I-“
Isabella held her hand up and waved it. “Whoa, wait a minute there, buddy. What do you mean wheelchair?”
“Wow, there is just so much you don’t know,” Joshua muttered, sounding exhausted. “Okay, long story short.
We were invaded by a Master, a vampire leader. She tried to get Dad to change her into a Pyte so that she could have true immortality and could walk in the daylight, but Dad and Chris turned the tables on her.
There was a little shoot out, Chris got shot a few times and landed his ass in a wheelchair, but thanks to his Sentinel blood, operations and a donation of blood or two from another Sentinel Chris was able to walk again.
He was paralyzed for less than a year. There’s more to it, but I’m sure Chris can tell you if he wants to.”
“Okay,” Isabella said numbly.
“Anyway, we were in town and I was sitting on Chris’
lap,” he said, pausing when her eyebrows once again headed north, “um, I was just a kid then,” he explained quickly.
“All right then,” she mumbled.
“He was spinning around on two wheels when his mother walked in the pharmacy. She wouldn’t even look at him,” Joshua said through clenched teeth. “He acted like he didn’t care, but I could tell he was pissed. The thing that really pissed me off was when he tried to wheel himself out of the pharmacy and his wheelchair got caught on one of those racks they kept by the door and blocked the exit. That bitch tried to shove his chair out of the way so that she could leave as she muttered ‘fucking cripple’,” Joshua bit out acidly, his hands clenched into fists.
“Oh my god,” Isabella whispered, shocked that any parent could be that cold. Okay, granted before she heard that she thought her parents were pretty damn cold. “What did Chris do?” she found herself asking.
Joshua shrugged. “He was too busy restraining me to do anything.”
“Restraining you?”
“I may have kicked her a few times,” he said, smiling sheepishly.
“Good,” she said, wishing she could kick the woman a few times. “Did she ever apologize?”
“No,” came the hard answer from the doorway, “but at least she’s gone back to calling me a f**king bastard.”
Chapter 19
“I’m sorry, Chris. I didn’t mean to-” Joshua started to say, but Chris waved the apology off.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, knowing his brother had only been trying to help. He didn’t really care if she knew that his mother was a bitch or not. The whole town knew and she would have known within a day if she stuck around, but that didn’t mean he liked the look of pity on her face as she looked up at him.
He hated pity.
“Did you clean her up?” he asked, switching the subject.
“Yeah, they’re shallow and should be healed in a day or two,” Joshua said, collecting his first aid kit as he stood up. “You’ll probably be a little sore, but that’s nothing a hot soak won’t fix,” Joshua said, giving Izzy a warm smile that she easily returned.
“Thank you, Joshua,” she said, getting up. As soon as Joshua was out of the room the smile was replaced with a glare in his direction.
“Not happy to see me I take it?” he said, closing the bedroom door in case she started to read him the riot act. The last thing he needed was for his mate to wake up his grandmother and little brother and draw their attention.
“No, I’m not, but I guess I don’t have much choice in the matter, now do I?” she asked as she sat on the edge of the bed, glaring at him.
“Nope,” he said, making the word pop as he casually strolled around the guest room, checking to make sure that none of the previous guests left anything behind that could be used as a weapon. Not that she’d know how to use one if they had, he thought with an inward groan.
Christ, even his sister Jill would have been at least put up a fight. She would have made sure at least one of them was singing soprano before she allowed herself to be captured, but not his little mate. She hadn’t put much of a fight up about anything. Hell, the first time Joshua had been strung upside down in the foyer he’d at least tried to bitch slap everyone.
Granted, most of his hits missed, but that probably had something to do with the fact that his seventeen year old brother had been too drunk to walk at that moment.
If he hadn’t been drunk out of his mind he probably would have remembered to stay away for two weeks to give his body a chance to get rid of every trace of alcohol so that their father and Madison wouldn’t kill him.
“Are you going to answer my questions now?” she demanded.
“Ask away,” he said, looking out the second floor window and immediately dismissing it as an escape route. If she had a problem with the ten foot drop from the first floor then there was no way she was going to chance a fall at this distance.
“What is a Sentinel? Why do you think I’m one? And why do keep acting like I’m yours?” she asked in a rush and he was actually relieved that she hadn’t brought up that little kiss in the foyer.
It was one more f**k up he could add to the last twentyfour hours. If he’d had his choice in mates it wouldn’t have been her, but that didn’t change the fact that his body craved her. Giving into it the way he had a little while ago had been a colossal f**k up on his part.
Touching her, tasting her had only made his body crave her more. He’d known at the time that he was f**king up, but hadn’t been able to stop himself. She had him hard and aching for her in a way that he’d been helpless to fight against. Stopping himself from running his hands over her br**sts and between her legs to see how wet she was for him had been one of the hardest things he’d ever done, but the knowledge that she allowed another man to touch her was like getting his ass dropped in a pool of ice water.
Before he found out who and what he was he’d tried to save face by messing with a few girls. He’d done everything but f**k them and although he hadn’t enjoyed it he made damn sure that he was good at it.
Although it scared him that he couldn’t get hard for any of them even when they stroked or licked him he’d been secretly relieved that he couldn’t do more than get them off.
He didn’t want to be like his mother who f**ked anything and damn well didn’t want to be like any of the men that came sniffing around her and allowed themselves to be led around by their dicks. Finding out that he had a mate out there who wouldn’t feel sexual attraction for anyone else, someone that was going through what he went through made it easier to deal with that little problem. As soon as he found out about his mate he felt as though he belonged to someone and had been more than happy to give up dating the local girls to save face. He didn’t care that people in town gossiped about his lack of a love life. He was a married man, something he never thought he’d ever achieve given his less than humble beginnings.