The shed was nestled a long distance from the house and was more like a mini version of his already kinda mini-cabin, made of logs with a steep pitched roof, a normal door, but no windows. As soon as we got close enough, I heard slams from inside. Something split against the wall. And then I heard the sound I had heard many times before, a growling noise. He made that sometimes, a low sound from somewhere deep in his chest. I kind of found it both amusing and sexy before. But this was different. This was an animalistic kind of growling.
Reign and Repo stopped a few feet from the door, looking at the mini cabin. I turned to Reign. "What are you being bitches about? Are we going in or not?"
To that, Reign made a short snorting sound, offering me a small smirk, pulling the door open and cautiously stepping inside. I moved to do the same and felt Repo's presence behind me. I got into the doorway and froze.
They had warned me.
I hadn't exactly disbelieved them either.
But it was a whole other thing to see it, to see a man you had started to think of as a less golden version of Michael, become a completely different animal.
That two percent shows you why his name is very, very fitting.
That was what Reign had warned and he was right.
Because Wolf was no longer a man; he was a beast.
Every inch of him was covered in bright, vivid red. I didn't have to get any closer to know it was blood. Nothing else was that exact color; nothing else carried with it the metallic smell that blood did. And I wasn't exaggerating either. I could see his beard sticky with it, smears of it across his face, staining his shirt and jeans in large splatters, and pooling around the bottom of his shoes like he had been walking in a puddle of it.
His arms were in front of him, making his big shoulders slump forward. I looked down to find his wrists were imprisoned in handcuffs. They felt the need to... cuff him? Was he really that far gone?
"Key," I said, looking at Reign.
"Babe, no," he said as Wolf roared loudly enough for my ears to ring, picked up a shovel from the floor and threw it at the wall.
"I wasn't fucking asking," I countered, squaring my shoulders. I wasn't about to deal with their macho bullshit. "Give me the god damn key or I will knock your ass out and take it from you."
"Janie he's..." Repo tried to reason, putting a hand on my shoulder.
I grabbed it at the wrist, twisted, and used the momentary pain he was experiencing as an advantage, grabbing his throat and shoving him back against the wall. I wouldn't be able to keep him there. He was taller and stronger. But I was just making a point: don't fucking underestimate me.
Repo smiled at me, nodding his head. "That was fast as fuck."
I smiled at the praise and turned to Reign. "Gonna give me the keys or you want a demonstration on how Israeli defense training can beat your street fighting any day?"
Reign shook his head at me, chanced a glance at Wolf who was pacing the small space, huffing out his breath like a boar, then reached in his pocket and held a key out to me. "You can let him go, but we are staying until we're sure he ain't gonna split your pretty little head open."
I took the key, rolling my eyes. "If you think he could hurt a woman then you don't know a fucking thing about him, do you?" I asked, seeing his eyes flash with something I didn't know him well enough to interpret before I turned to Wolf.
He was still pacing and I had to throw myself in front of him to get his manic body to stop. He made the growling noise, like he was trying to warn me off. "Don't you growl at me," I said, raising a brow. "I was worried sick about you. How dare you make me think that 'dead in a ditch' thing. How freaking cliche is that shit?" I asked as I reached out toward him, but he went back a step, yanking his arms back. "You want to wear the cuffs? 'Cause they're soo comfortable," I said, grabbing the chain between the bracelets and yanking it. He yanked back again, dragging me with him. My feet stumbled over the discarded shovel he had thrown earlier and my heart flew into my throat as I went flying through the air. I could make out the sound of Reign cursing and Repo exhaling.
But just as I was sure I was going to have a nice face plant on the hard floor, Wolf charged forward and I collided with his chest instead. His hands were low, the bracelets colliding rather intimately with me. I yelped, planting my hands on his chest and pushing myself back. His eyes were watching me, but they weren't Wolf's eyes, not really. They were detached, cold, untamed. I reached between us a slipped the key into the lock, sliding until they clicked before he could even register what I was doing.
