I move my hand over his beard. Lord, how I slept. For the first time in ages, I slept. The anxiety is coming back now—so stupid to think it wouldn’t come back. For a while, I felt clear and happy. Free. Normal.
He doesn’t take his cheek from the grass. His dark hair is splayed out around him. There is something so primal about how he is right now.
Again he takes in a ragged breath, as though my touch burns him. Why would my touch pain him?
“How does it feel? The grass—how does it feel?”
“It smells of chemicals.”
Yeah, I suppose it does. “Exhaust. Probably pesticides.”
Does he know what those things are? Maybe. He would’ve been exposed to a lot of TV at Fancher—at least before he was confined to his room. He has some familiarity with cars.
“Your sense of smell is amazing.”
His soulful amber eyes never stray from mine. Is he thinking about the scent of my arousal…that he could smell through the fucking door?
My face feels hot. “The smells at the hospital must have driven you out of your mind.”
Warily he observes me. The streetlights cut through the gloomy morning, lending rich drama to his cheekbones, his eyes. His kissable lips.
“It feels good,” he says, and I realize he’s talking about the grass.
I smile. “This grimy little scrub patch?”
“I haven’t been outside more than minutes at a time in…two years.”
Fuck.
“Do you remember anything from your life before the wilderness?” I ask.
“No.”
“Do you know why somebody would want to keep you in there? In Fancher? Hide you, keep you out of the way…I don’t know. The more information we have, the stronger we are. They called you Kiro.”
“That was never my name. I never heard it before.”
“What is your name?”
“Keith,” he says. “Keith Knutson.”
“I’ll call you Keith, then.”
“No, don’t,” he says. “The family who gave it to me never wanted me. It wasn’t my real family.”
“Where is your real family?”
He just gazes sadly at me.
“What do you want me to call you? You don’t want me to call you 34, do you?”
“They called me Kiro? The ones trying to kill me?”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe that’s my real name.”
“Do you like the name Kiro?”
He grunts. It seems like a yes.
“It’s a cool name. I’ll call you Kiro for now, but it’s a decision you can make yourself. I want you to be able to make a lot of decisions. That’s your right.” I slide my hand over his dark whiskers. “I’m going to get you back into the woods, back home, Kiro. And we’re going to be smart about it.”
He says nothing.
“I know people have been horrible to you. I know about the man who kept you in a cage. That professor.”
He shows no sign of hearing me. I know he does, though.
“I’ll help you. I’ve been in all kinds of places. I’m very resourceful. Not to mention I know how to drive.”
He turns his gaze to the sky.
“We’re going to get you back there, okay?”
He rests a finger on my knee, traces a lazy line across it, one light touch, wild with intensity. I think about how he pressed me to the wall, so out of control. A gorgeous force of nature.
“We have to be smart, though. There’s probably a manhunt after you involving the cops. Not to mention some really dangerous people trying to kill you.”
He turns his pained gaze to me.
Doesn’t he want my help? Well, it doesn’t matter. He needs an ally, considering his attempt to get home so far has involved carrying me out of a firefight while wounded and now lying naked in a patch of motel picnic area grass.
I have a nice fat expense account. I can help him get back to where nobody can find him.
There’s power in a good story. And for him, there’s also money. I can make sure he gets money without being wildly exploited. I can stand between him and the public. Get the story and the photos, but keep his location secret. I can use my power as a journalist to make sure things are run in a way where he can live free. Maybe I can make sure he’s paid and we can buy him tons of land. A place of his own. Land is cheap in northern Minnesota.
Most of all, I can figure out who is after him and why—that’s the only real way for him to be safe. Mob guys are hunting him. Cops are hunting him. And quasi-paparazzi sent by Stormline. My money might be on the paparazzi finding him first, frankly.
But he might have allies out there. A real family. I have to figure this out.
