by Riley Storm
If she let him have her.
They were moving rapidly toward that, and despite her nerves concerning the situation, Alison kept going. Anxious to begin, she found the bottom of his sweatshirt and started to lift it off.
“Come on,” Lucien said, taking her hand and leading her over toward the couch before she could finish undressing him. “Here.”
He lay her back, covering her mouth and neck with soft kisses before standing back up, crossing his arms over and grabbing the hem of the shirt.
“Oh I’m getting a show, am I?” she teased.
Lucien grinned, flashing a giant wink her direction. “Maybe just a quick one.”
“As long as that’s the only thing that’s quick,” she teased, settling deep into the couch, luxuriating in its comfort. The feel of the pillows against her skin, the relaxation as her body sat for the first time since getting up to open her door, what felt like an eternity ago.
“I promise,” Lucien said, lifting the shirt.
“Good,” she answered, lifting an arm to stifle a sudden yawn that interrupted the word.
Pausing with shirt halfway over his head, Lucien reversed his motions, a wry, knowing smile on his face.
“What are you doing?” she complained as his abs disappeared from sight. “I didn’t order this movie in reverse. Where’s the remote!” Another yawn stretched out the last few words.
“Come on,” he rumbled, reaching down and casually lifting her from the couch as if she weighed no more than a blanket. “Let’s get you to bed.”
“Yes, the bed,” she said, her eyes drooping. “That would probably fit us better. You’re pretty big.”
She bounced in time with his mild laughter. “Not us, silly. You.”
“What? Why?” Alison decided to rest her head on his shoulder, like a pillow. Just for a moment, so she could recover some of her strength.
“You’re going to bed. I should have realized this earlier,” he said, easily holding her to his chest with one arm while the other pulled back the covers, where he then deposited her gently into the wonderful comforts of a bed.
“Reali—lized, what?” she asked, pausing mid-word as another powerful yawn commanded her attention.
“You’re just running on adrenaline,” he said, pushing her slightly closer to the center of the bed so he could sit on the edge and play with her hair. “And now it’s gone, and you’re fading hard.”
“That feels nice,” Alison told him, snuggling deep into the covers, losing the battle to keep her eyes open. “Very nice.”
“Good. Now go to sleep,” he urged. A moment later, his lips pressed against her forehead. “I’ll be here in the morning.”
“So, we’re not going to have sex?” she asked, half-disappointed, half already asleep and unable to care.
“Not tonight,” Lucien said, his voice full of laughter. “We’ll talk in the morning. Goodnight, beautiful.”
Alison was already asleep.
17
He was awake long before Alison finally stirred, though that didn’t surprise him. Lucien was trained to go long periods without sleep, and had more experience recovering from events similar to last night. For Alison, it was all brand new.
When she finally emerged from the bedroom, arms over her head, dressed in the smallest set of sweats he could find in the safehouse—it hadn’t been stocked for women, so they were somewhat oversized—he couldn’t believe how pretty she looked. He started to stare.
“Something wrong?” she asked, forehead furrowing in confusion as she inspected herself. “I know they’re a little bit big…”
He laughed, shaking his head. “No, that’s not it at all. I was just appreciating how wonderful you look.”
Looking down at herself then back up, she gave him a skeptical glance, then wandered into the small L-shaped kitchen. “What’s this place got in the way of food?”
“Not much,” he admitted. “We’ll have to go find some stuff. Dog food as well. That wasn’t something we ever really expected to need in our safehouses.”
“Right. Gotta feed the Bergster don’t we?” she asked in a small voice, crouching down as the owner of the name “Bergster” came wandering over to her for scratches and attention. “Were you a good boy?”
“Very,” Lucien answered. “I took him out about an hour ago, before the sun really came up.”
He didn’t mention his reluctance to move about in daylight. They would broach that subject later.
“Thank you,” Alison said with heartfelt meaning. “I appreciate that. For…everything.”
