Page 21

CHAPTER 21

REDLEY

“Wolf!” I scream, certain there isn’t anyone but him who would have done such a thing. But the bastard doesn’t answer me.

Standing back up, I draw the light over James Porter’s limp body. All six feet of him lay crumpled against my overgrown driveway. I can’t help but feel that Wolf is already making good on the threat in that note. I’m not going to scream again. I’m over my shock, and I’m just disgusted and sad.

I can’t just leave him out here. Look what happened to the Murphy boy when I made the mistake of leaving to get help. Still, what are my options? Porter’s cruiser can’t make it back here, and I can’t carry him out. Leave it to the Wolf to complicate every part of my evening.

I take a step backward and collide with something hard and warm, someone . My breath cuts off as an arm snakes around my middle, snapping me tight against a man’s chest. Hot breath touches my neck, and he smells just the same, a million times better than Porter did.

“Muffin,” he breathes. “You called?”

An instant cold sweat breaks over my skin, followed by a nervous rush. It’s a special kind of fear that belongs to him alone.

“I wouldn’t phrase it like that.” It was more of an outraged shout.

“Have you thought about my offer?” he asks, and his voice is even deeper up close like this. We’ve been talking from the shadows for a year now, and this is the first time I’ve heard the difference. His lips skate my neck, the tender gesture taking me farther off my feet than the arrow took Porter. More electricity fills my veins than runs up the mountain.

I hold my breath, more alive and closer to death than I’ve ever been. It’s the most thrilling and horrifying experience, like the first time I rode a sled when I was a kid, and I thought I’d fly straight off a cliff.

“No,” I tell him.

“No, you won’t marry me, or no, you haven’t thought about it?” he asks.

I’ll never stop him if I can’t get him out of my head, and it’s starting to feel like it would take another arrow to do that.

“I would never think about it,” I lie.

“You’re thinking about it right now, with a corpse at your feet, naughty Muffin.”

He presses a tender kiss to the place my shoulder and neck meet and rather than shiver I resist his most potent weapon. “Fuck you,” I spit.

“I’ve missed you,” he answers like I never said anything at all. “Too bad it took a dead pig to bring us back together.”

This time I do shiver against him, and insist to myself that the feeling is disgust, not sweet reunion.

“I’m hunting you,” I insist for both our sakes.

“Hunting me or searching for me?” he asks. “Because sometimes I think you come outside at night hoping I’m up to something.”

“ Hunting ,” I repeat to remind myself more than him.

His nose moves up and down my neck, smelling me. I already noticed the change in his voice, but is he taller too? It’s hard to tell with him behind me, but I swear he’s even more massive at my back than he was four years ago. All the nights spent chasing him across the mountain have given him mystery, but now that he’s right here? Something isn’t adding up. How can an immortal monster change? And he’s most certainly different.

“What was the point of playing with your food before eating it?” I ask, as his warm hands start to slide over my midsection, curving around the swells of my hips.

“What is my food in this analogy? Because I killed that cop quickly.”

“This whole situation. How long have you been watching?” Did he follow me around to the police stations too? Did he sit outside while I slept next to the town drunk.

“I’m always watching you .” His answer is simple and assured, but it’s not possible.

“Are you Santa Claus now?”

A throaty chuckle vibrates against my neck. “I thought I was the devil.” But he doesn’t deny his ridiculous claim.

“Fine, I’m the food in this analogy, then. Why are you playing with me?” His fingers move across my skin.

“If you want me to eat you, Muffin, just ask. I’ve been desperate for a taste.”

His tongue darts out, sliding along my neck, and it’s all I can do not to pant.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“What. Did. You. Mean?” He enunciates each word like my answer is incredibly valuable to him, and I better not get it wrong. My cheeks burn. My heart rate kicks up.

“That ring and note. You’re playing with me.”

“Not in the ways I’d like to.” He briefly cups my breast, but his hands keep moving.

“You’re messing with me.”

“Not in the ways I’d like to,” he says as he twists one of my nipples, and I gasp.

I’m too small beneath his hands, never making it past five foot four, and his touch is making me crazy. His proposal and every damn interaction I’ve ever had with him are pushing me over the edge.

“I get you’re pissed about me trying to kill you for a year. It’s just a fucked-up way to pay me back,” I grit, starting to let my anger show despite my more noble intentions. It’s taking everything in me not to melt into a puddle at his feet, but I’m not giving into him or my own fucked up desires. His entire frame tightens.

“What exactly is a fucked-up way to pay you back?”

“Pretending that I actually have the choice to marry you when the only real option you gave me is payback. You don’t want me.”

Wolf squeezes my sides, and I can’t get over how his hands span nearly my entire waist.

“I don’t?” he asks, and the way he says it challenges my entire worldview.

“Why would you?”

He doesn’t answer, instead asking a question of his own. “Have I ever gone back on an offer I made you?”

I open my mouth to speak, but nothing comes out.

“No, Muffin. You’ve only ever rejected me. You can’t expect a man to stay patient forever.”

That’s obvious with his hands and mouth all over me, the arousal I’m trying so damn hard to ignore.

“You’re not a man. You’re a monster.”

“Is that what you really think even after all this time? Come on, Redley, you’re smarter than that.”

When he uses my real name, it takes my breath away. I can count the number of times I’ve heard him say it on one hand. I've had my own suspicions that my family’s stories about the Wolf might be affected by time, pain, and moonshine because the man I met didn’t match the stories, but when he phrases it that way, all I feel is a deep sense of naivety. I’ve been very, very stupid, and that’s not something I want to face.

“You better kill me now because if you don’t, I’m going to kill you,” I promise him, my ego bruised and shattered along with everything else.

He laughs again, driving in the metaphoric knife. “No, Muffin. It’s been a year, and you're not a bad shot when it comes to anything but me. I think there’s a reason I’m alive.”

“Yeah, and what the hell is that?” I challenge because there’s no damn way he knows the truth.

“You’re grateful I saved you from that old bitch, and you wish you’d have come with me.”