Unchained (Dark Shifter Romance) (6 page)

The cold splash of water of her face was enough to chase the last traces of sleep from her system. Alone in the small cabin bathroom, Lacey washed her face. Her scalp felt exposed in a way that she'd never felt before, making her shiver. She wished that the small bathroom had had a mirror, but she supposed that whoever had built it hadn't been planning for style. She ran her hands through the hacked off spiky mess that had been her hair, trying to picture how it looked. The sensation was strange, but not unpleasant.

Through the doorway, kept open by the chain leading through the doorway, she could hear Jack out on the porch outside of the cabin. The old wooden boards creaked under his weight, his boots making solid sounds as he paced its narrow length.

At the thought of him, his proximity to her, she felt her heart kick up a notch.

What had happened the first night, her strange compulsion to trust him and submit to him… Well, it'd definitely
not
happened the same way twice.
God!
She'd been with guys before, had her share of boyfriends. None of what had happened last night should have been new to her.

But it had. With a shiver, she remembered pinning Jack down, her body above his. At that moment she'd felt in complete command in a way she'd never experienced before. She hadn't doubted it, despite the size advantage he had over her, despite his obvious strength— none of that had mattered. In that one moment, she’d had no doubt that she could bend him to her will. The feeling had been hot, electric. It had filled her up from head to toe, like a wild force of nature.

She scrubbed her fingers through her short hair again. Whatever that had been, it had been a hell of a trip.

But even in the cold light of a new day, the strange feeling wasn't entirely gone. After her first submissive hypnosis experience, she had woken up the next day knowing that she could trust this man to not hurt her. The feeling of trust had persisted outside of that first burst of acceptance.

Now, after her display of… dominance? Aggression? She wasn't sure. But this morning, she no longer felt trapped in this other man's power.

In fact, she remembered the way that he'd looked up at her, those amazing blue eyes drinking every inch of her in, desperate for her,
craving
her. In some way, she was no longer sure which of them held the other one captive.

"You done in there?"

Scrubbing away the last trace of water from her face, Lacey left the bathroom and went back into the main room of the cabin. Jack was in the doorway, his rucksack on his back. With a spike of dismay, she realised that he hadn't asked her to put her boots on, to follow him whenever he was clearly about to go. Thought what made her uneasy.

"I put what's left of the trail mix on the table," Jack explained. "I’m going to head into town, see if I can't find something to eat one of the abandoned houses. You wait here."

"Take me with you."

His eyes narrowed, and there was no trace of the desire that he'd broadcast so clearly the night before. "There may be shifters still in town. You got away once, but that was an accident. If they see you, they won't let it happen again.”

"But there’s something different between then and now," Lacey said, crossing the cabin between them. She came to a halt a foot away from him, her chin coming up short. "I have you to protect me, don't I?"

There was no trace of humour in his face. "Don't play games. I'm trying to keep you hidden out here, so don't push our luck. They even get a trace that you haven't been washed out to God knows where, and they’ll come for you."

"Will they kill me?"

He scowled. "No. Colt wants you alive."

She crossed her arms. "Will they kill
you
?"

"I don't think so." He looked away from her then, his gaze fixing into nothing. "They wanted to toy with me."

Toy with him? That was new. Lacey chewed the inside of her lip. She'd have to try to get him to follow up on that at some stage, but later. She had things to deal with here and now. "So I'm not the one that has anything to fear from them, then," she said.

She walked back to her bed, sliding her feet into the boots that she'd left by its side. If he simply chose to leave then and there, she would have no recourse to that, still chained to the post. Despite that, he didn't seem inclined to simply turn his back on her.

"If they catch you, you’re going to wish that you were dead."

"Yeah, because being chained to a bed out here is so much better.” She stood up, and tossed her head as if to shake her hair over her shoulder, the reflex ingrained after so many years. Embarrassed at the gesture, she shook her head. "I have something I need to do in town. It's the reason I came here."

She expected him to order her back to the bed, or to even display some of that commanding strength she'd been witness to, the first time he tried to make her obey him. She forced herself to breathe slowly, her chest rising and falling in even breaths.

She was used to things like that, back in the real world. She had shot out of Greenvale as soon as possible, landing herself a shitty job in a shitty city. The only way she'd been able to make that work, to hold her head high and not be taken advantage of, had been to pretend to be tougher than she was. Fake it ‘til you make it, they said, and she had done exactly that.

Now, though... she wasn't faking. Something had changed. She felt… stronger, somehow. Like for the first time in her life, she wasn't on the back foot-- she was the one calling the shots.

Jack's face was implacable as he stared her down, but then, instead of ordering her back to the bed, he simply nodded once, short and sharp.

"No talking," he warned. "You do as I say, and do as I do. It's a large area, and his pack isn't huge. We might run into one, but if we keep our eyes and ears open, we should be able to give them the slip.”

"Won't they be looking for us?"

Jack shook his head. "Me, they know I'll come back. Colt knows I’ve got a bone to pick with him, and if I don't? Hell, he’ll probably be even happier if I disappear with my tail between my legs."

"And me?" she asked, even though she wasn't sure that she wanted to hear the answer.

"Getting washed down the river like that… He might think you're dead." Jack's eyes dropped from her face down to the curve of her shoulder. Lacey let out a shiver as he eyed the wound that was visible even under the shirt she was wearing, poking up to mar the pale column of her throat. "No, he could think you're dead, but I think he knows you’re alive."

Lacey raised a hand to the bite wound, as if trying to shield it from Colt’s senses, connected to her in some way even across the open air. "He thinks he can track me down."

Jack shook his head. "Worse," he said, looking her in the eyes again. "He thinks he won't have too.”

