Page 441 of Evil Hearts

“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 leaveever. 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 amnotjoining 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.

Chapter Four

He knelt ather side and inhaled her. He smelled the days and the injuries on her, but underneath was that sweetness and feminine scent had found on her the day he brought her to the cave. He pressed his nose against her thigh gently, a slight touch that she could have thought was a passing bug had she not felt the heat of him.

She was so cold she almost didn’t care that she was being held captive. Her leg ached, and she was honestly amazed that it wasn’t hot with infection. Whatever compress Madoc used was working. She knew he was there, knew he was sniffing her. And she felt the soft thick hair on his arms as he brushed against her.

What the actual fuck? Nora asked herself.He really did have fur!

Of all the things to do to a captive prisoner in the dark this fur-covered man was SNIFFING her.I must reek, she thought, but he didn’t seem to mind. His hand settled between her knees and as he breathed her in, he began sliding upwards, ever so slowly.

“I know you are awake, my Nora,” he whispered, his hand advancing slowly toward her core. She tensed, both in fear and anticipation.

He suddenly reached under her below the swell of her ass and at her shoulders, and scooped her over to the edge of the hammock, and slid in behind her. She cried out in pain.“Sssssshhhh,” he soothed her. “Nothing else has to hurt. I do not want to cause you more pain.”

Madoc reached around and squeezed her pussy through her shorts as his lips nuzzled soft words against her ear. His beard and mustache scruffed against her chilled skin, but the feel of his chest is what froze her. He was covered in hair. And not just soft hair, it was fur soft, like puppy velvet soft. She hadn’t imagined it. Nora didn’t think that she had ever heard of somebody covered with so much hair that it felt like fur.

But with Madoc spooning her, she felt warm for the first time since she’d woken up in the dark, and she knew with absolute certainty that her traitorous body would give in to Madoc. She did not want to, but her body had other ideas. The heat of his breath on her, the heat of him against her, holding her, and the hardness of his cock against her ass felt amazing. But what did her in was the sensation that she was being held by the softest blanket she’d ever felt. It was all too much.

Nora rolled her hips into his and he groaned. She arched her neck, and he wrapped his mouth around her pulse and sucked deeply. One hand massaged her through her pants, and the other reached under her shirt and groped for a nipple.

She did not understand why her body was responding to this man so strongly. The more he touched her, the wetter she got. And all the man was doing was touching and smelling.

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