Page 9 of Bound to the Griffin (Hillcrest Hollow Shifters #3)

Gwendolyn

This day was going from bad to worse with every passing minute, it seemed.

The only thing that was holding me together—well, not thing; person—was Jackson.

The sheriff had picked me up and he hadn’t let go, not once.

I burrowed against his wide chest, soaking up his heat, but still, I trembled from the cold.

It wasn’t any warmer inside the B how embarrassing.

I bit my lip, hoping it would hold back the sob rising in my throat.

Not just Jackson, a stranger was here too, watching me with dark eyes set in a square face.

I was pretty sure I’d seen another guy at the back door in my kitchen too, one with a cowboy hat.

And a wolf. Or maybe the guy with the cowboy hat had been in the woods, where the wolf had attacked me?

It was all a confused, jumbled mess inside my head.

Proof that I was losing my shit after all the stress.

I wanted everyone to leave, down a few painkillers, and curl up in bed while I pretended none of this had happened.

Jackson had other plans, refusing to put me down even when I asked him, with an embarrassingly trembling voice, to do so.

Instead, with a rough, almost growly noise, he carried me back out of my destroyed living room to my kitchen.

Now that the shock of my vandalized home had given me a surge of adrenaline, I was much more alert.

I could tell that here, too, someone had gone through the cupboards.

Had they been searching for something? Or was it just the cold draft from the open back door that had made all the kitchen cabinets open?

I wouldn’t put it past any of the crooked, worn doors and hinges.

“Arden, her ankle, please. Introductions can come later,” my sheriff commanded with a firm, confident voice.

The kind of voice everyone snapped to attention for, this handsome stranger I didn’t know included.

He nodded with a jerk of his square chin, dark eyes growing sharp with interest. He raised an old-fashioned leather valise in his hands, placed it on the sagging, wobbly kitchen table, and opened it to reveal bandages, a stethoscope, and other instruments clearly belonging to a doctor.

The sight of those eased my frayed nerves just a tad.

“Put her on the table. I’ll have a look,” this Arden said in a voice that was low and deep, but surprisingly gentle.

Jackson moved to set me down, and I tried to make my fists obey and release the thick fabric of his coat, only, they wouldn’t.

I was thinking frantically of an excuse to stay in his arms, because it felt like I would unravel entirely if he let go of me. I didn’t have to.

He set me on the edge of the table and slowly lowered the arm that was holding my legs up, stretching them out across the wooden surface.

His other arm remained firmly around my back, keeping me tucked against his chest. “This okay?” he asked, and I opened my mouth to say that it was, except it was Arden who answered with a quick yes.

I snapped my mouth shut and then scrunched my eyes closed too.

I didn’t want to see what kind of mess that wolf had made of my leg, the images in my head were frightful enough, as was the fierce pain.

Jackson’s now-free hand came up immediately, cupping the back of my sore and throbbing head and turning my face into his chest. “Close your eyes, honey. Arden will take good care of that little scratch. Don’t worry. ”

The words had the opposite effect of what he likely intended.

Instead of feeling reassured or calmed, I was angry.

Little scratch? That was no little scratch, it ached all around my ankle, and I’d felt how wet and soggy my pants leg was from blood.

Granted, more of me had gotten soggy from the snow; the wetness made most of my jeans cling to my legs in a nasty, cold, and scratchy way.

Pushing against his hand, I tried to raise my head, but he wouldn’t let me budge.

Arden was doing something to my pants; there was a tearing noise, then a warmth washed over me and the pain abruptly went away.

I froze, wondering if he’d just administered a fast-acting kind of pain relief, but I wasn’t sure.

I hadn’t felt the sting of a needle, hadn’t felt anything but warmth after he’d pulled my pants leg away from the injury.

“Let me just clear away this bit of blood,” the doctor murmured, and I felt hands against my skin.

Nothing hurt now, and only a short moment later, he was wrapping a bandage around my ankle.

No stitches, nothing. Just a reassuring, “It’s a small scratch.

You’re going to be just fine.” The head wound was next, and I froze, wondering if he was going to do the usual things I expected.

But that treatment was over in seconds, too.

“They always bleed a lot,” was the only comment, and I was left with ruffled hair, warmth shooting down my spine, and another bandage.

And still, Jackson refused to let me go.

He only let me lift my head from his chest when Arden started wrapping my head with the bandage.

It was when I blinked at their faces in the dark kitchen, lit only by the stars and moon through the window, that I realized neither of them had turned on the light.

A doctor treating his patient in the dark?

I glanced dubiously at the pale white bandage on my leg, but I couldn’t deny that nothing hurt now.

Helping me hop off the table, Jackson kept hold of my arm, the warmth from his body soaking into mine as he stood impossibly close.

I didn’t realize I needed that warmth until I tried to shift away and was immediately struck by violent shivers.

