Page 25 of Running on Empty

The wolf came alert, her muscles rigid as she readied herself to fight or flee: she would do anything to protect us both. But there were no enemies in the room, just my memories of them. “Fuck, Stevie…” Ronan’s voice filtered through my panic. But to allow myself to open up enough to hear what he was saying, I had to let the others through. And when I did, their voices layered over and over until I couldn’t understand anything except an overwhelming, visceral response rising up inside me.

I was about to be sick.

I pulled my head away just before Ronan kissed me, staggering off the bed and into the adjoining ensuite, my knees slamming down on the tiles as I shoved the toilet lid up. My stomach lurched, my whole body stiffening as out it came. Not the memories, not the pain, just the food I’d so enjoyed not that long before. A hand went to my hair—

—jerked back until my spine ached, every strand pulled as—

The wolf snarled then, full of a terrible anger, driving out the memories with a ferocious growl, her jaws snapping at the air as if to ward every memory off. She stood guard over me, a powerful presence that wouldn’t allow me to suffer anymore.

Ronan balled up my hair until it was out of my face as I vomited and vomited. He slid his hand up and down my spine as he soothed me through the freaking gross experience with soft words. I kept going, dry-retching, still trying to throw up food that wasn’t there. I’d already felt sore from the way they had treated my body, but now I was suffering just from the thought of them. When the muscle spasms eased off, I fumbled my hand up to push the flush button and then I slumped forward. As soon as I did, he bent down and scooped me up, holding me tight, close to his chest as he dropped his head to rest against mine.

“Too soon,” he hissed to himself. “Too fast.” When Ronan lifted his head again, the green in his eyes was starting to fade to hazel. He searched my face. “Fuck, Stevie—”

When I reached up and pressed my fingers to his lips, he went quiet and something inside me did as well. Not totally: I could still feel the restless pacing of my wolf. But being held so close, touching him as I hadn’t done before? There was something healing in this connection between us, and I needed to let him know how I felt.

“Not too fast,” I said. “Only you would think fifteen years wasn’t long enough to wait, but I’m telling you I’m done waiting. ‘Take me to bed or lose me forever’.”

He grinned at the line fromTop Gun,because the two of us had watched it together so many times we could pretty much recite every word. Then his face became serious again and he nodded, just the once.

“I’m never going to lose you,” he vowed, the rumble of his wolf in his voice. “I can’t. You’re mine, my mate, the only woman I’m ever going to want and Ican’tlet you go.”

“Not even to let me brush my teeth?” I grinned then, and finally I felt like I was back inside my head, back to being me again. “Because… vomit breath.”

He carefully lowered me down in front of the bathroom sink, and keeping one hand on my hip, grabbing a new toothbrush out of the drawer for me. Even then, he didn’t pull away. As I stared into the mirror, ostensibly focusing on cleaning my teeth, my eyes roamed over the image of the two of us together. Him: tall, hard, muscular. Me: smaller, softer and, for the moment, bruised like an overripe piece of fruit. I forced my eyes away from those temporary marks and my mind away from any thoughts of the men who’d put them there. Instead, I leaned forward and rinsed my mouth out, then turned around to stare at the mark he’d put on himself.

“So are we going to talk about what made you cut yourself?” I asked, reaching up towards his chest. Instead of letting me touch him, he took my hand in his. My eyes slid down to the neat rows of whisker-thin scars around his waist.

“Are we going to talk about these?” he said, hovering his thumb over a bruise near my collarbone.

I looked back up at him. He stared down at me while I just waited him out. Finally he let out a sigh and, still holding my hand, drew me back into the bedroom to lie next to him on his bed. Gathering me close, he pressed a kiss to the top of my head then he took my hand and ran them across the line of small scars.

“It’s not self-harm.”

“It’s not? Because it looks—”

“I don’t hate myself when I do it. I… like it.” I pulled away slightly, but only so I could sit up to focus better on him and what he was saying. I grabbed his hand in both of mine and nodded for him to continue. His eyes flickered, the green becoming brighter. “There’s something in me that craves it for more than the endorphins and adrenaline.” His fangs flashed as he grinned, his eyes taking on the same devil-may-care gleam of the boy who used to taunt the rest of us into performing dangerous feats. “Something that likes a knife in my hand, the heft of it. That gets hard at the slice of a blade through flesh, that feels the pain like pleasure.”

It felt like time froze right then. I couldn’t take a breath. My heart pumped harder; my pulse raced as my own adrenaline coursed through me at a thought I didn’t want to articulate.

But I had to.

“Are you…?”

Was this the reason they’d all held back? Had they been trying to protect me from—? I pushed myself to ask the question.

“Are you going to want to do that to me?”

Understanding dawned quickly in his eyes and he reared up, pulling me back down to the bed then pinning me beneath him, his arms bracketing me on either side. My wolf paced nervously. He was my mate but now she was waiting to see whether he was also a potential threat. She didn’t know how to handle that.

And neither did I.

“No.” He said it with absolute certainty. “No. And you’renevergoing to ask me to do that to you.”

“But—”

“Not you, Stevie.” I went still, my eyes widening as my mind began to draw an image of him leaning over another woman, a blade in his hand. He ground the words out. “No. Not anyone else. But absolutelyneveryou. It’s… me.” His head dropped down for a moment, then he raised his eyes to look intently into mine. “I’m the one that likes the cut of the blade. Me.”

“Show me—”

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