Justus (6 page)

“I’d like to see them try
that on a good day. They got lucky. It won’t happen again.”

Paige glared at him.

“Whatever,” she grumbled and
went back to peeling the tape.

It was painful, more so than
he would have thought.

“Just breathe,” she said.

Justus gritted his teeth.
“How do you know they are after me?”

Paige continued her hard
work.

“I was stopped by the
sheriff.”

Justus forgot the pain and
looked over to her.

“Did he do anything?”

She shook her head.

“I think it was more a
warning,” she said.

He mulled over her words as
Paige set to work. Several needles went into the wound, but it
started to feel better almost instantly. When she reached his leg,
Justus gritted his teeth hard. The pain was like a hot poker.

Just like before, the
treatment brought near instant relief.

“What did you mean by someone
like me?” Paige asked quietly.

His eyes shot to her as she
dressed his wounds with some sort of pungent, thick liquid.

Justus cleared his throat,
not really sure what he should tell her. Somehow it seemed strange
to tell her that she was made for hybrids and that her smell
attracted them, particularly him.

He took a deep breath before
starting.

“Vestal,” he said.

His voice was lower than he
intended, but somehow he couldn’t seem to stop. Talking about this
with her excited him. The implications, after all, were inherently
sexual. He shook himself of the thought.

“Vestal is what we call the
women that are meant to be bonded,” he said.

Paige stopped her work to
look at him.

“Bonded?”

He groaned inwardly. He’d
only managed to make it worse.

“It’s like being a couple,”
he said, hoping she wouldn’t make him go into all the details. The
seriousness was impressed on him with Vanessa. She’d done something
to Felix, and because he was with the wrong Vestal, it had killed
him. Vanessa might have finished the job, but he was already one
leg in the grave at the time.

Somehow compelled to
continue, Justus pressed on.

“We seek our Vestal.” He
stared at her. His temperature had gone down before, but at the
moment it was through the roof. “They have a smell that calls to
us. One that we could pick out a mile away. One we’d walk bleeding
through the forest to.”

He could see her swallow and
felt the urge to run his mouth along that soft skin there.

“Oh,” she said.

The blush that spread across
his face only made him ache for her.

He frowned when Paige jumped
up from her position on the floor.

“I think we should move you
to my sister’s room,” she said and nodded to the door just on the
other side of the room.

Earlier thoughts fled as he
pictured sleeping in a bed for a change. It had been so long since
he had somewhere even a little soft to sleep and never a real
bed.

Paige slipped an arm under
his legs and helped swivel his body. Then she placed and arm at his
back and pressed to stand.

It was painful, but he was
able to make it to his feet.

Slowly, they moved across the
room. She threw open the door and flipped on the light.

It was a simple room. If her
sister lived with her, she wasn’t around often enough to
matter.

“Ava is off in South America
somewhere,” she said quickly, and they moved further into the
room.

She heaved a great sigh when
he was finally seated on the bed.

Paige walked over to a drawer
and pulled out a pair of gray sweatpants and a white t-shirt.

“It likely won’t fit quite
right since Ava never dated a man quite as large as you,” she said
and blushed again.

For the first time in a long
while, he smiled. It almost felt foreign to him.

“It will do.”

Paige cleared her throat and
turned a shade darker. “Do you need help?”

Justus paused. He could feel
himself harden at the thought of her hands on him helping him out
of his clothes. At that point, he wasn’t sure he’d give a shit
about much else.

He swallowed hard.

“I got it.”

Paige nodded and stepped to
the door of the room.

“Bathroom is there,” she said
and pointed at another door in the room. “No showers yet.”

Justus gave a nod.
“Thanks.”

Paige stared at him for a
moment longer as if she wanted to say something else. Whatever it
was, she seemed to decide differently.

“Good night, Justus.”

And before he could even
respond, she was gone.

