Wolf (The Henchmen MC #3)

by Jessica Gadziala

  He nodded tightly at me and moved over toward his recliner, popping up the legs, turning on some game, and ignoring me. But, for once, it didn't annoy me. Because I had a new pile of books to look over and dive into. It felt like Christmas morning used to.

  I read until my eyes got blurry, making the words on the pages start to swim, then rolled onto my side and drifted off to sleep.

  I woke up not aware I was awake, still screaming, this time not silently. Because this time, the nightmare pulled me in and drowned me in the memories, in the pain, in the horror, into the sickening reality of what had happened.

  "Shh," a deep voice said as a strong hand closed around the side of my neck in a way that was meant to be reassuring. But I wasn't fully awake, still trapped in the remnants of a dream, and I flew at the body that was in the bed with me. "Shh," the voice said again and I found my flailing hands trapped between my body and a man's chest as his arms closed around me tight and held me. "Janie, shh," he murmured into my hair and I felt myself jerk fully awake, realization washing over me like a bucket of cold water.

  I wasn't back there. I was okay. I was in a cabin in the woods. I was safe.

  Then another realization came over me, but it wasn't shocking and cold. It was warm and comforting. I was in Wolf's arms. I was in Wolf's arms and he was draped around me, murmuring quiet reassurances against my hair. My hands curled slightly into the material of his shirt and I rested my head against his chest. "Wolf..." I started, not knowing what I was even going to say, but knowing I needed to say something.

  "You're okay," he told me, his arms squeezing tighter. "Safe."

  Safe.

  God.

  It was an alien feeling to me. Even trapped behind barbed wire, behind fences with dogs roaming the grounds and snipers on the roofs at Hailstorm, I almost always felt on edge. Noises sent a swirling off inside. People coming unexpectedly around corners set my teeth on edge. Safe was a physical thing I had externally, but an illusion that always felt false on the inside.

  But in that moment, in a cabin in the woods with a man who kidnapped me and trapped me and wrapped up my burns and bought me books, in the arms of my too-often silent captor, I felt it right down to my soul.

  Safe.

  My hands uncurled from his shirt and slid around him, holding him as tightly as he was holding me, wanting more of the sensation, wanting to drown in it. His arms loosened slightly, but only because his hands started stroking- one up and down my spine, the other sifting through my hair. I allowed myself the moment, closing my eyes, sinking into the feelings I wasn't accustomed to, choosing not to analyze them, just experience them. I breathed in his autumn scent that was somehow even more narcotic than being wrapped up in sheets that held it. Beneath my ear, his heart was slow and steady.

  When was the last time I had been close enough to someone to hear their heartbeat? Childhood? The last clear memory I had was when I was eleven and crying in my mother's arms when the boy I had a crush on referred to me as 'one of the guys' and it broke my little tomboy heart.

  Christ... that was thirteen years ago.

  In a lot of ways, it felt even longer than that. It was hard to even accept that hugs and heartbeats had ever been a part of my life. But they had been. Before all the ugly, before all the pain and blood and bitterness. Before I had reasons to erect walls high enough to never let anyone get close to me again.

  Wolf's hand tracked up the back of my neck, splayed into my hair and curled, tugging gently to make me move backward. I did on a quiet grumble that his chest shook in reaction to. My eyes opened slowly, feeling weighted to find his often haunted-looking honey colored eyes were soft as he looked at me again. "Bad one," he observed, referring to the nightmare.

  "Yes," I agreed because it had been.

  "I'll stay close," he said, his hand loosening its hold on my hair and slowly releasing me, moving away. He settled down on the bed just to the side of dead center, one hand tucked behind his head, the other stretched up under the pillows where I was about to lie down.

  I took a steadying breath and lowered myself back into my spot, leaving a few inches between our bodies. But I didn't stay there because as soon as my head hit the pillow, the arm underneath it curled around my shoulders and hauled me toward his body until I was on my side, plastered against him. It took me, oh say... two-point five seconds to think about and decide to lift up and rest my head down in the center of his chest. His arm stayed around my shoulders, the other moved from behind his neck and draped across my hips.

