by Zoe Forward
She knew he’d choose the last option.
Chapter Eleven
Staring at herself until the mirror fogged up felt like something she’d done before, and that freaked her out far more than the scrapes and cuts. More so if she was some sort of international assassin who did bad things.
Who was she?
After the shower, she styled her wet hair into a chaotic bun and wrapped herself in a terrycloth bathrobe from a hook in the bathroom. The blood-soaked clothes were her only option if she wanted to wear something other than the bathrobe.
When she emerged in the robe, showered, and dried, he still sat on the sofa watching TV. His gaze flickered to her for an instant before returning to the screen.
She settled in beside him, careful to keep a few feet between them. Within minutes, she started zoning out. So tired.
She jerked awake, finding herself snuggled up to him with her head against his hard, warm chest.
His big hand lay across her hip. Time ticked by as she breathed him in. A masculine mixture of soap and the essence of him filled her up. She memorized the scent—all Roman.
One of her hands lay on his lap. So close…
She imagined Roman naked. Her hand on his erection, stroking him up and down as he sat here. His abdominal muscles flexing with her touch. Him in her mouth as she teased and tormented him…
Roman flipping their positions. The feel of his scruff along her inner thighs, scraping and burning her skin.
Enough.
This throbbing sensation had to stop before it eclipsed everything, and she lost control and threw herself at him.
The TV still flickered news images.
She didn’t want to talk or even make eye contact. It’d break the spell. She wanted this time right here, knowing it might be the only chance she got to feel him this close, free of all the external factors that pushed on them.
When it became obvious he knew she no longer slept, she glanced up.
His hand jerked off her hip.
“Sorry,” she muttered, pushing up off his solid chest. She stood and moved to a window, opening the curtain to allow early morning light to spill inside. Down in the gated garden below, a woman wearing a ball cap with a ponytail hanging out the back prowled the area. The way she slowly swept the small garden gave her true intent away. Assassin.
Again, how would she know? She trusted her gut.
How had they tracked her here?
Without warning, Roman crowded in behind her and shut the curtains. “This place isn’t safe anymore.”
“Did you worry I’d run from you instead of return?”
“It wouldn’t have surprised me, but I like a good chase.”
She was tempted to move in closer. A few minutes ago, she’d been lying on his chest, the impossible warmth of his skin under her hands. She wanted him. Badly. And unless she was secretly terrible at reading people, he wanted her right back. She could almost see arcs of electricity radiating between them. She couldn’t breathe.
All of a sudden, he shuttered his eyes, paled, and sucked in a breath. “Get away. It wants me to hurt you. It’s pushing me hard.” He wheezed and stumbled away to fall against the kitchen counter. “Fuck you, I won’t do it.” He shook his head.
That wasn’t him talking to her, but to it…the curse. It was punishing him again.
On instinct, she wrapped her hand around his tattooed wrist. A rhyme came to her head that she whispered, “Ease the punishment forsooth, until he can discern the truth.”
He yanked his wrist away. “How did you do that? It’s gone. The pain…”
“I don’t know,” she said. “The words just came into my head.”
“It’s not possible. The curse is magic.”
“Dom seemed to believe I have a bit of magic in me. Who knows? Maybe the way to fight magic is with magic?”
“Can you keep doing it, though? I don’t know when the compulsion to kill you will override my will.” He backed away from her.
“You said yourself you’d only follow me. There’s no point in me running.” She nodded at the window. “I’m going to get information from her. I want to know how she knows I’m here. Maybe she knows more about who I am.”
He’d moved close. The planes of his chest pressed into her shoulder as he peeked through a crack in the curtain. His heat beckoned, and his presence comforted her.
“That’s futile,” he said. “Whomever they’re chasing is a shadow. Even it if was you, it isn’t who you are now unless your amnesia is an act.”
She whispered, “I wish it was. I’d give anything to know myself. Do I have a husband or someone else? I think I like men.” She gave a wry laugh. Understatement of the century. “Yes, pretty sure that’s true, at least I liked our kiss, and I have fantasies of us. But maybe I like women, too. I don’t know. Do I like coffee? Who are my parents? Do I like my hair up?” She chanced a glance over her shoulder. He wasn’t looking at her. “You think I was a spy or something? If so, who did I work for?”
His eyes flickered down to hers. “I have a lead we should explore that might give us some answers before we leave England, maybe find your family. But I still think you should go your own way. I don’t know if I… I might hurt you. I might be half asleep and do it.” His voice grew hoarse. “I don’t want to. I’d rather die than hurt you.” He held his breath and massaged his wrist.
“I believe in you.” She stepped forward and hugged him, pressing herself firmly against him and sighing in relief. Her body relaxed.
Messed up. She was sure this was some complicated psychological syndrome, falling for the person who was supposed to try to kill her.
His hand slid around her waist. “I like your hair down, but with it up…” He leaned in and pressed his nose to her neck, the touch gentle and respectful. This wasn’t the touch of a male who wanted in his heart to murder her. He felt safe. He always felt safe.
