by Layla Nash
When I took a day or two off from the restaurant, Logan suggested — gently but insistently — that Jake take over as head chef for that time. I agreed, more so that Jake got the experience, but part of me was so exhausted from all the work of the last few years that I might have agreed with any reason Logan handed me. But it left me with more time to volunteer at the soup kitchen, despite that Logan complained he intended the time off from work to mean more time with him.
I hid a smile as he chopped fruit on the cutting board behind me, looking dead sexy in a hairnet and latex gloves. My suggestion that he spend time with me at the soup kitchen had not met with a great deal of enthusiasm, but I had to give him credit — he showed up. After his first attempt at fixing chili, though, I put him to doing something he couldn't burn or scald. He muttered and pouted about it, clearly having never been told he wasn't successful, but he did it. Obeying did not come naturally to him.
"How's it going?" I peered around his side, resting my head against his shoulder in a brief moment of weakness since all the volunteers were out serving the food. His grumbly noise started up the moment I touched him, and I breathed him in. I loved that sound.
He tried to sound dignified. "Very well, thank you. I'm a master with a knife, as these apples clearly demonstrate." He gestured at a pile of uneven apple chunks.
I bit my lip to keep from laughing at him and rubbed his back. "Thank you for trying."
"Shit." He laughed, giving me a sideways look. "That means I'm terrible at this too, doesn't it?"
"I don't think anyone out there will judge your apple cutting skills."
"You will, though." Logan raised his eyebrows.
"Never." When he just looked at me, I laughed and turned back to the soup. "Maybe a little. We'll have a knives class soon. Help with your technique."
Logan followed me, and his arms slid around my waist so he could draw me back against him, and that contented rumble vibrated through me. He kissed the side of my neck, the rough stubble of his jaw dragged shivers through me from head to toe. "I don't usually need help with technique, baby."
I snorted, trying to bump him back with my hip and elbow so I didn't catch fire on the burner, and peered at the batch of chicken noodle in front of me. "Such confidence, friend."
He made a hungry noise and nibbled behind my ear. His palm slid over my stomach, down to the waist of my jeans, and my breath caught. His voice grew rough. "After we're done here, how about drinks and a late dinner at my house? I'll cook."
"You have terrible taste," I said, breathless but trying not to show him how my stomach wobbled and dropped to my feet. "Why would I trust you in a kitchen?"
"By cook," he murmured, moving to kiss my other shoulder. "I meant cut fruit. You'll have fruit salad for dinner and like it."
I laughed but pulled away, giving him a look as I set the ladle aside. "Nice try."
"Babe, help me understand."
I paused, then shook my head. "What do you mean?"
"Natalia." When I glanced over, he leaned against the counter near his cutting board, arms folded over his chest. That patient look on his face that made my palms sweat. "You pull away when I touch you."
"It's not you." I tried to smile and concentrated on dicing more chicken in quick, efficient chops. "It's not about you, I mean."
"Tell me what's wrong. Tell me how to fix it."
I threw the chicken into the pot and stripped off my gloves, tossing them into the overflowing trashcan before I hauled it out and tied it off. "You can't fix it, Logan. You've already fixed everything else, pretty much, but this isn't —" I took a deep breath and forced myself to meet his gaze steadily. "I just need time. It's not easy for me to trust someone like you."
His head cocked to the side. "Someone like me?"
"Rich. Handsome. Confident. Male. Terrible in a kitchen." I tried to smile as I dragged the trash to the back door. "I think dinner at your place would be nice, but I'll cook. But I don't want to sleep over."
Sleepover. Like we were children and had sleeping bags to roll out on the living room floor.
He straightened from his lean and reached for the trash. "Let me take that."
"I've got it." I kicked the door open, glad for the blast of cool air that chased the embarrassment from my cheeks. "Need some fresh air."
He caught my wrist before I could flee, though, and leaned to press his lips gently to mine. He caressed my cheek and then kissed the tip of my nose. "No pressure, babe. Just tell me if it's something I've done."