  He was quiet for so long, his breath slow and steady, that I thought he had fallen asleep. "Every night?"

  "Yes," I said just as quietly as he had asked. Funny... being around him for a couple days helped me interpret his half-sentences as full ones much the way that all his Henchmen brothers seemed to be able to do.

  "Bad memories?"

  The worst.

  "Yes."

  "Tried to burn them," he observed, meaning the bombs.

  "Yes."

  "Didn't work."

  I exhaled loudly. "Missed my target."

  "Dunno that."

  "I do. I feel it in my gut," I admitted, finding myself opening up more to him than I had opened up to anyone. Lo was the closest person I had in the world. She knew what happened because she picked up my pieces off the floor and helped sew me back together, both literally and figuratively. But I had never been able to tell her. I choked on the words any time I tried.

  "Think it'd help?"

  To kill him? Honestly, I had no idea. All I knew was it couldn't hurt; that was for damn sure. "Probably not."

  "Not."

  "Speaking from experience?" I cringed at how snippy my tone was. That was me. When someone got to close to the truth, I had to deflect deflect deflect.

  "Yes," he answered honestly, surprising me.

  "You burned them?"

  "No."

  "But something else just as lethal."

  "Yes."

  "And it didn't help?"

  "Not me."

  Curious, I pushed up on his chest, resting my hand there for balance and looking down at him. "Who did it help?"

  He watched me for a long time, long enough that I thought he wasn't going to answer. His hand reached out and brushed my hair behind my ear. "Mom."

  That was all I was going to get. But I had the feeling it was more than he gave most people. Maybe he gave it to me because I gave a part of myself to him. That thought had a weird gooey feeling swirling around my belly. "Thank you," I heard myself saying without having consciously thought it.

  "For?"

  For taking care of me? For helping me open up? For offering physical contact I wasn't even aware I wanted? How did someone thank another person for things like that?

  "Janie..." his voice cut into my internal battle, making my gaze snap to his. My hair slipped from behind my ear again and his hand rose. But it didn't do another ear-tuck. It paused for a second then slid into the strands then cupped the side of my neck. I saw the question in his eyes, but I didn't know what he was asking for.

  "Wolf, I..."

  Then his fingers dug in slightly because he was pulling me slowly downward toward him and I understood. He was looking for permission to kiss me. Kiss me. A thousand objections flashed across my brain in the course of a second, not the least of them being my earlier objections about becoming some pathetic Stockholm chick. But I ignored all of them. Because Wolf's eyes were liquid and heavy-lidded and my belly felt like it was melting in an all too delicious way.

  "You good?" he asked as if sensing the small part of me that was begging me to pull away, to put some distance between us, to reconstruct my walls.

  I felt my head nod slightly as his hand moved around the back of my neck, our faces a breath away from each other. There was a pause before he applied pressure and closed the space between us, my lips landing on his and sending a shock through my system, making my body jolt. />
  His lips didn't immediately demand anything from me; they were just firm pressure under mine as I adjusted to the sensations. His beard tickled in a way that wasn't amusing and almost erotic instead. His hand at my neck was hard. The arm around my back had tightened at the contact. My hair had fallen forward to curtain us and my heart suddenly flew into overdrive, making my chest feel tight.

  I had expected that trying to get close to someone again would bring with it the memories, would overwhelm my body with the sick, awfulness of it all. That was why I never let anyone get close. I didn't need the punishment; I had suffered enough.

  So when our lips pressed into each other and nothing surfaced but the desire, leisurely stretching from its long sleep like a cat, I knew there was no going back.

  My head slanted and his lips closed around my lower lip, sucking it in slightly and drawing a surprised whimper from somewhere deep inside me. At the sound, a growl escaped him and his arm tightened on my hips as he rolled, pushing me onto my back and half-covering my body with his. My hands went to his shoulders, digging in, holding on as his tongue pressed forward and moved into my mouth, toying with mine. My hands grabbed him, pulling him closer until he planted his arms on either side of my body and came fully over me. My fingers slid into his hair, holding him to me as his teeth nipped gently into my lower lip.

