Page 38 of The Wolf's Kidnapped Mate

Good goddess, he was peeling off my shirt without hesitation, unbuttoning my jeans next. Everything he did was clinical, careful, like he just wanted me to warm up instead of freeze in this shed because of the rain. As soon as I was stripped down to those white spandex shorts and a sports bra, I shuddered and eased around him to give him space.

He stripped down as well, exposing three long crimson scars on his back. That wasn’t something I remembered from our time together in the black ops. Trips out of the States often packed us into containers or camps, so we were used to seeing each other strip down. When it came to shifting, that was the standard. We got used to it.

I had seen Fred’s back multiple times—and not once had these scars been there.

Absentmindedly, I reached for them. I traced them. I felt him stiffen under my touch as he held a shirt up to a chain hanging from the ceiling. His head turned. Wet white hair clung to his cheek, a couple of packed strands breaking away as he glanced in the direction of what my hands were doing.

Of what my hands were doing.

I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Fred…”

“It’s nothing.”

“Liar.”

His back muscles flexed and moved as he hung up the rest of the clothes and dropped his arms. Smooth skin. Relaxed muscles. But so much pain hiding inside them.

I lightly touched the top of the right-most scar. I had seen scars like this before, a long time ago—thick welts the width of my thumb. From a time that was hidden in the supernatural history books during the very end of the wolf-vampire wars. “Looks like a whip did this.”

“Then you already know what happened.”

“Fred…”

He took a deep breath, leftover droplets of watermarking rivers from his neck down his back. Some of them encountered my fingers. I wiped them away.

“You should get into dry clothes,” he instructed. But he made no move to turn around. “Both of us.”

Again, he didn’t move. I couldn’t seem to force myself to do it either. I was stricken by the sight of his pain, horrified by what I knew was probably the most painful experience of his life.

I licked my lips. “Who did this?”

“Douglas and his boys.”

My heart sank. “The previous owner of the security company from four years ago?”

“Yep.”

Anger caused me to grab his shoulders and flip him around. “Why?”

His menacing frown didn’t frighten me. His towering stance hardly did either. Nothing but his scorching eyes prompted a reaction.

And instead of fear, terror, or hurt, I felt aroused.

It was such a passionate glare, a terribly betrayed look that I knew all too well. I wanted so much to comfort him then, to yank him into my arms and wash it all away. But I knew that he needed space too. I knew he wasn’t open to it yet.

I let him go. I dug through the bags for clothes. Sweatpants and shirts would do fine for now, so I handed him a pair and went about putting the clothes on. As soon as I was snug in front of the stove, the soup was ready, and I held the pot by the handle for us to ladle with our camping spoons.

Fred didn’t say a word until half the soup was gone. He set his spoon aside and grabbed one of the fur blankets. He waited until I set the pot next to us and wrapped me under his wing.

“I found evidence of Douglas using company resources to take over foreign territories when no threat was present,” he explained. He pressed his nose to my ear, shuddering with every breath as he continued, “I tried to expose him. I paid the price for it.”

I noticed his pale fingers. I stared at the black roman numerals on his knuckles with a horrifying realization. “That’s when you left.”

“I was threatened and forced out.”

“Fred, I’m sorry. Oh goddess, and we just…we just accepted that you hadleft…”

That was it, the driving force. I couldn’t contain it any longer.

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