CHAPTER THREE
Ella
Ella looked around Roman’s broad shoulders and went very still.
In the doorway were not one, but two men approximately the same size as Roman.
She instinctively knew the poachers had not found her.
She didn’t get any weird icky vibes as she had earlier in the forest. No, they were wolves.
Big, intimidating wolves—if she were a woman easily intimidated.
And they were uncannily the same as her self-appointed protector.
Or captor, as he’d just pointed out, which had done nothing for the state of her mind.
Now, instead of her body running on fear and adrenaline, it was running on hormones.
That was a sentence she never expected to think about herself in a stranger’s kitchen with blood on her shirt, and yet here she was, thinking it anyway.
Of course, her traitorous body would pick now to remember it had needs. Thoroughly ignored-for-years needs.
One was as wide as a load-bearing wall and the other had the kind of smile no smart woman—or man—would fall for. He was all charm on the outside, but underneath, the darkness practically swirled around him, and she was not into the whole aura thing.
Both of them were scanning the room like they expected to find bodies.
Everybody froze.
“Huh,” said the wide one. She couldn’t really call him the wide one. They were all freaking wide. And tall. And handsome.
Excessively handsome. The kind of handsome that belonged to women who didn’t come with soft stomachs and wide hips and the quiet knowledge that men who looked like this usually looked right past women who looked like her.
The charming one looked from Roman, to Ella, to the first aid kit on the table, to the bandage on Roman’s shoulder, and his knife-grin spread slow and delighted, like Christmas had come early and brought ammunition. “Well,” he said. “This explains everything.”
Roman made a sound Ella had never heard before. Not today in the clearing when he’d faced off armed men, not from any of the shifters she’d treated at the hospital. It was low and continuous. She felt it—in parts of her body she absolutely shouldn’t have.
Down, girl, she told her traitorous nervous system.
The man is growling at the strange men who just burst into his home, not at you.
Stop getting wet over a growl. You are a professional.
You are a grown woman who has accepted that men do not lose their minds over curvy packages.
You are not going to start panting now just because this particular giant happens to smell like pine and danger and something that makes your knees stupid.
The other two men just stood there, unmoving.
Because he had not immediately charged. Ella put a hand on Roman’s back—between the shoulder blades, flat, the way she steadied patients who were about to do something ill-advised—and felt every muscle in him go rigid at once.
“Roman.” She kept her voice the same way she kept it during procedures. Steady. Unhurried. A voice that expected to be obeyed. “Who are they.”
A pause.
“My brothers,” he said. It came out low and rough and not entirely like language.
“I’m Declan,” the large one said. No preamble. Just the fact, offered and done.
“Cage,” said the other one. “The charming one.”
“He decided that himself,” Declan said.
“Nobody disputed it.”
Ella was a practical woman who dealt in information.
She put together what she had. The sound, the position, the way his brothers had come in low and ready and were now standing absolutely still.
Not because they were afraid. Because they were being careful.
The way you were careful around something that might go one of two ways and you didn’t want to influence it toward the bad one.
She looked at the one named Cage. He was watching Roman with the expression of a man running scenarios through his mind.
She looked at the other one. He hadn’t taken his eyes off his brother.
“Okay,” she said. “Will someone tell me what’s happening.”
“Roman’s spooked,” Cage said casually. “It happens. He’s fine.”
“He’s making a noise,” she couldn’t help but point out.
Cage shook his head. “Actually, that’s his wolf making the noise. The animal is warning us away.”
“Why is his wolf warning you away? You’re his brothers.”
“And you’re his mat—”
Declan kicked Cage in the leg. “Ow, that hurt.”
“It was meant to.”
Cage rubbed his leg. “We felt you get shot, bro.”
“I’m fine.” Roman finally spoke.
Ella looked at the back of Roman’s head.
He was very still, which she had already learned was not the same as calm.
Big hands loose at his sides. Weight forward.
Eyes on his brothers with an attention that hadn’t wavered once since they came through the door.
She thought about him in his wolf form. How he’d placed himself between her and the danger.
How he’d looked at her with those storm-gray eyes like she was the only thing in the world worth protecting.
Which was ridiculous. Men who looked like Roman Matthews did not look at women who looked like her that way.
They looked at sleek, athletic wolf females.
Not nurses with soft bellies and wide hips who got winded after one good sprint through the woods.
She stepped out from behind him.
Roman moved with her, tracking left, and she put a hand on his arm and he stopped. That made both brothers openly stare at her.
“I’m Ella.” When she went to offer her hand, Roman grabbed it.
His fingers closed around hers like he had every right, warm and rough and possessive, and a completely inappropriate spark shot straight up her arm and settled low in her stomach. Oh for fuck’s sake. Really? Now? In front of his brothers? Her body had the worst timing in the history of bodies.
That made Cage grin again. “Hi, Ella.”
He was studying her with open, gleaming interest. He was handsome.
But then all three of them were, which felt frankly excessive for one family and one afternoon.
There was something underneath Cage’s charm, though, ears laid flat behind the grin.
The friendly part of him was real, but it stood guard in front of something that wasn’t friendly at all.
“So,” Cage said pleasantly. “You’re the reason my brother has a hole in him.”
“Poachers are the reason your brother has a hole in him,” Ella snapped back. “I’m the reason it’s dressed properly.”
