by Penny Alley
Gabe looked at him, but Colton only watched the empty road.
“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. When it came to Wayman, he wasn’t at all sure what he could make himself forgive.
Turning, Gabe started back inside, but stopped when he noticed the disassembled twin bed frame and all those cardboard boxes filled with clothing—pup-sized jeans and t-shirts, pajamas and socks, castoff toys, a flannel nightgown and the knitted folds of a truly gaudy Christmas sweater no doubt meant for Neoma. All the things that Neoma and Scotty didn’t have and which he hadn’t yet bothered himself to drive into Grady to get for them.
He was ready to bet half wouldn’t fit either of them. He’d bet even more the other half was too ugly, threadbare or stained to be worn. That shame was even harder to swallow.
“Tell Karly thank you for me,” was all he said though.
Colton nodded. “Want help bringing it in?”
“No, I got it.” Gabe left everything where it was—all the easier to carry out to his jeep when it came time to throw it all away—and went back inside. His unspent frustration would have found such satisfaction in slamming the door, but he didn’t do that either. He shut it softly and then stood there, impotent all over again because he had no idea how any of this could be fixed.
That it wouldn’t happen with him standing in the living room and Neoma crying in the tub was what finally got him moving again. Finding a clean towel in the linen closet above the washer and dryer, he knocked twice on the bathroom door. Not that he expected an answer. Not that she gave him one, either. He went in anyway.
Laying the towel on the counter by the sink, he sat down on the toilet again. Elbows braced on his knees, he rubbed his palms together, searching uselessly for anything that could be said to make any of this right. The shadow of her on the shower curtain never moved and in the end, coming up with nothing, Gabe picked up the stopper and reached in to plug the bottom of the tub. Switching off the showerhead, he adjusted the temperature from slightly-too hot to warm and let the faucet continue to run.
“Shoes,” he said, flicking the excess water from his forearm. He waited, elbows on his knees until the shadow gave in and Neoma’s arms untwined from around her legs. Each water-logged shoe was passed back to him from around the curtain. He dropped them into the sink. “Everything else, too.”
She sighed. She also undressed, one sopping wet article at a time, and passed them back to him to be dropped into the sink. She had a hole in one sock. If the rest of her clothes weren’t hand-me-downs when she’d got them, then she’d worn them long enough to be little better than rags. Funny, how he hadn’t noticed that before.
“Take your time,” he told her, leaving her things in the sink to drain. “When you’re ready to get out, we’ll talk.”
He still had no idea what he was going to say to her, the Bride he hadn’t wanted, Deacon’s own daughter. Granting her privacy, when he left he pulled the door almost closed, but stopped when she called out, “Gabe?”
He leaned back in around the door just far enough to see her shadow. “What?”
Shoulders hunched, arms once more tight around her knees, she turned her head to look at her side of the shower curtain. He didn’t know if she had ever stopped crying, but tears were still heavy in her voice when she said, “He was here when I got home. I didn’t let him in, I swear it.”
In a day already packed full of rotten revelations that one hardly ranked. Neoma wasn’t anything like he’d wanted her to be. There wasn’t a person he knew that Scullamy hadn’t victimized in one way or another and although he’d tried so hard to believe otherwise, Neoma was no exception. If what Marcus had told him and his own gut instincts could be believed, she was, perhaps, Deacon’s greatest victim.
Karly had been right, maybe it did take one battered woman to recognize another.
He groped for some way to talk to her, some magical phrase that could take back all the things he had already said and replace them with good things, or at least, less hateful things. There was none and the silence lasted so long that he soon heard, beneath the drumming of the shower, fresh tears.
“Shit,” he sighed, then cursed again as he realized that, on the list of ways he ought to begin, that was dead last and now he had to plunge in, ready or not. “Neoma, I don’t care whether he came in through the window or the door or down the damn chimney. You’ve got every right in the world to talk to whoever the hell you want. Mama Margo’s the one sticking her nose in and I let her know it.”
The shower drummed and drummed.
“You did?”
