by J. L. McCoy
Dean stood up and crossed his arms over his broad chest. “I didn’t tell you because you were in no condition to hear it,” he said sternly.
“That’s no excuse,” I argued, stopping in front of him. “Everything I own is in that house, Dean. Everything! I needed to know.”
“And now you do.” He frowned, cocking an eyebrow at me. “You need to cool your jets, toots. I’m not the enemy here.”
I shot him a frustrated look as I continued my pace around the room. He was right, though. I was angry, but I didn’t need to take it out on him of all people. He was the only person helping me at the moment. Sighing, I dropped to my knees and fisted my hair as I took deep breaths in an attempt to maintain my composure. I silently wondered how much a person could actually endure before they had a nervous breakdown. Either way, I knew I had to be close.
“What more can possibly happen to me?” I wondered aloud bitterly as I sat back on my heels, palms to my forehead, and gazed up at the ceiling. I’d been through absolute hell this week and the hits just kept coming. I couldn’t believe I’d lost my house. The house I pulled doubles and moonlighted to afford. The house that had been my home for the last six years and held every single item of my life, every item I’d worked so hard for…and now it was gone.
Standing up, I turned to face Dean. “I have to see it for myself,” I said in a near panic. “I need to go. I need to go now.” I started for the front door but a strong arm stopped me.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Dean drawled gently.
“I don’t care.” I shook my head as I tried to pull my arm out of his grasp. “I need to see it for myself. I need to see my house, dammit!”
Dean growled at my tone and the harsh sound seemed to knock some sense into me. Big bad werewolf…probably shouldn’t piss him off. I instantly stilled, took a deep, calming breath, and met the deep chocolate pools of his eyes. “Please, Dean,” I begged as my eyes began to sting with unshed tears. “I want to see it. I need to see it. I’ll walk if I have to, but I’m going.”
He sighed as he studied my face for a few seconds. Finally, he nodded his head and dropped my arm. “Fine, if you must, but I’m not letting you go alone.”
With that, he grabbed a set of keys hanging by the front door, and then led me outside to a vintage blue Charger.
Chapter Seven
Nikki
We were silent on the drive there, which was fine by me because I was too lost in my own thoughts to carry on a conversation.
When we turned onto Comanche Cove, I sat up straighter in the seat and tried to prepare myself for what I was about to see. No amount of preparation could have readied me for this, though. As the wreckage formerly known as my house came into view, I gasped and whimpered. It was gone…completely gone. The townhome was nothing but a tangled mass of blackened wood and unrecognizable debris.
Dean cursed under his breath and my eyes slid questioningly to his, but he was focused on something else. Following his gaze, I frowned when I saw my former best friend, Skye Morrison, digging through the rubble on her side of the townhome. Without thinking, I threw off my seatbelt and bolted from the car, heading straight for her.
“What the fuck happened here?” I angrily called out to her as I stomped up the driveway.
Skye jumped and turned to me in surprise. “Nikki?” she questioned, gingerly stepping over a pile of rubbish in her six inch pumps as she started toward me. “What are you doing here?”
“He just told me what happened.” I frowned, throwing my arm out behind me in the direction of Dean’s car, but was shocked when it hit something hard. Turning my head, I saw that Dean was right on my heels, following me with an unhappy look on his face.
“You try telling her no,” Dean growled out to her, crossing his corded arms over his chest as I faced her again.
She sighed as she stepped onto the driveway and pushed her long red hair out of her face. “I was hoping you wouldn’t come here. I didn’t want you to see it like this.”
“What the fuck happened, Skye?” I demanded as I crossed my arms over my chest as well. “What did you do?”
Looking shocked and a little pissed off, she crossed her arms too, mirroring my stance. “I didn’t do anything,” she huffed out. “I was out on the north shore of Lake Travis at Archer’s house when I got the call from the Arson Investigator.”