“Here’s my plan, Kiro. We’re going to clean you up so that you don’t look like an escapee from an institute for the criminally insane. Then we buy supplies and get a car. Use the car to get as far north as they’ll let us go with vehicles. Can you get us the rest of the way?”
He seems…upset.
“Say something.”’
He studies my eyes.
“Can you control yourself from my amazing womanly charms enough so we can cut your hair and re-bandage your wound and get you some proper clothes? Can we just do that much?”
“Yes, Nurse Ann.” He says it in a way that makes it sound as if it might be a struggle for him.
That shouldn’t be hot.
Not hot, I tell myself.
“How long will it take if we drive in and then take a canoe?”
“Not long,” he says.
“We’ll get a canoe and supplies. After we eat a ton of food. Are you hungry?”
One word in a gust: “Yes.”
“Do you like…eggs? Meat? Hot buttery rolls? What do you like to eat?”
“All of it.” He watches me in a way that’s not just about food. My heart skips a beat.
Not hot, I remind myself.
The fastest way to ruin this whole thing is to get emotionally involved with him. For one thing, all my credibility and my power to help him as a journalist would go out the window if I fucked him.
I look around nervously. More cars. “Let’s go then. We don’t want somebody calling the cops.” I want to tuck the towel around him a little better, but that’s a bit…intimate.
I feel like we’re both on the knife edge of control.
I get up. “Hold the towel around yourself and come on. We’ll do this right and get you to some real grass. Not this pathetic stinky grass.”
Chapter Nineteen
Ann
I’ve never seen anybody eat so much. I’d expected it, for sure. I ordered five steak-and-egg breakfasts from the nearest delivery place in preparation for it. And he ate four of them, and the steak part of mine, sitting there on the hotel bed in the dorky University of Minnesota Golden Gophers sweatpants I got him at the gas station. Somehow they don’t look dorky on him.
I pull out my phone. I feel weird doing so many secret photos, so I do one above board. “Smile,” I say.
He glares.
“Oh, come on,” I say playfully. I take his picture, then I do a selfie of us. I want less and less to be taking his picture. Less and less to be doing this story.
He drinks glass after glass of water, like he’s trying to get the drugs out of his system.
The white of his bandage is stark against his massive chest, muscles marred with scars and dirt, the chest of a beast of battle.
There’s even something about the way he tears into the meat that’s hot. He transforms everything around him. He makes the world glitter darkly. He makes me feel alive.
I get hold of myself and pull a chair into the bathroom. “We need to cut your hair and trim your beard.”
He stiffens, and I think about what they’d done to him at the institute in terms of grooming—probably lopping off his locks in the minimum number of snips and snipping his beard before shoving him into the shower to be basically hosed off—by people who fear and hate hi
m.
I go to him. “Let me, Kiro. Please?” I take his wrist and pull him in, and make him sit on the chair I brought in there. I drape a towel around his bare shoulders and start to comb out his dark curls. I go slowly, getting out the knots, careful not to pull.
“You don’t like my hair,” he says.
“Oh, I like it. You’re rocking kind of a Renaissance king look right now. I’m thinking we should go for more urban beardsman. You’ll blend.” But still look wild. Like my editor wants.
I pull out my camera. “We’ll get a before picture.” I say it like it’s some kind of favor, ignoring the sick feeling in my gut as I snap the photo. The Savage Adonis makeover images will sell like nothing else. The public loves before and after. I tell myself these images have potential value, which gives Kiro power.
“I don’t care about blending,” he growls as I pocket my phone.
“You should. There are people after you for whatever reason—deadly people.”
“I’ll kill anyone who tries to stop me,” he says casually.
My mouth goes dry. The atmosphere feels too charged, too full of dark possibility.
I continue to comb out his hair. This is a man who was caged, imprisoned, strapped to a bed by people. Maybe it’s foolish to get so comfortable with him.
“I frightened you,” he says.
