Rhyannon Byrd - Primal Instinct 04 (21 page)

“What? What is it?” A quick glance showed her
wide-eyed gaze zeroed in on his thigh—the one that bastard had clawed open. His
jeans were dark with wet, sticky blood, and he winced, hoping she wasn’t going
to freak. He’d changed his clothes and bandaged the wound as best as he could
with the first aid kit he carried in the truck, but it had obviously pulled
open and bled through its wrapping.

“You were lying about how quickly it would heal,” she
said unsteadily, settling that smoky gaze on his face. “When I asked you this
morning, you said you didn’t need stitches because it would close up in a few
hours.”

When they’d headed back to the hotel room that morning
and he’d stripped down to his boxers, she’d freaked when she’d seen his injured
leg. He’d finally calmed her down by explaining that the wound was nothing…that
it would heal quickly and she’d never even know it had been there. And by
tomorrow that would be true. He’d just exaggerated a bit about how long it would
take.

“You need to see a doctor, Aiden.”

He shrugged. “Naw, it’ll be closed up soon. Trust me,
Liv—I’ve had worse.”

She crossed her arms, her quiet voice rough with
tension as she said, “I still think we should get you some stitches. It’s
ridiculous just to let it bleed like that. Not to mention the fact that you
must be in pain.”

“Seriously, I’m okay,” he grunted, his stomach muscles
knotted by the fact that she actually sounded as if she cared that he’d been
hurt. As if it actually mattered to her. “I’ll pick up some more bandages
before we stop tonight. But it’ll probably be healed by then, anyway. I doubt
it’ll even leave a scar.”

Without any warning she reached out and touched her
hand to one of the smooth scars that marred his wrists beneath the dark tats.
“If that’s true, then why didn’t these heal?”

“I was too young when they were made.”

“Someone hurt you when you were little?” Shock, as
well as a healthy dose of outrage.

He shifted again. Rubbed his palm against the scratchy
edge of his jaw. “Yeah, but they paid for it when I got bigger.”

“Paid for it how?” Soft words, little more than a
whisper.

He cut her a dark look, arching his right brow. “How
do you think?”

She didn’t flinch away from his look. Just stared
right back at him, violet eyes wide and clear. “You killed them?”

“Christ. This isn’t good conversation material,” he
muttered, reaching up to rub at the knotted muscles in the back of his neck.
“Trust me.”

“So let me see if I’ve got this straight. You don’t
talk about your mother. Don’t talk about your scars. And you don’t even talk
about your tattoos. Is that right?”

“That’s about it.” He ground out the words.

“So I spill my secrets, but you get to keep yours?”
He’d have had to be an idiot to miss the rising temper in her words. Not that
he blamed her.

“You should thank me,” he rasped. “There are some
things you don’t want to know.”

“Or maybe they’re just things you don’t want me to
know.”

He nodded. “That, too.”

“Fine, but don’t expect me to keep spilling my guts to
you. I—”

“Jesus,” he growled, cutting her off. “There’s no
reason to get pissy. My past would probably bore you, Liv, so think of it as me
doing you a favor, okay?”

“Whatever, Aiden.”

A muscle ticked in his jaw, but he struggled to keep
his voice calm. “I’m telling you, it’s no big deal.”

Clearly the woman didn’t know when to give up,
reminding him of a pit bull with a bone. “And I’m telling you that I know
you’re lying.”

“Drop it,” he grunted, forcing the words through the
clenched wall of his teeth.

“You know,” she said tightly, looking away as she
wrapped her arms over her front, one hand resting on her shoulder, the other on
her rib cage. “You could try trusting me. But you won’t.”

A dark sound tore from his throat, thick with
frustration.

Silence stretched out. Thick. Heavy. Punctuated only
by the rhythmic slapping of the windshield wipers.

“Just tell me one thing,” she said, her voice muted.

“Christ, what?” He sighed, pulling his hand down his
face again.

She turned her head so that she could look at him.
“Did you kill them?”

Aiden didn’t answer at first, but he could feel her
gaze burning against the side of his face and knew she wasn’t going to let it
go. “Every last one of them,” he finally admitted in a low voice, wishing he
could get the visions out of his head. But they were a stain he couldn’t wash
out. A blotch on his soul that he knew would always be there.

Not that he regretted the killings. But he couldn’t
forget the way he’d done it. The sheer savagery of the act. Or the consequences
that had followed.

She shivered, tightening her arms around her body.
Aiden had expected her to be disgusted by the revelation, or at least horrified
by his ruthlessness, but as she turned her head to stare out her rain-spattered
window, he could have sworn she whispered, “Good.”

Southern Illinois

Saturday night

PEEKING AROUND THE CORNER of Aiden’s bedroom door,
Olivia peered into the small hotel room, fully aware that she was making a
mistake. After driving late into the evening, they’d finally stopped for the
night and taken a family suite with two connecting bedrooms. Because Kellan had
his handmade alarms with him, Aiden had agreed that she and Jamie could have
their own room. He’d taken the other one, leaving Kellan and Noah with the two
sofa beds in the living room, though the men had agreed they’d take shifts
pulling guard duty during the night, their level of caution elevated even
higher after the events of the morning.

If she’d been smart, she would have been using the
time to get some rest. God only knew when things were going to get crazy again.
The Casus could find them. Or another of those creepy things from that morning,
and yet there she was, acting like a Peeping Tom. Olivia had intended to simply
knock and ask how he was feeling, but when she’d found the door ajar, she
hadn’t been able to resist a look inside.

Hoping to catch a glimpse of something you
shouldn’t…hmm?

“Shut up,” she muttered under her breath, both bemused
and irritated by the fact that she was talking to herself.

