Beast Denied (18 page)

“He’s been digging into the sleazebag’s past,” Tynan admitted. “Found out this isn’t his first rodeo when it comes to stalking women. Which is why I didn’t want you out of my sight.”

A chill ran through Naomi’s already cold body, confirming her earlier fears, but the gravity of what Stoltz had done made her even more incensed that Tynan had kept her in the dark. “Are you saying this is on me? That it’s my fault because I dared to leave the house without telling you?”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “All I’m saying is that I had you covered.”

Naomi shook her head. “I appreciate what you were trying to do, but maybe if you’d been straight with me, I wouldn’t have gone off alone. I’m not stupid, Tynan. I wouldn’t deliberately put myself at risk like that. If anything, you were the one to do that by withholding this information from me.”

His eyes widened, and he opened his mouth to say something, but the rumble of an engine and the twinkle of headlights indicated Ryan’s arrival. The officer got out of the car and headed over to them, sparing a glance at Stoltz, who eyed him cautiously.

At first glance, people could be forgiven for thinking that Ryan courted the wrong side of the law. His close-cropped hair and pugilistic features gave him a brutish appearance, but Ryan was a cop through and through.

Without breaking stride, he nodded to Tynan, then bent down and brought himself eye level with Naomi. “You okay?”

Naomi nodded, keeping eye contact with Ryan and trying not to think about the fact he knew of her sexual escapade at Seth’s hotel.

She swallowed. “Yes.”

“Sure? Because you need to press charges, and the sooner we can get the ball rolling, the sooner we can put this scum away for a long time.”

Bile rose in her throat. Ryan’s words brought back the grim realization of what could have happened if Tynan hadn’t shown up when he did. She stood and smoothed down her dust-covered trousers. “If you want me to give a statement now, I’m more than ready to do that.”

“She needs to rest,” Tynan growled, moving beside her. “You can get her statement in the morning.”

Naomi turned to him. “I want to get it over with.” Since she knew he was about to argue, she held up her hand. “It’s my decision, and I’m doing it now.”

Ryan nodded. “I’ll take this dirtbag in. You want to ride with me or find your own way to the station?”

“We’ll find our own way,” Tynan said firmly.

Naomi recognized the battle of wills that was being played out, and she wasn’t going to let him get away with it. No matter how hard she tried to get him to back off and give her the courtesy of directing her own concerns, or at the very least allowing her to have knowledge of them, he wouldn’t get the message.

And besides,
finding their own way
was code for shifting. Tynan obviously thought that a run would help get rid of whatever residual tension Naomi was holding after the ordeal. What he didn’t know was that the thought of it was almost as horrifying a proposition as facing off with Stoltz.

Ryan tapped two fingers to his forehead in a salute, then started to move away.

“Wait,” Naomi said, hurrying toward him. “I’ll ride with you. Like I said, I want to get this over with.”

She didn’t look at Tynan but caught Ryan’s glance over her shoulder. He hesitated only briefly, then gave a sharp nod. Naomi watched Ryan haul Stoltz up, lock cuffs around his already bound hands, then toss him into the back of his car.

Tynan came up behind her and reached to open the passenger door. “I’ll go back and get my car and meet you at the station.”

His gruff tone matched the displeasure in his eyes, but beneath it she glimpsed a glimmer of hurt. She’d known he would be upset by her request to ride with Ryan. But she’d had to do it. This whole thing with him was getting so intense.

Last night, lying next to him, she’d felt a satisfaction, a contentment that she’d never known before. It had seeped into her blood, her heart, until all she knew was that she wanted more. Much more. Which meant it was vital she take a stand to stop herself from getting sucked into the sheer pleasure of having him in her life. Before she knew it, he would take it over.

“What is it?”

She glanced up at him, saw the concern on his face. “Nothing. I was just thinking that I’m going to have to go through the whole thing again, aren’t I? There’s no way my grandfather won’t hear about it now.”

“Ryan’s a circumspect guy. He’ll keep it quiet if he can.”

It wasn’t Ryan she was concerned about, because she knew he put the pack’s interests paramount when it came to his police work. On more than one occasion, he’d deflected interest away from the shifter community, most usually when one of the young shifters chose to use their powers in a reckless and unthinking way.