My heart surged in gratitude that he wasn't complaining about how we'd been going out for almost two weeks and I hadn't fucked him. I smiled, "Thank you," and shouldered the door back open. The alley was welcome space and open air and cool calm, and I heaved the trash into the dumpster despite the twinge from my shoulder.
I brushed my hands off and kneaded my lower back, looking up at the sky for a moment and wondering if there were shooting stars streaking across the sky.
"I told you this wasn't over."
Every muscle in my body seized up. For a moment, fear paralyzed me and I couldn't face the speaker — Joey, standing in the alley next to the dumpster. Holding a length of pipe in his hand and looking much the worse for wear. Yellow and purple bruises covered every visible inch of his face and throat, and a few of his fingers were splinted together. He smacked the pipe against his palm. "I'm going to break your legs first, so you can't run away."
I swallowed terror and backed toward the door. "Get the fuck away from me."
"Every moment of misery in the last two weeks is because of you. Everything was fine until you stuck your bitchy nose into my business and started calling around town. Well. Your fucking bodyguards aren't around tonight, are they?"
"Fuck. Off." I turned, wrenched at the door. Locked. I ducked, tried to dodge as the pipe thudded against the brick wall, and I kicked back.
He staggered, threw the pipe at my knees, and I screamed — more rage than pain, though. This son of a bitch was not going to hurt me. He was not going to win. He sure as shit wasn't going to violate the last place I actually felt safe. I picked the pipe up and whipped it at his head. "Get the fuck away from me. You're nothing. You're scum. I hope you fucking die, that your bookies rip your face off."
"Bitch," he snarled and lunged at me.
I meant to knee him in the groin and punch him in the nose, throw him into the dumpster and run around to the safety of the soup kitchen's brightly-lit windows. Instead, as Joey's stiff fingers clutched at my hair, the door to the kitchen blew open. Bent and folded as if it weren't solid metal.
I staggered back, about to scream again, but the sound died in my throat.
A cat, an enormous cat — a fucking lion stood over Joey, a massive paw planted on his chest. The lion roared, a sound that belonged in a nature documentary about Africa, not the back alley in an American city. I choked for breath, retreating to the other side of the alley as the thing snarled. Joey screamed and went silent, bloody rents in his chest staining the broken concrete of the ground. The lion, pretty much at eye-level with me as it turned, stalked closer. My knees gave way and I slid to the ground, shaking so hard that running away wasn't even an option. I was going to die. In an alley. In the dirt. Eaten by a lion.
"Oh please," I said, then squeezed my eyes closed. "Please, God, I don't want to die."
Not like this. Everything shut down; the breath rattled in my throat. I waited for the pain. The tearing.
A weird, wet sound and the cracking of bones made me look up, just in time to see Logan straighten from a crouch on the ground. Stark ass naked and swearing. He looked around, then found me. His expression softened and he held out a hand. "Natalia —"
I scrambled away, through the cold mud and ooze in the alley, but I didn't take my eyes off him. Some kind of trick. It had to be some kind of crazy fucking magic trick to put me off balance. He had a lot of money. He could pay someone for the special effects. This might all be some weird shit that billionaires
did for fun, trying to scare me into staying with him. My throat wouldn't form sounds.
Logan took another step toward me. "Baby, listen to me. Just breathe. I can explain."
"Wh - wh - what..." I clutched my head, staggering to my feet with the help of the brick wall behind me. "I don't —"
"Hold on, just wait a second. I can explain."
The alley opened up behind me, only a few more feet until freedom, but he moved to the side, arms wide, and I froze. Logan's patient expression grew tense, a little hard. "Natalia, don't run. Please. Don't run."
"So you — you can kill me?" The words squeaked out, and I reached a shaking hand for the wall. My phone was in my purse, inside, and there was no way I could get inside with him in the way. Why didn't anyone come outside? Didn't they need more soup?
