Redeemed (6 page)

No. I’ll never be okay
.

She couldn’t bring herself to tell her parents that though. They were hurting at least as much as she was. They went to counseling almost as often. They would forever beat themselves up for not finding her sooner, trusting their instincts, rescuing their only daughter.

Instead of opening wide the line of communication with her mother, Ashley chose to keep most thoughts to herself. She was broken enough as it was. There was no need to drag her mother down with her.

So she put forth a strong fake front most days, smiling and insisting she was doing fantastic, when really inside she was a ball of nerves with the nightmares to prove it.

“Evan seems nice,” her mother said as she took a seat on the edge of the bed. The mattress dipped, but Ashley’s mother didn’t set a hand on her. She knew by now that any contact with her daughter had to be initiated by Ashley.

She hated that about herself. But direct contact with anyone made her flinch involuntarily every time, no matter who it was.

It was amazing she had allowed Evan to take her arm and guide her toward his car earlier. Perhaps the layers of clothing and coat had provided enough protection to help her disassociate from what was really happening. Someone had been protective, caring, thoughtful.

She didn’t do those emotions these days. She didn’t trust.

“Yeah.”

“He’s coming for brunch tomorrow.”

Of course he is
.

“Just… I won’t tell you what to do.” Her mother’s tone was gentle.

“Thanks, Mom.”

Instead of speaking another word, her mother reached for the comforter at the end of the bed and laid it over Ashley, and then she silently left the room.

Evan pulled into his garage and set his forehead against the steering wheel. He hadn’t stopped breathing rapidly since he left Ashley at her parents.

This wasn’t how mating worked. It was nearly unheard of for mates to separate after meeting. It was bad enough he’d gone half a year knowing about Ashley, but now that he’d been in a confined space with her, the game had changed.

He needed her like he needed his next breath.

Instead he hauled himself into the house, dropped his keys on the table, and took off his coat. He was tired. Exhausted, more mentally than physically.

Ignoring his rock-hard cock, he crossed the room and turned on the coffee pot. All his nights went like this. He hadn’t slept well since locating Ashley. His routine always started with a pot of coffee.

A flashing light to his left drew his attention to the answering machine. He pressed the button and listened to the only message with a smile.

“Evan? You okay? I’m worried about you. I had intended to ask you to start hunting for Parkfield for us again.” Evan chuckled at the machine. “Guess that would be rather inappropriate under the circumstances. Call me.”

Josh. Of course.
He’d avoided the man for weeks and now the cat was out of the bag. If Josh only knew the truth…

At least Josh wasn’t angry. It wasn’t as though this mating were something Evan controlled. It was the nature of shifters. It just happened. Nature didn’t take convenience or timing into account.

Evan erased the message and turned back toward the coffee. He watched it drip into the pot, mesmerized by the steady slow stream of liquid that started out dark and turned gradually lighter.

He gripped the edge of the counter and tipped his head back to look at the ceiling. From one beat to the next, he made a decision. Ignoring the last slow drips falling into the pot, Evan grabbed his coat, stuffed his arms back inside, and swiped the keys off the counter.

Why hadn’t he thought of this earlier?

In minutes he was speeding down the highway toward his favorite spot on earth. He didn’t breathe fully until he’d parked the car in a thick patch of trees and exited. He shed his coat, dropping it on the front seat, followed by the rest of his clothes. It was cold, but he barely noticed. He only needed seconds.

On a deep breath, he shifted. Almost before his front paws hit the ground, he took off running. He sped between the trees, jumping over any obstacle, bounding as fast as he could to combat the stress he lived with daily.

Stress that had increased incrementally in the last few hours. It had been a risk, outing himself. He’d lived with the pain of knowing Ashley was his for months, but somehow keeping that information to himself had been less scary than sharing the details with the entire world.

Now he had a new set of problems. What if she turned him down? And more important, what if she didn’t?

She brought a closet of skeletons he’d never fully understand. Sure, he’d researched the stresses Ashley would be facing after her return, but he had no way to comprehend the depth of her pain and suffering.