  There was no tentativeness in him. He kissed me like worship, like prayer, like benediction. He kissed me like it was the only thing standing between him and absolution, like together we could wash away our sins and start anew in the Elysian Fields.

  And I found myself wanting to believe in the promise he was offering me. But as his hand moved, sliding softly down the side of my breast, an image popped into my mind: unwanted, of a hand there, aggressive, violent, taking things I hadn't offered.

  My entire body went ramrod straight; my hands dropped from his shoulders.

  Feeling the change, his lips pulled from mine, his body weight shifted upward. "Look at me," he demanded as I kept my eyes clamped shut hard, trying to push the images away and failing. "Janie," he demanded again, his voice like velvet-coated steel- soft but firm. My eyes drifted open to find his watching me, taking in every nuance, seeking answers and finding them. He nodded slightly, rolling off onto his side and pulling me onto mine so we were facing each other. His hand rested gently at my hip, safe, undemanding, taking nothing and offering an anchor. "It's okay," he answered, somehow reading my struggle to try to explain.

  "No," I clarified in a small voice. "It's not."

  "Not what happened," he said, his fingers squeezing my hip for a second. "Stopping."

  On a choked whimper that gave too much away of what I was feeling, my forehead slammed into his chest. His arm went up my back and remained there, sifting through my hair as I tried to pull myself together.

  He was, at once, both right and wrong. It should always be okay to stop, to want to slow things down, to need things to go at my own pace. That was my right and no one should make me feel guilty for that. But he was wrong too. Because he didn't understand. He didn't know what it was like to not want to stop, but to need to. He didn't know how it felt to feel ripped in two with desire and fear. He couldn't comprehend the struggle to overcome an invasion and move forward from it, to fear hands that wanted to give pleasure because there once had been hands that had caused pain.

  "Janie," his breath made my hair flutter slightly. "Don't," he demanded.

  "Don't what?" I heard myself croak, the tears stinging at the back of my eyes, begging to be released once and for all.

  "Go there," he clarified. "Don't go there."

  "How can I not go there? I live there," I told his chest, my voice both strong and weak at once. "It's everywhere. It's in everything. It won't go away. It won't let me..."

  "You wear it."

  "How can I not? It's etched into my skin. I can't scrub if off. I've tried. I've tried everything." My breath hitched, making me bite hard into my lip to keep any other sounds from coming out.

  He silently pushed me backward and reached between us, taking the wrist of my un-burned arm and stroking up my skin, no doubt feeling the raised lines underneath the tattoos, touching the scars. "Covered them."

  "Didn't work either," I admitted, keeping my eyes down, not trusting myself to make eye contact when I was so close to tears.

  "No," he agreed. "But made it into something beautiful." My head snapped up then, looking for an excuse in his face to not believe him, to deny deny deny. But I found nothing there. "Beautiful," he repeated and it sent a shiver across my skin, soaking in like a healing salve.

  "Wolf..."

  "Don't regret me," he said, a vulnerability in his tone that I had never heard before, that I wasn't sure I believed he was capable of until that moment.

  It was my turn. To comfort, to soothe. It wasn't a role I was familiar with, it wasn't one I felt fit to play. But he had been so good to me, so understanding, undemanding. I owed it to him to try.

  My hand raised slowly, his hand still holding it at the wrist, and moved to the side of his face, resting there. "I don't regret you. It's weird and it's warped and I'm pretty sure I need therapy for thinking this, let alone admitting it... but I've felt okay here. That sounds strange," I said, searching for the right words. I seemed full of the wrong ones all of a sudden. I sucked in a breath and charged on, ignoring the sharp twisting inside that was trying to make me clam up, to keep him from getting any further under my walls. "It's like... I feel like every day of my life for eight years I have been wearing a mask. I try to hide it, disguise it, pretend it isn't there. But it's there and all I've accomplished by denying it is making sure no one can ever really know me. No one. Not even Lo. It's... made me unknowable. It has made me alone even in a room full of friends. But you..."

