Shy (Once Bitten, Twice Shy, #2)

by Marie, Noelle

  She feared that if Bastian caught sight of her in her current state – namely, covered in blood – that he’d… well, she didn’t know what he’d do, but she knew that it’d be bad.

  “Okay,” Sophie agreed as she parked the SUV. “We obviously still have to tell him what happened,” she gave Katherine a pointed look, “but you’re right that it’s probably not a good idea for him to see you like this.”

  By “like this”, of course, she meant with crusted blood smeared all the up past the elbow of her arm and, though she hadn’t noticed until Agnes had pointed it out to her on the drive home, speckled across her right cheek.

  Unfortunately, the girls’ plan to sneak Katherine into Sophie’s shower was a doomed one. The house was dark when they’d arrived – not a hint of artificial light peeking out through the windows – so they’d assumed it’d be safe to quietly creep in through the front door.

  They’d assumed wrong.

  Apparently the house was only dark because Markus and Zane had heard the girls pulling up in the SUV and thought it’d be fun to scare them. Just as Sophie was closing the door behind them, the two men jumped out at them – Zane yelling “boo” or some such nonsense into Sophie’s face and Markus grabbing Katherine’s shoulders and giving her a little shake.

  Needless to say that after the ordeal she’d been through that evening, Katherine didn’t take it very well.

  Meaning, of course, that she promptly punched Markus in the face.

  It’d been her instinctual reaction – the jolt of fear his actions had sent shooting through her triggering her fight rather than flight reflex.

  He’d just been lucky that she wasn’t still in possession of the knife she’d stabbed Rogue with as far as Katherine was concerned.

  “What the hell, princess?” Markus complained, rubbing his undoubtedly sore nose.

  Katherine couldn’t speak. She was too busy trying – and mostly failing – to calm her jackhammering heart when suddenly the room was bathed in light.

  Caleb, who’d apparently been in on the prank as well, had flipped on the ceiling’s light fixture. “I’m sorry. I told them not to-” He stopped mid-sentence, his brown eyes widening to the size of saucers as he took in Katherine’s bedraggled, bloody appearance.

  Zane’s jaw actually came unhinged, and Markus’s entire body tensed.

  Their reactions, though, weren’t the ones that Katherine was worried about.

  Because it was at that precise moment that Bastian chose to make his appearance, stalking down the dimly-lit hallway – probably to investigate what all the racket had been about if the irritated scowl on his face was any indication. “What-”

  And then he saw her.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Katherine wasn’t sure what she expected Bastian to do. Yell? Rage? Break something or maybe even someone?

  What she hadn’t expected was for the man to freeze. But that was exactly what he did. His entire body came to an abrupt halt as soon as his eyes caught sight of her disheveled form, all movement immediately ceasing. Katherine didn’t even think she could see his chest rising or falling in the tell-tale signs of breathing.

  What she did see was a tremor so violent pass through him that it literally rippled under his skin.

  “It’s not mine!” Katherine croaked out desperately as he took in the blood crusted up her arm and splattered against her cheek. But she didn’t think the man had heard her.

  Because in the next second he was upon her.

  Suddenly engulfed in the intense warmth of the man’s body heat, Katherine could only stare dumbly at Bastian’s shirtless chest as he growled threateningly at the other occupants of the room. He’d wrapped himself around her in such a way that Katherine could scarcely move, and the others could no longer see her.

  As much as she appreciated the view of Bastian’s glorious, rumbling chest, she didn’t want the man taking out his – worry? anger? – whatever it was he was feeling at seeing her in such a state, out on the rest of the pack.

  “Bastian, stop,” she objected, pressing futilely against his taut muscles with her trapped hands.

  He only pulled her more tightly against him.

  “Bastian,” Sophie tried addressing the man in her stead, but he was incorrigible and snarled in the blonde’s direction, baring his teeth at his own sister before she could get more than his name out of her mouth.

  And then he was pulling Katherine backwards, her feet a good couple of inches off the ground as he held her firmly to his chest and essentially carried her away. He didn’t turn his back to the rest of the pack once as he dragged her in the direction of their bedroom.

