“I am neither a Berkowitz, a Zodiac nor a Ripper. I am not remotely like them in any way.”
“Don’t all you freaks say that when you’re all lumped together? What, you think your special or something? Newsflash, you’re fucking not. Your–”
“I wasn’t finished.”
“Well, damn. Pardon me, Emily fucking Post.”
“Must you speak like that?” He sounded irritated. At least she was getting somewhere.
“Yes, I fucking must. Must you kidnap women half your size and weight?”
His brows furrowed. “I didn’t kidnap you.”
She snorted and rolled her eyes. “The ropes kind of gave me the wrong impression then. Maybe you should read Emily fucking Post.” Dae’s eyes narrowed as her head cleared.
And as her brain started functioning properly, she came to realize three very important things. The first being she was in a bedroom, sitting in the corner farthest from the door. Not good. No bueno. The second thing being that this guy was entirely too calm for his own good. That was bad. Really bad.
It’s the quiet ones you have to watch out for.
And the calmer he was meant she had to search for the right buttons to push him over the edge, which could take time. Time she didn’t necessarily have because he could take what he wanted well before she found that button. That made her nervous. Her being nervous was also bad. She didn’t have the control she needed to keep the part of her that panics at bay.
The third was that he had no scratches. None. His face and neck looked completely perfect. Not even a scab. That was damn strange. Normal people scarred, they bruised, and they bled. His clothes were clean and they looked similar to what he was wearing during her futile attempts to get away.
Dae didn’t bruise easily, and she rarely ever scarred. And they had tried–
“I only tied you up because you attacked me. I would not otherwise have done such a thing, but you left me no choice.”
“Funny, I don’t quite hear the prosecutor’s going for that explanation when I go to the police. I think they’ll pretty much side with me, the poor 130 lb woman with the rope burns, since you have no fucking marks on you. So let me tally that up for you short bus, there’s kidnapping, unlawful imprisonment, assault and battery–”
“Now, I really find that hard to believe.” His lip quirked up and his eyes looked amused. True, she wouldn’t be going to the cops because she planned on murdering him right away if she freed herself. But how did he know that… Oh, wait, so this must be the part where he says ‘you’re never going to leave here alive’. So B horror movie of him. She took a deep, disgusted breath and straightened up.
“And why, pray tell, do you find that hard to believe?”
“Well, you have no marks on you either. I was surprised that after the many head butts, by the way, I didn’t even see those coming–”
“Thanks so much! It was all for your enjoyment.” Dae snarled. “Condescending fucking bastard.”
“No, actually, I’m not being condescending, whether you choose to believe it or not. And I do have parents, so I’m not a bastard. As I was saying, you have no marks on you whatsoever. You should have bruises from your attack on me but you have none. The cut on your head has already healed. That makes you very special. I wonder–”
“Well, looks like I’m not the only one in the special department. Where are your marks, your bruises, your scratches?”
She was still snarling. Gods, he thought, that woman even snarled sexy. And she wasn’t trying; she really believed he was going to kill her although he couldn’t figure out why. She was almost pushing him to it.
“Healed. But that’s not important. What is important is why, since you believe I am a notorious–”
“I didn’t say shit about notoriety, Captain Ego–”
“You think me a serial killer, none the less. So why are you trying to push me to kill you faster? Most people in your position would beg for freedom–”
Her beautiful face froze and her eyes glittered. “Fuck you. I’ll never beg. Never.”
“Wait, that came out wrong–”
“I’ll mother fucking bet it did.” Her lip curled in disgust.
“I didn’t mean I was going to kill you, I meant why did you want me to kill you?”
Incredulity was awash on her face. “Are you really asking me that? Really?” She struggled and then glared at him with a face that said ‘I will kill you and all of your future children’.
“Why won’t you answer the question?” Koda really wanted know. She didn’t say anything he expected her to do. Every time she opened her mouth he was shocked.
“Well, damn. I didn’t realize you were actually dumb enough to believe I would do anything you’re expecting me to do. Clearly, you must have failed Kidnapping 101.”
“Nice try at insulting my intelligence, but I haven’t forgotten my question. Why are you trying to push me to kill you?”
“Nice try, but I don’t have to do a mother fucking thing I don’t fucking want to do, including answering your Godsdamn questions or refrain from cursing so it looks like your shit out of luck, asshole.”
She emphasized every curse and had his teeth grinding to hear words like that coming from a woman. When Koda was growing into adulthood, women didn’t curse much… of course that was a long long time ago. And times had changed in 50 years. For the better, Koda reminded himself. He didn’t notice the years much until the differences were too distinct to overlook. Too intriguing. Mesmerizing. Like how her golden eyes were lit with a combination of anger and unadulterated hate. Like how every time her lips quirked her dimples showed themselves. And even though she was snarling at him, she was making his body feel things a snarl never should have.
Focus! He had to explain, preferably while she was silent and not cursing up a storm. So that’s what Koda did. He told her as much as he could, without revealing how he was watching her. She would not be ready for that. Not yet at least.
