Dragging her cotton-candy scent into his nose, he got busy focusing on the task at hand.
“I think I might go do a yoga class this afternoon.” She pulled out a glass from the cupboard and filled it with water.
He dropped the last slice of banana into the blender. “Sure. Just let me know the time, and we’ll go.”
“Okay.”
He was ignoring the way she took a sip from that glass, how her lips molded to the curved edge. More fruit went into the blender, then he was pressing on the lid and hitting the go button. The high-frequency whir filled the whole apartment, and he kept his eyes on the liquid level. Satisfied with the mix, he turned it off and grabbed a glass. Casey was still there, still staring at him.
“What?” he asked in a tired voice.
“Why don’t you like me?” Her question was soft, vulnerable.
His whole body went rigid. He could play it in two ways here––tell her the truth, the real truth, or push her away. Since he’d never been good with intimacy, he went for the cruelest reply.
“Because you’re a princess who’s getting special treatment when every other female out there just gets on with their lives.” As the words came out of his mouth, Casey’s eyes hardened. He braced himself for backlash. Hell, he needed it. He needed her to call him on his shit because he couldn’t do it himself. He needed to believe this lie. There was no way he was ever letting someone get close to him again, not when relationships could leave you abused or beaten or…
… abandoned.
“You’re right,” she murmured. “I am.” And with that soft declaration, she turned and walked back into her room. He watched her go, unable to say or do anything to stop her. Bracing his hands on the counter, he dropped his head and glared at the Formica like it was the one calling him on his shit.
“Fuck!”
Chapter Seven
Casey smiled and waved at Serena even though she didn’t feel like being sociable. She wanted to wallow in self-pity without an audience, and she figured the yoga studio would be pretty quiet given it was Sunday afternoon.
“Casey, how are you? Did you have a good Christmas and New Year with your family?”
“Yeah, it was great. How was yours?”
The woman laughed. “Same old, same old. My dad was asleep by two in the afternoon, and my mother made too much food, then forced us to eat it.”
“It sounds like it was fun, though.”
“It was. I thought you only did the weekday evening classes?”
Casey juggled her yoga mat into her other hand. “I do, but I’ve had a rough couple of days and wanted to just Zen out for a bit.”
“No problems. I’ll leave you to your Zenning, then.” With a kind smile, Serena walked over to the other side of the studio and unrolled her mat.
There were maybe only half a dozen people in the class, so Casey went to the very back of the room and got ready. She’d left Maddox outside, where he could wait until she was good and ready to leave. She hated herself for asking him that question. Why would she care if he liked her or not? To him, she was just a job, but for some unknown reason, she’d wanted him to like her. Maybe it was because he was the first male she’d spent any serious time with that wasn’t a sibling. Maybe it was because she could sense the hurt inside him and wanted to tease it out.
Maybe she just wanted to know she wasn’t alone in this world.
Whatever had driven her to ask him, she was regretting it now.
He’d used the princess excuse again, and the sad thing was, she agreed. She was a princess, but not of her own choosing. She was thrust, unwillingly, into the role due to circumstances she had no hand in. Maybe this was all her life was going to be––relying on others to survive.
She hated that.
She didn’t want to be anyone’s burden, and there was a time when she would’ve stood up for herself more.
But the past couldn’t be changed, and the future was already decided––not solely on the choices and actions she made now but by everyone else. If a woman didn’t stop at the grocery store on the way home, would she have gotten into that car accident? If a man chose to cheat on his wife, was the baby he produced with his lover any less precious? It all came down to choices.
And her choice so far had been taken away from her.
Which was why she clung to Saxon’s memory so tightly. That was her choice. She understood that seven years was a long time to mourn someone, but that was all she had left of Saxon. Her love for him would never dim, never diminish.
The instructor called the class to attention, and Casey focused on her breathing and positioning, letting the calm of the session sweep through her body and mind. Yoga had become her own sort of therapy when she’d started school, and it was something she intended to keep doing.
* * *
By the time the class was done, she didn’t feel any more relaxed than when she’d started. In fact, she’d spent so much time tangled up in her own thoughts instead of listening to the instructor that she hardly moved through the poses at all. Her mind was regurgitating images of Saxon to her, every so often throwing in a vision of Maddox. She didn’t want to be attracted to the male, but there was that element there.
Of course, it was one-sided.
What kind of man could love a woman who was only half-alive, half-breathing, half-living? The answer? None, and she had to make peace with that.
Serena approached her mat as Casey was coming out of an extended child’s pose.
“Want to go and get a coffee?”
As much as she wanted to say yes, she said, “I’m sorry. Not today.”
“No problem.” The other woman smiled, gave her a little wave, and retreated back to her mat to roll it up.
Casey stood slowly, breathing deeply. Like she could get a contact high from the studio. Rolling up her mat, she braced it under her arm, picked up her jacket, and slid it on. Shouldering her tote, Casey followed the herd out the door and down the stairs.
“Bye, Casey,” Serena called as they stepped out of the studio.
