Twist My Heart by Brooke Taylor (ebook audio reader .txt) 📕

everything. His grip, his kiss, and any connection immediately dropped, breaking and scattering as far into the night as the stars above us.

All that remained was the warm whoosh of Nik’s breath and the throbbing pulse in the soft pocket of my neck. His stubble-rough cheek scraped against the smooth plane of mine as we both pulled in air.

“I forgot you’re hurt. I wasn’t thinking straight. Are you okay?”

Titan’s cold, wet nose pressed cautiously against my other cheek.

“I’m fine,” I told them both. But even as Nik and I stayed skin against skin, a barrier had come between us.

After several long, slow breaths, Nik lifted me away from him, rolling me to my back on the sleeping bag. He gently gathered my shirt from the hem, raising it to the bottoms of my breasts. The cold air prickled my flesh as he leaned over me, dropping lusciously soft kisses across my tender rib cage.

“I’m so, so sorry I hurt you. I shouldn’t have put my hands on you.”

My heart lurched to a stop.

He regretted touching me?

The soft flannel of the shirt settled back down over my skin, my nerve endings grieving the loss of his caresses. My shoulders dropped. I didn’t know how to tell him his stopping hurt me more than his hands had. I couldn’t seem to speak at all.

With a rough push of his fingers through his hair, he scrubbed the dark spikes back and forth. “It’s getting cold and you’ve had a hell of a couple of days. We should go.” He sounded as frustrated and unsatisfied as I felt.

I couldn’t form enough words to even protest. My mind was entranced by the sensations I feared would never be brought to life inside of me again.

I took hold of his hand as he helped me to my feet. The pad of his thumb skirted my jaw as his fingers grazed against the column of my neck. Instinctively, I arched into his palm, trusting his touch even though moments ago it’d caused me pain.

“I don’t know how I could forget. It kills me to know you’re hurting.”

This flesh with its aching soreness, sensitive bruises, and sharp twinges if I breathed too deeply was all I’d ever experienced. But when Nik touched it, when his lips kissed it, when his breath passed over it, when the deep vibrations of his masculine voice rumbled through it—the pain seemed to disappear and my soul came alive. Mine.

I wanted more. Needed more.

* * * *

Nik powered through his midnight workout, pushing any remaining energy out via sweat through his pores and hard thrusts of air from his lungs. Fuck slow, fuck fast. He never should’ve put his hands on her knowing she was hurt. He reversed his grip on the pull-up bar and restarted his count.

Whether falling asleep easily was a side effect of her concussion or exhaustion, it thankfully had allowed him to carry her uneventfully from the Jeep to the guestroom. He’d much rather have collapsed into his own bed with her legs wrapped around his waist, but he barely trusted himself to be in the same house without losing his mind again. He had to be more careful around her.

She was hurt, but she’d heal soon. In the meantime, he needed to figure something, anything out about who was after her. Feds searching the tornado site wasn’t a good sign. It meant the whole Hell in a Handbasket incident with Animal Control was merely the tip of the iceberg. The internet hadn’t helped him at all and after kissing Thea, he’d decided there was no way he was contacting the so-called fiancé. One—if the Feds were after her, they were watching any significant others as well. Two—he selfishly didn’t want to open that can of worms with Thea.

Especially now.

He’d crossed a line and fuck if he could step back.

No, the only way to find out if anyone was truly after her was to pull an Operation Lizard, as Coop used to call it. Go out in public and see if Thea grew herself another tail. Using her as bait was risky as hell, but she did need some supplies. If she kept borrowing his clothes, he’d have nothing left to wear when she was gone. It would all be as penetrated by her scent as his skin was.

God, he’d sweated through over two hours of high-intensity training and still the intoxicating smell of her clung to him, driving him harder and faster than ever. He hadn’t pushed his body this aggressively in a workout since Hell Week. In the mirrored wall, he watched his form. He finished off with hanging reverse crunches, his muscles tightening as they burned past the point of pain.

He rarely lifted weights. Instead he used his own body weight to train—chin-ups, pushups, running… He rock-climbed, snowshoed, rowed. Always testing his endurance. Choosing the path of most resistance. His body didn’t have the bulk of a weightlifter or the flawlessness of an athlete. Instead it had the hard, sharp edges of a weapon. The scars proved it’d been used as such.

The cuts giving his abs definition deepened with the strain of repetition after repetition until they looked severe. And still, he could feel the tickling dance of Thea’s fingers tracing them.

He hung from the bar, stretching his muscles with the gravitational pull as he caught air. His body still screamed for her, but he was thinking clearly again. Which meant he was kicking himself for being such a prick.

He’d stopped!

After—after!—she’d said she needed him. Getting her all warmed up then nothing—nothing! Shit. There were a hundred things he could’ve done to satisfy her without hurting her, but when he’d heard her cry out the only option in his sex-scorched brain had been to hit the emergency stop.

He dropped from the bar and grabbed a towel, scrubbing it over his face as he tried to erase the vision of her steamed eyes going wide with confusion…and disappointment. He was a fucking V-tease. Great. Freaking