Page 63 of Savage Hunter

He’s already shaking his head. “I’m hearing you, Harmonia, but you have thrown walls up around your heart. You are the one not listening.”

His words sting with the truth. I push out of his arms. “You don’t know what you are talking about.” How do I tell him they have raped me? How do I tell him for three months straight men who didn’t see me as a human being used and abused me? I’m ruined, he just doesn’t want to see it.

His fingers begin a slow glide downward. His fingers curl around neck, locking me in place. My mind locks down and tumbles into the blackness of my memories. The last man who held me down. My body goes cold as the grave.

“Shh. It’s just me. Listen to my voice, baby. Come back to me.” Wolfe’s words penetrate the ice forming around my senses. “Come back to me.”

His lips on my temple are gentle. Caring. Languid circles of his thumb over my pulse point work to thaw my insides.

With trembling lips I whisper, “You see. One wrong move and I turn into this…this…I don’t know what I am. I told you, I’ve changed.”

I snag my lower lip between my teeth and flick the lip ring. “I only feel brave right now because there are people out there that need our help. I will do whatever it takes to get Ghost’s little girl and Persephone’s sister away from the Society.”

Air leaves my lungs in a jagged sigh. His desire-drenched gaze holds mine as he backs up. One step. Two. It feels too far and yet he still stands too close. His body heat brushes over mine with a reassurance I don’t want to admit I need or how much it messes with my senses.

I slide off the countertop. Every light in the house is on so we are sitting ducks in front of the kitchen window. It’s easier to focus on a problem I can fix rather than the ones I can’t. I slide the curtains closed feeling slightly better.

I turn around to find him tracking my every move. The seriousness of his expression is at odds with the burst of light from every light bulb in the place. Shadows still find the areas to cling to that lend a dangerous aura to his presence.

“Let’s just get through this and then see where everything stands. Parts of me died months ago, Wolfe. I don’t know if they will ever surface again.”

“We’ll circle back around, like you say.” He seems resigned to let this conversation die and I let out a ragged sigh of relief.

“Your mother is out there actively hunting you. Are you sure you want to step into the limelight and taunt her?”

Good. A safer topic than my emotions and the shitshow therein.

“Do I really have a choice?”

He pauses and so do I. “Probably not, which pisses me the hell off. I don’t know how the bitch found you. I didn’t even know and I’ve been on the road with Ares for weeks. It’s a question I might give her a chance to answer when I have my gun in her mouth.”

Wolfe rounds the kitchen counter and pulls me back into his arms like he can’t stand the idea of being in the same room with me and not having his hands touching a part of my body.

Right now I don’t have it in me to fight him. I give in, not ready for the onslaught of emotions such gentleness from a savage killer does to my resolve to keep him away.

His chest expands when he takes a deep breath.

His lips move but the explosion going off beyond the kitchen window severs his thoughts.

“Shit!” His arms become rock solid around me as he turns into a human shield. He shifts us around just as the window shatters inward.

Everything fast-forwards and all the talking stops. But not that I stop trying to get answers as he pulls me out of the kitchen and into the livingroom where everyone’s expression matches mine—pure fucking shock.

I run to Nova and help her off her knees where she’s fallen on the ground. “Are you okay? Oh, God, Nova. Are you okay, is the baby okay?” Guilt claws fresh wounds across my heart.

Glass shatters from nearby pictures and dishes falling to the kitchen floor. Doors rattle and the walls shake. “What the hell is going on?” My heart rate hits a triple digit speed in record time.

Wolfe moves us from the kitchen and into the living room.

Plaster cracks up the middle of the living room wall and debris falls to the carpet. Chandeliers rock and any second it feels like the floor will give out from under us.

Wearing a scowl that mirrors Ares and Riot’s, Dragon aims for the front door fully loaded and ready for war.

“Nyet, moy brat!” Ares throws a hand out and grabs him by the shoulder. “Not the front door. They’ll have men with fifty calibers out there.”

“Fuck them. Our men are out there. I’m fast. Before they can lock in on me, I’m already slitting throats and dropping bodies.”

“Trust them to get back to us.”

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