Chapter 4 - Nikki
When Nikki’s eyes peeled open, she shot straight up, head swiveling. She didn’t know this room. She had never seen it before in her life. Where was she, and why was she here?
After that initial panicked moment, everything came flooding back.
The walk back from the library, the street along the woods, someone grabbing her from behind and pinning her against him.
A lump formed in her throat, and a chill crept over her as she remembered Lucas pinning her down, the feel of rope on her skin, just how close she had been to being dragged back to captivity and a life she had thought she had escaped for good.
A lump formed in her throat, and she had to stop herself from trembling.
It’s over, she told herself. You’re safe. Nothing happened.
But it almost had, and what was more, Lucas was still out there. What was to stop him from attacking her again?
As that panic began to creep in, her fingers grasped the comforter.
The texture was unfamiliar but soft. Her thumb brushed against it, feeling the weight of the fabric.
She used it as a touchstone, a way to ground herself while the panic continued to flicker through her.
She stayed there, staring up at the ceiling, until that panic began to ebb and she could think straight.
It took longer than she cared to admit, but eventually, her heart rate slowed, and that image of Lucas pinning her down, the feel of his knee between her shoulder blades, evaporated, replaced by the warmth of the covers and the gentle sound of the HVAC kicking on.
Once she had managed to quell her panic, she climbed out of bed, wincing at the aches and pains all over her body from the night before.
A spot on her head felt tender, and when she prodded it gently, she could feel a large lump.
She shuddered, that feeling of dread and fear threatening to overwhelm her once again.
After a moment, she managed to start moving again.
She cracked the door open, peering down the empty hall.
She could hear something that sounded like the clatter of pans down below, someone moving around.
Jasper. Why that thought made her heart pound faster, and her stomach squirm, she didn’t want to think about just then. After one more moment, she stepped out and began to follow the sounds down the stairs.
The tantalizing smells of bacon and homemade waffles wafted toward her from the kitchen.
Her stomach growled at the scent. When she rounded the corner into the kitchen, she saw Jasper over a frying pan and heard the sizzle of cooking bacon.
A waffle maker was next to it, currently closed, a bowl half-filled with batter on one side, and a small stack of waffles next to it.
The waffle maker dinged. Jasper flipped one last piece of bacon before turning to the waffle maker, pulling it open, and extracting a perfect golden-brown waffle. Her stomach growled even louder.
As if he could hear it—and for all she knew, he could—Jasper turned.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hi. What’s all this?” She stepped further into the kitchen.
“I thought you might be hungry when you woke up,” he said. “So I fixed breakfast.”
“I can see that.”
What he couldn’t know was that he had made her favorite breakfast, the one she always ordered at the local diner whenever she had breakfast there.
“Sit,” he said, gesturing at the table with the hand not balancing a stack of waffles.
She did, and he placed the tower of waffles in the middle of the table, followed by a mound of bacon. A cup of coffee, cream, and sugar already mixed in, appeared in front of her a second later.
“Thank you,” she said. She took a sip of coffee. It was delicious, made exactly the way she liked it.
He sat down opposite her, spearing a waffle with his fork.
He left it untouched on his plate, though, his gaze intent on Nikki.
Heat flushed up her neck at the stare, and she felt her heart clench for the briefest of moments.
She took a sip of coffee, using the heat and the bite of slight bitterness to drag her away from whatever this moment was.
Jasper took a sip of his own coffee, still looking at her. “Do you mind if I ask you some more questions about last night?”
Nikki paused, holding half a strip of bacon up to her mouth. She hesitated for a moment, then lowered her hand.
“What is it that you want to know exactly?” she asked.
“Anything you can tell me,” Jasper said. “We didn’t interact much with Lucas. I don’t know much about him, and the more information we have, the better we can prepare for him.”
“Right.” She gnawed the inside of her cheek. “Um, I don’t know how useful I’ll be.”
“I think you’re probably more useful than you realize,” Jasper said.
He used his fork to cut into his waffle.
Syrup dribbled out from the indentations and onto the plate.
He kept his attention focused on her. “Why don’t you start with why he targeted you?
