Chapter Thirty-Eight
Helios
Her hair damp, her skin slicked with sweat, leaning all her weight on me, she drank the water.
Christ, I was fucked up.
I wanted to sink inside her. Hell, I wanted to fuck her into next year, fuck answers out of her, fuck her fucking anxiety away, and just fucking fuck her until our sweat comingled.
And she said my name.
One arm wrapped around her leg, stroking her thigh because I couldn’t not fucking touch her, I held the bottle and let her drink another few swallows. Then I took the water away, capped it, and asked the damn question.
“What happened at the farmer’s market?”
Fear hit her tone, and her voice shook when she asked, “How do you know I went to the farmer’s market?”
Seriously? This woman didn’t know by now that I tracked her ass all day long? If stalking Feralyn Alva Grayson was a fucking sport, I was the goddamn reigning champion.
I took the gold when it came to keeping tabs on her—usually.
This morning, I’d fucked up.
But that didn’t mean I hadn’t done recon.
Filing away the intel I’d gotten from her voice change, making a mental note to have Cypher comb through every second of sat imagery on that goddamn market, I laid it all out.
“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. ”
She melted into me.
My fucking Haven. Curling into my shit like I didn’t just download how I stalked the fuck out of her, she settled against me like I was the one who was her haven.
“Barnacling your sweet ass to me doesn’t answer the question, woman.”
She didn’t say shit.
Silently cursing, I dumped her water back into her pack, unzipped my leather, and wrapped my other arm around her. Resting my chin on top of her head, I exhaled. “Haven.”
“Helios,” she whispered, like my name alone was a cure-all.
“I’m not gonna let this slide.” Tracking the first car that’d passed us since she’d turned onto this residential street, memorizing the make, model, and plate out of habit, I gave her fair warning. “You know what’s coming.”
Ignoring what I’d said, like I hadn’t just told her I was going to force the truth out of her one way or another, her voice turned small, submissive. “Can we ride?”
I inhaled. “Yeah.” Christ, I couldn’t deny this woman a damn thing. “In a second.” After locking me out, the fucking hot tub, the goddamn edible, and finding her sprinting after dark like she couldn’t run from the shit in her head, I just needed to hold her for a damn minute.
With a sixth sense, or just fucking attuned to my shit like I was hers, she burrowed against my chest and repeated what I’d said like she was giving consent. “In a second.”
Holding her, holding the bike upright, parked in the middle of a goddamn block, I closed my eyes for a beat. Then I confessed. “You scared me today, Haven.”
“You haven’t called me Haven like that in a long time.”
I said it every damn day like that. She was just choosing to be selective in her hearing. “You know what you are to me.”
She tilted her face up and tucked in against my neck. “I smell terrible.”
She smelled like sweat and my Haven. The two scents together were a trigger, and my brain took it there. Me and her, fucking. “You know damn well you always smell good to me.”
“I do not.”
“Right,” I scoffed. “And you shy the fuck away from me after I’ve worked out?”
She shifted closer. “That’s different.”
“How?” I scanned the block, the hidden driveways.
“Your scent. It’s like… cologne.”
“I don’t wear shit.” That was a tactical fucking error. One that got you dead.
Leaning back, she looked up at me. “I know, but you always smell—”
“Like deodorant? Soap?” I wasn’t a fucking heathen.
“Good,” she replied, her gaze dropping to my mouth for a beat before those fuck-my-life-up amber eyes I could see even in the dark focused back on me. “You always smell good. I don’t know how to explain it, but you’re my favorite… scent.”
Jesus. Was I seriously going to explain this? “Pheromones,” I stated, my cock already going rogue.
She stared.
Whiskey eyes, gold hair, this woman was different.
But it wasn’t only her rare genetics. She’d been fucking different since the second I’d first laid eyes on her at that bullshit wedding when we were kids.
Yeah, she’d been too young, too na?ve, and too fucking small—like a pup taken from the litter too soon. But she’d never been ignorant.
Smart as hell, she’d been at the top of her class every year in school.
I’d never not be enraged at how her life derailed when she started college.
Hell, long before that. She hadn’t socialized since unless it was with me, Ares, or Raine.
She didn’t surf the web unless it was photography shit—I fucking checked, regularly.
She didn’t scroll socials. She didn’t go out.
She didn’t binge TV shows. She hated going to the movies.
She only shopped if I walked her ass into a store.
She didn’t do shit most women her age did.
As far as life in general, she was innocent as hell.
But that didn’t mean she was uninformed. “You know the term.”
Dropping her head, she leaned her cheek back against my chest. “In animals.”
“What the fuck do you think humans are?” We were all fucking animals—literally.
“Bad,” she whispered so damn quiet.
In the fraction of a second it took my brain to process her response, my training had already kicked in.
Forcing all my muscles to not react, stay loose, and keep stock-fucking-still, I gave her one inhale, two.
Then I brought my hand up, slow and steady, and cupped the side of her face, holding her to me.
“Not all humans are bad.” Fuck if I believed it, but I needed her to believe that shit, for her own sake.
Then I gave her my fucking religion. “But the ones that are, every-goddamn-one who so much as looks at you wrong, I will fucking destroy. You have nothing to fear. You hear me, Haven? Not one goddamn thing.”
“Too late.”
I took the hit like an RPG to the chest. Center mass organs decimated, guilt piercing like shrapnel from the blast wave, those two fucking words destroyed me, but not as much as they had her.
Fucking selfish, letting every damn failure roll through my muscles, I didn’t mask my physical reaction. “Nothing’s going to happen to you again,” I amended. “Not as long as I’m still breathing.”
“And if you aren’t?”
Then I take her with me. “You don’t want me to answer that.”
“Maybe I do.”
“You’re not coming to Valhalla with me.” I didn’t know which one of us I was reassuring.
“Do you honestly believe that?”
“Which part?” Not that it fucking mattered.
“About Valhalla.”
I scanned the block again. Walled properties set far apart, shadows where exterior lighting and streetlamps didn’t hit, perfect fucking landscaping I hated. “I used to.”
“And now?”
I didn’t know what the fuck I believed besides dead was dead, and living meant seeing her breathing.
But after today, I knew one goddamn thing for certain.
This wasn’t enough anymore. Something had scared the hell out of her, something so goddamn bad, she’d resorted to drugs.
That shit was not happening on my watch again.
I didn’t do total fucking mission failure.
Not in the Unit. Not with her.
So this—whatever the fuck this was—it ended tonight. But before I grilled the fuck out of her, I looped us back to the basics, to her previous question, both to put her at ease and off guard. Also because I had a goddamn point to make.
“How many times have you worked out with me?” Not after a damn number, I didn’t give her a chance to answer.
“How many times did my sweaty ass hug you after?” It’d become a whole fucking thing between us, and I’d started it.
On purpose. Wrapping my arms around her, wiping my sweat all over her any damn way I could, the workouts were only an excuse. I’d been fucking marking this woman.
“A lot,” she admitted.
“You think I stunk any of those times?”
“No. Never.”
“Pheromones, woman. We’re all animals.” And her animal was my fucking animal. “You never fucking stink to me. You got that?”
A car turned down the street.
She waited till it passed, then looked up at me. “I like how you smell after you work out.”
I smirked. “I know.” Grabbing the helmet, I put it on her. “Come on. Let’s get you that ride you wanted.” My cock pulsed at the double fucking meaning, and I hit the ignition.