This Dark Wolf (Soul Bitten Shifter #1) - Everly Frost Page 0,38
is, I never asked for it and I don’t want it.
I don’t fucking want it!
A moan rises to my lips.
Shockingly, the sound breaks across the room. Finally, my eyelids flutter open, obeying my internal scream to get up. My fingers twitch and shift across the table, gripping the edge, the muscles in my arms answering my commands.
I roll to the edge of the table but can’t keep my balance, falling right off.
Thudding onto the floor, I manage to draw my feet under myself in time to land in a crouch. Several ice packs thump onto the floor around me. A sharp pain in the back of my hand tells me that I’ve wrenched my IV line around. A second later, the stand topples and crashes to the floor. The nearly empty IV bag makes a wet sound as it slips free of the hook and slaps the floor.
“Tessa!” Helen is poised halfway between the table and the door, clutching her wand.
She hurries toward me, but the door crashes open before she’s made it two steps.
Tristan races across the space between us.
I can finally see him now that my eyes are open. He’s naked from the waist up. His muscles gleam with dirt and sweat. One leg of his black jeans is slit and tattered. The skin across his left cheekbone is cut, a precise but shallow wound like a knife would make, leaving a crimson line across his face. His raven black hair is slicked to the sides of his neck, damp with sweat, and his crisp green eyes are piercing.
He’s a mess of blood, sweat, and bruises.
I blink up at him as he rages toward me, his muscles bunched, biceps tense.
My instincts scream at me to get up.
Get the hell out of his path, Tessa!
He scoops me up just as I scramble to the side. Colliding with my torso, his arms hook beneath mine and he lifts me off my feet. His wolf’s growls vibrate from his chest to mine, an overwhelming thrumming that sounds almost like a purr as he hoists me back onto the table into a sitting position. My legs straddle his hips, my thighs pressing against the outside of his muscles, but he doesn’t push forward, leaving a gap between our jeans that doesn’t exist between our chests.
His right hand slides up my back beneath my shirt, coming to rest over the catch at the back of my bra, gripping the elastic so tightly that it could snap.
His face is inches from mine, his lips parted.
“You woke up,” he says, his lips curling into a self-satisfied smile, as if he thinks I obeyed him after all. He told me to wake up when he first came into the room.
Despite his close proximity to me, he’s unfocused. Blood oozes from the cut across his cheek and his eyes are dazed.
Someone definitely took a knife to him. Dear fuck. I inhale a confusing mix of his sweat and the scent of blood that isn’t his. There’s a splatter of someone else’s blood across his earlobe.
“You had a bad night, huh?” I murmur, trying to calm my breathing and figure out how to extricate myself from his arms without thumping him. He deserves a good wallop right now, but the hitch in his breathing tells me he already has bruised ribs.
“Don’t make my night worse, Tessa.”
“Worse how?” I whisper, searching his eyes.
“Tell me you’re not in pain.”
I frown. “I’m not in pain.”
His order is harsh, vibrating through me with his increasing growls. “Don’t lie to me.”
I bite my tongue before I fire back an angry response. After all, he just ordered me to tell him I wasn’t in pain.
He either wants me to follow orders or he doesn’t.
I arch an eyebrow at him, keeping my voice low. “I’m not in pain, Tristan. These human meds are amazing.”
He tips his head at me, his eyes narrowed. “But you whimpered.”
I consider the hard line of his lips as he presses them together, along with the clenching muscle in his jaw. I’d moaned seconds before he burst back into the room.
“I heard what you said,” I whisper, my voice sticking in my throat, honesty wrenching at my heart. “I was upset because… I killed my father.”
His fingers suddenly claw my back and his expression changes so rapidly that it shocks me, gleaming and alert. The deepest rage storms across his face, his eyebrows drawing down, teeth clenching, his incisors appearing and making his voice even deeper.