by DD Prince
“I’ll take her now,” I say.
“Oh.” She looks disappointed. “She’s hungry.”
“You can drive us,” I tell her. “I’ll feed her at home.”
She smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “Oh. Give me two minutes to get my keys and tell Stanley.”
27
Ivy
Tyson carries me in through the front door of his house. He has my bags, which I’m relieved about; I hadn’t even thought about them in the clinic because I was sort of reeling from everything.
I don’t know how he got them since he didn’t leave my side but suspect someone from the clinic helped.
Cat drove us in her SUV and Tyson carried me into the back seat and held me the same way he did when I was injured even though he didn’t need to.
“I should – ” I tried to scoot off his lap.
His grip around me tightened and his eyes were like green fire, warning me to stay put. On him.
“I can’t put on my seat belt from your lap, Ty.”
“Are you a good driver, Catrina Savage?” Ty called out.
“Only the very best,” she said with a smile in her voice.
He grunted and stayed put. Okay, then.
“Especially with precious cargo,” she tacked on.
I caught a smile in her eyes in the rearview mirror. I smiled at her.
The ride back was silent and broody, just like the mood in the room before we left. One minute she’s giving me the okay that I can go and offering to make eggs benedict and introduce me to Stan, who I guess she lives with, but the next moment, she’s coming back with Tyson on her heels and he’s gathering me up to take me back to his lair.
I can’t help but feel nervous about being alone with him. The way he’s been with me has been frying my nerves to a crisp.
We get back and he has to fetch his keys from his jeans by the tree before we can go in.
“Eyedrops three times a day unless you shift and it gets better on its own,” she reminds him.
He grunts in response.
***
He kicks the door shut behind us and my body jerks in response to the slam. He’s barefoot, and his face scruff is now officially a bit more than scruff, and it’s yummy. Though, I’m trying to not ogle it too much because we’re obviously in a fight.
He goes still and my hands fiddle with one another from their position in my lap. He sets me down on the sofa and looks around with surprise on his face.
The atmosphere has changed and it’s not subtle. He looks around with big eyes and then his eyes land on me.
The house still smells like lemon dish soap, cinnamon, and wildflowers from my cleaning spree yesterday that used almost the whole bottle of soap. I also sprinkled cinnamon into the fireplaces and on the kitchen burners. It’s evident that it’s much cleaner at a glance even if I only got the floors swept instead of mopped.
He’s eyeing me with that ‘math question’ face again. I say nothing.
Before we got out of the truck, his mother said, “Make her some breakfast and some tea when you get in. She needs to rest today so nothing that requires anything… strenuous. Understand?”
He flexed his jaw muscles in reply.
“Nothing too strenuous,” she repeated. Then winked.
He gave her a subtle nod and that seemed to satisfy her.
“See you tomorrow,” she replied. “I’ll be here around this time. Here’s my phone number if you have any questions or problems. And I gave him two dressing changes for the wound site, Ivy. Change it tonight and again in the morning. Pain pills every four hours. I’ll bring more first aid supplies tomorrow.” She held a card out and I took it.
“Thanks, Cat, but there’s no phone here.”
“I have your phone,” Tyson informed, and this shocked me.
I told her there were some of Riley’s clothes and a pair of boots near the tree and she said she’d grab them and take them back with her. “Our kind tend to leave our clothes absolutely everywhere.” She winked at me and then left.
And now that he’s put me down, he’s walking to the kitchen counter and emptying his pockets of all the things she gave him at the clinic. Pills, bandages and gauze, eyedrops, and my phone plus a cord and charging block.
He lifts a pot out of the cupboard, fills it with water, and sets it on the stove. He turns the stove on, likely to make tea per her orders. After that, he opens the fridge and surveys the ingredients. The fridge is jam-packed from the shopping spree of two days ago.
The table wasn’t dirty yesterday as he’d obviously cleaned it the night before after I went to bed because I noticed it no longer had the sticky-grimy film on it, but I found an actual lace tablecloth deeper in that stuffed armoire in the bedroom and had put it on as well as a pretty (once I washed a decade or two of grime off it) turquoise crackled glass vase I’d found in the back of a cupboard with some flowers I’d picked from the jungle of fragrant wildflowers behind the house.
He leans over and lifts the note I’d put down. His eyes go wide, and I feel self-conscious as he stares at it.
It flutters toward the floor and then he’s erasing the space between us, to get to me and before the paper even lands, he has my jaw in both hands and his mouth is on mine.
His teeth nip my bottom lip, making me gasp and this grants him access with his tongue, which licks at mine. He is devouring me. Devouring me with his mouth and there’s all sorts of heat rising in me along with crazy emotions coming at me from him. From me. Sort of swirling around us both, I think.
Oh. My. God.
What’s happening here?
I’m pulling away, trying to get some air because I can barely breathe. I search his face and the anger that I’ve been looking at since yesterday is just… gone.
“Ivy,” he breathes and then he’s kissing me again.
And now he’s purring.
And I’m melting.
He’s kissing me again and I suddenly don’t care about oxygen. It feels like everything I need… I can get from him.
