I got out of the shower and opened the door to find Wolf standing there, completely overtaking the entire doorway. "Jesus," I yelped, flying back a foot, my hand going to my chest. "Just creeping outside the door?" I asked, feeling defensive.
He ignored me, reaching out to snag my wrist and pulling up my arm to inspect it. "No wrap today," he informed me, dropping it.
I searched his face for a long minute, both of us blocking each other's way. "Everything alright?"
"Fine."
I felt my lips quirk up, ready to throw his own words back at him. "Don't lie. You don't want to talk about it, don't. But don't lie." Ha. So there!
I thought his lip was going to do the twitch thing, but all I found there was a firm line. "Woman..." he growled.
And, well, the impulse control thing failed me again.
"Alright," I snapped, shoving a hand into his chest. "I've had just about enough of your monosyllabic bullshit. I know you like to hide behind it and just shrug and go 'just how I am'. But I think that's cheap. I think you do it so you don't have to let anyone in. But I'm over it. Oh, and while we're on the topic of your linguistic skills, or complete lack thereof, 'woman' is not a complete sentence. You seem to think it relays some deeper meaning, but, newsflash, it doesn't. You're going to have to start using actual sentences with subjects and verbs. You get extra points for a good adjective or adverb here and there."
"You done?" he asked, one of his dark brows raised.
"Actually..." I started, still going full-steam.
"You're done," he corrected, pushing into the small room and leaving me no choice but to back up against the sink counter. I sucked in a breath as he just moved past me, reached in the shower to turn the water on, and went about things like I wasn't there. Meaning, he reached behind his back, snagged his shirt, and pulled it off.
I was totally going to lift my chin up defiantly and storm out of that room, slamming the door for good measure. Totally. That was the plan.
But, well, um... that didn't happen.
I stood there, eyes glued on his strong back, looking over the giant back piece inked there. I felt my mouth fall open slightly as I realized what the image was of: Michael Defeats Lucifer. The archangel Michael, sword raised, wings aloft, was standing on the body of a figure that was more man than demon. It didn't take a genius to know that had particular meaning to him, to his past, to whatever he had done to make his mother's life better, whatever man he had to defeat to make it that way.
He'd chosen wisely, championing himself as Michael in the image, the angel of protection. I barely knew him and that was what he felt like to me. I felt like he could swoop down and fight off any foe that I might be faced with. I felt like he was someone I could trust.
He waited, I guess giving me a chance to excuse myself. When I didn't, he reached for his pants and undid them, letting them fall down his legs, and I realized when I got the blinding image of his firm ass, that he was the kind of man who went commando. I felt my air get caught in my chest, my hand slapping down on the surface of the sink as he slowly stepped into the shower. I should have lifted my gaze. I knew it the moment his body shifted and he was no longer standing with his back to me, but his side. But the movement happened too quickly and I suddenly found myself no longer staring at his muscular ass, but staring at his hard cock. Yes, hard. He was hard. And, like the rest of him, big.
The breath I had been holding rushed out sharply, audibly, as a dozen different thoughts flashed to the forefront of my mind. My system felt drunk on an exotic cocktail of desire and fear. It made my leg muscles feel wobbly and my heartbeat feel erratic, speeding up one moment and slowing down the next. The swirling in my stomach was at once both exciting and nauseating.
"Two choices," Wolf's voice growled at me, making my head snap up guiltily. God, I had been staring at his dick! Jesus Christ.
"Two choices," I repeated, watching his face. It was still closed down. His tone was oddly empty.
"Come in or leave," he clarified and the words landed like lead in my belly. Because I knew I couldn't go in, no matter how curious I was, no matter how much a part of me wanted to. But leaving was equally unpalatable. But I couldn't just fucking stand there all day like a freaking creep either, could I?
"Right," I said, ducking my head as I nodded and moved to walk out of the room.
