Breaking Free

by Layla Nash

  “I don’t know much,” he said. Nick stayed on the other side of the small room, still almost within reach, and gestured around at the cabin. “I was looking for you. A couple days ago, Kara showed me this place so I could clean up and help if you returned. Your pack—everyone thinks you’re dead. That’s what the other hyenas said.”

  “Dead?” I lurched to my feet. “That’s bullshit. Cassidy was right there. I floated away, but I definitely didn’t die.”

  “I know,” Nick said. “But no one could find you. The bears think that BadCreek got you.”

  “And yet no one is out there,” I said, remembering the silence in the forest. My knees wobbled and I sat heavily on the bed. The cackle gave me up as dead in a matter of days. They didn’t even bother to search. And the rest of the shifters... My so-called friends... They left me to my fate. Only Nick kept watch. What would I have done if he hadn’t been out there? I shook my head, trying to process the betrayal. Unbelievable. “They didn’t look for me? Why couldn’t they find me?”

  “You disappeared into thin air,” Nick said. “No trail, no tracks. You just disappeared. BadCreek started hunting through the area as well, so they didn’t have free rein. I kept looking because I... well, because I had to.”

  He had to. I couldn’t stop shaking. “The djinn took me out of there; he wanted to make a deal. It felt like I was only gone an hour, and yet I get back here and... everyone gave up on me. They walked away. My friends, my pack... What does that say about me, Nick, that I disappeared and no one noticed?”

  “We noticed.” Nick moved forward to sit by me on the bed, though he gave me as much space as the narrow frame allowed. “I noticed. Eloise is out of her mind, apparently. They won’t let her out of the mansion because they’re afraid she’ll start freezing people. And half your hyenas tried to rebel, apparently, before your successor took over. People wanted to search for you, but there were no trails.”

  My successor? I frowned at him, distracted by the way he touched my knee. “What successor?”

  “Cassidy something. She took over.”

  I’d never named a successor. And certainly not Cass. She wasn’t well-suited to being queen—she was too ruthless, and she held grudges. Much like my mother. And we’d all seen how that played out for the cackle. I tried to stand. “She can’t be queen. It’s not right. I’ll go back, and—“

  I made it two steps before my vision turned red and the hyena took over as rage brewed in my chest. That bitch. She’d probably plotted all of it somehow. Dragged me into the raid to make sure she could take over—either leave me to be killed by BadCreek or kill me herself. My fist connected with the tree trunk and pain ignited in a blaze all down my arm, but I didn’t care. They didn’t bother to look for me. I disappeared out of my life in a blink and no one cared. I howled in fury and fought harder, wanting to break everything in the world. I searched for something else to knock over or splinter or just hurt, but my fist collided with something soft instead and I looked up, nose-to-nose with Nick.

  I growled at him, ready for a real fight as his hands squeezed my shoulders, but as I braced to knock him down and throw him over my shoulder, Nick leaned closer. His lips brushed mine in a glancing kiss, and I sucked in a breath. He couldn’t mean to—

  Nick growled back and then his mouth sealed to mine and I was drowning.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Nick

  She rose out of the forest like a ghost, and Nick feared that Lacey was just an apparition. He knew it was her, despite the hyena form. The wolf just knew. It felt like he could fly in that moment, as if he’d been made whole again. She lived.

  He didn’t like the wildness in her eyes or the scratches and scrapes marring her skin from running through the forest. Nick wanted to get her into the cabin as soon as possible, not just to protect her from the rest of the forest, but to have her all to himself. He wanted to get drunk on her scent, to revel in having her nearby. It hurt with a deep burn to leave her in the cabin as he gave her time to clean up and pull on the baggy sweats that concealed her glorious curves, but he relaxed back against the mass of branches so he could gaze up at the darkening sky. Patient. He had to be patient.

  That went out the window when she heard that her cousin became queen and called off the search, and Lacey began to destroy the cabin from the inside. He hated the pain in her, the break in her voice, and he hated every shifter in the city that lost faith that they could find her alive. Nick would help her punish all of them.

