by T. Cobbin
“What’s up, Chick?” he asked.
“Brought you some coffee.” She walked the few paces forward to his desk and placed his mug on it.
“The woman?” he asked.
“Still out of it.” She shrugged. “What are you going to do with her? I mean, she’s pretty sick.”
“Not sure yet. It’s a waiting game. For now, she can’t be going anywhere in the condition she’s in. Now scoot. Let me finish this, and then we can eat. Unless she wakes up of course.” He smiled with a wink. Even though he’d had to raise his siblings, he didn’t feel any resentment toward them. He loved them as much as he had before their parents’ demise, if not more.
“I’m cooking tonight.” She giggled, walking away and closing his door.
“No junk!” he called out.
“Yeah, okay.”
He ran a hand down his face and sighed. It was going to be pizza, he just knew it. Picking up his mug, he sipped at the hot liquid, and again his mind slipped upstairs to the female in his bed.
* * * *
Her limbs felt heavy, and her head, arms, and feet hurt. Hadn’t she already woken and gone through this once? But this time she was warm and lying on something soft. Instead of the musty, earthy smell there was a tantalizing, male, spicy scent.
She opened her eyes a little to discover it was dark. The curtains were open so she could make out the outline of the room by the moonlight. Wardrobes, chest of drawers, a full-length mirror. Nothing out of the ordinary. Judging by the looks of the furnishing, she would say it belonged to a male. Nothing pink, frilly, or girly. It was all...boringly beige.
Closing her eyes, she tried to remember something. Anything. Her name? Where she lived? Where she was?
A hole in the earth. Yeah, she’d woken up on a ledge in a hole with a cat lying beside her. But it wasn’t a normal cat, the thing was huge! Okay, that was a start. Opening her eyes, she focused on trying to recall her name, but she just couldn’t remember.
A movement in the corner of the room caught her eye. A small loveseat in a corner was currently being taken up by a mammoth of a man. Well, he looked huge being he was taking up most of it. She could make out his blue eyes as they shone in the dim light. Her heart sped up. Panic hit her with so much force she felt sick with it.
The giant of a man stood. “It’s okay, Chick. Calm down. No one is going to hurt you.” He held his hands up, showing his palms. “I’m the one who found you. I brought you here and got the doc to patch you up.”
She couldn’t help but calm at his deep, sexy voice.
“You have a broken arm and a concussion, and your feet are pretty badly shredded too.”
She lifted her arms to see that her right one did indeed have a cast on it. She wiggled her toes, and sure enough there was something tightly wound around them. She felt a dull ache of pain in all the places he mentioned were injured. Looking back up at the man, she examined his face and body. He was huge, muscles on muscles. If she was standing next to him, she doubted she would even reach his shoulders.
“Do you remember anything? Simple things, maybe like your name?” he asked, coming closer to the bed.
She could make out his face. It was strong, lean, and handsome. His hair was spiked and short with a hint of gray at the sides. He was wearing a pair of tight jeans and a black t-shirt that molded to the top half of him, clinging to all his muscles.
Closing her eyes, she once again tried to remember anything about herself, only to sigh in frustration when she recalled nothing. She felt tears pool in the corner of her eyes. “I can’t remember anything. It’s like someone took the lightbulb out and I can’t make out anything.”
The bed dipped and she opened her eyes to see the man sitting beside her.
“Well, how about I tell you what I know? I’m Harris Rockwell, and I’m the one who found you. You called out a few times, alerting me to where you were. Doc thinks you fell in the hole during the night and banged your head enough to rattle it a little, causing a concussion. He also says you had to have been running a while in order for your feet to be cut up like they were. Your arm though...he says it looks like someone took an iron bar or something to it from the defensive bruising. It’s gonna take a good month or so for it to heal completely. You were wearing a pink t-shirt and a pair of jeans, and you didn’t have any identification on you.”
She sucked in all the information he told her. “So you know a little bit more about me at the moment than I do.” She sighed.
“Maybe after a few more hours of sleep you will regain your memory. If not, you are more than welcome to stay here ’til either you do or something comes up.”
“Thank you so much. I’m sorry for the trouble I’ve caused.” She suddenly felt so tired her body sank into the mattress below her. Maybe he was right—a few more hours of sleep and she’d remember. She hoped so anyway.
“How’s the pain?” he asked, standing.
“It’s not too bad at the moment.”
“Okay. You get some sleep, and when you wake up either myself or my sister will bring you breakfast.” With a nod he walked out of the room, leaving the door ajar.
“What have I gotten myself into?” she muttered.
Her eyes felt gritty and sore. Closing her heavy lids, she drifted off into a dreamless sleep.
Chapter 3
Coffee in hand, Harris stood at the back door, looking out over the dales. No matter what the weather he was always found in this spot in the morning, drinking his coffee, and maybe other times during the day when he needed to think. There was even a small indent in the step where he’d worn it away over the years.
“Morning, bro,” Felix called, walking into the kitchen toward the coffee machine. “Anything from the chick yet?”
