“You don’t believe that.” She raised one reddish brow at me as she shook out a pair of pajama bottoms. “I can see it in your eyes.”
What else could she see in my eyes? They probably read like a thermometer at the moment. Could she see my temperature rise with every movement she made? Every glance she threw my way?
Beads of water still clung to her. The clean scent of her skin triggered urges I had no right to feel. No right to want. And the only thing that could possibly smell better than Abby fresh from the shower was the scent of her sweat mixed with mine.
I shifted subtly, trying to disguise the evidence of what I wanted. I needed to taste her. I ached to touch her.
I should have turned around and run, right then.
“If you didn’t have an Alpha’s responsibilities, you might be doing exactly what this stray’s doing,” she insisted. “He’s taking out the men who were hunting me, Jace. Wouldn’t you do that for someone you cared about?”
“In an instant,” I growled, surprised when the truth rumbled out without warning. “And when I find Hargrove and the rest of the hunters, I will personally rip them limb from limb, one bone at a time.” For you. Because they’d watched her. Stalked her. They’d photographed and threatened her. They’d terrorized and murdered her friends, then lured her to their sick-ass slaughtering cabin and come after her with a knife.
They’d tried to kill my Abby…
Another growl rumbled from my throat, unbidden, and her eyes widened.
While part of me was embarrassed by the possessive notes of aggression I couldn’t hold in, a deeper part of me was pleased that she’d heard and understood them, because I could never articulate those thoughts. No matter what my instinct was telling me—no matter what kind of potent hormones some ancient biological imperative was dumping into my bloodstream with every beat of my heart—she was not mine. She would never be mine.
But she was my responsibility.
“I would do anything for someone I cared about, Abby. But there’s a process. As an Alpha, I have to dispense justice rather than vengeance.” Though there were days when I’d much rather be a vigilante. “And even if we weren’t going to take action against the stray, we’d have to find him and question him, because you’re right—he probably knows more about the hunters than we do, and we need to know everything he knows.”
Abby bent over her suitcase again, her shoulders stiff. She didn’t like my answer. “I just think it’s messed up that we’re after this poor stray for doing exactly what we’re going to do to the monsters he’s hunting.”
“We’re not—”
She untucked her towel and let it fall, and I choked on the rest of my sentence. I had to focus on each breath after that to make sure I hadn’t forgotten the entire respiratory process, but that didn’t help, because every breath smelled like Abby. The rest of the room slid out of focus until I saw nothing but the curls tumbling down her back, ending just above the narrowest part of her waist. Even her lower back was freckled, but below that, her skin was smooth and pale, leading toward taut, rounded muscle.
Look at something else. Anything else.
I glanced around the room, desperate for something to latch onto. Something to talk about other than how her very well-toned backside tapered to slim, powerful thighs that could probably squeeze…
No, no, no. There was no hiding how badly I wanted her, and if she looked, she’d see.
My gaze landed on the computer printout I’d found on the desk, forgotten with my first glance at Abby in her towel, still wet from the shower. The gruesome image was jarring, but it did the trick.
“Where did you get this?” I held up the page.
She turned as she pulled her nightshirt over her head, then froze when her gaze landed on the paper. Her eyes widened and the hem of her shirt fell past her navel. “I should have shredded it,” she whispered.
Staring up at me from the page was a picture of Abby’s head mounted on a wooden plaque sloppily nailed to a paneled wall. Cartoonish blood dripped from her severed neck in the image, and her human eyes had been digitally overlain with cheesy cat pupils. She’d been smiling in the original photo, and the grinning severed head was well beyond disturbing.
“I printed it at Hargrove’s house before they packed up his computer.” Abby stepped into that green underwear and crossed the room toward me slowly, each step deliberate, as if she wasn’t sure she wanted to be any closer to the gruesome image but was too stubborn to give in to fear. And she was afraid. Terror danced in the coppers and browns of her eyes, but the line of her jaw had been chiseled by determination.
She was so strong. I’d never met anyone who’d been through as much as Abby had and had come through it with half as much resilience and determination.