by Ellie J Duck
“How would I know, Hilton?” I demand, wriggling again in the hopes that he’ll miss any signs of lying if they slip through.
“Well it’s your scent… or what you used to smell like anyway…” he says before he buries his nose in my hair and sniffs loud enough for me to hear. “You’ve smelt different since that night and I want to know why! Why do I have your scent all over my room? Why have you switched up the clothes you wear? Why can’t I remember anything that I did for almost twelve hours? Why is there blood on my sheets that isn’t mine? And why the fuck did I wake up feeling like I’d been hit by a truck?”
By the time he stops demanding answers he is almost shouting and his grip on me is tight enough that I suspect I’ll have a bruise in the shape of his forearm across my ribs tomorrow. I sigh, at least it will hide the finger-shaped bruises on my ribs. I have no idea why it is that I was able to heal from being slashed by Tara within a few hours but three days after a wild night of debauchery with Hilton I’ve still got his fingerprints and his teeth marks all over me.
“Well?” he demands when I don’t answer him.
“What answer are you looking for here, Hilton?” I ask him. “What exactly do you want to hear? Because the way I see it, I was lured away from the team against my will by a vampire who fed on my blood and then kissed me against my will. I had no control over my own body, so I couldn’t even shoot the tosser in the face and you’re running around whining because you can’t remember what you did for a few hours? Did you consider that maybe there’s a reason you don’t remember? That maybe you’re better off not knowing what you were doing?”
“I knew you were hiding something!” he snarls, sounding angry now.
“Of course, I’m fucking hiding something. You and I barely know each other. I’m not just going to gab to you about all the secrets locked inside my mind. You don’t even like me, why would I share anything with you?” I retort, trying to act like this is all something he’s blowing out of proportion whilst desperately shoveling as much dirt as possible over the truth to keep him from ever learning we’ve had sex.
“What did I do?” he shouts in my ear, clutching me impossibly tighter and lifting me right off my feet in his frustration.
“How would I know?” I shout back at him, lifting my legs up to overbalance him so he’ll let me go. I don’t know which one of us is more surprised when his breath catches before he drops me, causing me to curse foully as I fall in a crouch to the ground at his feet, cutting my foot on a stick in the process. Before I can stand on my own, he steps around in front of me and seizes my shoulders, lifting me again until I’m upright while I try not to wince at the way his tight grip covers the exact spot I already had his hand prints bruised into my biceps.
“What are these?” he demands, and I blanch when he releases my arms and squats in front of me, lifting the hem of my jersey a little and revealing the many bruises that litter my thighs, all of them shaped like his fingers.
“What are what?” I demand, stepping back from him despite the way it hurts my cut foot and tugging on the hem of the jersey, trying in vain to cover the marks.
“Cane,” he warns as he moves closer again and his hand shoots out to catch the back of my right knee, holding me in place while he lifts his free hand to my thigh, fitting his fingers over the five bruises on one patch of my upper thigh. As he does, I can see the scene in my mind of me on top of him, my hands pressed against his chest for balance, my body moving up and down on his while he urged me on.
He tips his head back to look up at me slowly and his copper eyes begin to glow orange in the dark forest.
“Tell me I didn’t do this?” he says, his voice low and dangerous now.
“You did,” I reply evenly, “probably when you shoved me into the car via the driver-side door because you didn’t trust that I wouldn’t be snatched out of the passenger side in the time it took you to get around the car.”
“Are you lying to me?” he demands, and I flinch at the caress when his hand on the back of my knee slides up to cover the matching bruises on my right thigh too.
“Why would I lie to you?” I ask, hoping to hell that I sound droll and condescending.
“That’s a very good question,” he says, his voice lowering further, almost a whisper as he looks away from my face to the rest of the marks on my legs that he can see. “I suppose you’ve got an explanation about the fact that your blood and your scent are on my sheets too?”
