Free Love Bites (Bitten Book 4) by C.C. Wood

released her.
    Ricki stared up at me, her brown eyes dark and huge on her pale face as she massaged her wrists.
    Feeling like a huge asshole, I rubbed the back of my neck, the headache from earlier now raging behind my eyes. “Look, I know you’re pissed off at me for bringing you here, but I did it to keep you safe. Conner and Lex agreed that it would be a good idea if we kept the five of you separated to make it more difficult for The Faction to locate you.”
    Like a wisp of black smoke, her cat wandered into the room and leapt up onto the bed. Ricki reached down and lifted the animal to her chest, stroking her back as she stared moodily out the window across the room.
    I sighed. “I’m making dinner. If you’re hungry, it’ll be ready in twenty minutes.” I turned to leave, but stopped by the door. “I’m sorry I lost my temper. I’m not great at the whole…talking stuff. I shouldn’t have—” I took a deep breath. “Anyway, I’m sorry.”
    Without looking back, I left the room, went back downstairs, and turned the burner on. While the pan heated back up, I finished slicing vegetables then stirred the chicken in the pan as it started to sizzle. A sharp spike of pain pierced my left eye, so I rummaged around in the cabinets until I found a bottle of ibuprofen with two pills rattling around in the bottom. Tossing them into my mouth, I grabbed the beer I opened earlier and washed the capsules down.
    The cat wandered into the kitchen and drank daintily from her water bowl. She disappeared into the laundry room, hopefully to use the litter box I’d stuck in there a couple of hours ago.
    I heard Ricki walking down the stairs a few seconds before her scent drifted into the kitchen. When she hesitated in the doorway, I kept my back to her and stirred the sliced vegetables in with the chicken. After I stirred the rice, I turned to face Ricki.
    She stood in the doorway, her hands clasped in front of her and her eyes rimmed in pink. The tip of her nose was red, as though she’d been crying. Seeing the signs of her distress, I felt like a huge dickhead. So she made a mistake. I’d made too many in the last couple of weeks myself.
    “I’m really sorry, Calder,” she apologized. “I didn’t realize that there would be children here or that I would be putting anyone else in danger.”
    “I know. I shouldn’t have exploded like that.”
    I watched in horror as her eyes welled with more tears, which she roughly wiped away with her fingertips.
    “Please don’t cry,” I begged.
    “I can’t—” Her voice broke and she cleared her throat before she continued. “I can’t stand the thought of someone else getting hurt because of me.”
    She looked so small and fragile, standing in the doorway alone. I couldn’t keep my distance any longer. I crossed the kitchen and wrapped my arms around her, tucking her head against my shoulder.
    “No one will get hurt. I promise.”
    Ricki sniffled. “You can’t promise that,” she retorted weakly.
    I sighed because she was right. “Okay, I seriously doubt that anyone will get hurt because you made a couple of phone calls from my house. The phone is destroyed now and can no longer be traced.”
    “I think we should wrap the broken bits in foil and bury it,” she muttered. “Just to be on the safe side.”
    I had to smile. It seemed that not all of her spunk had deserted her. “If you insist.”
    I tried not to tense as her arms lifted slowly to wrap around my waist and she gave me more of her weight as she inched closer. I didn’t want to scare her away now that it seemed we had reached a tentative sort of truce.
    Ricki lifted her face from my shoulder. “I think we need to talk.” Her eyes drifted over my shoulder. “But first you should probably stop dinner from burning.”
    “Shit.”
    After seeing her tears, it was nice to hear her laugh, even if she was laughing at me.
    I rescued dinner and we ate at the kitchen table. While she wasn’t the talkative