Fear swam through me with every sharp turn and throttle of the engine. I’d been trying to change my ways about giving people second chances because I wanted to believe others would do the same for me. But his aggressive and unpredictable behavior put a knot in my stomach, and I didn’t have a family or pack to protect me.
I slowly wrapped my fingers around the door handle, my heart racing. When he stopped at a light, I opened the door and leaned to get out. Hawk seized my left arm.
Pulling it free was as impossible as his grip, and when I turned to fight him off, he punched me hard in the face.
“Lights out, Izzy.”
Chapter 9
A ringing sound drew me out of a torturous slumber. I moaned, struggling to open my eyes. I began to feel pain in various places, from the throb in my head to a dull ache on my cheek. I’d never had anyone punch me in the face before. Ever. Not even in the house I grew up in. My conniving siblings had devised subtle methods of abuse, but they’d never struck a blow with a closed fist.
“Hello?”
It was still dark, and I thought the lights might be out until I felt something tight against my face. Not only that, but my wrists were bound. When I moved my legs and fabric brushed against my knees, I felt a stinging pain where I had skinned them. I could sense I was lying on a bed, but the house didn’t smell familiar.
“Hawk?” I croaked. I attempted to clear my throat and turn my stiff neck. I heard the sound of a television in the distance.
“Hawk,” I called out in a loud voice.
Footsteps approached, and a door opened. “I see someone’s awake.”
“Take this off me.”
“No can do.”
“I hate to break the news on your kidnapping attempt, but I might as well let the cat out of the bag. I already know what you look like.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Did you drug me?” I still felt groggy and didn’t think he could have knocked me out that long with a punch.
“Brought something for you,” he said.
“Ah!” I cried out when something icy touched my cheek.
“Hold still. It’s just an ice pack.”
I turned my head away. “Why don’t you let me shift and heal?”
“Because, Izzy,” he began with an intolerant sigh, “that would mean letting you free, and I don’t feel like chasing your crazy ass down.”
“Who says I’ll run?”
He chuckled. “You’ll run. That’s the thing you do best in this world.”
That hurt worse than a punch to the face.
“What is this about? You don’t love me enough to tie me up to a bed.” My fingers stretched out and I realized those weren’t ropes around my wrist. It felt smoother, like a cord.
The bed depressed as he sat to my left. “And how do you know what I feel?”
I frowned. “Don’t pretend you love me when all you feel is a sense of possession. You buy things for the sake of having them, not because you need or want them. You’ve done a great job at keeping me in a gilded cage, but I’m not a bird. I’m a wolf, and you can’t cage a wolf.”
His fingers combed through my hair. “I only want to keep what’s mine.”
I bit my tongue, deciding it was not in my best interest to argue.
“Can you at least remove the blindfold?” I asked in a calm voice. “It makes my head hurt worse when I can’t see. Please, Hawk. Just the blindfold.”
“I like the submissive side of you,” he said approvingly.
My hair tugged in the back, and I winced as he untied the heavy cloth and pulled it away. I blinked through blurry vision and widened my eyes in an attempt to see more clearly. Hawk’s shaggy hair covered the tops of his ears, and his jaw was peppered with black whiskers.
“You want a bottle of water?” he asked.
The civility of his question contradicted with the thin cords that painfully bound my wrists to the bedposts.
“Whose house is this?”
“Ours.”
I let that word hang in the air for a minute. Ours. That meant this wasn’t temporary, and he planned to keep me here. Bile rose in my throat when I glanced down at my body. I was no longer wearing my work clothes, but a white satin nightgown that stretched all the way to my ankles. And it wasn’t mine. Did he buy this while I was unconscious? Or did it belong to someone else?
“What do you mean by ours?”
“Maybe it’s about time we get to know each other a little better,” he suggested, getting off the bed and tossing the blindfold on a dresser. “You said you didn’t want any secrets, and I need to see if what we’ve got between us is going to work out. I own three houses. This one is smaller than the others, but it’s a good place to lay low.”
I glanced around the windowless room. The walls were the color of cement, and while I couldn’t see the floor, I thought it was wood from the sound his shoes made walking across it. The only light in the room came from a brass lamp on the nightstand next to Hawk. The wall in front of me had an open door on the left and a closed door on the right that looked like a closet. Unlike the other house, there wasn’t a single shade of pastel blemishing the room. This was cold and depressing, perhaps reflecting a darker side of Hawk I’d never seen.