The breeze picked up, a gust of wind setting all the leaves to rustling. The pit of despair that had been reopened in Lacey's stomach was brushed aside as Jack lifted his head to the breeze, scenting the air. "We should get going. The wind is blowing just right."

"Fine."

Lacey followed him out into the woods, picking her way behind him clumsily in her second-hand boots.

Jack had seemed imposing when it had been the two of them alone in the small cabin. Now, out in the woods, and without the fear of her mysterious captive to cloud her judgement, Lacey looked him over appreciatively as they made their way through the forest.

God, why couldn't she have seen a man like him when she was back at the bar? She would have been all over that… though, she supposed, if a man like looking like that had shown up at her work, she would have had to pull the other girls who worked there off of him first.

The mental image made her smile grimly. The thought was ridiculous, even in the privacy of her own mind. Men like Jack didn't come to bars like the one she worked out. They didn't talk to girls like her, and they didn't come back home with her. He was from a world she'd never encountered before, let alone been invited into…

But she was here now wasn't she? Whether she wanted to or not, Colt had thrown her into this new world, full of beasts that thought like men and men that could turn into beasts. She shivered in the cool forest breeze.

The two of them picked their way through the woods, scoping out the properties that butted up against the wild forest trees. Jack held a hand up, silently indicating for her to stop, and the two of them stood there for a while in the shade of the trees, looking at the property in front of them. Jack bent his head toward Lacey, close enough that his lips were nearly brushing her cheek. "You know this place?" he asked, his voice a whisper.

Lacey shook her head. "I knew a few people who lived over here, but I never went to their houses." She pointed at the property to the side of them, an unassuming little house. "Mr Jones lived there, I'm pretty sure. He was a gun nut, the whole school knew. We might be able to pick up some weaponry there…"

Jack shook his head decisively. "No need for guns," he said. "Shifters never really took a fancy to them. Anyone who comes after us will come as wolves. I feel more comfortable going after them the same way."

Lacey shrugged. Jack may have talked a big game, but the memory of Colt’s burning amber eyes was seared into her memory, and she didn't have that raw physical power in her own defence. Jack had said she was going to turn into a wolf, same as him, but at the moment, she really would have preferred something with a little more firepower to it

They stood there for a moment, Jack testing the air and listening intently, and then he nodded once. He let her down out of the woods and across the nearest property’s back yard, making his way silently around the trampoline, the children's toys, the abandoned deck furniture.

Lacey's heart rose to her throat. The yard looked completely normal, as if the family that lived there were still inside, sleeping in on a lazy Sunday morning. Her stomach clenched as she thought about the inhabitants, and what she would find inside.

She hadn't said a word, but Jack's head snapped around towards her, as if he had sensed her discomfort and unease on the wind. He jerked his head down, towards the patio steps. "Stay here," he murmured. "You can be my lookout.”

Lacey let out a weak smile, and he went around the corner of the house, out of view. They both knew that there was nothing she could have sensed that he would not have, but the lie had been welcome. She sat down heavily on the steps of the abandoned porch, fighting the urge to wrap her arms around herself like a scared child.

This place looked so peaceful and normal, but she'd seen the bodies in town. Her mind drifted inevitably to thoughts of Jenny, and her family house. Had this same scene repeated itself on her family house?

Jack re-emerged from the house, leaning in the doorway with a box of crackers and a jar of peanut butter under one arm. "Will you eat this?"

Lacey stared up at him, slightly incredulously. "Do I get a choice?"

Jack looked down at what he was holding, then shook his head, chuckling. "I guess not, huh? This was all that I could find in the house that hadn't gone off yet.”

Lacey looked at the supplies and bit her lip, thinking. "How much longer are we planning to stay out there?" she asked.

"Full moon is in a couple of days," he said.

"Then we’re going to need a little more than PB and crackers," she said. "You didn't exactly stock up your cabin, did you?"

Jack passed where she sat on the steps, and started heading towards the next door neighbours. Glancing around, Lacey quickly followed at his heels.

"It wasn't my cabin," he said in answer to her. “I just needed a place to keep you safe."

Coming to the fence that separated the two properties, Jack knelt down and offered his hand to give Lacey a leg up. Primly, Lacey stepped into his offered hands, and then slung her legs awkwardly over the fence. Jack soon followed her in one swift bound, swinging himself over the barrier as if it were little more than a step.

“Well, I’d say you’ve done an okay job with that so far.” She shrugged. “Apart from chaining me up, giving me what has to be a totally awful haircut, hypnotising me with weird werewolf shit, and the threat of malnutrition...”

Jack shook his head, chuckling softly. His expression was strangely unguarded, and Lacey couldn't help but stare. Out in the warm sunlight, with small birds flitting about and chirping, it was easy to imagine that this was just any ordinary stolen moment from an average day, that they were out in Jack's backyard, chatting like regular people.

But then Jack climbed the next porch and, placing his hands on the door knob, heaved. There was a muffled crack of the door knob ripping out of the frame, and he opened it to the house beyond. The illusion was broken, and Lacey was back to being lost and alone, swept up in the thrall of this strange man while monsters lurked in the town around them. It had been a silly daydream to have, but its loss still hurt her in some way she couldn't quite define. She followed Jack up into the house, trailing him to the kitchen, and tried not to look at the pictures of a happy family that adorned the walls.

The two of them wordlessly picked over the kitchen, discarding stale bread and fruit that had begun to go mouldy. They stuffed what unspoiled supplies that they could find into Jack's rucksack, until they had enough to last them the coming few days. Lacey pursed her lips as she looked at the food. It wouldn't exactly make the table of a five-star Michelin restaurant, but it would do for now.