What worried her was that once she pressed charges, it might be all over the local papers. She could only hope that, as a reporter, Talia would step in and divert attention away from that particular story.

Before she slipped inside the car, she turned to him. “Thanks for coming to look for me. For…for turning up when you did.”

“That was never in question.”

He leaned down and before she could stop him, he kissed her. Naomi pulled back. It wouldn’t pay for Ryan to spread the word that she and Tynan were an item. But Tynan was having none of it. He placed his hands either side of her face and held her steady until she met his gaze. “I’ll see you at the station.”

There was no mistaking the possessive way he held her, nor was there any way she could misinterpret his words and the meaning behind them. He might have given in to her request to travel with Ryan, but he wasn’t about to be fobbed off by it.

He released her, and she got into the car. Seconds later, Ryan joined her. He jerked his head toward the backseat. “Are you okay with this?”

Since she knew he meant her traveling with Stoltz behind her in the backseat, she nodded. “As long as he’s in handcuffs.”

They pulled out of the clearing, and Naomi glanced in the side mirror. Tynan looked pretty menacing standing there with his hands on his hips, his shoulders wide, and a deep frown on his face. The mist that came in off the moor whirled around his ankles, adding to the primal, dangerous aura surrounding him. But he also looked…vulnerable.

It took her unawares, and her throat tightened. It was for the best, she thought, still watching him. He needed to realize that this thing between them couldn’t go any further.

“Ty looks like he’s ready to kill someone,” Ryan said, whipping the car back onto the track. “Good thing I got there fast, or something tells me I’d be booking him along with shit-face here.”

After she had gotten his attention away from Stoltz, Tynan had been more interested in checking on her and making sure she was okay than laying into her attacker. She could only be grateful for that. The last thing she wanted was to see Tynan up on charges.

Naomi felt bad about the way she had virtually dismissed him in favor of traveling with Ryan, and could hardly blame him for feeling angry about it. She hoped that in pushing him away and trying to keep him at arm’s length, she hadn’t made things worse. If he was meeting her at the station, he would no doubt demand he remain with her while she gave her statement. She pitied the poor desk officer who tried to tell him different.

Like all shifter males, it was his nature to protect. It was in his DNA. And thank heaven he had arrived when he did. She couldn’t bear to think what might have happened had he not come to her aid.

It angered her to realize she had been helpless against Stoltz. Had she nurtured and respected her gifts over the years, she would have been easily able to summon just the right amount of strength to escape his clutches while not drawing overdue attention to it.

It was her own fault that she’d tried to deny her gifts, her skills. She hadn’t valued them. Hadn’t valued her strength, her ability to shift. In fact, she
had
denied them.

It came from feeling unworthy. Unworthy of being a shifter. Unworthy of belonging to the pack. As a female, she had failed in her duty to perpetuate the species. It might seem old-fashioned to some human women, but it was a woman’s vital role in the shifter community. Many packs had become extinct over time, mostly in remote parts of the world where sexual integration with neighboring packs was often impossible. But all shifters knew the importance of continued procreation for the survival of their kind.

Naomi had failed to perform her vital role. She had lost her baby. For which she could only blame herself.

It had taken many years to deal with her loss. At first she had thrown herself into her studies, and then into her work. It had gone some way to helping her feel she was making recompense for what had happened, and that through her medical expertise she was able to be of use to her people, and contribute to the pack in the only way she could.

In retrospect, perhaps she had been wrong coming back to Bodmin. Knowing she would run into Tynan and, in doing so, would be forced to relive what had happened between them and the heartbreaking consequences.

She’d been desperately wrong getting sexually involved with him. Deep down, she’d known it was a huge mistake, but he was like a drug to her.

Naomi was still trying to get her thoughts and feelings into some semblance of clarity when they arrived at the police station. The adrenaline rush was leveling out, and she felt raw and unbalanced. Facing the ordeal with Stoltz was bad enough, but she was almost more unsettled by her growing reliance on Tynan and her escalating feelings for him.

Despite the fact that Ryan had detoured back to her car to collect her bag and phone, then secure her vehicle until Tynan could arrange for the recovery service, Naomi was surprised to see Tynan already waiting outside the station entrance when they arrived. He must have broken the speed limit to arrive at the station before them. He looked fierce and uncompromising standing there beneath the security lights, a frown darkening his face and his eyebrows drawn together in a scowl.