I’m kissing him. He’s kissing me. My hands are on his shoulders, then in his hair and he’s groaning, liking the way it feels.
Wait.
Wait a freaking minute.
“Wh-what are you doing?” I pull back, ready to show how hurt my feelings are, though I’m relieved that he’s suddenly all about showing affection instead of roaring in my face like an angry monster. “Two seconds ago you were fuming. Now you’re… what?”
“Your note. You weren’t just… you didn’t just want to forget what we shared. I’m …” He stops and licks his lips.
“Sorry?” I ask, haughtily. “Are you about to say you’re sorry for the way you’ve been behaving? Because what if I’m not ready to hear a sorry and accept your apology? What if I’m still upset about you growling in my face so much in the past twenty-four hours?”
He pulls me against him, squishing me to his chest. Then he’s maneuvered me over and into his lap, his arms around me, his nose in the crook of my neck, where his teeth prints are. He drags his nose up and down the crook, purring louder, and….boom… my panties are drenched. Completely.
“Damn it,” I whisper and then his lips find mine and his fingers tangle in my hair once again.
“I am sorry, my beautiful Ivy. You shouldn’t have left, do not leave again, please, please never. But that you left me your telephone number for your house line, whatever that means and the phone number for your store fills me with so much joy. Coming home to this house made nicer and now seeing you didn’t want to just forget me…” He lets that hang.
Yeah. I felt bad. I wrote that I had to go, that I was sorry if it hurt his feelings, but that my job was counting on me and that I couldn’t let them down. I told him to please phone me, that I’d really like to talk to him again. I underlined the word ‘really’ three times.
I almost crumpled up the note and started over, but it seems that the few lines on a piece of paper were enough to make his ang
er at me disintegrate.
That’s why he’s been so growly. He thought I left him without a backward glance.
“I left because I had to, Tyson. I had to,” I whisper. “I didn’t wanna hurt you. I kept trying to tell you that I had responsibilities and people would be worrying about me and you just wouldn’t listen…”
“I know. It still hurts, but it doesn’t hurt as much.”
Oh, my heart.
I snuggle into him, realizing how much I’ve missed him putting his hands on me affectionately in such a short time.
“I have, in a few days, had my life changed,” he whispers into my hair. “I’m not good with words, Ivy, but I’ll try to explain.”
“Okay,” I whisper against his shoulder.
He squeezes again. “I found you. You, who are already and always will be the most important being in the world to me.”
I bite my lip. He keeps going.
“I found out about family that I didn’t know I had. I found out a pack I thought was against me has instead mourned me. The man who raised me, who told me he did it to save me? Lied. He lied my whole life. And I’m piecing together many other things about my life with him that I hadn’t taken the time to think about, not really. I’m in a different mind state now. And all those people who want to know me. And Cat…”
“Your mom. Your mom that you thought was killed.”
“But she was raped, Ivy. By my uncle. I knew he went to the forbidden village and took a female against her will. I smelled the sex and fear on him when he came back. And when I was faced with the scent and the eyes of Catrina Savage I knew that she was that woman he did that to and that she is my mother. My mother who he said was dead. He told me he saved me. He threw that in my face many times over the years that I was alive because of him. No, Ivy. I was alone because of him.”
“Oh, Ty.” I put my hand to his jaw, and he stares into my eyes with a wondrous expression.
“She is nothing like I expected. None of them are. There are so many things happening, my Ivy. And you tried to leave me and you were nearly killed by a venomous snake and I had to take you to them, not knowing if they’d save you or if they’d try to harm us and doing that while worrying about you…”
“I get it. Into a den of wolves. Or what you thought was one.”
“They are wolves. Wolf shifters,” he says, confused. He leans back and looks at my face searchingly.
“I know,” I explain. “It’s an expression for stepping into a dangerous place where… where everyone will betray you,” I say.
He jerks.
“That’s what people think of wolves? And yesterday you called me a filthy fucking animal and a monster then left me. And now you speak of dens of wolves as if it’s a bad thing.” He shakes his head.
“And you’re upset at your uncle for taking your mother against her will and that’s what you’ve been doing to me,” I return.
He jerks back like I’ve slapped him. “It’s… we’re mated. You’re mine, Ivy.”
He doesn’t understand.
I sigh. “You don’t get it.”
“You’re right, I don’t. I’m caught between a world of shifters and your world where I understand very little of either, Ivy. And you spoke vilely of me and then left me. And nearly died. Nearly died while I was running off anger so you wouldn’t have to see it and then came face to face with the woman that birthed me, a woman who had her husband and child taken. She’s in a pack where they mourn me, where they want me to be their leader. I don’t know how to be one of them or don’t know how to be with someone like you who doesn’t understand me or them.” He runs his hands through his hair. “And I don’t show vulnerability to anyone and yet here I am showing it to you.”
“Because you trust me,” I whisper.
He looks into my eyes.
“You thought I was the one for you and—”
“You are! I tell you this, but you continue to try to leave me.”
“I explained that,” I defend.
He huffs.
