Savage Instinct (7 page)

Her lips tightened.  “I’m getting a little tired of you
telling me what I owe you.  I did strike you with my car, but as far as I can
see the worst of your injuries were caused by a stab wound not by my car.  For
all I know, you instigated your attack and deserved it.  And I will thank you
to stop telling me what
I
need to do for
you
.”  Nydia threw the
vegetable clippings in the composting bowl at the end of the counter, trying to
curb her annoyance with him.

“Well I can guarantee that if you don’t feed me some meat
I’m going to get weaker and I won’t be able to get out of here.  The more all-veggie
meals you serve the more likely I’m to remain on this couch unable to care for
myself forever.” Aiden flopped backwards and covered his eyes with his arm.

Nydia adjusted her soup to a simmer and retreated to her
bedroom.  She slammed the door, taking her anger out on the poor, inanimate
object instead of whacking Aiden in the head with a spoon.  She sat on her bed,
willing herself to calm down from their silly argument.  Why did he get her
goad so much?

He seemed to have his finger on the pulse of her annoyance.

She didn’t have to put up with his demanding ways and she
wasn’t going to give in and fetch for him like a well-trained dog.  If he was
used to getting everything he wanted when he wanted it then he best return to
whomever he had waiting for him.

She didn’t have a problem going and getting him something
to eat, but she was damned if she’d allow him to think he could order her
around and get what he wanted.  If he’d just asked instead of going caveman on
her, she would have offered to do so.

“Stupid jerk.  All men really are jerks,” she said.  She
fished her phone out of her pocket and saw she had two missed calls from the
night before.

Richard.

“Screw you too, Richard,” she ground out, checking to make
sure her phone was still on silent.  The last thing she needed was to talk to
Richard.

She placed her head in her hands and thought how much her
life had changed in 24 hours.  Richard was gone and she had the house guest
from hell on her sofa.

“I’m hungry Nydia,” Aiden called from the living room,
sounding loud through her door.  “I can’t heal without some food.”

Nydia huffed.

“I’m hurting and I can’t take any aspirin on an empty stomach,
Nydia.  Have a heart, please?  I’m sorry for being such an asshole!”

Nydia began to soften as she sat there and listened to his pleading
calls.

Damn her soft-hearted ways!

It took every ounce of determination to stay seated on the
bed and not go in there to him.  She intended to show him who was in control in
this house, and that she wasn’t a servant to be ordered to do his bidding.

Aiden needed to learn some limits, and she was just the
person to put him in his place.

Chapter
Seven

Gnawing guilt put Nydia’s nerves on edge.  As much as
Richard might have complained about her being an uptight bitch, she’d always
been tender-hearted for the suffering of others.  It was one reason she enjoyed
working with people at the spa, making them feel better and easing their
tensions.

She didn’t enjoy the idea of Aiden being hungry or not
liking the food she fixed.  She’d always gone out of her way to pick up special
cuts of meat to sear on the stovetop or in the oven for Richard.  If Aiden had
had a little more patience, she could have done the same for him.

The man was infuriating, and the fact that he seemed to
like putting her through a guilt trip was more annoying than anything else.  He
seemed to know what button to push to bring out her worst side.

Through the AC vents, she could smell the scent of her soup
simmering to completion in the kitchen.  She knew she needed to check on it,
but she hoped it wouldn’t scorch while she was trying to outwait Aiden.

Once he finally stopped calling for her, she began to wonder
if he was okay.

Nydia worried her bottom lip with her teeth.

She’d spent the last hour thinking about the argument, and
different zingers she could have used against him in the heat of the moment.

Her way of eating had evolved over time, and it was
something she was quite used to.  Aiden, however, had a valid point about his
need for meat.

He wasn’t going to starve without it the way he thought he
would, and she would have made certain that he received ample mounts of the
necessary vitamins, minerals, and nutrients that he required to heal.

