by Reina Torres
A shiver of something passed through her. He could feel it through their physical connection.
“If you’re a good girl, I’ll wait until we get to a hotel outside of the city.” He hated how much he enjoyed the look of panic in her eyes. He didn’t used to be like this. “If you test my patience,” He glowered at her and fought down his bear so he wouldn’t have to hear the creature’s complaints, “I’ll pull over in the woods and mark you there.”
She’d fought him in earnest then. Struggling under his hold to get free of him, but he was bigger.
Stronger.
A shifter. And she was only a human.
A being meant to be controlled.
And yet… as he’d started to drive, he continued to hear her pleading words in his head. An unending litany of begging words and promises of pain.
Soon they were overlapping in his head as if the sounds could bounce off his skull and ricochet in his mind.
“Let me go…” he heard the whisper louder than her screams, “or I’ll kill you.”
He swore he could feel her breath on his cheek, her fingers clawing at his arm. He had to concentrate on the road up ahead. So many people and so many cars. Lights and signals. Stores and homes everywhere. The noise was deafening. The press of humanity like a vise on his head.
“Just be quiet!”
He screamed the words once… twice, before he turned to look at her.
“Damn it to hell!” She was out cold, her mouth slack and her bruise a dark purple with yellow around the edges.
He turned even farther to get a good look at her pulse deep at the base of her throat.
A loud piercing noise twisted him back around and a hard yank on the wheel barely kept him from crashing head on into a delivery truck.
His bear tried to wrest control from him and he knew why.
He managed to keep control of both himself and the car, jerking the vehicle back into his own lane.
Patrick felt his heart pounding in his chest and heard his bear’s angry growl reverberating through his body. He knew that what he was doing was wrong, but he needed this. They needed this. His whole clan needed the connections that the Black Hills bears would give them.
It was just getting harder and harder to justify the lengths or lows that he was going to have to do to get there.
He reached out and flipped on the radio, using his hands to twist the dial and look for a station with decent music.
While his people weren’t nearly as insular as the Black Hills clan, he didn’t have much of a chance to drive on such crowded streets. He was already worried about being found and Hollis taken away from him, but the drivers in Sylvan City certainly seemed to use their horns more than their lights.
A few blocks ahead he saw a bunch of police cars.
Slowing his speed, he managed to move the car off the road and into a gas station parking lot. From there he had a better view of what was happening up ahead.
The cruisers’ lights were off but he could see officers standing outside the vehicles and stopping cars in both directions.
Fiddling with the radio, he found a channel that had a news program on.
“…police are asking the public to be understanding of the temporary roadblocks set up all over Sylvan City. Once the suspected kidnapper has been found, the roadways will be cleared and traffic should ease up. Until that happens, please remain patient and keep safe. And now we’re back to our…”
Roadblocks.
Police.
Kidnapper.
They were searching for him.
Grabbing up a paper map that he’d bought at a gas station convenience store, Patrick took a moment to find his location and then he searched.
And searched.
And found what he was looking for.
A boat dock.
Looking over at Hollis he saw her begin to stir.
He needed to talk to her. And explain things.
And doing it in a quiet place was the best for everyone.
A boat dock in the middle of nowhere? What else could be better?
He waited for a moment for an empty space in the flow of traffic and pulled out, the car thumped down onto the road, he’d misjudged the curb.
Hollis groaned in the seat beside him and he swore.
They needed to get away from prying eyes so he could explain things to her. He’d make her understand.
He managed to make a turn at the next light and double back, skirting along until he found a turnoff toward the road into the woods.
It was going to be okay. It would be okay.
It just had to be.
#
“He made a U-turn, that-”
The curse words that blasted through the phone made Graham smile. “That wolf’s got a nasty vocabulary.”
“That’s one way of putting it.” Conor rolled his neck and flexed his hands, making the interior of the car echo with the sounds of cracking joints.
Conor looked up and saw Graham’s fleeting glance on his hands. “It helps me to keep human until I need to kill that asshole.”
Nodding, Graham adjusted his hold on the steering wheel and made a turn when Dom called out the instructions. “You remember that she’s going to need the human side of you too.”
He wanted to tell the lion to mind his own business, but he knew the words were true. They were right.
Killing Hollis’ kidnapper was something he wanted… something he needed for himself. Hollis would need the other side of him.
She was probably scared. She was probably in a lot of pain.
All he wanted was to get to her and make it right.
“It looks like he’s taking her into the woods.”
Conor’s bear roared inside of him. There were only a few reasons that the man was taking Hollis into the woods and every single one of them made his blood boil.
“I don’t know where he thinks he’s going to go from there, but I think you can cut him off.” Dom’s voice held a hard edge that sounded like he was biting each of the ends off his words. “Cage and Devlin will come up on one end of the road and you two take the other end. You can trap the car between the two, but he may take to the woods.”