I closed the door on a quiet click and moved over to the side of the bed where my legs finally gave up on me. Okay. So... yeah. I just saw Wolf naked. I saw Wolf naked and hard. And a part of me really did want to strip down and step into that shower with him. A part of me wanted his strong arms around me again, wanted to feel his fingers on my skin, his lips on mine. I wanted to see if I could break down the barrier in his eyes and voice.
But that wasn't me. I didn't do things like that. And no matter how nice it may have been for him to hold me while he slept and I read, as new and novel as his kiss had been, that didn't change anything. I was still me. I was still full of nightmares and demons. I could never be the girl to strip naked and step into the shower with a man without fear, without memories rushing back and ruining it. What had I been thinking playing at trying to be something other than what I am? I needed to stop playing house and focus. I needed to get my life back on track, as empty and unpromising as the rest of it sounded.
There was no room in my universe for fantasy, hopes, and dreams.
I closed my eyes on the crushing, crumbling feeling inside as I felt those childish wishes slip away. Then I got my ass off the bed and got on with my day.
Wolf came out a while later after more primal animal sounds and slamming that I pretended I didn't hear. He made a cup of the coffee I brewed and shuffled around making food. I sat at the table staring out the window wondering how deep a sleeper he was, if I could slip out when the dogs and he were passed out. It was worth a shot.
The frantic pounding came at the door sometime that afternoon. It was a long ass day pretending it wasn't driving me ape shit crazy that we hadn't spoken so much as a word to each other since the bathroom.
Wolf flew at the door, blocking the doorway as he did. "Not now," he growled at whoever was there. There was a short pause, then, "Seriously?" he asked.
"I need Janie's help," Cash's voice reached me. It was his, but it wasn't. Because I knew Cash's voice and it was always almost lazily flirtatious, light. But his voice sounded tortured, crazed.
"No," was Wolf's typical one-word response.
If I hadn't been listening so aptly, I would have missed it. But as it was, there was no mistaking the sound of a gun cocking. Cash had a gun on Wolf? What the hell was going on? They were brothers in every way that counted.
"This is not a discussion. Lo is in the hands of some fucking psychopath and no one, not even those freaks at that camp of hers can find her. So I need Janie's fucking help."
At that, my heart seized in my chest. Lo. Lo was at the hands of some psychopath? My Lo? My mentor, the woman who was like a big sister and mother and best friend to me all at once. I flew across the room, wrenching the door open.
"Who has her?" I demanded, hearing a bit of hysteria in my tone and not caring.
"Damian Crane," he told me, expecting the name to stump me, because he went on to add, "Her husband."
But, well, there wasn't a whole helluva lot that I didn't know about Lo. She was private; she never talked about her past, but I had done my digging and I knew. "Ex," I supplied.
"What?" Cash asked, brows drawing together.
"Ex-husband. She had a contested divorce that finalized a decade ago. He's her ex-husband."
"How do you know this shit?"
I looked off over his shoulder at the woods for a moment, surprising myself when I offered up the truth, "When I can't sleep, which is often," I started, "I go online. I look into stuff. When I was first at Hailstorm, I looked into the people. So... I know her name is Willow Swift. When she was eighteen, she married Damian Crane. They were m
arried until she was twenty-seven though, obviously, she was not with him that whole time because she was building up Hailstorm at the time and no one there had ever so much as heard his name. I don't know why she wasn't..."
"He beat her," Cash cut me off, effectively stunning me into complete silence.
"What?" I asked, hearing the horror in my own voice.
"I found a picture. There were bruises on her arm. That, coupled with the article that said he was stabbed twelve times in his apartment..."
"Oh my god..." I whispered, feeling a little light-headed at the idea. I couldn't picture it. I couldn't imagine a young Lo, untrained, knowing nothing of all the self-defense she now did, cowering away from a man who raised his hands to her. No wonder she fought so hard to be so damn strong all the time. She never wanted to feel that way again. She never wanted to cower or fear a man again. She...