“Considering your tendency to manhandle me, you probably got some of my blood on you during the drive back here. And that would also explain my scent. If you didn’t shower before you fell into bed, it makes sense that you and subsequently your sheets, would smell like me given that you practically made me sit in your lap on the drive back to base like some paranoid guard dog,” I lie hurriedly, hoping to hell these things sound legitimate and not as fake and false as they feel rolling off my tongue.
“Are you bleeding?” he asks suddenly, his nose twitching and his hands sliding down my legs to my foot, which he lifts.
“Yeah, jackass, while you’re standing here grilling me with questions I’m bleeding and it’s all your fault! Now if you’re done with the inquisition, I’m going inside before I freeze,” I tell him, snatching my injured foot away from him and turning away, in what I hope is the direction of the base.
“That’s the wrong way,” he says after a moment and my heart skips a beat when he reaches out and takes hold of my upper arm, tugging me back toward him. He lets go of me just as quickly and turns his back to me.
“Well, are you going to lead the way or just stand there?” I ask when he doesn’t move.
“Get on,” he tells me, his voice so soft I almost don’t hear him before realizing he means to give me a piggy-back to the base.
“Seriously?” I ask, shocked.
“Just do it, Anna,” he mutters and I almost keel over in shock to hear him use my first name. I don’t think he ever has before. At least not whilst operating under his own free will. Rather than commenting and risking him telling me to walk back on my own with my sore foot, I do as he instructs, placing my hands on the tops of his shoulders and stepping closer, jumping up and wrapping my legs around his hips. I try not to tremble when his warm, rough hands slide under the backs of my thighs to hold me in place while I wrap my arms around his neck and peer over his shoulder.
The feel of him between my legs, even like this, is enough to send my mind into overdrive with all the memories of what we did. The memories he doesn’t even have. I bite my lip, trying to let it go, wondering if he bought my lies or if he’s simply choosing to pretend I’m telling the truth so neither of us must deal with the awkwardness of the truth.
“How the hell did you sleep-walk all the way out here?” he grumbles a little while later, and I wonder vaguely how he knows where he’s going.
“I don’t know. You never answered my question….” I say, tilting my head back and looking up at the almost-full moon once more, catching glimpses of it through the trees.
“You didn’t answer all of mine,” he replies. “But which one?”
“Why did you follow me?”
He doesn’t answer for a little while and I almost give up on getting that response out of him.
“At first, I thought you’d heard a Shifter again, not one of the team, but another one. Though how you heard the first group when the rest of us didn’t, is a mystery…. But when I noticed how little you’re wearing I thought maybe you were just taking a midnight stroll. I was going to follow you and demand answers out of earshot of the team. Then I realized you were sleep-walking. You were muttering to yourself and when you came into my cage, I figured it wouldn’t be right to let you wander off into the woods on your own. Especially dressed in so little,” he explains slowly.
“Why didn’t you just wake me up?” I ask with a frown.
“Waking up people who are sleep-walking is dangerous,” he answers. “It’s like trying to wake a Shifter b
y sneaking up on them and touching them.”
“So, you just let me wander further and further into the woods?”
“I followed you, didn’t I?” he asks defensively when he catches my accusatory tone. “You kept looking up at the moon.”
“It’s pretty,” I murmur, looking at it again as we cross a clearing.
“You’re still shivering,” he comments. “And your heart is racing… are you afraid of me?”
There is a tone in his voice as he asks it, and I realize suddenly that he is thinking something awful. Something involving the reason I have finger-shaped bruises all over me and his sheets smelling like me.
“I know what you’re thinking, Tobias,” I tell him, “and you can just stop thinking it. I’m not afraid of you.”
“Why don’t I remember?” he asks, but I suspect he is talking to himself more than to me.
“Did you miss the part where I suggested that maybe Novikov compelled you to do something?” I ask him quietly as I see the base loom up out of the darkness in the distance.
“But what?” he asks.