“Of course I did,” said Gabe, wincing because there was no ‘of course’ about it. “I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for her apology, but…here’s mine. I’m sorry, Neoma. I’m sorry I made you feel like you were anywhere but at home.”
She did not answer.
Gabe accepted her silence without comment. Giving her all the privacy he could, he closed the door and then went to do what he should have done six days ago. He cleaned all the sports equipment out of his spare room, shuffling everything out to the carport. The bed wasn’t in bad condition, so he moved it in and set it up by the window to give Scotty a permanent place to sleep. Then he tackled the cardboard boxes.
As he’d suspected, half of everything Karly and Mama Margo had brought were heavy, winter clothes. The other half was mostly stained, shabby or inappropriate. No way in hell was his Bride going to walk around town in a pair of black stretch pants with the word ‘Juicy’ in hot pink letters across her ass. The accuracy of that kind of advertising notwithstanding, in the mood Gabe was in, he was pretty sure the first snide comment made within his hearing would be some unsuspecting volka’s last.
Of the salvageable pup-sized clothing, he found three pairs of pants and a handful of t-shirts that might fit Scotty. Everything else went straight into the garbage. The only thing he found in good condition which might fit Neoma’s slender frame, was a white sundress sprinkled with tiny yellow flowers, even tinier buttons from neck to waist down the front and lace sleeves that could be worn both on and off the shoulders. He took it into the bathroom, neatly folded, and left it on top of the towel.
“How you doing?” he asked.
“I’m okay.” The water was off now. Otherwise, the shadow didn’t seem to have moved much.
“Take your time,” he said again, and left her to it. Back into the living room he went to check his bank account and clean up the mess, putting the magazine and remotes back on the coffee table and his pillow back on the couch. He sat down to wait, rubbing at his hands and moving the pillow around, from one arm to the next, and then back again. He fluffed it, then again, and then made himself leave the silly thing alone because Martha-volka-Stewart he was not and he hated feeling this inept.
Getting up, he went back to the bathroom. Leaning against the door frame, he listened to the faint sounds of splashing, arguing silently with himself for almost five full minutes before knocking a light two-knuckle rap on the door. The splashing stopped, but when no answering hail invited him in, Gabe cracked the door—just a crack. Not enough to see her, but enough to talk to her through it.
Leaning his shoulder against the threshold, his mouth to the opening, Gabe said, “I cleaned out the spare room for Scotty and put his new bed in it. Don’t much care for the looks of that mattress, so when you’re ready, I’m think we might go to Grady. Pick up a new one for him. Maybe a few other things he’ll want or need. Yourself as well.”
Her hesitation was palpable. “Do I have to drive?”
That won a smile from him, albeit a small one. “No, I’ve got it. The car’s still up on jacks anyway.”
Another soft splash. He could almost see her turning in the tub, as if to stare back at him through both the curtain and the door. The smell of her, steamy heat and soap was thick in the bathroom air.
“We could use some groceries too,” she suggested, even more hesitantly.
“You’re right. We can do our s
hopping there for as long as you want. Maybe someday you’ll feel up to giving our local store another chance, but if not…” He shrugged one shoulder and picked at a crack in the jamb with his fingernail. When she didn’t respond, he cleared his throat. “I was also considering moving my pillow back into the bedroom, and I was wondering what you might think about that.”
The silence in the bathroom became as heavy as the steam-laden air.
“Do you want me to move to the couch?” she asked, though he knew by the way she’d said it that she wasn’t at all confused about what he was really saying.
Gabe stopped picking at the door jamb before he carved that split in the old wood any wider than it already was. “No.” He cleared his throat again, shifting his weight against the frame. “No, I’m thinking it’s past time I Claimed my Bride. And if you agree, then I’m ready to make this union official.”
Casa-volka-nova he wasn’t either.
“Right now?” she said, and it was probably the shock of his bad timing, not to mention the rest of this truly rotten day that put that oddly breathless hitch in her voice.
