“What’s that sound?” Trace asked, drawing her attention to find him frowning with a curious tilt of his
head as he listened to whatever it was that he heard.
Without another word, he turned around and headed downstairs while she stood there, telling herself that she should take advantage of this reprieve from her shadow and take a quick shower only…
She’d promised to keep an eye on him, Samantha reminded herself with a grumble as she turned around and headed downstairs only to turn right back around with a sigh because she was being ridiculous. He was fine. She kept telling herself that as she walked into the bedroom, stopping by the bed to grab her bag that she’d brought up earlier and continued to the bathroom.
Once she made it to the bathroom, she dropped her bag on the floor, ignored her aching head and grabbed the items that she’d had delivered from 7-Eleven and briefly debated taking a bath only to dismiss the idea since she didn’t know how long she had before Trace came back.
With one last glance at the closed bathroom door, she worried her bottom lip for a minute and then pulled her clothes off with a resigned sigh. She tossed her clothes aside, climbed into the shower, and turned it on. As she stepped beneath the spray of hot water, she nearly groaned when the moist heat began soothing her aching head.
For several minutes, Samantha simply stood there with her hands pressed against the wall and her head dropped forward, slowly exhaling as the hot water worked out the last of the aches leftover from what felt like a really bad dream. She couldn’t believe that it had only been three days since this whole nightmare started. It felt like a lifetime ago that she was kneeling on her basement floor, praying that Nathan wasn’t dragged into this mess and now…
“You’re in pain, wife,” came the concerned words spoken in that deeply accented voice that she liked so much.
“I’m fine,” Samantha lied, biting back a sigh as she opened her eyes only to close them on a groan when Trace ran his fingers gently through her hair.
“No, you’re not,” Trace said as he worked his fingertips over her scalp and tore another groan from her when he found the part that ached the most.
“There’s no break,” he said, answering the question that she’d been worried about. That meant that she most likely had a severe concussion, something that was probably going to cause problems for a while.
“How can you be sure?” she asked even though she really wasn’t sure that she wanted to know the answer.
“You would be screaming right now if your skull was broken,” he pointed out, making her lips twitch because he had a point.
“Did you find anything?” she asked, hoping to distract herself from the fingers massaging her scalp and the fact that he was most likely naked, something that she planned on discussing with him, but…in another minute.
His hands felt good, Samantha thought only to bite back a moan when he added shampoo to the mix and began working it through her hair. She should put a stop to this, she told herself as he guided her back so that he could rinse the soap out of her hair. It was hard to believe that anyone that was capable of breaking a solid wood door in half with his bare hands could be this gentle.
“Soap?”
“The green bottle,” she found herself saying only to moan a minute later when he ran his hands over her shoulders.
For several incredible, life-altering minutes, she stood there, enjoying the feel of his large strong hands moving over her body. Trace focused on her shoulders, her arms, back, legs, and stomach, avoiding all the areas that would have had her putting an end to this.
At least, that’s what she told herself as she stood there, feeling every muscle in her body relax until it became a struggle to keep her eyes open. It took a moment before she realized that he’d turned the water off and wrapped a towel around her and once she did, she turned around to thank him only to end up watching him walk away with his hands clenched into fists by his sides as his wet clothes left behind a trail of water.
Chapter 23
Williams Mansion
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Madison demanded, shaking her head in disgust as she grabbed an empty suitcase from the closet and threw it on their bed.
“We didn’t have a choice,” Ephraim said, reaching for her only to have her pull away.
“What the hell do you mean you didn’t have a choice? You didn’t need to send her away. You could have brought her here or asked Eric to hide her at a compound or-”
“She’s not safe, Madison,” Ephraim bit out, cutting his mate off and wishing like hell that he’d had a choice because the last thing that he wanted to do was to hand over his baby girl to the Council, but he didn’t have a choice.
Not if he wanted to keep her alive.
“We could have protected her here,” Madison said as her beautiful caramel eyes that he loved so much turned red as she anxiously licked her lips, struggling not to finally breakdown and lose it.
Between Jill and Joshua…
It was only a matter of time.
They hadn’t seen Joshua in nearly two years since the day he’d turned their lives upside down and left. They had no idea where he was or what he’d become, but they’d heard rumors that he prayed weren’t true. He couldn’t stomach the idea of the little boy who used to try to sneak up on him, giggling his little ass off every fucking time Ephraim grabbed him and threw him over his shoulder, doing those things. Joshua had been the sweetest little boy and Ephraim missed him more than he’d ever thought was possible. He’d outlived everyone that he’d ever met, and it had never affected him like this before.