Chapter Eight

Paige quietly made her
way around the kitchen. All night her thoughts had been filled with
a certain sexy hybrid’s dark good looks and what she’d like to do
with him.

It was crazy. Getting
involved with a hybrid, especially one on the run, seemed like the
sort of judgment her sister would use. This wasn’t her.

Paige was the practical one.
She was the one who did what she needed, not what she wanted, even
though every piece of her lady bits was telling her she needed to
spend some quality time with Justus in the horizontal position, the
vertical position or any position really.

Over and over she’d been
exposed to his hard, muscular body. Despite her better judgment,
every inch of his chiseled abs and pecs were etched into her brain.
There was no denying it. Justus was one of the sexiest men she’d
ever laid eyes on.

And then there was the whole
Vestal business. His words came back to her, echoing in her
mind.

Had he really traveled
through the woods, bleeding and in pain, just because her scent
called to him? It all seemed so far out there, but it explained so
much about the hybrids and about why so many of the women around
them seemed to fall in love so quickly and were happy with their
choice. Destiny seemed so unreal, but then so did all of this. If
you’d asked her a year ago if she’d be living near genetically
engineered super-soldiers targeting by a shadowy organization with
terrorist links, she’d laughed it off.

“Pancakes?”

She jumped at the sound of
Justus and whirled around in time to see him standing at the door.
A white shirt stretched across his muscular form. The pants were
slightly too short.

Paige frowned.

“You should be in bed,” she
said quickly and rushed forward to usher him back to bed. Hybrid or
not, he had severe injuries and might have been poisoned. Even with
her treatment, she still worried about the lingering effects on his
system.

His hand shot out and pulled
up his shirt just as she reached him. Her hand dropped to the
puckering flesh on his side.

“Amazing,” she whispered.
“You’re already healing.”

His hand rested on hers,
stilling her movements. He stared at her with such intensity she
wondered what he was thinking.

“We heal quickly.”

Paige blushed at his stare
and stepped back from him. The warmth of his skin still lingered on
her fingers. Justus dropped his shirt and brushed past her on his
way to the small table in the corner.

Not quite sure what else to
do, Paige dished the food onto their plates. They ate in silence,
each lost in their own thoughts.

The way he tucked away the
pancakes and bacon, she wondered when the last time it was that
he’d had a decent meal. It wasn’t exactly like they had
supermarkets in the middle of the forest.

“Don’t push,” she said
quietly. “With all the meds you’re on, you don’t want to get
sick.”

Justus frowned but slowed his
eating.

She watched him quietly as
they ate. He hadn’t said anything about the kiss and wondered if he
even remembered. He had been very sick, and it would make sense he
might not have known what he was doing. She pushed the thoughts out
of her head. Now wasn’t the time to be thinking about these things
no matter how much she might be drawn to him.

After they had finished,
Paige pulled out vials of medicine and a few needles.

“We should really give you
another round,” she said. “We need to keep your serum level
up.”

Justus nodded and stood from
the table.

She watched as he walked into
her sister’s room and she paused at the door. He lifted off his
shirt. She stared at the hard muscles there. Her mouth went dry.
His hands went to the band of his pants, and her eyes widened.

“What are you doing?” she
nearly shouted and turned her head away.

Paige glanced back after
several seconds of silence. Justus lay in the bed with a sheet
covering the middle of his body.

“You can’t examine the wound
with my pants on,” he said. A small smile played on the corner of
his mouth. “Or am I wrong?” He cocked a dark brow.

She scolded herself. This was
silly. She’d seen tons of men naked, and did all sorts of normal
everyday care and checkups with totally naked men. It was her job.
And yet seeing this one man nearly naked left her flushed and
wanting like she was some sort of horny teenager.

Paige took a deep breath and
tried to tell herself this was nothing. If anything, he wasn’t
naked. Unlike many of the other hybrids, he wore underwear. Somehow
knowing there was another layer between herself and other parts of
him set her at ease, if only a little.

