Bailey Bradford - Southwestern Shifters 06 - Reverence Read Free

truly got shocked, or jolted by simply feeling the werewolf’s skin with his fingertips. That kind of thinking was crazy, and Harley wasn’t giving in to it.
He needed to get out of there, away from all the creepy-ass werewolves who could kill him with a swipe of a paw. Harley knew that was all it was, his mind melting under all the weird shit that’d happened to him lately. He hadn’t felt a shock, or arousal, or smelt anything other than the burn of antiseptic and cleaners.
And yet, turning away from that silent form almost hurt, and that scared Harley more than anything else did. He didn’t even care if he woke everyone else up in the damned place, he ran hell-bent for his room. He was never leaving it again unless he got to go home.
Chapter One
    There came a point where you just had to either accept certain facts, like you were batshit crazy, or reality wasn’t what you’d always believed it to be. Harley Johansen was still trying to figure out which of those truths applied to his situation. He was leaning unwillingly towards the latter and, honestly, he thought he’d have preferred to just be insane. Somehow it wouldn’t be as scary as having to accept the existence of supernatural things.
    Like werewolves. Freakish things, they changed from people, contorting and twisting around until they were beasts. Harley had seen it happen numerous times since he’d been abducted from his crappy little apartment in Sedona weeks ago. Granted, it’d been men who had grabbed him then. His own fault there, for being a total slut. He’d been lonely and, as he often did in such a case, he’d gone out and brought home someone he’d hoped would help chase off the sense of isolation, of being nothing in the world.
    What a fucking idiot! Harley smacked his hand against his forehead. Again. There ought to be a dent in his skull from him doing that. Maybe if he did it often enough, he’d jar something loose in there, like some previously hidden stash of common sense. He’d been warned before that bringing strangers home was a stupid, dangerous thing to do. Well, duh! Hadn’t one of the people who warned him of that been a fucking werewolf himself?
    Not that Harley had known his trick a month or so ago was a freak. Alex had seemed really hot. Lost, too, like Harley often felt. And the guy had fucked Harley like a dream. Then he’d left the next morning and Harley had gone on with his life. He hadn’t mooned over Alex, but had remembered the sex pretty fondly. Alex had done nothing to get him involved in the mess he was now in, nothing to be exposed to an altering of his reality that had nearly cost him his sanity. Maybe still would, because sometimes he just wanted to curl up in a ball and rock and cry, like—
    “No!” Harley wrapped his arms around himself and huddled bent in the chair. He wouldn’t give up and let the monsters that had him win. Granted, they wanted him to believe they were the good monsters, as opposed to the ones that had taken him in the first place. But as far as Harley was concerned, they were all fucking psychotic monsters, unnatural creatures that weren’t man or beast exactly, but a frightening blend of both.
    As if thinking about them brought them to him—and it might have, Harley had no idea what powers the damnable things might possess—there was a sharp rap on his door. The fear Harley lived with every day spiked higher, right on up to slap his temper awake. Being scared often made him angry, and now was no exception.
    Harley uncrossed his arms and pushed up from the chair with enough force that the chair tipped over. He almost felt bad—it was a very nice chair and he hoped he hadn’t broken it. Then again, the rooms he was kept in were nice, period. Warm, homey, tastefully decorated—if his apartment in Sedona had looked like this he’d have never left, or at least not often.
    Unfortunately the beauty and comfort of his current dwelling had nothing to do with why he didn’t leave it.