Only escape was on his mind at that moment. He stopped his headlong flight for a moment and tried to picture the trail maps he’d studied when he first came up here. Actually, they had made little sense to him, and he’d probably been a little drunk at the time. He gnawed at his lip.

Hearing a noise off to his left, he whirled around and saw a huge silver wolf stalking him through the trees, coming right for him. He was unable to stifle the scream that tore from his throat. He looked around him for a weapon, but nothing came to hand. He turned to run, expecting to be taken down at any moment, and he wasn’t disappointed. A powerful blow to his back took him to his knees. He twisted wildly, throwing his hands up over his face. He felt the hot breath on his throat, as he took one last deep shuddering breath and then everything faded to black.

He awoke minutes later to find himself lying on his back, his hands tied in front of him with the rags of his own shirt. Looming over him, Marco stood looking down into his face, as naked as the day he was born, his body every bit as beautiful as Nicky remembered.

“Let me go!” Nicky kicked out with his feet, but Marco simply stepped back out of reach. “No,” he said quietly. “Settle down, Nicky. We need to talk.”

“I have nothing to say to you! I hate you!” Nicky turned his face to the side, trying not to look at Marco’s beautiful body.

“I’m sorry to hear that, baby. I love you,” Marco said softly.

“Bullshit! Don’t try to hand me that crap. It won’t work anymore.” He began to struggle wildly, pulling at the rags on his hands and kicking out with his feet again. Marco knelt beside him and put a hand on Nicky’s chin, turning his face toward him. “Stop it. I’m not letting you go, and you’ll just hurt yourself.”

Breathing hard, Nicky subsided, but glared hard at Marco before he rasped out one word. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do you want to take me back? Is it to make yourself look better to everyone? Like you’re so generous you let me stay even though you don’t want me anymore?”

“I do want you. I was a fool to let you go. I love you, Nicky, and I always will.”

“Yeah sure, you love me so much you asked me to dissolve our union.”

“I was wrong, baby. So wrong. If you’ll give me a chance, I’ll spend the rest of our lives making it up to you.” Falling to his knees beside him he cupped Nicky’s cheek in his hand and kissed him firmly, but very gently. Even that much contact was enough to make Marco moan with desire. To his surprise, Nicky moaned too, but softly and almost reluctantly, as if the sound were being wrung from him.

With his other hand, Marco reached for the bulge in Nicky’s pants, stroking his cock through the material. Nicky tried to pull his mouth away, but Marco followed his every move, teasing his lips with his tongue. “I love you,” Marco whispered against his lips again and again Nicky sighed. His mouth fell open and he welcomed Marco’s tongue inside, meeting it with his own. Marco unzipped Nicky’s jeans, and slipped his hand inside freeing his cock. Dizzy with desire, Nicky allowed him to stroke his shaft and pushed up into his hand. Marco lay across his body, angling so that his rock hard cock rubbed alongside Nicky’s. His hand moved inside his pants and down to cup Nicky’s balls. He dipped down further to tease his rim. Nicky gasped and bucked against him.

Keeping his gaze on Nicky’s, he put his fingers in his mouth, wetting them thoroughly before dipping one back inside Nicky’s tight hole. A few seconds later, a second finger joined the first and started moving up, searching for the spot Marco knew how to find only too well. When he found it, Nicky cried out, waves of pleasure washing over him. He pushed down on Marco’s fingers, wanting more fullness, more stimulation. Meanwhile his cock was sliding against Marco’s other palm, driving him seriously out of his mind. He couldn’t decide which way to thrust, whether to push forward or back. His mind swirling with pleasure, he felt his orgasm clawing at him. He lifted his ass up off the ground as he came, screaming out Marco’s name.

Marco fell over on top of him and nuzzled his face in his throat, trying to catch his breath. Suddenly he stiffened, seeming to hear some sound that Nicky couldn’t hear, and he quickly raised himself up from Nicky’s body, bending over to tuck Nicky back inside his pants and tug up the zipper. He pulled him up to his feet then and up against his side, hiding his erection. Nicky was glad for his arm around him so tightly. He didn’t think his knees would have held him up otherwise. He saw Ian and Zack emerge from the trees, back in their human forms, and he lowered his head, not willing to meet either man’s concerned gaze, and a little embarrassed at their nudity. They must have only shifted back moments before.

Marco turned him around in his arms and held his face against his chest. Nicky’s mind was in a whirl. He heard the excited voices of the men around him, but he felt himself fading. He was so tired, so worn out. Blackness crept up in his peripheral vision, but shied away when he tried to focus on it. His legs sagged a little more, and soon he felt Marco’s arm go under his knees and his body was picked up and held tightly to his chest. Only then did he allow himself to sink deeper and deeper into the blackness that was coming for him.