  No one dared protest.

  Bastian didn’t let her go even when they’d reached the room. Not after he unceremoniously closed and locked the door. Not when he sat them both down on the bed.

  Instead, he held her gently on his lap, keeping her as physically close to him as possible.

  Peering into the man’s eyes up close, Katherine could see that Bastian’s pupils were blown wide, the black almost completely overwhelming the magnetic blue of his irises.

  The wolf was very close to the surface.

  “The blood isn’t mine,” Katherine attempted to reason with the man again, despite the sharp jolt of pain that each word sent shooting up her tender throat.

  She sighed when the man again didn’t acknowledge her.

  She couldn’t bring herself to be mad at him, though, not even when his hands began meticulously checking her over for injuries. Or even more strangely, when he began smelling her, pressing his nose to her form here and there as he attempted to sniff out the source of the bleeding.

  Except that she wasn’t bleeding, of course.

  Still, she accepted that some part of Bastian – animal or human, she didn’t know – needed to do it.

  Knock. Knock.

  All the same, she was grateful when two firm knocks resounded throughout the room. Bastian’s head snapped to the source of the sound, the hands that were wrapped around her waist clutching her impossibly closer to him.

  “Katherine, are you okay?”

  It was Sophie, and there was more than a hint of concern in her voice.

  “Fine,” she rasped just loud enough for the girl to hear on the other side of the door.

  “Good,” Sophie replied, the relief evident in her voice before it hardened into something as strict sounding as her no-nonsense knocks. “Bastian, I know that you’re upset, but you need to get ahold of yourself. You’re probably scaring Katherine.”

  The man stiffened at her words, but he showed no other reaction.

  “Katherine needs to clean up,” Sophie continued bravely from the hallway. “I’m sure it’d make her feel better to take a bath. And while she’s in the bathroom, you can take some time to calm yourself down.”

  It was a brilliant idea, and if Katherine was capable of moving at the moment and Sophie wasn’t locked on the other side of the door, she would have kissed her in appreciation. The fact that she still had Rogue’s filthy blood plastered to her skin – and possibly more disgusting, stuck under her fingernails – made her itch for a bar of soap. And, of course, Bastian would be much easier to talk to if he could at least feign calm.

  Bastian seemed to be mauling over his sister’s request. Unfortunately, though, his grip on Katherine wasn’t loosening, and the girl was worried that he was still too ensnared in the thralls of his anger to respond rationally.

  “Please?” Katherine asked, pitching her voice so that it was as soft and pathetic sounding as she could manage. It wasn’t a difficult feat with her throat in the condition that it was.

  Bastian’s eyes met hers – the black still overshadowing the blue. But the man slowly peeled his fingers and then hands off of her. “Hurry,” he managed to choke out, the words the first he’d uttered since her unexpectedly early return from the concert in Fort Saskatchewan.

  Katherine could tell he was wrestling with his control and didn’t w
ant to test him, so after jerkily nodding her head and placing what was supposed to be a reassuring kiss on his cheek, she rushed to the bathroom.

  Closing the door behind her, Katherine wasted no time in shucking off her shoes and unzipping her stained dress and letting it fall to the floor. Steadfastly refusing to look at herself in the mirror, she started running herself a bath. Not wanting to ruin the clean water as soon as she stepped into the tub, however, she did her best to rinse her arm under the faucet of the sink, watching pink water circle down the drain until it ran clear.

  Then she slowly sunk herself into the tub, letting the near scalding water rid her muscles of most of their tension before grabbing the unscented soap and scrubbing her skin raw. Once she was satisfied that she was thoroughly clean, she yanked her hair loose of its bun and began lathering the thick tresses in shampoo.

  She was about to rinse the mass of suds from her hair when the yelling started.

  “Don’t tell me that she’s going to be fine! I’m going to kill the bastard!”

  It was Bastian. Katherine could feel the tension that the warm water had just ebbed from her muscles immediately come rushing back, causing them to stiffen.