“I get it, baby. You feel like everyone betrays you.” I caress his face again. He leans into my touch and his eyes go so liquid with heat; they glow. “I was angry because you talked about hurting someone merely because I had a history with them. Just because I used to date someone doesn’t mean they deserve to die. Would you actually kill him just because he used to date me?”
His lip curls. He still can’t hack the thought of me dating somebody. How can he feel so possessive this soon?
“We have a major culture divide between us, Ty. We’d have had that if you were a shifter growing up like a typical shifter, but you didn’t grow up in a way that’s typical for… anyone.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“And I don’t even know a whole lot about how you grew up. But I do know that if you and I are gonna work, we’re gonna have to take the time to try to understand one another. Be patient with each other.”
“If we’re gonna work?” he asks. “Does that mean you won’t try to leave me again?”
I sigh and give my head a shake. “It means I wanna try and see what this thing is…”
“You won’t leave me,” he orders. “Ever.”
I roll my eyes. “God, you’re bossy. Go make me some tea and breakfast. I’m injured over here.” I shake my head and fold my arms across my chest.
He looks into my eyes searchingly for a moment and I point exaggeratedly at the stove. “And I could use a blanket over here. My legs are cold.”
Cat let me hang onto her shorts so I wouldn’t have to try to get my jeans over my ankle again.
“Who’s bossy?” He cocks an eyebrow and then his sexy mouth splits into a breathtaking smile. “I’ll make you tea. And food, little boss. What food do you want?”
“A deli sandwich and soup,” I say. “And for you to promise not to kill any of my exes.”
He frowns. “I don’t know how to make that. I can cook meat over fire. I could try to…”
“Sandwiches.”
“Yes?”
He doesn’t know how to make sandwiches. I can tell by his face.
“You slap deli meat between two pieces of bread and put mayo and mustard and cheese and lettuce and tomato if you have it.”
“Okay…” He doesn’t sound sure.
“Soup, you heat up in a pot on the stove. The can will say if you have to add water or not.”
He blinks at me.
I’ll make it,” I tell him. “Just put a chair by the counter and I can rest a knee on it so I don’t have to put my weight on my foot, and you can help. Or stand there and look pretty. Whatever. Let’s go.”
“I need to mount you first,” he informs, looking like he’s getting ready to devour me.
Mount?
I put a hand up.
“You need to wait,” I correct, “until I eat, get some caffeine into me, and take a shower. I’ll have to cover my foot with something so I don’t get it wet but…your mom said I can’t do anything strenuous. And we need to work on your seduction skills there, baby.”
“Are you telling me I’m not allowed to fuck you?” he stares into my eyes.
“That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”
“You don’t get to tell me that,” he denies, pointing at himself. “I’m the man.”
I laugh.
He looks affronted. And confused.
“And I’m a woman with a voice. And besides… your mom said so,” I add.
His eyes track my face and he looks like he’s trying to figure something out.
I raise my eyebrows. “You gonna listen to your momma?”
He gives me a ‘what the fuck’ face.
“Okay, how about this then…” I try instead. “Do you want to have another fight with me before we even get a chance to have make-up sex?”
He tilts his head and eyes me sexily. “Make-up sex? That sounds interesting.”
“Oh, it is. Don’t blow it or you won’t be getting it. C’mon. Carry me to
the counter. Your mom doesn’t want me putting weight on my foot at all today. Not only did I get bit, but I also twisted my ankle trying to get away from the snake, so it hurts.”
“More pills?” He asks.
“I can’t have any for at least three hours. Gotta follow the schedule with pills or you can get sick from taking too many. You know that right?”
“I guess.” He doesn’t look so sure.
“You guess?”
“I’ve never had pills.”
I shake my head in surprise. This guy is just… fascinating. “I don’t need pills right now, but I wouldn’t be able to take them if I did feel like I need them, I’d call your mom and tell her that they’re not strong enough. Anyway, I’m fine though. I’ll rest after we eat.”
That reminds me, I need to take my birth control pill. And he needs his eyedrops.
“Let’s get that plugged in.” I gesture to my phone, not recognizing the cord.
He plugs my phone in and then starts working on a fire, so I take that minute to grab my birth control pills from my bag, which is at my feet. I pop one in and swallow it down dry. He’s rubbing his eye like it’s irritated.
“Ty, put your eyedrops in,” I say. “It’ll help with the irritation.”
He gets just one in and acts like a big baby about it, scowling and rubbing his eye.
“Another one. You have to put two in.”
“I’ve got a better idea,” he says, and he shifts, shifts back, and steps up. “Better?” he asks.
My head shakes in astonishment. I can still barely wrap my head around his ability to do that.
The white of his eye is still red.
“No. Put the rest of them in.”
“I don’t like how it feels,” he says.
“Then I’ll do it.”
“Later. You need food.”
“Ty…”
“Later.”
I decide not to push it.
He puts his clothes back on and helps me make lunch. Tea, deli turkey and swiss cheese sandwiches and I realize there’s no soup, so I make myself one sandwich and I make him two. He devours them and then looks at me like he wants to devour me.
