Knifing up out of the lumpy bed, Max paced across the room’s worn carpet, his tight boxer shorts hanging low on his hips, the sick feeling in his gut only getting worse as he thought about Elliot’s message. He was undecided on how much he was going to tell Vivian, which was probably a dickhead move, but damn it, he didn’t want to lay even more shit on her. Yeah, she was strong, but the girl was already dealing with more than most people could handle, from assholes trying to kidnap her to the bizarre awakening she was going through, which he knew was scaring the hell out of her.
And he wasn’t such a macho jerk that he couldn’t admit it was scaring the hell out of him too.
When he’d come out of the bathroom after his shower that morning, she’d already been curled up in one of the twin beds, dead to the world. He’d stood by her bedside and stared down at her for so long, it’d probably made him a creeper, but he hadn’t been able to move away. He’d just needed to soak in the sight of her, assuring himself that she was safe and, for the moment at least, out of harm’s way.
Eventually, he’d walked away and dealt with his things, then checked the door and window, making sure the room was secure. When he finally crawled into the other bed, he’d crashed hard and fast, and now that he was awake, he needed to see her again. Needed to make sure she was feeling okay and talk to her about what their next move was going to be, because there was a lot they needed to figure out.
But when another fifteen minutes went by and she still hadn’t turned off the water, Max started to get worried. Rubbing at the knotted muscles in the back of his neck, he walked over to the bathroom door and gave it a quick knock. “Hey, Viv, you okay in there?”
Check on her, the beast demanded, when she didn’t respond.
“Be quiet,” he muttered, trying to stay calm as he knocked again.
I don’t scent her, you ass! Break down the door!
“Fuck,” he growled, the wolf’s panic only feeding his own. Hoping like hell he wasn’t about to get kicked in the balls for barging in on her, he gripped the doorknob in his fist. One hard hit from his shoulder was all it took to break the flimsy lock, and rage exploded through his system when he found himself standing in the open doorway, staring into the empty bathroom.
The shower curtain was pulled to the side, the water streaming from the shower head falling directly onto the floor of the tub.
Son of a bitch! The last thing he’d said to her was Don’t run.
She’d nodded in agreement, but the little idiot had lied. Shit!
Throwing back his head, Max let out a guttural roar, the harsh sound echoing inside his skull as the wolf did the same. Not even at his lowest points had he felt this kind of blistering, seething rage, and every ounce of it was directed at himself.
This was his fault for being such a trusting jackass, and his beast agreed.
If he’d had any sense at all, he would have tied Vivian Jackson’s crazy little ass down when he’d had the chance…
And made sure she lived to see another day.
Chapter Six
A Gift From the Gods
Vivian jerked awake in her truck with no idea what time it was. All she knew was that it was late, the darkness beyond the windows telling her that she’d been asleep for at least a few hours.
After she’d run out on Max again in a total bitch move that she was seriously regretting—hell, she’d basically regretted it about five seconds after she’d left—she’d driven in what had seemed to be one rainstorm after another until just after midnight, before pulling off the winding country highway she’d been traveling on and parking in a little meadow behind a row of trees that she hoped would make it difficult for anyone driving by to spot the truck.
She didn’t understand why she’d been so tired, after sleeping the entire day, but she could barely keep her eyes open, and she’d been terrified she would drive off the side of the road. Once she’d parked, she pulled her jacket around herself, the freezing night making it impossible to stay warm without the engine on and the heat blasting, and despite being cold and creeped out of her skull by the eerie location, she’d somehow been asleep within seconds. And she’d continued to sleep like the dead until something had caused her to jerk awake.
Turning the key in the ignition to get the battery on, she checked the glowing clock in the dashboard and saw that it was just after three in the morning. Worried about draining the ancient battery, she quickly turned the key again, pitching the interior of the truck back into a chilling moonlit darkness just as another hard rain began to fall.