“Nope, but Terrie is checking on her again.” Twisting his head, he looked around at his brother. He remembered the angry stage he had gone through after the death of their parents. It had hit him hard, and having his big brother bringing him up hadn’t settled well with him at first. But over the years he’d accepted it—albeit reluctantly at times—and became the man he was today. “Anything from the enforcers?”
His brother came to stand next to him. Felix was only an inch or two shorter than he was now. “Nope, not yet. A bunch of our teenage shifters are camping on the far west side near the river. They don’t seem to be up to much, bar making out amongst themselves. John asked them if they’d seen or heard anything, but they said they hadn’t and they’d let us know if they did.” He shrugged and smiled, showing off deep dimples in each of his cheeks. “Teenagers and camping. I remember doing that.”
“Yes, I recall some of the camping trips you took. I think the longest you were away was a fortnight, then you would come back, use up all the hot water, and eat us out of house and home.”
Felix looked at him with a wince. “Hey, I was young and carefree. A leopard needs to investigate these things, sow their wild oats. It’s dirty work camping.” He shrugged again. “I behave now,” he said, his voice tinged with slight sincerity.
“In your case the saying a leopard doesn’t change its spots is right.” Harris laughed. His brother would shag anyone with a pair of tits.
“You’re just jealous I get it more than you do.” Slapping Harris’s shoulder, Felix walked off and stuck his head in the fridge, looking for his breakfast.
Terrie walked into the kitchen and told Harris, “She’s awake and hungry. But, umm, she’s going to need a lift to the bathroom. Doc says she isn’t to walk on her feet yet.”
Walking over to the kitchen counter, Harris placed his cup down and strode toward the door. “Did she say anything else, like remembering shit?”
“Nope.”
Harris left his siblings and went up to his room. When he walked in the young woman was swinging her legs over the side of the bed to sit up. Being she was a little larger than Terrie, he had given his sister one of his t-shirts to put on the woman. It only came to her knees, so he could see her long, pa
le but stunning legs.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he asked a little too gruffly. The look of fear mixed with the scent of it made him inwardly grimace. “Sorry. It’s just that Doc says you shouldn’t be on your feet.”
“I need the bathroom.” Her words came out in almost a whisper.
“That’s why I’m here, Chick. Terrie said you might wanna go.”
The woman’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Y..you...take me? I mean, I feel okay enough to go by myself. It’s just through there.” She pointed across the room to the bathroom door. Terrie must have shown her.
“As I said, Doc says it isn’t wise for you to be walking right now. So I’m going to put a hand under your knees and one around your back and carry you. Sit you on the loo. Then I’ll leave while you do what you have to do.”
Without waiting for a sign if it was okay from her, Harris did just what he said he was going to do. She wasn’t to know he already liked getting his hands on her body. To hold her against his chest again like he’d done carrying her home.
Skin to skin, me likie. His cat purred.
Having her scent over him felt right. Fuck it! There goes my cock again. A mind of its own. He couldn’t help but take a sneak peek at her while carrying her across the room. She had light green eyes that looked up at him in worry. What had she been through? He’d done nothing but wonder that all night. She was barely over five feet tall. He was a six-and-a-half-foot man, he must seem huge to her. He tapped the bathroom door with his foot, pushing it open. Placing her on the toilet seat, he reluctantly pulled his hands away from her skin.
“Shout when you’re ready, I’ll just be out here.” He walked back through the door, pulling it shut.
He walked to one of the windows in his room. His cottage—it was originally a cottage, but over the years had become more of a house—was built from old gray stone. The place had been handed down from generation to generation of Alphas, each one of them adding something here and there of their own. There were no boundaries around the place like fences, just land. It was a house in the middle of nowhere with a long, graveled path that led onto the village’s main road.
The place currently had four bedrooms, each with their own en suite bathroom. He himself had updated the kitchen and his own bathroom. Loving his showers, he had built one with three huge showerheads that rained down the water as if he were outside in the pouring rain. It was big enough to fit three people inside. Images of his chick inside of it, shoved against the wall with his cock deep inside of her... Crap, there I go again. My chick?
The kitchen he had gutted and rebuilt. All the counters were now white marble, the units themselves all oak. And being his sister liked cooking and they did their fair bit of meals on wheels for the elder folk he added in a six burner double oven, which she loved. He had also added modern-day conveniences like a dishwasher and a state-of-the-art coffee machine.
He heard the toilet flush and a couple of seconds later the tap on the sink turned on. He walked back to the door and knocked.
“You okay? You’re not standing, right?” He already knew she was before he asked because of the layout in the bathroom. He just wanted to see what she would say. He could scent her pain through the cracks where the door met the frame.
“I’m okay, although I had to stand to wash my hand,” she mumbled.
He opened the bathroom door to see her standing by the sink. She was pale and shaky, and the knuckles on her good hand were white where she was gripping the rim of the sink tightly. Probably to stop herself from falling over. Stupid woman. With two quick, long steps he was in the room and had her in his arms. He could already smell fresh blood where she must have opened some wounds on her feet.
