“It’s going to hurt, but this is how I help you.”
I mean the stitches, but I guess it applies to doing his story, too.
Slowly he opens his amber eyes.
“Okay?” I say.
He blinks, fighting sleep. As if he wants to keep looking at me as long as possible.
I pull out the kit I put together, sterilizing everything. I grab the fishing line and a small pair of pliers and get to work. His eyes fly open when I pierce his skin the first time. But he doesn’t pull away, he just watches me work. It’s a little unnerving, feeling his gaze on me as I stitch his shoulder—he just lets me do it. I numbed the area with a little bit of ice, that’s all. He’s calm. Watching me.
Is he out of his mind from the drugs? Or simply accustomed to pain? My heart breaks a little bit for him.
I talk to him softly as I tie each stitch, telling him how we’re going back to the forest, just as soon as we get him nice and strong. He seems to drift off…until the rrrrip of tape wakes him. His hand flies to the clean, dry bandage, then he looks at me.
Gratitude in his eyes.
“You’re safe for now. I’ll do my best to help you, but what you need now is rest.”
He eyes the window where the noontime sun bleeds out the edges of the blinds.
“Rest for me, okay? Go back to sleep.”
He reaches out and grabs me around the waist.
I pull away, but he won’t let me go. With a surge of unexpected strength, he pulls me onto the bed with him, holding me flush to his big body. He curls around me, like I’m his teddy bear.
I try to move, and he tightens his powerful arms.
Fuck.
“Sleep,” he whispers into my hair.
My pulse pounds. I wait a bit, then try to pull out all at once.
No go. It’s like trying to break through rock.
It hits me that I’m alone in a motel room with a man from an institution for the criminally insane. And yeah, I feel this crazy affection for him. And he’s gorgeous. And I have good reason to believe that he’s not criminally insane, but then again, he did kill a few people with his bare hands. My editor thinks hanging out with him is a grand idea, but he really just wants the story.
It doesn’t look good on paper.
And now Kiro’s acting like he’s in charge. I’m supposed to be in charge here.
“Kiro, let me up.”
His breath evens out. Is he sleeping? He won’t let me go even in his sleep?
I sigh and tell myself to relax. Not like there’s anything else to do. I won’t be able to get up from this bed until he lets me up. It should be scary, but I find I’m not scared.
In fact, there’s this nice silence in my mind. I’ve been living with an unnerving buzz of anxiety for months. Like static on the radio, but harsher, more jagged.
And now this silence. My mind feels strangely clear. I’m weightless.
I’m a creature in his arms. A heartbeat. Held. Trapped. This feeling is so strange, so new.
Just as I drift off, I realize that this strange, new feeling is peace.
I wake up with a start, disoriented by the weight around me, the massive arms entrapping me. The warm, rhythmic heave behind me.
Patient 34—Kiro. I remember my plan—waiting for his sleep breath to start so I can extricate myself.
I lift my head and squint at the red numbers on the digital clock, shocked to see it’s the middle of the night. I slept? I blink, unable to believe it. I slept for how many hours? Eight? Ten?
I shift, and he moves too, pulling me tight. My heart pounds. I haven’t slept this long in ages. Since I can remember. Since the hospital collapse. The children. The kitten.
I stiffen, waiting for the fear to close back in. That’s always how it happens—I wake up feeling good, and then the memories tumble back, and fear closes around me, poisoning everything.
I lie there, waiting for the fear. But I feel…okay.
So much of being a journalist is about recognizing the relative weight of details. You want to pull out that one little detail that has significance for people, the detail that helps tell the story in a way that words can’t. Maybe it’s something somebody said, or an image. Somebody’s hands. A broken doll in the street.
The detail that takes everything over.
The kitten became that detail for me in a negative way. It haunted everything, blocked everything. I couldn’t see past it. The kitten, the antiseptic smell.
And suddenly, lying in this strange, savage man’s arms in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night, the kitten has the weight of…a kitten.
And when I breathe in through my nose, the smell is gone. The smell that would cling to me for days on end, even through long weekends off, even when I wasn’t there at the hospital.
And I slept. Did I sleep because the smell wasn’t there? Or did the smell go away because I was able to sleep?
He pulls me tighter, breath steady. And I think that I can’t go anywhere even if I wanted to. And then I think that I don’t want to.
And I let my eyes drift closed again. And I wonder if we’re saving each other.
Chapter Seventeen
Kiro
I should hate her. I should walk out of this room and leave her. Lock her up so she can’t follow. Kill her if she takes yet another photo of me. I should kill her for how she’s fooled me.
Instead I breathe in the scent of her hair.
All these long, grueling months, I’ve wanted one thing—home. To be back with my pack, the one place in the world I ever belonged. The only ones who ever wanted me.
Ann acts like she wants me, but she just wants my story. I know that now.
I should kill her for being so kind to me. For making me think she cared.
I should kill her. Except I can’t. And I want her.
My head is still foggy from the drugs, but better than I can remember for a long time. My shoulder burns, but no feeling is quite so powerful as the feeling of her in my arms.
I want her with a fever that burns so brightly I can think of nothing else.