"Enough," Wolf said roughly, making my head snap up to find his gaze on Cash for a second before drifting over to mine, his face softening slightly.
"He has her, Janie..." Cash said, his voice a plea.
"I need a computer," I snapped, looking over at Wolf, not caring about the shaking in my voice. "Right now," I clarified.
There was the barest of pauses before his head gave me a jerky nod. "'Kay," he said and turned into the cabin.
"How long?" I asked Cash as we followed Wolf inside.
"Hours. I don't know. I was at Hailstorm trying to get their help in locating him before he found her again."
"Again?"
"That's why she was begging asylum at my place, kid. He got to her and he busted her up. Her face... her ribs... it was bad. He did a number. She went to The Henchmen. I just so happened to be there so I took her home. I took care of her. And then..."
There was something in his tone, something in the softness in his eyes. I wasn't exactly familiar with it, but I knew it when I saw it. He had feelings for Lo. Like... real feelings. I didn't think such a manwhore was capable, but if there ever was a woman who could intrigue him enough to tame his wild nature, it was Lo. "And then..." I prompted.
He sidestepped the question he knew I was really asking. "And then when I got home, my place was trashed. Her blood was on the walls. My neighbor gave me a make and plate of his truck. I called Malcolm and got him on it."
"They got nothing?" I asked, annoyed that they were proving so inept without me. I thought I had trained them well.
"Nothing useful. He said every other case is closed until you guys find her."
"Well... duh," I said, resisting the urge to roll my eyes. The rummaging Wolf had been doing quieted and I turned in his direction to see him moving toward me with a laptop box in his hands. Like... a factory-wrapped laptop. He had had a laptop in his closet the whole time. How the hell had I missed that? Why hadn't I asked if he had one before? He stopped in front of me, holding the box to a laptop that was already a good two years old and I felt a smile tease my lips. "You're ridiculous," I told him, taking the box from his hands.
The men moved away from me, going toward the kitchen and talking in somewhat hushed tones to, I imagine, exclude me from their conversation. Not that they needed to; I wasn't paying them any attention. I had a laptop to open and get running. Then I had the most important person in my world to find... before anything horrible happened to her. Though, a part of me knew that if she was in the hands of someone who used to beat her... well, horrible things were probably already happening. I used that knowledge to push me forward.
"Carpet store?" I called out as soon as I got online.
"Been there. Nothing," Cash supplied.
On a growl, I went back to work, their low, grumbling voices carrying on in the kitchen. "As much as I love to sit here listening to you two hens clucking like a couple chicks," I said, still tapping furiously as I spoke, "I am going to need some coffee and silence," I snapped at them, not caring if I was being a bitch.
Wolf made a grunting noise and I knew he was going to make the coffee. I flicked open a tab and put on internet radio, metal music blaring loud enough to drown out the endless stream of fears flying across my mind.
Cash moved over toward Wolf's recliner and sat down, anxious energy bouncing off of him. A part of me went out to him, knowing how helpless he felt, knowing that for a man of action to be forced to sit and wait and worry was the worst kind of torture. Especially when his woman was out there somewhere having god-knew what done to her. True, Lo was strong. But even strong women, when faced with something that once made them weak, could crumble.
Eventually, Cash slept. Wolf held silent vigil at the dining room table with me, refilling my coffee when it went empty, pretending to ignore my growling and cursing when I met dead end after dead end. Whoever Damian Crane was, aside from ex-military and wife-beater, he was air. He kept next to nothing on the books aside from that god damn abandoned carpet store he kept in town.
The longer I searched, the more that bothered me. Why would he have bought a store and not done something to renovate and reopen it? Why pay taxes on something useless? In the town where your formerly-battered ex-wife set up her business?
The answer was... he wouldn't. That carpet store meant something. Cash had said he had been there and there was nothing there. But I didn't buy that. No way. It had to mean something. Sometime around sunrise, I got into the city's website and after an annoying search, finally found the plans.