  If she didn’t bring the cabin down on top of them and destroy their only shelter. He did the only thing he could think of to distract her from tearing the structure apart, and it was something he’d been dying to do for months. He kissed her.

  She inhaled sharply but didn’t pull away. Nick slid his hand into her tangled hair, cradling her head, and deepened the kiss. Her lips were soft against his, gentle and giving, and he growled in anticipation as the wolf pushed for more. More. She made an answering noise and then she caught his head in her hands and dragged him closer. Their tongues tangled as Nick reached for her side, palm sliding under the T-shirt to her bare skin, and he nipped at her lip to encourage her.

  Lacey’s arm looped around his neck and suddenly she leaned back, dragging him on top of her on the bed. Her thighs parted in invitation, and Nick groaned as his hips settled closer to hers. God help him, he wanted her more than anything in the world. Lacey’s eyes fluttered closed and a hint of blood turned her lower lip red, a memory of his teeth, and she wiggled in his arms to drag the hem of her shirt up.

  And that made him pause. He wanted her enough to follow through, to spend the next week fucking like rabbits and wolves and hyenas and whatever animals they wanted, but something didn’t feel right. Her rage and fury seethed just below the surface, and as much as he enjoyed angry sex, he didn’t want that to be their first time together. She deserved more. Nick, breathing hard, broke the kiss and held himself over her. “Wait.”

  Her eyes snapped open and Lacey stared at him as if he were the stupidest fucking loser in the world—which was exactly how he felt. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I want you more than I have words for,” Nick said, and dipped his head to drag his teeth along the pure white column of her throat. The thin cotton sweatpants weren’t any match for his dick, and he let her feel that, too, until she arched her back and rubbed against him. He almost unloaded right in his pants, between the smooth roll of her hips and the sight of her full breasts testing the strength of the T-shirt. “But something’s up.”

  “I should say so,” she said, and her palm slid over his abs and into the sweats, wrapping around his dick until Nick groaned and cursed and his forehead dropped to rest on her shoulder. Fucking unbelievable. Lacey bit at his ear, hard enough to break the skin, and her words hissed in his ear as she stroked him. “You know you want me. Let’s just do this.”

  He couldn’t take it. He wasn’t a gentleman. Nick was never the good guy. He was always the asshole and the bad guy who loved and left and half the time called the chick “baby” and “sweetheart” because he couldn’t be bothered to remember her name. But Lacey. Lacey. She was different. He ground his teeth until he could swear half of them cracked, but he caught her hands and pinned her arms over her head after a very brief, very arousing struggle. Fuck. She actually liked it. She wanted to wrestle.

  Nick could hardly breathe, thinking of how easy it would be to shove his sweats down and her sweats down and then it would be a very short thrust into the warm clasp of her body and perfection...

  Being in the woods for a week must have driven him out of his fucking mind. Nick tried not to be distracted as Lacey wiggled her shoulders and her T-shirt rode up an inch at a time, in a temptation even a better man couldn’t have walked away from. Nick tried to look away but couldn’t drag his gaze from the smooth, soft flesh of her stomach. “Tell me why, Lacey.”

  “Tell you why, what?” A challenge lit her eyes, made them gold in bright flashes, and h
e wondered if the hyena took over. For once, his wolf took the back seat, ready to let Nick have his way. “I want to break something and tear the entire fucking city apart, and since I’m stuck in a cabin in the woods instead, I’ll settle for fucking you. What more do you need?”

  Her lip curled in a snarl, and it grew a little easier to control himself. It wasn’t about him. She wanted to use him to forget something, maybe to punish herself. She’d settle for him. He was too selfish to put up with that bullshit. When they fucked, Lacey would know she slept with him, and he’d be there for her. He could be as nasty and kinky as she could possibly want—and probably beyond what she thought she wanted—but the punishments would be a fucking turn-on, not some weird guilt and rage-induced game.

  “Say my name.” He locked eyes with her and didn’t look away. “You wanna fuck? Tell me why.”

