Packed: The Enforcer: A Shifter Paranormal Romance (5 page)

Luckily, the hospital in Hamden was a good one – thanks in no small part to the Alpha-Omegas charitable contributions, and the doctors knew how to deal with their...special situations.

Since she was only half wolf, and female, things went a lot more easily for her, even with the additional challenge of the silver added into the mix. The docs stitched her up relatively quickly, handed her gauze and supplies with which to change her bandage, along with a miniscule amount of painkillers. She walked to the emergency room waiting room with her arm in a sling, circumventing her family entirely and running up the stairs to the waiting area that was just outside the operating room that Tek was in.

And she steadfastly refused to move, to eat, or to even talk with anyone until a doctor finally came to talk to them about how Tek was.

He looked grim.

"Are you his next of kin?" he asked.

Cash started to say, "Well, we're the closest –"

"Yes, I'm his girlfriend. I live with him," she lied easily, stepping in front of her brother. There was no way she was going to let this man walk away without telling her exactly what was going on with Tek. If she had to pretend she was Hillary Clinton to get the information, she was prepared to do that, too.

Cash stood to one side, looking at his sister as if he didn't really know her.

"Well, he's lost a lot of blood. We're transfusing him, of course, but it's going to be touch and go for the next day or so."

Although her eyes filled with tears at what was anything but good news, Mari put her hand on the doctor's arm. "Can I see him, please? I'd really like to sit with him as much as I can. I'll be very quiet, I won't get in the nurses' way. I just want to be with him so that he knows he's not alone." She refused to say, "in case he dies," but everyone was thinking it. She wanted to be there for him, regardless of the outcome.

It was on the tip of his tongue to say no, but the doctor could see just how earnest this woman was, and he knew that it was always a good thing when someone who was recovering from a huge insult to his body had a loving presence with him.

"All right, but if the nurses ask you to leave, then you have to go."

"I will, I will," she promised.

Someone found her one of those uncomfortable molded plastic chairs and put it beside his bed. Because he had been hit in the chest, and the bullet had nicked an artery, he was in the Cardiac Intensive Care unit, and he faced his nurse. There was no door to his room because they needed to monitor him closely, and she would have no privacy with him whatsoever – not that she really needed it.

He was frighteningly pale and white, his tattoos standing out just that much more against that stark, sickly skin. They had him hooked up to a respirator and had tubes running in and out of him everywhere. Multiple, Christmas-treed IV bags hung around his head like a ghoulish halo and he looked alarmingly helpless, which was the very opposite of how he always was.

Mari reached out to take his right hand, which was the only part of him that didn't have some kind of medical apparatus going into or out of it. It was surprisingly cold, but she figured that was the blood loss, and she knew that operating rooms were kept pretty cold, too. She brought the back of his hand to her lips and kissed it, holding it there and beginning to mumble what little she remembered of the prayers she had learned in Sunday school. She didn't care if it offended God that she only acknowledged him in times of crisis. She would do anything at all to help Tek pull through this.

Cash appeared after a while, patting her on the shoulder, and slowly, then, one by one, those who could, filed through the room in very short stints, including Abby, who hugged her and offered to spell her if she needed to go to the bathroom or get something to eat.

But Mari refused. She didn't want to miss it if the worst happened. She remained glued to that chair – except when the nurses shooed her out to do some sort of procedure on him – but then she always turned back up. They gave her an idea of how long they were going to be with him, and she took a bathroom break and washed up as best she could with one hand while she was forcibly separated from him. She had stopped taking the pain pills when she'd fallen asleep in the chair, preferring to use the pain to keep herself awake for him.

She was glad to see that the doctors were keeping a close eye on him themselves, and after thirty-six hours, of which only about an hour strung out over all of them had been spent away from him, his surgeon told her that it looked as if he was going to make it. If he continued to improve, he said it wouldn't be long before Tek was transferred into the general population of the hospital and out of CICU.

She was ecstatic to hear that and called Cash and Abby immediately with the good news. "Are you coming home, now that a bedside vigil isn't necessary?"

"No," she answered, refusing to apologize for it or even explain it to them. She just had to do it and no one and nothing was going to stop her.

Cash surprised her by simply saying, "Okay. Let us know if there's anything we can do for you or get for you."

That made it just that much harder not to dissolve into tears. "Thank you, Cash," she barely got out through the thickness that had her throat nearly closed.

