I tried to remember what had happened, but my mind was foggy, the events leading to me waking up right now muddled. I looked down the length of my body at the leg that hurt, seeing it wrapped in what looked like splints on either side of my ankle.
There was a creaking sound in the next room, and I snapped my head up, my heart racing. I curled my fingers around the iron bars and pulled myself back a little, sitting up more. Thank God I was still fully clothed, but my situation was looking like it was straight out of one of those psychological thrillers with the girl getting kidnapped and chained to a bed by a psycho.
I held my breath as I waited and listened. But then I felt my eyes widen to the point of pain as I saw the huge shadow of what clearly was a man standing just outside this room. I started to hyperventilate as I took in his sheer size, and even though I couldn’t see much but his outline thanks to the shadows, it was very clear he was monstrous.
He took a step forward, and then one more, and I noticed that because his shoulders were so wide, before he could clear the doorway, he had to turn to the side slightly.
Oh my fucking God.
Tears tracked down my cheeks before I even knew they were falling, and damn it, I couldn’t even wipe them away because of the handcuffs. I pulled on my restraints again, not caring that the pain abrading my wrists had the breath leaving me harshly.
“Ye will hurt yerself even more if ye keep struggling.”
I froze at the sound of his voice. It was deep with this weird distortion laced within it.
“I wouldn’t be hurting myself if I wasn’t chained up.” God, why did I say that?
He took another step closer, and the glow from the moon and the candles finally let me get a good look at him.
He was… gorgeous, in some weirdly savage, brutal way.
I felt this warmth in my chest, one that was as uncomfortable as it was foreign. This tightness covered my flesh, as if I was in desperate need of lotion.
He said nothing, just stared at me, watching me like a… predator. Finally he spoke. “I now understand.”
My heart was pounding so hard I could barely hear anything else. “Understand what?” My voice was low, maybe too low for him to hear.
And he watched with the most intense expression on his face. Had I ever seen a look like that on another person?
The shadows wrapped around him and made his features look sharper, as if cut with a blade. He took a step farther into the room, and I pressed my back against the pillow, the iron bars pressing through the thin stuffing and digging into my back.
He stopped at the edge of the bed, and although the mattress was massive, his body seemed even more so.
Had I ever seen another person so big? His height alone had to be over six and a half feet. And his shoulders were impossibly broad with cuts of lean muscles tapering down to bulging biceps and hard tendons and sinew-lined forearms.
Although he wore a T-shirt, the material was white and looked dirty and torn, barely concealing the rolling ridges of his six-pack beneath the fabric.
I felt a flush steal over me at the sight of him, and despite my situation, it was clear my body didn’t give a shit. Because the heat I felt could only be from arousal.
I scolded myself for staring at him like I was and hated myself for feeling any kind of desire at the sight of the man who’d kidnapped me.
He reached out and curled his hands around the wrought-iron baseboard. “I now understand why males go tae the extreme of breaking rules for their mates.” His hands tightened against the iron.
His words made no sense. Males? Mates? Who spoke like that?
Although he had a thick Scottish accent, there was something… inhuman about him. Flashes of memory came through then, and I gasped just as he straightened to his full height. The corner of his mouth slowly curled up into a smile.
Memories slammed into my brain like a movie reel. Sights and sounds and smells of my surroundings rushing in like water on a beach.
I’d gotten lost. There had been a fight in the forest between men who didn’t seem like men at all.
I stared at my captor. His eyes. His eyes had been glowing. And he’d had claws.
A squeak of fear left me, and I instinctively lifted my legs to brace my feet flat on the bed to push myself farther from him. I hissed as the pain in my ankle speared my entire body.
“Easy,” he murmured in that low, far too deep and sexy voice of his. “Ye hurt yer ankle pretty badly running from me.” There was a distinct growl to his words. “I had tae do my best tae splint it and keep ye from hurting yerself more.”