“Arson Investigator?” I watched as Dean stepped beside me and looked at Skye. They seemed to be having some sort of silent conversation and it pissed me off that no one was answering my questions. Throwing my hands up, I lost whatever semblance of calm I was holding on to. “Will someone please just tell me what the fuck happened to my house?”
Skye sighed and swallowed thickly as she turned her attention to me. “My father asked the people who took you to burn down my house,” she said softly, embarrassed.
My brow furrowed as my mouth dropped in shock. There was so much wrong with that sentence, but I chose to focus on the first thing. “Your father? What the shit, Skye? How…when…?”
She proceeded to tell me the story of her own kidnapping and how she found out her father was a vampire. When she got to the part where she met my kidnappers at the airfield and they told her they set fire to our house at her father’s request, I just lost it.
“So, you’re telling me I lost my house because of you?” I asked angrily. “I was kidnapped, raped, drugged, and my house set on fire all because those vampires wanted you to join their sick, twisted little group? Fucking seriously?”
“Calm down, St. James,” Dean ordered sternly beside me, but it was too late. I was too far gone to listen.
Skye gazed at me with wide, teary, apologetic eyes. “I’m sorry, Nikki. I’m really, truly sorry. I had no idea they’d taken you until they brought you into the Mausoleum that night. If I had known sooner—”
“Oh, fuck you, Skye!” I shouted. My fists clenched tightly down at my sides, and my body quivered hard, full of intense rage. “Fuck. You. Everything I had, you took away from me. On top of all the other shit I’ve just been through, I have nowhere to live now. My entire life is destroyed and it’s all your fault. My house, Skye. My fucking house! You know what it means to me! You know how hard I had to bust my ass to buy it! I’ll never forgive you for this. Never! You’ve ruined my fucking life!”
Before I realized what was happening, I was rushing forward and my fist connected with the side of Skye’s face. The world seemed to stop for a second as we all froze at the sound. I was momentarily shocked at what I’d done. I’d never been in an actual fight before, let alone ever started one. For a second, I thought I might have daydreamed it. Dean’s quick intake of air broke the spell and the world seemed to move again. Skye slowly turned her head back to me, a look of shock and utter sadness in her eyes. She brought one shaky hand up and gingerly cupped her face as the tears in her eyes finally broke free.
Dean growled lowly behind me and I was quickly jerked around to face him. “No hitting,” he barked as he gazed angrily down into my eyes. I felt my own tears begin to fall and he frowned, his face softening considerably. Sighing, he put one hand on my shoulder as his eyes lifted to Skye.
“You okay, toots?”
“I’m fine,” Skye whispered unevenly behind me and I heard the clack of her heels as they walked past us. Dean and I watched as she silently headed to a black Porsche a few houses down, got in, and slowly drove away.
A long moment after her taillights rounded the corner, he turned back to me with pursed lips and a disappointed look. “Was the really necessary?” he asked quietly, his brow pinched slightly.
I wiped the wetness from my cheeks with my hands then ran them down my thighs, drying them. “I don’t know,” I huffed slightly. “I didn’t realize I was going to hit her.”
Dean dropped his hand from my shoulder and ran it through his thick, dark hair as he sighed and looked down at me, probably trying to figure out what he was going to do with me. I’d seen that same loo
k many times before when I was a child. “I know shit is fucked up between you two right now, but you should know that Skye did a lot for you while you were missing…and even today.”
“Yeah,” I sneered, getting angry again as I crossed my arms, “she sure did. She got my house destroyed.”
Dean eyed me silently for a moment, his face disbelieving. “You honestly, in your heart, think that? After all she told you, you’re still going to blame her for the actions of some psychotic fucking asshole?”
I huffed as I shifted my feet, silently eyeing him as well. Okay, so maybe some tiny, itsy-bitsy part of me knew she couldn’t control their actions, but that didn’t take away what was done. The only thing I had in this world was gone along with my car.