One second I was trying to be independent and shaking in my soggy work boots; the next, Jackson was shrugging out of his coat and pulling it around my shoulders.

Immediately, the warm, musky, but already familiar scent of him surrounded me.

Pine, something warm and safe, a hint of his aftershave.

Okay, fine, I’d stay in his coat and huddle under his arm against his chest. I’d be an idiot not to, really.

His chest was marvelous, he smelled good, and clearly, he wanted to take care of me.

He shared a look with the doctor that I couldn’t read, mostly because the tall man was cast entirely in shadow where he stood.

After he’d packed his doctor’s bag, he was out the door without a word of parting, just the muted crunch of his footsteps in the snow.

A silence followed that was laden, heavy.

Mostly, I was shaking with the cold, now that the pain was gone and the shock had worn off.

I was freezing, and this house was so cold right now, without the central heating properly working or the fire going in the fireplace.

Now that the floorboards in the room had been torn up, it wouldn’t be safe to stay there.

So what was I going to do? Maybe Jackson had a space heater I could borrow for the bedroom I’d managed to “undraft” that morning.

“Ah, took you long enough!” Jackson suddenly huffed, and I shook myself out of my spiraling thoughts and looked up.

Was that meant for me? Confused, I blinked at the sharp line of his jaw, covered in the beginning stubble of a pale blond beard.

He wasn’t talking to me at all, but to a new person who silently stepped into my kitchen, the door not even groaning, though a cold gust of wind did blast around his wide shoulders.

Who were all these people Jackson had parading in and out of my abused B&B, and why were they helping when it would negate their efforts to scare me off?

This newcomer was even harder to see, since a cloud must have shifted in front of the moon.

It was nearly pitch-black inside the kitchen now.

I just knew this guy was wide as a barn.

His voice, when he spoke, was cheerful and light, young, even.

“I needed to swing by your cabin, and you had a stack of packages on your porch, so I carried them inside. Here are the thermal blankets. Whew, someone sure did a number on this place, huh?”

Jackson made a sound above my head that had to be a muffled laugh.

Then there was rustling, and a crinkly blanket got pulled around me.

That didn’t mean my sheriff guardian let go of me.

No, instead—wrapped like a burrito—he swung me into his arms. “Thanks, Drew. Guard the place, will you? In case the bastard comes back.” Wait, what?

It was all moving fast. I was still processing being back in the arms of the guy I’d been obsessing about for days.

He was already moving out the back door with me before I caught up with the new developments.

My eyes caught on the shadowed hallway leading to the destroyed living room, a rush of anger and fear washing over me as I began recalling, in greater detail, what had happened there. My poor teacups. My poor floor. Why?

The newcomer seemed huge, and his face remained unreadable as Jackson carried me past him.

I caught a glint of dark eyes—gray, or maybe even silver—and that was it.

Over his shoulder, Jackson called out, “Only familiar faces, Drew. Nobody else.” Behind me, the stranger laughed—bright, excited—as if they relished the task of house-sitting the worn, frozen, now even more hopeless B&B.

“Where are you taking me?” I asked Jackson, a question I should have asked minutes ago.

I couldn’t even clutch at his shirt now, and he wasn’t wearing his coat, which was tucked around me beneath the silver thermal blankets I was swaddled in.

Outside, I could see his face better. Especially since the clouds had drifted and the moon could once again shine, pale and bright, down onto the snow-covered ground.

He looked furious, I realized, once I saw his frown.

This was not the amicable, collected-but-friendly man I’d met the first day in town.

This was a commander, a man on a mission, a man on a warpath.

What I was seeing on his face was because of me, because of what had happened inside the B&B.

It made me all too aware of how serious it was: this burglar ransacking my new home, or at least what I hoped would become my home.

He was all sheriff right now, and that made me feel safe, even if the feeling of being violated hadn’t gone away.

“I’m taking you somewhere warm,” was the enigmatic answer.

His voice had dropped into the lower registers, becoming a lionesque growl that made my skin break out in goosebumps.

These weren’t from the cold, and they weren’t from fear either, but from something that bordered on arousal.

That voice was bedroom-husky, but dark with anger at the same time, and I was pretty sure it was on my behalf.

Given the situation, it shouldn’t have turned me on, but it did.

It made me feel treasured, protected, to know that he was looking out for me.

I couldn’t recall a time when someone ever had.

My mother was not the looking-after type.

I’d raised myself more than she’d raised me, and often, it felt like I was the parent in the relationship.

Somewhere warm turned out to be across the street, around the side of the hostile General Store.

We went through a small, narrow street, then past a long row of evergreens that glowed silver in the moonlight from their dusting of snow.

He shrugged through a small, soundless wooden gate, and then we were facing a tiny, cozy cabin with a covered front porch.

It sat on a fairly large plot, entirely screened by the dense, still-green trees.

Very private, and very much his home, as it turned out. Oh boy, what had I gotten myself into?