“See you next time.” Casey watched her go, heaved a sigh, then scanned the street for Maddox. He appeared at her side, his expression grave and his eyes flashing with his wolf.
“How was class?”
“Fine.”
He gestured for the mat. “I thought we could take a walk and maybe talk a little bit.”
“Sure.”
After stowing her mat in the trunk of his car, they turned toward the municipal park only a few blocks from the studio. The wind was bitterly cold, whipping past her hair and lashing her cheeks.
“Are you cold?”
She lifted her lips in a smile. “We’re werewolves, remember? It’d have to be below freezing for us to get cold. Even then, it probably wouldn’t happen.”
She was shocked when he returned the smile. “Right,” he rumbled.
He led the way into the park, his eyes always moving, his head always scanning. Casey didn’t think anything much could happen in a public park, but she wasn’t about to tell him that. He was simply doing his job.
They ended up on a pathway that wound around the whole park, weaving between the barren branches of the northern red oaks and along the slow-moving, icy slice of river. All the leaves that had fallen in the Fall crunched softly beneath her tennis shoes and his big boots. Soon, the branches of these oaks would be filled with new growth, and Casey couldn’t wait.
“You said you wanted to talk?” she asked, breaking the silence that had settled between them.
He cleared his throat, avoiding looking at her face. He shoved his hands in his pockets, took them out again, and ran them through his hair.
“Whatever you’re going to say, I can’t wait. You’re nervous as shit.”
He glared at her. She smiled. “I just need a minute to gather my thoughts.”
She wondered what could be so important that he needed time to think it all over, but she waited, enjoying the walk even though th
ey were the only ones there. It was too cold for humans just to take a walk in January, and for that, she was grateful.
“I want to say I’m sorry.” Maddox’s words came out rapid-fire, and she couldn’t decide whether it was because he was uncomfortable with apologizing or just talking in general.
“Okay.”
“I’m sorry I called you a princess. I needed… fuck.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I needed to push you away because you were getting too close.”
She frowned. “I’m pretty sure there was ample room between us in that kitchen.”
“Not physically.” He touched the center of his chest. “Emotional room. I needed… ah, yeah… I needed emotional space.”
Casey digested his words. She hadn’t realized she’d broken past some emotional barrier of his.
“I called your brother and asked about what happened to you.”
Well, those words made her blood turn to ice. “Oh?”
“You wouldn’t tell me, and I had to know.”
“Why?”
He hesitated, clearly toying around with telling her something that maybe he didn’t want to say. “It’ll help me protect you better.”
So that was it. She was just his job, and he was methodical enough that he had to know all the details to figure out what made her tick. “And what did Hunter tell you?”
“That you were abducted. Tortured. Mutilated.”
Her eyes shuttered closed, and she took a deep breath through her mouth. That ice in her veins had frozen solid. “Truth.”
“Your fingernails were pulled out.”
“Truth.”
“Why didn’t they grow back?”
“Salt,” she mumbled. “They used salt on them.”
A low, pumping growl came out of him. His eyes were solid green, his wolf firmly in control. “I’ll kill every last person for what they did to you.”
With a gasp, she looked away. His possession was a heady scent in the air, something she didn’t think she’d ever be on the receiving end of again.
Chapter Eight
Maddox couldn’t keep a lid on his anger. It was clawing at the cage in his mind, howling to be let out. He hadn’t meant to reveal that wish of his––to kill everyone who harmed Casey––but his wolf had taken control of the wheel and was driving them into some seriously dangerous territory.
Casey’s shoulders rolled in, making her look hunched over. Talking about this still hurt, but like grief, pain sometimes lingered for a long time.
“My father beat me,” he blurted out. The playing field was tipped heavily in his direction, and he needed to even it out. “He beat me when he got drunk.”
Casey said nothing, but that’s what he needed. She shared some of her pain. Now, he needed to do the same, but he needed to do it on his terms.
“He beat me so badly sometimes that I had to take a week off school to heal properly. I think…” He hesitated. He was about to tell her something he’d never voiced before––some deep, dark part of him that he never wanted to shine a light on because it was too ugly of a thought.
“I think he did it because he thought I drove my mom away. I wasn’t an easy child. I was angry all the time. I got into fights almost daily. I didn’t listen to her or my dad. I just wanted to be left alone, but nobody ever did. When my mom left, I was ten. I was just a kid… a kid who needed their mother because she was the only one who truly loved me.”
Looking up, he found Casey staring at him with pity in her eyes. He braced for the words that would no doubt come—the I’m-so-sorry and the you’re-better-off. He braced for all the platitudes that would make his anger rise like the beast it was, the wild creature ready to begin tearing down the metaphorical building made completely from his pain.
He braced…
… but nothing came.
“Aren’t you going to say something?” he asked, his voice rough, his nerves strung out. “Nothing at all?”
“What do you want me to say?” she replied. “That I’m sorry for you. That you had it bad.”
