“Come on, darlin’,” he rumbled. With a quick look around to be sure McCain’s wolf was gone, he leaned the shotgun against the base of the tree and held out his arms to me. He was naked from the waist up, wearing only a tight pair of faded jeans and his smooth tan skin was dappled with shadows and moonlight. His forest green eyes were filled with emotions I couldn’t name and the brand on the inside of his muscular forearm, as he held his arms up to catch me, was glowing like a live coal—as was mine.
I wanted to protest but there didn’t seem to be any choice.
“All…all right,” I whispered in a choked little voice.
I started trying to lower myself down to him, but with only one working foot, that was a problem. I tried to hop down to a lower branch but I missed it. With a gasp, I lost my grip on the upper branch I’d been holding onto and found myself falling…falling…
Right into Nick’s arms.
He caught me with no apparent effort even though I wasn’t what anyone could consider “thin.” Then he leaned down to grab the barrel of the shot gun with one hand while he kept supporting me with the other.
“C’mon, Kira darlin’—let’s get you out of here,” he growled.
And then he carried me deeper into the woods.
I put my arms around his neck and didn’t say a word—what could I say to this ghost from my past? The one man I had ever been able to depend on once my father died—the only one I cared for, the only one I loved.
The one who had abandoned me at the worst possible time.
I had no words—not at first. I put my arms around Nick’s neck and pressed my face to his shoulder, breathing in his warm, familiar scent which always reminded me of fur and the forest and campfires at night and under all that was a dark, spicy, masculine musk that smelled like safety and comfort and home.
His scent brought forward emotions I’d been hiding from myself, memories of the past I’d been suppressing for years. They washed over me as Nick carried me through the forest and by the time he got me to his truck—a normal sized one, not a jacked-up monster like the one Bobby Aiken had been driving—I was beginning to cry.
“Kira? Honey?” His voice was gentle as he somehow managed to get the passenger side door open and set me gently on the seat with my feet dangling outside the truck. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
I tried to hold back a sob that was trying to force its way out of my throat. I had been kidnapped and forced to strip, hunted and threatened and mauled by a huge werewolf but none of that was what was bothering me. It was him—it was Nick—and what he had done to me so many years ago.
“You left me!” I wanted the words to come out as a shout, but they were more of a whisper. Swiping at my streaming eyes, I tried again. “You abandoned me, Nick! You left me in that horrible place! How could you? How could you?”
And then it was like a dam burst inside me and I was beating on his broad chest, the tears pouring down my cheeks. This was no Spring shower—this was a hurricane of emotion I’d been repressing for years and it was all suddenly coming out at once.
“You left me!” I sobbed again. “You swore you’d keep me safe! You promised we’d be together forever. And then you left and I never saw you again!”
I was ugly-crying now, but I didn’t care. I could see the stunned and horrified expression of guilt and sorrow on Nick’s handsome face but I didn’t care about that either. Didn’t care if I was hurting him with my words. He’d hurt me with his actions, damn it! And rescuing me from McCain’s Werewolf wasn’t enough to get him a pass for the ancient pain that sat in the center of my heart like an immovable stone.
“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry, darlin’! So sorry, baby!”
He didn’t try to shield himself from my blows. Instead, he gathered me to him, capturing my arms and pulling me close to his broad, bare chest, muffling my sobs as he enfolded me in a hug I’d been needing for the past ten years.
At last the storm of emotion passed, leaving me feeling empty and cold.
“You can let go now,” I said dully, pressing against his chest with my hands, trying to push him away. “I…I’m in control of myself again. Really I am.”
“Baby…Kira…” He was rubbing my back and shoulders with soothing sweeps of his big, warm hands. I had always loved his hands on me, I remembered now. Once I had craved his touch. But no longer.