Conor was shaking with rage. “Let him. Only one of us will come out if that’s the case.”
Graham nodded his agreement. “Just tell us what to do.”
Chapter Eleven
Hollis came to with an ache in her head unlike anything she’d ever felt before. Headaches, sure, who didn’t have those from time to time. But not like this.
Lifting her hand, she gingerly prodded the area that hurt the most. She found a knot just shy of her hairline and when she tried to remember how she’d gotten hurt, all she saw was a dark flash of pain.
She whimpered at the terrible sensation and hated how her stomach lurched and tumbled as the car hit a hole in the road.
The car.
The man. He’d dragged her to the car. He’d told her to get in the car, but she didn’t want to leave.
Conor!
What was he thinking? She’d waffled back and forth about their bond and bearing his mark. What if he thought that she left willingly?
What if he didn’t want to come after her?
How would he know that she wanted him?
That she needed him?
Setting her hand on the door to steady her movements, Hollis sat up and instantly regretted the sudden movement when her vision tilted and darkened at the edges. She drew in a quick breath to steady herself and smelled the fetid stink of sweat.
And beneath it, fear.
“Why are you doing this?”
Her voice startled him enough to fishtail the car into the other lane of the two-way road.
He muttered a curse under his breath before answering her. “Your father told me to bring you home. Then I could have you.”
“Have me?”
“As my mate. You don’t get to make your decisions anymore.”
The words echoed
in her head and she found her jaw tensing up until pain radiated from the joint. Her father had been angry, but this crossed the line.
There was no way she was going to let this stand.
“You can try to take me home, but you won’t be my mate.”
“I already am.” He stomped on the gas and the vehicle shot forward, throwing her back against the seat. “Your father gave you to me.”
“My father knows that I have chosen my mate and he’s not you. So, taking me back will do two things.”
He growled and she got a good look at his fangs when his upper lip curled back. “What?”
“One,” she looked out the window hoping that something would look familiar, “you take me home and waste your time, because my father’s going to realize that I meant what I said. I have a mate and if you hadn’t shown up, I’d probably be carrying his mark right about now.”
The scoff in the man’s voice was a loud scratch of sound. “And two?”
“Two,” she saw a tall pine tree rising up above the other trees around it that looked achingly familiar. She could only pray that she was close enough to get help when she got out of the car, “once Conor finds you, I hope you’ve done everything else you’ve wanted in life, because I don’t think I’d try to stop him from killing you.”
“I haven’t lived this long being weak. If he faces me, you’ll end up mine anyway.”
She sat back in her seat and felt heat singe the sides of her face. The thought of this man even thinking that he could fight Conor and take him down. It was ridiculous. Crazy, even.
While she’d only seen Conor fight once and this man had at least fifty pounds on her mate, she knew deep down inside that he would beat him easily.
After all, she couldn’t lose Conor now. The world had already been exceedingly cruel to her over the years, wasn’t she due something good in her life?
Something made the pace of the car suddenly slow and Hollis looked at the driver and then out of the windshield.
Where had that car come from?
The road ahead was blocked with a large black SUV with windows tinted so dark that she felt a strange hopeful sensation burst in her belly. “Devlin.”
“Who?” He reached out and grabbed her arm, his nails bit into her flesh, drawing blood. “Who is Devlin?”
She took an almost savage pleasure in explaining things to this man… a poor excuse for a shifter, for she had met more amazing people in the last few days than her whole life with her father’s people.
“Devlin is a tiger shifter, more important in this town than you’ll ever understand. He’s mated to the Mayor’s daughter and leader of the shifter community. If he’s come then he knows that I don’t want to leave.
“Set me free and then go,” Hollis looked down as his nails continued to score her flesh, “or Devlin will see that you pay for this.”
Most of it was bluster. She had met Devlin’s mate, but she had no idea if he would do those things for her, but she needed to get out of this situation before she lost her angry bluster.
What else she did have against a shifter… or even a man of his size? He didn’t need preternatural speed or strength to make her suffer.
With one hand he could grip her neck and twist, snap it like a twig.
So, what she had right now was his need to make her his mate and bluster. Poor weapons, but at least it was something.
They continued on the road, moving closer and closer to the SUV, until there were less than a hundred yards between them and the vehicle blocking the road.
Wide-eyed, she watched in morbid fascination as they drew ever closer, wanting to experience every second she had left.
“Damn it!”
Her captor reached across the wheel with a hand and yanked on it.
As the car turned, it rode on the edge of its inside wheels tilting the car precariously. “Stop! Just stop!”