How does he know? Does he hear my fucking heartbeat? Does he scent my fear in some way? “I’ll tell you if there’s a problem with us.”
He nods.
“We just have to make sure they don’t find us. We need to not be obvious. The best offense is a defense, which means we get proper clothes and camping gear. Without turning it into a circus.”
He scowls.
I arrange his rich dark locks over his shoulder. Did I hurt his feelings? I realize suddenly that it was probably the circus reference. A place to display animals. Strange acts. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
He meets my eyes. Since his escape—since I realized just how there he was—I’ve started to think sometimes that he hates me.
I swallow and continue to comb out his hair, and then I start on his beard. I snip slowly, carefully, heart pounding. I try to keep my touch clinical, the way they train you to do in nursing school.
The heat that comes off him is dizzying, though. Sometimes I’m not sure whether it’s heat—maybe it’s just sensation. Awareness.
Every time I brush his neck or his bare shoulders, this wild electricity blooms up, as if the surfaces of our skin carry opposite charges. From the way his breathing changes, I think he feels it, too.
I can even feel the sweep of his gaze on my skin. This wild, wrong thing between us has too much energy for this tiny space. His lips are inches from my breasts.
Finally he speaks. “The best offense is a defense?”
I straighten. “You don’t agree?”
He gazes over at the tub, handsome face dark with disdain. “The best offense is a better offense,” he growls.
I stifle a smile, loving that he said that. How oddly smart it is. I move around him, stroking and snipping.
Eventually he closes his eyes, and I think maybe he’s finally relaxing. Has anybody in his miserable life ever tended to him out of affection?
I trim the underside of his beard, trying to avoid touching his thick, corded neck. The neck of a beast.
Hellbeast, Donny called him.
I flash on the way he carried me out of that place. The way he saved me from Donny. The way he pinned me to the wall. My heart feels thundery.
You can’t have him.
I concentrate on getting his beard trimmed evenly.
Sometimes he watches my throat. I feel weirdly vulnerable to him when he watches my throat like that. Like he could have anything from me.
Stroke. Clip. Don’t meet his eyes.
I channel my wrong, wrong lust into caring for him. Giving him this. Wanting this nice look for him. Still a wild boy, but superhot.
When his beard is trimmed to perfection, I unwrap one of the razors from the pack I got. I suds up his neck with soap and clean it up with careful razor strokes. I’m gentle. Slow.
He’s one of the most powerful men I’ve ever encountered, and he’s letting me put a razor to his neck. It means something.
I have to touch him a lot for this part and he seems to like it. He seems to like touch. I suppose he hasn’t had much touch in his life. Not of the caring kind, anyway.
I step back. Perfect.
He just stares off to the side.
“It’s very good,” I say. Understatement of the year.
He doesn’t seem to like being made much of. So I just move on.
I rinse his neck, patting it dry, trying not to adore him too much, but he’s starting to look way too fucking amazing.
I move on to his hair. I take off length. I give him soft layers just over the shoulder. He never once looks at the mirror. His big body heaves in a sigh at one point. There’s still that edge of wariness to him.
It means a lot that he’s making himself vulnerable to me like this, considering who he is and what he’s been through.
Considering that he’s completely feral.
I think I never understood the concept of feral until Kiro gripped my arms and pressed me to the wall, trembling on the knife edge of control. I felt utterly held. Utterly open. Utterly powerless.
When I’m done, I stand behind him in the mirror. He keeps that faraway stare, just off to the side, seemingly lost in thought. Or maybe just enduring my attentions. I brush aside a sooty curl and then force myself to stop touching him.
God, the way he looks now…he was hot with the long hair, but now he’s pure and utter madness… “Shit,” I say. “Kiro.”
He keeps his gaze fixed on the tub spigots.
He’s a dark, scowly angel. Hard and gorgeous. The neatly trimmed beard brings out his cheekbones and the sharp, confident line of his jaw. I really want to touch his beard again. “Shit,” I say, because apparently that’s all my vocabulary has left. “Take a look, dude.”
