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“Will I need to smack you again?” he asked quietly.
“Damn, bro— fucking dark,” the bunny killer said. “I know we are a bit heavy-handed but give the poor girl a break.”
“I can assure you that the next smacks won’t be to her face,” my captor clarified. “She is not going to like where these next smacks end up.”
“Fuck,” swore Garrett. “Can we at least get home first?”
I knew I was the asshole here. My rescuer had saved my life, and I had bitten him for it like some wild animal. I deserved to be slapped. But it wasn’t the sting on my cheek that upset me. Rather, it was his tone that had injured my feelings. He was growly, and it made me anxious in ways I couldn’t quite define.
On a night when I’d been attacked by the android that practically raised me, and I’d learned that both aliens and Anachronists were real, facing him in this moment was the scariest thing yet.
“I have asked you to do something,” he rumbled, leaning in close to speak to my ear. “If you don’t, I will flip you over my thigh, bare your ass, and spank it raw until you get it through your brain that I am not the one to be trying— especially not tonight.”
That threat did it.
I lifted my head and stared into his startlingly beautiful eyes, even as my own welled. His hard, angry expression seemed at odds with the gentle way he smoothed my hair away from my damp lashes.
“You will never, ever run from us,” he said low. “Or even think to try to run from us. Got it?”
I tried to remember if anyone ever spoke to me this way in real life. Outside the realm of virtual reality where we could roleplay in theatrics or reenact historical events, most people were emotionally stable if not downright distant. Anything more would be considered overly dramatic. Yet, these three spoke this way naturally.
“Do. You. Understand?” he gritted.
Unable to bear the intensity of his glare, I simply nodded and returned to looking at our feet.
“I will not tolerate lying, little girl. If you don’t understand, just say so.”
Since I had lost my ability to speak, I shrugged my shoulder. I didn’t understand any of this. Nothing in life made sense anymore. Did I understand what he wanted? Yes. Did I understand why? No.
He put his hands on each side of my head and forced me to look up at him. “The world outside the city is extremely dangerous, even beyond the Ai and aliens that are after you. There are wild animals. There are hidden animal traps. There are sinkholes, tree wells, and pools of quicksand, as well as several other hazards for those who don’t know the area.”
The passion he used to get his point across moved me. I was rattled by it. Not once in my life had anyone seemingly cared what happened to me the way this stranger did.
I realized I was becoming overly emotional. I wanted to cry because of him, yet I also wanted to seek comfort from him even though he was the cause of my distress.
He used the pads of his thumbs to capture the two stray tears that leaked from my eyes. “What did I say about crying?” he groused.
“Not to,” I mouthed.
“Exactly.”
Goodness, he made me feel brave. I had never met someone so strong that I could take some of their strength as my own. I had known the guy for an hour, a mythical guy at that, and with my world falling apart around me, he seemed like the only safe thing in it now.
He released me, removed his backpack, and handed it to his bunny-killing brother. “Take this. I’ll carry her. She’s injured, exhausted, and in meltdown mode.”
Protesting this new arrangement, I shook my head and took a step back, but he put a finger in my face like I was an errant child.
I lifted my brows and tried to focus in on the fingertip near my nose.
“What I say, goes. Always,” he added. “Understand? If I give you directions, you follow them to the letter. Immediately. This is not up for debate. You will simply obey without question. If you don’t, there will be consequences, and you will not like them.”
The energy he gave off was incredibly conflicting. It was like father, brother, and lover rolled into one. It was messing with my traumatized brain.
Because of his vague warning of punishment, and the fact that I had no choice or say in the matter anyway, I didn’t stop him when he effortlessly picked me up like the sloth he called me and forced me to wrap my legs around his waist and link my arms around his neck.
He was huge. And so freaking strong.
It was almost too easy to feel safe in his arms.
