“Sure,” he murmured, just as his stomach gave another gravelly rumble.
“Okay, that’s it. We definitely need to feed you,” she said with a light laugh, nudging him in the arm as she smirked. “Aren’t we putting the general population at risk by having you walk around hungry?”
He gave a masculine snort. “Smartass.”
“Hey, I’m just being a conscientious citizen.”
“Don’t worry,” he drawled, opening the outer door for her. “I’m not going to gnaw anyone’s arm off.” He leaned down, putting his lips at her ear as he whispered, “Though I wouldn’t mind nibbling on you.”
Her breath sucked in on a little gasp, and she could feel the bloom of color in her cheeks as he wrapped his strong arm around her waist, tugging her into his side as they headed down the cracked sidewalk, toward the coffee shop with the garish Christmas lights that they’d passed on their way to the garage.
This man, or Lycan, or whatever he should be called… God, there were times when he was almost too much, the way he affected her a little too intense for her to know how to handle. But for the first time in her entire adult life, Vivian started wondering if maybe she should try lowering her guard a bit and actually let a guy in.
Actually take a chance on one for something more than a few stolen hours of fun.
And if ever there were a guy who she wanted to take a chance on, it was this one. Max. Gorgeous and kind and sexy as hell. Protective and thoughtful and smart. Not to mention the only man who had ever made her even consider the idea of a serious relationship.
But then, he was also the only man she’d ever met who she knew had the power to destroy her. To break her heart into a thousand tiny, fractured pieces of pain, if she let him.
And the truly crazy thing?
As they walked down the sidewalk together, beneath the old-fashioned Christmas lights, Vivian realized that she wanted him so badly, she almost didn’t give a damn.
Chapter Thirteen
Bloodbath
The burgers and fries that he’d grabbed at the little diner next to the coffee shop had been surprisingly good, and Max was enjoying the lighthearted smile on Vivian’s lips as they headed back toward her ex’s garage.
He’d hated the guy on sight, which made him feel like a dick, seeing as how the dude had been genuinely friendly. He could honestly say that he’d never had a jealous bone in his body before meeting Vivian Jackson. But then, he’d never been curious about a girl’s exes before either, and look at him now.
He knew why he’d agreed to go there, instead of finding another garage. He’d wanted to see what kind of males had interested her in the past, but now that Max had met him, he had a feeling David had been more of a friend than anything else. He really was a nice guy, and even though it chafed against every possessive bone in Max’s body, he could admit that he was happy she’d had at least one male in her past who’d treated her well. Hell, she deserved to be treated like a friggin’ goddess, and every jackass who had ever done wrong by her was a jackass Max would have loved to beat the shit out of. It might sound savage, but it was how he felt.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, as they neared the garage.
“Me? Good. I mean, I feel almost…well, normal again.”
“That’s probably because you’re finally eating, and have been sleep—”
Stop! Something’s not right! his wolf suddenly roared in his head, cutting him off, and Max grabbed her arm, jerking her to a stop beside him. Narrowing his eyes, he scanned the surrounding area, his nostrils flaring as he pulled in a deep, searching breath. They were standing no more than five feet from the entrance to the garage’s front office, and there was no one else on the street with them for at least a block in either direction. But every instinct he possessed told him that the wolf was right and something was unquestionably wrong.
“Max,” she whispered, pointing toward the part of the garage that sat at the corner of two cross streets. “The car that’s parked on the other side of the building. Is that the back of a white van?”
“Fuck. Get behind me,” he growled, his wolf surging up beneath his skin so hard and fast it would have punched its way right out of him if he wasn’t standing out on a sidewalk in bright daylight. “Now, Vivian!”
“Do you think the wargs are already inside?” she asked in a breathless rush. “Oh, God. David!”
She charged past him before Max could stop her, a vicious string of curses tearing from his throat as he went after her. She burst into the garage with him right on her heels, and his curses turned into a low, guttural snarl that curled his upper lip. His truck was no longer on the hydraulic lift, and he hoped like hell it was already parked in the garage’s back lot, because they weren’t alone. Seven wargs stood in the three car bays, the outer rolling doors pulled down, and there were a few drops of blood on the floor—but no sign of David or the other four employees who’d been working. Max could scent, though, that the humans were close, even with the musky scent of the wargs filling his head.
He knew Vivian was going to be pissed as he grabbed hold of her arm again, but in that moment the only thing that mattered to him was getting her the hell out of there—even if it meant David and the others got left behind. Keeping a careful eye on the wargs, who were watching her with a nauseating combination of victory and lust, he started to jerk her against him, intending to throw her over his shoulder and run, but Vivian apparently had other ideas.
Or rather, the awakening creature that now lived inside her did.
Letting out a bloodcurdling shriek that shook the panes of glass in the room’s high windows, she was suddenly in motion, and he was left holding on to nothing but air. She moved so fast she became nothing more than a brightly glowing blur. One that was cutting a swathe through the wargs in a way that had their bodies crashing into the walls and various pieces of equipment, their blood spraying in wide arcs as they tried to fight back, releasing their fangs and claws. But she was too fast, somehow drawing more and more blood from them as the fiery heat of her rage filled the air, crackling and sharp.