Nodding, Lucien went to try and change the subject, but he was too slow.
“I think it’s time you gave me the truth about everything now, Lucien.”
The words he’d dreaded hearing. There was only so much dodging of the truth and half-answers that he could give, and Lucien was well aware that he’d more than used up that quota, and it wasn’t even close.
“Alison, I—”
Bergey’s head came up and around, orienting on the front door a split second before Lucien’s ears clued him in to the presence of someone there.
“Get in the bedroom!” he hissed as a key twisted the lock. “Take the dog!”
The two of them disappeared without protest, leaving Lucien just enough time to slide quietly to the side and out of immediate view before the deadbolt turned and whoever it was pushed their way into the safehouse.
Lucien thought furiously. He wasn’t the only one who knew the location of this safehouse. But there had been no signs of activity anywhere on the property inside or out. He’d checked it with every sense and bit of knowledge he possessed. Nobody was there. Yet whoever was coming inside now, had a key. They knew where the keys had been hidden.
The shifter stepped inside and froze, obviously noticing the clothes and shoes, signs that someone was there. But it was too late, and Lucien swept in from the side, taking them down swiftly.
“Yield!” the person shouted almost immediately.
Not stopping to hesitate, Lucien continued his movement until he had the intruder’s leg firmly in his grip. “One false move and I snap your femur,” he growled. “Understand?”
“Yes. Yes!” the shifter yelped, slapping the floor in pain. “Shit, I’m not here for you.”
“I know that,” Lucien said. “Why are you here…Lechieffre?”
The other shifter straightened slightly at the usage of his name, twisting slightly to get a look at who had him pinned. “Lucien? Shit. You had me scared there for a moment.”
Lucien tightened his grip.
“Hey, what are you doing? Ow. Dammit. Stop that!” Lechieffre bellowed.
“You’re loyal to the King,” Lucien said bluntly.
Lechieffre had been one of Lucien’s counterparts in the city when he still worked at the hospital, one of the half-dozen or so facility managers who ran House Canis’ hidden operations within Plymouth Falls.
“Was,” Lechieffre, or “Chief” as everyone called him, ground out. “I was loyal.”
Ignoring the protest, Lucien began grilling Chief. “Why are you here?”
“Hiding.”
The reply was so unexpected, for a moment Lucien almost let go. Then he remembered where he was and his grip tightened again.
“That makes no sense. How do you even know about this place? Who are you hiding from? I need answers, Chief, and I need them now.”
There was a snort of disdain from the bedroom, but Lucien ignored it. Now was not the time to discuss the irony of that statement with Alison.
“I’d guess that I’m probably hiding from the same people you are,” Chief answered. “Those who still somehow think Laurien is sane.”
Lucien noted the way Chief didn’t refer to Laurien as King, but simply by his name. It stripped him of any legitimacy that way. Liking the way it sounded, Lucien decided to the same. In his eyes, Laurien no longer was his King. He was just a tyrant sitting on a throne that didn’t deserve it.
; “Are you trying to tell me that you’ve renounced your loyalty?” Lucien asked.
“Yes. Again, how do you think I know about this place?” Chief snorted. “You think if I knew you were here, I would know where the keys were, and just come waltzing inside alone? This place would be surrounded and they would have come in through the windows and doors at once in overwhelming numbers. Not sending me in like a sacrificial lamb to get my leg snapped. Now will you let me go?”
“Not yet. Who told you about this place?” Lucien was starting to form a theory, but it wasn’t there yet. He wanted Chief to tell him if he was correct or not.
“Two young shifters. Male and a female. They were brought in yesterday to my facility. Names Lorik and Lana.”
That confirmed Lucien’s first theory. Lorik and Lana were small-timers, there was no point in sending them to the main facility, since they weren’t officially a part of the organization Logan and Lucien had put together. “How did they come to tell you about it?”