"I'll explain. Come inside." He gestured at the kitchen behind him, the broken door, but never took his eyes off me. Stalking one slow step at a time towards me, trapping me. Hunting me down.
I shook my head, sliding closer to the mouth of the alley. If I could get to the street, someone might help me. He was naked, after all, and a dead body lay cooling behind him. Someone would help me. "Get away from me."
"Baby —"
"I'm not your baby." It came out louder than I expected, and I clamped my lips together to keep from crying. I pointed at him with a shaking hand. "Get away from me. I don't know what the fuck is going on, but it's sick. Sick. You're messing with my head, and I never thought — I didn't think you would do that. So get the fuck away from me, and don't you ever, ever talk to me again."
"Natalia," he said, a sigh. Disappointed. "Let me explain."
I shook my head. "I'm done with your explanations."
When he opened his mouth to cajole me into staying and took another step towards me, I bolted. Turned and ran and fully expected him to leap at me, to chase me. Instead, only the sound of my panicked breathing followed me into the night.
Eleven
When Logan heard her cursing someone in the alley, his lion burst out, and the rage and pain of the transformation hurled him through the metal door to confront the danger. And then he faced Natalia. She stared at him, terrified, and it shook him to his very core. He hated that she feared him. So he changed back.
And it didn't get better. It got worse.
She made a terrible keening sound and cringed smaller against the dirty bricks of the alley. He couldn't calm her, couldn't even get her to stay in the alley. When she turned and ran, he wanted to go after her but his clothes shredded in the change and he had nothing to wear. He dragged the manager's body behind the dumpster and retreated to the kitchen. He pulled on an apron and stayed out of sight, hoping none of the church-y volunteers caught sight of his nakedness around the food, and called Edgar.
Luckily, Edgar was still working near the restaurant and arrived with new clothes, a cleanup crew, and a lot of jokes within fifteen minutes. Logan changed quickly in one of the large SUVs as Edgar and his guys got rid of any evidence that the manager or anyone else had been in the alley. Logan took a few seconds to apologize to the volunteer coordinator inside the soup kitchen for himself and Natalia, blaming it on Natalia not feeling well. They were all very concerned, asking him over and over to pass their good wishes on to her, which just made him feel more like an ass. If only they really knew.
When he finally extricated himself from the circle of genteel older ladies, he found Edgar waiting on the sidewalk out front. His brother peered at his phone and said, "No sign of security cameras, which is good and bad. Good because there's no evidence against you, but bad because we can't tell which way your chef went."
"She just needs time." Logan stretched his shoulders; two quick changes like that always led to muscle aches, to feeling like his bones weren't connected right, but there was no way he ever would have chased Natalia down as a lion.
"Not too much time." Edgar glanced up from his phone with a frown. "Go get her, man."
"She's terrified. I'm not going to —"
"She saw you." Edgar said it slow and careful, like the problem was Logan not hearing clearly. "She knows what you are, what we all are. Now she's running around in the city. Logan, man, you have to get her somewhere safe until you can explain and make her understand."
He clenched his jaw, staring into the night where Natalia — bruised, scared, alone — wandered. Running away from the monster she thought he was. He'd killed Joey right in front of her without a second thought. Maybe he was a monster.
"I'm not going to hunt her down like some — gazelle. She'll come back when she's ready."
"No, she won't." Edgar sighed, ran a hand over his face until his expression resumed its neutral cast. "If you don't get her, Logan, I will."
A growl started in his chest, and Logan wrapped a fist in Edgar's shirt. "Do. Not. Touch her."
"Then go get your mate," his brother shot back. "It's your job, and you're not doing it."
"You didn't see her face." Logan turned away for a moment, glad the other vans and cars had disappeared, along with what remained of the shithead manager. Just his brother remained, and Logan didn't mind Edgar seeing him uncertain. Anyone else would have gotten thrown through a wall, but Edgar was the only person in the world he could tolerate knowing these things. "Edgar, she looked at me like — like —" He held his hands up, ashamed the nails were still dark and long. His lion remained too close to the surface, unhinged by the threat to his mate and her subsequent escape, the thought of her wandering the dark city alone made him want to burst through his skin again.
