Wolf (The Henchmen MC #3)

by Jessica Gadziala

  Fucking hilarious.

  If anyone deserved to have their place blown off the surface of the Earth, it was Lex Keith. I said a silent prayer that he was suffering somewhere inside that place, skin blistering and peeling off. I might have been a lot of things, but I ain't never been merciful. Besides, that mother fucker didn't deserve anyone's mercy after the shit he had done to people, most especially women. He was an evil, sadistic rapist who deserved the most painful death imaginable.

  Good riddance to bad rubbish and all that.

  I was another ten minutes down the street when I caught sight of something on the side of the road. Scratch that. Someone on the side of the road, down on their knees in the dirt. At first I thought it might be one of Lex's minions, but my lights caught the long dark hair and the small, almost childlike body, and I knew it wasn't one of his men. It was a woman. It could very likely be one of the women Lex kept around his estate. Prostitutes or sex slaves. Who the fuck knew.

  On a sigh, I pulled the truck off to the side of the road and got out.

  Then fuck if the slip of a woman was none other than Lo's little hellion protege, Janie. I met Janie helping Reign save Summer from a skin trader about a year before. She had been a distant, calculating, hot-headed piece of work who had the respect from all the other men and women over at Hailstorm. And, given the sheer amount of criminal and ex-military talent that place sported, it went without saying that she must have been something special. I'd seen the way she'd wielded a gun, sure of herself. Maybe not the best shot I'd ever seen, but a cold, calculated killer when she needed to be.

  She was young. I'd put her at twenty-four or five though she looked younger being short and so skinny that she barely had any curve to her at all. Even in her usual tight black tank tops, her breasts were barely more than a suggestion and her hips non-existant. That wasn't to say she wasn't hot. She was just her own kind of pretty with her long dark hair, big blue eyes, and colorful tattoos. Janie's biggest appeal was the confidence she wore, like she didn't give a fuck whether you thought she was hot or not. Which, well, made her all the hotter.

  She didn't look so hot knees down in the dirt, her face twisted in a way that suggested she was fighting a losing battle with tears. But she came up spitting when she realized it was me. That was until I mentioned Lo's name and she jerked back like I'd struck her. She didn't want Lo. And that was some weird shit because from what I understood, those two were practically attached at the hip.

  Then my eyes did a quick scan, taking in the tear in the knee of her right pant leg, the dark spot around the thigh of her left leg which I couldn't know for sure, but would bet good money on it being blood. Then, finally, the pale skin of her right arm that was usually just a nice piece of brightly colored artwork, but instead was violently red and peeling viciously. My hand curled around her wrist, pulling it up slightly.

  It didn't take a genius to figure out how she got it. She was on a road that led away from Lex's estate. She set the bombs there. Why... I had no idea. And obviously it wasn't with Hailstorm and Lo's blessing that she did it, otherwise she would have been calling Lo herself instead of insisting I didn't. So I didn't know what was going on. What I did know, though, was that she needed to get the fuck off the road, not kneeling down beside it. She needed to get out of sight before the cops, crooked and inept as they might have been, started sniffing around. And she sure as fuck needed to get her arm taken care of.

  After all of that, then I would get some answers.

  "Fuck woman..." I said, releasing her wrist. It fell to her side without her so much as flinching. She should have been in massive amounts of pain. I'd been burned a fair amount of times in my life and the pain was a fierce and unyielding thing until you got the right creams on it. Maybe she was in shock. That would explain her unusual tight-lipped mood. "Come on," I said, waving a hand out to my truck.

  "I'm not going anywhere with you, Wolf," she said, her chin jerking up defiantly. On a good day, everything about Janie screamed: I don't need help from you or anybody else for that matter. This was not a good day and the usual fierceness seemed dimmed under something else I couldn't explain: regret or fear or grief. I couldn't place it. But it was something strong that made her lip tremble slightly and her shoulders slump forward. It was a startling change that I didn't like. Women like her, strong women, don't take no shit from no one women, should never look so lost and unsure of themselves.

  "Woman..."

