My body answered, remembering his smell, the weight of his body against mine, and the unimaginable pleasure we'd shared between us. One of my legs lifted to wrap around him, getting his cock closer to where I needed him. Kaden’s hands tightened around my shoulders and I gasped, thinking he might take me right there against the wreckage of our car, with the bodies of our enemies at our feet. We were still high from our victory and the thrill of battle, the lust for blood and sex urging us on. I wanted nothing more than to feel Kaden’s cock inside me, to reassure myself that he was still alive and that he was mine.
But then his hands shifted position and he shoved me back. "Ayla, we can't do this."
"You're right, we should at least go into the trees so no one will see us if they drive past." I couldn't think why else he would stop this when we both obviously wanted it so much. My nipples were hard in the cool night air, straining toward Kaden, along with every other inch of me too, and he definitely noticed.
"No." He looked away and raked a hand through his hair. "You're still mated to someone else. It doesn't matter that he's your brother—you're still not mine."
His words were like a sharp blow to my stomach. I actually stepped back, so hurt by them, and it took me a second to realize why—because in my head, Kaden was mine, and I was his, even without a mate bond between us. But why would I expect him to feel the same? Especially when I technically belonged to someone else?
Kaden leaned into the car and rooted around inside until he emerged with some clothes. I watched as he threw on pants and a t-shirt in quick succession. Then he turned back to the car to find his shoes, which he dragged out of the wreckage.
“Get dressed,” he said when he turned to find me still naked.
I clenched my jaw as I grabbed clothes out of the bag and put them on. I understood why he denied me, but it didn’t make his rejection any easier to stomach. While Kaden salvaged anything else he could and put it all in his backpack, I found my shoes beside a dead wolf, where they'd fallen off while I'd shifted. The rest of the clothes I'd been wearing had been torn to shreds when I shifted, but at least these had survived. I checked the car again, and found my burner phone miraculously intact, along with my lip gloss. Thank the goddess for small favors.
As soon as I finished dressing, Kaden started down the road, heading in the direction we'd been driving, with his bag slung over his shoulder. I followed after him, leaving the car and the dead wolves for the Taurus pack to deal with.
They were allies of the Leo pack. I sighed heavily as I realized Jordan must have changed his mind about letting me go and had sent them after me. Kaden was right—Jordan didn't care about me at all, except as a prize to be won or a tool to be used. Brother or not, I was done defending him. If the only way out of this was to kill him, so be it.
Chapter Sixteen
We walked in silence for about an hour. For once, I didn’t try to break it. My emotions were too tangled up, and I was too busy trying to figure them out to even think of trying to get Kaden to talk. Not a single car passed while we were alongside the road, and our only company was the waning moon hovering over us. Finally, I was drawn out of my thoughts by the glimmer of lights on the horizon.
“Is that a town?" I asked.
Kaden still didn’t look over at me, but I saw him frown as he considered the question. “Looks like it. We’ll stop and rest there.”
“Oh, thank god,” I said. My whole body ached now that the last of the adrenaline fading. My wolf healing was taking care of it, but I was starving and exhausted and tired of traveling. We'd been driving or walking since dawn, not to mention in a bad car accident and then a battle for our lives, and all I wanted was to lie down for a while.
"How did the Taurus find us?" I asked, suddenly worried they might be able to follow us here too. "Was it the mate bond?"
"I don't think so," Kaden replied. "They probably tracked down the car somehow. I should have changed it out when we split up from the others."
When we reached the town limits, I nearly sighed in relief. There wasn't much to look at, just a sleepy little pit stop in the mountains off the side of the road. The buildings looked like something out of an old Western movie, but they had a gas station at least. Hopefully, they had somewhere where we could rest for the night—and shower. And forget that this day ever happened.
"There's a motel or something this way," Kaden said, looking at his phone. "I think. Reception is terrible out here."