Rather than risking suggesting anything to further incriminate myself, I keep my mouth shut and pretend the two of us have never done anything any more intimate than what we’re doing right now.
“Do you hear that?” I ask him suddenly, my ears twitching toward a sound away toward the gates of the base as we draw close to it.
Hilton stops midstride, tilting his head to listen.
“Hear what?” he asks, sounding uneasy and I wriggle to be let down from his back, although he ignores my attempts.
“I can hear something… kind of like footfalls and heavy breathing, but also like a scraping sort of sound,” I tell him, wondering why he can’t hear it when my inferior human hearing is picking it up.
“Are you delirious?” he asks me seriously and I shake my head in annoyance.
“No. I can hear something moving beyond the gate,” I reply.
“I don’t hear anything….” he tells me, and I sigh, wondering if maybe I’m imagining it after all.
“It’s probably nothing,” I mutter, my eyes straining against the blackness of the night to try and see something and coming up with nothing. I can barely see ten feet in front of us, let alone all the way across the base to the gates. When we reach the base, Tobias carries me inside and stops in the kitchen where he puts me down, waving me onto the island bench while he fetches the first aid kit.
“I can do it,” I tell him, trying to take the bottle of saline from him when he squirts it into the cut on my foot, washing out the dirt and making me wince.
“Just shut up and let me,” he tells me, eyeing me for a moment.
“Is this your version of an apology?” I ask him, understanding suddenly why he’s being so helpful.
“The team keep losing their heads at me about you, so I am making sure you don’t go to bed with a cut on your foot that will no doubt get infected without attention. Otherwise, I’ll have to hear about it from Greg, and Brody will try to hit me again. And you don’t want to know what Tara and Mitch did to me after you passed out from running yourself to death,” he tells me, rolling his eyes.
“What did they do?”
“Waited until we were all shifted for the day, where Tara proceeded to tackle me and pin me down and Mitch sat his big lion ass on my head for almost a full hour, roaring like the idiot feline he is,” Tobias grumbles like the grumpy wolf he is.
I can’t help but laugh at that.
“How many of these do you have?” he asks me, suddenly changing the subject as he puts down my foot for a moment and pokes at another set of bruises on my legs, these ones high up on the outer edge of my thighs and curling toward my ass.
“Leave it alone, Hilton,” I warn him.
“Did I do that?” he asks me, gripping my knee and yanking it sideways, practically revealing my pantie-covered ass to his gaze.
“No,” I hiss, shoving him away and pulling my jersey down before he can see any more of the marks he left on me. His eyes lift to my face.
“Did he?” he growls, referring to Novikov, those eyes of his flashing in warning. I realize suddenly that while he might not be that fond of the fact that I’ve got the hots for him, he doesn’t hate me and doesn’t like the idea of anyone laying a hand on me when they shouldn’t.
“No, it wasn’t him either,” I answer seriously, not blinking at him. “Just leave it alone.”
“You said he compelled you to do something…?” he asks, and I can see that he is now imagining the very worst scenario.
“If only I remembered what it was,” I say, feigning total ignorance.
“You might be able to keep from expressing the noticeable signs of lying we’re used to picking up on, little human, but you’re not infallible. I know you’re lying,” he accuses, going back to patching up my foot, smearing antiseptic cream on the cut before sticking a bandage over it so I won’t get blood everywhere if it keeps leaking.
“Why do you insist on calling me that?” I ask him, trying to steer him away from this topic.
“Little human?” he asks, and I see the hint of a smirk on his lips before he turns away to Pack up the first aid kit and then put on a pot of coffee.
“Yes, that. Why do you call me that?” I ask him, rubbing absently at the mark on my neck.
“Well, you’re little,” he says, “and a human.”
“Points for creativity,” I tell him sarcastically. I jump in surprise when he suddenly spins and bounds across the kitchen toward me, seizing my hand where I’m still rubbing the mark on my shoulder.
