She grabbed her head and fell to the floor, screaming. Cole stood a few feet away, watching her. He didn’t know if she was trying to trick him or not. But he wasn’t about to get close to her until he knew for sure.
Zack ran into the room and froze when he saw Lacey screaming on the floor. “What’s going on?” he asked Cole in a rush.
“I don’t know. Check on her” Cole said in a rough voice.
Zack looked from Cole to Lacey, he didn’t understand why he wanted him to check on her instead of doing it himself but he did as he was told. He knelt down beside Lacey and turned her head toward him. The look of pain on her face shocked him. Tears streamed down her face as she continued to yell out. Zack looked up at Cole. “What did you do to her?”
Cole came up behind Zack and looked over his shoulder at Lacey. “I didn’t do anything to her. She used her powers and threw me against the wall then she fell to the floor screaming like a banshee.”
The room was getting full with Cole’s pack members. They all stared down at Lacey but none offered to help her. Cole noticed how packed the room was getting and ordered everyone out.
“What about me, boss?” Zack asked as he stood up.
“Stay outside the door in case she tries to use her powers again.”
“You got it, boss” Zack said and left the room, closing the door shut behind him.
Cole knelt down beside Lacey. The pain on her face made him believe that she wasn’t faking. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked.
She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to speak through the pain. “My powers...they give me headaches...I need pain reliever.”
Cole went to the bathroom and looked in the cabinet but didn’t find anything. “I don’t have any.”
Lacey screamed again and Cole picked her up and carried her to the bed.
“Make the pain stop! Knock me out!” she yelled at him.
Cole gave her a dumbfounded look, like he didn’t understand what she was saying. She yelled at him again and tried to jump up from the bed. “Knock me out!”
Cole grabbed her and stared at her wide-eyed, not sure if she really wanted him to hit her. The pain on her face answered his question. And without a second thought, he hit her in the back of the head and she fell across the bed unconscious.
Cole stared at her in shock. No one had ever begged him to hit them before. Lacey was confusing him more and more every second that he spent with her. He grabbed her under her arms and straightened her in the bed then sat down beside her. He watched while she slept and tried to come up with a rational reason for her behavior. But there wasn’t one. The image of her screaming on the floor flashed in his mind and he shook his head. “What’s going on with you, Lacey?” he whispered and brushed her hair back from her face.
He replayed the moment when she threw him against the wall in his mind and smiled. He admired the fight in her. She was definitely a one-of-a-kind woman. He looked at her lips and the memory of kissing her the night that he had taken her came to mind.
Her lips had been so soft and sweet against his and he wanted to experience that sensation again. The only kisses he ever received were rough and demanding. The women he had been with weren’t interested in taking it slow. But it had been different with Lacey. She had kissed him like she had real feelings for him, like she loved him. But it wasn’t him that she thought she was kissing, it was Jesse. The thought angered Cole more than it should have.
He took one last look at Lacey before getting up to put new nails in the chair. Once he was sure that she wouldn’t be able to remove the nails again, he sent one of his pack members to get a bottle of pain reliever in case Lacey needed it when she woke up.
*****
Kevin walked back to his room and picked up his shirt from the floor and put it on. Sasha was still in the bed with a sheet wrapped around her. “What was the girl screaming about?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Cole told us to get out. She was on the floor screaming like a mad person” Kevin said distractedly.
Sasha smiled. “She must have really pissed Cole off. Stupid humans cry about everything.”
Kevin grabbed his shoes and started for the door. Sasha got out of bed and sashayed over to him, then wrapped her arms around his neck. “Where are you going?” she asked in a sweet voice and nibbled on his ear. “I need to talk to you about something.”
Here it comes, Kevin thought. She was finally going to tell him what she expected him to do for her sleeping with him. He stepped away from her and put his shoes on. “What do you want to talk about, Sasha?”
She dropped the sheet to the floor and stood in front of him naked. She wrapped her arms around his neck again and started kissing him. “I want you to do something for me” she said in between kisses. “I want you to help me get close to the girl. She’s weak and useless. We don’t need her in our pack. She’ll bring us all down.”
Kevin let out a deep chuckle and pulled Sasha’s arms from around his neck. “I don’t think so.”
She narrowed her eyes at him and put her hands on her hips. “Why not!” she yelled.
Kevin rubbed his finger over her lips. “I know what you’re trying to do Sasha, and I won’t help you. Until Cole says differently, the girl is not to be harmed.”
She let out a loud frustrated growl. “You mean I slept with you for nothing!”
Kevin laughed and shook his head. “You came onto me, remember. And I never told you that I would help you do anything. Look at it this way, we both got laid and now you know your tricks don’t work on me.”
Sasha swung at him but he ducked and quickly opened the door and left her standing in the middle of the room completely naked, yelling cuss words at him.
He walked down the hall to Lacey’s room and saw Zack standing by the door.
“What the hell is Sasha yelling about?” Zack asked.
Kevin looked over his shoulder to his room and smiled. “Nothing that you need to know about. What’s going on with the girl?”
“Nothing that you need to know about” Zack said sarcastically, repeating Kevin’s words back to him.
