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

Did she really know how to use them? If she did, did it mean anything? Knowing my life was in danger, I reckoned being able to defend myself trumped finding out if I was a morally corrupt criminal or not.

“Do any of them catch your eye?”

“This one, I guess.” I slid my hand over the dark wood handle of an older rifle more interesting to me than the modern weapons.

“30-30.” Nik took it off the rack. “This was my first hunting rifle. If it’s familiar, you most likely learned to shoot it with your dad or grandpa, someone who would’ve taken you out hunting or target shooting.”

The rather unassuming rifle had caught my eye in a room full of bigger and bolder weapons. Knowing it could be a link to my childhood intrigued me. Things like popular culture and understanding foreign words, bits of trivia and general knowledge had been coming easier to me. I still had no desire for her memories to return. But unlike the more recent Thea I feared knowing, this gun may’ve represented the childhood version. The part of her I was interested in learning more about.

“Any others?” Nik took the rifle off the wall and set it on the worktable in the middle of the room.

I stroked my fingertips over a fierce-looking one. But Nik tsk-tsked. “Can’t let you play with that one. We affectionately refer to it as a head eraser and I’ve seen the way you look at Coop’s head.”

“That does sound appealing.”

Bins upon bins of various containers lined the shelves, labeled with various calibers and types of ammunition. He must’ve sensed me taking it all in, calculating the sheer volume of potential damage, because he rushed to explain again about his father’s influence. “I’m prepared for the apocalypse, remember?”

I pulled out a clear-sided drawer and held up one of the many slim darts topped with frilly pink tassels. “Are there going to be clowns to kill during the apocalypse as well?”

He laughed heartily. “Fucking frightening, but no, I don’t hunt clowns. Those go with the one up there.” He pointed to a strange, slender gun.

“And what is it for?”

“Tranquilizing bears.”

My eyes widened as I remembered the bear he’d mentioned seeing earlier and how common they were here. “You can do that?”

“I have lots of training hours on it.”

“Our military is involved in bear warfare now?”

“More like my dad’s training program.”

“Oh, right, bears…” I drawled, adding a conspiratorial wink, “with big feet.”

Nik narrowed his eyes. “We helped the wildlife department tag black bears,” he scoffed. “But now that you mention it, Dad’s motives might not have been purely veterinary. Shit.”

He closed the drawer full of clown darts, as if it would put an end to the conversation.

I smirked. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

“Careful, your feet are looking pretty big right now. Lemme see ‘em,” he demanded as he leaned down to check my feet. Hooking his arm behind my knees, he swept me up. The ground disappeared so fast I yelped in shock. Lifting my oversized booted feet higher into the air, he tilted me backward. “Oh, no. Those are some big feet, baby. Not good.”

“I don’t have big feet. I swear! These aren’t my boots! My feet are tiny,” I gasped out through laughs. Still cradled in his arms, I ducked my face into the warm crook of his neck and shook my head. “How can you make me laugh right now?”

He looked down at me with hooded eyes and warm weight filled my belly. I knew that look. Craved that look. Got drunk off it. His shallow breathing deepened. “How can you turn me on all the damn time?”

Green eyes locked dangerously with mine. His bottom lip disappeared into his mouth, returning dampened as his breathing hitched. The smell of nighttime in these mountains—cedar, campfire smoke, and snow—permeated his hair. But it was the warm scent of his skin, the blend only belonging to him, making me buzz with need. Strong arms banded tighter around me, still cradling me off the ground—not wanting to set me down…to let me go…to stop.

When he hadn’t acted on the heady impulses I easily read in his fiery eyes, I asked, “Let me guess? There are cameras down here too.”

Nik swallowed. Pivoting to turn me to the corner by the door, he lifted his chin to the camera. “Probably sent an alert to Coop’s phone when we came in.”

“He’s watching us, isn’t he?”

The camera pivoted left and then right and then left again, as if it were a head shaking no.

“And listening.” Nik flipped Coop off. “This room is mic’d for sound.”

“It’s the middle of the night. Do you guys ever sleep?”

“Hazard of the job. You either learn to sleep through anything or to live without it. Put me in a hammock on a C-17 cargo plane and I’d be out so cold you could probably do surgery on me.”

I tilted my head to whisper in his ear, “Give me your shirt.”

“What?”

“T-shirt. Now.”

He set me down and reached back, hauling his shirt off in one motion. As he handed it to me, I brought it to my nose, taking a deep whiff of his amazing scent mingling with cotton and laundry soap. Then I tossed it over the security camera.

Nik quirked his lips as my eyes danced across his glorious inked chest. His abs flexed under my appraisal.

He leaned in and whispered into my ear, “I like where you’re going with this.” With a little nip on my lobe, he added, “But there’s still audio.”

Placing my hands on his hips, I backed Nik against the center worktable and went up on my tiptoes to whisper in his ear. “Let’s see how well you play the Quiet Game.”

Chapter Thirty-One

Nik’s Adam’s apple popped up the thick column of his throat and his neck torqued from side to side. My mouth fell open seeing the reddened marks where it met with his shoulder. “What happened?”

“You happened.”

My fingertips questioningly stroked over the bruises. “I did this to you?”

His low voice