Page 14 of Wraith
My eyes flick to Leena, who is leaning against the doorway, as though she needs it to hold herself up. Her face is ashen as she glances between her brother rolling all over the ground, me, and her father who stands, presiding like an asshole judge over us all.
When no one bothers to answer, I step over the writhing piece of shit taking up space on my lawn like a bag of discarded trash, stalk over to the black truck waiting at the curb, and start hefting a few boxes and a duffel bag out of the box. Jesus. They couldn’t even put her things inside the cab. Fucking bastard asshole cunt shits.
It only takes me a few minutes to haul Leena’s entire life from the truck up to the porch. Viking watches it all. He makes no attempt to veil his amusement, though I really damn well fail to find the humor in the situation.
Leena backs away from the door and disappears inside while I shove boxes in. Finally, I had her duffel and whirl on her father, who is still there, right where I left him. “Pick the trash off my front lawn when you leave. And rest assured, I’ll take far better care of your daughter than you ever did.”
It gives me incredible satisfaction to slam the door in his face. I don’t actually give two flying fucks that he and his pig son out there are part of The Riders now, in whatever newchapter we’re gonna set up in Jacksonville. If any one of my brothers had treated Leena like that in the past, or spoken to her like that, you can damn well bet I would have broken his nose just the same.
I whirl, breathing hard, expecting to find Leena cowering behind me, ashen and shaking, scared just like Abby is when she hears anyone raise their voice. I’d kick my own ass for scaring her, because like Abby, I will always treat her with a gentle hand. It’s my job now to protect her from harm. I didn’t exactly ask for it, but I agreed just the same. And now that I’ve met her, I want to. I fucking want to with every ounce of my being.
I expect to have to console a trembling, crying girl, so it’s a complete shock to me when a hurtling object streaks through the entrance and hurtles itself against my chest. Her slender arms wrap tight around my neck, so tight I almost can’t breathe, while her supple curves meld against mine and her pert breasts mash into my chest.
It catches me completely off-guard and all I can do is wrap my arms around her tiny frame and bend my head to bury my face in her dark, sweet floral scented hair.
I’m a liar. It’s not all I can do. It’s all I let myself do.
Chapter 8
Leena
No one has ever stood up for me.
All my life, I’ve been at the mercy of the people who were supposed to love and protect me. My mother. My father. My brothers. If my sisters had lived with me, maybe they would have stood up for me, but as it was, they were never there and they had their own set of problems.
I’ve never had anything to call my own. I always knew that my few possessions could be taken from me as easily as the roof over my head. I’ve never really hadanyoneeither. My mother was always too busy chasing after a man who didn’t want her, a man who had never really wanted her, and when she finally figured out she was never going to have my father’s love, she abandoned the product of it, the physical reminder of it—me.
I was never anything more than a burden to my father. Just another useless daughter that he didn’t really want. A reminder to him, that women were nothing more than Delilahs and Jezebels. My brothers are like clones of my father. They’ll do what he says in the hope that one day, they’ll prove themselves worthy of inheriting his empire of grime.
I’ve never had so much as a crush on a boy. To me, men were always this entity that I never fully trusted. They represented the twisting and crushing of hope. I watched my father destroy my mother over the years and I never wantedto give anyone the power to do that to me. I was never even actually attracted to the guys in my school. They seemed boyish and immature. I was friendly with them, and they were friendly in return, which was nice, because most of the girls in my class seemed to intrinsically hate me. They curled off into catty little groups that I didn’t want to be a part of anyway.
This man though…
I breathe in a deep, shaky breath past the tears stopping up the bridge of my nose and burning at the back of my throat. He smells good. Dark and dusky, spicy and smoky, but most important, he smells like trust. I didn’t know that emotions had a smell, but on him, they do. I can scent the dark potency of his rage, and as his arms sweep around my back to hold me so tentatively and gently, I feel safe, protected in a way that I never have before, like the strength of a stone wall, centuries old, has just been wrapped around me, shielding me from the horrors of the outside world.
A strong, steady pulse throbs between my legs as I realize how close we’re pressed, how my hands are splayed over his shirt, the ridged hardness below evident under the thin cotton barrier. He’s warm, his heat seeping into me. His shoulders heave as he takes a hard breath and his hand sweeps protectively to the back of my neck.
Something warm and terrifying unfurls in my belly and the pulse hammering at my neck throbs lower, between my thighs. A shiver gnaws at my spine, licks its way up my back, until hot heat floods the base of my neck, right where his strong, unyielding hand is wrapped.
I pull away, confused and unsettled, and he lets me. I know I shouldn’t, that I should detach myself, pull away,put distance between us and this confusing heat wrapping itself around my heart like steel bands, but I don’t. I can’t. Instead, I look up into the face of my defender and my unlikely savior. His eyes burn black, like coals, or maybe it’s just because the pupils are so blown, devouring his softer velvet brown irises entirely.
I can feel him tense, his entire body going rigid. His square jaw clenches and a deep furrow appears over his broad forehead. His masculine lips pull into a thin line and his nostrils flare.
I’m about to ask him, stupidly, why he’s looking at me that way. I hate that I’ve done something to make him unhappy. I sink my teeth into my lower lip, blinking furiously against the tide of fresh tears pricking the backs of my eyes.
I realize we haven’t said anything, that I threw myself at him, but it isn’t that.
Slowly, like the clouds rolling back to reveal the sun, understanding breaks through the fog of my confusion. I let my eyes scrape over his face again, boldly, because it doesn’t even cross my mind that I shouldn’t look at him that way. His clenched jaw. The pulse point hammering at his throat. The vein jumping in his forehead. His dark, blazing eyes so hot that his gaze sizzles against my skin.
The air sizzles, charged between us. I watch, in utter fascination, as his hand shifts away from my neck, leaving me warm and sweaty where his heavy palm just rested. He sweeps his hand through the tangled snarls of my hair, combing out the remnants of my curls, until he reaches the end of one strand. He smooths it between his fingers and a rough, animal sounding groan is torn from his throat.
I feel it in the tightly coiled pit of my stomach, that raspy sound like gas heaped on the burning coals of the sensation I now recognize asdesire.
Something is torn from my throat, an echo of that sound that mirrors his.
Wraith drops my hair and steps back like I’ve poisoned him, shot an arrow dripping with venom straight into his most vital organs.
“You should shower,” he says roughly, before he turns and starts to manhandle the boxes he’s brought inside.