“Screw this shit!” one of the males shouted, limping for the side door that led out onto the street where they’d parked their van. “It’s a fucking bloodbath!”
“Abel! What do we do?” another one of them bellowed at the red-haired giant who was standing on the far side of the garage, watching the chaos with a disgusted scowl.
“What the hell do you think?” the warg snarled. “Catch her!”
Thankfully, she was too fast for any of them to do as they’d been commanded. Hell, Max didn’t even get a chance to engage, because every time he tried to lunge for one of the wargs, a strike from Vivian would send the bastard spinning away. And then even Abel was bearing the brunt of her rage, his tall body flying through the air before crashing against the back wall of the garage, the slashes across his face making it clear that Vivian had her own set of claws, though her body was still too much of a golden blur for Max to see them.
“Fuck it, fall back!” Abel roared, once he’d sluggishly regained his footing, and the wargs started rushing for the door, just as something brushed past Max, making his hair lift from his scalp.
“Vivian?” he shouted, spinning around as he sucked in deep pulls of the blood-scented air. But nothing more than a faint trace of her scent remained, and he knew what she’d done. Apparently, the thing she did best.
She’d run right past him, leaving him behind.
And Max was right back in hell all over again.
Chapter Fourteen
Repeat After Me
If there was one thing the other Runners had ingrained in Max when it came to the job, it was to always cover his ass. And because he’d taken the lesson to heart, he’d tucked a tracking dot into the sole of Vivian’s left Converse while she’d been asleep back at the Reapers’ safe house.
Thanks to that little tracking dot, once he’d quickly dealt with a few things at the garage, found his keys, and hu
rried out to his truck, it didn’t take him long to find her. Parking the truck in the alley beside the diner where he’d just eaten, he ran around to the back lot and there she was, no longer glowing, but covered in blood and shallow cuts, her speed during the fight too fast for any of the bastards to have done more than graze her with their claws.
Crying her eyes out, she sat huddled on the ground between two cars parked in employee spaces.
“Jesus Christ, woman,” he ground out, crouching down in front of her. “Do you actually want to die? Is that it?”
“M-Max?” She lifted her head, blinking at him as if she couldn’t believe he was there, the tears running down her cheeks leaving tracks in the blood that was smeared over her face. “Oh, thank God,” she cried, suddenly throwing herself into his arms so hard it nearly toppled him onto his ass. She clung to him as if he were a lifeline, holding on to him like he was the thing she needed most, above all others, her voice cracking as she sobbed, “Thank God you found me!”
He wrapped his arms around her, his low voice wrecked with emotion. “What the hell, Viv? I thought you promised you weren’t going to pull this shit again.”
“I wasn’t running from you,” she gasped. “I wasn’t. I swear. I was… I was…”
“You were what, baby?”
“I was r-running from myself.” Her arms tightened around him as she pressed her cheek even harder against his chest, holding him with more strength than any human female ever could. “I’m so freaking scared. I don’t know what’s happening to m-me.” Her voice broke on that last word, the tears spilling from her eyes ripping his damn heart open. “I don’t know how I d-did that.”
“Baby, it’s okay,” he told her, pressing his lips to the top of her head. “You’re okay, and I’m here now. I’ve got you.”
“I knew you’d find me.” She hiccupped as she tried to stop sobbing. “I knew you were sneaky enough to have put another t-tracker on me.”
His lips twitched with a brief, wry smile. “Always, sweetheart. I’ll always find you.”
“I hope so,” she sniffed, still clinging to him in a way that she never had before. In a way that no woman ever had, as if she belonged right there, held tight in his arms.
“I’ll chase you forever, if that’s what it takes, Vivian. Till the end of time. From my fucking grave. I will never stop doing everything I can to make you mine,” he scraped out, his chest burning as if he’d swallowed a red-hot ember.
“But I’m not.” Her voice was so soft he almost didn’t catch the words. “I’m not.”
“You are,” he growled, the truth of those words only making that burn flare brighter, until he swore he could feel it searing through every part of him. “How could you even doubt it?”
She tilted her head back, wet lashes blinking up at him as she placed her hands on his shoulders, her fingers digging into his jacket. “And what are you?” she whispered.
“I’m yours. All of me. Every inch. Every cell. My fucking DNA has your initials embedded in it. If you want, I’ll ink it into every inch of my skin: Property of Vivian Jackson.”
Her mouth trembled, eyes bright and wide and impossibly beautiful. “Wh-what?”
“I want it all, Viv.” Cupping the back of her head with one hand, he grabbed the clean napkin in his pocket with the other and then lifted it to her face, wiping away the crimson streaks of blood as he said, “I want everything and I want it with you. Only with you.”
She stared at him in shock, as if she didn’t know what to make of the huskily spoken words, and he wished there were some way to make her believe in them. To believe in him. Because everything he’d told her was the gods’ honest truth.