He decided to start with “It’s not what you think…” His story was very much the truth, expect for the omissions. It was always better to tell the truth than to lie. Lies were hard to remember and the Tribe smelled them a mile away.
So, instead of telling her he was trailing her as she stormed out of the apartment, he said he was walking down the street. Not a lie, he was walking down the street. He told her he saw her attacker grab her and came to help. Also not a lie, he did indeed see and come to do that. He heard how she antagonized her attacker, instead of ignoring him before he ran the thirty odd feet he kept between them as he followed her but he didn’t mention that.
Koda had excellent hearing, but humans didn’t. They wouldn’t understand that as far as he was, he heard everything she said. His beauty had a really, really smart mouth. He told her by the time he got close enough, her attacker already had pinned her down. Her eyes blazed when he spoke about that. He had a feeling his did as well. He explained his poor decision with hitting her attacker in the head. It seemed the best way to take him down. He didn’t tell her that he was so angry he wanted to bash his skull in. He might have.
He didn’t stay around to check.
Koda took her to his apartment rather than a hospital because her injuries were minor and healing fast. Just a bump on the head. It didn’t take him long to explain. That was true enough, but he didn’t want anybody else’s hands on her and at the hospital he would have no choice in the matter. That was an irrational thought. She wasn’t his. Anybody could touch her, with her permission. And that made his blood run cold.
The whole time she sat very still, watching every motion of his hands –he tended to talk with his hands more times than not– with a wariness that shocked him deeply. She had the golden eyes of angel but somehow he knew her gaze was more predator than prey. She paid close attention and he knew she was calculating what counter she would make if he made a move on her. He wouldn’t but she still seemed to believe he was a some kind of serial killer. Why?
> She was silent for a good two minutes. Then she finally said something. It was very simple but he still had no idea what to make of it. “Hmm.”
“Hmm?” He made it a question.
“Hmm.” She made it a statement.
“Is that all you have to say?”
“Would you like me to elaborate?” she said in mock-innocence.
“Please.”
She inhaled a deep breath. “I said ‘Hmm’ because it seems farfetched that you just happen to come along as I was being attacked.”
She shivered slightly and all he wanted to do was to hold her close so she would know that he was there for her. It was another irrational thought. He shouldn’t be so worried about what she was feeling. She was a human woman he was sent to tail because the Cursed were after her. She was his job.
She continued, “Due to the fact that I am tied up in your presence, it seems equally farfetched that you knocked out my attacker, while simultaneously knocking me out and that you did all of this out of the kindness of your own heart.”
She spoke with contempt. But she didn’t understand– “You were only tied up because you kept attacking me–”
“Well, damn. That’s an awfully convenient excuse.”
“An excuse?” he asked incredulously.
“Yes, an excuse. I am still bound and at your mercy, am I not? It really takes the shine off of your… chivalry.”
Koda blew out a breath. “Wow, you are good.”
“Compliments are always appreciated, but I wonder your meaning. It seems we agree on the facts of the situation, although not the motivations. So, what exactly do you mean by ‘good’?” she asked looking confused. Every time she wiggled her glare intensified. He was now sure she would also kill his children’s children, their teachers and their friends.
“What I meant by ‘good’ was how you seemed to skirt right around the apology for attacking me and the gratitude for saving your life.”
“Well, damn. Captain Ego returns. Shall I just slowly hop on my ass over to your lap and get to work? Give you your due? Or bend over and let you take me? How grateful do I need to be to please you?” She snarled and fought against her restraints.
“Why would you think that?” he growled in rage as he jumped up to stand in front of her.
“What about this predicament would lead me to think otherwise?! If you were really as chivalrous as you say, then I should have been free by now, don’t you think?” She spat the words at him.
Koda furrowed his brows at her snarling and looked at her. Damn she was right. He had left her tied so she would calm down and when she finally did he still left her tied. Idiot. Sometimes he was an idiot.
No wonder she thinks you’re scum on the bottom of her shoe.
“Stop wiggling. You’ll hurt yourself.”
“Yeah, because your all about caring if I hurt myself.”
“I am. That’s the problem.” Her eyes widened but she stopped fighting against the restraints. And didn’t ask him what he meant by that.
He got as close as possible and pulled out his ankle knife. She stilled completely, eyes going tight, still angry beyond reason, but she said nothing as he got closer and lowered himself to the floor so they were face to face.
Now I see and scent.
She was scared. It was there hiding in her features, lightly wafting off her body. He now saw the thoughts running through her mind as easily if she’d written them with pen and paper. She expected him to hurt her, as she was hurt before, way before tonight. Those were the scars she carried that never healed.
As illogical as it was, that made the man and the wolf angry. His wolf screamed for vengeance, for her to be safe. But the man, Koda knew she would not understand the why of him needing to kill something or someone for her. To keep her safe. To take away her fears. And then lay the body at her feet. Hell, he didn’t understand why but he wanted her to tell him. Bad. She would need time to trust him first–
Did he want her to trust him?
Yes, he did. Gods, he was confused, the pull he had been feeling towards her intensified the closer he was. The closer he was the more he felt… right.