  "No," she said again, brows raising like she couldn't believe I wasn't taking no for an answer. "I'm fine. I'm great. I don't need your help."

  "Cops are coming," I tried, jerking my head down the hill where the sounds of sirens were both stationary and moving... our way.

  Janie looked over her shoulder for a long minute, her breath hissing out. "A ride," she said, turning back to me. "That's it. No questions. No explanations. Just a ride. Got it?"

  I felt my lips twitch at her tone but nodded my head. She brushed past me, throwing her small frame into the passenger side of my truck and slamming the door.

  I would give her the silence she wanted.

  I would give her a ride too.

  I just didn't tell her that where she was getting a ride to wasn't wherever she wanted me to take her. No, she was getting a ride to my place.

  Like it or not.

  THREE

  Janie

  "I said pull the fucking truck over right now, Wolf," I shouted, the sound reverberating back at me in the enclosed cab of his truck.

  "No."

  We'd been having the same conversation for five minutes, me yelling, screaming, cursing, slamming my hand on the dash. Him giving me the same one syllable answer, calm as a cucumber which was only making me all the more angry. He'd child-locked the friggen door so I couldn't open it. Then he just... kept on driving.

  Only a handful of people knew where Wolf lived. He was private to the point of reclusive. The only reason I had any idea of his cabin in the woods (horror movie worthy, truly secluded) was because when I couldn't sleep, I screwed around online, digging stuff up about the people of Navesink Bank. I never slept. So I had come across the information about Wolf's land a good ten months before. So knowing this, I knew that was the exact direction Wolf was driving us in.

  It was also in the exact opposite direction to where I asked him to take me, to where I had a car parked, full of everything I had taken from Hailstorm and all the supplies I'd packed for my new life.

  "Are you seriously fucking kidnapping me right now?" I asked, eyes lowered as I sat in my seat, half facing him, arms crossed over my chest.

  "Yep."

  This couldn't be my life.

  First, I royally fucked up my plan. I had no idea if Lex Keith was dead or alive. Second, I didn't get the hell out of dodge. Third, I was being kidnapped by someone I once fought alongside.

  "I swear to Christ, I am going to kill you when you stop this car," I said, mostly meaning it. I wasn't stupid enough to risk my own life by beating the hell out of him while he was behind the wheel. But all bets were off when I wasn't risking violent, metal-pierced vehicular death. To this threat, I got no reply. Likely because he thought it was bluster. I imagined being a living, breathing hot-guy equivalent to the giant at the top of Jack's beanstalk made the threat of bloody death from a girl who could barely tip the scale into the triple digits on a good day dismissible if not outright laughable.

  He was in for a rude awakening.

  I was pissed. As in... seriously pissed.

  I wanted blood.

  And since I couldn't have Lex Keith's, well, I was okay with having his. At least some of it. Whatever amount I could get before he took me down. I was under no illusions. There was no way I could actually take him in any kind of fight, not even if he just stood still and let me wail on him. I'd probably break my own hands before I caused any kind of damage to him. But that didn't mean I didn't want to unleash a bit of my frustration on him.


  I mean... who took someone somewhere against their will anyway? Even if maybe he was trying to do the right thing and get me away from the cops who would definitely take the burn on my arm as some incriminating evidence. And, well, if they got my clothes into a lab, they'd find a lot more than a trace of bomb and Molotov cocktail residue.

  Maybe I should have been thankful to him. He obviously had his head on straight when he offered me a ride. I had been losing my shit on the side of that road.

  But that being said, I didn't need to be holed up in his shack in the woods. I needed to be getting the hell out of town. Christ, what if that Josh guy decided to rat me out? The further away I was, the better. I might have been risking my relationships with everyone I cared about by doing what I had done, but I wasn't exactly keen on the idea of being trapped behind bars for the rest of my life.

  Wolf turned the truck up a driveway that was steep enough to require you to take it on foot or by some other behemoth with huge traction like his truck. I guess that was why he left his bike at The Henchmen compound.

  "You planning on chaining me up?" I asked, uncomfortable with the lingering silence as we drove up the long lane.

