Page 15 of Hunted

This time Michelangela flinched at the nickname. It was the one her friends called her, the people she loved most. Hearing it from his mouth—in that soft, wild tone—brought back too many memories.

Her stomach lurched, and she set down the half sandwich in her hand.

You happened to me, she wanted to say. You stole my heart, and then chewed it up and spit it out.

Out loud she just said, “Life happened to me. You know—that fairy tale you mentioned? Only we’re still in the part where the princess is alone out in the wilderness, learning life lessons.”

He kept his eyes on her, and his chest rose in a deep breath. Regret? Frustration? Trying to keep himself from losing his temper and stabbing her?

Finally he reached over and laid his hand on her wrist. “Eat,” he said gently.

This time his touch wasn’t a burning brand. His fingers were warm, like a campfire on a cold night, and the warmth stole up her arm and down into her chest, into her belly. The knot in her stomach unclenched.

She was still hungry, but the hunger didn’t hurt anymore. She picked up the sandwich and started eating again.

She heard him give a little growl of satisfaction.

He shouldn’t get too excited. She wasn’t in his power, and this wasn’t over.

But Gunn had more moves to make. Apparently, his plan was to soften her up and hope she’d hand him the antidote in a sentimental rush of Stockholm Syndrome.

After the sandwiches, he offered her a shower, which she decided to accept. It was going to take all her strength and determination to get out of here, and she knew from experience that being clean and not smelling like filth did wonders for your morale. Also getting to pee with no one watching.

He uncuffed her from the table and showed her into an obviously unused bedroom with an attached bath, and left her to it. He’d likely spend her shower time tearing her gear apart. Good luck with that.

Gunn did, in fact, spend the time in his office tearing through her gear, after he locked the bedroom door so she couldn’t escape. He searched pockets, pinched seams—unfortunately, there weren’t that many places to look.

She only carried a small flat backpack attached to her heavy-duty combat vest. The rest of her gear fit in the vest’s multiple pockets. Besides that there was just a utility belt and a holster for her sidearm.

According to Boomer, all that somehow disappeared when she went wolf, and reappeared when she Changed back to human. Some kind of new Enforcer magic? Gunn would give a lot to get his hands on that. Coming out of wolf form naked and unarmed was a major logistics issue that shifter ops teams constantly had to deal with.

But there was no chance of that, since he couldn’t even get a damn antidote out of her. It was maddening.

He could still hear the water running in Mikey’s bathroom, so he picked up the private line and buzzed Thanatos’s house. The guys called it the Big House—and the reference to prison was not coincidental.

It was the place you ended up after things went to shit, and if you’d really fucked up, rumor was you didn’t come back.

It was answered by Thanatos’s assistant. An expert pilot and a former lieutenant in a drug cartel, he always answered Thanatos’s phone—day or night, 24/7. He apparently didn’t sleep, or even break to take a crap. At least, not without his phone.

His name was Sugar, from his cocaine dealing days. It was not an endearment.

As usual, there were no friendly preliminaries. “Gunn,” was all he said.

“I have a sitrep for Thanatos,” Gunn told him.

“I’ll put you through.”

“I want to talk to him face to face.”

Silence.

“Tell him I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

Going straight to Thanatos with a request to bring Mikey into the mission was an all or nothing move. Hell, it was desperate. But he had to try—before Thanatos found out who Mikey really was.

Because once he knew, that 1% chance of a ‘yes’ was going to turn to 0%.

And then Gunn was going to have to make some difficult fucking choices.