Chapter 9 #2
Tauren’s fingers tightened around the end of the linen strip in his hand. Even that slight tug was enough to pull me closer toward him.
“I said you didn’t want to hear this,” he reminded me.
Yeah, he had said that. But what I really didn’t want was for some brutish stranger to think he could read me so easily.
“Fine,” I huffed. “Tell me the rest. I want to know.”
“You sure?” His tone was slightly teasing—a mood I’d never imagined a ferus capable of…let alone one of their alphas. “Because the last thing I want to do is make you uncomfortable.”
“I’m fine,” I assured him.
“Or rile you up before you try to rest.”
I shot him a deadly glare. “Trust me, I’m sure I can handle it.”
That was a lie, though. I was absolutely unsure.
His rumbling voice, his fathomless eyes, the heat rolling off his body—those were almost too much to take on their own. Adding what sounded like a highly erotic story to the mix was sure to overwhelm me.
But Tauren didn’t need to know that.
And I must have lied well enough to convince him because, after a shrug, he kept going.
“My resolve lasts until I get you through the door,” he continued. “The moment your lips touch mine, I have to have you.”
“So you throw me down on the bed and ravish me,” I finished for him. “Got it.”
But Tauren shook his head.
“Not the bed,” he corrected me. “I take you right here up against this wall.” He slapped his hand against the logs behind him for emphasis. “I prop your shoulders against the wood, wrap your legs around my waist, and slide into the sweetest heaven I’ve ever felt.”
He closed his eyes again, and the muscles lining his jaw twitched as he relived the memory in his mind.
I swallowed down hard at the idea that it was me he was seeing in his head.
My lips begging him to take me.
My legs locking tight around his waist.
My body gripping him tight.
I knew how real the memories of those dreams could be. How vivid. How intense.
I felt a stab of jealousy. It wasn’t fair.
Why did the alpha get to relive his triple X erotic fantasies night after night, while I was forced to spend seven years stuck in an endless horror show?
“Then you wake up and have to change your pants.” I didn’t bother to hide my annoyance.
But Tauren shook his head.
“Unfortunately not,” he said, opening his eyes. “I wake up before the end. The last thing I hear is you crying out my name as your body starts to shake and pulse around me. Right after that, my eyes open.”
Well, that was a sliver of cosmic justice, I guess. Though I had to imagine just about everybody would take blue balls over having their throat ripped out if they had the choice.
“Well, I hate to be the one to break it to you,” I told him, “but none of that’s going to happen.”
His gaze lifted up to meet mine, and instantly I felt a shock of electricity light up my nerves.
“It will,” he said with absolute certainty. “I’ve seen it. I’ve felt it thousands of times.”
All I could do was keep shaking my head and deny what I knew was impossible. “Whoever you see and feel in that dream, it can’t be me.”
“It is.” His long fingers that had been gently resting against my side fanned out, touching more of me. All the way from my ribs to the curve of my hips. “I know the way you feel, Hannah. I know every inch of your body.”
Between the intensity in his eyes and his voice, he almost had me believing. But no.
“You don’t know shit about me,” I shot back. “I’m not like that.”
It was true. I’d never been into sex—at least not like my friends were. I wasn’t a prude. I just didn’t understand the obsession some people seemed to have with getting laid.
I’d never met a man who could set me on fire, and I never saw the point of faking it. Besides, there was always something better to do. What was the point of wasting time making out with random dudes when there were photos to take and shows to binge?
But it was clear that Tauren didn’t know any of that when he slid his hand a little further around my back and pulled me an inch closer.
“You will be with me.”
He was so damn confident that, for a second there, I actually started to believe him.
Just through the force of his words, I could almost imagine myself with my back against the wall, head thrown back in ecstasy, crying out his name with every ragged exhale.
Heat rushed to my cheeks as the image filled my head, and I snapped my face down in embarrassment.
“I can finish wrapping the bandage.” I couldn’t stand the way my voice was shaking.
But Tauren wasn’t giving up that easily.
“No, it’s my job to take care of you, Hannah,” he said. “In all ways.”
I could have insisted, but I had a feeling that would only prolong contact. And I didn’t want that…did I?
I wasn’t so sure anymore.
My head was swirling with all kinds of conflicting thoughts while my body tingled with sensations I couldn’t name.
Maybe Tauren had been right from the beginning, and I was just overwhelmed. I needed rest.
It was best just to let him finish up binding my fractured ribs and then try to get some sleep.
That was easier said than done.
Silence didn’t make his touch any easier to ignore. My skin still came to life with every brush of his fingers. My breath still hitched when his hand lingered on the sensitive curve of my waist. My heart still raced when our eyes met for even the briefest moment.
But eventually, he tucked the end of the bandage in and was done.
He pushed back, resting his shoulders against the wall. “I’ll leave you alone to get some rest.”
Good. That’s what I wanted, right? To be left alone?
So why couldn’t I resist the urge to open my big mouth and engage with him again?
“I know it doesn’t make sense, but you have to trust me,” I said. “I really can’t be the girl from your dreams.”
He crossed his arms and stared down at me, his blank expression giving nothing away.
“Do you really believe that, Hannah?” he asked. “Or is it just what you hope?”
“A little of both, I guess.”
Because for the first time, I was starting to believe there was hope for me after all.
All this time, I’d been assuming my nightmare was a glimpse into a predestined future. An inevitability I couldn’t bend or change. But if Tauren’s dream would never come true (and it absolutely would not), then maybe there was hope that mine wouldn’t either.
There was still a chance I could actually escape. That I’d live through this.
And I had to believe that.
There was no other choice.
Tauren pushed himself off the wall and started toward the door.
“Get some sleep,” he said.
I started to stretch out on the bed to do just that, but stopped myself halfway down. I’d forgotten something.
“Can I get my shirt back?”
“This?” Tauren pulled the ruined rag off his shoulder and shook his head. “I was going to burn it. Let me grab you something else from your pile of clothes.”
“My clothes?” What clothes?
He pulled a stack of neatly folded shirts off one of the corner shelves. I recognized the dull green camouflage that I’d grabbed from Franklin’s Jeep to wrap my camera.
Great.
While I wasn’t super excited to wear my dead attacker’s clothes, beggars couldn’t be choosers. Besides, it was better than nothing.
But I was surprised when Tauren didn’t toss me the button-down fatigue from the top of the pile, but another simple T-shirt underneath it.
My heart began to pound as the light green cotton shirt landed in my lap.
Oh God, no.
I lifted it up to see the round logo for Deke’s Tavern right there on the chest.
Franklin must have grabbed it off the bar when we’d left the bar and tossed it in the back of his Jeep.
The sight of it was like a giant gut punch from the Fates themselves.
The moment Tauren walked out the door, I collapsed back down on his mattress, a whoosh of breath escaping my lungs.
So much for hope.