He touches me now because he can. Because I’m his. Heat fills me.
He lowers his voice. “Even if you knew your way back, do you think you could make it? I’m not the only predator in these woods. There are bears, bobcats, wolves, of course. Massive ground-wasp nests. Unstable cliffs. A hundred ways to injure yourself.”
“I’d survive until I found a camper.”
“This isn’t an area campers like to come to, even in the high season. The maps warn them away. That’s something I learned in the professor’s cage. This is the wildest territory. And not a season for campers.”
“It’s not happening,” I whisper hoarsely.
He lets me go and turns his back, digs around in the pack. It’s almost like a taunt—run, go ahead. Try it.
He takes the tin cup from the pack and goes to the shoreline. He dips it in and drinks. If I run, he’ll catch me. We both know it. He dips it in again and brings it to the fire, extending the retractable handle.
“What are you doing?”
“You like your coffee hot.” He holds the thing over the fire.
Coffee. How could I forget? Being a prisoner of a feral man is a lot to comprehend before I’ve even had my coffee.
“It’s one thing I can’t provide you with indefinitely. Would you prefer to drink it all up or try to make it last?”
“How about neither? How about a nice big cup of not in your dreams is this happening?”
“Out here, you want to make things last,” he says thoughtfully. “I’m going to make you a small amount. I want you to have it for a long time, but then you’ll be without it. You won’t die, I don’t think. I’ll find new things for you to enjoy.”
“I don’t want new things to enjoy.”
“I’ll find them anyway. I’ll care for you, Ann. I’ll give you everything.” He looks up. “I’ll protect you. I’ll even die for you if I have to.”
My pulse whooshes. Kiro only ever says what he means.
“You’re mine now,” he explains. Like that clears it all up.
You’re mine now.
He splashes a bit of the water onto his finger. “It’s ready.”
I look over at the canoe. “I think you won’t like swimming after me in the icy water. This water is coming down from the glaciers or something, isn’t it?”
“The human body can adjust to a far wider range of temperatures than seventy to seventy-five degrees, Nurse Ann.”
His calling me Nurse Ann has this edge now. Like he’s calling attention to my deception.
“I didn’t tell you about what I was doing because I knew you’d hate it. I didn’t have evil motives. I only ever wanted to help.”
He waits with my heated water.
“You can’t keep me.”
“I think I can.” He puts down the tin cup and grabs one of the slim foil packets that contains my coffee, one of four. Four servings left.
“Go ahead, then, put it all in,” I say. “Because this shit that you have in mind? It’s not happening.”
He puts it all in.
I grab a trail bar and rip into it. “And I’m eating as many of these as I want, because there is no fucking way I’m doing Clan of the Cave Bear with you.” I stir my coffee. It’s stronger than it needs to be.
I gulp a bit down and instantly start feeling more rational.
He rolls up the sleeping bag. My sleeping bag. He didn’t use his sleeping bag. I guess that one was for me, too. All of this camping stuff is for me, I realize.
Kiro’s like one of those wilderness guys who can be airlifted into the middle of nowhere naked and survive, no problem. And there I was in that camping store, picking things out like a fool. No wonder he was so interested in my opinions.
I wander to the shore, savoring my coffee, trying to think. What if I did disable him? He might be right about how hard it would be to get back. But surely if I trekked far enough south, I’d get a signal with my phone or run into somebody. And if I had the canoe? It’s not like I’m in a desert with no water or food surrounded by scorpions and rattlesnakes. I need the canoe and a head start, I decide. And my phone.
It’s foolish to try to run—he’s probably right about that. But isn’t it foolish just to go with him? The foolish ledger seems pretty evenly balanced between my two options.
I sip, looking out at the craggy, rocky shores. I spot one of the slick black rocks Kiro warned me about. I’ll avoid those.
He comes up next to me. “I missed this so much. This beauty. The sun. The silence. The scent of live things. You can’t know what it is to be home.”
“And I don’t get the same consideration? I don’t get to go home?”
“You said you didn’t have a home.”
“I’m between homes. It doesn’t matter. The point is, I like to pick my home.”
He goes to pack up the canoe. I watch him, mind racing in circles from one option to another. He kind of has me checkmated. Even if I knocked him out with a boulder and took the canoe and phone, I don’t really think I could get back. I need a map. Campers. Something.
I spot a deer grazing on the shore, and all I can think is, fuck.
“Are you enjoying your coffee?”
“I always do.”
“Finish it. We have to set off.”
“Aren’t we having breakfast?”
“Later.”
His hair catches the light as he puts our stuff into the canoe. His plaid shirt looks soft, tightening over his huge muscles. His canvas shorts cup his ass as he bends to bungee cord the stuff in.
He’s my captor. He shouldn’t seem hot anymore.
I turn away and take another sip. I’m not stupid. I know I can’t make my move now—this is exactly when he’ll be expecting it.
“Ready?”
“Part of having coffee in the morning is enjoying it.”
He comes up behind me and smoothes my curls. My pulse races as he touches me with that strange mix of tenderness and domination. “I like your hair like this.”
