The pillow missed. Badly. It fell about five feet short, and two feet wide from where he was standing.
Maddox frowned.
It was one thing to know that she didn’t remember him. It was another entirely to have Evangeline act as if she was as much a stranger to him as he was to her when it was just the two of them alone together.
The words were out before he could think better of it.
“Your name is Evangeline Lewis.” Wolfe, he added to himself. She wasn’t ready to hear that yet; still, that didn’t make it any less true. “You’re twenty-seven years old. Your favorite color is orange. You love it when it rains because you think it’s God’s way of crying and that means it’s okay to be sad sometimes.”
Her mouth fell open. Evangeline blinked, then shook her head as if that was enough to get him to shut up.
“You’re addicted to caffeine. You get this fancy frou frou drink, always iced, even in the winter. Almond milk, too, not because you have a problem with real milk, but because you’re convinced it makes your drink taste a bit nuttier.”
“Stop it—”
Maddox couldn’t.
“Your mother is Naomi. Your father is Paul. They never liked me. If they knew you were here… if they had any idea I had you, all hell would break loose. It’s one of the reasons I had to do it this way. I’m sorry, but I had no choice. You’ll see. One day, you’ll understand why it had to be this way.”
For both of their sakes, Maddox hoped it was sooner than later.
Evangeline’s mouth hung open, gawking up at him. No fear. No shield. Just pure shock.
“Who… who are you?”
“My name is Maddox. And I know everything there is about you.”
“How? How…” Evangeline shook her head. Her hands were shaking. Quickly, she shoved them under the sheet. Too late. Maddox picked up on the reaction. “The coffee shop… you really did set me up. Me. You picked me out on purpose, didn’t you?”
“Angie—”
“How long have you been watching me?”
“It’s not like that.”
“Then how is it? You drugged me. You brought me here, wherever here is. I met you, what? Like five days ago? But you seem to know so much about me, I bet you could tell me the name of the hamster I had when I was twelve.”
“Rupert the Survivor,” Maddox said. The answer just popped out. “He had no teeth and you fed him birdseed that he managed to gum down, piece by piece. He lived for close to four years, even after he went blind in one eye. You cried so hard when he died that you swore you would never have another pet again.”
He always thought that Evangeline’s irrational phobia about loving another pet was ironic. There she was, swearing she’d never get attached to another animal, and what happened? Fate decided she was the mate of a wolf shifter. In one fell swoop, she got a husband in Maddox and the most devoted pet ever in his beast.
Maddox didn’t know what it was that did it. She stared him down within seconds of taking stock of her situation. When her temper got the better of her, she lashed out, even though she had no idea that she had nothing to fear from Maddox. She tried to manipulate him into thinking she was harmless, even unaffected beyond an icy shield.
But showing her just how much he remembered about her, about his mate… that did it. Tears filled her eyes, making the green go glassy. She gulped and, for the first time since she discovered him in the room, Evangeline looked away.
“Get out.” She curled up on the bed, her legs tucked protectively under her as she turned away from him. “Turn the lock, I don’t care. Keep me prisoner. Just go.”
He sucked in a breath. He got another taste of her scent. Even that wasn’t enough to make the guilt subside.
Maddox never expected to break her. What happened during the last three years? The fire and the venom and the anger, that was okay. He’d been expecting that. But this?
What the fuck had he done?
Nothing that he wouldn’t have done if given a second chance to do it all over again.
She didn’t understand. She didn’t know.
Maybe—
Maybe it was time he told her.
“Evangeline?”
“What do you want from me?” Her voice was throaty. Raw. If she wasn’t sobbing yet, she would be soon.
That broke his heart and hardened his resolve. “I want you to look at me. I want you to see me.”
“I—”
He removed his sunglasses.
She gasped.
He knew what she saw. Golden eyes. Hints of amber rolling across his pupils.
Shifter eyes.
“I’ll be just on the other side of the door,” he reminded her. “When you’re ready to talk… when you’re ready to listen… to remember, you let me know. I’m not going anywhere, either.”
The big bastard made his escape so fast, Evangeline barely had enough time to process what she was seeing before he was gone. She had no doubt that he made good on his promise to lock her in the room. She had to check anyway.
A quick tug assured her that she was still trapped.
Golden eyes. She didn’t think a pair of peepers like that actually existed in this world.
Not the real world, at least. In her dreams, the man who haunted her—who loved her—had a pair of eyes like that. But he was a dream, a fantasy. The big shifter who kidnapped her was a monster, and not only because he was a paranormal.
Para or human, nothing gave him the right to do what he did.
He… he stole her. At least, now that she knew he was a Para, it made the tiniest bit more sense. Everyone heard stories about a friend of a friend who got involved with the paranormal races. Picking a woman off of the street—or out of a bustling coffee shop— just because they had the urge to seemed like something a shifter would do.
In the back of her mind, Evangeline felt a niggling panic about what that could mean. It was easy to drown it out. The panic that she was trapped with a dangerous man whose inner beast made him even more formidable? Yeah, she was definitely focusing on that one.