He might not have a clue how the life-mate thing was going to play out for them, but everything else had become crystal clear to him when he’d thought he might lose her. Living inside him was a creature capable of extreme violence, but also unwavering loyalty. An animal that would fight to protect her with its dying breath. But it was also a beast of desires, and he wanted to satisfy each one with her. Every single goddamn one of them. Which meant that there was a hell of a lot that they needed to talk about, but he knew this wasn’t the time.
“There we go,” he husked, wiping the last of the blood from her face. “You okay?”
Her feminine throat trembled as she swallowed. “Yeah. I… I just… I don’t understand how they found us. I’ve been eating the honey, just like Arra said to.”
“Hey, this isn’t your fault. It’s mine.” Keeping a hold on her, he moved to his feet, then helped her stand. “They probably had a scout watching the garage, and when we showed up, he called in the group. I should have seen it coming.”
“You think they knew about David?” she asked, gripping onto his arms. “But how? That’s so messed up.”
“They obviously have money and resources. And with those two things, any jackass can pretty much uncover anything he wants. We’re just lucky that they never realized we were at your gran’s place.”
Squeezing her eyes shut, she stammered, “Is… Is David dead?”
“Hey, no,” he said gently. “From what I could hear through the supply room door after you took off, I think the bastards locked all the employees in there without their phones. They’re pissed, but they’re not hurt.”
She opened her eyes, her brow creased as she looked back up at him. “How are we going to explain what happened?”
“You didn’t kill any of the wargs, Viv. You just roughed them up bad enough that they ran like cowards. So there aren’t any bodies.”
Surprise filtered through the worry on her beautiful face. “But what about all the blood?”
“My guess is that they’ll think the assholes turned on each other in some kind of botched robbery. My truck was already parked behind the garage, so I left the money for the work on the office counter, along with a quick note that said we had to bail. Made it sound like we thought they’d all left for lunch. It’s stupid,” he murmured, lifting his shoulder in a shrug, “but it was the best I could come up with at the time. Then I called the cops from the office phone. They’ll be there soon and will let David and his employees out. It’s all going to be okay.”
She sagged with relief, but he caught her before she could hit the ground. In the distance, he could hear the police sirens nearing, and he picked her up in his arms, quickly carrying her to the truck. “We need to get the hell out of here.”
It took less than a minute to get her buckled in, and as they drove past the cop cars, she covered her face with her shaking, blood-stained hands. “This is all my fault.”
“No. Stop that shit. You are not responsible for this nightmare. They are. Put the blame where it fucking belongs.”
“But none of this makes any sense. What do they even want with me?”
“I don’t know,” he clipped, checking his rearview mirror to make sure they weren’t being followed, since he had no idea where the wargs had run off to. “But they’re sure as hell not getting you.”
“Where are we going?” she asked, lowering her hands to her lap as she looked at him. “That place in West Virginia?”
He shook his head. “No. Until we know what’s going on, I need someplace where we can lay low for a few days that’s completely off the grid.” Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out the card that Arra had given him. “Can you punch that number into my phone for me?”
“Yeah,” she whispered, taking the phone and the card as he handed them over. It took her a few tries, since her hands were shaking so badly, but the call finally started ringing through the truck’s handsfree system.
“You’ve got Arra,” a husky voice said through the speakers, the background noise sounding like she’d taken the call in a crowded bar. “What’s the problem?”
“This is Max Doucet. Vivian and I, we need your help again.”
“What happened?”
“We got hit by a group of those warg assholes in Perryton, Ohio.”
“You’re
still on the road?” Arra asked with surprise. “Why haven’t you returned home?”
“Vivian… She, uh, isn’t ready yet.”
“Hmm.”
“Look, I know this puts you in a bind,” he said, “but can you help us or not?”
There was a lengthy pause, and then the background noise faded, as if she’d walked outside. “You’re in luck, Runner, because I’m actually not that far from where you are,” she told him, obviously deciding to offer some assistance. “Meet me at the Tenth Street Bakery in a little town called Bayford. It’s just outside of Perryton.”
“We’ll be there.”
Forty minutes later, Max pulled the Chevy into the empty parking space beside Arra’s gleaming bike. She was on her own, but still dressed the same, her supermodel looks drawing the eye of every customer walking into the vintage-looking bakery.
Vivian had had a pack of wet wipes in her backpack that they used to clean themselves up as best as they could, and they’d pulled over on an empty side street to exchange their blood-covered shirts for clean ones, since she’d bled all over his when he’d been holding her. So while they still looked like they’d been through a battle, they at least weren’t going to send anyone screaming in the other direction…or calling the cops.
Arra gave them a quick onceover as they walked over to where she stood by her bike, then slowly shook her head. “I swear I told you to get your ass back to your pack, Runner.”
“And like I said on the phone, Vivian isn’t ready yet.”
She cursed something vicious under her breath that didn’t sound like any language Max had ever heard, then gave a sharp exhale. “Look, I will help you this one more time,” she muttered, “but that’s it.” Taking another card from her pocket, as well as a key, she handed them over. “I’ve already written down the directions, and instead of a code this time, that’s a key for the front door. The kitchen is stocked, and you’re welcome to stay for as long as you like.”
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