  Wolf's gaze cut to mine for a second and I could have sworn he almost looked offended. "No."

  "Then you can't keep me here," I decided, looking away out the windshield.

  "Okay," he said in a tone I didn't trust, like he knew something I didn't know.

  The driveway seemed to twist forever, secluding us deeper and deeper into the woods, the treetops long barren. Despite myself, I actually felt myself relaxing. There was something soothing about knowing you are somewhere that no one would look for you or find you. Especially after all the reckless and unforgivable things I had done that night.

  Wolf finally pulled his truck up beside a small cabin, looking like it couldn't have been any bigger than an average loft apartment inside.

  "Do you even fit inside that?" I asked, meaning only to think it, but there it was... all out there.

  To this, Wolf made some sort of snorting sound that I took for amusement when I glanced over and saw his honey-eyes dancing. "Come on," he said, swinging out of his door and bleeping the button to undo the child-locks.

  Without much choice, I followed, the jump down from the cab making me feel like a little kid when I landed hard, the impact ricocheting up my legs. When I looked up to see him standing beside his door, lips twitching, I lowered my eyes at him as I approached. "Not all of us can be Paul Bunyan," I bristled. I stopped in front of him, planting my feet wide and craning my neck up to look at him. "If my arm wasn't throbbing like a mother right now, I'd make good on my promise. As it stands, I need to get cleaned up and down some pain medicine. But don't think I forgot about it. It wouldn't be very smart to fall asleep around me right now."

  There was more lip twitching and he nodded his head at me, acknowledging my threat the way a parent acknowledges their child's proclamation that they are Superman when they tucked a pillowcase into the collar of their pjs like a cape.

  When he said nothing, I sighed. "So do you actually have indoor plumbing in this place or is this a cop a squat behind a bush kind of situation you have here?"

  There it was again, the lip twitching. Apparently everything I had to say amused him. I found myself both annoyed and flattered by that realization. Annoyed because nothing I said was meant to be funny, especially the parts where I threatened his life. And flattered because, well, no one ever laughed at me and because I knew Wolf was not the kind of man to find amusement easily. He was one serious dude.

  He moved to open the front door, left unlocked, and pushed inside. He said nothing, but then again, he rarely did, so I followed behind. The inside of his cabin was a loft floor plan with a straight, small kitchen against the wall to the left with a small dining table. There was a worn leather chair against the back wall, a end table beside it stacked with magazines and a massive TV attached to the wall beside the front door. To the right was a giant bed with plush red and black flannel comforter; true mountain man style. There were two doors which I imagined led to a bathroom and a closet. That was it. That was all there was to his place.

  I mean I guess I was judging a little harshly given that I had spent the last eight years living at Hailstorm, a survivalist camp/ lawless military compound that was made out of shipping containers with no windows where I slept in a barracks-style room with a bunch of men and women. But if you were going to have a sanctuary in the woods, why not go whole-hog and make it more, well, sanctuary-ish.

  Still, it was cozy. The log walls, the wood floors, the curtain-less windows, the braided rugs here and there. It screamed 'home' to someone who all but forgot what home felt like. If it had some massive built-in bookshelves and a killer wifi connection, I could be comfortable there.

  I felt my good wrist tagged in his giant hand and looked up as he started pulling me forward toward the door beside the bed.

  "Quit pawing at me," I grumbled, uselessly trying to pry my arm from his grip. He opened the door and reached inside to flick on the light then dragged me inside, slamming the door to give us more standing area in the small space with a square sink vanity and mirror, shower stall, and toilet. That was it. No medicine cabinet. No linen cabinet. God, his whole place screamed 'I'm a man and don't need all that useless shit like a guest towel or bath mats'. I was suddenly turned, my stomach pressed against the sink cabinet, crushed there by Wolf's solid frame at my back. He reached around my body, turning on the tap and putting the stopper in the sink. "What are you..." I started, then found my burned forearm submerged in the cool water, pressed and held there by his hand wrapped around mine. I repeat: his hand was holding mine. I'd never had a man hold my hand. As in... ever. And here it was happening for the first time with my well-intentioned kidnapper who meant it as nothing else but a silent instruction to keep my arm under the water.