"We mean it. Anything, Mari."

"Thanks," she breathed, then disconnected the call before she cried all over her phone.

* * *

She was with Tek every step of the way, from ICU to a regular – albeit private – hospital room, to his home, which she'd rarely been to. It was a modest little ranch on the outskirts of town, very private, as one would expect with him. He had bought all of the land in one developer's failed subdivision for a song, and had his house erected dead square in the middle of it.

Abby and Cash helped him get home that first day, with Cash pretty much carrying Tek – because he absolutely refused to accept the wheelchair they'd wanted him to use – into the house. Of course, Cash had to needle him all the way.

"Damn, I know you've lost some since you were shot but you still weigh a ton, man!"

"It's all muscle," Tek countered like he always did but in an unusually soft voice because he hadn't regained much breath.

"Bullshit. It's all beer and tequila!"

It was good to hear him laughing again, even if he couldn't do much of it.

As Cash was outside carrying the other stuff in, Abby and Mari were putting things away. Abby started with the bag into which the hospital had put his personal effects when he had first come through their doors. There were the remnants of a blood spattered shirt, and jeans that were pretty much clean and intact. She delved into their pockets and came up with some folded bills and change, which she laid on top of his bureau, a matchbook she recognized as being from one of the local strip joints in the area, and a small bottle of what look liked hand sanitizer, which surprised her for some reason. She hadn't known Tek was a germaphobe. Hell, there was no way he could do parts of his job if he were, she was quite sure.

"What you got there?" Mari asked when she saw her friend staring at the small bottle.

"I was just going through the pants pockets of the jeans he was wearing when he was sh…injured, and I found this. But I've never known him to be scared of germs, and I've never seen him take it out and use it –"

Mari had rarely been so glad to hear anything in her life as the last part of her friend's sentence. She reached over and plucked the bottle out of Abby's hand. "That's 'cause that's not what it is," she said, crossing the room to put it where it belonged if he wasn't wearing it, in his nightstand.

She had made the exact same mistake about the liquid in that container herself, until she had her own up close and personal encounter with its real purpose.

It was during her first attempt at coming back to Hamden, when she was living alone, not too far from the clubhouse, and they had recently started seeing each other, right under everyone's noses. The thrill of possibly being discovered added to their already heated lovemaking, and they tried to get together every time they could, even when there was the distinct possibility that they might get caught in delecto.

Both of them were more mature than they had been that first go round, when she was just barely legal, and they had the advantage of knowing more of what they wanted from each other. And everything they said seemed to jive, one with the other. He liked a traditionally dominant role, and she was all over that. The guys she'd met at college were all metro sexual and asked for permission to do absolutely everything to her in bed, which took quite a lot of the fun out of it for her.

Tek had no such problem with taking charge. He rarely asked her anything in bed, but rather issued commands, and even sometimes outright ignored her. Especially when he had a feeling – and he was usually right, damn him – that she was just putting him off because she didn't want to have to get all dressed up for him, or some such other fluffy – and wrong - excuse for them not to have sex. He often ignored what she wanted in favor of what he preferred, but then he'd never left her unsatisfied in any way, either. He always circled around to her, and pretty much anything he did had her panting after him, anyway, so it all worked for her. And he trusted her to tell him if she really objected to what he was doing. He would have stopped immediately if she had.

One time, when she had thought she had forestalled him with the excuse that she had a headache, which she actually did have, he came into her house entirely unannounced. He picked the lock she had carefully made sure was set, and came up behind her while she had "The Black Parade" by My Chemical Romance blaring from her stereo speakers and was singing with at least as loudly as they were.

She didn't hear him or see him until his arms wrapped possessively around her waist, and by that point it was stupid of her to reach for the knife that was in the dish drainer, although she did it. Of course, he had her disarmed in a matter of seconds, to say nothing of tugging her panties and her disreputable sweat pants down to her ankles and bending her over the sink, one big hand at the back of her neck as he stood to one side and blistered her behind for putting him off for a silly reason.

"But I
do
have a headache! I'm not faking!" she yelled. This was before she came to realize that it wasn't necessarily a good thing to do and might well land her in more hot water than she was already in.

He didn't stop spanking in the least, saying, "I bet I can get you to forget your head in favor of your behind."