But as a vegetarian in a meat loving world, especially the
South, she knew what it was like to be served foods you didn’t like, didn’t
want, and weren’t accustomed to eating.  She also realized that should she
force him to eat a strictly vegetarian diet for a few days when he wasn’t
accustomed to them she could cause him to have problems with his digestive
system.

Problems with the digestive system could cause him to be
weak and take a longer amount of time to heal and get off her couch.  Getting
that pain in the ass off her couch and out of her house was her main goal.

She’d come to the conclusion that she should have never
been dumb enough to bring a wounded stranger into her home.  She should have
just done the logical thing and dumped him off at the hospital and called the
cops.

But she’d brought the headache home with her, and now she was
stuck with him.

Nydia was as stubborn as she was tall though, and she had
been trying to wait in her room to see if he would fall asleep before she went
to the store.  She wasn’t relishing the idea of having to tell him that she had
conceded.  He was so arrogant that he would think that meant he won.

Just thinking about the smug look on his face when she
showed up with meat was almost enough to make her spite herself and not do it.

“Damn all men to hell,” she muttered.

Nydia eased over to the door and opened it just enough to
allow her to see the couch.

Aiden was lying on his side facing the back of the couch.  Taking
a step out and closer, she watched the rise and fall of his chest and realized he’d
fallen asleep.

Nydia closed the door as silently as she opened it.

She went over to the bureau and opened the middle drawer.  She
pulled out a pair of shorts and a tee shirt to change into.  She opened the top
drawer and got a bra and a fresh pair of panties.  She quickly changed, slipped
on a pair of leather sandals, and then went into the bathroom to put on her
makeup and fix her hair in a sleek ponytail with a clip adorned with a bling
butterfly.

Satisfied at her appearance, she retrieved her purse and
crept out for the door.  She knew she needed to pick up more tape and gauze
before coming back, and made mental note to make a list on her phone when she
got in the car.

As she entered the main room, she turned and looked at the
sleeping form on her couch. She really didn’t want to leave him here, alone, in
her house.  She didn’t see where she had much choice in the matter though.  He
could barely walk, and was still half naked.  She couldn’t take him to a store
looking the way he did.

She’d have to remember to pick up a pack of t-shirts and
underwear for him too.  He looked like a comfortable large in her eyes.

Nydia stopped by the kitchen and turned off her soup then
looked at the white board hanging on her refrigerator.  She picked up the
marker and in large print wrote “gone to store. Be back soon.”  She didn’t want
Aiden to wake up and wonder where she was, or wander outside and fall.  Maybe
he would stay put until she returned.

Or, if she was lucky, maybe he’d be gone by the time she
got back.

As she was leaving the house Spot, her cat, was trying to
get in.

“Oh, you poor thing!” she whispered.  “Mama forgot to let
you in last night.”

She’d have to remember to feed her when she got back.  Nydia
reached down and petted the cat on her head and let her go inside before she
gently eased the door closed.

Walking down the front porch steps and heading for her car,
Nydia stopped in her tracks when she saw the huge dent on the front hood and
blood smeared all over the bumper.

“Lord, they’re going to think I killed someone with this
thing,” she muttered to herself.  Moving down the walkway onto the concrete
pad, she peered down at the damage.

She couldn’t drive into town with all of that blood on her
car.  It was bound to raise some suspicions.

“Deer,” she said, thinking to herself.  Unless there’d been
another hit and run reported, she’d probably get away with that excuse.

She’d have to head to a car wash first thing.

Her unexpected guest was piling up all sorts of costs for
her.

Nydia would have to take her car to the shop in a few days and
have the dent pulled out.  It was too late to get that done today.  Most shops
were jammed up right before Friday and closed down on the weekend.

Another expense.  Her insurance might go up.

“Dammit,” she said.  She waved her hands in the air.  “I
just won’t report it.”

Opening the door, she slid into her seat and realized he’d on
the upholstery of the passenger seat.  “Great.  That’s just brilliant.  Yeah, I
hit a deer and then put him in the car.  Everyone will believe me.”