Morning. Birds nearby. Not nearby like at Fancher Institute but right outside the door. The sun is just rising; I can hear it in the bird songs. I need water. Sun. Food. Air. To run.
But my desire for her overpowers all that.
She’s nothing but a reporter, hungry for my story. I heard her on the phone. I heard what that man on the other end said.
She wants my story because I’m different, savage, wrong.
Still I want her. Need her.
I knew she had secrets, with that strange kitten story. I knew she wasn’t like other nurses. I never expected she was one of them.
Those reporters.
I still remember the way they went at me when I was so weak, unable to defend myself.
I faced lots of deadly predators out in the forest, but it was always the natural order of things. They were after me because they were hungry. Trying to protect their young.
The reporters came at me because I’m different. Bad. Wrong. Savage. It was personal.
I still remember holding the wall by the side door of the hospital where that man led me. Holding myself up, swaying, still sedated from the operation, trapped between the mob of them and the locked door.
I was in a lot of pain, but it was the despair that twisted my heart. Somehow, after being accepted by the wolves in every way, I’d come to think I wasn’t an abomination.
The pack of reporters showed me I still was. Their shouts and pictures and questions. Calling me Savage Adonis.
I only ever wanted to belong.
I thought Ann was different. I would’ve done anything for her.
Then I heard Ann talking to the man called Murray, talking so casually about photos and stories about me.
When I buy a story on Savage Adonis, I want Savage Adonis.
I trusted Ann. Dreamed about her. We were a pack of two, there in the hospital. We helped each other. We fought for
each other.
She’s one of them.
The betrayal cuts hard.
At least the other people at the Fancher Institute didn’t pretend to care, to be pack with me.
She wants to come home with me and take pictures—I understand that now. That’s why she’s here.
I stare at the sun’s glow coming from the edges of the curtain. She tried to cover up the window just like she tried to cover her true nature, but it’s there all the same.
I close my eyes, hating that she’s one of them.
I should knock her out. I should tie her up and leave. But I can’t let her go. I pull her to me. I stroke her soft brown curls. Waves like the edges of a peanut.
Mine.
I imagined her with me out there. It made me so happy to think of it.
And I realize that I don’t have to let her go.
The place we’re going is so remote, so deep in the woods, she’ll never find her way out. Not without me.
I could take her for my mate. Out in the wilderness, I don’t need to trust her. She would be mine to keep. To care for.
Fully and completely mine.
My heart begins to pound as images of taking her crowd my mind. The fierceness with which I want her makes it hard to think.
She would struggle, and I would chase her, and then I would catch her—and I wouldn’t let her go.
Something amazing happens out in the woods when a predator catches its prey. When a wolf has a squirrel in its jaws—not just the tail, but when the wolf fully has a squirrel’s warm body trapped in its jaws—teeth, pressing into warm flesh. No way out.
The squirrel will stop struggling and go limp. Just relax into it.
Heart beating furiously, it submits to the superior force of the wolf.
It always fascinated and compelled me, ever since I witnessed it as a boy, cold and hungry and alone. The flop of the body, like a dance of death and life.
It felt ancient and cruel and beautiful.
I nuzzle her hair, cock hard as steel. She could be my mate. I’ll bathe her and wrap her in furs and keep her safe from the Donnys of the world. I’ll find food for her. There’s a hilltop I would bring her to where you can watch the sunrise light the trees and paint the water pink. I’ll hold her down and fuck her and care for her. I would never let her go.
She groans and shifts against my cock, sleepy and sweet. I put my mouth to the back of her neck and taste her and breathe her in, letting her sweetness flood my senses.
She was different at the hospital. Wary. On edge. Here she’s soft. I move my lips to her ear, taste her skin there, cock pressed to her back.
I move my hands over her hair. She’s so warm, body so soft and sweet. She’s betraying me, yet I can’t stop liking her.
I want her affection, too. Not fake affection but real affection.
That’s something I can’t have.
I tell myself I don’t need it. I’ll take her either way.
I reach around to her belly, push my hands under her shirt and touch her skin. Her belly isn’t hard and rough like mine; it’s smooth and soft. I spread my hand and pull her ass to me. I nearly lose it right there, separated from her warmth by mere layers of fabric. I imagine bending her over the bed, her ass pale and bare, her pussy open to me.
Right then, I catch the scent of her arousal, and everything in me surges to life. I’ve woken up her body, but not her mind.
I imagine tasting her. She’d struggle, but I wouldn’t let her. I’d plunge my tongue into her warmth. My tongue and my fingers.
I imagine her out in a sunny field, naked, rolling on her back, looking up at me, baring herself to me, waiting for me.
I stroke her soft belly. She hisses out a sleepy breath and moves with me.
Slowly, gently, I push my hand down and graze her waistband.
Her breath is like the water, slow and deep. I pull her closer.
Her rhythmic breathing tells me she’s still sleeping.
Still I touch her.
Savage, the drugged campers said, laughing. You fuck like a savage. I didn’t fully understand what they were saying until I saw the TV and all the gentle people.
