Page 7 of The Piece You Stole

Because Aden will have one. I’d hate him for his need to spend a hundred fucking years thinking things through if his plans hadn’t saved mine and Dariel’s life more than once. But it doesn’t stop impatience from raising my hackles even though I’m wearing human skin and not fur.

Aden nods. “We need to think this through.”

Thinking will take time. Time Saige might not have.

Snarling, I back Aden into the wall with my lips peeled back from my teeth. “You saw what they did to her. Do you honestly think they aren’t doing the same? We need to movenow.”

Aden’s expression, calmer now than the panicked mess he was minutes before, doesn’t change. “We can’t rush into this, Kade, not when we might only get one chance to pull her out, so just give me some time, okay?”

I force myself to release Aden and take a step back. We’ve wasted far too much time fighting when the focus should be getting Saige back. The least I can do is listen. “What’s your plan?”

Aden nudges me back a little more and heads down the stairs. “Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“People who drive cars like that don’t live around here.”

“So?” I follow close behind.

Stopping halfway down, he peers over his shoulder. “The city is too big, so we need to make it smaller. It’ll give us better odds of finding her—and quickly—instead of wasting time running all over the city. A concentrated area to work with.That’swhat we need.”

My wolf snarls in anticipation, eager to run free. “And then we hunt.”

Aden doesn’t have a wolf in his head snarling at him to hunt and kill, but the predatory light filling his amber gaze makes me wonder if he hasn’t spent a little too much time with me and Dariel. “Then we hunt.”

CHAPTER 3

SAIGE

Rylan kisses my shivering shoulder, startling me.

I can’t see his face, but I feel his amusement. I guess he has every reason to smile now that everything is as it was before.

This is a good thing,I tell myself. If he’s happy then it means he’s not thinking about going after Kade and Aden for helping me. It means the only one he punishes is me.

Laying your head on a Frette one-thousand-thread count sheet is an experience. One most people will never know because the silken sheets I’m lying on as I stare at the wall of glass in Rylan’s bedroom cost two thousand dollars.

Each.

But comfort isn’t the reason Rylan scrubbed me down with a towel, carried me from the shower, and placed me in his bed. Comfort is the last thing I feel as I huddle into myself and fight back the shivers wracking my body.

Every corner of this apartment carries his scent. None more so than the place he lays his head each night. And the bed, like the sheets, like this apartment and everything in it, including me, belongs to him.

Now, once again, I smell like leather, cedar, and an elusive something else that would tell you someone came from money without them having to say a word. The scents linger on his sheets, overwhelming me. A hated smell to go along with the hated man beside me.

He brushes aside my long dark hair, still damp from my freezing shower, continuing his caress down the center of my back and along my spine. I’m almost positive he’s tracing one of the scars Felix’s whips cut into my skin, but I have so many, I can’t be sure.

“I should thank you for Felix.” His voice, as relaxed as his lazy touch, pours over me like warm syrup. He’s gotten what he wanted, so now he can afford to be tender. At least, his version of it.

He pauses.

Silence has become my sanctuary, my cage, and my prison. I tuck myself in a dark corner of my mind where I don’t have to think about all the ways I hate this life and everything in it.

“He was becoming difficult. You are mine, and he was forgetting that.” His warm fingers stroke over my hips and continue down. And down. My body tenses. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t punish you for it.”

I squeeze my pillow so tight my hands turn white. But I don’t move, and I don’t fight. Just continue to shiver.

“How should I do that, hmm?” His finger strokes me. Not to give me pleasure, but clinically, as if testing my response. “What kind of punishment will teach you a lesson you will never forget?”

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