It’s ten minutes on ranch track to the cabin. I back the truck to the door, roll him out unceremoniously, then grab his heels and drag him over the threshold.
Once inside, I shut the door and get to work. His shirt first. Buttons, practical, my fingers working through them while his chest rises and falls under my hands. His skin is warm — warmer than it should be, alpha metabolism already fighting the drug. There’s a scar across his left side. Old. A white ridge where something opened his ribs, once. My fingers find it before I’ve told them to.
Stop that.
I pull my hand back. Finish the shirt.
Boots. Socks. I pause for a moment before working on the top button of his jeans. My hands are doing the job, and my mind is running the reasons: a naked prisoner is a vulnerable prisoner, and vulnerability is a tool. The reasons are sound.
They don’t account for everything that’s happening in this room.
For fuck’s sake, just do it, Briar.
I grit my teeth and tug the heavy fabric over lean hips and down his thighs. His knee looks like it’s taken some damage at some point, and for some reason, I find myself easing the denim carefully over the old injury. Which is just fucking ridiculousbecause there’s a good chance he’s not going to be walking out of this cabin.
I avert my face as I tug off his black briefs, then pause to gather myself for the next step. I run an eye over him as I stand with my hands on my hips. Tall, long-limbed, broad through the shoulder, with a chest built for power. As males go, he’s a good specimen. Almost a pity that I’m going to have to ruin him.
Back to work. You’re wasting time.
I get behind him, wedging my hands beneath his armpits and heaving him up into the chair. This would have been an impossible task if it weren’t for wolf strength and grim determination.
Eventually, I step back and look at what’s in front of me.
He’s in the chair. Naked, unconscious, head dropped forward. A bar of afternoon light from the window falls across his bare feet. No authority, no voice, nothing between his skin and the air. Just a body. Muscle and bone, and the record of everything that’s been done to it and everything it’s done.
I strap the restraints. Wrists, ankles, chest. Tight. I test each one.
I’m sweating by the time I’m done.
This better be worth it, Forrester.
I pull my own chair to the opposite wall and sit, knees up, arms across them.
On the floor between us is the rabbit. Button eyes facing the chair. A child’s comfort object, carried six hundred miles for this moment.
There. That’s what you wake up to.
The cabin is quiet. Outside, the mockingbird is still at it. The light through the window moves slowly across the floorboards toward his feet. Time trickles by.
And I wait.
His breathing changes. The deep rhythm shortens. His fingers move against the chair arms — small twitches, involuntary. His head lifts an inch. Drops. Lifts again. His wrists test the cuffs, then his ankles, then the chest strap. His body taking inventory before his mind catches up.
His eyes open.
He sees the rabbit.
Chapter 5
Garrett
The first thing I see is a goddamn rabbit. A kid’s stuffed toy with beady little eyes. It’s on the floor in front of me, close enough to touch if my hands were free.
My hands are not free.
I’m in a chair. Solid — bolted, from the feel of it, because when I pull against the restraints, nothing shifts. My wrists are strapped to the arms, my ankles to the legs, a strap firm across my chest. The wrist cuffs are angled wrong for a shift. Somebody who knows wolf anatomy did this. My bones can’t lengthen. Joints can’t contort.
But that’s not the worst of it.