Read Online Ready to Bear by Ivy Sinclair - Free Book Online Page B

the urge to take a shower. She wanted to wash every possible inch of her skin and rub it raw just to erase any memory of Kurt or Ollie’s fingers.
    She stood up abruptly. “Excuse me.” She dashed out of the room and made it to her bathroom just in time. She hadn’t eaten dinner, but what remained in her stomach came up just the same. After the heaves finally calmed, she rolled over onto the cool tile floor and stared up at the ceiling as she felt the tears well up again. She brushed them away. She refused to fall apart.
    There was a gentle knock on the bathroom door. “Thea?”
    “I’m fine,” she said. She barely raised her voice to answer, but it didn’t matter anyway. With his enhanced hearing, he’d be able to hear her just fine.
    “Can we stop pretending now that you’re fine?” His question was direct and to the point. Thea also sensed that he wasn’t planning on going away anytime soon no matter what she said. That made her feel glad in a way that she couldn’t even describe while also feeling annoyed and frustrated. Yes, this man was getting under her skin in a bad way.
    “The door is unlocked,” Thea said. Even as he opened the door, she was pushing onto her feet and moving to the sink. She needed to brush her teeth. She ignored him as she grated the toothbrush hard against the inside of her mouth and tried to forget the alien tongue that had forced its way inside just an hour ago.
    The tremors started then in earnest. She dropped the toothbrush into the sink as she covered her face with her hands. It was as if she was back there again, and nothing she did was protecting her from their onslaught.
    She yelled as she felt hands touch her shoulders.
    “Thea? Thea, it’s okay. Look at me. Look at me.” The words were said in a commanding tone that she couldn’t ignore. Thea looked up into Billy’s cool blue eyes. She saw the worried concern there. “Listen to me, because this is important for you to hear. Those men will never be able to touch you again.”
    “I wasn’t supposed to be there,” Thea whispered. “I didn’t do anything to get away from them because one of them had a knife. I should have fought back. Maybe I could have gotten away.”
    “It wasn’t your fault. There was nothing about that situation that was your doing. Those dirtbags are going to get what’s coming to them.”
    “I have to press charges,” Thea said. Billy looked away from her then. “What? I am pressing charges. I’m not going to let them get away with what they did to me. I would think that of everyone, you’d support me on that.”
    Billy shook his head, and his hands dropped from her shoulders. He rubbed his face, and it took several long moments before his eyes met hers again. “Thea, I’m glad to hear that you would have pressed charges. But those men aren’t going to jail.”
    Thea’s jaw went slack. “What are you talking about?”
    “You do understand who your brother is, right?” Billy seemed to hesitate with his next words. “We shifters take care of our own, and it doesn’t always involve sticking to the letter of the law.”
    “What are you saying, exactly?” She wasn’t sure how she felt about what Billy was implying. Thea wanted the men who had tried to hurt her to pay. It shouldn’t thrill her to think that they might be getting their asses beat, but it did.
    “It means that shifter business is dealt with differently in certain circumstances. Those boys made a gross error in judgment when they decided to go after you. Your brother will remedy the situation so that they never make that error again.”
    They couldn’t come after her again. Which was a silly, irrational thought because they never knew who she was to begin with. But still, knowing that they had been effectively dealt with would help her rest better at night, although she wasn’t sure how she was going to sleep. The real men might have been removed from her life, but the rank memories of their touch and smell