His hand landed on her shoulder, a heavy paw that pushed her slowly to her knees. “I know your body’s reaction to touch. You know the monster that lurks inside me.”
His words felt important. A confession to match her earlier one.
Another secret just between the two of them.
She landed between his thighs, kneeling, her mouth inches from the growing bulge beneath his loincloth.
The burning between her thighs sparked hotter.
He held out the piece of meat between his two fingers. “If you use those fangs on me, there will be consequences.”
Was he actually allowing her to eat?
Gaze watchful, she opened her mouth. He tore off a small piece and placed it on her tongue. She moaned aloud. After so long subsisting on scrub brush and crawlies, the taste was delicious. A bit of fat and oil dripped down her chin. She barely resisted the urge to lick that, too.
Scowl deepening, he wiped the droplet with his thumb. Then, he held up another piece. She hadn’t noticed before, but he’d laid out a few pieces on a cloth and put them on the chair next to his thigh. “When was the last time you ate?”
She hesitated.
“That hardly qualifies as a deep, dark pack secret,” he chided.
“Four rotations.” He fed her once more. She glared at him as she chewed, but it wasn’t much of a glower. The meat filling her belly tasted too good. “You steal from my traps.”
“Before then?” He slipped another small piece between her lips. “Were you eating well before that?”
She shook her head. “Others take all pack territory and food.”
He leaned forward and down, his nose nearly grazing hers, another piece of meat raised high in between them. “Is that why you came to the camp and traded with others of my kind? You needed food?”
She clamped her lips shut. If he thought a few pieces of food would turn her into a compliant pet, her captor was less intelligent than she’d come to believe.
The line between his eyebrows deepened. “So stubborn.”
It was the only reason she’d survived so long.
“One of your warriors came looking for you.”
She swayed on her knees. How could that be? Pack were forbidden from this area, and Talg would never send anyone to check on her.
Her captor’s too-sharp gaze never wavered, cataloging every flicker of fear and hope she fought to hide. “Stocky, bald, massive tusks.”
That could be any pack male, but there was only one who would even consider defying Talg’s order, Ramm. The only hunter who had been remotely kind to her.
She pressed her lips together to keep from begging to know his fate.
“Nothing more to ask?” Her captor leaned back in his seat, that edge of darkness crackling from his skin to hers. “No follow-up questions about his current state of existence?”
He knew she was desperate to know.
She sensed there was something more, too. He was riled. Almost angry. The monster inside him not quite as controlled as usual.
Her gaze dipped to his knuckles. No blood or bruises, but he could have used one of his weapons.
“D-did you hurt him?” The words tumbled out.
His jaw went tight. “So you do care about what happens to this male, almost as much your Sharluff.”
“Is…is he in the Void now?” The thought of Ramm dead hurt her. As did the sharp, foolish cut of betrayal that sliced into her chest at the knowledge that her captor’s actions proved Talg was right about Others.
“You want responses to your questions?” Expression hard, Grif leaned forward, stomach muscles rippling as he rested his elbows on his knees. “Answer mine.”
“Never.” Springing upward, she slammed her bound wrists toward the underside of his chin. For Ramm. For pack. For Sharluff. For herself and her foolish hopes that Talg might have been wrong.
Her captor was faster. Dodging her strike, his hands closed around her shoulders, a shock of scorching heat. Using her momentum, he yanked. She tumbled upward and forward into his lap. “That was foolish.”
The cloth with the meat tumbled to the ground.
In the next heartbeat, she was seated sideways, her wrists pinned to her belly, her legs splayed over his powerful thighs, hers so much shorter than his that her heels didn’t touch the ground. The side of her ribs pressed against the hard steel of his chest. “We both already know who wins in a battle of strength—and wills.”
A riot of sensations, intense and overwhelming, crashed through her. The prickle of hair from his thighs and chest rubbing against the sensitive bottom of her thighs, a reminder of how different he was from pack males.
Hissing, she fought her captor’s hold.
“Enough.” He clamped one thick thigh over her legs.
She didn’t stop. “Kill me, too. I not tell you anything.”
“Damn it, Nayla. I didn’t kill him. He’s alive and well and grunting his way across the plains still searching for you. Settle down before you hurt yourself.”
Her body grew boneless as the fight drained from her. She searched his gaze. The use of her name as disarming as his claim.
“I left him circling the pit for the twentieth time.” His thumb snaked between the loops of her binds, tracking across the sensitive skin at her wrist. “It’s the truth.”
It was. She saw it in his gaze.
Relief surged through her. Along with awe. For the first time, information had flowed from him to her. Why would he do that for her?
Moreover, why wasn’t he beating her for her attempt to attack him? Talg would already have her bloodied and on the ground.
“Th-thank you for telling me.”
He sighed. “You’re welcome.” Lifting his thigh, he slid it beneath hers, taking the heavy weight away.
She’d had never sat in anyone’s lap before.
Positioned as she was, her lips hovered right at the level of his thick-muscled neck. At the same time, her nose pressed close to the hollow of his skin, sending the masculine, exotic scent of him pouring into her lungs, offering no quarter.
Equally as noticeable was the heavy, hard bulge beneath his covering that pressed between her thighs, an insistent, massive, silent demand.
Everything about him was overwhelming.
“You’ve been treated bad and it’s not fair,” his words were a low growl, “but I can’t just let you go. You have to tell me what I need to know. I have people counting on me. I can’t let them down. But I won’t let you down, either. I won’t let Malin touch you.”
She didn’t know what a Malin was, but she did recognize the harsh bite to Grif’s tone was gone, replaced by a resigned note. As if he wanted her to understand that duty, not cruelty, drove him now.
It made her belly flutter and heat in a different way than when he put his hands on her skin, but the reaction was no less potent. She comprehended duty. She knew loyalty.
Her pack was counting on her, too.
Another commonality between them she hadn’t expected. It made her feel a little bad for lumping him with the other savages. He was fierce and aggressive, but also different than she’d been taught to believe of his kind.
Questions about his behavior and his people crowded at the tip of her tongue, but she held them back. She couldn’t expect him to tell her anything when she refused to do the same. For the first time, the thought made her ache for a different way.