The phone buzzed as it vibrated.  Nydia picked it up and
saw yet another call from Richard.  Why hadn’t that asshole gotten the message
yet that she didn’t want to talk to him?  She was done and that was that. 
Plus, she had bigger issues on her mind at the moment—like not going to jail.

Nydia planted her face against the steering wheel, gripping
it with tense hands.  Lies were piling up and she hadn’t even left the driveway
yet!

She supposed he couldn’t help messing up the pristine
interior of her car, but it was annoying just the same.  Aiden had crashed
through her well-ordered world.

Now she’d have to get the car detailed and deal with looks
from the staff over a bloody hood and interior.

If she could keep them from reporting her to the police as
a murderer, she’d consider herself a master storyteller.

***

Aiden woke with a rumbling in his stomach.  His heightened
senses told him immediately that Nydia was no longer in the house.  He sat up
and glanced around.  The little house was quiet.  He saw the note left on the
whiteboard and smiled just a little.

Then he got to thinking that the note might simply be for
his benefit.  She may have gone to tell the authorities on him.  He hoped his
insinuations that she would be charged with a crime would stop her from doing
that, but he couldn’t be certain that it would.

He really didn’t need the authorities asking a lot of
questions.  So far he had been able to avoid the ones that Nydia had about the
incident by using the guilt she felt for hitting him.

He’d told the truth about wanting to avoid the cops.  Their
involvement tended to make a bad situation worse—something he needed to avoid
at the moment.

Shape shifters, like other creatures that man didn’t truly
understand, did everything they could to remain off the radar of the government.

It went without saying that normal people probably couldn’t
handle the reality that shape-shifters, vampires, fairies, goblins, and other
supernatural beings lived amongst them.

They’d lived in the shadows for eternity, revealing
themselves to humans only on the rare occasions that it was necessary, or when
a human got in their way and managed to get either killed or infected.

Aiden had been infected so long ago, he’d long since
forgotten what year it had happened.  Sometime in the 80s when their town
wasn’t even a dot on the map, and certainly well before the internet and cell
phones.

He expected he’d live to see other radical changes to his
environment.

If Lee Riker and his gang didn’t kill him first.

Aiden thought about all of the news he had heard on
television where people accused each other of being prejudiced and how so many
people swore that they weren’t prejudiced against others who were different.

Aiden snickered.  If they only knew what dwelled beneath
the surface of their society, they’d all band together to hate the
supernaturals.

At least they might not be hating on various ethnicities
and genders anymore.

Maybe it’d bring about world peace.

“Yeah, right,” he muttered.

Aiden stood and flexed his muscles.  He bent from side to
side to limber himself back up a little from sleeping too long on the couch and
pretending to be injured.

He’d had a close call with Nydia wanting to check his
wound.  He’d managed to open the scar left by the silver blade before she could
see it was healed.

Maintaining his façade was growing wearisome.  He hoped he
could make contact with his brethren soon so he could stop the charade and get
free of this woman.

He left the sanctity of the living room and went into the
kitchen.  The soup smelled good despite his reservations.  He stirred it with a
spoon and dripped the contents back into the pot, watching as the chunks plopped
and spattered.

“Bleh!  Vegetables,” he said.  He was a wolf, dammit. 
Wolves needed meat!

He just hoped he’d won out with Nydia and she was getting
him some real food.  The thought that she might have caved in gave him a
superiority complex and he strutted to the pantry to look inside it again.

The contents really were pathetic and limited.

He frowned.  No wonder the girl was so skinny.  Who
wouldn’t be living off of all this rabbit food?

Aiden continued his snooping in the living area of the small
home.

He’d been amused by her trying to hide her dildo from him. 
The flush she’d gotten all over her body had made her eyes look wild and
fevered.  He imagined she looked much the same when getting hot and bothered
and ready to fuck.

Thinking about it made his cock get hard.

He frowned again and rubbed himself.  Fucking a human
wasn’t on the agenda, least of all one like Nydia.  The girl was a little too
OCD to be with someone like him.  He didn’t consider himself a slob, but he was
a man and a little beastly at times.