When Ryan pulled up, Tynan came over and opened the door for her. She noticed the slight limp and realized that he must have run like blazes to get to her on the moor. Mortified, she glanced up at him. “You’ve hurt yourself.”

“Bit stiff. It’ll pass.”

His gruff tone and brusque manner told her he wouldn’t appreciate her probing deeper into the subject, but she fully intended to check in with him about it after they had finished at the station.

He remained silent while he accompanied her up the steps to the entrance, but his hand settled at the small of her back. Under different circumstances, she might have reveled in his comforting presence. She had never given a statement to the police before, and the thought of doing so was pretty daunting. But far more intimidating was the unsettling feeling that Tynan wasn’t planning to let her keep him at arm’s length.

If that were the case, she might soon be facing an ordeal infinitely more threatening than anything the night had yielded so far.

Chapter Twelve

Tynan rummaged through Naomi’s refrigerator and found the basics for breakfast. He didn’t like how pale she looked when she’d come out of the interview room at the cop shop, nor did he care for the way she tried to fob him off and push him away. He understood that she wanted to be in her own place after what she’d been through, but there was no way he was going to leave her until she’d eaten and was feeling better. On the drive back, she hadn’t wanted to talk it through anymore, which again was something he understood. In fact, all she’d been interested in was assuring herself that he was okay and his back had settled down again. While he’d told her everything was fine, the truth was he was far from okay and his fucking back was acting up like there was no tomorrow.

He saw it as his penance. He’d failed to protect her. Had he been able to run faster, he could have found her before Stoltz had gotten his hands on her. He was certain that the image of the terror in Naomi’s eyes would be forever carved into his soul. And it was his fault. Plain and simple. He hadn’t gotten to her quickly enough.

She came out of the bathroom wearing a fresh tee and workout pants. Her hair was pinned up, although some wet strands hung down across her shoulders. She was still pale, and her eyes looked too large for her heart-shaped face, the haunted look in them confirming his instincts that something was going on that went even deeper than being terrorized by Stoltz.

Unanswered questions buzzed through his head, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was going on with her. But damned if he could get a handle on what exactly it was.

He planned on changing that.

First things first, he decided, signaling for her to sit at the breakfast nook. With eyes full of suspicion, she complied, but stared at the soft poached eggs and slices of bacon he placed in front of her.

She swallowed. “I can’t eat all that.”

“Do your best. I’ll get the toast.” Keeping his eye on her, he walked to the toaster. “You don’t have any spread.”

She tucked her hands between her legs and looked up at him. “I don’t use it. There’s some malt spread somewhere if you want it.”

“I’ll survive. Now eat.”

She frowned, but thankfully she didn’t call him on the sharpness of his command. Right then, she looked too tired to do much of anything.

She had said little when she’d come out of the interview room, even less during the drive back to her apartment. He’d placed a hand over hers, but she’d remained tense and unyielding during the short journey home.

“There’s really no need for you to stay,” she said, her attention on the untouched food. “It was good of you to wait for me, but I know you have things to do.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” He pulled out a chair and disguised a wince when he sat opposite her at the counter. “And certainly not until you’ve eaten something.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You said you were feeling okay. It’s hurting you, isn’t it?”

“Like I said. Bit stiff.”

Reaching across for her bag, she pulled out painkillers. “Take two of these. And don’t argue, Tynan.”

He wanted to grin at her fierce tone, but the lost look in her eyes and the pallor of her face couldn’t have made him feel less like smiling.

After he’d swallowed the tablets, she picked up her fork and fluffed some of the egg. “You should see a doctor.”

“A hot shower will see me right.” He imagined that sharing a hot shower with his own special doctor would be the perfect remedy for what ailed him, but he kept his thoughts to himself. Instead, he pressed a little for her to open up. “Want to talk about it?”

Thoughtful for a moment, she took a deep breath. “They said Stoltz had been charged with sexual assault before. They said he had photos of me in his car.” She looked up with those stricken eyes and Tynan felt his heart catch. “I thought you were exaggerating, making a fuss over nothing. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Like I said. We had it covered.”