“When you’re ready,” he assured and twice had to stop himself from resuming picking at the crack in the jamb. As if there wasn’t enough going on in his life right now that he needed to add unnecessary home repairs to the list.
“O-okay.”
She said it softly, so softly that Gabe stopped—stopped running his finger over the crack, stopped breathing, stopped thinking even and just listened.
“Okay?” he echoed, staring until a faint watery splash and the rustle of the curtain betrayed her own uncertainty. Was she peeking out at him, trying to glimpse him in the mirror? He tried, but she was too low in the tub and he was too far out of the room to find her reflection.
“D-do you want me to get out now?”
How easy it would have been to say ‘yes’. Gabe pulled back instead, temptation teasing at all the worst edges of him. She was so young, almost half his age. She was the daughter of his pack’s enemy, but that wasn’t her fault. She wasn’t Maya, but she needed him and he, in spite of all the many reasons for why he shouldn’t, found himself wanting her.
The coolness of the doorknob found his palm before he knew he was going to do it. He wanted to go inside.
“Take your time,” he said and withdrew instead, closing the door softly between them.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Gabe sat at the foot of his bed, elbows on his knees, rubbing his hands lightly back and forth. The faint splashing sounds coming from the bathroom were painting a mental picture impossible for him to ignore. Each activity had its own subtle clues, marking her progress as she bathed. He imagined he could smell the soap all the way down the hall. Although he knew his soap didn’t have that strong a scent, not even for his nose, his shampoo did. Dark Temptation, and damn him if it wasn’t.
She washed her hair twice with it, his imagination keeping time with each dip as she lay back to rinse and the slosh of the water in the bottom of the tub when she sat up again. He was a dirty old man, waiting in his bedroom while his mind played with thoughts of small breasts lying buoyant in the ripples in the water, little pink nipples rising taut as she cleaned herself for what lay ahead.
He heard it when she stood up and his belly tightened, warming with each cooling drop that wended down her too-slender frame, dipping into all her shadows and curves, gliding over the rounding of her buttocks and hips. He wished he could smell arousal. That would have made waiting for her so much easier. Failing that, he wished he could see her face so he would know whether she was coming to him as a Bride should come to her mate, or if he was just another Wayman and pravica do sre to whom and which she had no choice but submit. His ardor couldn’t have died faster if she’d pulled a gun and shot it.
He rubbed his mouth, the rasp of his palm passing over his chin abrasive and loud. He should get up right now, walk back to the bathroom and tell her he’d changed his mind. That she didn’t owe him anything and official or not, he’d take care of her. Her and Scotty both. He’d give her the protection of his name and keep them both safe, and sleep on the couch every night for the rest of his life, and that nothing else mattered. Except that the shower curtain rustled then, the plastic rings sliding across the bar at the top and in a soft rain of splashing, she stood up and got out.
He could see every bit of it in his mind’s eye. The reach of her toes as she found the bathmat. The wet glisten on pink skin before she wrapped in the towel he’d brought her and patted herself dry. It wasn’t too late. If he got up right now, he could still catch her with the bathroom door between them, maybe apologize. He had not been kind to her, and for that he was sorry. He would do better, whether she came to his bed or not. From here on out, things were going to be as different for her as he could make them. From here on out, she would have at least one good ally in Hollow Hills.
Good as his ears were, he was still thinking about how he could do that and completely missed the padding of timid bare feet coming down the hallway. The scent of Dark Temptation joined her when she stepped into the open doorway, wrapped in only that towel, her fingers clutching it so tight between her breasts that her knuckles were white.
They stared at one another, neither moving nor speaking, and every breath he took filled his senses with the warring emotions her nervousness couldn’t begin to hide. He could smell her, the fresh cleanliness intermingled with apprehension. He didn’t like that she was coming to him with the glimmer of fear moving through her eyes, as strong as he’d ever seen it, smelled it, tasted it even, although somehow he sensed this was different. Perhaps because, underlying all those scents, the heady aroma of female arousal could be detected. Fragile, but there on each slow breath he took.