As Koda cut the ropes that bound her, he looked into her eyes and swore he saw the sun. The pull he felt was indescribable; it was like… Gravity. Electromagnets. Enforced with bungee cords. The power his beauty held over him as he watched her from afar seemed nothing like the power she held over him now. Koda didn’t think he could resist her if he tried. He was a fool to deny that he wanted her; knowing that he shouldn’t want her didn’t stop what he was feeling.
She was a human… Koda was a Warrior for the Tribe. His life was not his own. If she would ever want to be with him. Those odds didn’t look favorable for him at the moment. And being with him would put her in danger. She could never know about his world and the Cursed would see her as an easy target, consort to the A-Gi-Na.
Consort not mate.
If only things were different… If only the pull he felt towards her were not as strong. If only she were Tribe. If only he were human. If only their worlds could be combined, so none of it mattered. Their worlds hadn’t mingled since the time after the Great War, since the Withering, when so many had lost their mates and their sons. His kind, the First People, were unable to have children without being joined to their other halves, their predestined mates. His kind might have become extinct had the Great Creator not gifted those who survived with human mates. And that was over 1000 years ago.
Dammit. There was something about her eyes and her scent that made him want her to be his mate. Madness. He was going mad. Maybe this was what it was like to be feral. His own thoughts and feelings made no sense to him anymore. He was also pretty sure he was having delusions because he could swear her fear scent nearly evaporated and something else in her eyes looked back out at him. Yeah, definitely delusional–
No, he wasn’t having delusions. But this was impossible. What he saw could not be. Her eyes… he saw it in her eyes; it recognized him and the wolf for what they were. Two souls. Both as one. The awareness in her eyes wasn’t the woman. He knew it wasn’t her, it was her wolf. She was a shifter. Impossible, he should have smelled it, but it was true.
A wolf in the sheep’s scent.
Her wolf looked through those unearthly gold eyes and said words without speaking that he heard deep down in the depths of his being. Words the man and wolf wanted to echo with a howl. Mate. Mine. Then surprise entered her eyes as the wolf subsided to the woman. A really confused woman.
Looking into that man’s eyes was like falling. She got lost and forgot about the world around her. What did she need the world for when everything she wanted was in those eyes? Something deep down inside herself ignited. She felt it stir and with it came a boatload of crazy. The part of herself she thought she knew, the strong part that carried her through the bad times, was a stranger to her all of a sudden. She was her but not. The she who wasn’t her wanted to rub herself all over him and his fur. The she who wasn’t her said the craziest things. Mate. Mine. She was and was not herself. She was her and… all of a sudden more.
Fur? What? That’s what snapped her out of the trance his eyes held her in. She moved her eyes to where he was cutting her free. That was safe. The ropes couldn’t suck her into oblivion as his eyes did. They couldn’t destroy what little sanity she managed to maintain after all these years. How long did it take to cut ropes anyway? He would be finished and then she would see if the truths she scented from his admissions were in fact truths.
Clearly, bat-shit crazy was the word of the day. Normal, sane people don’t just start relaxing with their kidnappers. Normal, sane people don’t think about rubbing themselves on their captors. If she thought that. It could have been the she who wasn’t she but was her…The consensus was still out.
Her ropes were finally cut and she made the mistake of looking up. And he was sitting there looking at her with those eyes. Damn him and those eyes, they caught her again. And his scent
… it was like winter snow, wild forest, mountain laurel, man and something she couldn’t describe but had to admit was intoxicating. He was so close his scent was surrounding her. All she could do was breathe it in, she couldn’t move; it paralyzed her mind and body.
The worst part was she didn’t want to and that made her angry. He already had the knife back by his ankle. There was no logical reason why she wasn’t moving. Except those damn eyes. So very blue, so alive. His eyes and scent trapped her.
He slowly moved his hands to her wrists, rubbing gently at where the ropes had been tied.
His hands were lightly calloused, large and warm. His touch was so gentle, and damn it did things to her! It made her want to touch him to see if the rest of him felt as perfect as his hands felt. There was no reason why she was letting him rub her wrists. Again, it was the most contradictory thing she could have done but she couldn’t protest.
His hands moved from her wrists to her bare forearms, lightly rubbing his way up to her shoulders. Oh, but when he touched her it was as if her whole body sang a song she never heard before. The song had one word. A word she never knew the meaning of until recently, so she wasn’t quite sure she heard it right.
He was so close his chest was touching her knees, close enough to kiss. She wanted to rub her hands all over his chest; she wanted to feel his bare skin. His fingers smoothed their way across her collarbone and she shivered. He inhaled deeply as he stared hungrily at her.
He spoke low and husky, “Your scent, it’s like summer rain, honey, woman, wild and… home.”
That was the word from the song. The song her stupid disgraceful betraying body decided to get stuck on repeat. And that’s what woke her up from her psychotic break. Her face must have given her away because he slid back from her immediately. Something in her growled. The fear returned but she beat the crap out of it and the she who wasn’t she who was growling until it was nearly quiet inside.
Lost & Found (A Lost Ones Novel Book 1) Page 6
