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 dammit, I couldn’t even wipe them away because of the handcuffs. I pulled on my restraints again, not caring that the pain abasing 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 weird 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. “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 very… 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 curling up and 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 laced in his words. “I had tae do my best tae splint it and keep ye from hurting yerself more.”
“Stay away.” And then I remembered everything right before darkness took me in that forest, before the pain had been too intense and I’d let it drag me under. “What do you plan on doing with me? How long are you keeping me here?”
I didn’t expect an answer, and he didn’t say anything at first, but right after I said those words aloud, I remembered the last time I heard him talk... in the woods.
He’d told me I was his and no one would ever take me away. And judging by the handcuffs that bound me to his bed... he very much meant those words.
Epilogue
Ainslee
Six months later
The promise of spring was already in the air, warm and wet and having this pleasurable hum filling me.
The scent of the forest surrounding the home I shared with my mate caused my heart to thunder. I inhaled deeply, taking in more of that sweet, clean scent.