  “I didn’t think you’d be into the sweet and clean stuff,” she said, but with a hint of nerves in the way she gulped for air. “Fine. Nick. I want to fuck, Nick, because I’m about to go out of my mind, Nick, and I can’t let the hyena take control again, Nick, and if I don’t do something, I’ll fly apart and never get the pieces back together. Okay? Is that good enough?”

  He wanted to say it was more than enough, that he’d be her stress relief any day, and that he looked forward to being used up and tossed aside.

  Except it wasn’t and he didn’t.

  Nick pinned her, hoping they’d be in the same position in the very near future but with far fewer clothes, and kissed the tip of her nose. “No.”

  “No?” Her expression would have been priceless if he hadn’t wanted to smack himself stupid for being out of his mind. “What the fuck do you mean, ‘no’?”

  “I mean,” he said, kissing her cheek, “that’s not good enough for me. I want more.” He kissed her other cheek, a ghost of a caress, since he knew she wanted a rough touch instead. “I want all of you. And not just for one angry roll in the hay.”

  Lacey gulped for air or composure or something, and her full lips parted. He waited for the sweet declaration of love, or a demand to be freed, or something, but instead she just smiled.

  He smiled back, taken in, and leaned to nuzzle behind her ear. She smelled amazing, all wild and passionate...

  Her legs locked around his middle and she lunged, throwing herself up and to the side enough that she almost gained the upper hand. Nick let her think she’d pinned him, even waited for the triumph in her expression, then used an old judo trick to flip them around until Lacey ended up face-down on the mattress with her hands behind her back. She growled in fury and bucked, trying to turn the tables, and Nick let his weight press her down until she squirmed and gasped for air. The T-shirt pulled at the neck and gave him the opportunity to kiss the soft spot on her shoulder where he really wanted to bite her. The wolf growled in anticipation. Soon.

  Lacey craned her neck to watch him over her shoulder, and she pushed her ass into his groin in invitation. “Come on, stud. You know you want to.”

  He squeezed her hip, imagining all the fun they could have, then sighed and released her. He got off the bed and hobbled the two steps to the only chair in the cabin, and flopped into it, his dick still making a tent out of the damn sweats. She stared at him from the bed, looking rumpled and a little lost, and finally said, “I seriously can’t believe you won’t have sex with me.”

  “That makes two of us.” He scrubbed his hands over his face and gestured at his lap. “Of course, if you still want to help me out, I wouldn’t say no...” And he waggled his eyebrows at her in a seductive invitation.

  Lacey bit her lower lip as she slid to the edge of the bed, and Nick’s heart jumped to his throat. Holy fucking shit, maybe she really would...

  Her hips swayed as she stepped over to him, leaning down to give him a look at her cleavage as she squeezed his thigh and let one hand drift up to brush against his cock. Nick groaned, reaching for her breasts, just as Lacey picked up the basin of wash water and dumped it in his lap. The cold water shocked through him and he jumped.

  She arched an eyebrow and leaned forward to whisper in his ear, “No one rejects me, sweetheart. No one.”

  He wanted to laugh and curse and drag her back to the bed to show her how he felt about that—and that the water did little to dampen his enthusiasm for how her ass filled out the sweatpants—but he gripped the arms of the chair and sighed. “You make me a better man, Lacey.”

  “That isn’t hard,” she said, then her gaze drifted back to his groin. “You should go outside and take care of that, because if we’re not going to fuck, we have some planning to do.”

  Nick smiled. “Sure you don’t want to watch?”

  She almost laughed, though her lips thinned at the last moment and she only looked disapproving. Nick winked and went to stand outside the cabin, imagining her soft curves and the gentle give of her hips when he pinned her to the bed as he stroked himself. Soon they’d get back to business. He’d woo her the right way and instead of a hate-fuck in the woods, they’d get to enjoy each other. He could take his time with her, explore every inch of her skin, taste every tender spot...

  Soon. Lacey Szdoka would know what it meant to be loved by him.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Lacey

  I wanted to be furious that he rejected me and refused to have sex, but part of me was also relieved he had better sense than I did. Which only made me more pissed off. How dare he be the reasonable one? He was supposed to be a meathead wolf, motivated by his dick and nothing more, and easily manipulated. And yet Nick walked away. I growled in irritation as lust settled heavy and low in my stomach. Rubbing against him had been the closest I’d gotten to getting off in months. Since... Well, since Cal died.