Gabe sat up straight, but she only hesitated a moment before crossing the threshold. She came into the room as if expecting him to cast her out again, and kept right on coming until she stopped directly before him. Whether her courage failed her then or she simply did not know how to proceed after that, he couldn’t tell. But as ungodly long seconds bled out into minutes without end, her tight fingers loosened and she let the towel slip, and then fall away altogether.
She was so, so incredibly young, but the body she offered for all that it was small was no child’s. She was still too thin, but flesh had filled in over her bones, making them not so easily counted, and gone were the dark circles that bruised her sunken eyes. Not quite so sunken now, he noted.
He did not reach for her, but said, “You can tell me no.”
But she didn’t. Her nipples tightened instead, budding into little peaks that set his blood to pulsing in all the right parts of him.
“Nobody has ever said that to me before.” Her chest rose and fell in fast, shallow bursts. Her eyes expected rejection. His body felt primed for anything but, but then in every man’s life there came a point when he found out exactly who and what he was at his core. This past week had taught Gabe many things that left him chastened, and yet when she sidled a little closer and tentatively lay her hands upon his shoulders, his own came to rest upon her waist. The heat of her flesh burned through his palms to seep into his pounding veins. Soap, shampoo, the fragrant musk of a woman bared as she lowered herself to straddle his lap—they were an assault for which he had no easy defenses.
His mouth ran dry, the tiny peaks of her nipples well within his reach to taste. The tension in his arms as he fought back the urge—the growing need to embrace her, roll with her, pin her to the mattress beneath him and see if the burning of her fragile flesh was every bit as hot on the inside as it was pressed against him—left him shaken.
“Tell me no,” he said again, the tightness of his throat turning it to a growl.
She shivered at the sound, but not because she was afraid. Her gaze dropped to his mouth. She shook her head, refusing. “C-claim me,” the mouse in her could not say without stammering. And yet she had fought off Wayman, giving him a glimpse of the volka within.
; He should have been better than this, and he knew it. He did. But seeping moisture from her skin were soaking into the crotch of his jeans, scalding him with a willingness he simply hadn’t the ability to refuse. He wasn’t a monk. At this particular moment, he wasn’t inclined to think of himself even as a good man. But, put any two people in a house together and would it not eventually lead to this?
Or hatred.
His hand dug in under her left thigh and his arm locked around her waist. It was the only warning he gave before he stood up with her in his arms. Neoma caught his neck, but when he dropped her, it was a careful and gentle descent straight to her back on the mattress. When he covered her, for all her smallness, she fit to him in ways Maya never could have, maybe. Or in anyway, in ways she never had. He closed his eyes, but it was Neoma in his nose now, and Neoma whose soft skin burned into his when he pulled his shirt off over his head and kicked his jeans off onto the floor. He tried to go slow, to be patient and gentle, but that lasted only until his hand found the slight handful that was her breast and her hand found his hip and their mouths found each other.
She drew an unsteady breath, her only response the parting of her lips and the trembling of her body as she touched him. She tried to kiss him back, but it was as if she’d never done it before. Her hand held, but did not caress. Her body under his lay tense and waiting, uncertain what to do, not like a mother with a pup should be, but as a girl fumbling her way through her first time. In an instant, his hatred of all things Scullamy, and especially of its alpha, hit him with near blinding intensity.
And from his belt on the floor where he’d kicked off his pants, his cellphone vibrated to alert him to an incoming call.
Gabe swallowed his anger. He softened his touch, caressing her to show her how, nibbling at her lips and coaxing one tender kiss at a time until she began to mimic the motions of his mouth. He meant to take his time, to make this an experience unlike anything she had ever known—likely, it would not have taken much. He meant to be gentle, to show her with each dip and thrust of his tongue and each rock of his hips exactly how he intended to take her. But when Neoma sighed, her back arching to press herself into him, sparks of sheer wanting shot straight through his belly. Her hands drifted from his hips to his shoulders, kneading and pulling at him, trying to bring him closer still, and his hips responded with a will of their own.