Chapter 8 #4
The energies in this place are shifting with the addition of the Runaways. There can be no doubt about it. Not all of the changes will be controllable. In some ways, they will change us the way we hope to change them.
The young men Nicky brought with her are already mingling with the younger she-wolves. They are mutually excited, I believe.
“I know what you’re doing.”
Nicky is looking at me balefully, though some of the edge of her annoyance is taken off by the fact she has her hand in a sling to keep her from banging it on the world at large. Hard to look fearsome when you’re a broken little creature.
“What am I doing, whelp?”
“You’re trying to make everybody get on together so I lose influence over my pack, and then I have to give into you. You’re going to make it so I don’t have anybody just for me anymore.”
“Your friends are enjoying themselves,” I say, not denying the charge. “You could enjoy yourself too, if you liked.”
“Really? What can I do?”
“I can show you the bedroom.”
She gives me a look and then rolls her eyes. “I see how it is.”
“You need rest,” I say. “I’m not going to mate you again right now. Not until we’ve talked about why you don’t want to shift.”
“I don’t want to talk about that.”
“I understand that,” I reply. “And you do not have to. Not yet.”
“Because you have me where you want me now, and so you don’t care what I do. Because you think you have me under control. But you’re wrong. You don’t have me under control. You don’t have me under anything.”
Her rebellion is so intense. She will not, even for a moment, relax enough to enjoy anything. Even if I were to send her off to play with her little friends, she wouldn’t enjoy it. It’s better she is taken off to nap.
“Do you want to be reckoned with?”
“No,” she mutters.
But the answer is yes. Her pack need to be welcomed. She needs something else from me. Something I shied away from giving her entirely before now. I’ve spanked her ass, I’ve mated her. I’ve given her my seed and there’s no doubt I’ve claimed her.
But she doesn’t feel held. She doesn’t feel seen. She doesn’t feel like she’s mine, and I can see that written all over her face.
“Come with me,” I say, making my voice more gentle. “I don’t want to hurt you. I want to spend time with you.”
She comes reluctantly.
I take her up to my suite. The alpha suite is a beautiful place.
It was architecturally designed by a very intelligent woman whose understanding of space and aesthetics are paramount.
It is made in such a way that it blends into the environment.
Wood walls give the place a cozy, midcentury charm.
The bed is large and the spread is green, and so is the carpet.
The hues are picked to mimic the space around us.
Most of the furniture is low slung and understated.
She sits on the very large bed in my very large room with floor-to-ceiling windows that look out over the forest and the plains and the mountains, and she just looks small.
“Hey, what are you doing?”
The inquiry is a little silly given I have wrapped my arms around her, picked her up, and am holding her to my chest. She fights me at first, then weakens against me as I keep her where I want her to be.
“I am hugging you, little one. Haven’t you ever been hugged before?”
“Of course I’ve been hugged before,” she mutters against my chest.
“Recently?”
“Yes.”
“By who?”
“By my friends.”
“It’s not the same as being embraced by your mate, is it.”
“How would you know? Got a lot of mates, do you?” There’s a delightful hint of spite in her response. She really wants me to fight with her, pin her down, beat her ass, make this easy for her.
That’s not on my agenda tonight. Tonight, she talks to me.
“Tell me more about you,” I say, setting her back on the bed. “You’re something of a mystery. Your ID doesn’t check out past a certain point. Nicky Love isn’t a real name.”
“It’s as real as Rex Regent,” she snorts. “Maybe more.”
“Where did you grow up?”
“In a small town,” she says. “I forget where. Doesn’t matter anymore. I don’t think anybody lives there now. It was one of those places that had a mine that ran dry and then everyone left and the people who didn’t sorta rotted with the houses.”
“Poetic,” I note.
“Accurate,” she says. “Ever seen an old lady with wood rot?”
She is, of course, fucking with me.
“Do you remember the name of the town?”
“I don’t remember the name of the state,” she says. “We packed up and traveled a lot when I was still small. I grew up in the bed of a truck, really. My dad would pick up odd jobs along the way.”
“How did you go to school?”
“I didn’t.”
“How did you learn to read and write?”
“Bold of you to make the assumption I can do either,” she says.
She’s joking, but she’s also keeping me away from the truth of her life.
I knew she’d have some hardship in her past. Every stray does.
But I am starting to sense something more than simple poverty.
