Page 224 of Evil Hearts

Chapter Three

W hen Nora woke again, she wasn’t panicked, but she was definitely scared. The cool, damp smell reminded her that she was in a cave. The sway of her body reminded her of the hammock. She knew she was in the far eastern part of North Carolina, being cared for by a man with a strange accent. In a cave .

That was the part that scared her the most. Why did this man live in a cave? And besides the why, how in the hell did he survive here? How was she ever going to get out? What if she couldn’t get out? Would she starve? The faster the questions came, the faster her heart beat, the faster her breathing got.

“Nora,” the deep voice whispered, almost touching her left ear. She nearly jumped out of her skin, the shriek echoing around them. “Quiet now. Just breathe. You are as safe as you can be with me. I will not hurt you unless you try to run.” He shifted his position, and the breath on the pulse of her neck was the first warm thing she’d felt since waking in the cave.

“Why can’t I leave?” Her voice matched his whisper.

“Your leg is broken. It will take weeks to heal.”

Despite the pain and the impossibility of her situation, Nora snorted. “No shit. But you make it sound like I can’t leave ever . Why can’t you take me back up to the road?”

“You can’t leave,” he said with quiet determination. “You are mine. I found you and you are mine.”

If Nora had been chilled before, she was downright cold now. “But I’m not yours. That’s not how people do things.”

Madoc chuckled, a deep bass that settled low in Nora’s belly. She’d always been a sucker for a deep voice, but dammit, this was not the time for that! Bad lady bits! Bad!

He continued, “This is how my people live. Because you know of us, you can never leave. There are so few of us that when we find a person, a woman, we keep her. She becomes our mate, our other side, and we are joined.” His large warm hands were on her shoulders now, fingers gently caressing the soft spots below the shoulders. “You will join with me Nora,” his soft low voice thrummed in her ear. “You will be mine and join with me.”

Nora struggled to sit up, but the combination of the hammock she was in and his suddenly firm grip held her in place. “Nora, you cannot walk on your leg and you will not leave. You. Are. Mine.”

She tried to pry his hands off her shoulders only to find that he gripped harder. Her leg screamed in protest, and the rest of her body was alive with pain and terror as she struggled against him.

“Let me go!” she yelled. She tried to fight him, but the next thing she knew, he was straddling her over the hammock, his large thighs pinning her in place. Still, she tried slapping at him, only for him to capture her hands and hold them to the top of the hammock.

His other hand wrapped around her throat and began to squeeze. “Nora, do not yell and cry for help. The people in this cave will not help you.” Tears welled up in her eyes as she fought to breathe, fought to escape his strong hands and powerful thighs. “They will listen to your screams and wait for your throat to grow hoarse and quiet. You will find no help from them.”

Her leg shrieked in protest and her awareness began to fade around the edges as his fingers pressed in and his voice calmly continued. “You may struggle if you wish, but the end will be the same. You are mine, and we will join.”

He let go of her neck and she drew in a ragged breath. His finger traced her eyebrow, while his thumb slid gently under her eye, along her cheekbone. His thumb and finger had barely lifted as his other fingers slid up and over the top of her ear and around to the back of her head. “Please, my Nora,” he whispered. “Cease your struggling. Finding you has let free my deepest desires and darkest dreams. Our joining will not just be pleasure for me—it can be for you as well.”

“No,” Nora said as she wriggled and squirmed underneath him. “I am not joining with you, or whatever you call it!” Madoc locked his thighs tighter, and Nora knew her efforts to escape had turned him on because the evidence of his heavy erection rested on her belly button… and all the way up to the bottom of her sternum. Holy shit. The man was huge.

“You will. But not yet. Now you must eat and drink and then rest again. You cannot leave. You would get lost in the caves.” He climbed off her and let her hands go. She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. He dropped a small fabric sack and a metal canteen into the hammock next to her. “Eat. I will return soon.” With a soft whish of air, he was gone.

Like a damn ninja, Nora thought, as she was left with the food and drink the strange man had dropped next to her.

Madoc waited only a few feet away, listening to her wriggle and struggle against the pain of her leg and the instability of the hammock. She was strong, this woman. She would be good for him and his people, if he could break her connection to the outside world without breaking her. He knew it was hard for the found women to adjust to their lives, and some did it better than others. Some lived as not much more than captives and slaves, while others rose to the challenge and found not just acceptance but comfort and companionship among his people. He hoped Nora would be the latter.

Nora, on the other hand, had just realized something. The man who had just held her down might not be a man at all. He had soft fur on his arms: short and soft, but definitely fur.