“What the hell was I thinking?” she whispered to herself. Turning her head, she stared into the dark, reflective, rain-spattered surface of the driver’s side window, trying to remember why she’d run out on him, but her thoughts were still fuzzy from exhaustion, and she honestly couldn’t recall. But whatever the reason, she doubted her actions made sense.
God, why hadn’t she just stayed with the gorgeous, protective hunk? Sure, he was a werewolf, but that hadn’t been nearly as hard to wrap her head around as she would have thought it would be. And he hadn’t hurt her. No, he’d killed two sadistic kidnappers and fought off three hulking idiots to keep her safe. Had repeatedly put his life in danger to keep her protected.
And that was all before kissing the hell out of her in the motel room and nearly making her come from nothing more than his addictive taste and the feel of his mouthwatering body pinning her against the wall, his wicked tongue doing things to her mouth that would have made even the most hardened, cynical female melt with need.
“I’m such an idiot,” she muttered, leaning forward and smacking her forehead against the glass. “Such a stupid, brainless idiot.”
Pulling down the visor, she flicked on the small light, surprised by how red and swollen her lips still looked. Whatever weird healing abilities she now possessed, she could still feel the evidence of that mind-blowing kiss. Quickly turning the light off, she sat back in her seat and brought her fingertips to her tender mouth, reliving every second of that raw, provocative, devastating moment. He’d taken her mouth like he was taking so much more than just a kiss from her. In her mind, he’d already been moving inside her so hard it made her lose her vaunted self-control. So hard and deep and possessively, it literally made her scream like one of those heroines in Skye’s beloved romance books. Made her…
Whoa. Wait a minute.
Scream?
Scream. Screaming. Screams!
Oh… Ohmygod! Just like that, the nightmare she’d had while sleeping curled up in the lumpy motel bed came rushing back at her like a perfectly thrown boomerang, the memory so violent she would have lost the contents of her stomach, if there’d been anything in it to lose. Squeezing her eyes shut, she remembered how she’d licked her lips as she soaked in the sight of him standing before her in her bedroom back at her and Skye’s crappy apartment. Max’s bare-chested body had been a thing of beauty, tall and lean and insanely powerful, all that golden skin stretched tight over rugged lines of sinew and slabs of muscle, the veins in his arms and at his throat pressing up against his flesh, making her mouth water for a taste of him. But instead of attacking him with her greedy lips and tongue, she’d…attacked him.
With her fangs…and her claws…until there’d been nothing but an ocean of blood around them, the crimson liquid pouring over her and into her, like some kind of sickening scene from a horror movie.
So, um, yeah. Now she remembered why she’d run.
She’d broken her word and snuck out of that motel room because there was a good chance that she was the thing to be feared. The thing that others needed to be protected from, including the delectable Max Doucet.
“This is so freaking twisted,” she whispered into the eerie silence, rubbing her pounding temples with her fingertips, her breaths jerking hard and sharp in her chest as she tried not to slip into a complete panic attack. “I did the right thing,” she told herself, praying it was true. It had to be, because what other option had ther
e been? She’d rather die than be responsible for his death, and after that horrifying dream, she couldn’t help but fear that it was a possibility.
Jesus, was she a monster? Was she something as evil and vile as the creatures that Max and his partner hunted down in order to protect the lives of the innocent?
No matter how much she hated it, she had to face the repulsive fact that she might be.
And that’s why she’d had to get the hell away from him.
Not for her, but for Max. Because no way in hell could she be the thing that ever hurt him or caused him harm.
Now that the fog of exhaustion had been burned away by the sickening rush of her remembered nightmare, Vivian recalled how she’d searched her truck and removed the tracker Max had put on it before driving away, slicing her hand open in the process. Her palm no longer even stung, though, and she was too freaked out to turn the light on again, already knowing what she’d find.
That her palm was already completely healed.