“Why do you keep doing that?” he asks. “You kept rubbing this spot while you were sleep walking and muttering to yourself too…. What are you hiding?”
I kick out at him before he can pull the neck of my jersey aside to reveal the bite marks he left on me, my injured foot colliding solidly with his chest and making a dull thud.
“Ow!” he snarls, still clutching my hand and almost dragging me off the bench when he stumbles back.
“Stop touching me!” I hiss, trying to shake him off and failing miserably when he yanks hard on my arm, toppling me off the bench and right into him. I wriggle immediately when he wraps his arm around my waist to hold me to him, while his other hand claws at the neckline of my jersey. Unable to stop him with my arms pinned, I do the only thing I can think of, I tilt my head until it’s resting on my own shoulder, effectively covering the mark, and then for good measure I bite his pectoral muscle through his shirt.
“You’re such a little savage!” he growls, clearly annoyed by the bite, especially since I don’t let go and refuse to let him see the mark he left on me. “What are you hiding so desperately?”
“None of your business!” I snarl right back. “Now stop manhandling me and get the hell off!”
For good measure I claw at his lower back, making sure to burrow my hands under the hem of his shirt so that I am clawing at his skin.
“Don’t do that,” he says in a tight voice, still trying to wrestle me around so he can see my shoulder.
“Then stop trying to see down my shirt,” I retort, clawing even harder, bringing the other arm up despite his grip on me and clawing at him with that hand too. He fights me harder now that I’m no longer biting him, and I claw him viscously, digging my nails into his skin and raking them over his lower back.
“Don’t,” he says, his body rigid against mine and his voice low and husky.
“Let me go if you want me to stop,” I command, scratching even harder.
I almost swallow my own tongue in surprise when his arm around my waist tightens, pulling me tighter against him even as the hand he was using to tug at my neckline slides under my cheek and lifts my head before he plants his lips on mine. Memories batter me as his lips move against mine, his tongue sweeping into my mouth and stroking tantalizingly. The whimper of pleasure that escapes my throat is embarrassing, but I feel a little better when I realize he is making a strange
rumbly sound inside his chest that I recall from our lovemaking means he’s enjoying himself. Heat engulfs me, and I subconsciously dig my nails into his lower back even harder, pulling myself closer to his hard body, unable to resist him even if I have no idea why he is suddenly kissing me.
When he pulls back, we are both breathing hard and he snatches my hands out of the back of his shirt, shoving them back toward me even as he glares at me, his eyes so bright they are fully lupine. I stare at him in bewilderment, uncertain of what just happened and why he just kissed me without being compelled to.
“I told you not to,” he growls.
“What?” I ask, so confused that I feel a little dizzy. My whole body feels like it’s on fire and my heart is pounding so loud it’s a wonder the rest of the team haven’t woken up. He doesn’t say it again, he just keeps glaring at me and I admire how sexy he looks when his lips are red and swollen from kissing me.
“You just….” I begin, acknowledging that he did just kiss me and that this isn’t some new vivid and wild dream I’m having about him.
“You dug you nails into my….” he begins at the same time before he stops and growls again as though I frustrate him.
“Into your what?” I ask, frowning now and totally confused, “Your lower back?”
I raise my eyebrows when he points to himself and says, “Canine.”
“This is some weird werewolf thing?” I ask, shocked now. “You just kissed me because of some werewolf thing?”
His nod is sharp and his growl of annoyance a little scary.
“Wait a minute….” I say slowly, wondering how that could possibly be the case before an idea strikes me. “Did I just find your happy spot?”
I feel a smirk of amusement and triumph creep across my face when his face darkens. I found his canine happy spot, and practically just received the equivalent of finding that special spot on a dog and scratching it. The one that usually results in them kicking their leg like crazy. I start to giggle just a little bit with what I suspect might be delirium to know that werewolves have a happy spot.