Resignedly, she shook her head “You made decisions about me and my life, and you didn’t think I had a right to know what was happening.”

Beneath her soft tone was an icy calm. Tread carefully, Tynan told himself. Best to say nothing until she got what she needed to get off her chest.

All the while, she continued to fluff those damn eggs, her fork digging in with venomous intent.

“Have you any idea how bloody sick I am of people making decisions for me? Thinking that they have the right to decide what’s best for me and my life? God. It never stops.”

“That’s not what I’m doing.”

The fork clattered down on the counter. “Yes. It is. That’s exactly what you’re doing.”

He narrowed his eyes and kept his rising temper in check. He wasn’t about to press the switch without knowing what it would unleash. “I’m not going to apologize for wanting to protect you, but I will apologize for upsetting you.”

She shot back in her chair. “Do you know how patronizing that sounds?”

He bit down on the inside of his mouth. She been through a traumatic experience, he reminded himself. She was tired. Emotional. Likely needing to vent. And he was a convenient target.

“Why don’t you eat those eggs and then get some sleep.”

Her expression turned lethal. “I have to work. I’ve got patients who need me.”

“Are you fucking kidding? After what you’ve been through, you need to rest.”

“You haven’t listened to a word I’ve said.” She scraped back her seat, snatched up the untouched plate and took it to the bin. After shoveling the food into the bin, she all but threw the plate into the sink. “You don’t get it, do you? You just don’t get it.”

Calm, he told himself. Keep fucking calm. “Then spell it out for me. Make me get it.”

She glared at him, causing him to wonder what the hell he’d said wrong this time.

“You should leave.” She turned away, clasping her hands over the edge of the sink to stare out the window. “Thank you for helping me. I really mean that. But I need to be alone.”

While her tone was firm, a tremor reverberated on the last words. It was all he needed, and he went to stand behind her. The urge to touch her, to draw her back against him, was so strong he had to fist his hands and hold them tight to his sides. He wanted to wrap his arms around her, pull her close and never let her out of his sight again. But he knew she would tell him to get the hell away from her. So he kept his arms at his sides.

He took a step closer until mere centimeters separated them. “I’m finding it hard to give you what you want right now.” Every instinct he possessed cried out to him to scoop her up and take her away, keep her at his side, to know she was safe. Protected. He glanced down at her neck, felt the almost overwhelming need to sink his teeth into the succulent flesh. To mark her. Finally make her his.

The need was so intense, he felt his fangs descend.

He stood, fighting the instinct with everything he had, when she turned and looked up at him. Her eyes were ravaged, but there was a steeliness in them. “You’re finding it hard to give me what I want because it’s your nature to do what your instincts tell you to do. I can’t blame you for that. But it’s not what I need.”

“Then tell me what you do need.”

She sidestepped him when he reached for her. “You don’t owe me anything, Tynan. And you sure as hell don’t own me.”

“I’m not trying to own you—”

“I spent my childhood and teenage years being ruled by a man who thought he did. Who made decisions on my behalf he thought were in my best interests.” Her voice hitched again. “I swore never again. No man is going to control me. Not ever again.”

Tynan knew that her father had been a controlling man. That he’d ruled Naomi and her mother with an iron fist. “You think that’s what I’m doing?”

“It is what you’re doing. Like I said, I don’t blame you. I can’t blame you. All I can do is make decisions for myself that will give me what I want. Allow me to direct my own life. And never answer to anyone again.”

While there had never been any evidence, rumors abounded that the man had raised his hand on more than one occasion to Naomi’s mother. Tynan himself had seen the woman flinch around her husband.

It was insulting on so many levels to be compared to such a brute.

“I’m nothing like your father,” he felt compelled to point out. “You don’t have to answer to me, and you don’t have to compromise what you want in life.”

Closing her eyes, she shook her head. The action sent a fresh wave of frustration through him. “Damn it, Naomi. Why the hell won’t you let me in?”

She opened her eyes, throwing tiny daggers of irritation his way. “Let you in? To what? You think the fact we’ve had sex entitles you to something more?”

“Fucking right.”

She opened her mouth, closed it, then shook her head. “If that’s the case, you’re delusional. I’ll always be grateful for what you did for me with Stoltz, but apart from that, you’ve already given me the only thing I wanted from you. A threesome. End of story.”