He moved back from me and the cuffs clanged to the ground. His wrists were red like he had been pulling against the bracelets.
"Where was he?" I asked, looking at Wolf but talking to Reign.
"Babe..."
"Don't 'babe' me in that tone. You do realize I'm the one that called Cash in on this, right? This blood he's covered in... it's Lex Keith's, isn't it?" At their silence, my head swiveled in their direction to see them sharing a look. "Well?"
"Most of it," Repo supplied on a shrug.
"And the rest?"
"Anyone who got in between him and Lex."
I turned back to Wolf, advancing, reaching out and moving to place my hand on his blood-splattered forearm. His entire right hand was stained crimson. The second my fingers landed, he flew away from me on another growl.
"Janie babe... you need to give him time to calm down," Reign said in a calm way that suggested he had been through this before.
"How long usually?"
Reign shrugged. "Two, three days..."
"Oh fuck that," I exploded, eyes wide. "I am not leaving him locked in a god damn shed for three fucking days so he can calm down."
"It's not safe to..."
"Are you big, bad biker guys really being bigger pussies than I am right now? Seriously? I need to get him back to the house and clean him up. And maybe get some food in him. And he probably needs sleep too."
"Babe, no."
"You know what I really, really like about not being in your little boys club?" I asked and went on when all he gave me was a brow raise. "I don't have to take orders from you. So get in with the plan or get out. I don't care. You have a woman at home. And apparently Repo has a car to make love to. Go. I can handle this."
They shared another look, making me instantly jealous that men could apparently hold entire freaking conversations with just a couple looks. What was that about? Repo winked at me and headed out the door and Reign made his way toward me. He stopped when our toes touched, his hand raising and moving to rest on my arm. "You've got some..."
I wrenched away from his touch, cringing internally at being so damn transparent about my touch issues at times. Wolf made another growl, this time lower, more menacing.
"Guess that means I should keep my hands off, huh?" Reign mused, rolling back on his heels. "You have a piece of what looks like intestines on your shoulder," Reign informed me, turned, and made his way to the door. "If you need help, call Cash. We can have someone here in half an hour."
With that, we were alone.
I took a deep breath, trying to figure out what was the best course of action, before turning and walking toward him. He kept backing away until the wall blocked further retreat. "Alright so I know nothing about how like... cognizant you are right now, but I am choosing to believe that the Wolf I know is listening so... we need to get you back to the house and get you in the shower and get rid of these clothes. I dunno how you handled this shit and what kind of evidence trail you left so we need to handle this shit right now."
With that, I reached out and grabbed his hand, linking our fingers. Seeing it, I flashed back to the first night be brought me to his place, submerging my burned arm in the sink water, his hand holding mine to keep me in place.
I looked up and his eyes were focused on our hands too in a way that I thought maybe he was remembering what I was. But when his head lifted, his eyes were still empty.
But I was too distracted with a reality I had been waiting almost nine years for: Lex Keith was no longer part of this world. He wasn't breathing my air anymore. He couldn't ever hurt me again; he couldn't hurt any woman again.
Wolf gave me that.
Wolf gave me safety.
Again.
I owed him in kind. I owed him a lifted chin in the face of his kinda creepy, definitely scary, altogether too bizarre rage-out. I imagined this was what it was like to meet a new personality to someone with schizophrenia because it was a person you know and care about, but at the same time, it really wasn't. It was freaky.
Harley and Chopper sat up straight at our approach, heads tilting to the side, noses up in the air, taking in the smell of blood all over their owner no doubt. Wolf's truck was in the drive and I looked at it for a second, realizing that I would have to scrub it down once I got Wolf squared away. There had to be blood all over it.
I led a glamorous life, let me tell ya.
