I nodded, recognizing the pain in his eyes. I recalled the fear in her voice as she’d screamed for him the final time—but I held my peace so as not to pry.
“My name is Bryce, and my brothers call me Big Bry.”
My lips twitched at the appropriate nickname. “I’m Ashlyn.”
“Ashlyn.” The lines on his face eased. “My iubita.”
My heart swelled at the emotion inflicting his voice. “What does that mean?”
“Beloved. Sweetheart.” He glanced at my lips. “Lover.”
Good Lord. I gulped at his rumbled tone, a mere word wrecking my body as much as the hard length once more growing between us.
He squeezed my fingers and turned, his steps a bit more hurried.
Guess I wasn’t the only one interested in getting to the physical claiming of what he’d started with that bite.
Darkness had all but taken the sky as we neared the wood’s edge, and Bryce paused in the shadows, his head moving as though he scanned the dirt road he’d parked alongside. No other cars sat near his navy truck, no hint of headlights coming from either direction. I did the same as him, amazed at having the ability to do so without glasses.
Giddiness lit inside me, and I chewed on the inside of my lip to keep from giggling as he stepped into the open, leading me out of the forest that had twice taken more of my innocence than it should have.
Bryce opened the passenger door, grabbed clothing off the seat, and stepped back. “Climb on in—I’m going to get these on, but here.” He handed me a thin flannel which I quickly tugged on to cover what had survived of my shirt.
I climbed in and buckled up while he pulled on his own clothing and unlaced boots.
The old Ashlyn would have been chewing her fingernails to the quick while being shut up inside an unknown truck with a near-stranger. She would have fought anxiety, and a panic attack as he drove them down a road she didn’t recognize.
But I sat cool as a cucumber, beyond thankful so much had changed within the previous eight hours or so. I’d found healing from some of my phobias. Healing from a brutal rape which I couldn’t remember thanks to that hit to my head. Darkness lay like a shroud over my memory, and I gladly embraced it, pushing the lingering remembrance of pain and the stench of wet dog beneath the contentment, the purr in my throat at Bryce’s nearness.
He parked beside my car and I chewed on the inside of my lip when he asked what all I needed from inside it to get by for a day or two.
Guess I hadn’t gotten over my phobia of going without—and I felt like a fool. “Um … everything?”
“Stay put.” Bryce hopped out and loaded all of my belongings into the bed of his truck, making a call on his cell while doing so.
I stayed in the cab at his insistence, hearing the rise and fall of his voice even though I couldn’t make out words he spoke into his phone. He scowled more often than not, but my usual anxiety lay quiet. Embarrassment over the amount of crap I had packed for my four-day journey rose with every trip he took from car to truck bed. Stuffed trunk. Loaded back seat.
“Sorry about all that,” I said when he finally hung up his cell and climbed back into the cab, my car emptied.
“Pennsylvania plates—long trip. Being prepared isn’t a bad thing in my book.”
“I tend to be over prepared,” I admitted. “It’s one of my many phobias.”
He eyed me while turning the key. “You got lost all those years ago, didn’t you?”
I nodded—and went ahead and told him all about the previous twenty-seven years I’d endured since that day we’d met. All my fears, all my triggers—and the fact he seemed to have healed most of them.
176
Bryce
I listened as Ashlyn told me about her debilitating fears, soaking in her voice, her scent, but anger still stirred inside me, my inner cat like a caged panther wanting freedom to exact revenge.
What remained of the Lycaon Wolves MC had been pissing outside their territory for far too damn long, encroaching and stirring up shit. We’d taken out most of them, but a few stragglers hung around, trying to rebuild their ranks. It was time for a real reckoning.
I wasn’t an enforcer in the club, but I’d always felt it was my job to protect my brothers, the only family I had, and doing so had become personal on a whole new level—with a goddamn capital P. Time to make them pay.
I’d called Wraith, our president, while loading up my truck with Ashlyn’s things, telling him what I’d found, what had happened—and who the fuck I smelled on my mate. He hadn’t given me shit over my declaration it was war time, and he’d agreed to send a few prospects to get Ashlyn’s car the next morning.
He’d told me to take as long as we needed at the cabin. While I planned on quenching my thirst for my mate the second she gave me the green light, I felt the same compulsion that had carried me into the woods, to head back to the club, have Wraith call the officer brothers in for Church, and make plans to decimate those bastard wolves once and for all.
“So, what about you?”
I glanced over at Ashlyn, my gaze flitting toward the open flannel I’d given her, and the lush, plump tits I had plans for. “What about me?” I said, not really sure what she’d meant.
“Where are you from—who are you. All that good stuff.”
“I grew up a true vagabond, making temporary homes in woods and fields with my mom until her itch to move returned. Mom was a flower child through and through.” Memories of camping invaded my head, stalling out my thoughts.
“Your father?”
“Nothing more than a sperm donor. Big fucker, Mom told me, from Kenya.
