Page 21

“Where are we?” I ask, clutching my head, not recognizing the room.

“Not far from home, we drove through most of the night, only stopping for gas and now to get the rest of those bullets out of you,” Dustin explains.

“You aren’t as bulletproof as you thought. Your Lycan took a lot, but you healed too quickly, leaving half these fuckers in ya.” Liam holds up a bullet and then shows me another. I realize they are wolfsbane pellets. Fuck.

Leaning back against the headboard, my eyes move to Dustin.

“We can’t stay long, we need to get back home,” I tell him, and he nods when Hunter stirs. He cries out, making us all jump. Dustin peers over his shoulder, and I notice the boy sitting up on the bed, rubbing his eyes.

Hunter peers around at us, all staring at him before opening his mouth and screaming for his mother. I force myself up and grab him only for him to let out an ear-piercing scream just as I hear the water cut off. “Shh, she’ll be back, I won’t hurt you,” I tell the kid, sitting him on my hip as I hunt for his bottle in the blankets. Liam finds and snatches it, rushing off.

“See, Uncle Liam will make you another one,” I tell him, and he calms down just as Tandi comes bursting through the bathroom door in a panic.

“What did you do to him!?” she shrieks, rushing over to take him. Maybe it’s the fact that I took several bullets, or perhaps it’s because I’ve had a long day but I don’t like her tone or her implication that I was hurting her son. She snatches him from me, and I am about to protest when she suddenly slaps my face. Blood fills my mouth as my head whips to the side, and I hear Dustin gasp at what she did just. Just then, I see Liam stop at the door in shock with a bottle in his hand.

“You don’t touch my son,” Tandi sneers at me before turning her attention to her son and checking him over like she seriously thought I hurt him. I grit my teeth.

“Liam!” I force out between my teeth, and he rushes forward with Hunter’s bottle.

“How about Uncle Liam take the brat,” Liam says, not giving her a choice when he plucks him out of her arms.

“Hey, what do you…” her words cut off, and Liam rushes out of the room with him as I grab her.

“You dare fucking hit! What the fuck,” I growl in her face. “I was trying to comfort him, what is your freaking problem?”

“He’s not yours to comfort!” she snaps, yanking out of my grip, but my arm wraps around her waist, crushing her against me. She thrashes.

“Damian?” Dustin asks, and I cut a glare at him. He lifts his hand, backing out of the room as I start walking her backward toward the bed.

He knows I won’t hurt her but I also won’t tolerate her hitting me. I slam her down on the bed as she tries to cover herself. She whimpers as I tower over her.

“You can’t just…ouch,” she whimpers as I push her wrists above her head with one hand and squeeze her thigh to keep her in place.

“You better fucking apologize for that,” I growl in her face as she cowers back as my grip on her wrists tightens.

“Ow, you’re hurting me,” she whines and I squeeze a little harder before growling.

“Apologize!”

She whimpers but meets my glare with her own. “I’ll apologize when you stop manhandling me,” she snaps back and I let go of her wrists, grabbing her chin instead between my fingers.

“I said apologize!”

“How was I supposed to know you weren’t hurting him, he was crying, and I came out to find you holding him!”

“That is not an apology!”

“Fine, fuck you! Now get off me!” she spits in my face.

I clench my teeth. Suddenly, my senses are filled with the taste of her saliva as it mixes with my blood.

I feel the warm fluid of her spit on my face and growl, earning a wide-eyed and petrified stare from her. Yet, that doesn’t stop the fact that I somehow feel turned on by her defiance. I wipe my face with my hand and she uses that slight movement to try to escape and scramble out from under me, but I’m faster. I grab her ankle, only she kicks at me, making me grunt. I reach out, only managing to grab and tear the towel from her body.

“Fine, you want to play it this way!” I snarl, reaching for her, dragging her closer, and pressing my weight down on her. She thrashes beneath me, trying to toss me off before exhausting herself when she realizes it is pointless fighting me.

Yet the feel of her naked skin touching my bare chest makes me look down, taking in the way her breasts heave with every breath she takes, the flush on her cheeks from both arousal and anger as sparks course all over where her skin touches mine.

She looks away from me, biting her lower lip as she tries to hide how affected she is by this situation. But I can see it all over her body language - the quickened breathing, the dilated pupils, the way she’s attempting to hide from me, she may hate me but she feels the bond as strongly as I do. She squirms under my gaze, and I can almost taste her desperation to escape in the air.