  “How could you have allowed her to go off by herself?”

  Apparently, he’d let Sophie in the room and she’d clearly told him what had happened. Katherine didn’t like how Bastian made her out to be some child who needed watching over with his question, but strained to hear Sophie’s response to it anyway.

  She could only clearly make out the word “restroom” through the heavy wood of the bathroom door.

  “I trusted you with her.” The statement wasn’t a thunderous boom, but accusatory and sharp enough that Katherine’s ears could still pick it up. “What if she hadn’t thought to pull that knife out on him? Or had tried to swing it at him and missed? God, Sophie, what if she hadn’t gotten away from him?”

  Bastian’s distraught questions had tears pooling in Katherine’s eyes, but she stubbornly blinked them back so that she could focus on Sophie’s answer. All she could make out, though, was a vague, comforting murmur.

  And after that, nothing.

  Resigning herself to the fact that Bastian now knew why she’d been covered in blood, Katherine quickly finished rinsing her hair. After a few more minutes of soaking – otherwise known as avoiding the agitated man on the other side of the door – Katherine reluctantly pulled the plug and stepped out of the tub.

  She grabbed a towel to dry her hair and pat down her body before shoving her arms into the oversized bathrobe that had been hanging on a hook near the bathtub and tying it tightly around her waist.

  Then she finally gathered enough courage to look at herself in the mirror.

  Katherine winced.

  It was worse than she’d thought.

  Examining the colorful array of bruises that decorated the entirety of her neck, she could clearly make out where each of Rogue’s fingers had squeezed. Most disconcerting was the mass of purple at the very center where his thumbs had brutally dug into her.

  Katherine was a werewolf – enhanced healing was a perk of the condition – and the marks would be gone – or at least very faint – in only a week’s time, but at the moment, her neck looked like an awful, discolored mess. A nightmarish rainbow of reds, blues, and purples.

  She didn’t think Bastian had seen the full extent of the bruising earlier because he was so focused on the blood that coated her arm and face, and it crossed Katherine’s mind to try to adjust her robe to better cover them. Ultimately, though, she knew she’d never get away with it. Sophie had probably already told Bastian that Rogue had put her in a chokehold, anyway. So wrenching her gaze away from her reflection, Katherine bravely left the relative safety of the bathroom.

  Bastian was standing in the middle of the room, between the bed and bathroom, his head buried in his hands. At the sound of the bathroom door shutting closed behind her, however, he quickly turned to face the nervous brunette.

  Katherine saw immediately that his eyes had returned to their normal blue – stormy as the color was at the moment – and an inordinate amount of relief washed over her. Bastian was himself again.

  Or at least he was until said blue eyes landed on the purple bruises that adorned her neck like a demented parody of a necklace. In two massive strides, he was mere inches from her. He urged her chin up with gentle fingers so he could take in the entirety of the damage. His hands ghosted over the bruises, not quite touching the discolored skin as he surveyed her neck. His eyes followed the direction of his hands, analyzing each finger shaped bruise, seemingly burning them into his memory.

  When he was finished, he took a small, jerky step backwards. Katherine was just thankful that the man had remained cognizant throughout his examination.

  “Rogue did this.” It wasn’t a question, but a statement of fact. Sophie, after all, had already told him what had happened.

  Nonetheless, Katherine answered him. “Yes.”

  Holding her gaze, Bastian gently tucked a wayward strand of damp hair behind her ear. “What else did he do?”

  Katherine frowned at the question. “Just this,” she assured quietly, gesturing at her neck in an attempt to refrain from straining her distressed vocal cords. “The blood you saw earlier came from him. I… I stabbed him.”

  The words felt foreign on her tongue despite the truth in them. What was even stranger was the peculiar sort of pride that enveloped her when the admission caused a ghost of a grin to tug on Bastian’s lips. “So I’ve heard.” His smile, however faint, quickly faded. “He… he didn’t do anything else to you, did he? Touch you, maybe?”

