Wild and Free (The Three #3)(2)

Then I was up, my own body swinging like it was flying through the air, but I felt hands on me. A breeze was blowing through my hair, I was moving so fast, and then my back slammed against the brick wall of the building at the side of the alley.

I blinked, not feeling the wall at my back but the intense hard-muscled warmth of a body pressed to my front and before my eyes. A man.

A shock of black hair.

An intriguingly tilted set of eyes, the hue I couldn’t make out in the dark, but shockingly, I could see one was a color that was light, the other a color that was definitely dark.

Strong jutting jaw, sharp cheekbones, heavy brow.

The slash of an angry scar that went across his forehead, through his left eyebrow, disconnected then rejoined on his cheekbone to slide all the way down his face, curling around his jaw and disappearing.

I panted in his blood-stained face.

He stared, intense and frightening, into mine, his gaze, honest to God, like a touch.

I stopped panting because I stopped breathing.

His face came closer and my stomach clenched, my muscles tensed near to snapping, my chest burned, but his head veered and he touched his temple to mine, slid it back, rubbing it through my hair.

I sucked in breath only to hold it again when his hands left my armpits. One traveled down my side and then curved to become an arm around my back, holding me so strong, I was plastered to his front. The other went up, over my shoulder and in to curl tight and freakishly warm around the side of my neck.

His chin dipped and I felt his lips at my ear.

“Mine,” he growled in a deep, guttural, forceful way that even I, who had no clue what was happening, I just knew I didn’t like it one…single…bit, agreed.

When he said “mine,” he meant me.

Uh-oh.





Chapter One


It’s Only Just Begun

Delilah



He tossed me on the bed.

I bounced, staring at him as he prowled away from me and across the room.

I should have fought. I should have tried to run. I should have done anything but let him take my hand and drag me to his bike.

I didn’t.

When we got there, he didn’t let me go even as he swung astride it. Then he pulled me on in front of him, started up the bike, and we took off.

My dad was a biker. I’d been on a bike so often, if I had a nickel for each time, I’d be a millionaire. Hell, I even had my motorcycle license and my own bike at home in Dad’s garage.

But I’d never ridden up front while someone else was driving.

If I didn’t struggle and run when he took me to his bike, I should have done it when he stopped us in another alley, this one dark, dank, and not smelling all that great, located behind a Chinese restaurant.

And if I hadn’t done it then, I should have done it when he shoved a big Dumpster out of the way like it weighed no more than a shoebox, lifted the grate under it, and dragged me down a flight of stairs into a dark hall, to a steel door, and through, to this room.

No one lived in a scary basement room off an alley under a Dumpster.

At least no one I wanted to know.

Vaguely, as I sat on that bed, it came to me that I hurt. My shoulders had scraped against the pavement when that guy took me down. But I ignored the ping of pain, seeing as I was clearly In Trouble, capitalized in a way that shit should be in neon. Blinking neon. In huge letters.

My mother’s voice all of a sudden came into my head. “You’re nuts. You’ve always been nuts.”

This is what she’d said when I’d told her what I was doing during my vacation days.

She believed this and I knew she did because she said it to me more than once, starting from when I was about four.

It was safe to say I wasn’t real tight with my mother.

“My little girl goin’ on a quest,” Dad had said when I’d told him. He’d also had a big grin of pride and approval on his face and he’d given me a tender cuff up the side of my head. “Good for you, Lilah. ’Bout time you took off and found what you needed to fill that hole in your gut.”

Dad understood.

Dad always understood.

I didn’t.

And now I understood it less.

My mind came back into the room when the guy walked toward me carrying some material in his hand. When he did, I couldn’t believe I’d let my mind wander.

I watched him warily as he moved.

He was tall. Tall and lean. His shoulders were broad, his hips narrow, his legs long.

He had bulk, but it was spare. Regardless, even if I hadn’t experienced what I’d experienced not thirty minutes ago, one look at him and you knew he had power. That scar. The way he held himself. The economical way he moved. He was not a guy who went to the gym to hone his body because he was into fitness or wanted attention. He was a guy who, if he went to the gym rather than drinking raw eggs and doing one-armed pushups on the asphalt of the alley where he’d parked his bike, he did it as a statement that no one should mess with him, because if they did, he’d f*ck them up.

He had that scar and it was nasty.

But I’d put money down that the other guy got worse.

“Shower,” he grunted as he tossed the material on the bed beside me and I continued to stare at him. “You reek of them.”

“I…uh” was the only thing I could get out, seeing as there was no way in hell I was going to shower in this weird basement room with a guy in attendance who I did not know, who also terrified me.