She lifted her hand, gnawed nervously on her thumbnail. It wasn’t just his size and his dark aura that she had to worry about now. A human woman was no match for a shifter, no matter what kind of animal he shifted into. Heightened senses, increased speed, crazy fast healing… those were just the perks she knew about. This guy… this Maddox… he already had the upper hand simply because of what he was. Throw in the terrifying fact that he knew so much about her and had managed to separate her from anyone who could have helped her…
It was going to be up to Evangeline to help herself.
She couldn’t stay. That was out of the question. He promised her answers, but he could shove those answers up his furry ass for all she cared. He might think he had a good reason to steal her away from her home. Fine. She could learn all about it when he went on trial.
First, she had to get the hell out of there.
Evangeline searched the room again. Every inch of it. There were two doors: the locked exit and an empty closet. Three windows. Wary of how he could probably hear every step she made, she tiptoed over to the two small windows on the far side of the room.
Shit. Locked.
Okay. Fine. There was still one more.
She gripped the edge lightly, her heart in her throat. It eased up gently with barely a whisper.
Yes!
Once she’d opened the window, Evangeline poked her head out. A warm breeze caressed her face, her hair flying all around her. It carried the scent of a forest with it, a mix of dirt and moisture and wood. A rich cotton candy sky peeked through the rare gaps between branches and towering trees. It was sunset.
Evangeline blinked. What time was it? It had been barely afternoon when she set out of Mugs for her apartment. So she’d lost hours while she slept, if not longer than that.
Great.
She immediately reached for her pocket, searching for her phone. It surprised her that she hadn’t thou
ght to look for it before; probably because, deep down, she knew her captor wouldn’t have been so stupid to leave her a way to call for help. Grabbing it if only to check the time? It was a habit.
And she was crushed all over again to realize that he left her with nothing.
No phone. No purse. No wallet. No keys.
Evangeline let out a soft sound that was a mixture of a laugh and a sob. At least he didn’t strip her of her shoes.
She was going to need them.
Poking her head out of the window again, she took a deep breath and looked down. A bed of crisp green grass was below. One problem, though: it wasn’t directly below. About fifteen feet kept her from the ground.
He’d stowed her in a room on the second floor.
Of course he did.
It wasn’t going to be so easy to get away from him as that. No wonder he felt confident enough to leave one of the windows unlocked. The shifter thought he knew everything about her. He never would guess that she’d risk a broken leg rather than stay with him.
Gritting her teeth, Evangeline was going to prove him wrong.
She was tall, but she was slender. Without a screen, it was only a matter of a couple of minutes where she maneuvered her body so that she was perched on the ledge of the window. She didn’t believe him when he said that he was going to leave her alone. Sooner or later, he was going to check on her. There was no time to waste.
She had no idea where she was. Help could be just on the other side of the trees, or she could be swallowed up in the shadows within minutes, forever lost.
Evangeline glanced down, swallowing back her nerves.
It was a pretty big drop. No way she was going to make it without hurting something.
She started to second-guess herself. Would it be so bad to see what it was he wanted? He… he had seemed so nice, so kind, whenever she met him at Mugs. Except for the time she was afraid he had followed her home, she’d never felt any fear or trepidation in his presence. She knew better now. If he’d been watching her long enough to know every last detail about her, no doubt he had followed her home. Even so, she still couldn’t shake the feeling that he was harmless.
And that was fucking insane.
He kidnapped her. She didn’t honestly believe he was so hard up for a dinner date that he had to abduct one. As intimidating as he was, as terrifying as this situation was, Evangeline would be lying if she said that the spark of attraction between her and her captor had been snuffed by his actions.
That scared her more than free-falling out of a second-story window.
Golden eyes. This Maddox had golden eyes.
One part of her wanted to stay. That was even crazier than anything else. One small part of her, the part she tucked away, the part that was too painful to live with following her accident… it wanted her to stay. It wanted to hear what he had to say, and it wanted to drown in those familiar golden eyes.
Good thing it was easy for the rest of Evangeline to drown out that voice, too. Dealing with a hole in her memory made it easy for her to compartmentalize. She’d unpack all her baggage way later on.
Now?
It was time to go.
Evangeline braced herself on the ledge. As impossible as it was, she tried to relax. If she hit the ground hard while her body was all tensed and tight, the risk of hurting herself was even higher.
“It’s going to be okay,” she whispered to herself. “I’m gonna be fine.”
Then, once she was as ready as she was going to get, Evangeline lowered herself along the rough siding of the rustic cabin. It was smart to get as low to the ground as possible instead of jumping straight out. She twisted her body as she slowly dropped, hand over hand until she was facing the cabin, her arms extended.
The fifteen-foot drop was less than ten now. Hopefully the grass would be enough to break her fall without breaking any part of her.
Right before she let go, she closed her eyes and fervently wished for wings.
17
This was going to have to be the fastest shower of his life.