I’d had nothing growing up and worked hard to give myself the things my junkie mom couldn’t. For me, having my own house and vehicle was like summiting Mount Kilimanjaro. It meant I’d actually accomplished something, made it in life; it meant I wasn’t going to be druggy trash like my parents who never had a pot to piss in. I swore I was going to live better than I was raised, and I was up until this happened. I didn’t know how the fuck I was going to rebuild my life again. Yes, I had homeowner’s insurance, but that couldn’t replace the irreplaceable…like the only photo in existence of my parents, taken a few weeks before my dad bailed on us. And what about a place to live? Where would I live until the insurance money came in? I didn’t have much in my bank account, maybe a couple hundred, and that wouldn’t get me very far.
“I asked you a question, Nik,” Dean said, drawing my attention back to him.
I bit my bottom lip as I frowned at him, not wanting to actually answer the question. I was too upset at the moment and wasn’t quite ready to admit aloud that I knew Skye couldn’t help what was done to our house.
“Fine, don’t answer me, but you know she had no hand in this.” He frowned, cocking an eyebrow at me as he reached around for something in his back pocket. “Here,” he said, tossing me a thick white envelope.
I wasn’t expecting it, so I fumbled to catch it before it hit the ground. “What is it?” I asked, feeling its considerable weight in my hands.
“Open it.”
Frowning, a question pulling at my brow, I slowly pulled the rubber band from around it and lifted the flap. Inside was a ridiculously large stack of cash. Sliding my surprised eyes up to Dean, I stumbled to speak. “Wh-what the hell is this? Where did you get all this money?”
“I’d like to tell you, but I don’t know if I should,” he said gruffly, crossing his arms.
“You can tell me.” I frowned then glanced back down at the stack. “Whose is it?”
“It’s yours.”
“I think I would remember if I’d won the lottery,” I scoffed.
“You think you’d remember a good friend before you punched it in the face,” he sassed back plainly.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means the girl you just hit cleared out her entire bank account this afternoon so you’d have the means to start replacing your things. And I think you should also know that six hundred of that money was earned by her in your absence at Drop Kick Dan’s bar. Instead of keeping it as compensation for the work she put in, she set it aside to give to you whenever you came back.”
I glanced down at the money in shock, looked up at him in disbelief, and then back down to it. There had to be seven or eight thousand dollars in there. I couldn’t understand why Skye would give me so much money. Was she trying to buy back my friendship? I hadn’t seen her give Dean any money when we got here. Wait…
Jerking my head back to Dean, I eyed him, not understanding. “She’s been working at Dan’s? Since when?”
Dean dropped his arms and took a few steps toward me, his eyes studying me closely. He was looking for something in me, but I had no idea what he wanted or expected. “Dan called Skye the day after you didn’t show up for work. Skye sent people to your house to look for you while she went in to help him out. From what she told me, they were worried sick about you. By the third day, they were going to go to the police, but that’s when those bloodsuckers brought you into Archer’s place.”
“She…she filled in for me?” I asked, not really grasping what he was saying.
“Yes,” he said as he inched closer. He slowly reached out and gently put his finger under my chin as he tilted my head up so I’d give him my full attention. “And she still is. Skye said she’d be working there until you were ready to go back.”
“But, I thought she worked at The Mausoleum,” I near whispered as his eyes seemed to pull me in.
“She does,” he whispered, matching my tone, “but she works for Dan in the mornings before her shift at the club. That doesn’t seem like the actions of someone who intentionally wanted to hurt you, now does it?”
I blinked my eyes a few times and slowly shook my head as I answered. “I-I don’t want her money.”
Dean sighed and dropped his finger as he took a step back and crossed his arms again. “It’s no longer her money. It’s your money and you are keeping it. End of discussion.”
“She can’t just buy me off,” I huffed as I threw the envelope on the ground between us. “There’s no way she’s going to get me to forget all the horrible shit I just went through because of her.”