  That hit me like the bucket of ice water I’d hoped to throw on Nick. Cal.

  Nick was the opposite of my fiancé—all rough around the edges and uncouth and assertive. Infuriating. The true lone wolf. Cal had been refined and charming, the perfect balance when my hyena side spun out of control and all that anger took over. Being around Nick felt like chained fireworks—one explosion after another, building and building until everything was flames and smoke.

  I clenched my jaw and straightened the T-shirt where it had rucked up around my breasts, and tried to focus before thinking of Cal made me too sad to do anything but cry and sleep. Nick was just another distraction from figuring out what the hell I was going to do about the djinn and BadCreek.

  Nick reappeared after a few minutes, looking pleased with himself, and occupied the chair once more. For a brief moment, I wondered what he looked like what he came. And then heat surged to my cheeks that I’d thought that.

  His grin widened. “Why are you turning so red, Your Majesty?”

  “No reason,” I said. Exhaustion hit me like a ton of bricks and for a moment I swayed, wishing I could just curl up and sleep. We had planning to do, though, and rest was still a few hours away. “And you’re going to focus, Nikolai. We have to figure out how to get Ray back.”

  “Why the fuck do we want him back?” Nick leaned back and reached for a bag of jerky from the shelf of food, gnawing on a piece before tossing me the rest of it. “Besides, he’s probably dead.”

  “He’s not. He’s stuck somewhere.” I hesitated before going on, and wondered how much Iskander wanted me to share with others. It wasn’t as if he’d sworn me to secrecy. But something in Nick’s eyes grew guarded, and I wondered what he’d been up to the last few months. He didn’t have a job, and there was only so much working out he could do. And a bored wolf was a dangerous wolf...

  I put that aside to question him about later, and moved so I could lean back against the pillow and headboard of the bed, easing the tension in my back. Grappling with him definitely wasn’t as easy as throwing Savannah around; Nick was pure muscle and a tricky bastard to boot. That throw he’d used did something crazy to my ribs. “I don’t know how much you know about how I disappeared, but it’s not all that clear to
me either. During the raid, the djinn grabbed me out of the conflict and I ended up in... this weird in-between gray place. It was horrible. There wasn’t anything there until he kind of wished it into existence, but I could only walk so far before I ran into a wall. I couldn’t escape.”

  Nick started growling as my breath caught at the memory of the djinn’s prison. The claustrophobia compressed my lungs once more and I had to focus on being present in the cabin so I didn’t race for the door and the open night sky. His teeth grew too large for his mouth and pressed against his lower lip. “I never liked that guy.”

  “He’s stuck because the alpha isn’t dead. So Iskander isn’t free and can’t get free. He’s just stuck in that awful place. Apparently he can still reach out and touch people in this world, near the compound, but that’s it.” I took a deep breath, my hands trembling at the memory. “He offered to let me go if I’d find the alpha so he can be freed. The djinn said he would help us get the rest of the people out of the compound when I free him.”

  Nick shook his head. “Don’t trust him. Don’t trust any of the fae. You think you’re getting a straight deal, but there are traps in all their words.”

  I’d heard the same thing, but it wasn’t like I’d had much of a choice. “I’ll hire you to help me find the alpha. He disappeared with Smith a while ago, but someone with your background should be able to track him down.”

  “I’m flattered,” he said, fluttering his hands in the air to demonstrate just how flattered he was. “But you can’t afford me.”

  I snorted, ready to make a joke about him whoring himself for God only knew how much money, but Nick beat me to it, and made a mocking bow from his chair. “Lucky for you, I’ll do it pro bono.”

  Except “bono” sounded a little too close to “boner” the way he said it. Juvenile. Ridiculously juvenile. I knew he was just screwing with me, testing boundaries, maybe trying to get a laugh. “Great. Once we find him, we can figure out how to get him back here. He uses up his last wish, and then we—“