Chief started to try and get comfortable, but at a warning twist from Lucien, sighed and lay back onto the floor. “They were brought in by Lyken and his squad, along with another, some preening dick.”
That couldn’t be anyone other than Lowwen.
“He kept going on and on about how he’d turned them in, while the other two kept calling him a traitor. That was just annoying to watch, but when I started to interrogate them, and found out they’d been betrayed by this asshole, I felt sick. Here he was bragging about being loyal, when in fact he’d lied to two people, pretended to care about them, only to turn tail at the first setback?”
“Sorry about that,” Lucien muttered. “I thought giving him a beatdown would force him to realize the truth of his character. Instead, he just doubled down and went crawling back to the teat for more.”
“Ah, so you’re the one that did that to him,” Chief said with a chuckle. “None of them would volunteer who left the bruises, other than to say it wasn’t them.”
“Indeed.” Lucien was still waiting for the part where Chief elaborated how he’d come to be at the safehouse.
“It was that loyalty that started me wondering. It’s something I value highly. Here they were, not talking about anything, while this jerk-off was actively crowing about how he had no loyalty, essentially. It disgusted me. He sang like a mockingbird, giving us all the details about everything they’d accomplished since they left the Manor. It wasn’t much, but he didn’t even bother to try and hold back. It was pathetic.”
“Keep going.”
“So overnight, I spent a lot of time wondering if I really wanted to be a part of something that valued such flagrant abuse of loyalty and honor,” Chief explained.
Lucien made a disappointed noise. “It took you all night to reach that?”
“Nobody ever accused me of being a genius,” Chief admitted. “Which is probably why the jailbreak this morning failed.”
“Jailbreak?” Lucien asked, perking up as the conversation got interesting.
“Yeah. I decided the three of us were going to get out of there. Lowwen was long gone at orders from the Manor, and there were only four guards there with me. It was easy to switch things up so that nobody would be covering one exit. They’d know it was me after, of course, but I intended to be long gone.”
“What went wrong?”
Chief snorted. “Ran straight into Lyken and his gang as they came in to talk to the other two.”
Lucien’s suspicions suddenly ratcheted back up and he twisted hard on the leg. “So he let you go, is that it? Kept the others and sent you here to befriend me and infiltrate us? Yeah, right. Like I believe that. Tell me, they let you go, didn’t they?” he snarled.
“No,” Chief answered firmly, without elaboration.
“Not good enough.” Lucien said, increasing the pressure to send a spike of pain through Chief’s body.
“I escaped, okay? I turned and ran while the other two held them off, because that’s what they told me to do. I was a coward and listened, and left them behind.”
Lucien had been expecting a long litany of excuses from the pinned shifter. Anything that he thought might get him out of trouble. Instead, he got the truth. A truth only someone else who’d done the same thing could recognize so easily.
Abruptly, Lucien relaxed his grip, not speaking as he helped Chief to his feet, staring into the other man’s eyes. He saw it there, the same guilt and shame he felt himself, when Logan had ordered him to run. The burning knowledge that he’d turned his back on his fellows, escaping harm only because they took his suffering upon them.
No plant could ever fake that, and so he knew that Chief was speaking honestly. Which meant he truly had decided to switch sides. Among other things…
“So you two are friends now? Just like that?”
Both heads turned as Alison and Bergey emerged from the bedroom. The dog eyed Chief speculatively, staying just a hair in front of Alison, just in case, but otherwise he didn’t react.
“Uh, who is that?” Chief asked, looking back over at Lucien, then over to Alison again. “Who are you?”
“That’s Alison,” Lucien said, not explaining any further. “She’s with me.”
Chief eyed the two of them, then sudden comprehension, followed by worry. “Oh. I see. But don’t you think it’s dangerous to have your m—”
“Tell me about this facility you worked at,” Lucien interjected before Chief could finish the word.
The last thing he needed right now was to have that discussion with Alison. They were not ready for that. At all.