I stare into the last bit of my coffee, cooling in the tin camping cup with its fancy retractable handle. The coffee doesn’t help much with my ability to wrap my mind around the fact that beautiful, savage Kiro has me in the middle of the wilderness under his total control.
Because you’re my mate. The words make my belly feel melty.
He pushes his lips to my neck. “You can finish it in the canoe.”
I stay there. It seems foolish to consent to going even deeper into the wilderness now.
“If I carry you to the canoe, do you think you’ll spill your precious coffee? I think you might.”
Pick your battles.
“Fine.” I go over. He stabilizes it as I get in. He has the packs arranged differently now, so that the only place for me is a little nest right in front of where he sits to paddle.
“You want me to sit between your legs now?”
“I don’t know what you might do.”
“I liked where I sat before. When I was in the front. Like the Queen of Sheba.”
“And now you’ll sit in a different place.” He urges me forward.
Pick your battles, I think again. Though it occurs to me he’s winning every one.
“Fine.” I settle in and stretch out my legs over the plank of the canoe bottom, back against the bedroll. He shoves us off, and we begin to move. His long, powerful strokes move us silently up the stream.
I sip my coffee and watch the scenery go by, thinking about where we are, where the sun is. I need to pay attention now.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks.
“How I’m going to escape.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
It’s common for freelance journalists to wade too far into danger in the course of digging up the real story on something. You just keep going further and further, because that truth you need, that nugget you need, is just up ahead—you’re sure of it. And you need it so bad for this story that you’re going to write, this story that will make so
me fucking difference in this twisted-up, tangled-up world.
You see a lot of us dying to get a story. You see a lot of us quitting once we get married and definitely once we have families. The last thing you ever want is for your kids to see your beheading video. Or for your partner to get a hundred pieces of you in a body bag.
I always figured I’d quit.
This isn’t what I had in mind, though. I was thinking more along the lines of writing a book or a blog. Not being a captive in the wilderness.
I lean back, bracketed by his thick, muscular shins, which are lightly covered with hair. His muscles flex with every stroke, thick and powerful. I tear my eyes from them, force them down to the boots we bought him.
“How are the boots?”
“Fine for now. Once I get my feet used to rough ground again, I won’t need them. You won’t need shoes eventually, either.”
I snort. “And if you look out the tour bus window to your right, folks, you’ll see a massive rock formation as we enter utter and complete motherfucking fantasyland.”
“Tour bus? What?”
“Nothing. Never mind.”
“Don’t you want to be strong?” he asks. “How can it be a bad thing for your feet to be so tough and strong that you never need shoes? To be so free and wild you don’t need anything, and this is your home, and all of this beauty is yours? Out here, you’re richer than the richest person in the world.”
My heart pounds like it does whenever I feel the edge of another person’s reality. We all see the world so differently from one another, but every once in a while, you see through the eyes of another. And it never ceases to blow me away.
Kiro definitely blows me away.
Abused and lied to all his life. So he makes his own damn life out here—fuck all the people and phones and cars and insurance plans. The sky is his. The river is his. With everything he tells me, I want more, more, more. Not for the story, but just…to know him.
“King of the forest.”
He says nothing. He is king of the forest. Master of everything he sees. It’s madness.
And way hot.
I crane my head back to look up at him. Our eyes meet. “King of the wolves.”
He glares down. Massive pines stretch up into the blue, blue sky behind him. The ever-changing cathedral ceiling. And Kiro, the high priest.
“Not like I’m going to run off and tell it, right?”
He paddles steadily, all scowly at me. It’s quiet out here. The only sounds are the wet swish of the paddle and the whisper of breezes high above.
“Did you really run with the wolves?”
“A man can’t run as fast as a wolf.”
“But you were leader of them?”
He snorts.
“It’s cool. I know why you won’t tell me—because you know I’ll get away. I’m so out of here, and you know it.”
“You won’t get away.”
“Yes, I will. That’s why you won’t tell.”
A long silence goes by. “I know what you’re doing,” he says.
“You took over a wolf pack. King of the wolves.”
“It’s not how it was.”
“Tell me how it was. Please. I so want to know.”
He glances down at me, and my reporter’s antennae zing to attention. He’s thinking about it—I can tell. Kiro very much doesn’t want me to think he was king of the wolves. He wants to set me straight.
“The professor always used the term ‘superalpha,’” he begins. “About me and the pack. He thought I took over the pack in some feat of strength, but he had it wrong. It wasn’t a feat of strength. It was bribery. Desperation.”
“Who wouldn’t be desperate? An adult would be desperate. You were eight.”
He seems to consider this. “When I was first out here, I was frightened of people, because of the threat of police.”
Which didn’t exist, but I don’t argue. “Right,” I say.
“But I was lonely. I spent a lot of time in trees, and I’d watch the wolves below. They looked like dogs to me. I’d had a dog I loved. I thought maybe the wolves could be friends with me like my dog was. So I made a plan of winning their friendship. That’s how it started.”
He dips the paddle into the velvety-looking water and pulls it back with strength and skill.
