Iris
It’s the voices that wake me up. Low, hushed, right outside the door. Two of them.
One I recognize. The deep one, the one that belongs to the guy who’s been sitting in that chair all night watching me. Declan, right? There’s still so much confusion and fogginess from earlier, back at the house, but his name is clear in my memory.
The other is similar but doesn’t have the same resonance that feels like a drum being struck in my chest. They’re arguing, but trying not to be loud about it.
“—been sitting there for hours, Dec. You need to sleep.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. You look like hell. Let me take over.”
“I said I’m fine, Cole.”
“And I’m saying you’re not, and I’m not asking.”
Silence. Then a sound that might be a sigh or could be a growl. It’s hard to tell with these people.
I don’t know why, but it seems important to keep my eyes closed while they fight it out.
Something about the idea of Declan leaving makes my chest tighten in a way that doesn’t make sense.
He kidnapped me. He tied me to a bed. I should want him gone, right?
I should be relieved at the thought of someone else taking over.
Someone whose presence doesn’t make my skin feel like it’s humming.
But I’m not relieved. I’m the opposite, and I hate that I can’t explain why.
The door opens. Heavy footsteps pause near the bed. I can feel him looking at me. I keep my breathing slow and even, and I don’t open my eyes, and after a moment he moves away. The door clicks shut.
He’s gone.
The tightness in my chest gets worse instead of better.
I open my eyes and look around, then go stiff when I find the other one in the chair now.
I remember him from last night, sort of.
He’s not Zeke—I don’t think Zeke would just sit there, looking curious instead of hateful.
But he has the same dark hair and green eyes. Are they all brothers?
“Morning,” he murmurs, and he doesn’t sound unkind.
I don’t answer. I push myself up as far as the rope will let me and lean against the headboard.
My body feels better than last night—still heavy and sore, but the fog in my head has mostly cleared.
The infusion is working its way out of my system the way it always does, leaving behind that bone-deep ache and a tiredness that no amount of sleep will fix.
“I’m Cole,” he explains. “Are you hungry?”
My empty stomach twists when I think about food. When was the last time I ate? Before the infusion, which means yesterday afternoon. No wonder.
He must see it on my face because he leaves and comes back a few minutes later with a plate. Toast, scrambled eggs, a glass of water. Simple. He sets it on the nightstand and unties my wrist so I can eat.
Which I do, shoveling it in and barely taking the time to breathe between bites.
The eggs are better than I’d expect from a house full of guys, which is a dumb thing to think right now, but my brain is latching onto stupid details because the big details are too much.
I’m eating breakfast made by one of my kidnappers.
Yeah, it’s easier to think about how tasty it is.
Cole watches me eat, but not in a creepy way. It’s more of him trying to figure out what to say. After I finish and put the plate down, he leans forward, elbows on his knees. “The guy from last night,” he says. “The one who wanted to tie you up. Zeke.”
My muscles tense, including the way my heart seizes.
“He’s our brother. Mine and Declan’s.” Cole’s voice is careful, like he’s picking his way through a minefield and doesn’t want to take the wrong step.
“He’s not a bad guy. He’s just... his mate went through a lot.
At one of your father’s facilities. When we found her, she was in bad shape.
So when he looks at you and sees Dr. Moore’s daughter, he sees what happened to her. ”
I can only stare at him because he’s got the wrong information. “My father would never treat anyone like that.”
“I’m telling you what we saw.”
“Then someone else was responsible,” I insist. It’s not easy keeping my emotions in check, but come on.
Do they really need to make up these lies to justify what they’ve done?
“Someone at that facility wasn’t following protocol.
If what you’re saying is true—and I’m not saying it is—my dad didn’t know about it. He would never allow it.”
Cole stares at me for a long time. There’s something pitying in his expression, making me want to scream. I don’t need his pity. I need him to understand he’s wrong. That they’re all wrong about my dad.
“Okay,” he finally replies in a quiet voice. Not agreeing, but deciding not to push it, and it makes me grind my teeth.