  I focused all my intention on keeping my fingers still under his, not wanting him to think I was making as big a deal of it as I was. His free arm pulled open a drawer by my thigh, dragging items out and putting them on the counter beside my arm: factory-wrapped gauze, tape, and a huge white tub with a prescription label.

  "What is that?" I asked, reaching for it with my good arm and holding it up to read the label. "Silver Sulfadiazine," I read, turning my neck to try to give him a questioning look.

  "Burn cream," he answered, taking it from my hand and putting it back on the counter. That was the end of that. He wasn't going to explain. I mean not that I really expected him to. That wasn't who he was. He wasn't a talker, a conversationalist. Which, given that I almost never shut up, kind of bothered me. I couldn't just keep talking with no comment from anyone else. I mean, I could, but I would look crazy. And, suddenly, I found myself not wanting to look crazy. Normally I didn't give a good god damn what anyone thought of me. But for reasons I was choosing not to analyze, I didn't want Wolf to think I was off my rocker.

  So I stood there silently, looking down at my arm under the cool water. Actually, I wasn't looking at my arm at all; I was looking at Wolf's hand wrapped around mine. Like the rest of him, it was massive, but in that large knuckle, tendon, and vein way that only large men seemed to possess. Like they could handle anything, like they could hold on forever and never tire, like they could take any burden and lift it.

  Jesus Christ.

  I was starting to think like Lo, all wishy-washy from reading all her silly love stories all the time.

  That wasn't the kind of woman I was. I didn't romanticize things. I certainly didn't think of poetic ways to describe a man's freaking hands. What was wrong with me?

  As I was thinking that, my hand was finally released and I watched my fingers instinctively flex and reach outward, like they were seeking the contact again. Mortified, my head swung around to look at Wolf. His gaze wasn't on me or my hand though. He was reaching behind the door for a white towel and moving it to rest on the sink counter. He pulled
my arm out of the water and rested it there. I reached for the edge of the material that was so stiff I knew that, among not believing in bath mats, he also had some kind of aversion to fabric softener, and moved to blot the water off my arm.

  "Don't," he growled, swatting my hand away and giving me a hard look that I guess was supposed to impart some kind of information, but it was completely lost on me before he turned away to focus on the gauze. I watched as he carefully laid out strips of the gauze then used some sort of sealed stick to glob the burn cream onto the soft material. "Dry?" he asked, turning to look at me.

  "Um... yeah," I guessed, not having the damndest clue. I was too focused watching him, watching the way his powerful frame seemed capable of the smallest, delicate tasks in a way that seemed unnatural. He reached for my wrist, pulling it up and letting go of it in mid-air. It was another silent instruction: keep your arm like this, it said. It was amazing how much he was able to communicate silently. Then I stood stiff as a board and watched as he picked up the coated gauze and carefully wrapped up my burns. He did it so lightly I barely felt it and it seemed wrong for such a big man to be able to be so gentle. Finished with the wet gauze, he wrapped me in about ten coats of dry gauze then attached the medical tape and put the remainder down on the counter.

  When he turned back, his eyes went to my face for the first time since we were outside his house and the effect was physical, like a falling sensation in my belly. His hand raised slowly, his fingertips whispering across my jaw and the sensation stopped being falling and started to be a fluttering in my stomach. His eyes went soft for a long minute before he shook his head slightly and let his hand drop. "Triple antibiotic," he said oddly, pulling open a drawer, finding some, and slapping it on the counter before reaching for the door and opening it against my back until I moved out of the way.

  And then he was gone, leaving me staring at the closed door for a long minute before turning back to the sink and looking into the mirror. It was then that I got it. I had a bunch of shallow scrapes and scratches down my cheek. They were nothing, superficial, wouldn't even scar, but they had made his eyes soften. How freaking weird was that? I sighed loudly and washed my face, skipping the triple antibiotic because I didn't really need it.