Dean’s eyes narrowed at me before he bent down and picked up the money. “That girl loves you, Nikki,” he growled out as he got in my face and roughly put the cash back in my hands. “She saved your job, came up with a good excuse for your absence when she learned you were kidnapped, she came to me, a werewolf, which is practically forbidden, and begged me and my pack to help her rescue you and kill every last one of those sick fucks who took you…and you know what? She did. She slaughtered the fuck out of them for what they did to you and I know that girl would do it all again for you if she could.”
My heart had begun to pound with his proximity. He was too close, or not close enough…I couldn’t tell, but my heart and respiratory rate were rapidly rising. My eyes slid from his fiery mocha gaze to his full lips as my nose drew in his wild, manly scent. I licked my lips as I tore my eyes away and focused back on his, but Dean was no longer meeting my gaze. His eyes were now focused solely on my mouth. Heat and longing, the likes of which I’d never experienced before, zinged throughout by body and I gasped unexpectedly. I was more than a little confused at my body’s reaction to him. Weren’t we just fighting? Having recently survived a horrific rape, I never expected to desire another man so quickly…if ever again. While my body seemed to be begging for his touch, my mind was too shocked and confused to agree.
Shaking my head in hopes of knocking some serious sense into it, I took a small step back. “Too close,” I breathed out.
Dean’s eyes quickly flashed to mine and the heat instantly dissipated as his brow furrowed. “Shit, I’m sorry,” he apologized as he shook his head and put a good four feet between us. “I didn’t mean to—”
“S’okay,” I mumbled, shrugging one shoulder as my mind spun wildly, trying to figure out what the hell had just happened. There was some definite attraction between us and I didn’t know how to handle it. I didn’t even know if I could handle it. But I did know one thing, my body had never reacted to someone’s presence so strongly before. It was electric…and also confusing as hell.
A dull, throbbing pain drew my attention and I worriedly looked down at the source. The knuckles on my right hand appeared swollen and they were quickly turning a purplish color. I grimaced at the sight before glancing up at Dean again. “Uh…whoops.”
Frowning, he took the envelope from my hands, stuffed it in his back pocket, and then carefully lifted my hand, inspecting it closely. “Well, this doesn’t look good,” he sighed before gently prodding around the center knuckle, testing it for serious damage.
“Aeiii,” I cried out immediately, trying to pull my hand back. That’d hurt like a mother.
“Hold still, babe,” he gentl
y shushed me before carefully extending my index and middle fingers. I whimpered again and he tsked as he let me have my hand back. “You messed it up pretty good there, toots. Might have even broken it.” Seeing the fear in my wide eyes, he chuckled and slung his arm around my neck as he turned me toward the car. “Come on, Rocky. We’d better get that hand looked at.”
“B-but my house,” I protested as I twisted my neck and looked back at the blackened mess. I hadn’t even gotten the chance to go through it to see if there was anything I could salvage.
“It’ll be there tomorrow,” he assured me as he opened the passenger door. After helping me with my seatbelt, he rested his hands on the roof, leaned down, and smirked at me. “So, Nikki, did we learn anything from this experience?”
“Yeah,” I huffed unhappily. “Vampires are tougher than they look. Next time I’ll use a sledgehammer.”
A slow smile pulled at his lips as he chuckled, shook his head, and shut the door.
Chapter Eight
Dean
“Fuck me, toots,” I sighed as I finally put my fork down and slid the empty dessert plate a few inches away from me. “That was incredible.” I swear, Nikki sure could cook a meal. I bet I’d gained a few pounds in the three weeks she’d been living with me.
Skye wasn’t kidding when she said Nikki tended to stress-bake. Every morning there were fresh muffins, waffles, pancakes, or whatever else she felt like whipping up, but dinner…dinner was another matter entirely. The girl would put together three course meals fit for a Michelin star restaurant. Lots of guys from the pack had heard about her mad kitchen skills, so they found every excuse they could to stop by. Nikki, being the caring, giving person she was, would always invite our guests to stay for a meal, or at the very least, take a to-go bag of the day’s sweets home with them.
