Page 7 of Kiss My Sass

She shook her head, wiping a tear that escaped her eye before anyone could see it. Jack had done a real number on Nica. He loved playing his little games, making her apologize for things she didn’t even know she did wrong, and always making it feel like it was her fault when they disagreed or when she had a difference of opinion.

It was never about anything important until he wanted more than the chaste kisses she offered him whenever they returned from a date.

“I’m a man, Nica, not a boy. I need more from you.”

“I’m sorry, Jack. I don’t know how—I’m a virgin,” she’d confessed one night, guiltily.

“I see. You want a contract first. Fine, I’ll meet with your mother tomorrow.”.

True, they hadn’t done more than kiss, but she didn’t know what he meant by contract until her mother explained she was Jack’s the next night. Then she told Nica to wear her one good Sunday dress, and she drove her to the cherry tree where Ravens had been making their intentions known for years and years. Nica had heard stories about the promising ceremony, but she never expected to have one for herself.

Fear and excitement warred within her, but the sharp look on her mother’s face was as much incentive as the idea of finally getting out of her small hometown and the house she was raised in. Nica’s mother was never affectionate with her, and she wanted more from life than waiting tables.

Jack’s offer seemed too good to be true, but she wouldn’t learn about that till much later. After she’d signed the papers he’d thrust at her, and they spoke their promise to mate one another aloud as per the ceremony, Jack drove Nica to a cheap motel where he took her virginity with Emmet waiting outside the door—what a horrible disappointment that night was. Eye opening, too.

Sex was painful and messy, and over too damn quickly for her to do more than wince and gasp. Jack was angry at the way she’d received him, her lack of warmth. But she was a virgin, and he didn’t seem to care.

“Christ, that was rough. Let’s fuck off back to the trailer park. Maybe Ella and Denise can teach this little puritan something about sex before I have to bed her again.”

Oh, yeah. She’d heard every scathing thing he’d growled about her to Emmet while she’d been in the bathroom, using a damp washcloth to clean the blood from between her legs and soothe the hurt he’d left there. When she was finished, he demanded she get in the car, then Jack and Emmet drove her to the trailer park where he and the others in his Murder lived.

Nica was almost relieved when he put her inside a trailer with two other females and told she would have to wait her turn to marry the King. She didn’t understand, but when she questioned him, Jack told her the promise ceremony they’d had in front of her mother was just that, a promise to marry in the future.

“You ain’t the only one in line. Let’s see if you can hold my seed better than the others,” Jack said, nodding at her stomach.

Nica felt as if the floor had dropped out from under her. Not growing up in a Murder, she did not understand the politics. Apparently, Jack wanted her pregnant before he mated her. That was news to her. Nica wanted to finish school and maybe spend some time getting to know him first.

Thank goodness Ella and Denise had been kind upon her arrival. Ella was ten years older than Nica, with blonde hair and a tall, willowy frame. She was a Crow Shifter who had been promised to Jack since they were teenagers.

Denise was shorter than Ella, but still taller than Nica, with bronzed skin and sharp features and straight black hair. She had been brought in about two years before Nica. The Crow King was apparently desperate for an heir, and after failing to get either of them pregnant, he was still looking for a fertile female to be his Queen.

Lucky for Nica, she had started birth control back in high school to help regulate her period. Still, her reality had hit her hard. She was no treasured mate and there was no impending marriage.

Jack Branwen was a liar.

What she’d thought was the happiest time in her life turned out to be the worst. She was the third in line to mate the Crow King, and she paid her way by cleaning and cooking, doing laundry and other housework the females were told to do. She was made to quit her classes and all outside activity. Her life was to be dedicated to the Murder.

Funny thing was, pathetic as it might sound, Nica could have handled that. She would have done the dishes and washed the clothes, hell, she would have scrubbed the windows and the floors till her fingers bled, if only he loved her. But Jack never loved her. It didn’t take her long to realize that. Unfortunately, there was a reason a group of Birds like them was called a Murder—death was the only way to leave.

Unlucky at love. That’s what you are, Nica girl. Terribly unlucky.

Chapter4

“Nica? A Word,” Derrick poked his head out of his office and called out to her from down the hall.

She turned her head, placing the last of the lemon slices in the condiment tray. Raven Shifters might have an inferior sense of smell when it came to other Shifters, but her hearing was just fine. And her sight, well, that was even better.

She placed the clear plastic cover back on the tiny tray, taking a second to enjoy the rainbow of sliced lemons, oranges, limes, cherries, and such, before she wiped her hands and headed to Derrick’s office.

“Yeah, boss?” she asked, knocking before entering.

“Sit down, Nica,” he invited, patting the back of the baby he held.

Nica smiled. The triplets were the most beautiful babies she had ever seen. At almost one month old, they were triple the size of a human baby, and alert in the way of Shifter offspring. She was delighted with the way the entire Pack pitched in to take care of the cubs. It wasn’t something she was used to growing up with just her mother.

Catherine Corvo was the opposite of what Nica thought of when it came to maternal instincts. Her mother saw to the necessities like keeping food on the table and a roof over her head, but she never witnessed the kind of utter joy she saw on the faces of Lucy and Derrick when they held their precious young. If only she should be so lucky someday, she mused, laughing as the baby let out a surprisingly loud burp.

“That’s my girl,” Derrick murmured, grinning as he kissed her head.

---