Taming the Heart (Creatures of the Night Book 2) by Tisha Wilson Page B

under his own control.
    “Put on some clothes and meet me in the kitchen,” he commanded before he picked up the rest of his clothes and headed back towards the kitchen.
    She stared at that beautiful retreating back and was stunned for a moment. He was drop dead gorgeous with golden hair a mile long. What had she expected, that he would just fall on her and ravish her? He could probably pick up any woman in any bar in the US and have his way with her, but then why had he kidnapped her? Why had she called out to him? Why had he come to her? Why had she been able to wrap her legs around him?
    Why why why why why? There were so many questions to be answered. Was she still dreaming? Had the whole damn thing been a dream? She pinched herself and flinched. It wasn’t a dream. She then looked at her arm. It was… healed. There was no sign that she had ever been bitten. There was no sign that it had been stitched. In fact she didn’t even feel the pain of it at all.
    She moved the fingers of the formerly broken arm easily. Before she had too much time to dwell on the impossible, like her legs healing, and her having shot the man’s head nearly clean off for it to have healed nearly the next moment, she sat up. It was too much to think about. She grabbed the strap of her overnight bag and drug it up to herself from where it sat on the floor. She pulled on some underwear and jeans with a t-shirt that said I love kittens.
    She combed the many tangles from her hair, shocked at how easily the comb passed through it. Not once had it been this easy for her to comb her wavy sometimes curly hair. She lifted the ends and looked at them. They were not split. They were healthy. They were almost… vibrant. She shook the thought away. It was not possible. So she was having a good hair day for the first time in nearly thirty years. It was about time. She pulled it into a ponytail and then reached for her chair.
    Apparently her kidnapper had left it within reaching distance for her, which was… nice of him. She used her upper body to pull herself in to the chair before she looked down at her legs. They seemed to be… healthier than she remembered. It had been so long since she’d actually walked on them that they had previously been little more than skeletal.
    She went through her therapy and sat in the tub meant to keep circulation flowing into the limbs, but she had been told nine years ago that there was no hope that she would ever walk again. Looking at her legs now, however… they looked like real legs. She stared at them long and hard, willing them to move again. All she felt was the phantom legs which kicked about freely while her real legs stayed still.
    She sighed before she could allow the devastating crush to fall completely on her. If she remembered the dream where she had run free and wild, she might drive herself insane, if she hadn’t already gone off that deep end. But she hadn’t imagined it. She had used her legs to wrap around him this morning. She wheeled herself towards the area of the large living room that was the kitchen. It was a simple table with four chairs, a fridge, and a stove with a few shelves.
    All the appliances were black and the table was an old plank table. She looked around at the room more fully than she had yesterday. There were no pictures on the log walls. There were no flowers on the marble slab that was the coffee table. The marble was a brown color like earth. It was quite beautiful by itself without any adornment. There were heavy plaid drapes on the windows. They were brown and an earthy green. There were a few shelves set into the wall as an entertainment center. He had a flat screen TV and…
    “Is that an old record player?” she asked spying the old fashioned thing.
    It had to be an antique. He grunted in response and she noticed what he was doing at last. He was trying to dislodge some corn beef hash from a can into a waiting skillet. She blinked in surprise. He couldn’t be cooking