We don’t talk much after that. He ties my wrist again and settles back into the chair.
I lie on my back and stare at the ceiling, where shadows dance and move as the sun climbs in the sky.
Time does that weird stretchy thing where minutes feel like hours, and I think about Dad.
Whether he’s figured out where I am yet, and when he’s coming.
He’s coming. Of course he is.
Hours pass. I drift in and out, floating in that gray space where thoughts don’t quite form all the way. At some point, I hear voices downstairs, maybe a baby cry, a door opening and closing, footsteps on stairs. Normal house sounds. It’s strange how normal it all seems.
Then the bedroom door opens, and everything in me lights up.
He’s back.
Declan steps into the room, and Cole stands, and they do that silent brother-communication thing where a whole conversation happens in a look.
Cole leaves. The door shuts. And it’s us again.
He looks better. Still tired, but more alert. He’s changed clothes, showered maybe. His hair is damp. He smells like soap and underneath that, like him. That warm, clean, sweet scent that makes my lungs want to expand until they crack my ribs open.
I’m glad he’s back. The force of it startles me. My heart is doing something fast and fluttery, and my skin is prickling; heat is climbing up my neck, which is—what? What is this?
He sits in the chair. Those green eyes, steady and searching, land on me and stay there. I feel pinned by them in a way that isn’t scary. It should be scary, right? This should all be terrifying.
“You look better,” he observes in a low voice that tickles my ears and makes me wonder if he could read aloud to me. I don’t even care what.
“I feel better.” My voice comes out weird. Breathy. I clear my throat. “Can I take a shower?”
He studies me for a second, then nods before getting up and untying me. His fingers brush the inside of my wrist where the rope was, and a jolt goes through me that makes me suck in a breath.
He notices. His jaw tightens.
I stand. Steadier than last night, though my legs still feel shaky. He walks me the three steps to the bathroom, and I go in, while he stays in the doorway.
“The door stays open,” he reminds me.
“I know.” I turn on the hot water in the tub and let it steam up the small room while I unbutton the flannel and peel it off, then leave it folded loosely on the closed toilet lid.
He’s still behind me. He hasn’t gone back to the chair so I can have a minute or two of privacy. It should make my skin crawl, having him watch me.
It doesn’t. Which is even worse.
I’m way too aware of him. I don’t even want to cover up, when I’ve never been naked in front of a man in all my life.
Especially not a stranger who’s holding me captive after kidnapping me from my home in the middle of the night.
I should want to cover up, or at least ask him to turn his back. Right?
Instead, I pull my shirt over my head. Push my shorts down and step out of them.
And I don’t feel afraid, rather something else entirely. Something hot and restless that’s been building since he walked back into the room. Since before then, even. When I was half out of it, and he carried me. When his arms felt like the safest place in the world.
I glance back at him before stepping into the shower.
He’s not looking away. His eyes are dark, pupils blown wide, and his hands are at his sides, but his fingers are curled into fists. And…
He’s hard. I can see it straining against his jeans. This huge, powerful shifter, who could break me in half without trying, is standing in the doorway of this tiny bathroom, visibly turned on, with his jaw clenched like he’s fighting a war with himself.
Instead of feeling afraid or threatened, the way a normal person would, heat pools low in my belly so fast it almost takes my knees out.
What is wrong with me?
I step into the shower. The hot water hits my skin, and I gasp, bracing one hand against the tile.
The heat loosens muscles I didn’t realize were clenched, runs over the ache in my bones.
I tip my head back and let the water stream over my face, and I try to think clearly.
Remember who I am and why I’m here in the first place.
But all I can think about is him. Three feet away. Hard. Watching.
I turn off the water.
I don’t reach for a towel. I step out of the shower, dripping, and he’s still there.
He hasn’t moved. His chest is rising and falling faster than before, and his eyes track a droplet of water as it slides down my collarbone, between my breasts, over my stomach.
He follows it like he can’t help himself.
“You should…” His voice is rough. He stops, swallows, and tries again. “You should get dressed.”