Her eyelids drifted closed on a soft, “Oh.”
Abruptly, he stopped and stepped away from her. “I shouldn’t have done that. I shouldn’t have kissed you, either. I have no right.” His face turned stormy with surprise and then regret as he touched a pendant beneath his shirt.
He was turned on. Very turned on.
The unmated female cannot have physical contact without permission from their guardian. Males have lost limbs or their life for so little.
A male had said that to her long ago. Her father? She pushed to grasp the wisps of the memory and see the speaker, but it was gone.
“This is wrong. I’m not just talking on a species level, but about the fact I am not my own person. I can’t have…attachments,” he said. He turned around, rearranged himself and stalked to the kitchen sink to splash water on his face. Finding no hand towel or a paper towel, he wiped off with a sleeve. “We can’t… This, whatever it may be, is over.”
Nova wanted the right to choose when and if she was with a male, whether it be with or without the bonds of matrimony, and whether it be a human or with a lycan. Ancient society rules be damned. Guilt assailed her from years of tradition and protocol crammed down her throat by her mother who’d died so long ago—how to look at a male, how to address him, the dos and don’ts of conduct.
Her mother? She couldn’t remember what she looked like but recalled her essence.
“We haven’t done anything wrong,” she said. “Doing it gave me some flashbacks about our species’ protocol.” She touched his arm. All his muscles tensed as if he would pull away. “There’s no one here to give permission. There’s only me. I decide what’s acceptable.”
“For you but not me. I am bound by society rules to a large extent and to my curse.”
He yanked his arm away from her and stepped back. “How do I know you’re not exploiting weakness in me?”
…
Great. All Roman could do wa
s stare at her and imagine what she’d look like naked on the kitchen counter. He dropped his head to cut off her hurt expression. She wouldn’t like knowing she wore her emotions so obviously in her eyes. The mental lockdown he put on their fantasy foray into all kinds of naked was so complete that he felt like he’d been whacked in the head.
He’d never lost his focus like this.
He recognized his emotions were all over the place…as well as completely out of control. He needed space between them, or he was liable to lift her onto this counter and give them the release they both ached for. He couldn’t dwell on the thought.
His wrist burned its reminder of who owned him and who made decisions about his life, but since she’d cast her spell, it didn’t hurt as much. Didn’t that make him more attracted to her? If she could ease some of the pain of his life…
When he’d thought the agony his curse inflicted could get no worse as he fought the dictate to hurt her, she’d made it go away. He couldn’t stop wondering how she’d done it. Could it be repeated on a larger scale and made to hold for longer? It might offer escape.
He didn’t want to be a Crown’s wolf any longer. Because he questioned orders. Because he hated the authority over him. And most of all, he was exhausted and skeptical.
He was a disaster, thinking deep thoughts for this woman he’d known a little over twenty-four hours and barely kissed once.
Bloody hell, this hurt…
Nova’s cell phone rang. She reached for it, looked at the number and showed him. “You know the number?”
“It’s Flynn. I’ll get it,” he said. He answered, “Yes?”
“Where are you?” Flynn asked.
“London.”
“Still? You should be out of there. Meeting over and you gone. I’m halfway south. Antonio is following you. This is bad. I don’t know what he intends or how he’s tracking you. Makes me wonder if he did the same to you that we did to him…put a tracker in your watch. Dump it. Dump anything that could emit a signal. Why’d you get recalled?”
“The target got affirmed.” They had to be cagey in case someone listened in, which was likely, even with all of their precautions.
“Are you tracking her?”
“Yes. Seems in her previous life she assassinated a few people. He put a contract out on her.” He reached for Nova’s hand and took it in his.
“Leave. You bringing any company south?”
Roman remained silent.
Flynn continued, “Scan everything for a tracking chip.”
“I’ll check. We’ll dump stuff. They could track the plane.”
“True,” said Flynn. “But we check before we leave each time for any sort of newly installed devices.”
“I’ve got a lead that might help figure her situation.”
“The tone of your voice is interesting. I like interesting. Makes you unpredictable and that’s more like the old Roman, the one who gave a crap about life and hot females.”
“Well, she is that.”
“At least you admit you noticed.” Flynn sighed. “If killing has to be done, I might be able to do it for you. I’m not sure, though. I’m not as good at it as you, and I like her. Well, not like you like-like her. You know what, I’ll see you at the dock and be curious to see if you turn up alone. Any word on Ky?”
Flynn obviously hadn’t found anything either in his search. “Not on my end. He hasn’t check in for five days, which means something’s wrong.” He hung up, every muscle in his neck and jaw tense with worry over his brother.
“What did he say?” she asked.
“I was followed, which makes leaving important. Antonio is nearby.”
“The vampire from Berlin?”
“Put all your electronics and anything metal on the counter. We’re leaving them. They’re tracking something on one of us.” He put down his watch.
