Page 24 of Ruthlessly Mated
She stomps away to the truck and starts going through it for something. I keep a very close eye on her to make sure that she doesn’t get in and drive away. We escaped the port with what we had on us. We have some cash reserves, but that’s it. All the actual supplies we have right now are coming through her. She’s looking after us.
I feel immense gratitude toward this young woman, so I let her go without doing what I’d normally do—grab her by the arm, throw her over my knee, and spank her ass red until she begged me to fuck her.
“Just do it,” Tailor says, coming up beside me.
“Do what? You should be resting.”
“I’m rested,” he says. “You got worse. You’re not even down.”
“I’m okay. He didn’t hurt me that badly.”
“Of course he hurt you badly,” Tailor says.
“Doesn’t matter. I don’t care.”
“Well, anyway. You’re seething because you want to spank her. You need to be in charge of her. Just do it. It will do the both of you a lot of good. She needs it.”
“She already hates me for doing it the first time.”
“Fine. Then I will. We can’t let her talk to us like that. We can’t allow disrespect. Not for someone like her. The second she feels that she isn’t in hand, she’s going to get rowdy.”
“I’m surprised to hear you say that. I thought you’d be telling me to lay off her. She saved your life today, and mine. Damon didn’t need saving, but what’s new there. You and I? We’d be dead if not for her, drained and burned.”
“All the more reason to spank her little ass,” he says. “We need to give her what she needs. She can’t get stuck in the role of protector. She’ll get even more wound up and aggressive if we let that happen. Yes, she saved our lives. Now maybe we save hers, by being her mates, and doing what mates do.”
“There it is!”
She steps down from the truck with a bottle of high-proof ale in her hand, wrenches the stopper with her teeth and necks a good dose of it.
“Cut that out. We need to keep a clear head.”
“You don’t want some?” She offers me the bottle. I’m tempted to take the offer, but I just told her no. I need to be sensible. I need to be in control. I need…
“Stop that!”
She’s taking it on herself to finish the rest of it in one go.
I’m able to convince her not to go all the way to the bottom. She throws the rest of the bottle onto the fire, laughing as it makes a splash that causes a fireball to burst forth. We’ve seen enough of that sort of thing for one day.
“Alright. That is enough of that. Go lie down. You need sleep, not drink.”
“I need what I say I need. I thought there was rabbit to eat.”
“Go sit down, then you get rabbit.”
She looks at me with an attitude fortified with a swift and heady dose of alcohol. “Listen. I’m the only reason any of you are still alive. Except Damon. He seems to be able to keep himself alive. And he’s not trying to boss me around right now, is he? No. The two of you have a lot to learn from…”
She’s cut off when Damon grabs her around the waist and hauls her bodily off to the truck, where he snugs her into the bed at the back of the cab and keeps her there until she stops squirming.
We have a lot to learn from him.
Kita
“I can’t get up,” I complain, knowing that’s the point. Damon doesn’t reply. He never does. But he has his ways of making his wishes known regardless. Right now I am held in place under his arm, pressed belly down against the mattress where Tailor bled previously. It smells like mates and blood, like desire and death. Damon’s own scent is deeply masculine. Not sweaty, but rich.
I like this guy. He barely batted an eye when I drove the truck into the vampire. This situation is cozier than I thought, and the fact that he won’t speak and therefore won’t argue means there’s no point even bothering.
“Let me up, you…”
