MINE 2 Read Free Page A

adequate time to seek an outlet for them after I tend to the needs of my woman.
    “About that other matter.”
    “No, we’ll discuss it when I’ve had her seen to and resting comfortably.”
    Frank nods and stays silent for the rest of the journey, his unsettling eyes never straying from my light burden and the paleness of her skin. As I relax back and shift her closer to the crook of my neck, I close my eyes and plot my next course, laying it all out as methodically as my vengeance-filled mind will allow.
    I have no use for those who oppose me, never have, so for Wesley Munro…well, let’s just say that as far as I’m concerned it’s become a personal affront to me that the man breathes the same air as my little family.
    For daring to take what is mine I’d already decided to make him suffer. For hurting her, though, I have an altogether different set of standards. For this he will not only suffer but beg for mercy.
    I will make him cry for every tiny scratch he put on her delicate skin, will make him scream for every shiver that wracked her body as I pulled her close and willed my heat into her frozen limbs.
    Every mark and bruise that he has given her will be visited upon him two fold. By my own hand, and then… I may not kill him like I wish to, I’m no murderer, but I will ensure that he lives the rest of his miserable days regretting that he dared to hurt my Ashley.
    My thoughts are brutal and hard and so far from the civilized man I show to the world, but as I pull her closer and stare out of the window I can’t find the will to give a damn.
    Wesley Munro will hurt for hurting my family.
    ***
    Ash
    “Lucian, seriously, I’m totally fine. See? I can get out of bed without my limbs falling off. For God’s sake! Put me down, you ninny!”
    I’m yelling, something that makes me feel shitty due to the fact that he’d saved me, but I can’t help it. It’s been three days since I’d woken in our bed, and the man has yet to let me so much as lift a fork to feed myself.
    I love that he’s been so attentive and caring, and yeah, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to hamming it up a little just to have him fawning all over me a bit longer.
    But even I can’t stay in bed this long and I freaking well say so, have said so continuously since yesterday, when the doctor came by to give me the all clear.
    “You’ve been through an ordeal. You need your rest,” he snarls, sweeping me up only to lay me gently back on the bed I’ve come to hate.
    “But Lucian—”
    “No! You damn near had hypothermia, and you’ve had a massive shock. You need to give yourself time to heal,” he grinds out, pinning me to the bed with a hand over my heaving chest. “Really, love, I can’t tell you how awful you looked—”
    “Gee, thanks. If you’re looking to get laid anytime soon, you should keep going. The flattery is almost killing me.”
    His mouth kicks up in the first grin I’ve seen since waking, and I do what any hot-blooded female in my position would do when pinned beneath a man this dominantly sexy.
    I stare open-mouthed and drink it all in with a long line of drool streaming down my chin.
    “You’re twisting my words. Deliberately,” he chides, leaning down to plant a gentle kiss on the skin between my eyebrows. “You know I didn’t mean you looked ugly. You looked half insane with fright and cold.”
    I snort and look away as a blush heats my cheeks.
    “Don’t remind me of my overactive imagination.”
    I’d confessed to running from not only an animal but a fictional ghost, needing to explain my little biting attack after seeing the bloody evidence of my teeth marring his sculpted chest.
    Instead of being annoyed—or amused—by my ludicrous imaginings and the resultant hysterical attack on his person, he’d gone all stony silence before yelling at me that it wasn’t amusing.
    Seems my man doesn’t like the thought of me running scared and almost braining myself on a tree, even if I’d done it