"Alright, shower," I said as I led him inside and toward the bathroom. I closed the lid on the toilet and pushed him onto it. He complied, still watching me and I fought the insane urge to be insecure. He wasn't even Wolf right then. There was no reason to feel any more insecure around him than I would around the dogs for chrissake.
I reached for the hem of his shirt, scrunching the material up in my hands and lifting it slowly upward. His eyes pinned mine and his arms went up over his head so I could free him of the shirt. I felt myself swallowing hard, trying to keep my eyes on his face when my body was sort of begging me to look down. Forcing down the ridiculous surge of hormones, I unlaced his boots and pulled them off. Then his socks, before I stood up. "Okay. Up," I said, grabbing his arm and pulling until he took his feet. I gestured toward his pants, hoping he might maybe clue-in enough to take them off himself. But his arms were limp at his sides and I needed those pants off so I could deal with them and the evidence they were covered in.
I took a deep breath and reached for the button. At the brush of my fingers, the muscles in his abdomen contracted and his breath hissed out of his mouth. Okay. I needed to focus. I needed to ignore the fact that my hands were a thin piece of material away from touching his cock. Thoughts of that particular body part needed to stay the hell out of my brain right then. I pushed the button through and pulled the zip before I could chicken out. My hands moved to his hips to snag the material and pulled downward.
Yeah, well. At that point, it was pretty much impossible to keep thoughts about that particular body part out of my brain because suddenly, there it was in all its glory, hard and straining.
I wrenched away from him, reaching inside the shower and putting the water on hot. "Alright, um, you need to get in here and get that blood off." I sighed when I didn't feel movement behind me. I turned back, grabbing his arm, and dragging him toward the enclosure. He stepped in with encouragement and stepped under the spray. I yanked the curtain closed, hoping that when I came back he would have at least thought to wash up as I gathered his clothes and shoes and took them outside.
That far in my stay, I had yet to find a washing machine, leaving me stumped as to how he had managed to clean my clothes from the night of the bombing. At a loss for anything else to do, I overturned a five-gallon bucket full of rock salt and filled it with water and bleach from the kitchen, submerging the clothes and shoes. It would ruin most of it, but at least it would eat up the DNA. I found another smaller bucket and went to work on the interior of the truck which wasn't nearly as bad as I had been anticipating.
There were many fun parts of working at Hailstorm: the guns, the bombs, the martial arts, the blurred lines of legality that generally allowed us to end up on the right side of morality. But that being said, it wasn't always a glamorous life. It was obnoxious how much time we had to spend covering our tracks, cleaning up crime scenes, erasing evidence. I'd had so much freaking practice that I could do it in my sleep. It wasn't the most impressive of skills to boast about, but it sure came in handy at times.
Thirty long and sweaty minutes later, I went inside to scrub the floor where Wolf had walked, washed my hands and arms in the sink, grabbed fresh clothes for Wolf who was still in the shower, and went into the bathroom.
"Did you wash up?" I asked, not expecting an answer and not getting one. I pulled the curtain to find him standing under the spray that had managed to wash a fair amount of the blood down the drain. But he hadn't washed. In fact, the only thing he had managed to take care of was, well, his raging hard on. But that was... kind of a relief especially given what I had to do now.
On a sigh, I climbed into the shower in my tee with nothing else but my panties on. "You're determined to make this difficult, huh?" I asked, grabbing the bar of soap and sudsing it up in my hands before reaching out toward him. His body stiffened as my hands pressed down onto his shoulders. "Relax," I said, but I wasn't sure if I was telling him or myself. I scrubbed down his chest, over his arms, down his stomach, pausing awkwardly. "Um... face," I mumbled, sudsing up my hands again and reaching up to scrub the soap into his beard, eyes on his face, watching him watch me. I reached up to wash his hair, making me need to press forward and go up on my tiptoes. It was right then that I realized that Wolf, or Wolf-The-Animal-Version, had a really fast turnover time for hard-ons.
