Taking Back Sunday Read Free Page B

They would travel with an entourage that he trained while he stayed behind to man the fortress.
    For those years and through all that separation, the firestorm in him never abated for even a moment. If anything, knowing she was so close made it impossible for him to function. She was toxic, and the poison’s effects were unassailable. He was in perpetual torture. When it became clear that Bernadette could do nothing to alleviate what ailed him, he resigned his charge and left the witch and her preternatural plaything.
    Whatever she was, whatever her purpose, and whatever chaos she was bound to unleash was out of his hands. He returned to his pack in Alaska and reclaimed his position as their lead tracker. When the Pastophori of Iset set a bounty on her head for recapture, the pack Alpha didn’t hesitate to take the lucrative job, nor did Cyrus hesitate to jump at the chance to recapture her. Stephen, his pack Alpha, put the deal in place and gave Cyrus the green light to confront her again. That was over two years ago.
    Peaches stirred on his chest and snatched the picture from Cyrus’ hand. Her pert, pink tips stood at attention, and the firm mounds hardly moved as she lay back beside him.
    “Who’s this?” she asked. “This your girl?”
    “Nope,” he answered, grabbing the photograph and tossing it aside on the carpet by where they lay. From the other room, he heard Angel and Peaches’ friend starting up again. They were at the friend’s apartment, and Angel and she had taken the bedroom while Cyrus and his date had taken residence on the living room floor.
    “So, who’s the girl?” she asked again. This time turning back to him, and taking a cue from the couple behind closed doors, Peaches took his semi-hard cock in her hand and stroked, first softly, then harder.
    Cyrus laid his head back, closing his eyes. His mind wandered back to the picture of Sunday as a grown woman. He imagined opening her up like a cabinet of curiosities. His erection grew full in Peaches’ hand as his wolf rose to the surface. Rather than ignore it, he let Peaches stroke him through it, as the photograph of Sunday in her sundress built in his mind. Tattooed flowers draped over her shoulder and cascaded down her arm. He hadn’t seen them yet, but he’d learned that gladiolas covered her leg. Always, in his memories, like in the photograph, her gaze hovered just beyond him. Cyrus found himself wondering, not for the first time, what it would be like to look straight into the honey saucers of her eyes.
    Peaches leaned into his ear and whispered, “Tell me about her.”
    “She’s a woman I used to know.” The timbre of his voice rumbled through his chest.
    “Why do you carry around a picture of her?” Peaches purred.
    Cyrus hesitated as he delved into the cavern of his memory to a place deep inside where the Incarnate lived. He gritted his teeth as he pictured her, at fourteen, covered in bruises and dried blood as he carried her from Bernadette’s torture chamber. For years, he could believe that what his pack had done had been just, but that faith was misplaced. The Incarnate was a monster, but delivering a child into weeks of torture was a fucking atrocity.
    A confluence of self-hatred and hate for the Incarnate brewed in him.
    “I ran into her a while ago while I was on a job,” Cyrus answered. “At first, I didn’t recognize her. She had to have been in her early twenties, and I hadn’t seen her since she was a kid.”
    He gasped as Peaches found her rhythm, keeping pace with the feelings evoked by the vision of Sunday.
    “She was older. But it was the same face. And she was… fucking beautiful .” His breath caught in his throat again, and he growled. Opening his eyes and looking into Peaches’, his erection softened, and she forced his head back.
    “Keep telling me, babe,” she said. “I like what it’s doing to you.”
    When Peaches combed through his hair, Cyrus imagined Sunday’s caress. His cock jerked