“I started by robbing campers. I’d take their meat and bring it to the wolves and scramble up a tree while they ate it. I didn’t want to lead them or take them over. I wanted them to be my friends.”
“Like with your dog back home.”
He nods.
“Did you have other friends back home?”
“I had adopted siblings. None liked me, except my little sister—for a while, anyway. She came to hate me eventually, too, but at least I wasn’t alone. Alone and lonely is harder.”
“So you fed the wolves.”
“Yeah. I stole meat mostly. Those bars and dried things for myself, but the meat was always for the wolves. I wasn’t even thinking ahead to winter,” he says. “There was this tent that I stole, and I figured the tent would be enough. I was a kid, what did I know? Minnesota winters never seemed like a big deal. When campers started getting scarce, I’d lure and trap rabbits for something to give to the wolves. It was hard to kill those rabbits at first, but I got better. Eventually a few of the wolves would let me feed them by hand. It was such a small victory, but it was okay. My life was so simple. Just survival. These small victories. I felt…happy. I thought, ‘As long as I keep going, they’ll let me be a friend.’ I wanted…just one friend.”
“And it worked?”
“Two of them began to approach me when I didn’t have food, sniffing. Nipping. But not the rest. The leader, who I called Brutus, was always growling at me. Teeth bared, fur puffed up. Wolves are like people. Different ones have different ideas about things.”
We’ve gotten to a shallow part of the river. Kiro uses the paddle to shove us out of a muddy patch and back into clear water.
“Then came the first cold snap of winter. It was so cold—far below freezing after being warm for all those months. And there was no snow for tracks—just the bone-chilling cold. I tried and tried to catch anything, but it was too cold and windy for me to move around outside. I knew where the wolves stayed—it was this dry place near a rock under a mammoth fallen tree, but I didn’t dare go there. I’d moved to a cave by then, so I would sit in there and wait out the night, shivering, covered by the coats and sleeping bags I’d stolen. I’d make fires, but they kept being blown out by the howling wind—it had shifted for the winter. At one point, the cinders burnt my warmest blanket. All of the lighters I’d stolen were out of fuel. No more campers came around.”
I’m stunned that an eight-year-old boy could keep himself alive even that long. He’d been out there for months by then.
“Two of the wolves came by. They were used to me feeding them, and I thought for sure that when I didn’t have food for them, they would kill me. And I was curled up, so cold, I almost didn’t care. They sniffed around for food, and I just cried, ashamed.” He pauses, and I wonder whether he’s feeling shame now. “And then the brownish one who was the first to let me feed him from my hand came to me and sniffed me. I thought he would bite my hand—I really did. I was willing to let him. I was pretty fucked up by then.”
He pauses for a long time. I can tell by Kiro’s eyes that he’s back there, thinking.
“I waited. He smelled my hand, and I saw this flash of teeth. Then he curled up next to me with his big warm body partly on me…” His voice drops to a whisper. “It might sound like a fairy tale, but it’s what he did—he kept me warm. And the other one curled up next to him. They were just so warm. I shivered there, crying and talking to them. Petting them. They were kind to me even though I had nothing to offer them. It was the most amazing experience of my life.”
Shivers come over me.
“I never told this to anybody.”
“It means a lot that you would
tell me.” Does he believe me? I want badly for him to believe me.
“You’re my mate now. You should know these things.”
I don’t reply.
“Snow came, and it aided in my hunting. I would play with the brown wolf—Brownie, I called him. My first friend. The other, Beardy, would play, too. I would get wounded a lot—wolves aren’t like dogs; they are really rough. But I got strong fast. There were seven in the pack, and they would disappear sometimes, and I’d feel so sad, thinking they wouldn’t come back, but they always would. Off hunting—that’s where they were. I worked harder on being a help to them after that. It was getting colder, and it wasn’t even winter. I understood then that I’d die if they wouldn’t let me stay into their den. I started making traps—mostly pit traps. That’s what the professor called them. He’d show me pictures, trying to get me to talk. Wanting us to share a vocabulary about the wilderness—that’s what he always said.”
“But you didn’t talk to him.”
“No. I only ever wanted to kill him,” he says. “I would wait so silently at my pit traps. I was so small then, but I knew how to wait. One night I had five rabbits, and I made my move—I brought them to the den. The wolves ate the meat. And I stayed the night, curled up at the edge, right up against the rock, making myself as small as I could. Brutus, would snap at me when I’d get near the group, so I shivered by myself. It wasn’t so cold as that one night I almost died. The next night I did the same thing—I brought two rabbits and stayed. But I was so cold in the middle of the night, I approached the group. I knew it was dangerous, but I figured that if I was dead, at least I wouldn’t be cold anymore. Brutus was on me immediately. He had me on my back, snarling, jaws on my throat. I whimpered. I thought he would kill me. And then he licked my face.” Kiro looks down at me with a happy light in his eyes. He looks so young. “That was the first time I really felt…like I belonged.”
“It must have been amazing.”
“It was the best feeling in the world. Brutus never liked me, I think. But he didn’t kill me. But with the other wolves, things were good. It was…amazing.”
Savage Mafia Prince: a Dangerous Royals romance Page 18