Add to that the way she fought off those jerks at her apartment, and her weird glowing thing back in the strip club’s parking lot when she tossed that guy against the wall, not to mention the way she’d thrown Max across the entire width of the motel room, and she knew the beautiful Runner had been right.
She was…awakening into a “thing” that wasn’t human. Not even close. And, God, did that freak her out.
When something suddenly screeched out in the darkness, she nearly jumped a foot off her seat, her narrowed eyes scanning the meadow she was parked in through the windows, searching for what had made the bone-chilling sound. The meadow appeared to be empty, but that didn’t mean that something terrifying wasn’t lurking in the thick woods that bordered the empty field on three sides.
“Time to get moving,” she murmured, putting her seatbelt back on and cranking the engine. She shivered as cold air blasted her from the vents, praying the heat kicked on quickly, and put the truck into Drive. But when she hit the gas, nothing happened. There was just an awful whining sound, and with a sinking feeling in her gut, she realized the rain had turned the meadow into a muddy death trap. Her wheels just kept spinning, unable to gain traction, and she finally turned the engine back off, determined not to completely lose her shit and start screaming like a banshee.
“Good job on picking literally the creepiest place you could find to get stuck,” she muttered to herself, just as the wind picked up and the gnarled branches on one of the trees that she’d parked under began scraping against the roof of the truck. It reminded her of one of those old urban legends that kids told at slumber parties in grade school, trying to frighten each other with tales of monsters and mortal danger. Those stories had always terrified Vivian when she’d been a little girl—and still did. Especially now, when she knew that monsters really were prowling around in the darkness, just waiting to strike.
Just waiting to bring her nightmares to life.
Only, she was probably one of the nightmares now too, and a sob tried to climb its way out of her throat, until she swallowed so hard that it hurt, forcing it back down.
Not gonna cry. Not gonna cry. Not gonna cry.
She repeated the pathetic words in her head, over and over, willing them to be true. But if ever a girl were going to break down into tears, Vivian figured it would be at a time like this. The only problem was that if she started, she knew there was a damn good chance that she’d never stop. And she didn’t want to be that girl. Yeah, she wished it were safe for Max to be there with her—or for her to be wherever he was now—but just because he wasn’t didn’t mean she was going to just give up and sit waiting in the dark for a knight in shining armor to come and rescue her. Screw that crap. She might not have a clue how to survive the terror raining down on her, but she wasn’t ready to just give in and let them have her. No, she’d keep fighting with everything she had, until the bitter end.
“I can do this. I can do this. I can do this,” she whispered, wondering why she seemed to only be able to say everything in threes, while trying to gear herself up for whatever was coming, the sick feeling in her gut telling her that she was no longer out there in the middle of nowhere alone. But when another stark sound came from the distant woods, this one more like a graveled cry, she started panting with fear.
If it had been a howl, she’d have been relieved, because at least that would mean there was a slim chance that it could be Max. But that sound—there was no way in hell it’d been made by a wolf. Even a werewolf. She just knew it, on some instinctual level that she couldn’t even explain.
Squinting through the driver’s rain-covered side window, she struggled to see if something was crawling toward the truck through the meadow’s tall, windswept grass. Was that a glowing eye she just glimpsed? Looking away, she started frantically searching the truck for some kind of weapon, but there was nothing. She’d emptied her can of pepper spray back at her apartment, and now she couldn’t seem to find a single item she could use to defend herself, unless she planned on bashing one of the bad guys over the head with her hairbrush.
“Okay,” she whispered, pulling in a deep breath, and then slowly letting it out. “I’m just going to have to do whatever I did before.”
It was a great plan, except for the fact that no matter how hard she tried, nothing seemed to be happening. She didn’t feel that frenetic surge of energy or strength, and she sure as hell didn’t have claws or fangs. She wasn’t even glowing! She was just tired and frightened and seriously starting to panic, the scraping of the branches on the roof of the truck making her shiver with terror. Just when she thought she’d snap from the pressure of not knowing what was coming, someone knocked on the passenger-side window, making her scream.