Edgar took a deep breath, holding his hands up. "Look, Logan. You're my brother and my leader. I say this with love and respect. Pull your head out of your ass, go catch your mate, and explain to her what the fuck is going on. If she starts screaming, wait until she stops and start talking again. Wash, rinse, repeat. She'll get it eventually."
"And if she doesn't? If she can't accept what we are?"
His expression hardened. "Then she wasn't really meant to be yours to begin with, was she?"
Logan tilted his head back to look at the stars, wishing he could see more through the light pollution of the city. He closed his eyes and tasted the air, trying to get a whiff of her. Nothing.
"Does she have her phone?" Edgar flipped at his phone, then frowned. Showed Logan a screen with blinking dots. "She's right here."
Logan held up her purse, retrieved from the kitchen. "She left her shit. You have a tracker in her phone?"
"I have a tracker for all of you, dumbass," Edgar said under his breath. "How the fuck else am I supposed to keep you all alive? Jesus. Okay, we do this the old fashioned way."
He got in the car, drove about half a block, then leaned out the window and gestured for Logan to get in. Logan looked at his brother, irritated. "What?"
"She's at O'Shea's."
Logan's scowl darkened. "How do you know that?"
Edgar's gaze fixed straight ahead. "Ruby owes me a favor."
Ruby. Logan got in the car without a word, though he wanted to put his fist through the windshield. "She knows Ruby and Rafe."
"Oh yes."
From the grim sound of it, Logan didn't want to hear the rest of the story. He rubbed his temples and tried to figure out what the hell he would tell Natalia when he found her, how he could possibly explain. Shapeshifters. Lions. Abrupt violence as a normal part of the world. Particularly when her friends, wolf shifters, got involved. He pinched the bridge of his nose. So maybe they wouldn't be moving in together this weekend after all.
Twelve
I wandered aimlessly, not seeing the street signs I passed, but eventually buildings looked familiar. People filled the streets, looking at me askance as I staggered along. My brain clicked slowly, the world moving past in flickers and flashes instead of a rolling film. I couldn't stop the trembling that wracked me from head to toe. Nothing worked right.
The sign for O'Shea's drew me in, dragged me across a street and through traffic. I didn't
hear the honking. I hit the door and almost crashed into Rafe, lurking near the door. He caught me by the shoulders, expression strange. "Nat. What's —" His head tilted and he inhaled deeply near me, then held me at arm's length to study me. He pulled at the collar of my shirt, exposing my neck and shoulder, and I tried to push him away. Rafe made a strange sound in his throat, then turned and walked me into the bar. He steered me to a stool at the very end, nearest the office he shared with Ruby. He poured whiskey into a glass, three or four shots worth, and put it in front of me. "Down the hatch."
"I don't think that's —" My voice came out all wobbly and uncertain, and his frown deepened.
"You look like someone just walked over your grave. Put it down, Nat."
So I did, and the whiskey landed like a rock in my stomach. A warm, sloshy rock. It took the edge off... whatever it was I felt. For a moment, a hysterical giggle fought to escape my throat and I gripped the edge of the bar, holding on to it and my sanity by the tips of my fingers alone. Rafe splashed more amber liquid into the glass. "Again."
"I haven't eaten all day, Rafe."
"Good." His gaze moved past me, to the door, and I froze. Terrified. Thinking a demon lion would burst through the door and murder me. He looked back at me, and his head tilted in a decidedly nonhuman fashion. "You're safe here, Nat. Believe me."
"I d-don't know what you're talking about."
The next shot of whiskey seemed less like a bad idea, more like stress management. Seeing a lion turn into a man — and a man I'd been kissing only minutes before — deserved a bit of liquid courage.