He shrugged. “I guess that’s what I expected.”
“And would it make you feel better if I did?”
“No.” He turned away, paced a few steps forward, then faced her once more. Fuck, she looked amazing in the late afternoon sun, her hair whipping about her face, her cheeks flushed from the exercise and the wind. “In fact, it’ll only serve to piss me off more.”
A ghost of a smile touched her lips. “I thought as much.”
She continued, waiting for him to catch up. “What happened to your father?”“I killed him when I was sixteen. He tried to beat me again, but I’d finally grown strong enough to fight him off. I’d grown strong enough to kill the bastard for what he’d done to me.”
“Good.”
His next question to her was going to be a difficult one. He knew his anger would turn into a roar in his head if he didn’t get the answer he needed to hear. “What happened to the female who had you tortured?”
Casey’s head jerked up, and her eyes were a solid gray—feral. It was funny, he’d never seen her wolf before. “She’s dead, as is the male who actually did the torturing.”
Maddox’s wolf howled in triumph. Sure, he hadn’t been the one to do the deed, as it were, but Casey had been avenged.
“And still, knowing that doesn’t make me hurt any less,” she added. Clearing her throat, she looked ahead, then back to him. Her eyes were back to that vibrant green of hers. “They killed my mate.” The words were softly spoken, but he didn’t miss all the emotions inside them.
Rage.
Sorrow.
Longing.
Grief.
Agony.
Maddox ran a hand through his hair. “Jesus.”
“And they did it because they knew it would hurt me.” She sucked in a sharp breath like those memories of hers were covered in barbs. “They killed him in front of me. I watched the life drain from his body, and there hadn’t been a thing I could do or say to stop it.”
Wrapping her arms around herself, Casey’s shoulders dropped, and she bowed her head. Her fine form began to shake as the tears fell. Feeling helpless and out of his fucking depth, Maddox wanted to wrap his arms around her and cradle her while she physically purged her body of her feelings, but he and intimacy had never been friends.
When her sobs got louder, he moved without thinking—doing exactly as he thought he shouldn’t—folding her in his arms and holding her head against his chest. She clutched at his shirt, fisting the fabric tightly. Running his hand through her hair, he figured he could allow himself this one thing, this one connection with another being. Sliding his fingers through her hair, he rubbed the silky lengths between his fingers and even brought some to his nose.
Her scent was intoxicating. And it was everywhere—burrowing into his memories where he could pull out this moment somewhere down the track and remember how she felt cradled in his arms.
Because the indelible truth of it was, Maddox didn’t deserve love.
His mother left him.
His father beat him.
And nobody ever cared for him.
All he had for company was his fists and his instincts.
All he had was himself.
The sun had sunk below the horizon when she finally pulled away. The air was colder, biting at his nose and getting caught in his throat with the deep inhale he took. She looked into his face, her eyes red, her skin blotchy, and he thought she was still the most beautiful female he’d ever laid eyes on.
They stared at each other until all he could hear was the pounding of his pulse, the pounding of hers.
He wanted more of this.
He wanted more of her.
As if reading his thoughts, she tilted her face to his, her mouth parting a whisper. She was silently asking for a kiss he had no right to give her, and he growled because he wanted to put his mouth there. He wanted his mouth in more places too.
Fighting his attraction for
her wasn’t going to work anymore.
He’d thought maybe he could fuck her out of his system, but knowing what he now knew, that wasn’t possible. He had nothing else to offer her—he was as broken as she was, and two negatives don’t make a positive.
He stepped away from their embrace, her fingers—still fisted in his shirt—sliding away. She blinked.
“This is a mistake,” he told her, his voice a lot lower, a lot more graveled. Fuck, his lust was hitting him hard, his cock pounding against the barrier of his zipper. “We should get home before it gets too cold.”
He got going before Casey could say anything. He didn’t need her to say anything because for once in his life, he was doing the right thing.
He was giving a fuck.
He was not letting his anger dictate his actions.
And that, in itself, was freeing.
Chapter Nine
Casey walked beside Maddox feeling like an absolute fool. They’d had a moment in that park, but he’d shut things down before they could progress. Their truths laid bare would set them both free. Hell, Casey didn’t even know why she’d told him all of that. Maybe because he bled for her. It only seemed fair that she did the same. The thing was, telling someone other than her brother or her mother about what had happened to her was scary as hell but also liberating. Maddox had listened to her, had not tried to placate or coddle her. He had listened without judgment.
But something had changed. After she’d finally let herself weep in what felt like years, he’d shut down. She saw it all play out on his face. Wherever he had retreated to, he was staying there. She saw that now with the stiffness of his shoulders and the way he avoided looking at her.
Back at the apartment, she went for a shower while he decided what they’d have for dinner. Locking herself into the bathroom, she stripped out of her workout clothes and turned on the shower. While she waited for it to get good and steamy, she redid her hair and put it into a bun at the top of her head.
The Helheim Wolf Pack Novellas: The Complete Collection Page 33