“She talks back,” Cage said to the room, delighted. “I like that.”
That produced another low growl from Roman.
The sound vibrated through her hand where he still held it, and Ella had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from making a noise of her own.
This was getting ridiculous. She was standing in a kitchen with three enormous, attractive wolf shifters, one of whom had just called her his, and her primary concern was that her panties were becoming a problem.
Declan gave her a nod and slowly walked toward Roman.
When he was still about a foot away, he reached out and placed his hand on the bandage.
Up close he was even bigger. His eyes when they passed over Ella held on a beat too long—not unfriendly, just thorough, like she was being weighed on a scale only he could read.
“This going to be okay?”
Ella nodded. “Probably. He won’t go to the hospital.”
“No. He wouldn’t.” Declan looked down at her hands. “Why don’t you go wash up. We need a few minutes alone with Roman.”
She didn’t know why, but she looked at Roman for his permission. He nodded and she headed to what she thought was the bathroom door. It was Roman’s bedroom instead. She closed the door and leaned back against it, trying to put herself back together.
Great. Fantastic. She’d accidentally walked into the one room in the house that smelled entirely like him, and her stupid body took a full, greedy breath before her brain could stop it.
There is blood on your shirt, she reminded herself.
You do not get to enjoy the smell of the man who is currently holding you hostage for your own good.
You especially do not get to stand here wondering what it would feel like if he pinned you to this door and put that growly mouth on every inch of you.
Washing her hands and face helped settle her nerves.
She undid her ponytail and finger-combed her hair, trying to get the leaves and twigs out of the brown mess.
She sighed. Of course she’d end up in the same house as three deliciously handsome men while looking like she’d just rolled down a mountain—which, at some point today, she actually had.
And looking exactly like the disheveled, thoroughly unheroic woman she was. No sleek ponytail. No athletic glow. Just flushed cheeks, a scratched face, and a body that had never once been the kind men fought over.
She came out to find Roman alone again, waiting in the kitchen with the first aid kit open on the table.
“Sit,” he said.
“That’s my line.”
“Cheek. Sit.”
“It’s a scratch. I’m a medical professional, I would know if —”
“Ella.” Just her name, in that low voice, and her knees pulled the same trick they’d been pulling all day. Traitors. She sat.
He came around the table and crouched in front of her. He’d put on a shirt while she was in the bathroom, which was for the best. But also, a tragedy she was choosing not to examine. He tipped her chin up with two fingers and turned her face to the light.
Nobody had ever handled Ella Scott gently.
She was sturdy. Everyone said so. Sturdy, dependable, strong as an ox—she’d heard every version, and none of them had ever once made her feel like this, pinned to a kitchen chair by two fingers and a pair of gray eyes.
Women like her got practical touches. Efficient touches.
Not this slow, careful attention that made her pulse jump in her throat.
Get it together, Scott. He is checking you for injuries.
This is a medical exam. There is nothing romantic about a medical exam.
You have given approximately four hundred of them yourself and never once felt like this during any of them.
And men who look like him do not get romantic about scratched-up nurses who take up space.
The antiseptic was cold. His hand wasn’t. He worked slowly, dabbing along the scratch, frowning at it. She sat very still and looked anywhere but at his mouth, which left approximately nowhere to look. Because he was that close.
“Anywhere else?” His voice had dropped. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”
“No.” She answered without thinking even then, her body was reminding her she’d just ran through the forest, men chasing her, sliding down inclines and getting accosted by a bevy of low handing branch. The protest was real.
“Your ankles. You went down that slope hard.”
“They’re fine.” She held out her legs, wiggling her ankles.
“Your hands.” He took one before she could answer, turned it over, and ran his thumb across the scraped heel of her palm. Every nerve she owned sat up and took notice of his touch. “That’s not fine.”
“That’s— barely a—okay, in medical terms we call that a boo-boo, Roman, it doesn’t even need a—”
He lifted her palm and pressed his mouth to it.
Ella stopped talking. Possibly forever. His lips were warm against the scrape, his eyes stayed open and on hers the whole time.
He was still crouched in front of her chair, close enough that she could see the storm-gray of his eyes go molten at the edges with a color that did not occur in humans.
He lowered her hand slowly but neither of them let go.
She heard the thud of a heart beating erratically and had a terrible feeling it was hers.
Oh no. Oh no, no, no. That was not allowed.
Curvy women did not get their scraped palms kissed by men who looked like Roman Matthews.
They got a bandage and a polite you’re fine and then the man moved on to someone sleeker.
Her body, traitor that it was, did not care about the rules.
It cared that his mouth had just been on her skin and that she wanted it on a great many other places immediately.
“Your brothers came through that door ready for a fight,” she said, mostly to have something to say that wasn’t oh God do that again.
“They were.”
She should push for more of an answer than that. She was a woman who pushed. It had gotten her into trouble at the last hospital she’d worked at and caused an incident she preferred not to discuss.
But she had never once considered not to push. That was who she was.
She looked at him—at the bandage on his shoulder and the gray eyes and the stillness—and for reasons that were not entirely rational, she let it go.
Mostly because some small, deeply unprofessional part of her suspected that if she kept pushing right now, she wouldn’t like where her own willpower ended up.
“Fine,” she said. “Where do I sleep?”