“Didn’t I just tell you...” he began.
“Shut up and let me see.” Heart hammering, Tommie slapped at the hand fingering the red and swollen area around the wound. The flesh was torn in a straight line, not deep, but still oozing blood. She grabbed the bloody tee and pressed a clean section against the wound. “This needs to be cleaned and bandaged.”
“Just give me the damn shirt,” he growled.
Tommie held the clean shirt away. “Why? So you can get this one bloody, too? Stop being Mr. Macho and get in the damn truck before someone sees you stripping down in the middle of the parking lot and calls the police. Where’s your first aid kit?”
He was hurt, he was hurt, he was hurt, and all because she didn’t do what she was told.
“Jesus, you are one fucking pain in the ass,” he groused, but he sat back in the seat and opened the console beside him. He passed her a couple of sterile wrapped gauze pads and a roll of tape. “Happy now?”
“No. I need antiseptic and something to clean this black stuff away from the cut.” There were tiny bits of thread from his tee shirt as well. “I don’t know where it came from, but it can’t be good.”
Bull winced. “It’s gunshot residue, spitfire, and it’s a good thing I paid for the room with cash. No credit card to charge for the hole in the shower.”
“That’s not funny.”
“It wasn’t at the time, but now?” He shrugged and grinned. “He lost. I won.”
Chapter 11
He expected surprise and thought it would be followed by exasperated laughter. What he got made him feel like a heel for opening his mouth.
She stared at him as if she couldn’t believe what he was saying and then her eyes blinked as she refocused on his face and his words. Her mouth opened and closed and opened again emitting a strangled sound somewhere between a whine and a growl.
What little color she’d regained, drained from her face. She dropped her head, wet her thumb on her tongue, and continued to clean the residue and blood from around the wound with it. When he handed her a couple of alcohol wipes from the console, her hands were shaking. She wiped the wound, applied the gauze and tape, and when she looked up at him again, tears were streaking down her cheeks. He kept her chin up with his knuckle beneath it.
“Hey now, it’s okay. I lived,” he soothed with a false sounding chuckle.
Again, the reaction was not what he expected. She hit him. Her jaw clenched and her bony little fist crashed into his shoulder with surprising force. Twice.
“You stupid, stupid man... wolver... whatever the hell you are,” she seethed. “You could have gotten yourself killed. Killed! And for what? What the hell were you doing in that room?” She waved at the bags behind the seat. “You didn’t even want this... this... this shit. Why didn’t you just get in the truck and drive away?”
He stopped her hand before she hit him again. “That was the plan, spitfire. I needed one minute with their eyes on you so I could slash their tire, get the truck, get you, and they couldn’t follow.”
“Then why did you go in? Why didn’t you stick to the plan?”
“Because I heard a scream,” he said quietly.
But it wasn’t just a scream. It was her scream, and the sound of it tore something open in him. For one brief moment his wolf had taken over, blinded by rage, and it was all he could do not to kill the bastards for touching her, for hurting her again, for making her scream in fear, for locking her in that God damned cage.
She surprised him yet a third time when she threw her arms around his neck and sobbed into the shoulder she’d just hit.
“Aw, Jesus, baby. It’s okay. It’s a graze. It’ll bleed a little and then go away.” He slid the seat back and hauled her onto his lap, closing the door and dousing the truck cab’s interior light. “They paid. It’s all good.”
“It isn’t all good. You could have been killed,” she wept into his neck, her breath coming in short, sharp bursts. “This is my fault, my fault.”
It wasn’t the first time a female had cried on his shoulder, but their tears never affected him like this. Whatever Tommie’s scream had torn open and exposed, was now being crushed by the sound of her weeping. He felt her pain and he couldn’t stand it. He was in danger of making promises he couldn’t keep just to make it stop.
His wolf, however, had other ideas. It was looking for the source of her pain, ready to tear it to pieces.
Bull wrapped his arms around her to give his hands something to do besides clench into fists. Stroking her hair and rubbing her back had the added benefit of soothing both woman and wolf. The sobs subside to snuffling and his wolf relaxed. Bull let out a relieved breath and kept his voice even.
“I wasn’t killed and this wasn’t your fault. How did he find you? What does he know?”
The crying stopped and her breathing calmed. She was so still, so quiet, that for a minute he thought she wasn’t going to answer. But he was wrong. His spitfire was only taking a moment to pull her act together. She took a last breath, a deep one, and leaned back. Grabbing his bloody shirt, she wiped her eyes and nose with a clean spot.
“Has to be washed anyway,” she said and then she shrugged. “Sorry. I’m not usually a crybaby.” She shrugged again and tried to smile. “Except for my people at Harbor House. I cry for them a lot, but you don’t want to hear about them.”
Actually, he did. He wanted to hear about these people who earned her tears. He wanted to know what gave her the strength to withstand the untamed wolf inside her that should have rendered her incapable of that kind of compassion. “Another time. For now, tell me about Gantnor.”
She nodded. “He’d been friends with my parents since college. He’s the one who arranged my adoption.” She told him about her childhood with ‘Uncle’ Ray. “Next to my parents, he was the most important person in my life until I got older and started having problems. He started coming around even more, asking questions, wanting to take me places where he said we could talk, privately. I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t know what was happening to me, but I knew I didn’t want him near me.”