His hands moved behind me, sliding down my back and landing on my ass with firm pressure, using it to shift me down slightly so his erection pressed between my thighs. An involuntary moan escaped my lips as my forehead fell to his shoulder. God. It didn't even matter that he was out of it, my body still wanted him. And, obviously, his body wanted mine as well.
His fingers dug in and stroked me over him again. My hands curled into the skin on his back as I tried to take a deep breath and think straight. On the third stroke that was driving me upward faster than I could have imagined possible, I choked out a strangled, "No." There was a pregnant pause, his hands still holding me hard, his cock still pressing against my pussy. Then his grip lessened and his hands fell away completely. I went down on my flat feet as my body screamed a painful objection to the loss of contact. I took a step back, reaching for the soap and pressing it into his hands. "I can't," I said though I wasn't sure he was paying any kind of conscious attention.
I pulled the curtain and walked out of the bathroom, stripping out of my wet tee and panties and rummaging around for the jeans and tank I had worn the night Wolf picked me up. I slid those on then threw on Wolf's flannel, buttoning it. Layers. I needed lots and lots of layers.
On a groan, I went to the kitchen.
I needed to make him food.
And, well, see, I have a bunch of talents. Cooking had never been one of them. As in, I couldn't do it. At all. But if he couldn't exactly remember how to wash himself, I doubt he had been in the right state of mind to feed himself either. So I pulled out the eggs and bread, deciding it was pretty hard to fuck up scrambled eggs and toast.
Food done, I took a deep breath and went into the bathroom to find the water off and Wolf dry. Though still naked. Because my hormones really needed that sucker punch.
"Clothes," I said, taking them off the counter and shoving them against his chest. "Then food. Hurry up, it's getting cold." Not that I thought the warmth of it would make it taste any better. The toast was burnt to shit and the eggs were the weirdest freaking consistency, kinda almost rubbery. I don't know. Maybe that was how they were supposed to be. Whatever. He needed to eat.
I sat down at the dining table, cradling a coffee cup. My stomach clenched painfully at the idea of trying to shove food into it so I just stared at his heaping plate until I heard the door open and Wolf walked out and sat down. He looked at the food for a long minute, brows drawn together, before he stabbed a forkful of egg and brought it up to his mouth.
He chewed for all
of two seconds before swallowing hard.
Then the weirdest thing happened.
His fork clanged down onto the plate and he threw his head back and laughed.
Laughed.
Not a chuckle or a those rumbling things I'd heard him do before.
This was a real, genuine belly laugh.
The deep, masculine sound of it boomed off the walls and shivered under my skin.
Then his head lowered, his honey eyes on me.
"Woman..." he said, grinning.
FOURTEEN
Janie
It was stupid to say I missed his voice, but I did. I didn't even realize it until I heard it again.
I felt my lips tip up. "I thought we talked about how 'woman' isn't a sentence."
"You talked," he agreed, lips twitching.
"And you apparently didn't listen. Woman what?"
"Worst fucking eggs ever," he chuckled again, shaking his head.
I should have been insulted, but, well, they looked like rubber and they kinda smelled awful too. Still, I had to say something. "I think you're supposed to say 'thank you for uncuffing me and cleaning me up and making me food when I was all Hulked out'." If I hadn't been watching him so closely and if he wasn't always so silent and often spoke in tiny nuances of expressions, I would have missed it. As it was, I saw it. Guilt. "Wolf, it's fine. I really didn't min..." But then the guilt got mixed with something else, something a little boyish, a little wicked. "You bastard!" I said, half-angry and half-amused. "When did you clue back in?"
"When you stepped in."
When I stepped in... to the shower. Oh, that shit! There I was worrying about him and his seemingly unbalanced mental and emotional state and the fucker was in his right mind again. While I was in the shower with him. When he was naked and hard! "I soaped you up!"
"Yeah you did," he said, his face losing all of the guilt and looking almost devilish.
Wolf (The Henchmen MC #3) Page 12