If he could have avoided it, he would have. Nope. It was necessary. Torn between wanting to lick the salty tears from her cheek while pulling his mate close or flipping her onto her belly so that he could mount her, Maddox stepped into the second bedroom and headed straight for the shower.
The cabin had running water. It had a water heater, too. Maddox refused to use it, jerking the knob to the right until the icy stream beat down on his tense back.
As he washed up, he avoided his erection. He was so primed, one touch would be all it took to go off. The damn thing was nearly raw, he’d rubbed it that often since he first caught sight of Evangeline again. Ever since, just the thought of her was enough to make him go instantly hard.
Having her in the room next door, lying in a bed? He knew he had a snowball’s chance in hell that she would ever invite him to join her. That didn’t stop his wayward cock from acting up.
He washed his body, his face, his ass, his feet. He scrubbed his hair and brushed his teeth. Whenever Evangeline came to her senses and wanted to get close to him, he would be ready.
The cold water did nothing for his hard-on. A shock of pure pleasure made his body tighten, his toes curl, when he accidentally brushed the head with the back of his palm. It felt so good, yet so wrong. Only a thin wall separated him from his delicious mate.
This was a bad idea.
A fucking awful idea.
It was hard enough already to keep his paws off of her. Why tempt himself?
Then again, maybe if he took the edge off, got it out of his system, he’d be calmer when he returned to his mate to feed her a late supper. She had to be starving and nothing was going to stop him from providing for all of her needs.
That settled it. As the water poured off of his bowed frame, Maddox braced one hand against the wall, grabbing his cock with the other.
He grunted as he stroked himself. Each pull was more of a yank. It was fast, furious, and vicious. It felt amazing, but it wasn’t about the pleasure. It was about the need. He wanted nothing more than to claim his mate, bite her, bond with her… anything. He’d kill to get back inside of her—but that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. He accepted that.
And he rubbed one out instead.
The orgasm came quickly. It started low, his knees shaking, his ass tightening as his sac drew up. He bit into his hand in a vain attempt to muffle his shout as ropes of thick, milky white spend shot out of his cock, hitting his belly. He kept stroking. He kept coming.
When he finally finished, he pulled his mouth away from his hand. Blood mingled with seed as the shower water continued to flow over him.
And that’s when his senses picked up a voice coming from the other room.
“It’s going to be okay,” Evangeline whispered. “I’m gonna be fine.”
His heart stuttered to make out the despair in her soft voice. He could just see it: Evangeline curled up on the master bed, tears in her eyes, the long dark curtain of her hair shielding the angry and lost expression on her beautiful face. He was hurting her and it was fucking killing him to do that. But he had to.
This was the only choice he had left.
His cock went limp, and not because he ran out of seed; as a bonded shifter, he could’ve easily jerked off again and again and still be hard. He let it slip from his hand, his cock slapping into the side of his inner thigh before hanging between his legs. Maddox let it settle, even when it started to come to life again with the tiniest of twitches.
It didn’t seem right to focus on his own pleasure when Evangeline was so upset with him. He grabbed his soap, roughly washing away the last of the cum that painted his belly white. The puncture wounds from his fangs had already sealed up. By the time he was done with his shower, he’d be completely healed.
He would be.
What had been pleasure immediately turned to pain when a sharp ache filled his chest—and not all of it was his. Maddox didn’t know w
hat, but his mate had done something to hurt herself. Through the meager bond that existed between them, he felt it, and he bit out a curse between sudden fangs.
Angie.
He focused his senses, stunned when he realized that the warm vanilla scent that belonged to his mate was fading. Oh, it lingered, and his wolf wanted to burst out and roll around in it, but the source of it?
It was gone.
She was gone.
His ears pricked up. If he strained, he could just pick up the sound of Evangeline as she crashed through the trees and crushed the foliage underfoot.
Holy shit. She actually did it. She escaped.
The metal shower knob creaked in protest as his hand gripped it angrily. Hell no! He slammed down on the misshapen knob, killing the stream of water before hopping out of the shower.
Pausing only to throw on his jeans, Maddox burst from the bathroom. He inhaled deeply as he flew down the hall. Her rich scent clung to the air, but it was only an echo. His wolf’s anguished cry only confirmed what he already knew. The second he jumped in the shower, Evangeline was gone.
Not for long, though. He would get her back or die trying.
There was no way he could survive losing her a second time.
Running on a sprained ankle was pure hell.
With every step, every stride, the shock of pain radiated all the way up to her hip. It was agony, but at least it wasn’t broken. She never would’ve been able to bolt if the bone had splintered.
Adrenaline helped. It cushioned the pain enough that it was bearable; it wasn’t easy to move, but she was so determined to escape, she pushed past it. Gritting her teeth, Evangeline dashed through the woods, putting more weight on her left foot. The right one was weak, her ankle throbbing, and the uneven terrain was terrible to navigate. She fell once, cursed under her breath, then scrambled back to her feet.
He would chase her. She knew that with every fiber of her being. The stranger would chase her as soon as he realized she was gone.
Hungry Like a Wolf (Claws Clause Book 1) Page 16