He finally turns his gaze to the mirror, but not at his reflection. At mine. My eyes. “You don’t think it’s good?”
“No,” I say, mouth dry. “I think it’s a little thing called un-fucking-believable.”
His gaze doesn’t stray from my eyes. This so Kiro. One-pointed. Committed.
“Take a look for yourself.”
“No thanks.”
Something seizes up in my heart.
“Look,” I say.
He keeps his gaze fixed stubbornly on mine.
“Fine.” I go around to the front of him, my back to the sink, the mirror. “Then look into the mirror of my eyes,” I say. “Not only are you the most fucking brave, fierce man I’ve ever met, but you’re officially the hottest.”
He stays hard and wary. The air between us seems to tremble. He seems to take up more space than he ever did. He’s mostly clear of the drugs, now. He’s so there, so alive, so…male.
“Do you seriously not believe me? Do you think I’m a liar?”
His gaze tells me he does.
“We need to wash you up, now—without getting that bandage or your stitches wet. Maybe you could bend over the side of the tub and hold a towel to your shoulder while I wash your hair with the sprayer and then you take a bath after, carefully avoiding…”
He stands, crowding me in that small space. He takes the towel from my hand. “Leave me.”
“You’ll do it?”
He glowers.
“Just don’t get the bandage wet.”
His glower intensifies, or maybe it’s the atmosphere in that small space that intensifies. Nervously, I back out of the bathroom and shut the door. I listen to the water crashing, leaning in that spot where he had me, remembering the way he pressed me against the wall. Feeling his arms around me as he held me in the bed. I squeeze my legs together, imagining it’s his fingers between my legs.
I listen to him swish the water,
testing it.
In the tub now.
I grab my phone and call Murray, talking in low tones. He’s sending over a rental car and a burner phone—any minute now, he tells me.
Good. I give him an update. There’s a rural shopping mall twenty minutes out. I’m going to get him decent clothes and shoes. Outdoor supplies. I cut his hair.
“Savage Adonis getting a makeover. Tell me you’re getting this.”
“This isn’t Pretty Woman,” I say.
“No, it’s better than Pretty Woman,” Murray growls.
“I got a before shot, don’t worry.”
“And notes?”
I lie and say yes, even though I hardly need to take notes. I tell him about the meal he ate. There’s a lot I leave out.
“Listen, I looked into the mob angle from here. The lion tattoo is probably the Black Lion clan, headed by Lazarus Morina, aka Bloody Lazarus. They’re powerful, but they don’t seem to have any active blood feud that would merit this kind of hunt. Another clan family, the Valcheks, were enemies at one time, but they wiped them out some twenty years back. All the males.”
“Could Kiro be a Valchek? Maybe hidden? At the time of the war?”
“The timing is right, but I put a researcher on it, and there is no Kiro Valchek. There’s a deceased Kiro here and there. A few back in Albania that are connected to the organization, so we’re checking on them to make sure they’re still there. But I think you’re right—that kind of firepower doesn’t come out for a vendetta. These mob guys aren’t idiots. They’re not going to expend the resources like what we saw at the Fancher Institute for a blood vendetta. They have fucking criminal businesses to run, bottom lines to think about. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Keep me updated. Look for any missing twenty-something Kiros. I need that side of the story.”
“What about his life in the woods? I need the wolfy stuff. Cutting his hair and a meal, that’s not front-page-feature stuff.”
“You’re going front page?”
Murray goes on. This will be a front-page feature, multiple days running. It’ll get picked up all over. He wants to hold some sexy images back to sell to BMZ Confidential, the ultimate sleazy Hollywood gossip site. “Get his buy-in. Does he want to be independently wealthy? Would you keep him from that? He plays this right, he can write his own checks.”
Savage Mafia Prince: a Dangerous Royals romance Page 12