RawHeat by Charlotte Stein Read Free Book Online Page B

didn’t scare her. Only a
bite could turn you—no blood, no semen. Though she suddenly found herself
wondering what would happen if she bit him .
    “How do you know?” she asked, then cursed her stupid voice
for sounding so breathless. They were in mortal danger, in the dark, in a death
lab. Snogging through the bars did not seem like an ideal use of time.
    “I can smell an intruder wolf a mile away. I can smell an
intruder wolf in the fortress five miles from here. And I heard the crash too.
Termites, I think.”
    She could feel him standing straight, suddenly, before
turning a little. As though he was looking at the door and seeing beyond it, to
the heap of rubble. To the fortress on the hill.
    “Still, I should let you out. Just to—”
    His attention snapped back to her, immediately.
    “You can’t let me out, Serena. The lights will be back on
any minute and then people will return to their stations. How would you answer
Dr. Philips if he asked you why you’d opened my cage?”
    “With a dirty limerick?”
    “Be serious. Go back to your room. I’ll see you later, all
right?”
    She paused before speaking. It wasn’t that big a deal,
really, what she wanted to say. He had to know it was coming, reasonably. And
yet it took some getting out, anyway.
    “I don’t want to wait until later. I don’t want to see you
in installments anymore, Conn. Those days are over.”
    His pause was just as long and pregnant as hers had been.
And he sounded different when he finally said something. Looser, somehow.
Crazier.
    “If you don’t go I’ll do something stupid.”
    “ Pffft. Like what?”
    “These nails are really deep in my shoulder.” One of his hands
left hers and even though most of her didn’t really suspect he could ever do
something like the thing he was absolutely going to do, she had the urge to
hold on to him. Just grab one of his fingers, maybe, and cling. “If I just
twist one of them it really—”
    Something cracked. It actually cracked, and squelched, and
he made a sound like nothing on earth.
    “Oh God no, no! Stop it! Are you fucking nuts? No, no, I’ll
go, I’ll go!”
    He didn’t say what she expected, however. Though after the
whole nail in the shoulder stunt she wasn’t sure what “expected” actually was .
    “You really care about me that much, huh?”
    “Was that a test of how much I may or may not care?” she
asked, too incredulous to make her voice normal. “Oh my God, I think I’m going
to faint. Don’t twist things in your shoulder, okay? Don’t do that.”
    “It’s not a test , Serena. You just ran down a
possibly wolf-infested corridor to come let me out. You’re standing here, as
though waiting for them to come and find you. So I’m going to make this point
very clear with a nail in my shoulder—don’t do that again.”
    She slapped a hand against the bars.
    “Don’t you fucking twist that nail again, Connor, I mean it!
I won’t, I promise I won’t.”
    “You swear to me.”
    “I swear, you fucking masochist!”
    She took a step back, away from the bars—just as light
suddenly flooded the room. Only once it had, everything just died in her mouth.
All the words about him being an asshole for torturing her like this…they
seemed pretty weak in the face of someone who’d actually been tortured.
    “Go,” he said, and pointed her in the direction of the door
with his gaze.
    “You look like shit,” she said, because it was true. But
also because it was the only thing she could get out without crying over it.
    “I’ll be fine, you’ll see.”
    “I’m sorry, I’m just sorry.”
    “You know, as much as I hate using my pain against you, I
love knowing you care that much. I never thought anyone would ever care about
me that much.”
    She couldn’t do anything but. There were great, livid
bruises all down his left side—some of them swirling away into nothing even as
she watched—and blackened burns across his face likes claw marks. He looked
beaten