Page 42 of Sweethearts and Savages
She lifted her cuffed wrist. “Take off, sleep wolf?” she said hopefully, and it was my turn to snort.
“Unlikely. Come on, I’ll push, but I can’t be dragging you along too.” I stood, looming over her in a way that made my heart thunder. “I promise I won’t hurt you. We both need sleep and I promise you’ll be safe.”
I expected her to snort, to argue, to call me a liar. But she just stared at me for a moment and then nodded.
“Pee.”
I flushed red. “Uh, yeah. Of course. Come on, unfortunately it's outside.” I looked down at her feet, knowing she’d have to walk in the freezing conditions barefoot. I tried to tell myself she was a captive. A monster. One of the people I’d vowed to exterminate to avenge my father’s death.
But another part, a softness I’d inherited from my mother, that I’d thought was well and truly dead, reared its head. This girl wasn’t the enemy. She was just another victim.
We walked slowly toward the door. “How old are you?”
She eyed me suspiciously, then nodded. “Eighteen.”
I blew out a breath between my teeth. I was twenty-six, even though I felt like I was ninety-six somedays. She was so fucking young. I didn’t say anything else, and when I threw open the back door, the cold air swirling around us made her skin rise in goosebumps. I’d drop my vendetta for a night. Just one night. We both needed rest. Tomorrow, I would make the hard decisions.
“If you like, I can carry you down to the bathroom. I don’t have any spare boots.”
She gave me that long look again, staring at her own feet. They were cute. Someone had painted her toenails baby blue.
She nodded and raised her hands. I scooped her into my arms and walked through the snow to the latrine.
Her nose twitched, and she gave me a look somewhere between disgust and disappointment. “Smell like sex.”
I was glad we were outside in the dark so she couldn’t see the red of my cheeks, or the shame that probably clouded my face. Instead, I just cleared my throat. “A guy has needs.”
She was tense in my arms, and she basically threw herself out of them as soon as we reached the toilet. She slammed the door in my face, the chain stretching underneath it, and I took the moment to move around the side of the small building and take a piss.
I was just stuffing myself back in my jeans as she marched out of the outhouse and up the path toward the back door. I took long strides to catch up. Her feet must have been like ice and I looked at her face, at the hard line of her jaw, confused as fuck. “Want me to carry you?”
She gave me a sharp shake of her head as she marched over the porch and pulled the door open. In the light of the room, I was still confused. I thought we’d, I don’t know, built enough of a rapport that the next eleven days weren’t going to be a shit fight, but maybe I was wrong. It was probably too much to ask, seeing as I stole her.
She watched me move the couch and then climbed into bed without another word, her cuffed hand behind her and her back to me.
It was better this way. Rule number one of being a fucking vigilante was don’t get attached to your hostages.
But as I watched her tense back muscles ease into sleep, her body softening and her breaths coming in even little puffs, I knew that that would be harder than it sounded.
21
Enit
Iwould never truly understand my wolf. I mean, she was me and I was her, but still, our instincts were sometimes wildly different. Like pouting because your freaking abductor smelled like sex with another woman? That was absolutely ridiculous, not to mention possibly deadly. The wolf was meant to protect me, even from myself—especially as an Omega—but maybe she was as broken as the rest of me.
Still, I hadn’t spoken to Kell since last night, accepting the food he gave me with a grunt and walking through the freezing snow in my bare feet so he didn't have to carry me. Granted, he hadn’t pushed anything since last night, studiously ignoring me like I wasn’t there. Fine by me. We could do this dance until my parents arrived. I had no doubt that they would be here in a few days. I’d been gone forty-eight hours. Christopher would be going crazy, Brody would be tracking me across borders by now. I shuddered to think of the killing spree that Lucius and X would be on, and could only hope that Nico or Judge was there to temper them before they inadvertently started a war.
When Kell handed me another peanut butter sandwich, I screwed up my nose and shook my head. The guy didn’t know how to make anything else and as hungry as I was, I couldn’t stomach my seventh sandwich in two days.
“Too good for a sandwich, little monster?” Kell teased, and I looked up at him.
I tilted my chin up haughtily. “Yes.”
He threw back his head and laughed, and it was a sound that skittered down my nerve endings and made them tingle.
“Kitchen’s yours. If you can do something better, go for it. Pretty sure some of that canned food rolled out with the first computer, but you’re welcome to it.” His tone said he didn’t think I could, but I’d inherited the same stubbornness as the rest of my littermates, even though I kept it better tempered. Well, I had before.
I stood, smoothing his shirt down my thighs. I probably needed a shower, but I didn’t think I wanted to be naked in a shower attached to my kidnapper. Though, I guess as far as abductors go, he’d been okay.