Kevin got in his face. “Don’t try that smartass crap with me newbie, if I ask you a question, you damn well better answer it.”
Zack smiled. He liked aggravating Kevin. “If you want to know, ask the boss. He hasn’t told me anything.”
Kevin knocked on the door and Cole opened it. “What?”
“What’s going on with the girl?” Kevin asked.
Cole opened the door all the way and let him in. He ran his hand through his hair roughly as he looked at Lacey. “I don’t know but there is something wrong with her. Her nose was bleeding earlier and I smelled something in her blood. I don’t know what it is but it’s not normal. I think she’s sick.”
Kevin glanced at Lacey. “She looks alright now.”
“Yeah, I had to knock her out” Cole said and sat back down in his chair.
“At least she’s not screaming anymore” Kevin said with a smile.
Cole ignored him and rubbed his hands down his face. He looked tired. “I don’t know what to do with her. I think her powers are what caused her to freak out. She was fine until she used them to throw me against the wall. Then she fell to the floor screaming.”
“If her powers incapacitate her like this,” Kevin pointed to Lacey asleep on the bed, “then she’s useless to us. There’s no point in keeping her. We should just kill her and be done with it.”
Cole jumped from the chair and grabbed Kevin by the throat. “If anyone comes near her, I’ll rip their hearts out. Do you understand? I’ll decide what we do with her, not you. And until I say differently, she’s not to be touched.”
Kevin looked at Cole with fear in his eyes. “Of course” he said through tight lips.
Cole released him and took a step back. Exhaustion was taking a toll on him. “Get out” he said and looked over at Lacey.
Kevin opened the door and walked out, slamming it shut behind him.
Zack, having heard everything that had happened in the room, smiled as Kevin stormed past him. He was beginning to think that it was going to be easier than he thought to take Kevin’s place as Cole’s second in command.
*****
Lacey moaned as she started to wake up. She rubbed the back of her head where a new pain was throbbing. She remembered Cole hitting her and looked around the room for him. He was leaning against the wall across the room with his arms crossed over his chest. She shot him a mean look. “I really hate you” she said with as much venom as she could muster.
A slow grin crossed his face. He pushed away from the wall and took his seat by the bed. “Well, I’m not that fond of you right now either” he said as he studied her face. She looked too weak to use her powers again but he wasn’t going to let his guard down around her anymore. “What happened to you earlier? Why were you in so much pain?”
Lacey wanted to tell him to go to hell but she was too tired to fight. And she knew that eventually he was going to figure it out anyway, so there was no point in angering him by not answering his question. “Using my powers has side effects. Well, they do now. The headaches and nose bleeds started a few months ago. But they’re getting worse the more I use my powers.”
Cole gave her what he hoped was a sympathetic look but since he had never showed anyone sympathy, he wasn’t sure if he was making the correct face. “You go through that every time you use your powers?”
Lacey gave him a hard stare and nodded.
Cole was completely stunned. “Then why do you keep using them?”
Lacey thought about his question and she didn’t really have an answer. She could tell him that she was just used to using them or that her powers were the only defense she had to keep herself safe. But the truth was she used them because she didn’t know how not to. She had spent her whole life trying to find a way to suppress her powers so that she could be normal like everyone else. But every time she got even a little upset, her powers would surface, even when she didn’t want them to.
She looked away from Cole. “Why do you care? As long as I use my powers to help you, you couldn’t care less about what they do to me, so don’t pretend like you do” she snapped at him.
“I do care” Cole said in a rough voice. “I don’t want to see you hurt, Lacey.”
She looked at him with sad eyes. “If you didn’t want to see me hurt then you wouldn’t keep me here against my will. Just let me go...let me go back to Jesse” she pleaded.
Cole scooted to the edge of his seat to get closer to her. He hated hearing his brother’s name come out of her mouth. And he hated knowing that she wanted Jesse and not him. He tried to keep his anger at bay but jealousy was making it almost impossible. “Why do you want him?” he asked in a thick voice.
Lacey closed her eyes and thought about Jesse. When she opened them, she said the only thing that she could, “I love him.”
Her words hit Cole like a punch in the gut. He wanted to lash out at her, to tell her that she was in love with the wrong man. That she should love him because he was stronger, braver and more worthy of her love than Jesse was, but he didn’t. Instead, he tried a different approach. He reached out and gently rubbed his thumb over her cheek. She tensed and gave him a scared look.
“Don’t be afraid of me, Lacey” Cole whispered.
She relaxed a bit but didn’t take her eyes off of him. His face appeared softer, kinder and at the moment he reminded her so much of Jesse that she wanted to reach out and touch him. She gazed into his eyes and saw a familiar look. It was the same look that she had seen in Jesse’s eyes when he looked at her. Desire. Confusion filled her mind as her heart began to race.
Cole slowly closed the distance between them, keeping his eyes on her lips. He ached to kiss her and before he could stop himself, he did. His lips gently touched hers. Lacey flinched and instantly pulled back. She looked at Cole like she didn’t know what to do.
