Unchained (Dark Shifter Romance) (4 page)

Lacey's feet were certain as she picked her way through the thick leaf litter of the forest floor, but her mind was racing in circles. What had happened back there? She wasn't sure. When her captor pressed her down against the bed, for one terrifying moment she’d thought he was finally showing his true colours. But then… something had happened. In a way, she suspected that it had felt more intimate than it would have if he'd simply had his way with her body.

He'd leaned down on top of her, all hard muscle and strong arms, and instead of fighting she'd felt almost...
good
.

She frowned. Had it been hypnosis? She'd heard of things like that. Okay, none of them were
exactly
like that-- they were mostly about pretending to be chickens-- but, still. The only way that that strange moment made sense was if he had somehow hypnotised her.

But nothing about this whole thing made sense, did it, so why would this thing? The monstrous man in the town, the roadblocks, waking up in a strange cabin in the middle of nowhere... Maybe she just had to give up and admit that nothing was going to make sense from here on out. Suddenly trusting the man who had chained her up in a cabin was the least of her worries.

And it had been trust. It had been sudden and abrupt, taking her by surprise. All of her suspicions had suddenly melted away, and in that moment she
knew
that he would not hurt her. She didn't even know why she had rolled over, even though it felt so intimately vulnerable. Her body had just done it, moving of its own accord like a drowning person thrashing their arms. It had just seemed like the right thing to do. It had felt like a
good
thing to do.

What the hell was happening, and what did he want with her?

"Over here," came her captor’s voice, down by the river.

He'd been walking a few yards away from her, but she hadn't felt the urge to run away. From the scuffle in the cabin, she knew he was fast, faster than she had even expected from an ordinary person...

She shivered. It was all getting way too weird.

Picking her way over to her captor, she stood by the side of the river, rubbing her arms through the thin shirt she had been dressed in.

The cabin had been full of scents that were alien to her: the trees of the wood, the open breezes of nature, the scent of someone's house, always slightly foreign. But when he had leaned down on her, she’d breathed in his scent, and had belatedly realised that the shirt she had been wearing was his, that clean, masculine scent present in the fabric, as if he had just been wearing before giving it to her. It was reassuring in a way she couldn't quite place.

"Strip."

Okay, that got her attention. "Excuse me?"

He looked up from his rucksack and tossed something at her. Instinctively, she reached out and caught it from the air. "Soap?"

"There's no bath in the cabin, and I didn't think you'd appreciate it if I made you bathe in a bucket." He jerked his chin towards the river. "We need to keep your scent low, so in you go."

Lacey glared at him, but his face was implacable, his expression unmoving. With the memory of that morning’s lesson still echoing in her ears, her wrists still aching where he had grabbed her, she knew that this was one fight that she wouldn't win. Unhappily, she bent to untie her boots, placing them on the bank of the river, then stepped forward.

The man shook his head. "Not like that. Clothes off, too."

"Excuse me?" Ever since his weird Jedi mind trick back in the cabin, Lacey's anger had dimmed down to a low, dimly burning ember. Now, it flared back up. "There's easier ways for you to get your kicks, old man."

For the first time since she'd met him, that seemed to rattle him. He frowned at her, his eyes going wide with confusion. "Old man…?" There was a hint of incredulity in his voice. "How old do you think I am?"

Lacey snorted. "I don't know, like… forty?" She saw the look of pain that flashed across his face, and fought to stifle her laughter. "Fifty, maybe?"

Her captor’s eyes narrowed again, but it wasn't the focused glare of a predator. He was pissed, she realised. It gave her some perverse delight. "In dog years, maybe. Quit trying to yank my chain. Get in."

At least the mood had lighted a little, putting some distance between the two of them and what had happened between them that morning. Resigned to the fact that she was going to have to do it whether she wanted to or not, Lacey bought her hands up and began unbuttoning the shirt she had been dressed in.

She was prepared for the man to ogle her, his eyes on her as she stripped at his command, but he seemed more focused on the woods around them. Even when she bared her breasts to the cold morning air, he kept his gaze on the woods, as if waiting for some threat to show itself.

God, it was cold. Slightly emboldened by the fact that he wasn't perving on her, Lacey stepped out of her underwear, leaving it next to her boots. Soap in hand, she stepped forward into the shallows of the river.

"Shit!"

That made him finally turn his head to her, one hand raised in a warning. "Keep your voice down."

"It's cold, is all." Wanting this to be over quickly, Lacey set about with the bar of soap, scrubbing as quickly as she could. Her body slowly acclimatised to the chill of the forest river, but it wasn't exactly relaxing.

Just think of it like some sort of fancy spa treatment,
she told herself.
Yeah, some sort of new age cold water shock bath. Drives out toxins or something, I don't know. Any minute now some Botoxed woman is going to turn the corner with a plateful of cucumber slices
.

It was a stupid distraction, but it was still enough to keep her mind from dwelling on the icy chill of the water. With chattering teeth, Lacey stepped out of the water back onto the bank, thoroughly scrubbed. She draped her hair over the river, trying to squeeze the water from the heavy, wet mass. Unhappily, she knew it would take forever to dry, unless her mysterious captor happened to have a hair-dryer and some fluffy towels back in the cabin of his.

Speak of the devil… He was back to looking at her, a stern look in his eyes. He shook his head. “Back in," he said. "You’re not quite done yet."

"God
damn
it!" Lacey cried, shivering in the air. "Is that how you get your kicks? Just making people be slightly uncomfortable? Regular sadism too extreme for you? What's next, paper cuts? Traffic jams? Slow wifi?"

He didn't seem fazed by the contents of her outburst, but his eyes narrowed as her voice rose. "Quiet down."