Gingerly, she sat on the edge
of the bed and examined the wound at his side.

“It really is amazing,” she
said and ran her fingers over the now healing wound. All the
infection she’d seen the day before had gone away, and he was
healing at an incredible rate.

She glanced up to Justus. He
watched her movements with great interest.

“Why is your sister in South
America?” he asked after a moment.

Paige paused her preparation
of the shots to look over at him.

It was a simple question
really. Most people would have no trouble explaining what their
siblings did for a living. But explaining her sister just wasn’t
that simple.

“Ava is a free spirit,” she
said.

Justus frowned at her answer.
She could see it annoyed him she hadn’t shared more, but there
wasn’t much she could share.

His amber eyes watched her
closely as if he could see into her soul. “Is she a criminal?”

Paige looked up from the shot
she was about to give and sighed. It wasn’t like he had anyone to
tell. She went back to her work as she spoke.

“Ava met Antonio on a cruise.
He swept her off her feet with fine dining and pretty things.”
Paige pulled out the needle and capped it. Ready for the next dose,
she plunged that in as well. “When she came back, she quit her work
at the bank and packed a bag, saying she was off to see the
world.”

Paige capped that needle and
looked up to find Justus staring at her in bewilderment.

“And this Antonio, he’s a
criminal?”

Paige shrugged. “It’s hard to
tell. From what I’ve found on the internet, he’s connected with
some really bad people, but I guess that doesn’t mean he’s a
criminal. Still, I’d say maybe.”

Justus sat up in the bed, and
her hand fell down his chest to his leg. She looked down at it but
didn’t pull away. Talking about her sister brought out something in
her. She needed the comfort.

“And you didn’t stop her from
going with him?” Justus asked.

She gave a sad smile and
shook her head. “She’s twenty-two. Not really an age I can stop. We
argued about it, with she saying she was in love and I knew nothing
about that. She’s right really. It’s not like I’m a great
role-model in that field. Dependable and caring but a cold fish
otherwise. That’s me.”

Paige turned from his
watchful stare and pulled the sheet up his leg. Just like the
other, it was healing nicely. She wondered if he’d even need the
stitches tomorrow.

As quickly as she could,
Paige raced to finish the shots in his silence. Maybe she’d be able
to escape before they started talking about some other ghost in her
closet.

She sighed and set the last
needle down on the tray. Now she just needed to make a quick
retreat.

A warm hand brushed against
her shoulder, moving her soft brown hair off her shoulder.

She gasped when his mouth met
the bare skin there.

“Don’t feel like a cold fish
to me,” he mumbled, his mouth returning to trail up her neck into
the sweet spot just behind her ear.

Her nipples tightened at his
hot breath on her neck. She had to force herself not to lean back
into his ministrations.

“Justus,” she squeaked out.
The protest came out more as a plea, and she sighed when it was met
by his roving hands.

“Let me show you what I see,”
he said. “Let me show you what I feel.”

His hands trailed over her
body, lightly skimming her breasts as he did so. She could feel her
control slip with each kiss and tender touch.

When his hand slipped up her
shirt, her eyes shot open in surprise. She didn’t move this fast
with anyone, and yet she didn’t really want to stop. Is this what
it meant to be a Vestal?

With ease his hand found its
way under her bra and cupped her breasts. It wasn’t a secret she
was well-endowed. Every time she bought a bra she was reminded. But
being in his hand, it was the first time she thought it might not
be such an annoyance.

Justus let out a deep moan
from behind her. His chest vibrated against her back, and the sound
only turned her on more.

He growled as her nipples
hardened further in his hands.

With a great yank, he pulled
her back against him on the bed. His legs splayed on either side of
her, her backside flush with his front. She could feel his hard
length pressed against her back and gasped at his size. There was
no way she was equipped for that. Or any woman for that matter. How
the hell did the bonded women at the lodge handle it?