I was a sideshow to them, too. A freak. A savage fuck. I didn’t know.
I stroke her belly, making her breath speed up.
She sighs in her sleep.
The camping girls would joke that I was raised by wolves. They didn’t understand that I actually was, in a way. They walked around naked and drugged with their glowing necklaces and bracelets. They would touch my hair.
They would rip their clothes off and run from me, laughing. They liked me to chase them and fuck them. The drugs made them crazy to touch and be chased. Eventually, I didn’t care that they saw me as an oddity. I was a teenager by then, and all I wanted to do was to fuck.
At least they weren’t keeping me in a cage. At least they didn’t pretend to be my ally when they just wanted to use me for my story.
We move together, animated by lust. Her body responds to me, moving against me.
A jolt moves through her. She spins in my arms with fear in her eyes. She pushes me away and clambers off the bed and onto the floor. She stands there, shocked. “What are you doing?”
I rise out of the bed, swaying on my feet.
In a flash, she turns and bolts for the bathroom—not fast enough.
I follow her and trap her against the wall next to the bathroom door. She’s shaking, frightened. I’m a savage to her.
I shouldn’t care what she thinks. My heart thunders with the need to bend her over and take her. The feel of her is overpowering. Her scent, her softness.
But this is Ann. I protect Ann—even from myself.
I slide my hand over her cheek, breathing in the potent scent of her arousal. She sucks in a breath as I press her to the wall, cover her with my body.
With a wild effort, I push off the wall, stagger back. “Go in. Lock the door.”
She widens her eyes, then she goes into the bathroom. There’s a click. Not that it could stop me.
I press my hand to the door, and then I press my face to it.
I focus on the sounds of the birds out there. It’s dawn. The first morning bird songs. The bird songs mean almost nothing with her in there. I want her so badly.
But she’s mine now. I care for her. It means not scaring her.
“Wash yourself,” I say.
“Wh-what?”
“I can smell you,” I pant.
The water goes on. I feel more in control.
I force my attention outside. The cracks of light around the curtain. Sunshine.
Her voice from inside. “Kiro? You okay?”
I bring my fist down on the door. I’m not good with words like Ann is. I bring my fist to the door again.
I turn and focus on the light coming from around the curtains. Freedom. It’s what I always longed for. I force myself across the small room, away from Ann. I pull open the door, expecting green, but the sky is gray. The street is gray. Cars and colorful lights swirl around. Giant stores line the street like sleeping lions, guarding their parking lots.
But the air smells fresh. And then, on the other side of the motel’s small driveway, I see a small patch of green. Grass. Nature.
I’m naked aside from the bandage on my shoulder, but that patch of aliveness calls to me. The earth—I have to touch it. I close the door, and like a sleepwalker, I go. The pavement is harsh on my feet. Like when I first arrived in the forest. They’ll toughen up. It’ll be like normal again.
There’s a tree, a picnic table with dirt around it…my steps speed up. When I get there, I fall to my knees, palms pressed to the ground. I breathe in, feeling almost normal.
Home. I need to go home.
I curl up on my side with my cheek to the grass. It’s stubby, prickly, not like the grass I love, but it’s grass. It’s alive.
I breathe in, feeling everything. The sky above is brightening at the edges. The earth feels vast underneat
h me. I gaze up at the fading stars.
I want her so badly it hurts.
I close my eyes, and I’m back on the bed, holding her, soft in my arms, given over to me, and the powerful smell of her arousal.
As if I called to her with my thoughts, the door to our room opens with a slash of light. I don’t see her, but I hear her. I no longer smell her arousal. I track her. She won’t get away. Will she try?
Footsteps across the pavement.
A dark figure above me.
“Kiro.” She kneels beside me and lays something soft over my waist. A towel. “Dude, our best bet right now is to be inconspicuous. Lying naked on the motel picnic area at six in the morning? Um…”
Her care isn’t genuine. She doesn’t want us to get caught, that’s all. She wants my story to herself. It stings me. I growl.
She puts her hand on my shoulder. “We’re together in this.”
Together. I wish with everything in me that it was true. I’ve been so alone for so long.
She touches my cheek. I close my eyes, soaking up the goodness of her touch.
When she touches my cheek, I can pretend I’m not alone.
Chapter Eighteen
Ann
He closes his eyes when I stroke his beard.
His head is clearing of drugs. He’s not suffering from blood loss. Things are getting real. Maybe even dangerous.
Still, I had to go to him.
This little fucking patch of nature out in the freezing cold morning. He’s lying there like it’s heaven. People have taken so much from Kiro.
He’s dangerous. I know that.
But he’s amazing, too. Fierce and vulnerable and beautiful. And honest in a way other men I’ve known aren’t.
I’d never slept so deeply as when I was in his arms. And I’ve never felt so turned on until I woke up with his hands on my belly and his teeth two faint wicked indents on the back of my neck. It was…dangerously hot.
And when he had me against the wall, I knew he was out of control. It scared the fuck out of me, but I also liked it.
The electricity surging between us felt forbidden and good.
Savage Mafia Prince: a Dangerous Royals romance Page 11