had dropped down.

While the blood flowed from his wrist, he let it drop down on to her belly, along the scar they had opened back up with all their cutting. Carlee looked down, watching as her wounds sealed back over, and smooth skin replaced it.

The entire process took only seconds and then his wrist was closing up on its own. Before he could rinse away the blood, she took his wrist in her hand, and turned it over so she could see it. Her fingers wiped away the blood and saw the wound had closed completely.

“See? All healed.” She looked up at him, amazed it had healed so fast. “Come on, let’s get you rinsed and out of here.”

He pulled her back under the water, rinsing them both again and then turned the water off. JT preferred large towels and this bathroom was stocked with the same. She was wrapped up in one large towel that wound around her twice before it reached the end, and he grabbed one for himself.

The towel felt soft on Carlee’s hypersensitive skin. She turned and grabbed another towel to dry her hair, and gasped when she found Ryden standing right in front of her. His hair was wet and water droplets coalesced into small rivulets on his chest and arms. Even after all he’d been through getting her out of MedVision, there wasn’t a mark on him. She was enveloped in his clean, earthy scent. She bit her lip as her eyes drifted lower. The towel hung low on his hips, the fine downy hair leading down the happy trail to his thick length tenting against the fabric.

Her mouth was instantly dry, her voice was almost raspy as she said, “I need to brush my hair.”

She reached for the hairbrush, but Ryden was quicker as he snatched it off the counter. The half-ass grin on his face caused her to press her knees together as her core clenched with desire. She took a step back but was not fast enough. It almost seemed as if Ryden sensed her movements and with each step she took, he was there. He reached out and spun her around. The brush glided through in long strokes along with his fingers.

“Damn, Buttercup, your hair is so soft, like fine silk running through my fingers. You cannot even imagine what just that touch does to me. I still prefer the yellow-blonde streak you had the first night we met. Buttercup Yellow…”

He leaned down and placed a soft kiss to her bare shoulder, followed by another kiss on her neck. Her heart quickened. She knew what his fingers running through her hair was doing to her, and if it was the same for him, the quakes and heat of Mount Saint Helens eruption didn’t even compare. Holding her breath for a moment, she tried to calm her racing heart and raging hormones. Damn, she was falling for him…again…something she swore she’d never do. She felt her face flush. The last thing either of them needed was exactly what was happening.

She spun around and grabbed the brush, trying her best to just blow this off as near-death hormone overload. “I can’t stop there, Peaches. You know the golden rule, a hundred strokes.”

As fast as she went to turn away he stepped with her again. Now his eyes were burning into hers. He was leaving no doubt as to his intentions. “A hundred strokes are just about what I had in mind for a warm up. Now, it’s up to you, Buttercup. I can fuck you here against the bathroom wall, bend your ass over the counter, do it on the floor, or we can do this in a warm soft bed. You have about three seconds to choose before I decide to make a meal out of that sweet pussy of yours or just sink my cock into it instead. Whatever you pick, in about five minutes, you
are
going to be screaming my name.”

He reached up and threaded his fingers through the hair at the side of her face. He lowered his head slowly bringing his lips down and brushing them across hers as he spoke. “What’s it going to be, Buttercup? Time’s up.”

His words alone did things to her that no other man’s hands ever could. Just the look in his eyes could set her on fire. Ryden could easily become an addiction, and there would be no giving him up. Did he love her? Was she in love with him? At that moment, she didn’t care. All she knew was what she felt—the deep ache inside her only Ryden could soothe.

Reaching up, she removed her towel and let it drop to the floor. “Take me to bed, Peaches. Floor burns suck.”

His lips crushed down on hers in a hungry kiss as he scooped her up onto his arms. Her fingers tugged at his hair as their tongues battled for control of the kiss. Carlee tried to hold him to her as he placed her down on the bed, but her hands were not strong enough to keep him there. Her eyes followed him while he took a step back and dropped his towel. She licked her lips at the initial sight of his erection. At that moment, she wanted nothing more than to taste him. He obviously had other plans. 

“I’m gonna eat you, Buttercup. Every sweet drop, and when I’m done, I
will
fuck you so hard and so good you won’t ever think about leaving my side.”

Carlee moaned as Ryden crawled onto the bed, raising one of her legs then the other and draping them over his shoulders exposing her core to him. His voice was raspy with desire as his eyes traveled down her body.

“Damn, you’re so beautiful.”