“It’s alright, Lacey” he whispered and cradled her face with his hands before kissing her again. Instead of returning his kiss, she stayed perfectly still and held her lips tightly closed. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to kiss him, because if she was being honest with herself, she’d admit that she did. The problem was that she knew he wasn’t Jesse. He might look like him, talk like him, even act like him at times, but he wasn’t the man she loved. But even knowing all of that, she was still finding it hard not to give in to him.
Cole rubbed his face against hers and closed his eyes. “Kiss me, Lacey” he whispered.
His breath was warm against her skin and it sent goose bumps down her arms. She looked him in the eye and tried to find the strength to push him away.
He lightly touched his lips to hers again, hoping that she would have pity on him and let him experience how a kiss should be. He wanted her to kiss him, knowing that it was him she was kissing and not Jesse.
Lacey knew that what she was about to do was wrong but she couldn’t stop herself. Cole reminded her so much of Jesse and she needed to be close to him, anyway that she could. Cole’s lips touched hers again and she relaxed her mouth. She slowly moved her lips against his. It was a soft, tender kiss that quickly grew into a more passion filled one. She didn’t feel the instant connection that she had felt when she kissed Jesse but she did feel something and that surprised her.
Cole couldn’t believe that Lacey was actually kissing him. She moved her lips against his and opened her mouth to him. He gently pushed her back on the bed as they kissed. Everything in him felt so alive. It was like fireworks were going off in his chest and the more he kissed her, the more he wanted her.
He had often heard people talk about what it was like to fall in love, how it excited and terrified them at the same time. He had never understood what they meant by that, until now. At that moment he was the happiest he had ever been. But at the same time, he was terrified that at any minute, Lacey was going to pull away from him.
Lacey was getting lost in the moment and was about to let things go too far. Cole eased his hand under her shirt and she put her hands on his chest and pushed him away. He looked down at her with lust filled eyes. She sat up and scooted away from him. “We shouldn’t have done that” she said quietly.
Cole looked away, angry at her rejection. “Why not?”
Lacey shook her head as guilt formed a knot in her chest. “We shouldn’t have kissed because I love Jesse. He’s the one I want to be with.”
Cole got up from the bed and glared at her. “What the hell is so special about my brother? What makes him more worthy of your love than me?” he yelled.
“Are you serious? Do you really not see the difference between you and him?” Lacey yelled back. “Jesse is a good man. He’s brave and courageous. He lives his life trying to save people from monsters like you who only want to hurt and kill others...and did you forget that you drugged and kidnapped me. God, I can’t believe that I kissed you!”
Cole jumped on the bed, knocking her back onto the mattress. He straddled her and held her down by her shoulders. “You think my brother is brave? And courageous? Tell me Lacey, how brave is it to stand by and watch your own father be murdered and do nothing to help him? You think you know Jesse so well, but you don’t. You don’t know anything about him. At least I tried to save our father.”
Cole lifted his shirt over his head and tossed it to the floor then pointed to a scar in the middle of his chest. “And this is what I got for my attempt. I was shot and left to die beside my father while my dear brother hid in the bushes, watching. So don’t you ever talk to me about how brave that bastard is because I know better.”
Chapter Fifteen
Lacey stared at Cole with disbelief. She heard the emotion in his voice but she couldn’t believe what he said. It wasn’t possible. Jesse would never sit back and watch someone that he loved die. “I don’t believe you!” she yelled and struggled to break free of his hold.
“Believe it baby...the man you love so much is
just as much a killer as I am. He could have saved our father but he did nothing.”
Lacey shook her head in denial. “You’re lying.”
Cole released his hold on her and sat down on the bed. “You want to know what happened to our father, I’ll tell you...It was two years after my mother died, we were in the woods around our house, hunting in our wolf forms when we crossed paths with two hunters. My father had just taken down a big deer and Jesse and I were admiring his kill when father caught the scent of humans in the area. The hunters were too close for us to run away without being seen so father pushed us toward a thick group of bushes just as the men came into view. They saw my father before he had a chance to join us. He moved away from the bushes to lead the men away from Jesse and me. I saw the men raise their rifles and aim at my father. I darted from the bushes toward them and knocked one of the men down. But the other one got a shot off. I saw my father fall to the ground and I called out for Jesse to help me take down the other man but he never came out of the bushes. So I went after the man alone but he shot me before I could get to him. Then he shot my father again. Even then, Jesse never came from his hiding spot. Some of our pack were in the woods and heard me howl. They came to help but it was too late. I crawled over to my father to see if he was okay, but he was dead. I didn’t know it at the time but the bullets the hunters used were silver. I passed out and woke up two days later. And I’ve hated my brother ever since.”
Lacey stared at Cole, unable to speak as images of what he described went through her mind. She couldn’t believe that Jesse wouldn’t help his family when they needed him. There had to be more to the story than what Cole said because if there wasn’t, then he was right, she didn’t know Jesse as well as she thought she did.
She wrapped her arms around her legs, pulling her knees to her chest. She watched Cole stare at the wall across the room and felt sorry for him. She couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for him to watch his father die and the fact that he had been shot too, made her feel the need to comfort him.
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