Fated

  Just a few more minutes, she told herself, taking a deep breath and started to count to a hundred slowly in her head, telling herself that her hand would be healed, all the blood would be washed away and she could pretend that this never happened.

  “Drew! Stop!” she heard Ryan yell just as the sound of the kitchen door exploding off its hinges interrupted her count and made her open her eyes in time to see Drew, in all his nine foot shifter glory standing there, growling as he searched the kitchen, looking for something that he clearly wanted to kill.

  Frowning, Kara followed his gaze, careful to avoid looking at the bloody knife on the counter, her hand, the blood pouring out of it and just simply focused on what had Drew’s panties in a twist. When she couldn’t find a reason for his obvious mental breakdown, she looked back over at the door to find Ryan standing there and for the first time since she’d met the asshole, he looked shaken.

  “Who did this to you?” the angry cold voice demanded, drawing her attention away from Ryan, who was still standing there looking terrified to the very large, naked man standing next to her, glaring down at her through silver eyes.

  When she didn’t answer, mostly because she’d caught sight of the slash across her fingers and had to struggle not to pass out or worse, vomit, she was forced to close her eyes, take a deep breath and go to her happy place, which unfortunately for her, she didn’t have one.

  “Who fucking did this?” Drew snarled, snatching her hand out of the cold water so that he could inspect her hand and make it nearly impossible to keep it together, because now she could feel the warm blood trickling down her hand and arm.

  Oh, God…

  “Tell me who fucking did this!” he snapped, giving her the distraction that she desperately needed, but she absolutely refused to open her eyes, terrified that she would see another glimpse of bone if she did.

  Unwilling to open her eyes or mouth, she shook her head, once, because that’s all her stomach could handle while the large bastard started prodding at her wound. She tried to pull her hand away, but the stubborn bastard wouldn’t release her.

  “Kara,” he snarled, “tell me who fucking did this to you!”

  Blindly reaching out with her good hand, she grabbed onto the edge of the kitchen island, needing the support as she opened her mouth, careful not to breathe in the scent of her own blood, and admitted, “No one.”

  “Bullshit!” Drew snapped. “Tell me who fucking did this to you!”

  If she thought that she could manage opening her eyes without passing out, she would have rolled her eyes. Instead, she settled on sighing heavily until she caught the scent of her own blood and her stomach turned in protest. Then she simply answered the man, hoping that it would be enough to make him stop talking and release her hand so that she could continue standing there, pretending that she wasn’t bleeding to death.

  “It was an accident,” she managed to get out, surprisingly without gagging, which she took as a positive sign.

  “An accident?” Drew snarled, not really sounding like he believed her, which was kind of insulting.

  “The knife slipped,” she bit out, carefully pulling her hand free even as she kept her eyes tightly closed and blindly searched with her injured hand until she managed to place her hand back beneath the ice cold water.

  There was a pregnant pause before Drew slowly repeated back, “The knife slipped?” in a tone that she didn’t really appreciate. So, she simply stood there, ignoring him as she returned to counting to a hundred in her head.

  “The knife slipped?” he repeated, sounding a lot less angry and a great deal more curious.

  “Yes!” she hissed, wondering why the big jerk was having such a hard time understanding this concept.

  “I see,” he murmured thoughtfully as she reached sixty in her head.

  She considered opening her eyes to see if her hand was healed, but she could still feel the tissue knitting together, which to be honest, was not a very pleasant experience.

  “And it slipped while you were…,” he prompted, making it obvious that he wasn’t going to let this go until he knew the whole sordid story.

  “I was making a sandwich!” she snapped, even though it should have been more than obvious since all the ingredients to make her sandwich were still on the kitchen island, probably covered in her blood, she realized, tightening her hand around the edge of the kitchen island as her stomach once again threatened to betray her.

  “A sandwich?” he said dryly.

  “Yes!” she snapped back, wondering what was so difficult to understand that she simply cut herself while trying to make a damn ham sandwich!

  *-*-*-*

  “You’re a shifter,” he felt obligated to point out while he watched the strange woman that he was mated to turn an interesting shade of white as she stood there, holding onto the kitchen island for dear life while she held her injured hand beneath the cold water.

  “I know that!” she snapped, not bothering to open her eyes as her breaths came a little faster and she looked close to either passing out or vomiting.

  He’d prefer that she’d simply pass out, because the idea of her vomiting kind of turned his stomach. Not that he really wanted her to pass out, but honestly, it was the preferable choice. He placed his hand on the curve of her hip, ready to pull her back against him if she passed out and looked back down at her hand.

  It was a pretty nasty cut, but it was also healing very quickly. In another minute or two the cut would be completely healed, which begged the question, why did she look like she was about to pass out? She was a shifter, an Alpha and had obviously seen worse. Hell, he’d seen her take down a full-sized grizzly bear and tear into it, blood squirting everywhere while she enjoyed her meal and never once had she looked squeamish. Instead, she’d looked seriously pissed off when anyone in his Pack had tried to help themselves to her kill.