He was afraid he’d never be able to give her what she would need.

In the end, the best course of action might be to walk away, but he couldn’t bring himself to do that without at least trying. He owed it to himself, and to her.

Evan ran hard. He pushed himself more than usual. He’d shifted more lately than ever before, finding that the only way to relieve even a small piece of his stress was to take off through the trees at a breakneck pace. The workouts did nothing to his libido, but at least he managed to sleep hard the few hours a night he allowed himself to slide between the sheets.

He was restless. Every time he lay down he dreamed of Ashley, his imagination running wild with whatever his mind conjured she might be like. If he’d had every one of those dreams written in a diary, they would fill several volumes and still not do justice to what he assumed a true claiming would be like.

He hadn’t slept with another woman, shifter or human, since meeting Ashley. That hadn’t slowed him down in the orgasm department. He masturbated to visions of Ashley daily, often more than once. Usually in the shower.

Evan stopped running and skidded to a halt when he reached his car. He hadn’t realized he was back where he’d started until he’d nearly collided with the vehicle. He’d grown so accustomed to his route, he hadn’t thought about his location while he ran.

Heaving for oxygen, Evan lay down on the ground next to his car and rested. If he’d been in human form, he’d have been sweating so hard, he’d be freezing. But in wolf form, he could only pant. He lay on the gravel and cocked his head toward the moon and the stars while he waited for his labored breathing to slow.

When he could delay no longer, and found himself chilly even in his fur, he shifted, yanked open the car door, and jerked all his clothes back on, heedless of whether or not they were straight, backward, or right-side out.

The car warmed rapidly as Evan rubbed his freezing hands on his jeans and waited for the windshield to clear.

God, she was gorgeous. He closed his eyes. The memory he’d had of her undernourished frame, her lank hair, and her deep sad eyes had been shattered by the woman he’d seen tonight. She’d put on weight. She was still skinny, but healthy. Her eyes glowed brighter, a green he could get lost in. And her hair had shown in the light.

Her smile, when she allowed herself to release it, brought tingles to his palms. He wanted to see that expression on her face more. Maybe it would erase some of the destruction.

Oh, who the hell was he kidding? He didn’t know if she could ever overcome what she’d been through, and he had no idea if he was capable of rising to the task of her knight in shining armor.

•●•

Twenty minutes later, Evan was back at home. His coffee pot still sported the tiny orange light in the corner, indicating it had yet to time out and shut off. It would still be hot.

He grabbed a mug, filled it, and sauntered down the hall. At the first door on the left he paused. He stared hard at the dark wood finish, wishing what lay beyond had never existed. But as had been his custom for months, he turned the knob, took a deep breath, and entered the spare bedroom. There was no bed. Hell, there wasn’t a dresser or a desk. Nope. The room’s only contents were two massive folding tables and a spread of paper that would put the police department to shame.

It was time to work. It was late, later than he usually started working. He hoped he could sleep soon, but until his eyes drooped to the point of no return, he didn’t dare go to his bedroom. The only thing worse than perpetual insomnia was falling asleep only to wake up an hour later covered in sweat, panting as though Evan himself had been the one kidnapped four years ago instead of Ashley.

Evan set his coffee cup on the corner of the table and laid his hand on the piece of paper he’d been perusing before sleep had claimed him last night. The room would look haphazard to anyone who saw it, not that anyone had, but to Evan it was organized chaos. He knew every single slip of paper, where it was located, and when he’d written on it.

This was not his office. Another bedroom across the hall contained the items of a real office—desk, fax machine, computer, filing cabinet. This room was special. This room had everything he needed to investigate one single case.

Damon Parkfield.

Unlike every night for as long as he could remember, Evan couldn’t bring himself to sit on the only folding chair in the room. He didn’t keep a nice sturdy desk chair in this room. He preferred to maintain a certain level of discomfort when dealing with the whereabouts of Mr. Parkfield. The bastard rankled him.