“Is that so? I didn’t see anyone else making up the numbers last night when you screamed
my
name and kept begging
me
for more.”

She raised her shoulder. “It’s called sex. Good sex. I’ll give you that. And when it’s good, I usually scream and beg for more. It’s no big deal.”

Blood raged through his veins. He had a mind to pull her into his arms and show her just how big a deal it had been and would be again. But she was deliberately trying to push him further and further away, and he knew he had to keep his cool and play this very carefully if he wanted to find out what was really going on with her.

Her father was at the heart of it, with her not wanting to lose control of her choices, her freedom. Like her mother had done? Was she that terrified of being trapped in a relationship with someone she feared would dominate her, take away her liberty? Someone like him?

Again, insult skittered through his body, but he refused to react. He kept his voice low, his tone even. “Tell me what happened with your father.”

Panic rushed over her face, but quickly disappeared. “I’ve already told you.”

“Some of it. But not all. If you’re going to put me on a level with him, don’t I deserve to know why?”

“I don’t put you on a level with him.” It came out in a rush, before she stepped back and wrapped her arms around herself. “He was a bully and a total control freak. God, Tynan, don’t ever believe I think you’re like him.”

He wanted to throw up his hands in frustration. “Which makes this whole conversation moot. You’re using your past as a way to push me back, convincing yourself that I’d want to manipulate you, run your life like he did. What else am I supposed to believe?”

“It’s complicated. And it lives deep inside me. It’s taken me years to get to a place where I know that the choices and decisions I make are coming from me and not from his influence. For so long, I didn’t know who I was.”

After a moment’s hesitation, she faced him squarely. The defiance and determination that shone in her eyes almost brought him to his knees. “There’s something you need to know, Tynan. I should have told you a long time ago.”

Okay, he’d been pressing her, wanting her to spill her secrets. But now that it was happening, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Especially when he noticed the way her hands trembled. Fear trickled through him, but he kept still, not wanting her to clam up now that she was actually talking to him about what was at the heart of her concerns.

“First, you need to know that the decision to leave for London wasn’t mine,” she said. “It was my father’s. He sent me away.”

Tynan frowned. “Why?”

“Because he knew…about you and me. About what we’d done.”

Shit
. The vicious bastard had driven her from home because she’d dared to have sex with him that night? He sent her away from her family, her friends. From him.

His whole body tensed. If the fucker was around right then, Tynan knew he wouldn’t be responsible for his actions.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“We weren’t exactly on speaking terms at that point, were we? Besides, you couldn’t have done anything, and you might have made things even worse.”

“How could they be worse than you being exiled from everything you knew?”

“He was responsible for your accident.”

Tynan wasn’t entirely sure he’d heard her correctly, but before he could ask her to repeat what she’d said, she hurried on.

“Bob Tucker? The man who paid you to destroy those traps out on the moor? I think my father got him to do his own dirty work. He and Tucker were thick as thieves. I remember them drinking and playing cards long into the night, grumbling about certain people who had done them wrong and speculating on how they’d like to make them pay. I know that he paid Tucker to employ you, and then he deliberately set those traps by the old copper mine, knowing that you’d walk into one of them. He told me he intended to make you pay, and I know that he did.”

Tynan tried to process what Naomi was telling him. He had always reconciled his accident with being in the wrong place at the wrong time. If it had been a malicious act of deliberate intent, he had to come to terms with it in a whole different way.

“I’m so sorry, Tynan. Both for what my father did to you, and for not telling you before now.”

Her eyes filled, moisture welling up at her lower lashes and threatening to spill over. Tynan wasn’t about to let her take the blame on herself. “Even if you’re right about him, it doesn’t mean you’re in any way responsible. It’s on your father, not you.”

“What we did set everything in motion. We should never have taken things beyond friendship. As you said at the time, it was a mistake.”

No longer able to resist, he took her hands in his. “The only thing that was a mistake was me acting like a horny jerk and making it difficult for you. It was a mistake when I didn’t come after you, tell you how sorry I was and make things right.”

She looked down at their joined hands, a wistful expression on her face. “I didn’t want to see you. I felt stupid and naïve, making such a fuss over the whole thing.”