"What about the basement?" I shouted as I paused the song on the radio station.
"What?" Cash asked, bolting awake in the chair, rubbing his eyes.
"The basement," I said again, overly caffeinated and under-slept and, therefore, a little grumpy.
"What basement?"
"The one at the carpet store," I clarified.
"Kid, there wasn't a basement. No doors to a staircase. Nothing."
"Then what is this?" I asked, swinging the laptop screen in his direction and stabbing at the picture.
He flew out of his chair and across the room, his face a mask of horror as he choked out, "No..."
"Yeah. There's a basement. He must have hidden the..." I didn't get to finish my sentence because suddenly... he wasn't in the cabin anymore. I closed my mouth on a snap as Wolf got up out of his chair, grabbing the cell off the counter in the kitchen where he had put it to charge after Cash had passed out. As he passed, he fished into his pocket and brought out another cell, tossing at me.
"Call it in," he told me, not having to say anything else. I snagged it on the fly and quickly dialed in the number for Hailstorm.
"Malcolm," he answered, his familiar, fatherly voice making my insides feel like they were being ripped out. It was supposed to be a clean break. I was never supposed to hear their voices again. And, next to Lo, Malcolm was the closest thing to family I had. He raised me up. He showed me that men could be good and trustworthy. He never once implied that my damage or my femaleness or my size was ever a factor. He trained me like he trained the men even though I knew he held a soft spot in his heart for me, like the daughter he never had. Hearing his voice physically hurt.
But it was for Lo.
I would torture myself every day left of my miserable life for Lo.
"Malc it's Janie..."
"Jstorm, what the fuck?" he exhaled loudly, sounding both frustrated and relieved. "Where the fuck have you been? Lo is..."
"In the basement of the carpet store. Cash is on his way. He's going to need back up. Bring someone medical. If Damian has her, there's going to be damage."
"On it," Malcolm said and I could hear him issuing out orders. There was a pause. "Honey is everything okay with you?" he asked, somehow picking up on things being amiss. What can I say? He was good at his job.
"Everything is fine. Go get Lo. Get her safe. Get her fixed up."
"Never doubt it," he said, but he wasn't done. "JJ," he said, his voice dipping soft, "when am I going to see you back here?"
The ripping of my insides thing
s intensified. "Bye Malc," I said into the phone, ending the call before things got out of hand and I started crying.
I put my elbows on the table, burying my face in my hands. It was that moment that Wolf decided to come back in. "Janie..." he said softly, all the distance gone from his voice. I couldn't bring myself to look up at him, too focused on trying to rein in my emotions before they went out of control. "He'll get her," he told me and I heard him come up by my side. "She's strong," he reminded me.
"Even strong women can be weak sometimes," I told him, feeling the truth of it in my bones.
I felt his huge palm close over both of my wrists, pushing them down and away from my face. His other hand reached up and snagged my chin, pulling it in his direction. I looked to find him crouched down beside my chair, watching me with open eyes. "He'll take care of her."
"I know he's like your brother and you have to protect him. But Cash isn't exactly..."
"She's his," he cut me off firmly. "He loves her." Those words hit home, cutting through the fear and helplessness I felt. "He'll help."
"Help what?"
"Her be strong again."
"You're sure?"
He gave me a tight nod and I found myself believing him even though I had no good reason to. On a strange muted whimper, I flew off the chair and launched myself into his chest, arms going around him tight. Him, being some descendant of the Titans themselves, didn't so much as budge at the impact. He made a grunting noise, his arms moving around me automatically as I buried my face in his neck, his beard tickling across my cheek.
Feeling braver with the contact, I whispered into his neck. "You locked me out this morning."
His chest tensed against me. "You pushed."
I felt a small laugh escape me, shaking my head. "Yeah I do that sometimes. In case you haven't noticed, I'm a pain in the ass."
Wolf (The Henchmen MC #3) Page 7
