Read Online Wolver's Rescue by Jacqueline Rhoades - Free Book Online Page B

say.
    Bull flipped through the bills in his hand.
“How far did you think you were going to get on thirty-eight
dollars?” There was almost five hundred more in the duffle.
    “ Home.”
    “ Where’s home?”
    She sat back on her heels and shook her bowed
head.
    “ I could beat it out of you,
you know.”
    The corners of her mouth tilted up and then
down. “No you couldn’t. You killed those men without batting an
eye, but not once did you hurt me, even when you tried to be mean,
you weren’t.”
    “ Don’t be too sure,” he said
gruffly, but even he knew it sounded false.
    The smile finally took over her mouth. “It’s
the only thing in this whole mixed up mess I am sure of. I don’t
know why I’m sure of it. It’s probably just part of the craziness
that is me. Like not ever getting lost, you know?” The smile faded.
“No, of course you don’t. You wouldn’t. You aren’t weird.”
    Bull sucked in his cheeks to keep from
snorting. He’d killed two men without batting an eye, but she
considered him normal. Compared to her, he probably was. She was
weird and he was temporarily stuck with it, so he might as well
make the best of it.
    “ Are you still hungry?” he
asked.
    She shrugged. “I guess so. I don’t really
feel it unless I smell the food.” She eyed the waste basket and the
balled up wrapper.
    “ You didn’t,” he said, but
she had.
    “ It was only the top bun.
The meat and pickles were okay.”
    “ I was gone for what? Ninety
seconds?”
    “ I could smell it,” she
whined.
    “ Get back on the bed,” he
ordered while he pulled his backpack from beneath it. “All the way
back. Up by the pillows.”
    He grabbed her wrist, snapped a handcuff on
it and snapped the other end to the bed before she had the first
word of protest formed. He pointed his finger at her nose.
    “ Now stay there and try not
to eat the pillow.”
     
    ~*~
     
    Tommie flipped up the middle finger of her
free hand and showed it to the closing door. It was a stupid
gesture, but when it came to the big guy, stupid was her middle
name.
    “ Want an example?” she asked
the woman on the TV screen who was hawking some kind of dust mop
that would pick up fifty times the dirt your mother’s mop could. “I
know you’re not a bad man, but you’re not a good one either,” she
mimicked herself. “How’s that for stupid?”
    “ No answer, huh?” she asked
the woman, “That’s what the drugs were supposed to do, but they
only work for other people, normal people, and not for the weird
ones like me.”
    At one time or another, she’d taken every
medication on the market. None of them worked. As the dosages got
larger and her body became less responsive, the voice in her head
got louder. She couldn’t put a coherent sentence together, but the
thing inside her was loud and clear.
    “ Run. Find. Like
us. ”
    As if she could find someone else like her.
She was stupid, weird, and nuttier than a pecan tree and just her
luck, when she’s at the lowest point in her stupid, weird and nutty
life, she runs into a guy who shakes her insides up so badly, she
didn’t know which way to turn.
    He was big and strong, and when he carried
her in his arms, she’d felt more closeness and warmth than she’d
ever felt in her entire life. Even the voice inside her was quiet
and content. For the little time she’d been held in his arms, she
felt normal.
    She was embarrassed to think about the
shower. Bull was completely impersonal as he soaped and scrubbed
and rinsed. Her head knew it. Her body didn’t. His hands, running
the cloth over her arms and legs, back and breasts, made her body
sing like no one else’s ever did. And when that cloth passed
between her legs, it took every ounce of her willpower not to cry
out, not to let go. One shower made her long for his touch. Two
would turn it into a craving. Three, and the addiction would be
complete. Another abnormal load to add to the ones she already
carried.
    When he’d stepped