She laid down the cell phone, watch, and earrings. “I don’t have anything else that I had on in Germany.”
He pulled an iPad out of a drawer in the kitchen and opened an app. After moving the iPad over her body to scan, he announced, “You’re not transmitting.”
“What does that mean?”
“You don’t have an implanted chip on you that’s transmitting a signal.”
“Guess that’s good. Weird and unnerving that it’s possible, but okay. You’re leaving the iPad?”
He clicked open an app that had a pirate-style picture of a skull and crossbones. “I’m wiping its memory.” He glanced up to find her cringing. “It’s just a thing. It’s replaceable and not important. I’m not a fan of technology, anyway.”
He dropped her phone and stomped on it with his heel. No small feat to destroy the little unit, but he managed it.
The demolished plastic and metal pieces felt like he’d shattered her only link to her old life.
He said, “It doesn’t have answers. We can’t run risks when Antonio is involved. What if he’s the one who gave the phone to you to begin with? That twisted bastard might play a game like that.”
“I get it. But I say if you think he knows more, let’s capture him and torture the truth out of him.”
“I like the thought, but he’s too dangerous for that.”
She touched her face as if self-conscious. “Should I wear the scarf again?”
“Yes.” He grabbed his duffle bag off the floor near the sofa and met her at the door after she’d changed.
They slipped out the back of the apartment building and caught a cab.
“Where are we going?”
“North. To get answers.”
Chapter Twelve
Nova slept through the entire ninety-minute flight to Inverness and all but the last few minutes of the two-hour car ride over small country roads. Roman moved the blanket that had slipped down back over her. With each hour of sleep, her skin healed. The remarkable healing capacity of their species never ceased to astound him.
He believed her amnesia, although it made no sense she’d been sent to seek him out. Whoever sent her had to realize there was a high chance he’d be ordered to eliminate her—given her past and the fact that the royals didn’t want anyone hanging around the Crown’s wolves for too long. A good assassin would disappear and be gone forever, not return to him after committing another murder. Guess he believed her when she said she’d been abducted.
How many men had she slept with before she lost her memory? He liked the idea of her not remembering anyone but him. Okay, that was a random and dangerous line of thinking.
But she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, and if he was completely honest, he wanted one night with her, kill order or not. Maybe it was the effects of the full moon, coming soon.
By the time the sun sat high in the sky, he pulled up to a gated road far south of Inverness. He fingered the address he’d jotted down on a torn piece of paper and double-checked one more time that he’d punched it into the rental car’s navigation system correctly.
The gate wasn’t much more than a rickety wooden barrier surrounded by an overgrowth of vines. No lock. Looked as if his car could drive through it.
Her eyelids fluttered open, and she gave him the most brilliant smile. It was as if seeing him lit up her world. No one had ever looked at him like that. He found his lips twitching to return the smile.
“We’re here?” She glanced out the window. Her hand ran up his arm. “Thanks for driving.”
She couldn’t touch him like this. Its effect rippled up his arm and down his abdomen, straight to his dick. He had to keep this under control. No losing focus.
She frowned and lifted her hand off him. “Am I making you nervous? I swear I promise not to tear off your clothes. I might want to. I might have imagined it.” She rolled her eyes heavenward. “I dreamed of you naked and the moon high in the sky. It was a delicious dream. The things
you did on the beach… I don’t think I’ve ever had such a vivid dream. Or maybe I have. I can see you’re thinking sand would be a problem, but don’t worry there was a towel. Damn, I’m babbling. This feels more me, though.” She compressed her lips and twitched them back and forth.
Really freaking adorable.
She said, “Not good to talk about hot sex on a beach in the moonlight? Got it. I’ll try to navigate platonic waters. But…” She bit her lip and scanned down his body. “There’s this thing between us—pheromones or something. Whatever it is, I’ve experienced it since I first saw you. Maybe we’re just two people starved for sex, or maybe I’m alone in the sexual deprivation department.”
He was dying. Literally dying.
“Moon madness,” he muttered.
“What? I didn’t catch that. We had our little kiss moment. It was…” She did a mind-blown hand sign next to her temples similar to Flynn’s on the plane. “Pretty sure I felt the mega-boner pressing into my thigh, which means you felt it, too.”
Mega-boner?
He dragged a hand over his face as his gaze dipped to her chest. The sweater and jeans he’d found for her at a store on the way to the airport earlier were functional but unworthy of her. He hadn’t forgotten what she looked like in the club outfit.
“Moon madness,” he repeated. He swallowed hard. Based on the way her eyes widened with realization, he must’ve conveyed exactly how much attraction there was from his end. So much it scared him. “I have to be stronger than this.”
“What’s moon madness? Please tell me it’s not a cliché werewolf thing about the moon and sex.”
“Pretty much.”
“You’re kidding.” Her smile faded. “You’re not kidding. When’s the next full moon?”
“Tomorrow night.”