  "Saw under the mask," he supplied when the words failed me.

  I felt myself nodding. "I don't need to pretend here. It's... safe here." I threw myself onto my back on a strange, hysterical-sounding laugh, covering my face with my hands. "Like I said... I think that proves I need some serious head shrinking."

  My arms were snagged at the wrists and pulled away. "Stop hiding," he said with a pointed brow raise. Then he reached across my body and grabbed my book off the bed where it had fallen when I passed out. He pressed it into my hands, reaching down and dragging the blankets back over our bodies. He settled in beside me, one arm draped across my belly. At my questioning look, he settled his head into the space above my shoulder. "You won't sleep," he said simply, knowing it was the truth. "You read. I'll sleep."

  And there it was: acceptance.

  He knew.

  He saw.

  And he didn't shrink away; he didn't look at me any different.

  He saw and he accepted.

  His breath warmed my neck and chest, his arm was a comforting weight across my middle, his massive body beside me, curled toward me, offering protection.

  And, again, the word flashed across my mind, it burrowed deep into my soul:

  Safe.

  I was safe.

  So I read. And Wolf slept.

  EIGHT

  Janie

  Wolf's body didn't move all night, my sleeping, stalwart protector. He drifted awake a few minutes after I finished the book, turning his face in toward my neck slightly and planting a soft kiss there. My stomach clenched at the normalcy of it, the casual intimacy, like he did it every morning. But then he rolled away casually, looking up at the ceiling for a moment. "Good book?"

  I almost wanted to laugh. "Yeah," I said, smiling wide at his profile, a happiness inside me that felt foreign and almost overwhelming.

  His head tilted in my direction, his eyes drifting over my face for a long moment and I watched as something strange happened, a shutter closed down over his eyes. While the honey-colored depths always hinted at a bit of distance, there had always been an openness there. Right then, it was gone completely. He shut down. He shut
me out.

  "Shower first," he commanded, bolting off the bed and making his way toward the door, Harley and Chopper jumping up to follow.

  The door slammed and I sat up slowly staring at it. What the hell was that? Like, I got that he had walls. There was nothing about Wolf that suggested he had escaped from his past unscathed and completely well-adjusted. I mean he couldn't have a normal conversation for chrissake. Suddenly, I found myself wanting to know every detail. He implied he had done something bad, something that didn't help him, but had helped his mother. Did he do something to his father? Or his mother's boyfriend or something? I wanted to know. I wanted to know every gory detail.

  I'd looked into Wolf. A year ago when Hailstorm decided to work with The Henchmen, I dug deep and tried to find more than the surface information we had already acquired about him. The problem was, his trail was almost non-existent. He didn't have any social media; he didn't seem to go online at all; he paid his bills in cash. Aside from a few arrest records- one for a drunk and disorderly that I found hard to believe. One, because he seemed like the kind of man too in control to get drunk in the first place and two, because, well, how much liquor would it take to make someone as massive as him drunk in the first place? There had been another arrest for aggravated assault when he was in his early twenties. It never went to trial and I knew enough about the crooked law enforcement in Navesink Bank to know that palms had been greased and paperwork and witness statements found themselves 'missing'.

  I didn't like being blind. I was usually able to find out just about anything if I dug deep enough for long enough. But with him, I got nowhere. And now I was without the resources to try again to find out more about his family. His mother and especially his father. The only thing I knew about Wolf's dad was that he was a Henchmen under Reign and Cash's father and that the three of them had grown up tight as brothers.

  I sighed, climbing out of the bed and shivering against the late fall/ early winter air, grabbing a fresh t-shirt out of Wolf's closet and making my way into the bathroom. I hadn't asked him what happened to my clothes. I don't know why that was. Especially my panties and bra. I made a mental note as I waited for the water in the shower to warm up and I unwrapped my arm, to ask him to return them. Or in lieu of that, buy me new ones. Because, really, it was too freaking cold to be walking around with a draft up your skirt.