” His expression darkened, looking dangerous.
“Because, based on the fact that he came prepared, I doubt it was a random attack.”
She thought back to the rope and had to suppress a shiver. She swallowed, still feeling pinned by his gaze.
“What do you know about him already?” she asked.
Jasper tapped a piece of bacon against his plate while he considered. “I know he was Sier’s second-in-command. Seemed like a real piece of work. I know that he had a big hand in rounding up the women for slaves. He seems like he’s a similar flavor to Sier.”
“Sometimes I thought Lucas was worse, in a way,” she said.
“He was ambitious and power-hungry. I always thought that if Sier hadn’t died, he would have tried to take over at some point.
He never had the sort of power that he wanted—that much was clear.
He tried to take that out on us by giving us stupid, petty orders and things like that. ”
Jasper stared at her intently, and she tried not to glance away even as heat began to prickle over her skin.
What was it about him that made her so flustered?
Was it the way he watched her, like he was hyper-focused on every little detail and every tiny movement she made?
Or simply because the intensity of that stare made her feel like she was under a microscope?
“What happened last night, exactly?” he asked.
She swallowed. The half-eaten piece of bacon she’d been twirling in her hand dropped onto the plate.
“I was walking down the road, and he grabbed me from behind,” she said. “I tried to fight him off, and I almost got away. But then I realized who it was and …” She trailed off. Her eyes narrowed, and frustration rippled through her. “I froze. You saw the rest.”
“I’m just sorry I didn’t get there sooner,” he snarled. Then, before she could figure out how to respond to that, he added, “Why did you freeze?” His voice was curious instead of accusatory.
“Does it matter?” she asked, unable to look at him, too angry with herself, and too embarrassed to look at him.
“I think it does,” he said. “Because if we know, it’s easier to work around. It’s something to work on.”
She swallowed, staring down at the half-eaten waffle, trying to scrounge up the words.
“It’s hard to explain,” she finally confessed.
“But I was always more afraid of him than I ever was with Sier. Sier might have been a creep and a terrible person, but he didn’t take a special interest in me over the other girls. ”
“And Lucas did?” he asked.
She gnawed the inside of her cheek, poking at the waffle, watching the syrup in the divots shift sluggishly with the motion.
“He always seemed sort of fixated on me,” she said. Embarrassed, as if it were somehow her fault, she glanced away.
“Fixated, how?”
“He paid more attention to me than the others. He would find excuses to touch me. He liked insulting me, too. Calling me names and telling me how pathetic I am. He didn’t do it with the other slaves.
” She swallowed. “One time, he started pulling me away from the other slaves to take me somewhere private. The only reason he stopped was that Alpha Sier came by before he got the chance.”
Jasper hadn’t taken his eyes from her, but she didn’t miss the way he was white-knuckling his fork. Her skin crawled at the almost murderous expression on his face. She nearly recoiled, but she managed to stay in her seat.
He’s upset because he had to come to my rescue, she thought. I couldn’t protect myself even with his training, and he had to save me because I was too weak and incapable of doing it on my own.
“I should have killed him when I had the chance,” he growled.
She wasn’t sure what she had been expecting, but it hadn’t been that. This time, she did rock back in her seat a little, taken aback by the conviction and sincerity in his words. There wasn’t a hint of bravado or empty threats in those words.
“You sound like this is personal for you,” she said.
He blinked, almost surprised, then glanced away. At first, she thought he wouldn’t respond, but then she saw that he was mulling over what he wanted to say.
“If there’s one thing I hate,” he said, staring down at his plate, “it’s cowards who prey on women. They’re the lowest of the low.”
She didn’t say anything, but studied him, taking in the bristling rage, his stiff posture, the hard set of his shoulders.
She sensed there was a story there, but she was too afraid to ask about it.
It felt too personal, like simply asking what it was that upset him so much would breach some sort of unspoken contract.
“Thank you for saving me,” she finally said. “If it weren’t for you …” She trailed off again, unable to voice what they both knew would have happened had Jasper not stepped in. It was a miracle he had been walking by when he did.
“There’s no need to thank me,” he said. “I didn’t get there fast enough.”