He’s right, but instead I take a step toward him. The question falls out of my mouth before I hear it in my head, like there’s no filter anymore. “What if I don’t want to?”
Something flashes in his eyes. He takes a breath that shudders on the way in. “I can’t,” he rasps. “I’m waiting. For my mate.”
Mate. The word lands somewhere in my chest and does something I don’t understand. I should back off. I should grab a towel and cover myself, pretend this didn’t happen. That’s what a smart person would do.
I’m apparently not a smart person. “I only want you to touch me. Please.”
I can see it happen. The exact moment his resistance cracks, the way his whole body tenses like a wire pulled to its breaking point.
His jaw clenches even tighter than before. His growl sends goosebumps racing over my bare skin. “Turn around.”
I turn. The sink is in front of me, the mirror above it, and when I look up, I can see both of us: me, wet and flushed all over, and him behind me, so much bigger, closing the distance between us until his chest is against my back and his breath is hot on my neck.
One of his hands grips the edge of the sink beside mine. The other settles on my hip.
“Look at me,” he murmurs. “In the mirror. Keep your eyes on me.”
I lift my gaze. Our eyes meet in the glass, and his hand slides from my hip down over my stomach, slow, deliberate, giving me time to stop him.
I don’t stop him.
His fingers slip between my thighs, and I make a sound I’ve never heard myself make before.
Desperate, broken. My hips jerk forward into his hand, and he catches me, his other arm wrapping around my waist, pulling me back against him.
I can feel him, hard, pressed against my lower back, and the knowledge he’s that turned on—by me, because of me—makes everything sharper and more intense.
“Eyes on me,” he says again when my eyes slide shut so I can absorb the sensations. I force them open. In the mirror, I watch his arm flexing, watch his face over my shoulder—his gaze latched onto mine intensely, as if I’m the only thing in the world, and he’s memorizing every part of this.
He finds a rhythm. Slow at first, almost teasing, his fingers sliding and circling, learning what makes me gasp, what makes my knees buckle. When he hits the right spot, I cry out and my hands slam against the sink, my head dropping forward.
“Look at me.” Rougher now. A command. I drag my head up and meet his eyes in the mirror, and his fingers press harder, move faster.
The pleasure builds like a wave, and it’s nothing I’ve ever felt by myself or imagined feeling with someone else.
My whole body is shaking. I’m making sounds I can’t control, these breathless, broken moans that fill the small bathroom.
“That’s it,” he whispers against my ear, low and rough, and the vibration of his voice goes straight through me like an arrow made of lightning. “Let go. I’ve got you.”
I shatter.
It hits me like a freight train. My body locks up, spine arching, a cry ripping out of me that I couldn’t hold back if I tried.
His arm tightens around my waist, holding me upright when my legs give out completely.
Through it all, his fingers keep moving, slower now, drawing it out, pulling every last aftershock from me until I’m gasping and trembling and can’t see straight.
When it’s over, I slump against him. His arm is still around me. His hand slides away from between my thighs and settles on my hip, and his forehead drops against the back of my head. For a moment, we just breathe.
In the mirror, I watch us. This girl I barely recognize, flushed and wrecked and glassy-eyed, leaning against this man who’s still fully clothed, still hard, still holding her like she’s something he’s afraid to drop.
I should feel satisfied. Or embarrassed. At least that would make sense.
Instead, all I feel is more. More want. More need. This hunger that didn’t exist before last night wants to rip me to pieces, and I almost wish it would because if anything, what just happened made it worse.
I want him. Not just his hands. All of him. And I can’t understand it. He’s my captor. He’s a shifter. He’s the enemy of everything my father has built. And I want him so badly my teeth ache.
The thing is, when our gazes lock, a message passes between us.
For some reason I can’t even begin to understand, we’re connected.
Two halves of the same mind. He doesn’t say the words out loud, but he doesn’t need to.
I hear them loud and clear in my head, as clearly as I feel his hardness pressing against my back.
Not enough. Not even close.