Page 27 of Bound to the Wolf
Hell, maybe the manacles had some sort of tracking beacon. Fuck. That would be bad.
Delainey scraped at her wrists, trying to get her fingers under the metal, but all she succeeded in doing was gouging a line of broken skin. A thin bead of blood welled along the scratch, dark against her brown skin, and the brass edge left a raw pink groove where it had bitten in.
“Could we think about camping for the night?” She rubbed the injured wrist against the hem of her jacket, leaving a faint rust-colored smear on the denim. “Or do we keep going until you can’t see anymore and hope we find a road?”
Reece wasn’t paying attention to her. He didn’t give her a grunt of acknowledgement. He was just sniffing.
“Hey, asshole, I’m trying to figure out how to get us out of this mess,” she said. She reached for his arm, and then found herself crushed up against a tree.
His body pressed close against hers. He shoved his face into her neck and sniffed deep, letting out a rumbly growl that was almost a purr. His body was a wall of heat against her.
He was so much bigger than her up close—his chest broad enough to block her view of anything but the dark shirt stretched across it, his forearms braced on either side of her head with the brass manacles pressing cold against the bark. The tree bark bit into her back, and his nose dragged a long line along her throat.
The sound he was making vibrated through her. It was a full-body sensory experience, and she tried not to remember that night at the bar, or the taste of his lips against hers.
She tried not to enjoy the feel of him. His hands caged her. He sucked in deep drags of air filled with her scent. She didn’t see the appeal of that, but standing this close, it felt really good and kind of sexy, and her brain short-circuited for a few dangerous seconds. His breath was hot against the side of her neck, and the scrape of his stubble caught against her skin each time he shifted his jaw to breathe deeper.
Then her senses came back in a rush.
What the fuck was she doing?
It must have been the manacles, she thought. She put her hand on his chest and pushed back. Her palm connected with the solid plane of muscle beneath his shirt, and it was like pushing against a wall—he didn’t budge until he chose to.
Reece stepped away. His eyes were still glowing wolfish yellow; they hadn’t stopped since he woke up, and that was weird. She didn’t know everything there was to know about werewolves, but she knewthat.
Werewolf eyes didn’t stay golden. They could flash during a shift and would often be gold in their wolfish form, but when awolf was in his human form, his eyes stayed human, unless there was a moment of high emotion, or danger, or something like that.
It wasn’t normal, and it couldn’t be good.
His jaw was clenched, a bit of flush in his cheeks.
“These manacles are doing things to us,” she said again, since he was actually looking at her and maybe paying attention. “My magic is erratic, and you seem?—”
“I’m fine,” he ground the words out through teeth that looked sharper than they had any right to be, his chin ducked low and his shoulders hunched forward like a man bracing against a strong wind.
“You are very not fine.” Maybe he didn’t know it. Maybe that was more magic bullshit they would have to deal with. Whatever was going on, he needed to gain some more control; she needed the logical man-Reece, not this instinct-driven, wolfish beast.
She was about to say something when his head snapped toward a sound. There was a rustle in the trees, and he went off running towards it. He moved terrifyingly fast for a man his size, crashing through a tangle of mountain laurel without slowing, the branches whipping back behind him and the heavy thud of his boots swallowed almost immediately by the dense undergrowth.
“Hey!” Delainey tried to call him back, but the manacles started to hurt, and she sprinted after him before the pain caught up to her.
She cursed after him the whole way as he chased whatever his wolfish instincts had him chasing. Babysitting a feral werewolf while being magically leashed to him was not on her agenda for today.
Or ever.
Chapter
Twelve
Delainey was glaring at a dead rabbit.
There was a bit of blood on its brown fur, and it was tiny and limp. It had been incredibly fast. She had gotten a stitch in her side being forced to chase after Reece as he bounded after it.
“I’m sorry, Bun Bun. Reece wanted to play fetch.”
It was one of those times he took off sprinting and didn’t give her a chance to stop him. The manacles were doing wonders for her cardio, because Delainey was not a runner and Reece didn’t seem to care.
They were going to have to have a discussion about that, because pretty soon she was going to start putting up with the massive pain from the manacles rather than dealing with the man-wolf who kept thinking he got to control their direction and speed just because he was bigger and faster.
