Should have killed them.
Why the hell hadn’t he?
Because you didn’t want her to think you were a monster.
He found the bullet. Held tight to it and felt the burn on his flesh. Smoke rose from his fingertips and drifted from her body.
“C-Cade?” Her voice was soft and scared. “What’s happening?”
He pulled out the bullet. The flesh on his fingers was bright red and already blistering. He tossed the bullet onto the nightstand. “They used silver.”
Should have killed them.
Those bastards hadn’t just been after Allison. Elsa had sent the humans to take him out.
Allison’s wound began to close, right before his eyes.
“It feels…strange,” she whispered. “Tingling…”
Because the flesh was mending. She was so close to the change now, so close to becoming fully vampire, that her body had already prepared for the shift.
Vamps could heal from nearly any wound. Because they were such fast healers, they were often damn hard to kill.
There were only three ways to kill a vampire—fire, beheading, or a stake to the heart.
No wonder Elsa hadn’t come after Allison on her own. The witch literally wasn’t strong enough to kill her.
But I am. A werewolf’s claws were the perfect weapon to behead a vamp.
He realized that his fingers were caressing her stomach. Sliding lightly over the flesh. His gaze lifted, met hers.
Want her.
“You…protected me.” Who’d ever done that before? And why the hell had she done it? He’d told her that he’d been sent to kill her, and the woman had still gone ahead and take a bullet for him.
Why?
Allison stared back at him.
Fuck. He rose. Left the room.
“Cade?” Allison called after him. He liked it when she said his name. Liked it when she touched him. When her scent surrounded him. “Don’t leave,” she said, the words quiet, but he heard them perfectly.
His chest ached. “I’m not.” He went back into the room with a wet cloth held in his hands. She was sitting up now, and her br**sts pushed against the cups of her bra. Damn fine br**sts.
Cade’s c**k shoved against the front of his jeans, but he yanked back the lust.
For now.
Carefully, he put the wet cloth over her side and washed the blood off her skin. Creamy, smooth skin. The wound was all but gone. Vamps and their amped up healing powers. She’d have no scar to bear, not like him.
Scars covered far too much of him.
He glanced up and found Allison staring at the scar that sliced down his cheek and curled under his jaw. Cade’s back teeth clenched.
Then she lifted her hand and touched the rough skin. “What happened to you?”
Sympathy. Pity. He didn’t want either from her. He tossed the cloth unto the nightstand. It covered the bullet. “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”
He expected her to drop her hand. She didn’t. Just kept right on touching him, and the lust that he’d tried to hold back grew stronger with every second that passed.
Her heady scent filled his nose. Her body was so close, waiting for him. And she was touching him. Stroking his cheek. Staring up at him with those big, blue eyes.
She knew how dangerous he was. The lady should be hauling ass away from him.
Not—
“Tell me.” Her words were husky, whispered, and they slid right over his flesh better than any silken stroke.
Fine. Not like it was some deep, dark secret. His story had been talked about in bars. Whispered in the woods. “When I was fourteen, vamps attacked my pack.”
Her hand stilled on his cheek. Her eyes didn’t look away from his.
“I was too young to shift, but too damn big to be seen as anything other than a threat that they had to eliminate.” He’d always been big. But being big didn’t matter when you were up against a vampire’s enhanced strength.
“Before they got around to that eliminating…” He exhaled and remembered the scent of burning flesh. “They thought it would be fun to torture me.”
He saw the delicate movement of her throat as she swallowed. “Your face.”
Cade couldn’t help it. He laughed at that. Then he rose and made sure the light fell on his body. There would be no shadows to hide him any longer. He hadn’t taken the time to put his shirt back on before heading out to face Griggs and his gang. No shirt to cover him. No darkness to cloak the old wounds. “Sweetheart, my face was just the start.”
He turned around, real slow, making sure she had time to see all the marks that twisted his flesh.
Nothing nice or neat about him. The vamps had used silver knifes to peel away his skin. Then they’d used liquid silver to burn his muscles. To burn and burn until agony had been all he’d known.
He kept his back to her and stared straight ahead at the wall. The vampires had been laughing as he screamed.
“But I stopped them,” he said, still remembering. Still seeing. “I got out of the chains.” Out of the silver that had held his wrists so tightly. “At the first light of dawn, when they were weak and I was strong, I got out, and I killed every one of those f**king bloodsuckers.” With the claws that had finally sprang from his fingers. The pain, the fury—something had brought on the change in him. The wolf had burst to the surface that blood-soaked day, and his claws had ripped into his prey.
“But it was too late for the others in my pack,” he said. Far too late. “Everyone else was dead.” Tossed aside. Broken.
He’d never joined another pack. What was the point? To grow close to them, to care, only to wind up one day watching them all die in another attack?
He didn’t need anyone else. Didn’t want anyone else. It was far better to be alone.
When Cade felt the light touch on his back, he stiffened. Not fingers on his skin—the touch was too soft. That was—
Allison was kissing his back. Kissing the marks left by torture almost twenty years ago.
He spun around and caught her shoulders. “Don’t.”
She didn’t look afraid. She should. The wolf was far too close to breaking free. “Why not?” she asked him, staring into his eyes and he found he couldn’t look away. “You took care of me…why can’t I take care of you?”
“Because I don’t want your damn pity!” His words weren’t loud. Lethally soft.
“Pity isn’t what I want to give you.” Then she pulled from his hold, far too easily.
Barely human now. The vampire transformation was so close. Did she realize it?