Page 27 of His Runaway Mate

Nicky

“You need to get laid,” Laura tells me a day or so later. She’s approached me with an abundance of caution, which I notice, because it’s how everyone approaches me at the moment. I have been a little, well, how to best say it… I have been grumpy. Tetchy. Irritable, perhaps.

“I do not need to get laid. Sex is not a need. Food, water, shelter, those are needs.”

“Maybe not for humans, but for you, I think you need to get laid.”

“Why?”

She extends a hand at the chaos around me. “This, mostly.”

Okay. So I have thrown a rack of clothing on the floor. I didn’t notice that.

“Sorry, I knocked the rack over,” I mumble.

“And the rest of it?”

I turn around and look at my office. It is a little messy.

“It looks like someone ransacked it. You’re not shifting, but you’re starting to act wild anyway. You have to go to him, Nicky. You have to get him to take you through the shift.”

“I don’t need him. None of us do. He’s still the same person he was before I fucked him. Sex doesn’t change anything.”

“Maybe for some humans that’s true, but it’s not true for us,” she argues. “Sex changes everything, boss. It’s changing you.”

“Because I got a little messy?”

I’m tired of being questioned. There is something restless in me, but it’s just my need to go and do something. I’ve been in this office for too long. The walls are starting to close in.

“I’m going out for ice cream.”

“Okay,” she says. “I’ll send the…”

“Alone,” I say.

I go out by myself, half-striding, half-stomping through the streets with a scowl on my face that feels like it’s never going to leave. What the hell is wrong with everyone right now? They will not shut up about Rex and sex and shifting. Don’t they understand all the work we have to do?

I know it’s really my mood they’re complaining about, but they’re wrong about that too. I’m not monstrous. I’m whimsical. I’m nice. I’m fun.

I’m waiting at an intersection. The little red walking man turns to a green walking man. I step out into the intersection, just as a vehicle that apparently considers itself above the light system entirely comes screeching to a halt.

“I’m driving here!” a big man shouts at me out his driver’s window.

My temper spikes. I remind myself to be calm. I’m not monstrous. I’m whimsical. I’m calm.

I turn around and smile at him.

“Get the fuck outta my way!”

Still smiling, I very calmly punch his hood hard enough to leave a dent. Pain bursts through my hand. I feel my knuckles crack. I feel some small, tender bones break.

“Fuck!” I curse as I grab at my hand.

The guy comes half out of his car. He’s red in the face, so pissed off he’s forgotten to remove his seatbelt. Lucky for him, because the way I feel right now I could fight him and this whole street.

“What the hell are you doing, lady?”

Before I can reply, I hear my name shouted behind me.