Page 5 of Taken By The Wolves
“I’m staying at the motel,” I tell him. “The one on the edge of town. My car is there, too.”
He tightens his grip a little, and I’m drawn even closeragainst his chest. The motion makes my breath catch. His heartbeat is slow, steady, and calming.
“You know,” I say, trying to get a handle on the weird energy between us, “if you’re getting tired, I can walk… with help. Rest my arm over your shoulder.”
His jaw ticks like I’ve challenged him. “Do I look like I’m getting tired?”
Wow. Fragile male ego. That didn’t take long. Still, there’s no strain in his steps, no sag in his posture. He carries me like I’m made of down feathers and light.
“No,” I say carefully. “But if you do... You know, just tell me.”
“I won’t.”
That’s it. Two words. Ironclad.
And maybe it’s the way he says them or the way the trees part for him like they’re not foolish enough to get in his way, but I believe him. I think he’ll carry me all the way back to the motel and won’t slow once. I believe he’d run through fire if he needed to. There’s something otherworldly in him. Not only strength, but purpose.
It’s insane to trust a man I just met. But whatever danger stalked me tonight, it isn’t with this man. With Nixon.
The forest is still around us now, but in the quiet hush of leaves and the rustling wind, safety wraps around me like a warm blanket, even if I don’t yet understand why.
“Is there a doctor in town? A hospital?”
“I don’t think you need a doctor for a simple sprain.”
I raise a brow. “And you can tell that by looking at my foot? Through the sock?”
He exhales long and slow, like he’s exercising monk-level patience. Or trying to. “If anything was broken, you’d be crying. You’re not. It’s swollen, yeah, but it needs ice andsomething for inflammation. Nothing serious.”
“Well, thank you, Doctor Forrest-Gump, for your sage medical advice, but I think I’ll get a scan done anyway, in case your backwoods x-ray vision has a glitch.”
“Backwoods x-ray vision?” He blinks, then lets out a deep, rumbling laugh that rolls through his chest and vibrates into mine.
I don’t laugh. I sit in his arms, stiff as a board, because the longer he holds me, the more I realize I’m completely at his mercy. I’ve been attacked, rescued, and now abducted all in the same night, and I still don’t even know if I’m safe. It’s too dark to see much of the path we’re on, but he strides forward without hesitation, feet silent on the forest floor, as if he knows every bend and root by memory. I open my mouth to insist again that he put me down when the trees break open, and we emerge into a clearing.
Encircling a cabin.
A beautifully built one, with handcrafted joints, timber that looks older than Croesus, perfect angles and proportions. But the second realization comes with a cold rush.
This isn’t the motel. We’re not in town.
My stomach lurches as panic punches the air from my lungs. I struggle, but he clutches me tighter.
He didn’t take me to help. He didn’t take me toward people. He took me to a secluded house in the woods, and I still don’t know who he is or what he wants.
I squirm in his arms, instinct kicking hard. “Let me go,” I say, struggling against his hold.
His grip tightens, iron-hard and unyielding. His jaw clenches, and that calm mask cracks. “You’re not walking anywhere on that ankle. You won’t get far.”
“I don’t care,” I snap. “Take me back to the motel. I’ll crawl if I have to.”
“You don’t need to be scared of me.”
But I am.
Because no woman should ever be carried away into the woods by a stranger, no matter how square his jaw or how perfect his beard or how impossibly chiseled his chest might be beneath that flannel. No matter how heroically he saved her. Nixon is a man who doesn’t bend or break. That much is obvious.
“You can rest here,” he says. “I’m going to take a look at that ankle and see what we can do to make it better.”