Chief must have picked up on his hesitancy, cluing in to the fact that Alison maybe was not aware of everything going on, and he nodded. “Okay. But why?”
“Because,” Lucien said, a plan forming in his mind. “We’re going back.”
18
“What?” The word just sort of slipped out, but she couldn’t take it back now.
Both the large men turned to look at her, one she knew, and one she didn’t. Alison wasn’t sure about the newcomer, but Lucien was relaxed, and Bergey was calm, not raising a fuss, which seemed to indicate everything was okay.
“I thought you said you had to go rescue your friends,” she asked, pointing at Lucien. “That’s all you’ve been on about.”
“I do. I plan to,” he said, coming over to her, but then stopping just short to give Bergey some head scratches. Lucien winked at her. “But to do that, I’m going to need some help, and frankly, Chief here isn’t quite enough.”
“Ouch.” The newcomer feigned hurt.
“Not to say you aren’t a help. But it’s a matter of numbers, I think,” Lucien explained, tapping a finger to his jaw, thinking as he went.
“What about me?”
Alison once again wondered what was possessing herself to say these things. She really needed to work on her self-control.
“What about you?” Lucien asked warily, quite clearly uncomfortable with the direction the conversation was going.
“I can help.”
“No,” both the men said at the same time, looking at each other sharply in surprise.
“This isn’t your fight,” Lucien said, resting a hand on her shoulder for all too brief a moment.
“Fine,” she said, half pouting, half relieved. “But didn’t we just escape from some of these bad guys? Now you want to turn around and go back?”
“Escape?” Chief asked, looking back and forth. “What is she talking about?”
“We too recently had a run-in with Lyken and his team,” Lucien said, taking a moment to explain what had occurred the night before, including their mad dash across town.
Alison noted with a bit of mirth that he’d “forgotten” to include his naked dash across town, carrying her over his shoulder with a perfectly square-on view of his rear end. Funny how the details always seemed to get lost in translation in stories like that. Oh well, she would have that mental image for a long, long time.
Something
occurred to her, as she listened to Lucien recap the story, including his dustup with the traitorous Lowwen, the same shifter that had spurred Chief to switch sides.
“Lucien,” she said, speaking up.
“Yes?” Pale blue eyes focused on her immediately, without resentment at her interruption, but rather in expectation that her contribution to the conversation would be worthwhile. It was an interesting feeling.
“If you told Lorik about this safehouse, wouldn’t Lowwen know about it? Shouldn’t we move on?”
Lucien pondered her question, looking at Chief for input.
“I didn’t ask,” Chief admitted. “I would assume that they wouldn’t have made plans to come here if there was a possibility that Lowwen would reveal its existence to Lyken or anyone else who might be after us.”
“My assumption as well,” Lucien agreed. “But still, she brings up a good point. We shouldn’t linger here too long. This was the only safehouse I told them about. We didn’t have time to set up many, but there are a couple of others we can head to. After we get Lorik and Lana out of there. I owe them that much, for getting them involved in this.” He shook his head. “If it weren’t for me, Lowwen would never have turned, he would have just been content being a bully with those two.”
“I don’t think you should go,” Alison said.
“I have to go,” Lucien countered, turning to face her directly. “This is my fault. I put them there. I can’t leave them. Besides, I need their help.”
“What if it’s a trap?” she asked, looking apologetically at Chief. “Sorry.”
He shrugged. “Understandable. I’d be wary as well.”
“He’s not lying,” Lucien said in an oddly quiet voice.
Frowning at his tone Alison wondered if he was about to get stubborn and stupid on her.
“How can you possibly know that?” she pushed, crossing her arms under her breasts and giving him a measured look. “What proof can you have?”
“Because I know he isn’t.” Lucien wasn’t backing down.
“That isn’t good enough, Lucien. You’re going to have to do better than that,” she informed him, though how she could possibly hope to stop him was beyond Alison. She’d cross that hurdle if it came to it.