I can almost scent something in the room, copper and iron.
Interesting.
“I didn’t grow up rich like you. But I got along. My dad taught me how to look after myself, and other people taught me what I needed to know from time to time. I’m good. I don’t need anybody to look after me.”
That last statement is such an inaccurate lie. I am looking at a young woman with a smashed hand and exhaustion from fighting her own instincts. I let the fact that I did not grow up rich slide. This isn’t about arguing with her. I want to understand her. I want to be here for her.
“You need to be looked after, Nicola.”
“Don’t call me that,” she hisses.
“It’s your name, isn’t it?”
“No. It’s Nicky. That’s what’s on my birth certificate. That’s how I file my taxes.” She scowls at me. “What do you even want? I thought we were going to fuck?”
I laugh. I can’t imagine a scenario in which I wouldn’t want to have sex with her, but she’s managed to find one. If mating with her means agreeing she doesn’t need to be cared for, I won’t mate with her.
“We’re not going to mate now, but you’re right that I do need to handle you,” I say.
“What’s that supposed to mean? More of you whipping my ass? You’re gonna beat me because I broke my hand and gave you some shit here and in the car, because you’ve got thin skin and you want to be in control, and I won’t let you be in control of me.”
I sit down in a chair and beckon her over.
“Come here,” I say, crooking my forefinger at her.
She gives me an angry look, but she gets up and comes over. There’s some part of her that craves the punishment she thinks I am going to give her. She’ll come to me to get spanked, to feel the heat and the pain and the arousal that inevitably follows even when she is sore.
I take her by the hips and draw her between my legs.
“Kneel for me,” I intone softly, but firmly.
I don’t expect her to obey me, and she doesn’t. She resists until I extend my leg, wrap it around the back of her knees, and bring her down in a gentle, controlled way with my hands on her hips.
She looks up at me with a pout. “That wasn’t fair,” she says.
But there’s a flush on her cheeks and a gleam in her eyes. She likes this. She is enjoying being put in her place. I am glad. This will happen to her often from now on.
I lift one hand and brush some of her hair out of her eyes. I want full eye contact with her. When she lowers her head, I lift it with my fingers under her chin.
“You are special, Nicky. You deserve to be cared for. I am sorry I let you run. I thought I was giving you the freedom you needed. But it’s really just the solitude you’ve become accustomed to. I am looking forward to getting to know every inch of your mind, as much as your body.”
* * *
Nicky
Oh, god. This is awful. I feel hot and awkward and I can’t help but squirm. I can’t escape him. His thumb is on my chin, directing my gaze, I am blocked in between his legs, trapped on my knees and he is saying… I can’t believe it… nice things to me.
“You matter,” he says, making it worse with every word. “And I notice you. You are more than a biological impulse. You are my fated mate. We are destined to know one another in ways we have never known anyone before.”
I start to feel lightheaded. He catches it immediately.
“Breathe for me,” he says. “Nice and deep. Hold it a moment. Yes. Good. Let it go…”
“I wanna get up,” I say.
It’s not really what I mean. I want to get away. Far away. It was so much easier when he was a man who walked into my office, whipped my ass so hard my boys drew guns on him, then seduced and mated me later.
“I bet you do,” he says. “But you’re going to stay right here with me.”
I start to whine after a moment or two, and squirm besides. He moves his hands back to my hips and clamps them there tightly.
“Stay.”
He delivers the order firmly and warmly. There’s no escaping this inspection and there are a thousand filthy painful things I’d rather him to do me in this moment.
“Please,” I whine.
“Please what?” He smiles the question at me. The bastard knows exactly what he is doing.
“Let me go.”
“Oh, sweetheart, I will never let you go.”
Something in my stomach flips. He says it with such casual intensity. When I think about it, it makes total sense. I am his mate. Fate has bound us together. He has claimed me.
I don’t know why I thought he would let me go. Maybe because he let me run the first time we were together. Now I think he has been toying with me this entire time. Seeing what I will do with the limited choices he allows me to make before drawing me back in for this internal inspection.
Then I remember I am not helpless.
He has his weaknesses too. He has a desire for me that drives him inexorably. He might be pretending to be intellectually drawn to me, to want to plumb my emotional depths, but I know, deep down, it is his cock he wants to sink inside me.
I lunge forward and snap my teeth at his neck. I catch flesh, bite it hard.