“Felix, get the doc quick.”
“Okay, but why? Blue balls?”
“Fuck off, and don’t be funny. The female stood and I scent fresh blood.”
“Aye aye, bro.”
“The doc is on his way,” Harris said, making his way out of the bathroom.
“Huh?” She looked up at him in surprise.
“Your feet are bleeding again, so I told Felix to call the doc.”
“How did you know that before you came into the bathroom?” she asked.
Crap! How could he have forgotten in such a short fucking time that she didn’t have any idea what he could do?
“I umm, guessed. You being a woman and all.” He inwardly winced. He’d said the only thing that had entered his head.
“Me being a woman and all? That’s a little sexist, don’t you think?”
He placed her gently on the bed and moved down to her feet to see just how badly they were bleeding. “Not really. I’ve raised my sister since she was six years old, and there are quite a few women in the village. I’d say a lot of them have a stubborn streak a mile wide.”
Seeing the blood wasn’t soaking through the bandages too badly, he looked up at the woman with a challenging stare. All he received was a roll of her eyes.
“You remember your name, Chick? I can’t keep referring to you as the woman or the female.”
The look of frustration on her face was clear to see. “Sod all. I have no idea at all.” She shook her head, a frown growing on her forehead. “The first thing I remember is lying in that hole. I think a cat came to lie beside me too...I’m not sure if I was dreaming it.”
“Cat?” He wanted to see if she actually remembered his cat. He wanted more details.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I was so out of it.”
“Okay.” Although he was a little disappointed, because for some reason he wanted to tell her all about himself. At the same time, he was also pleased he didn’t have to tell her. Why bring her into a situation when he didn’t know anything about her?
Because she is our mate, dummy. His cat growled.
“Well, for the time being we’ll nickname you Chick, okay?”
“Really?” she asked with an incredulous tone.
“Hey, don’t worry about it.” His sister came into the room behind him, interrupting them. She was carrying a tray with a mug of coffee, some tomato soup, and a roll. “He’s used that endearing word most of my life. For him it’s normal. I got used to it years ago.” Terrie winked at the woman. “How about we call you something else like...Ann...or I don’t know, Judy, for the time being?” she asked, placing the tray over her legs.
His chick smiled and sat back, leaning against the headboard of the bed.
My chick? Again?
“Chick will do fine if it’s normal for him,” she said, picking up a spoon. The scent of her enjoyment filled the air around her as she chowed down.
“Chick it is then.” Terrie nodded.
“Doc is here, bro.”
“Send him up.”
“Doc is here,” he announced to the room, forgetting again how he’d received the message. Lucky enough his sister was on the ball.
“That good hearing of yours will get you into trouble one day, brother.” With a slap to his shoulder she walked out of the room.
“Thank you,” he said humbly to his sister.
“Don’t sweat it.”
The doc entered the room not a minute later.
Chapter 4
Harris disappeared with her empty tray as the elderly gentleman introduced himself as Doc Ben and set to unbinding the bandages on her feet. Even standing and taking those few steps to the sink had been torture. Her ankles had barely held her up, and her feet were now throbbing incessantly.
How the hell had she gotten herself into this situation? Was it normal for her? No, surely it couldn’t be.
“Why can’t I remember anything?” she asked.
“When I examined you last night you had a good-sized bump on your head, young lady. I’m hoping after a few days’ rest and sleep your memory will come back. If not, then we’ll have to see about getting you to the hospital in the next town over for a brain scan.”
She nodded, but her heart started racing at the t
hought of having to leave. For some unknown and bizarre reason, she felt safe here. Deep down she had a feeling that it had something to do with Harris.
“You must stay off these feet for a few days, young miss. If you keep opening these wounds, it will take a lot longer for you to heal. I’m sure our A... Harris and his family will oblige in helping you with everything. Some of the women in the village have already started cooking dishes to bring around. News of you has already spread. The women here sure do like their gossip.”
She couldn’t help the snort that came out. What was it with these men and their sexist comments? Biting her tongue, she kept her opinion to herself. She raised her head, a movement in the doorway catching her eye. Harris had come back and was now leaning against the doorframe, his head almost touching the top of it. What was it about this colossal of a man that had her heart racing every time she saw him? Those piercing blue eyes of his seemed to bore straight through to her soul.
“She won’t be walking on those feet, Doc, I promise you. While she’s in my care she will do as she’s told,” he said, staring at her with a glint in his eye.
“You pompous, chauvinistic sexi—”
“Yep.” He nodded, interrupting her spew. “I like sex, not sure about the other words.” He cocked his head and smiled.
She growled at him. Anger reared its ugly head. She wanted to scream at the top of her lungs. The jerk just stood there smiling at her. Then the realization of not knowing where she’d come from or where she would go even if she called a fucking cab to get her out of his house was like a bucket of cold water thrown over her. How would she pay for it? Where would she go?