And he wasn't bluffing. It only took him an embarrassingly small amount of swats before her head was the last thing she was thinking about. Especially since his hand – once it had delivered a hearty crack – tended to wander.

"Spread your legs."

She didn't want to, but she already knew better than to actually say that to him. Instead, she inched her feet apart, but only slightly.

And for her efforts, she received a tremendous round of hard, heavy slaps that each took her breath away, leaving her nothing in reserve for the inevitable next one.

By the time he was finished chastising her for what he considered being a brat, she was sobbing into the sink, hearing the sounds of her own wails reflected back at her by the stainless steel.

"Mari."

She could hear his low, rumbling tone from somewhere above her as she sobbed.

"You know that kind of thing isn't going to play with me. And you know I'm not going to like it if I have to tell you something twice when you're already bent over with your behind all hot and red..."

Although the volume of her wails increased considerably as she did it, she widened her stance as far as she could.

And then he widened it for her another six inches or so, until she had to lean forward to balance, which had been his aim all along. That required that she bump her butt out, as if she was begging to have it spanked.

Which was the furthest thing from the truth, he knew – at least that's what her mind told her. Her body, on the other hand, enjoyed every crisp swat he gave her.

But it had been too long for him, and he was ashamed – which made him annoyed – to admit that he didn't think he was going to last long enough to do her the way he wanted to. He wanted that sore red ass bouncing on top of him while he gave her some more to encourage her to do it right. But when he was around her, he could barely control himself, and having her here, all alone, having snuck in and begun spanking her as if
she
had invaded
his
privacy instead of him picking her lock to get at her, had him closer to spurting in his pants than he'd been since he was an adolescent.

And he wasn't at all sure that he liked just how out of control she made him, so he stopped spanking and placed himself between her legs, not bothering to remove his own pants, but rather just unzipping and adjusting his underwear only enough to let himself loose. His cock had a mind of its own, it seemed, nestling immediately as it did right up against its home away from home.

He reached automatically for the little helper he kept in his left front pocket, in a clearly labeled Purell bottle. Although that wasn't at all what it was, but then he reached down, between her legs, to where he was bumping boldly up against her entrance to find that he was covered in her juices. So much so that the beginnings of his bad mood dissolved, and he actually smiled down at her, although she couldn't see it, of course, since he was still holding her at the nape of the neck.

So instead of using the stuff, he put it on the edge of the sink, where it promptly fell in, startling Mari.

"What was that?" she asked, until the bottle came to rest under her nose. "Oh. That stuff."

"No, not that stuff." He pressed his fingers up inside her rudely, then brought them out covered with cream to present her own wetness before her eyes. "This stuff – only the artificial kind. It's something you'll probably never need, based on my experience with you."

She was stunned. "K Y? Where'd it come from?"

Her outraged modesty – belated as it was – amused him. "From my front pocket. I'm a firm believer in the Boy Scouts' motto – always be prepared!"

With that, he let go of her neck and took firm hold of her slender hips, pulling them back towards him as he advanced his hips forward, giving her no choice but to become very thoroughly impaled.

And he didn't stop, not so much as the slightest pause, even when they got to that unusual knob at the end of him, which he pressed right into her as slick as could be, ignoring the fact that she was panting with the effort of trying to become accustomed to him.

He was the only man whom she had ever had to convince herself that she could take. Of course, he was also the only werewolf she'd ever slept with. And unfortunately, he made normal human males rather pale in comparison, in a lot of ways.

But especially, when she was full to the back teeth with him. She liked the challenge he presented, in a lot of different ways. He was a much coarser sort of person than she was used to in general. No other man she'd dated would even know how to pick a lock; much less not have any scruples about doing so for the sole purpose of getting inside her.

Tek was completely unabashed about his desire for her, in fact, he hated the deception that she forced him into, although he had agreed to it because she had told him there was no other way she could be with him.

"I could take the choice away from you," he'd suggested, a little too eagerly for her comfort.

"What do you mean?"

"I could kidnap you. No one would ever find you, and believe me, you'd never escape."

She had hated to play the "I'm the daughter of your Alpha card," but he sounded serious enough that she did exactly that.

"I know. Too bad you weren't born into a much less important family. We could have a lot of fun."

She gave him a serious look. "I don't think it sounds like I'd be having much fun at all."

"Don't you believe it, Mari." He'd reached up and moved her hair over her shoulder, so he could touch her bare breast. "You'd adore being at my beck and call, being my submissive."