“You didn’t want him near you or your wolf didn’t?”
“Your wolf. You say those words so easily.” She attempted to smile. “I only knew there was something inside me, something angry and rebellious, that took control of me and made me do things I wouldn’t normally do.”
“That’s what a pack is for,” he said gently, “To teach you control.”
“A pack? Another word that’s easy for you to say. I didn’t have a pack. I thought I was going insane and it grew worse whenever he was around. My parents argued over it. My father said Ray was trying to help. He’d told them my birth parents had problems, too. My mother said Gantnor was becoming obsessed, that he was the abnormal one and my behavior was simply teenaged rebellion.”
“And what did you say?”
“Nothing. They didn’t know I was listening in. My hearing is...”
“Better than most,” Bull finished for her. “It’s a wolver thing. My mother used to say...” he began and then stopped, expecting the pain he normally felt when he remembered things he’d rather not.
Tommie’s fingers felt warm against his cheek. “Bull? Bull, what’s wrong? I’m hurting you, aren’t I? I’m sitting here feeling sorry for myself when you’re the one who’s injured. You’re probably cold, too. You need to get that shirt on and your jacket,” she fussed. She reached for the door handle to let herself out.
“No,” he said, more sharply than he meant to. He drew her hand away from the door. He wanted it back where it was, caressing his cheek in a gesture of tenderness he hadn’t felt in a long, long time. “I’m not cold or hurting.” And it was true, but not in the way she meant it.
Having her in his arms, listening to the sound of her voice, he felt warm in places where he’d only felt cold for so long. He never spoke of his mother, had trained himself not to think of her or the others. Yet with Tommie, it seemed natural, ordinary.
He finished what he’d begun.
“My mother used to tell us to watch our ears as well as our tongues. Both could bring hurt; tongues to others, ears to ourselves.”
“A wise woman. When did you lose her?” she asked, surprising him with her perception.
“A long time ago, when I was just a cub.” Saying those words didn’t hurt as much as he thought it would, either.
Tommie held her hand against his cheek again. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
And that did hurt, because no one had ever said it before, and because it hurt, he changed the subject back to where it needed to be, the business at hand.
“As I said, it was a long time ago,” he said brusquely. “We were talking about Dr. Gantnor.”
She reluctantly withdrew her hand. “Yeah, Dr. Gantnor,” she sighed. “My mother won, as she usually did with Daddy. I saw other counselors, but they didn’t help much. Neither did the drugs they gave me. Uncle Ray still came around, but not as often, and when he did, I made myself scarce. Eventually, just as my mother predicted, I got my act together.”
“How?” He didn’t think it was possible.
She shrugged and settled back against him, her head against his bare chest. “I made up my mind that it wouldn’t control my life. I wouldn’t let it beat me. I stayed close to my parents, got my degree, and went to work for Harbor House as a Social Worker. When it acted up, I got angry with it instead of with everyone else. Most of the time.” She giggled a little. “My periods were weird and really irregular, but my PMS isn’t. You’d better be careful. Once a month, I turn into a madwoman.” Her eyes widened. “Not literally,” she added hastily, looking up at him.
Bull laughed at the look on her face. “The call of the moon. It does that to all of us, though it doesn’t have to be bad,” he assured her and felt his wolf yip happily at the thought of how he’d like to spend the coming full moon. Bull wished the damn animal would keep its horny thoughts to itself. It was hard enough to concentrate on the woman’s words and not her fingers drawing lazy designs on his chest.
Tommie pulled away, looking down at that chest. “What was that?”
Shit! She shouldn’t have been able to feel his wolf unless he wanted her to. And he sure as hell didn’t want her to. She was half starved with a little over twenty-four hours of recovery from her three month confinement and he still didn’t know what her wolf would be like once it was let out. She should be the least attractive sexual prospect he’d ever encountered, but she wasn’t. The damned female called to him like the moon herself.
He pulled her back against his chest where she couldn’t see his face and covered his frustration with a question. “If Gantnor was out of your life, how did you end up in the cage?”
“I went to the clinic on behalf of a client. She insisted two of her family members were there, but when she tried to find out more, they gave her a hard time. She had no ID, no proof she was a relative. I thought I might be able to help. When I got nowhere with my inquiries, I asked to speak to Dr. Gantnor...”
Things were beginning to add up and Bull didn’t like the sum. Was he being paranoid? Maybe, but he wasn’t paid to look the other way when the security of his species was threatened. It was his job to investigate and eliminate the problem if there was one. Listening with one ear, he began to compile a list of questions that needed to be answered.
“Tell me about this woman,” he said. “Do you think she was working for Gantnor?”
~*~
“No! Cora? Absolutely not,” Tommie answered with complete conviction.
She couldn’t explain it, but she was sure from the very beginning that Cora was telling her the truth.