  It was hard to think of this small, curvaceous woman capable of taking down a large grizzly bear on her own, never mind bitch slapping anyone that came within ten feet of her kill. This woman, who stood in his kitchen, mumbling to herself what sounded like numbers as she stood there, waiting for the small, albeit deep cut, to heal, was a fucking shifter.

  God, she was so fucking adorable, he thought as he leaned down and brushed his lips against hers, unable to help himself.

  It was the sweetest, most dangerous kiss of his life and the instant that his lips touched hers, he regretted it and apparently, so did she.

  *-*-*-*

  “What the hell are you doing?” she snapped, opening her eyes to glare at the large man-whore, only to end up gagging when she caught sight of the cut on her hand and was forced to lean heavily against the kitchen island as her head spun, threatening to drop her on her ass.

  Sighing heavily in a way that deserved another kick to the balls, he had the audacity to grab her and place her butt on the edge of the kitchen island when all she wanted to do was to curl up in the fetal position on the floor until her head stopped spinning. Sitting up this high made her head spin faster and her stomach do this thing that wasn’t exactly promising.

  “Oh, God,” she mumbled as she felt Drew step between her legs and come closer.

  Thank God, she thought, he’d finally snapped and was going to rip her throat out. Surprisingly in that moment she was more than okay with that, she decided as she found her body slumping forward until her forehead was resting on Drew’s wide shoulder. It helped a little, but not enough to get the memory of that cut and all that blood out of her head.

  Okay, maybe that kiss had also taken her by surprise and knocked her on her ass, because as much as she would love to say that she’d hated it, she couldn’t.

  Nothing in her life had ever felt so right before and that was definitely her clue that it was time to go.

  Chapter 19

  Why were women so damn predictable? he wondered with a sigh that may have come out as a growl as he shifted his large head on the woman squirming beneath him as she
tried to get away, or breathe, whatever.

  The point was that the annoying woman had tried to make a run for it, forcing him to shift, tackle her before she could reach the door and then forced him to use his weight as an advantage to keep her where she was. Granted, that may have happened a few hours ago, but was it really his fault that her large breasts made the perfect pillow?

  God, they were just so damn comfortable, he thought with a sigh, which unfortunately came out as another growl, but he really didn’t care, because he’d just had the best nap of his life. Plus, he was so damn comfortable that nothing and no one could ruin this moment for him.

  “Can’t…breathe…,” the selfish woman beneath him complained, again, as she tried so rudely to shove him off her.

  At this point he decided that perhaps some intimidation was in order so he used his most menacing growl to get her to shut up so that he could savor the use of her body in peace. Instead of heeding his warning, she simply reached over, grabbed him by one of his large ears and pulled.

  He simply ignored her sad attempts to get rid of him, closed his eyes and made himself more comfortable on her breasts. God, they were so damn comfortable. They were like firm heavenly clouds made just for his head, he decided as he curled his big wolf body around hers, placed his back paw over her legs to put an end to her kicking assault so that he could get a little more sleep.

  “Drew!” she snapped, giving up her attack on his ears and simply tried to push his head off her breasts, but he wasn’t having that, not when he was this comfortable.

  He snarled at her until she finally got the hint, sighed heavily and stopped trying to push him away. If he hadn’t been so eager to return to that lovely nap that he’d been enjoying before she’d so rudely woke him up, he probably would have realized that she’d given up a little too easily and been ready for that attack that he should have seen coming a mile away, but those damn breasts of hers had been his undoing.

  Definitely her breasts’ fault, he decided with a grunt when the small curvy woman beneath him suddenly shifted and turned the tables on him.

  Christ, she was a devious little thing, he thought with a pained grunt when she placed her paw just above a very precious piece of his anatomy and let her claws dig in as a warning.

  Too bad that he’d taken that as a challenge and not the warning that it was obviously meant to be, because once he shifted to human and tossed her off, sending her across the room and slamming her into his pain in the ass Beta that had apparently shown up at some point with a six-pack of soda, a bag of chips and pulled up a chair to watch the show.

  “Son of a bitch!” the whinny little bastard shouted as he was knocked to the ground with seven hundred pounds of pissed off female shifter lying on top of him.

  Thankfully all her attention was on him and not the Beta whimpering beneath her, which probably saved the little bastard’s life.

  *-*-*-*

  “Let go!” she said as soon as she gave up and shifted back to human.

  “No,” the arrogant bastard that had shifted back to human five minutes ago and managed to pin her to the ground said with a yawn, sounding really bored and looking as though he was going to try and use her body for another nap.

  “Seriously, Drew,” she said, trying to push him off as she did her best to ignore the fact that she had a very large, naked shifter lying on top of her, who seemed really happy to be there. “Get the hell off me!”

  “No, too comfy,” he mumbled sleepily as the bastard once again curled his body around hers and settled in for a nap, but this time in his naked human form, which unfortunately felt a little too good.

  “I’m serious, Drew,” she said firmly, trying to push him away.

  Okay, so she wasn’t trying to push him away as hard as she should have been. There was also the slight chance that she was using her ineffectual shoves to move closer to him.

  Just so that she could keep an eye on him of course. The sooner that he fell asleep, the better. Once he was finally passed out somewhere other than on top of her, she was going to grab her shit, get the hell out of here and go-