Chapter Thirty-Seven
Feralyn
The ground vibrated a second before a growling rumble cut through the pounding bass blasting through my earbuds.
Before I could turn my head to look, a heavy, muscular arm wrapped around my waist, and I was yanked off my feet.
I screamed.
Then it was trained instinct. Pulling up my legs, slamming my head back against a solid mass, I drove my elbow behind me, making contact with what felt like a brick wall.
“Hey!” a voice I would know anywhere barked. “It’s me.”
Helios.
Oh my God.
On his Ducati.
The motorcycle braked, his soapy laundry scent that was now mixed with leather and oil washed over me, and one of my earbuds was plucked out as engine noise suddenly backfilled, competing with one of Helios’s playlists.
“Take a breather,” Helios ordered in a tone that told me he was mad but trying to rein it in.
My throat raw, my lungs on fire, my body already following his instruction, I took out the other earbud and inhaled past the leather-clad forearm still wrapped around my middle.
My sweat and his earthy musk mingled with gas and night jasmine.
Panting hard, I managed an apology. “Sorry for hitting you.”
“Don’t fucking apologize for all the hours I had you on the mats. You did what I trained you to do.”
Self-defense. He’d taught me after…. Shoving all those memories down, I glanced back at him.
Black helmet, tinted visor up, his piercing gaze cutting through me, the look in his eyes made me shiver.
I almost forgot what I was going to ask.
“Did my headbutt hit your shoulder?” It was the one that’d taken the most recent gunshot wounds.
“I’m fine, woman. Drop your legs.”
My heart racing impossibly faster than when I was sprinting, every nerve rattled with renewed anxiety and buzzing energy I’d spent six miles trying to undo, I lowered my legs.
But he’d braced his strong thigh under me.
My sweaty ass landed on his jeans, my trainers settled on the top of his boot, and I exhaled like I’d been holding my breath for twelve hours.
“Better?”
The new roughness to his tone told me he knew the answer, but I replied anyway. “Yes.”
“Good.” Still holding on to me, he maneuvered the bike off the road. “You got your water?”
“Yes.”
He cut the engine, then pushed himself back on the seat and hauled my butt onto the bike sideways, seating me in front of him.
Simultaneously cradling my body and holding the Ducati steady between his huge, muscled thighs, he took off his helmet and hung it on the handlebars.
Then, using both hands as he reached around me, he unzipped the running pack at my waist, took out the water, uncapped it, and unerringly brought it to my lips.
All of this was done with such tactical precision and graceful fluidity, I would’ve believed he’d done it a thousand times before. And maybe he had for other women, but I didn’t want to think about that.
I wanted to focus on the large, veined hand near my mouth with its long, capable fingers.
I wanted to relish in the heat of his other hand as it settled around my leg while I sat sideways on his bike.
I wanted to feel everything I shouldn’t—small next to his large, safe next to his strength, submissive next to his dominance.
I also wanted to fantasize that he’d come for me because he’d missed me while I pretended that this day never happened.
“Drink,” he ordered, his voice now lower, quieter.
I drank.
But the water wasn’t what was quenching.
It was him. It was every small and large detail about him.
But most of all, it was this—the unapologetic way he dominated me and every aspect of my life.
Grabbing me off the street, absorbing the blows I’d landed without so much as flinching, pulling me bodily into his protection, getting my water, holding the bottle to my lips, stroking my thigh as I drank.
He was rough and dangerous. He was protective and caring.
He was hotheaded and calming. Helios was a lesson in dichotomy I couldn’t ever predict, but he was the most essential element of my life.
In moments like this, I knew my heart only beat for him, and I wished—
“What happened at the farmer’s market?”
Reminders of this morning spiraled me back into anxiety, and I wanted to sink into the past and make just one different decision if it would’ve meant never being abducted.
My breath and voice suddenly shaky, I tried to avoid the conversation I’d been running from all day. “How do you know I went to the farmer’s market?” I’d turned off my cell, and I’d taken the old truck.
Helios sighed like this conversation was tiring him.
Then he rattled off facts like the observed minute details of my life were obvious and his stalking was normal.
“We’re out of that fruit you use, the organic shit you put in our shakes.
You like the produce from the farmer’s market better than the grocery store shit.
You were gone thirty-seven minutes, but there’s no new fruit, no new groceries.
You didn’t wait for me to finish working out this morning so I could take you.
Which means you went somewhere you’re normally comfortable going alone.
Add that shit up, including the fact that I know your habits, checked the gas gauge on the truck, know you didn’t go far enough to see Raine, and I’m fucking calling it.
You went to the farmer’s market. Then shit happened. ”
On the side of the road, in the dark of night, I allowed the intrusive thought to settle into my very soul.
We. We’re.
Our. Us.
We were out of fruit. Our shakes. It was the very last thing I should’ve been grasping at, but it was the only thing I was holding on to.
Those little words, that plural pronoun and that one little adjective, they resonated, and I held on to them with all I had.