Page 17 of Ruthlessly Mated (Shared Mates #2)

“I don’t like your inability to understand simple instructions. Don’t open the fucking truck!”

I swing her off her feet, reminding her that she’s not actually in charge. It’s time I dominated this little wretch properly. The first night we were together was not enough. She’s dismissed it as a one-off event and decided she’s in charge.

Posting my leg up on the tail of the truck, I throw her over my knee and yank down her pants. She knows what’s going to happen before it starts.

“Ow! Stop!”

I smirk. I haven’t even started yet and she’s already begging for mercy.

“I’m not going to stop, little girl,” I growl, spanking her bare ass hard.

Her skin starts to flush red, her legs are starting to kick, and I know she’s feeling this.

She’s stoic when she wants to be. Proved that with the silver coin test. But there’s a difference between spanked for bad behavior and just trying to resist reacting to stimulation.

“I’m going to keep spanking you until you understand you’re not in this alone. We are not props on the side of the road of your personal mission to do something incredibly dangerous. I want to know what is in that truck, and you are going to be very sore and very sorry until I do.”

“I don’t care! I’m not telling you!”

“Yes. You. Are.”

I spank her hard. And fast. I make her feet drum with pain as she tries to resist the urge to just give in and submit. I know she can, and she will.

She is getting so red and so sore. I pause, long enough to give her a chance to stop things.

“What’s in the truck, Kita?”

“None of your fucking business.”

My palm is starting to numb out from spanking her, but I’ve set up a situation in which I have to keep going until she breaks. But I already know she’s not going to break.

This is because we have not properly taken her.

We have not taken our wolf forms. She has not taken hers.

We are all playing at being people, but the truth is we are beasts.

At a time like this, that matters. I have the animal urge to clamp down on the back of her neck and shake her for this insolence.

She would feel it, too. Not like she does now, as an outrageous demand, but as an irresistible command.

Trying to claim a she-wolf while never having taken animal form is ridiculous. Tailor is right. We have to get out of here, and we have to be what we are and we have to mutually, communally claim her. All three of us, so she knows who we are, and she knows who she is with us.

I turn to look at Tailor. “We need to get out of this city. Tonight.”

“No,” Kita cuts in, her voice ragged with the effort of resisting the pain. “I can’t move the truck yet. He’ll have caught up. He can’t catch up. He needs to realize that he’s not getting it back.”

“He’s not getting what back?”

“I’m not telling you.”

“We’ll leave the truck behind. You and the rest of us are leaving.

This city is dangerous. The water is poison to us.

We can’t eat. We can’t drink. We won’t survive here.

We’ll have to choose between sickness and starvation.

And they’ll know. So if you can’t tell me what’s in the damn truck, and why we need to keep it, then I’m taking you from it. Nothing is worth our lives.”

“My life is in there.”

Tailor

I’ve been watching this little show for about long enough.

Kita’s strength of will is tremendous. Causing her pain only seems to make her more determined to endure.

It’s a character trait that will bring much strength to our pack over time, but in this moment it is about to cause a significant rift.

I tap Conroy on the shoulder.

“Let me take over.”

Conroy may be an alpha and a disciplinarian, but he’s no interrogator. Our mate deserves a thrashing, but it won’t get her to talk. Not on its own. She needs a little more finesse than that.

“Fine. What are you going to do with her?”

“I’m going to take her back to the apartment,” I say. “And we are going to talk about this tomorrow when we have all had some rest, and something to eat.”

“I thought you were going to handle this,” Conroy says.

“You want me to take over beating her? You want me to ruin her completely? You think she’s not obviously endured much worse than this?”

“How do you know that?”

“Because of how she’s reacting to it. She doesn’t care.

You could hurt her a lot worse than you’re hurting her right now and she wouldn’t act any different, I can practically guarantee it.

If you want to know what’s in the truck, you’re going to have to go about it another way.

Now, we are presumably trying to maintain a low profile, and beating the hell out of a girl in public is not a good way to do that. ”

Conroy hates this approach, but he’s already done his part. She’s physically sore and mentally tender.

Kita pulls her pants up and gives him an annoyed look. “You will never be able to beat anything out of me. Bigger, meaner people than you have tried.”

