Chapter Three #2
“You didn’t talk about it online,” he murmured, unfolding a T-shirt she’d left on the edge of the weird tree branch nest she’d built. It was a shirt with a beer logo on it. Nice.
His other shirt would’ve been nothing but bloody rags. “Where is my hoodie?” he asked.
“Washing machine. I’ll move it to the dryer when we head to the kitchen.”
“Thanks. It has some sentimental value to me.” He wasn’t quite ready to tell her it was the last hoodie in his possession from before he was Turned. He had a lot of memories attached to that old thing. He’d pulled it on after the fight to hide the injuries.
As he gingerly pulled his T-shirt on, he followed her out of the bedroom and into a hallway and realized they were in a basement. Good. That would hide their scent some. Clever girl.
“How long was I out?” he asked, lifting up the t-shirt to pull a few more staples from his healing skin.
“About twelve hours. My turn for questions.”
“Shoot,” he mumbled, pulling another staple. These stupid things hurt.
“Why are your brothers trying to kill me?”
“Brother, singular.”
“You keep saying brothers, plural.”
“Marsden doesn’t know what’s happening. He just knows Stellan is dragging his tiger into a hunt. I bet he didn’t even realize they were hunting you.”
“Stellan, Marsden, and Damian,” she murmured. “Do you have any more siblings?”
“Nope. My parents wanted a big family, but Stellan came along and they were immediately good with the number of kids they had.”
“He was a handful?”
“From birth.”
“Were you a tiger since birth?”
He plucked the last staple and refused to answer. She didn’t need to know all the tiger stuff. No one did. That was for him and his brothers and the handful of other Cats that existed.
“Your communication skills are atrocious,” she pointed out as she took a hard right into a laundry room.
“Huh? Why do you say that?” he grumbled, rubbing his hand over his horrifically scarred torso. Stellan was going to pay for this.
“Because when you didn’t want to answer a question, you just ignored me, but you could’ve just said, ‘Hey that’s too deep,’ and I would’ve understood and asked something else.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Are you training me to respond how you want me to respond?”
“It’s just courtesy. Settle down.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes and counted to three for patience so he wouldn’t unleash a snarl at her for telling him what to do.
He hated it when people told him to settle down. It was a pet peeve.
“Why are you angry?” she asked.
“I’m not.”
“Then why are you growling?”
Dammit, she was right. It was soft in his chest, but it was there.
“Fiancé,” he reminded her from their conversation earlier.
“Oh. You almost met him last night if you weren’t being followed by your serial killer brothers. He works at the hospital. He’s a doctor there.”
Fuck. Why did that piss him off? “You never posted about a doctor almost-fiancé.”
“He wanted to maintain privacy.”
“He never posted you either?”
“Nope.”
“Mmm.” He inhaled deeply and pulled open the washing machine, moved his hoodie to the dryer while she got a dryer sheet for him. “And how did that work out for you?”
Misty pursed her lips. “He cheated with a nurse named Miranda. They’re still together. He posts her.”
“Ooooh, brutal.”
“Yep,” she agreed. “Anyways I just got through what I’m hoping is the final round of crying over him, but he texted me yesterday during my shift.”
“Saying?”
“That I look good.”
“Screenshot, send it to his girlfriend, go to heaven.”
She giggled. “That was quick,” she said as she started the dryer.
“Assholes should be held accountable.”
“Well, my move is mostly to just look pathetic, stumble any time I’m around him, blush a lot, and cry pre-shift, mid-shift, and post-shift so that my eyes are nice and puffy every time he sees me.”
“Unsavory.”
“So unattractive,” she agreed with a teasing smile. “Can’t imagine why he upgraded.”
Okay, she was cool in person. He respected a self-deprecating woman. “I can’t imagine it was much of an upgrade. He sounds like a douchebag anyway.”
“He was the love of my life.”
Behind her, Dame scrunched up his face. He didn’t like that. There was hurt to her tone when she’d said it. “How long ago did you break up?”
“Three months.”
“Sucks that you have to see him still.”
“It has slowed down the healing process, for sure. He likes to play with my head sometimes too. I don’t know what it is. He seems good with Miranda, but I think they argue every once in a while, and he’ll throw me some attention, see if he could still get me. It’s like a cat and mouse game.”
“Do you play it back?”
She shrugged. “I try not to. I don’t do games, but sometimes I think he drags me into them without me realizing it. His girlfriend asked me what’s up with us last week. I barely talk to him, and we don’t even work on the same floor.”
“But you know where he parks,” Dame guessed. Why did this conversation bother him so damn much? Why was he fishing for information on this guy?
“Yeah,” she admitted. “I know his shift schedule too. It’s ingrained in my memory.”