  Katherine flushed, nervously gnawing on the sensitive flesh of her inner cheek as she debated how to answer. When an angry red exploded across Bastian’s face, however, she quickly realized that the longer it took her to reply, the more depraved the theories that ran through the man’s head became. “No,” she choked out immediately, and then more slowly, “he… he just threatened to.”

  Bastian’s entire being tensed with palpable rage at the admission. He snapped his eyes shut, but his fury was plain enough to see. The veins running up his neck were bulging and his jaw was twitching uncontrollably as he ground his teeth together in an attempt to suppress his raging emotions.

  After a tense moment wherein Katherine feared the man would once again be lost to his unadulterated anger, Bastian’s eyes snapped back open, immediately meeting hers. “He’ll never come near you again, Katherine. Rogue,” he spat out his name like a curse, “wouldn’t dare set foot into Haven Falls after what he’s done. And on the off chance that he’d be foolish enough to consider it, I’ve already sent Markus and Zane to track him down and take care of him.”

  She didn’t know what “taking care” of the man entailed – if Bastian meant for the two to kill Rogue or not – but she didn’t want to know and so didn’t ask. Instead Katherine focused on the fact that by sending the others, Bastian had chosen to stay with her. She knew unquestionably that the man was aching with the desire to track down the man himself – it was just his way.

  She swallowed down the lump of gratitude that suddenly lodged itself in her throat. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “For, you know, staying with me,” she clarified when his brow crinkled in bemusement.

  Bastian’s eyes softened immeasurably. “Leaving you never crossed my mind. No matter how much I may want to hunt down Rogue and rip out his…” he trailed off, his eyebrows drawing together in a frown. “I’m sure you don’t want to hear about that. I… I’m sorry if I scared you earlier.”

  “It’s okay,” Katherine hurriedly assured, “I know you would never hurt me.”

  Bastian nodded, running a hand through his unruly hair. “I’m glad. I just,” he paused, face crumpling as he palmed his chest, directly over where his heart was located. “…it’s just so much.”

  Katherine knew exactly what he meant. She placed her hand over his. “I know,” she softly assured.
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br />   Bastian maneuvered his hand so that he could intertwine their fingers. With his other hand he gently cupped the side of her face, his calloused thumb brushing against the apple of her cheek. “Can I kiss you? Please?”

  Katherine didn’t think she could deny the man anything when he asked it in that particular tone.

  She didn’t answer his question with words, but rather with actions, as she closed the remaining gap between them, and standing on the very tips of her toes, she pressed her lips to his.

  What started off as an innocent meeting of the lips didn’t remain that way for long. Bastian’s mouth moved sensually against hers, and Katherine felt the familiar heat that kissing Bastian caused begin pooling in her lower belly. As per usual, it made her love drunk. She boldly caught the man’s lower lip between her teeth before sucking it into her mouth.

  The only word to describe Bastian’s reaction was primal. Suddenly the hands that were chastely holding her hand and cupping her face were possessively gripping her waist, tugging her forward so that her miniscule form was flush against his much larger body. And while Bastian had seemed content to let Katherine set the pace of their kiss not a moment before, that was no longer the case. His tongue plunged into her mouth, and he licked the entirety of its cavern, sucking greedily on Katherine’s own tongue and nibbling on her lips.

  Katherine’s body thrummed with pleasure under his ministrations, an unexpected shock of desire shooting through her when his hands grabbed the sensitive area where the back of her thighs met her butt and lifted her into the air, encouraging her to wrap her legs around his waist as he walked them towards the bed.

  Not once breaking their kiss, he laid her down gently onto the mattress. He held his body above hers with his arms, his hands gripping the sheets on either side of her head. But while Bastian’s hands may have been occupied, Katherine’s were not, and she wasted no time in splaying them across his chest, exploring the dips and grooves of defined muscle as they traveled lower and lower. She dared to dip just a fingertip under the elastic waist of his sleep pants when Bastian tore his lips from hers and nipped sharply on her ear in warning. “Don’t tease me,” he whispered huskily, tenderly kissing the delicate shell and smooth skin behind it, but being careful – oh so careful – not to aggravate the bruises on her neck.