His hand spread open over my neck and despite my intention to ignore it, I almost groaned at how good that felt. I was tempted to lean into—
And then I realized I was—
“Damn it,” I snapped. “Would you stop? I thought I made it clear, I’m a little freaked out by the fact that you keep touching me even though just an hour or so ago, your Alpha was telling you that you might be killing me soon.”
“Nice opening into that talk we need to have,” he said, his mouth firming out into a hard, flat line. “Thanks for that.”
And his hand didn’t move.
“I made it clear—I am not going to kill you. Got it?” He shot me a glowering look that oddly enough didn’t leave me with the urge to cringe in my seat. “Even when you do make me want to do something violent. I’m not going to hurt you. Period. Ever.”
“Uh-huh.”
He snapped his jaws shut with an audible crack, like he wanted to bite something. “You’re so fucking difficult.”
“That’s funny coming from you. Really.”
“Would you shut up, and listen?” he growled, the low, pulsing sound echoing through the car. “You present a problem to her if you don’t find the kid. Since she said she’d kill you, she’s going to feel like she has to. But I’ll tell you this. It’s not love that’s motivating her. She doesn’t give a damn about Doyle. Never has, never will.”
“That’s a shock. Poor kid. Does he have anybody who cares about him?”
A tense silence stretched out and finally, Damon sighed. “Yeah. Me.”
It was the very last thing I expected to hear.
Gaping at him, I said, “What?”
“You heard me.” He dragged a hand down over his face. “The boy has been living with me since he was five. He was a mess after his dad died—acting out the way a kid will. Had a tantrum and the Lady belted him in the mouth. If he wasn’t a shifter, it would have killed him. He spent two days in the Lair’s medical ward as it was. I offered to take him home with me to let her have some time to adjust to the loss of her brother before taking on the hardships of raising a child…and he just never went home. He’s more my kid than anybody else’s.”
“Your kid.” I slammed my head against the headrest. Or I tried to. His hand was still behind my head and kept getting in the way. “So tell me something…did she send you here to help me, watch over me, or are you helping look for the kid?”
“All of the above.” He shrugged. “I’d heard you were good at this sort of shit and I wasn’t having any luck on my own. So I got her to thinking we needed outside help. Then I sort of suggested to her that you’d be likely to cause trouble so maybe I should make sure you stayed on task.” A smile tugged at his lips. “Probably some of my best work there. Subtle as hell, and you have to be subtle with the Lady.”
“You’ve basically been working this from the get-go, haven’t you?”
“I’ve been doing what I can to find the kid,” he said shortly. “You’ve been everything from a shortcut to the biggest complication imaginable.”
“Yeah?” I twitched as his fingers threaded through my hair.
“Yeah.” He sighed. “At first I thought I’d fucked it up, because we were spinning our wheels, but then you started untangling all these knots, things I didn’t even think to look for.”
“Sure as hell doesn’t seem like I’ve managed to untangle any knots. All I’m doing is hitting dead ends.”
“The witch, Keeli. The wolf kid.” Strong fingers dug into my neck, working the tense muscles there. “I don’t know if I would have bothered reaching out to Banner. You did. You also reached out to your connections with the witches, so we see a pattern—non-human kids getting grabbed. Although it’s weird that the Alpha’s nephew would have been, too.”
“I don’t think he was grabbed. I think he ran.” I closed my eyes. “At least that’s what I thought. I’m going to assume he was better off living with you than he would be with the Queen Bitch.” I smirked as I said it but he didn’t say anything. “Was he happy with you?”
Damon was quiet for a long moment. “Yeah. Mostly. But word got back to her that he was getting close to