Series: Unforgiven Country Series by Jenika Snow
Total pages in book: 14
Estimated words: 12868 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 64(@200wpm)___ 51(@250wpm)___ 43(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 12868 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 64(@200wpm)___ 51(@250wpm)___ 43(@300wpm)
He let me do what I needed to do.
No stopping me.
No trying to talk me out of it. So, I took that as a sign.
Right then and there, I told myself it was best to keep how I felt to myself. Because if not, he would have broken my heart right in two. If Wyatt shared my feelings at all, he wouldn’t have let me walk away. I might not be a shifter, but I know that once they find their mate, they never let them go.
So, for the past two years, I’ve regretted leaving every single day, even if getting out of Unforgiven took me away from a controlling, drunken mother, and no opportunity.
I let my mind wander, open it up so I can hear the things people are saying, but not out loud.
The majority of what people think is about sex, drinking, and the simple pleasures of giving themselves over to someone. My gift—or at times a curse—allows me to hear what others think. Sometimes it is too much, a burden, something I wish I had never been born with. Other times it gives me insight into how to react to someone, how to approach things.
And right now, I count this as a gift as I sift through the sexual thoughts, the visual flashes of images that fill my head.
And then one string of thoughts catches my attention. It is thick and heavy, filled with this desperation … need, so strong it has me gasping. It’s familiar, like this string wrapped around my middle, pulling me closer. The desperation turns into arousal, hardcore lust.
Possessiveness.
Wyatt is looking right at me, his big body tucked away in the corner, the shadows partially concealing him. I should have known he’d spot me—sense me—as soon as I stepped through the door. His possessiveness takes me by surprise though. His hunger … his gaze is still locked on me. I look behind me just to assure myself that he doesn’t have someone else in his sight.
I don’t see anyone else, but I don’t try and probe Wyatt’s mind, don’t try and read him. It wouldn’t have made a difference anyway, because he locks it down fast, like he did all those years ago. It is like this thick brick wall, impenetrable, a force to be reckoned with. He’s always been hard to read, even when I glimpsed his mind, even when he gave me consent to see what he thought.
My breath lodges in my throat as Wyatt begins stalking me. His long muscular legs stride toward me, eating up the space between us in moves that are deliberate and precise. It appears my trip to see Wyatt is now going to consist of me facing my fears and talking to him for the first time in two years.
He isn’t giving me a choice.
2
WYATT
I almost did a double-take when I caught her scent in this fucking bar. She’s like the sweetest flower on the damn vine and I’ve been grieving the loss of it for two fucking years. The wolf inside of me has been pacing back and forth, barely resisting going wild and chasing my mate down and claiming her. Now that she’s back here of her own free will, nothing will stop me. I’m not letting her walk away from me again.
I zero in on her immediately. A snarl leaves my lips before I can stop it.
What in the fuck has she done to herself?
She’s lost weight. Her damn hipbones are pressing against that black, short skirt she’s wearing. Then there was her damn hair. Kendra had this thick mass of auburn hair that fell heavy around her face and reminded me of dusk, as the sun faded and light danced through the clouds in different hues and tones.
In the past, I couldn’t stop myself from touching her hair whenever the opportunity rose. Fuck, most of the time I made up excuses to run my fingers through it as often as I could. It was gone now, cut short and dyed a brown that looks expensive and pretty, but it isn’t the glory that belonged to my woman.
For probably the millionth time, I want to kick my ass for letting her walk away. For the hundredth time my wolf inside snarls and pulls against the restraints I keep on him. He wants free to claim his woman.
His very human woman.
And that’s the whole problem.
Kendra is human, physically weaker than my kind, and for a shifter who is destined to take over his pack … that can be a problem. Fuck, as many times as I’ve been over it, the scenarios are all the same. The females in my pack will eat my woman alive. An Alpha can’t have weaknesses, even if that was a human as a mate. Kendra would be a huge weakness to them and me.