"Aren't I that now?" she asked.

"Not twenty-four-seven," he had replied.

Knowing he couldn't indulge himself in that outrageous fantasy, he did his best to test her, nonetheless, when they were together, and this was definitely one of those times.

He moved his hands from her hips to her shoulders, gripping them as he drove himself into her, leaning enough away to remove himself entirely then jamming his enormously swollen cock back into her in one impossibly hard thrust. He enjoyed how her squeals rose in volume every time she was forced to accept the end of him, which was by far the biggest part.

He took her entirely for his own pleasure, which he did quite calculatedly sometimes, as if to remind her that she was very lucky he pleasured her at all. The thing was that he knew that, even in doing so, he was pleasuring her just by fucking her and by stretching her almost beyond her limits at the same time.

When he was done, he reached down between her legs to fondle her, but made no move towards actually granting her satisfaction, and as soon as he was physically able to, he withdrew, rearranged himself, slapped her hard on the bottom and left without another word, leaving her – almost literally – hanging.

And she'd loved every single minute of it. Granted, she would have liked it a lot better if he had brought her off, but she knew – even then – that was his choice to make, not hers.

* * *

She stayed with him, of course, once they got him settled into his house, taking over the only other bedroom and refusing to leave his side under any circumstances. Mari wouldn't even let anyone take a respite shift. She didn't need anyone else's help to take care of him. Besides, she had a feeling that he was going to be a nightmare of a patient – before and after he began to really feel better – and she wouldn't want to subject anyone else to his bad humor.

He had told her once that he had designed the house himself, and she could see it now. His room was enormous, and the guest bedroom, which he had never really expected to use, was miniscule at best. His room had the only – working – bath off it. There was a half bath in the hallway across from her room, but someone had filled it with the junk he'd found at various flea markets he went to, which was just about his only hobby outside of work. It was mostly filled with antique firearms and knives, as well as the occasional ancient gambling paraphernalia, but it was enough to discourage the heartiest individual from trying to make his or her way to the toilet, figuring one of the old guns would discharge on the way and that would end their need for the facilities entirely.

His touch was also present in all of the various security measures he had taken around the place. There was a tall fence around the entire perimeter, which must've cost him a pretty penny, as well as an elaborate alarm system on a backup generator, and caches of guns hidden in strategic areas all around the house and his land, just in case. Cash had told Mari that he'd been surprised that Tek hadn't used land mines or machine gun nests, but then the man had cultivated a rather large group of enemies over his career, and most of them were on the wrong side of the law.

For the first week or so, he was very easy to take care of because he was mostly asleep. Their only bone of contention was the use of the bedpan. He absolutely refused, preferring instead to hobble his way into the bathroom while leaning heavily on her to the point where she could barely move either of them. And then, by the time they got there, he was so exhausted that she had to...aim him. She was apparently a very poor shot at it, because although she tried to stand behind him so that she was at least in the right position to use the thing, she somehow managed to spray all around the toilet rather than in to it. This, of course, meant that she had to take bleach to the commode and the floor around it after every visit.

She could tell when he truly began to recover – not only was he awake more often and for longer periods, but he stopped leaning on her much to go, and he stopped allowing her the dubious privilege of trying to make a bulls eye with equipment she didn't know how to work – towards that purpose, anyway.

One afternoon, when he had first started to stay awake more than he slept, he asked quietly, "How long have you been here taking care of me?"

She had been reading quietly on her iPad, but looked up at him and began to try to think of the answer. "Well, are you including time in the hospital, or just here?"

"You were with me in the hospital?"

He was – understandably – a little shaky about the timeline and the details of what had happened to him, and she had only told him generalities when he had demanded them before, but he was so drugged up and exhausted from healing that he didn't retain them very well, anyway.

"I've been with you since the moment you were shot, Tek. And that was..." She had to count on her fingers. "Forty-six days ago today, a couple of days in ICU, a week and a half in the hospital afterwards, because of the silver that got into your blood, and a little more than a month here, at home." She had been with him every single second of every minute of it, almost jealously guarding him and knowing that she was the best person – out of anyone – to take care of him. She didn't even leave when the PT guys were here, and she, alone, got him to all of his doctor's appointments. She knew the names and dosages of all of the meds he was on, which were rapidly dwindling as he got better, and gave them to him on a strict schedule.