Hollis made a frantic grab at the armrest on the door and pushed her weight into it, her abject panic easing as the car started to level out.
“Just stop, please!”
“Shut-” his words were lost in the bellowing roar torn from his throat.
Looking out of the windshield at the road, Hollis almost sighed in relief.
What had been an empty road a moment ago was now blocked. There was a car in the road, but there was also a single man standing in front of it.
His form was that of an avenging warrior, but as she watched, as they both watched, he started to move toward them.
The man in the driver’s seat pumped the break and then the gas as if he was juggling the pedals instead of operating them. “What the hell is he doing?”
Hollis hadn’t turned away for a moment. Conor’s shirt dropped from his hand, falling to the road and rolling with the wind that mussed his hair.
When Conor’s hands reached for his waistband, Hollis hissed in a breath. “It looks like he’s come to get me, mister. Do yourself a favor and stop the car right here and walk away.”
And she really hoped that he’d take her suggestion and leave, because the look on Conor’s face was beyond angry.
Beyond murderous.
With his bear bleeding through his eyes, she could almost feel the need to rend and tear radiating from his body. And bless her, but she was entirely and totally aroused.
The danger posed by the man sitting beside her paled in the face of the heat that suffused her skin. The need that clawed at her mind.
She didn’t care who else was around. She wanted Conor.
Wanted him the way her lungs wanted oxygen. “Pull over.”
Her voice felt strange in her throat. Her skin far too tight.
“What’s wrong with you?”
She turned to stare at the man sitting beside her and found herself hungering for his pain. Breath in. Breath out. She looked at him and felt the whole world tumbling around inside of her as if it was looking for a way out.
Hollis didn’t have to turn to know what was happening outside the vehicle. She could feel how close Conor was, as if they were under water and the current pushed against her skin. Turning in her seat, she put one hand on the dashboard and the other on the back of her seat. “You need to let me go.”
She could smell the man’s fear.
Taste it on her tongue.
Swallowed it deep into her empty belly.
“Now.”
He opened his mouth to speak but a roar split the air and she smiled.
“No,” he shook his head, “this isn’t worth it.”
There was a rush of hope deep in her chest, just enough to savor it before it was stolen from her again.
The car launched forward and Hollis fell back against the seat, completely off balance. “What are you doing?”
His gaze was fixed straight ahead and the smile on his lips had pulled the skin so tight it looked painful.
“He won’t let me go. He won’t. No matter what I do now.” He leaned forward, his knuckles pale white from exertion. “I’m not going to give him the chance.”
The nightmare end of this confrontation played in her head like an old black and white flick on a silvered screen. Images didn’t need sound to make her scream.
“Conor!” She knew what he planned to do. Whoever this man was beside her, he was the kind of man that destroyed what he could not have, in much the same way as her father had decided her fate.
Her captor wanted to take everything away from her.
Even as the vehicle’s engine roared like a wounded beast, she knew that the force of its impact on Conor as man or bear would likely kill him.
And in turn, kill her own soul.
If he took her future, what would she have left?
The images in her head went blank and gave her the answer. Without Conor, there was nothing left for her.
And she knew that Conor would give his last breath to save her. Why? Because that’s what her mate would do for her.
And something she would gladly do for him.
Taking hold of the man’s hands with her own, Hollis took control of the wheel and sent the car off the edge of the road.
#
Conor’s world imploded.
He’d seen the look on her face, recognized the determination in her eyes. Saw the moment of calm that settled over her as she made the decision to take hold of the wheel.
He would be too late to stop her, but he knew whatever she did, he would follow.
What else could he do when his mate was in danger.
The car ran off the road and ran out of space. The narrow shoulder at the edge of the asphalt gave way to roots, trees, and brush. A heartbeat later it was gone, swallowed up by the woods.
Conor entered the brush and heard three others push in behind him.
He could hear the engine running and the acrid stench of something burning. “Hollis!”
A sapling snapped back and hit him, but he pushed forward.
“Hollis? Can you hear me?”
“Here! Conor, here!”
Conor followed the sound of Cage’s voice and dove through the brush, almost stumbling over what was left of a wheel. The vehicle was laying on its side, the driver’s side of the frame was twisted, but the passenger side of the vehicle had sustained enough damage for him to know that it wasn’t going to be easy getting her out if she was still inside.
He heard Cage moving around on the other side of the vehicle. “Can you see her?” He tried to look through the wreckage and found most of his vision obscured.
“Yeah. Come around this side.”
He started to follow Cage’s voice but stopped short when he heard her voice. “I’m okay, Conor.”
Air rushed into his lungs and he made his way to Cage’s side as Devlin and Graham reached them.
Devlin touched his shoulder. “You okay? If you are, we’ll go look for him.”