Chapter Five
“Boone!”
Jackie jerked up into a sitting position, dragged from his sleep by something he didn’t understand, something scary enough to make his heart hammer painfully in his chest. He panted heavily as he pressed his hand over his heart, willing it to slow down.
He tried to remember what he had been dreaming about, but it was nothing but scattered images. Teeth and claws and blood. Jackie wasn’t sure whose blood it was. Just that there had been a lot of it.
He did know the dream had been about Boone, which made the blood kind of make sense. The teeth and claws, too. Fuck. Jackie rubbed his hand over his face. This was insane. If he wasn’t having fantasies about Boone, he was having nightmares about him.
He needed to stop thinking about Boone.
He needed another cold shower.
Jackie rolled out of bed and stumbled into the bathroom. After turning the shower on and checking that nothing but ice-cold water was coming out, he climbed in. He could have no more prevented the scream that came out of his mouth than he could have stopped breathing.
That shit was cold.
Jackie’s tears mingled with the falling water. Each drop of water hitting his skin felt as if a needle were being poked into him. It was excruciating, and yet Jackie didn’t know of any other way to make it stop.
He stood under the unrelenting spray of freezing water until his skin started to turn blue. After turning off the water, Jackie climbed out of the shower and dried off. When he started to walk back to the bedroom, the reflection of his pale face in the bathroom mirror caught his eye.
Jackie winced when he turned his full attention to the mirror. He looked like shit warmed over. His skin was ashen white and his eyes had a sunken, gaunt look to them. There was no shine in them, no life. Jackie looked half-dead.
He sighed as he turned away from the mirror. He couldn’t look anymore. No amount of makeup was going to make him look better.
Jackie walked into the bedroom and climbed back into bed. He groaned as another wave of heat rolled through him. He could feel a layer of sweat covering his entire body as he struggled to breathe through the pain ripping through him. His insides were being shredded apart.
Jackie’s jaw tightened to the point of excruciating pain as he tried not to cry out. He was going to crawl right out of his skin. He’d felt that way since the moment Boone walked out the door. Jackie had almost given in to his anguish and called the man to demand to know what he had done.
Except he couldn’t.
Jackie had seen too much, witnessed too many painful and horrifying scenes. He knew he could have nothing to do with anyone who had any connection to shifters, and that included the handsome sheriff. Jackie wanted nothing to do with the man.
And maybe if he told himself that enough times, he might start to believe it.
Despite the vivid dreams he had every time he closed his eyes, Jackie knew nothing could ever come of it. Shifters were the things of nightmares. They destroyed lives, killing indiscriminately without repercussions. Those they couldn’t control, they eliminated.
It was that simple.
He had escaped once. He didn’t think he would be so lucky a second time, and Jackie would do everything within his power to make sure that never happened again. His days being someone’s guinea pig were over.
Jackie rolled to his back and stared up at the ceiling. It seemed as if nothing he did alleviated the pain rolling through him. It started at his toes and went all the way up to the top of his head. Even the tips of his hair hurt.
His stomach had cramped into one big knot yesterday. It hadn’t unwound yet. Jackie was starting to wonder if it ever would. If he didn’t know any better, he’d think he had food poisoning, except he wasn’t throwing up.
He ached, every inch of him. He had hot and cold flashes that wouldn’t stop. His skin itched so bad he had nearly scratched it right off. His head throbbed uncontrollably.
It wasn’t food poisoning, but it was something. Jackie blamed Boone. He hadn’t felt like this before they had sex and that stupid knot had formed.
And, oh yeah, Boone had bitten him.
Jackie shuddered as he ghosted his fingers over the bite mark. It was still there, although when he looked in the mirror, it wasn’t an open wound like he would have expected. It actually looked as if it had been there for ages. And every time he touched the bite mark, it was like being bitten all over again.
“What did you do to me, you stupid shifter?”
Jackie didn’t even know what kind of shifter Boone was. He didn’t think it mattered. He was still a shifter. Unless he was a cute, cuddly house cat, Jackie wanted nothing to do with him.
Jackie groaned as he rolled to his side, trying to find a position where he didn’t feel as though he were about to explode. There really didn’t seem to be one. He got up and staggered into the bathroom for another cold shower. They didn’t help much, but at this point, any relief was welcome. Jackie wasn’t sure the agony would ever end.