"Why?" Lacey looked around her, but there was nothing to indicate that anyone was anywhere nearby. All she could hear were birds, and the breeze blowing through the trees. "You scared of someone?"

"Yeah, I am." His eyes flicked to the scar on the curve of her shoulder. "And I’m pretty sure you've met them, too."

That managed to cut through her anger. Lacey's hand automatically jerked to her wound. "You know who did this?"

He nodded solemnly. "Yeah, I do. I’ll tell you all about him, too. In exchange for… well."

For a moment Lacey wondered if he would ask to exchange knowledge for sex, but then he reached into his backpack, and pulled out a knife. A bolt of terror earthed itself in her spine, freezing her in place.

He locked eyes with her. Strangely, there was no hint of violence looming in those cool blue depths. "I'm going to tell you exactly what you need to know about the man who did that to you, and why I need to keep you with me. But in exchange..." He jerked his chin towards the sodden mass of wet hair that hung limply down her back. "That has to go."

Not for the first time that day, Lacey’s terror was replaced by a wild anger. "Seriously, my hair? Oh my God. You really are into petty sadism,” she spat bitterly. “What's wrong with just taking a finger?"

He shot her a look of annoyance, as if her fear was getting on his last nerve. "Those men out there, the ones who did that to you? We haven't seen the last of them. Sooner or later they’ll come for you. No matter how much you try to hide, no matter how fast you run." He tipped the blade towards her hair. “That’s a liability. It has to go."

Lacey's mind reeled. He'd said all that as if it made perfect sense, as if he was just teaching a stubborn little girl some harsh realities of the world. "I’m not planning to get into any fights."

"It doesn't matter whether you're planning to or not. They’re out there, and when they find you, I don't want you going down because of vanity."

Lacey raised a hand to her hair, tangling her fingers in her wet locks. She'd always loved having long hair, even though it had been a pain in the ass her whole life. She'd been awkward as a child, and an even more awkward teen. There was no way she could have changed her face, and changing her body has been hard enough, but she'd always taken refuge in how beautiful her long hair had been.

The idea of cutting it off completely… It was frightening. Suddenly, the fear and anger that had been present in her for the past day gave way to a pitiful sadness. "I want to go home," she whispered.

The look her captor gave her wasn't entirely without pity. A tension spread across his broad shoulders, as if he was holding himself back from something, though he made no attempt to step forward towards her.

"Yeah, we all want something." His mouth quirked ruefully. “If you want something enough, you have to go to any length to make it happen."

It sounded as if he was speaking about something personal, but, swallowed up in her own private misery, Lacey didn’t care.
Let the crazy man with the knife fight his own battles
, she thought.

Wordlessly, she turned her back to him, offering her mane of hair.

She heard his footsteps approaching her, his boots crunching on the leaves,. She could feel the heat of his body as he stood behind her, startlingly warm after the fresh chill of the water. When he reached up to place one hand over the bite mark on her shoulder, it seemed almost blindingly hot against her skin.

She had spent a lot of time so far watching his hands. They were good hands, the sort that spoke of a man not afraid to pitch in and get his hands dirty, but without the lifetime of abuse of a manual worker. She felt those hands run up and up to her neck to gather the weight of her hair, his fingertips drawing their way up along her skin. A heartbeat later she felt the touch of her hair as it brushed against her body, falling in locks around her on the way down.

"So tell me,” she said, as much an attempt to distract herself as anything else.

"Hm?"

"About whoever that was back in town, the man who did this to me. About you," she made a noise of frustration, even as she was careful to hold still. "Tell me what the hell is going on."

The man paused for a moment, and then went back to his methodical work, shearing her hair away with practised strokes of the knife. "You ever hear of werewolves?"

The man in town had been a wolf, and then he’d been a man... but that was crazy. There had to be a better explanation, didn't there? Lacey let out a snort, slightly panicky. "Hairy guys, into long walks on the beach and moonlight? Yeah, I’ve seen a movie or two.
Please
don't tell me you're unhinged enough for that to be any kind of explanation."

Her captor let out a dark chuckle. "It's nothing like the movies, though the thing about the moon is true. A stopped clock has to be right twice a day, I suppose."

To her surprise, Lacey let out a bark of wild laughter. "Okay! Okay, why not? Why wouldn't it be something like this? God, I was stupid to get my hopes up. For a moment I thought I might actually find out what was going on and what you wanted with me. I know, what an idiot, right?"

"You
are
finding out." Those strong hands worked through her hair, much shorter now. The strange lack of weight, so familiar to her, was startling in its absence. "The man who attacked you was a werewolf. Wolf shifter, rather. That's what we call ourselves."

"Shifters? Sound scientific." She laughed bitterly, but her thoughts gnawed at her. It was impossible to ignore what she'd seen in the town.

The man behind her didn't seem fazed by her disbelief. "We’ve been around for a long time," he explained, his hands still working. She could hear the sharp
snick!
of the knife as it sliced through her hair, the soft sound of her hair falling on the ground, and between them both, the sound of his breathing, heavy and masculine. "We mostly try to keep to ourselves. Humans aren't always the most understanding, and crossing those two streams is just inviting trouble. So, we stay out of trouble, separate from humans." He let out a dark chuckle. "Just about worked, too. Until Colt started up, anyway."

"What, is he the big bad wolf?"

"Something like that,” he captor said, and to her surprise there was an edge of venom in his voice. “He's a pack leader from up north with too many anti-human sentiments in his pack and too many delusions of grandeur in his head. They started coming down a couple years ago, carving up small towns here and there. Started with livestock, I heard, but they must've got bored of that real fast."