“How long did you date?”
“You sure are asking a lot of questions about Chris.”
“Oh God, he’s a Chris? Everyone’s been cheated on by some dude named Chris.”
“What?” she asked, pulling the pantry door open in the kitchen. “That sounds very judgmental of you and also, I’ve never heard that saying.”
“Well, now you have. I need meat. Is that a root cellar?” he asked, looking over her shoulder.
“I told you, my Uncle Tim is a prepper.”
It was as if Dame had lost consciousness completely when he’d been talking to her about her stupid ex.
He hadn’t even registered his surroundings.
Whoa, that was so weird and unlike him. Usually, his tiger noted every detail of every room he was in.
Here, it was as if he’d morphed to this place in the kitchen. That was dangerous.
“What kind of sedatives did you say you gave me?”
“I didn’t look at your penis,” she said suddenly.
Should he tell her he could hear lies? “Sounds very medical when you call it a penis.”
“Well, I don’t know what you’ve named it.”
“What…I’ve…what?”
“All of you men name your penises, right?”
He held up his hand and winced. “Stop calling it a penis.”
“Shaft? Genitalia?”
“Ew. Let’s call it a dick, okay? And who do you know that is a grown man who has named his dick?” Realization struck him. “Wait, let me guess? Dr. Fuckboy?”
Misty pursed her lips and he knew he’d guessed it.
“Well, now I have to know what he named it.”
“Magnus,” she said.
He cocked his head and arched an eyebrow.
Softly, she said, “But now that I accidentally saw your dick, I think he should’ve named it Minimus.”
A laugh belted out of him, and he doubled over in pain. “Ow!”
“I’m sorry I accidentally saw it and I’m also sorry I accidentally lied about it.”
“Accidentally, huh?” he asked, pulling open one of the deep freezers along the far wall. Her Uncle Tim had three there. This guy was interesting. This one was full of wild caught salmon, looked like. The next was full of beef. Jackpot.
“You need red meat?” she asked.
“Lots of it. I’m not feeling so good.”
“Sit,” she said, pointing to the four-seater table across the large kitchen.
“I can cook it. I’ll pay your uncle back for anything we eat.”
“He won’t let you. Park it.” She jammed her finger harder at the table.
Stern and stubborn little thing.
He did feel pretty horrible though, and he was swaying again. She’d already had to drag his carcass into a car and then got him into that basement and then made him a nest, so he could help her out and stop passing out by listening to the nurse’s instructions.
As she dug containers and a foil-covered plate from the fridge, she said, “Hey remember that one time last night you stabbed a tiger’s paw as he was trying to kill me?”
Aw fuck, he’d forgotten about that. Stellan’s tiger would probably be limping for a while after that. “I was half-delirious. The details, they do escape me.”
“You were passed out in a little crumpled pile bleeding out on my back seat, and then bam, you were poured over me in the front seat with my knife slitting right between the second and third knuckle. You completely severed a tendon, for sure.”
“Well, that may be how we escaped. Stellan is hard to pull off a hunt.”
“I never saw the other one. Marsden? Can I ask now?”
He puffed air out of his cheeks. He’d known this was coming. It was just a complicated answer.
“I can’t give you the full explanation.”
“Give me what you can. I deserve to know why he came after me years ago, and I deserve to know why he came after me last night. What do I need to protect myself from?”
Agitated, Dame scratched his forehead and leaned his elbows on the table, clenched his fists. “Stellan has a tiger problem. When he was Turned, something went wrong.”
“Turned,” she repeated softly as she poured what looked like a thick beef stew into a huge bowl. “What does Turned mean? You’re not born this way?”
“Hardly anyone is. Being a shifter means someone hated you enough to poison you and ruin your life. No one chooses this.”
She cast a glance at his chest, then lifted those pretty blue eyes to him. “The healing is pretty cool.”
“The tiger is hard to control, and we have to live in hiding. We can never make mistakes. Add to that a brother who doesn’t give a fuck about any of that.”
“Who Turned you?”
He shook his head. “Too deep,” he said, remembering her communication rules.
“Was it a girlfriend?” she asked softly.
“You’re asking me about girls?” he asked, confused. Was she curious about his dating history?
“Yes.”
He cleared his throat and parted his lips to explain his relationships, then hesitated. “Misty, that can’t happen between us.”
She put the bowl of stew into the microwave and turned it on, then cast a glance over her shoulder. “What can’t happen?” Her tone sounded so innocent.
Did she find him attractive? Did she like him? Nah, she must’ve just been a curious personality. He was no doctor. Hell, he wasn’t even human.
“We don’t pair up. We can’t.”