No one was paying Evan to continue looking for Damon. Josh mentioned on the answering machine he’d considered it. But the truth was, no one knew about his obsession. Evan was determined to bring to justice the man who called himself a member of the shifter community and had terrorized the woman Evan was fated to love.

Even though the elders of the wolf shifter community were investigating Damon and working hard to find him, Evan couldn’t let it stop there. He wanted—no,
needed
—to make sure the bastard was brought to justice fast. He couldn’t rest until then.

Evan smoothed his fingers across the table. He didn’t have it in him tonight. His shoulders slumped. Perhaps it was the breakneck run, or the stress of having seen Ashley face-to-face tonight, but he was exhausted.

He stared at the unfinished coffee and left it sitting there as he backed out of the room and shut the door behind him.

Sleep. Was there a chance he could actually slumber peacefully finally?

Too tired for anything else, Evan used the bathroom that adjoined his room and brushed his teeth. He dropped his clothes in a line on the way to his bed and climbed between the sheets naked. He always slept naked. He preferred the feel of the silk against his skin to the confinement of boxers.

He closed his eyes and steadied his breathing.

Ashley.

•●•

Dark blonde hair danced along his chest, its owner’s face curtained by the thick locks as the woman licked a trail across his pecs and then flicked her tongue over his nipple.

Evan moaned. He arched his back into the sensations tickling across his chest.

When she continued down his stomach, he gasped. Her chin bumped into his cock as she swirled her tongue around his belly button. He grasped his thick shaft in one hand, unable to tolerate the torture of her sweet mouth on him, teasing him with promises of more. Instead of lowering her mouth to take his cock into her warmth, she nibbled her way back up to suck his nipples.

Her tiny moans filled the room.

He pumped his length harder, unable to stop himself with her scent filling his nostrils, her hair dangling across his chest, her soft lips torturing his skin. Her fingers danced across his chest, molding and sculpting his muscles as she kissed him.

With a loud groan, Evan came, pulsing against his stomach with more force than he ever remembered an orgasm having in the past. For a moment he lay there, relishing the experience with his mate…

His eyes shot open. He gasped into the darkness of the night. There was no Ashley. There was no sweet set of lips on his chest. Just blackness. Although he swore he could smell her lingering scent as though she’d been there.

Oh God. He had it bad.

Ashley’s entire body was on fire. Her heart wouldn’t stop pounding at a rate that threatened to explode out of her chest. Every cell was alive and sensitive.

She’d uncurled from the tight ball at some point, stripped off her clothes, and climbed between the covers of the bed, hoping the cool sheets would bring her temperature down. She’d never been so hot. For years she’d been cold. She spent many nights in a damp basement or dark unfurnished spare rooms with no covers. She’d learned to wrap herself in a ball and hug her knees to her chest to stay warm.

Even after she’d come back home, she still rarely got between the sheets. Being covered was too confining. It made her feel trapped and afraid she couldn’t get away fast enough. She always covered up with a throw blanket these days, but usually on top of the bed. Like she had tonight, before she’d started losing her mind.

In her bra and panties, she stretched out on the mattress. Her mind provided her with only one image—Evan. She’d pictured him in many different scenarios, some imagined, some real. She couldn’t shake him from her head. And she couldn’t sleep either.

Her bra felt too tight, her nipples abrading against the cups. She tried to ignore it but eventually unclasped the confining lingerie and tossed it aside.

Well, that didn’t help.
Now her breasts rubbed the sheets. She set her hands across her belly in attempt to tent the cotton away from her chest.

Her nipples pebbled anyway, as though she were cold instead of burning up.

Maybe she had a fever.

Or maybe it was true what they said—
once a shifter meets their mate, there is no turning back
.

She groaned. No. No no no. She wasn’t ready for this. She didn’t think she’d ever be ready. But certainly not now. She wasn’t whole. She wouldn’t wish that on another being.

When a tingling started in her pussy, she spread her legs a few inches, hoping if she didn’t rub them together, her clit wouldn’t demand attention.