if he was okay or why he was such a fucking idiot in the first place to put himself in that position for me? Didn't he know, if his death didn't kill me, knowing he lost it to save me would?
The wraiths glided from me to Diesel, looping behind his lower back. Traitors.
They urged him forward. He needed no urging and was already striding toward me like him holding me was a foregone conclusion. When he was close enough I could see into his eyes, and the life that still burned there, I could finally speak. "Don't do that again!"
I whirled around, stomping back toward the hotel.
Halfway there, I glanced up, stumbling over my steps. It looked like that one stone from that one Indiana Jones movie had rolled right down the middle.
It didn't make a difference to where I was going. I still had no fucking clue. I couldn't go back to my room. The space created by those four walls had started feeling colder with each passing day. But now I had everyone's eyes on me, thanks to my panic attack and the following awful display of ingratitude.
The longer I imagined their eyes burning into me, the more I felt like I was burning. Not from fire, but ice. My teeth chattered while sweat poured down my forehead. My body shook, lessened only by the way my chest heaved for air—air that I couldn't find. Knowing I was having a panic attack didn't mean I could do anything about it. After a certain point, it was just easier to jump in headfirst and ride it out than it was to try to tear out of your own skin. I prepared to do just that when a new sensation hit me, one that warmed my frozen places.
A hand squeezed my neck. Not a hand. Diesel's. He gripped my nape with his fingers on one side and his thumb the other, squeezing just tightly enough. My body remembered the feeling. Before, the way he held me had never failed to make me drop, stealing any negative emotion and replacing it with warm, safe Diesel.
"You're safe, baby boy," Diesel murmured in my ear. "That's it, breathe. Good, my good boy."
The bubble of warmth formed in my heart and grew, expanding to cover the rest of me with happy zings of pleasure. My breaths still made noise when I sucked them in and blew out, but I knew I was coming down. And I didn't even have to jump.
The space around us was dark. He'd carried me into the hotel. The damage looked concentrated at the entrance, and the trajectory had, thankfully, veered to the right, obliterating the hallway and corner of the sitting room, but leaving the stairs intact. There was less damage than I expected, but I'd forgotten they'd reinforced this space with hellfire stone.
When Diesel ascended the last step and turned down the hallway to our rooms, I let out a final, slightly shaky breath, pressing my nose flat against his pectoral. His chest was warm and firm, making me feel fragile but safe. I peeled my face back and looked up his body, to his thick, corded neck, and then his relieved face. "That's the second time you brought me back."
His mouth went slack, and his eyebrows briefly rounded, like he'd been sure I hadn't noticed the way he'd brought me back from the brink when my wraiths had destroyed the hotel.
He dropped me, sitting on his bed. My head swiveled around. I wasn't sure what I was searching for until I didn't find it.
Me. Pictures of me.
Silly, candid photos of the two of us had forever lined his room and mine. Every so often, or when he moved from pack house to pack house, he always agreed to let me decorate his bedroom, and I'd never wanted to give him a single chance to forget me.
But here, I wasn't anywhere. My picture wasn't anywhere, and though I knew it was a selfish reason to be upset, my spine still stiffened. I lifted my arms, waiting for my wraiths to wind back around me, but they never came. They weren't even in the room.
Nothing was stopping Diesel from continuing to ravish me until my desire took over and I eventually gave in—except my consent. That was how he was so much different than Pierce and why Pierce hadn't ever been able to create a version of Diesel that had truly seemed like him. I didn't need my wraiths