But then she heard the sweetest freaking sound in the world, and she almost cried with relief.
“Vivian, it’s me,” Max clipped. “Open up.”
“Max? Is… Is that really you?”
“The bad guys don’t take the time to knock, Viv. Of course it’s me!”
“Max!” she cried, scrambling over the center console and quickly unlocking the door, unable to believe he was actually there as he pulled it open. And, God, did he look amazing. Even when drenched with rain, his dark curls plastered to his forehead, fury was an emotion he wore really well. Too well, obviously, seeing as how she was focusing on how freaking gorgeous he looked standing there in the golden glow from the interior light, instead of the very real fact that they were probably being surrounded by a bloodthirsty pack of assholes at that very moment.
“Jesus,” he hissed, cramming his tall body into the passenger’s seat and slamming the door closed, plunging the cab back into moonlit darkness. But she could see the gleaming blue of his eyes burning like the center of a flame as he turned his head and glared at her. “I can’t believe you ran and got your truck stuck in a fucking mud pit in the middle of nowhere. Do you EVER stop to think about what you’re doing before you do it?”
“Are you really here?” She was so relieved she almost burst into tears, her throat shaking with emotion. “I can’t believe you’re here. I mean, I don’t even know where I am. I… I just kept driving. How did you find me?”
Slicking his wet hair back from his face, he muttered, “I put a tracker in your backpack last night after you fell asleep. But the weather was causing all kinds of problems with the signal, which is why it took me so long to reach you.”
She opened her mouth, ready to apologize for running out on him again, but he cut her off before she could get another word out.
“I can’t goddamn believe you, Viv. You told me you wouldn’t run!”
“I know. I know,” she said in a breathless rush. “But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that staying with you was too dangerous.”
His blue eyes flickered with anger, his deep voice cutting and sharp. “You think I’d hurt you? I’m trying to keep you alive!”
She reached over and curled her hands over his muscular forearm, the wet leath
er of his jacket slick beneath her palms as she tried to find the right words to explain. “No. That’s not it. I… I had a nightmare. I… You… You were bleeding and I…”
“Oh, fuck me,” he breathed, blinking at her in disbelief. “You left because you were afraid of hurting me?”
She sniffed as she gave a jerky nod, her heart still pounding so hard it was a physical pain in her chest.
He slowly shook his head, sending a drop of rainwater sliding down the side of his face, until it hit the dark scruff of stubble on his chiseled jawline. “Vivian, that was… So. Incredibly. STUPID!”
She frowned as she drew back to her side of the truck. “There’s no need to be a dick,” she grumbled. “I was trying to do the right thing.”
The crooked smile suddenly kicking up the corner of his mouth was so freaking sexy it shot a jolt of warmth through her system, even though she was still peeved with him. “And in a weird way,” he husked, reaching over and grabbing her cold hand, “it was super sweet, baby. But if you’d just talked to me, we wouldn’t be in this current shitstorm, because there was no need for you to run. You can’t hurt me, Viv.”
“You don’t know that,” she sniffed again, hardening her jaw. And since when did he start calling her baby? And why did it sound so impossibly good in that deep, husky voice of his? But no, she couldn’t think about that right now. Not when there was a good chance they were about to die, and she still needed to make him understand. “You don’t know…what’s going on with me.”
He opened his mouth, then seemed to think better of whatever he’d been about to tell her and closed it again. After a moment in which he seemed to be searching for the right words to say, he lifted her hand to his lips and pressed a soft kiss to her knuckles, before murmuring, “You’re just going to have to trust me on this.”
“I don’t know if I can, Max.” She hated how small her voice sounded, but that’s how she felt. Small and crushed down and irreparably broken, like a dandelion that had been trampled beneath someone’s boot. Only, in her case, the boot had been a terrifying kidnapping attempt that had somehow sent her spiraling into a horrifying change from human into… Who even knew?
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