Nicky was furious. Since he awakened, he’d been trying desperately to escape, fighting everyone, and now he was sitting exhausted in a room with Gabe, his wrists in Gabe’s fur-lined cuffs. He was cuffed because he kept trying to wreck the room before they restrained him. His ankles were bound too, because he was still trying to get up and run. Gabe looked over at him nervously. “Nicky, I wish you’d try to eat something.”

“I want a drink, Gabe. I keep telling you I need a drink. Take these fucking cuffs off me and let me go.”

“Damn it, Nicky, you know I can’t do that.” Gabe indicated the tray next to Nicky on the table. “I got you some beer though. See, doesn’t it look good? I know you must be hungry. A bottle of beer and a variety of meats. Wouldn’t that be good?”

Nicky sneered at him. “Sounds like the working title of your memoirs, Gabe.”

Gabe smiled. “Very funny, Nicky. You always did have a way with words. Yes, actually it could well be the story of my life before I met Zack. I know you must be feeling better if you’re cracking on me.”

“I don’t feel better! I feel like shit! I need a drink, Gabe, and not a beer. Damn it, my stomach hurts! You must remember how that is—only some tequila or some vodka will help make it bearable. That or drugs. Morphine or Oxy would do it…but I’ll take what you got.”

“I don’t have any drugs, Nicky. Marco’s blood would help you, if you’d let him feed you more instead of fighting him so hard.”

“Bullshit. I don’t want to drink from Marco, or see him or even be in the same room as him, I told you. Please Gabe, let me go. I’ll never bother you again. You don’t have to give me any money, or anything. Just let me go.”

“You’re not going anywhere except back home where you belong,” Marco’s voice sounded behind them at the door.

Nicky bit his bottom lip and turned his head sharply to the side, looking down at the floor. “You gave up your right to make that decision for me,” Nicky said softly.

Marco came in and sat down in front of Nicky on the sofa. Gabe patted Marco’s shoulder and got up to slip out the door, leaving Nicky and Marco alone in the room. Marco said nothing more, just folded his arms across his chest and watched Nicky’s face carefully. Nicky glanced up at him furiously from beneath his lashes. He’d be damned if he’d say anything to the bastard. What the hell was he thinking, sitting there looking all big and bad. Damn wolf! Why did he have to be so gorgeous, and why did Nicky still love the bastard so much?

Marco thought Nicky looked dirty and disheveled. He had shadows under his eyes and badly needed a shave and a haircut, and was way too thin. God, he was absolutely fucking gorgeous, and Marco could barely keep his hands off him. He couldn’t get enough of looking at him, and was content to sit there most of the night if he had to, determined to wait Nicky out. He was dying to feed him again, anything to make him feel useful, like he was doing something for his mate. The strong protective urges were driving him crazy, but Nicky was right. He’d given up any rights he had over him, and now all he could do was hope and pray that Nicky could forgive him and take him back.

When he got the word that Nicky had been found, it was like waking up from a terrible nightmare that wouldn’t end. From the time he found out Nicky was missing, he’d been searching everywhere for him, driving everyone crazy until they came up with fresh ways to try to find him. He had hardly slept from worrying about where Nicky was sleeping, and could barely eat for worrying that Nicky was going hungry. Scouring the nearby hospitals, police departments, and even the morgues, he dreaded what he might find, but had turned up nothing. He didn’t need anyone to tell him what an idiot he’d been because he’d spent the last three months calling himself every kind of fool.

He had castigated, reproved, and mistreated himself until even Logan and Evan had begun to feel sorry for him. Then, that morning when the call came from Zack, he could hardly believe it. Ian and Logan had driven him to Zack’s lodge, because he was shaking so badly he didn’t trust himself behind the wheel. That and the fact that Logan would have killed him if he hadn’t brought him along.

The others had already been out searching for him when they arrived, so leaving Logan with Gabe, Marco and Ian both shifted and ran off into the woods. They’d located the search party soon enough, consisting of Zack, his beta, Jamie, and three more of his gammas. They discovered that it had taken about an hour to get back to the lodge and form a search party after Gabe had seen Nicky. When they got on the scene they soon found that Nicky had evaded immediate capture by running through a stream for a while. It had taken them almost another hour to pick up his trail. It had been sheer luck that Marco, so in tune with Nicky’s sweet scent, had stumbled across it right away on an outcropping of rock off the trail where he’d stopped to rest. Finding him after that was only a matter of minutes. When he’d taken him down, he was still in his wolf form and had sensed Nicky’s fear and anger just before he passed out. Marco had quickly shifted back and tied his ex-lover’s hands. What happened next he would never regret and couldn’t have stopped no matter what. His only hope was that Nicky would forgive him enough to come home with him. He had certainly seemed responsive, even if it seemed almost against his will.