“Does the sheet provide you with added protection?” he asked distractedly as a fresh wave of exhaustion hit him.
He was so f**king tired. That wasn’t anything new. He was always tired, but over the past couple of months it seemed as though exhaustion was hitting him harder than ever before. He needed a break, some rest, but he’d come too far to stop now. He was so close, so damn close, to his goal.
One more year and everything that he’d worked so hard for would be his. He could go back home, buy a cottage out in the middle of nowhere, and live out the rest of his existence without worrying about anything other than resting, eating and enjoying his well-earned solitude. He was going to forget that anything else existed in the world for a while.
Except for her maybe, he thought as he watched the mound beneath the sheet shift again. He wasn’t sure how it happened, but this small Sentinel female somehow became his best friend, his only friend, and his family. Thanks to her, he had to adjust his goal to include her, her mate and their children. That wasn’t something that he was entirely happy about.
He liked the way his life used to be, the way it should be. He hated complications and there was no doubt in his mind that Izzy was a huge complication. She was his one and only weakness and he f**king hated that.
He hated the fact that he thought about her a little too much and worried about her whenever he was away from her. His focus should be on his goal and not the woman devouring a year’s supply of junk food in his bed. He shouldn’t care if she was okay never mind happy. The woman was a Sentinel and therefore his enemy, he reminded himself with a glare as he caught a whiff of peanut butter and chocolate.
“Hey!” Izzy snapped as he snaked his hand beneath the sheet and stole the bag of miniature peanut butter cups that she’d tried to hide from him.
“Mine.”
“But-”
“Mine.”
“Well, let me just have-”
“Mine!” he snapped, allowing his voice to deepen, becoming more animal than man and giving her the only warning that she was going to get if she-
“Yeah, cause that really scares me,” she said dryly as she raised the sheet off her head just long enough for her to search for the bag of peanut butter cups and steal them.
“I’m seconds from shifting and tearing this bed apart, woman!”
“Uh huh,” she said around what sounded like a mouthful of peanut butter cups, his peanut butter cups.
He crossed his arms over his chest as he narrowed his eyes dangerously on the lump beneath the sheet. Any other woman would have given up the peanut butter cups as she cowered, begged and pleaded for his mercy, but not this woman. No, this woman knew that he would never hurt her. Screw her over for dessert? In a heartbeat, but he would never cause her any harm and that knowledge pissed him off.
“I want a Coke,” Izzy mumbled again, earning a tired sigh from him as he settled more comfortably back against the pillows and closed his eyes.
“You can’t have Coke,” he reminded her.
“I know,” she said, not sounding happy about it and he couldn’t really say that he blamed her. The woman’s Coke addiction was almost as bad as his.
He couldn’t imagine going an hour, never mind a day without his caffeine fix. It was the only thing that gave him the energy to move most days and kept him from killing everything in sight, he thought as he reached over, not bothering to open his eyes, and grabbed the can of Coke that he’d forgotten about and took a long, deep satisfying sip.
“That better not be what I think it is,” Izzy bit out, sounding close to committing violence.
“It is,” he said, pausing only to rub it in her face with a loud satisfied sigh before he finished it off and tossed the empty can aside.
“I hate you,” Izzy sighed heavily, sounding miserable as she shifted beneath the sheet until she was curled up against his side. She buried her face against him as her small hands found his bicep and squeezed, nails digging in as she did her best to bite back a whimper, but he heard it.
He always did.
He didn’t need to ask what was bothering her. He knew exactly how much pain she was in no matter how hard she tried to hide it. He hated this, hated feeling this helpless and he f**king hated the little bastard that had done this to her.
One day…….
He would catch up with Joshua and when that day came he would pay the man back for every ounce of pain that he’d caused Izzy with interest. Izzy’s family wanted to save Joshua and they probably thought that he was onboard with their game plan. He wasn’t. But, as long as they kept him informed of what they’d learned about the little bastard he would keep letting them think that. They really didn’t need to know about the excruciating death that awaited Joshua and if he had his way, they never would.
Not that he really cared if his plans for the little prick upset the misfits of Pytes, Sentinels and humans that made up this family. He didn’t give a damn if his plans upset them. The woman curled up beside him, clutching onto him almost desperately was the only one that he really cared about.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, pretending that he wasn’t aware that agonizing pain was shooting through the hip that Joshua had callously destroyed. Izzy hated the reminder of what her one time best friend had done to her, but he suspected that she hated the fact that her injury reminded everyone else of the monster that Joshua had turned into, more.
“Nothing,” she bit out through clenched teeth as her grip on him tightened to the point that he knew he’d be sporting some rather nasty bruises for a few hours. He could have pulled away from her, but he wouldn’t do that since this was the only thing that he could do to help ease some of her pain.
“Then why are you clinging to me?” he asked softly, giving her the opportunity to stop trying to be brave all the time and allow someone to take care of her.
“I missed you,” she said, her voice breaking on a sob as her nails dug into his skin.
“Well, that went without saying,” he said, pushing the sheet off her so that he could pull her into his arms.
As soon as she was in his arms, she turned her face against his chest, grabbed a fistful of his shirt and released a heart-wrenching scream of pain that had him biting back a curse and wishing that the little bastard was around so that he could kill the son of a bitch. Since that wasn’t an option, he settled for holding her tightly against him and placing his hand on the large swell of her belly where his godchildren kicked and squirmed, frightened for their mother.