“She’s one of my ladies at Harbor House. Cora’s special. The minute I met her, I knew she belonged in my little group. We’re not supposed to play favorites, but there are always those where you know you can make a real difference in their lives and Cora was one of them. It was like I’d known her all my life and she said the only reason she came to me was because of the connection we shared, so she must have felt it, too. Have you ever met someone like that? Like you knew them even though you’d never met them before in your life?”
Realization hit her like a virtual slap in the head. She wasn’t the one who felt the connection. It was the thing inside her; her wolf. And the connection she felt for Cora was like the connection she felt for Bull.
Tommie felt the heat rise in her cheeks when her wolf - and the word felt more comfortable each time she thought it - when her wolf began to yip and howl in what Tommie now recognized as laughter and she immediately understood why. What she felt with Cora was nothing like what she felt with Bull. Jumping Cora’s bones had never once crossed her mind.
It wasn’t crossing her mind with Bull anymore, either. It was permanently implanted there and sitting on his lap wasn’t helping matters. This wasn’t the time, place, or conversation in which to be having these thoughts, but they wouldn’t go away. Maybe she’d just traded one form of craziness for another.
She shifted her body uneasily at the thought and then jumped when her rear end slipped from his thigh, made contact with his crotch, and the bulge behind the zipper of his jeans jumped too.
“Maybe I’d better move back to my own seat,” she squeaked.
“Good idea.” Bull lifted her from his lap and dropped her into the passenger seat like she was a hot potato.
They sat together, looking out the windshield at anything and everything except each other.
“Movie’s out,” she said because she didn’t know what else to say, but couldn’t take the silence any longer. A mass of people was pouring out of the theater into the parking lot.
Bull let out a long, whistling breath. “Look, it’s only a part of the full moon’s call. All wolvers feel it. I’m sure you’ve felt it before and just didn’t know what it was.”
Another piece of the crazy puzzle that was her life fell into place. She had felt it before, when she was running wild. It had earned her a reputation in high school and later, she’d been shamed by it. The bitchiness she called PMS was the result of her refusal to give in to the urges of her body.
But because she’d felt it before, she knew this feeling wasn’t the same. The undeniable neediness that came from inside was there, but there was a satisfaction in it, almost as if that need had been met. Except it definitely hadn’t been met. It was worse sitting with the console between them, unable to touch him or feel him touching her.
“This woman, Cora, how did she know the men were taken?” Bull asked. His voice sounded huskier and strained.
“Sh-she saw it. She wouldn’t tell me how or where, but sh-she saw the car insignia and the men who took him and her daughter’s mate, that was the word she used, mate.” She closed her mouth and looked down at her hands. It was the same word that her wolf was whispering in her head.
“It’s our word for spouse. Wife, husband, it works both ways.”
Bull pulled on the clean shirt and shrugged into his jacket. He started the engine and threw the truck into reverse.
“Where are we going?” she asked with the word still swirling around in her head.
“To see if we can find two more wolvers in Gantnor’s torture chamber.”
Chapter 12
“They’re looking for us, Bull. Shouldn’t we think about this? Shouldn’t we have a plan?” Tommie asked as she pulled the take out bag from behind the seat and a burger from the bag.
“This is the last place they’ll be looking, and ‘we’ don’t have to think or plan, because ‘we’ aren’t going in there. I am. You’re staying in the truck.” Bull never took his eyes from the cop car crossing the intersection while he waited at the red light. When it passed without slowing he shifted his eyes to her. “Jesus, are you eating again?”
“My name’s not Jesus, and I’m hungry.” She bit, chewed, and swallowed. “And you’re not going in there alone,” she added before taking another bite. She hoped she sounded braver than she felt
.
The idea of going back in there with the threat of recapture was terrifying, and the likelihood of another Bull coming along to rescue her was slim to none. Besides, she didn’t want another Bull. She wanted this one, though at the moment, she wasn’t sure why. “I’m not going to stand outside and watch while you get yourself shot.”
“You’d rather stand inside and watch it up close?” The light turned green. He took his foot off the brake and eased the truck up to the speed limit. “Because that’ll be the only difference.”
“That’s not funny and you know what I mean. I can help.” She leaned over to check the speedometer. “Can’t you go any faster?”
The fool man took his hands from the wheel and held them up. “Would you like to drive?”
“Yes! Would you let me?” She grabbed for the steering wheel, but he got there first.
“No, and I’m not letting you come with me, either.”
She changed tactics and said in her most wheedling voice, the voice that always worked on her father, “Please, Bull, pul-ease. I’ll be good and do everything you tell me to. I can help. I know I can.”
He didn’t fall for it. He didn’t roll his eyes, but he may as well have. “I should have left you in the fucking dumpster.”
Tommie huffed. “And then you wouldn’t have known there were two more wolvers at Gantnor’s.”
They’d been arguing since they left the parking lot. The man had no sense of planning or organization. How was he going to get in? The same way they got out. How would he find the other wolvers? The same way he found her.
“How did you find me, exactly?”
“I told you. Smell. The stench was overwhelming.”
Tommie was sorry she asked. Then again, it made her think of another question.
“If you were looking for Thomas Bane and you didn’t know you’d found him, why didn’t you keep looking? Why didn’t you smell these other guys?”
Wolver's Rescue Page 10