“I believe you’re a trained pain in the ass,” Conroy growls.

“Let’s get back to the house and talk. All of us. It’s time we really communicated,” I remind them. “There’s no excuse for this level of feral behavior, and it’s time everyone got honest. There’s too much at stake. We’ve lost too much. All of us.”

“I’m not telling you anything,” Kita says predictably.

The two of them bicker all the way back up to the apartment.

Conroy is almost acting as though he doesn’t remember that we lost everything and then almost died to the most terrifying creature in the world less than forty-eight hours ago, but I know that’s not an accident.

Easier to argue with our cute mate than to face all we have lost in very short order.

We get back to the apartment, which makes me feel a lot better. Whatever is in the truck, I don’t want to be near it. My instincts tell me it is the sort of thing we will want to distance ourselves from immediately.

I want to get Kita out of this city as soon as possible, and I want to start taking steps to rebuild our lives sans evil vampire.

The memory of those sadistic eyes burning down at me while every fiber of my being was racked with psychic pain will not leave soon.

Every time I try to sleep, I see the vampire’s face, and I feel his malevolence.

I am not accustomed to staring evil in the face, but I get the sense Kita has done it many, many times before.

She’s not afraid of the vampire the way we are.

She’s managing fear, but not of the kind I experience.

Hers is older, muted by repetition. It’s like the difference between scenting fresh blood and blood that has soaked into the ground and become part of the earth, imparting fertility to what grows in around it.

“You’re lucky he stopped me,” Conroy is saying. “I would have taken my belt off, and…”

“Yeah. Yeah. I know. You would have hurt me. Didn’t you see how good I was with the silver?”

“Quiet about the silver. People might hear you.”

“I don’t care what people do.”

I grab Kita and pull her over to me, grasping her hand in mine. It’s a light attempt to control her, and it works. I think she likes the way it feels to be treated with some level of gentlemanly decorum. It’s a change from being thrown around and beaten, I’m sure.

“Conroy, you’ve been threatening her since you met her, and it has changed precisely nothing. We all need to build trust. Just because nature decided we are mates doesn’t mean we are mentally or emotionally…”

He lets out a loud and frankly immature snore. Fortunately we are almost back to the little apartment, or should I say, tiny den of iniquity. This place reminds me of the port, not in the way it looks, or its location, but the way it feels.

“It’s time to talk,” I remind them both as we all enter.

I wash my hands as soon as I get in. I can feel the silver in the water, but there’s so little it’s barely tickling me. Over time it would weaken us and make us sick, especially if we drank it, but for the moment it’s not really a problem.

Damon taps my shoulder and points to a pot boiling on the stove. There’s a plastic bowl suspended over it, dripping into other bowls. It’s an evaporation station, and it’s genius. Silver-free water for us to drink.

“We would not survive without you,” I tell him. “I could not live without you. Please never let anything happen to you.”

He smiles and inclines his head a fraction, but doesn’t say anything. I’ve never heard him speak. I’ve never found out why he doesn’t speak. He’s just been a solid presence since the port was founded.

“And you’re cooking!”

He’s got an iron skillet on the element with bacon and eggs in it. I’m guessing neither of those things have silver in them. Hard to poison the entire food supply, especially animal products.

Aside from the vicious, raving xenophobia, I quite like Rock City.

I want to go shopping. I’ve already mentally picked out some new clothes, a waistcoat and a white shirt with brown slacks with a pleat down the front.

Very dapper. I’d quite like to take Kita shopping, too.

I saw a dress that would fit her figure very well.

She’s stormed into the single bedroom and closed the door behind her. Conroy has flung his frame into a chair that was clearly not made with such a tall, broad beast of a man in mind.

“I’m going to talk to Kita,” I say. “Can you two give us some time?”

“Yeah. Sure,” Conroy says. I’m not worried about Damon interrupting us, so I go into the bedroom, where I find her rubbing her rear and looking rather tearful and also quite annoyed.

One of these days Conroy will work out how to discipline her effectively.

For the moment he seems to brutalize her into some combination of annoyance and arousal.

“Kita,” I say, crooking my finger at her. “Come and talk to me.”

“Talk?”

“Something closer to talking than what was happening before,” I say. “We’re in hostile territory. We have to get along. We’re all suffering.”