Her gaze found him instantly, her tummy doing another
one of those nervous little flips at the decadent sight he made. No matter how
she looked at it, the odds were strong that this wasn’t a good idea. A stupid
one, more than likely. But she didn’t care. She was all too aware of the
terrifying fact that he could have died that morning. That she could have lost
him. She needed to see with her own eyes that he was okay. That the injury to
his leg wasn’t causing any lingering pain.

Needed simply to be near him, which told her just how
much trouble she was really in.

He was lying diagonally across the bed, on his
stomach, with nothing more than a small hotel towel wrapped around his lean
hips, humming softly to himself. Since he faced away from the door, Olivia
couldn’t see his expression, just the back of his head and one side of his
long, golden body. He’d showered, washing away the blood that must have covered
his leg, and she shivered as she remembered his blood-soaked jeans, then
immediately shoved the chilling image away.

No, she wouldn’t think of that now. Instead, she would
give herself this moment to simply enjoy the eye-dazzling view. She started at
one end of his mouthwatering body, moving her avid gaze over his long feet, up
along the strong muscles of his legs, relieved to see that he hadn’t needed to
rebandage his thigh. From there, Olivia followed the naked line of flesh up to
the hem of the white cotton, then over the firm, towel-covered muscles of his
backside until she reached the breathtaking expanse of his golden back. He had
his right arm folded beneath his head, the tattooed fingers of his left hand
moving smoothly against the snowy white of the top sheet.

A low hum of music drifted softly from his lips.
Beautiful. Dark. Enthralling.

Before she could say anything to announce her
presence, he drew in a deep breath, and his long fingers—fingers that had been
inside her body just that morning—stilled, telling her that he’d scented her
presence. Her cheeks flushed as he rose to his elbows and turned his head,
looking at her over his broad, gleaming shoulder, his long hair still damp from
his shower.

In that moment Olivia felt the same sense of danger
that had come over her that morning when he’d pulled her out of the restaurant
and into the hotel parking lot. She recalled flinching from the brightness of
the sun. Recalled the feel of its heat against her skin.

And she recalled the way in which the reality of their
situation had slammed back into her with stunning force. The fact that they
were being hunted. That monsters were coming for them. That their lives were in
danger. Run. Hide. Take cover, a chorus of voices had whispered through her
mind.

She’d known it was wrong, but she’d ignored them, and
stayed there with him. Allowed him to kiss her. Touch her. Make her come.

And here she was again, flirting with danger.
Literally. Olivia knew she should turn around and leave, but for some reason
she did the opposite. Taking a shaky breath, she moved a little way into the
room, standing just to the side of the partly opened door. “What were you
d-doing just now?” she asked, the words stumbling over themselves in her
nervousness, her face no doubt burning with a ridiculous flood of color. She
didn’t know what she was doing, slipping into his room uninvited, invading his
personal space. But she couldn’t make herself turn and leave, her muscles
locked in place, her body holding her prisoner.

“I was just thinking about a piece of music I’ve been
working on.” He gave a low, almost embarrassed laugh, his eyes heavy
lidded…curious. Probably wondering what she wanted.

“For the piano?”

“Yeah.” He shifted, using his right hand to push the
damp strands of his hair back from his face, the light catching against the
golden bristles that covered his jaw and chin. “It helps me think. Even mellows
me out.”

Studying his expression, Olivia realized that he
looked more relaxed now than he had when they’d stopped for the night. “Do you
do that a lot?” she asked, leaning back against the wall. “Think about your
music?”

“I guess I do,” he replied in a low drawl, and without
fail the corner of his mouth kicked up in another of those sexy, crooked grins
that she could never get enough of. That she was actually starting to crave.
“Hell, there were times when I was younger that the music in my head was the
only thing that kept me going.”

Olivia wanted desperately to ask what he meant by the
strange comment, to ask about his childhood, but bit back the intrusive
questions, knowing he would refuse to give her any answers. That had been made
painfully clear during their earlier conversation about his tattoos and his
scars, as well as his mother. Instead, she was just going to have to glean
every little bit that he revealed, and try to piece together the story on her
own.

The only problem was that he gave away so little.

Even though the shadows had left his eyes, it was
still difficult to read his mood as he watched her from the bed, his dark body
in sharp contrast against the bleached white linens. As the silence stretched
out to an uncomfortable level, she started to edge back toward the door, ready
to mumble something about letting him get some rest, when he said, “Where’s
Jamie?”

“Kellan and Noah are with her. In fact, I think
they’ve been sucked into Hercules right along with her. All three of them, brainwashed
by Disney,” she told him with a soft laugh. “We should get a picture. Blackmail
them with it some day.”

Though it sounded as if it hurt, his own low burst of
laughter rumbled up as he rolled onto his side. A cocky smile played at the
corners of his mouth as he braced his upper body on his left elbow, the heavy
slabs of his muscled chest the most drool-worthy sight she’d ever seen. “So
what brings you in here, Liv? You come to kiss me good-night?”

Blinking, she struggled to concentrate on his huskily
spoken words, but it wasn’t easy. Not when that damn towel was barely hanging
together around his lean hips. When so much of that hard, powerful body was
just lounging there, begging to be ogled. The wounds on his arms and side were
already pale lines of color, barely visible in the soft glow of lamplight
spreading out from the bedside table. His leg, however, was a different story.
An angry-looking weal darkened his hair-dusted skin, but at least the cut was
closed and no longer bleeding.

And it wasn’t as if the battle wounds detracted from
his beauty. Call her a savage, but she thought he looked sexy as hell sporting
the scratches and scars. She only hated the pain they’d caused, knowing they’d
had to hurt when they were made, no matter how tough he was.

Clearing her throat, she gave herself a little shake
and finally managed to say, “Actually, I, uh, just w-wanted to check that you
were okay.”