by Tate James
His cheeks pinked slightly, and he dragged his lip through his teeth before replying. “Nothing, it’s… nothing.” His gaze dodged away, like he was embarrassed about something.
I didn’t push the issue, though. We barely knew each other, nowhere near enough for me to try and force pillow talk out of him. But my chest tightened at the thought that I’d made him uncomfortable about something, so I shifted onto my side to face him, propping my head on my hand.
“You’re different from other guys around here, Lucas. Why is that?” I didn’t mean it as an accusation, more a compliment, but I was genuinely curious about this angelic man who’d fallen into my lap when I needed him the most.
He gave me a wry smile. “Because I’m not from around here?”
I rolled my eyes. “Alright then, smartass. Where are you from? I haven’t had a chance to snoop through your employment application yet.”
“Most recently? Colorado,” he told me with a small grin. “Dinosaur, to be exact.”
I frowned. “Excuse me?”
He laughed. “Dinosaur, Colorado. Not even joking, that’s what it’s called. Tiniest town you’ve ever seen.”
“That’s legitimately the best thing I’ve heard in a long time,” I told him with a chuckle. “So, why Shadow Grove, then?”
He wrinkled his nose, and it was one of the cutest things I’d ever seen. Fuck, why was I so fascinated by this man?
“Uh, long story,” he said with a sigh. “In a nutshell, my uncle—my mom’s brother—used to live here. He didn’t like the way I was always moving around with my mom and offered to pay for my education if we moved here to Shadow Grove.”
Surprise rippled through me. “You live with your mom, then?”
He stiffened, and his expression shuttered. “She’s… not well. About a week before we arrived here, after my uncle paid for my schooling in full, he died from a heart attack. My mom hasn’t taken it well.” He paused, seeming uncertain about telling me more, then gave a sigh. “She’s got MS, and it’s been getting worse. Just after my uncle died, she deteriorated to the point of needing a wheelchair. So everything that was left in our savings went toward installing accessible ramps in the house.”
Understanding dawned, and I nodded. “So you’re attending Shadow Grove University during the day and stripping at night to pay for your mom’s medical expenses?” I was in absolutely no way judging. In fact, it was admirable of him.
Lucas’s cheeks pinked, and he dragged that lush lower lip through his teeth again before nodding. “Yeah, something like that.”
I reached out, trailing a fingertip over one of his warm cheeks, then impulsively pressed a kiss to his lips. It was out of character for me in that it wasn’t a kiss to initiate sex… it was just a kiss because I liked him.
“I’m glad you came to 7th Circle, then,” I murmured. “You’ll earn good money there. What’s your major?” He was twenty-one, so if he’d been caring for his mother for a while, it was possible he’d been doing online courses until starting at SGU.
His gaze ducked away from mine, and he ruffled his fingers through his hair. “Uh… undecided. So far my only real talents are in dance and gymnastics, and without any aspirations to take that professional, I don’t really know what I want to do with my life.”
“You’re still young; you’ve got tons of time to work it out,” I told him with a grin. “But in the meantime, those skills will pay well in my clubs, that’s for sure.”
He snorted a laugh. “You say that like you’re so old.”
Smart boy, he didn’t actually ask my age. Not that I cared, but it was bad manners to ask a lady her age. Or that’s what Demi always told me.
“I’m twenty-three,” I said with a bitter laugh, “but I feel like I’m sixty-three. Criminal life is stressful, Lucas. Don’t get mixed up in that shit if you can avoid it.”
His expression sobered, and he gave a small nod. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
I bit my lip, suddenly feeling all kinds of vulnerable, like I’d somehow revealed a deep secret by admitting how tired I was of my life. Shaking it off, I wriggled out of bed and started toward my bathroom.
“You coming?” I called over my shoulder. “My shower is big enough for two…”
7
Against my better judgement—and my usual practice of “hit it and quit it” hook-ups—I didn’t kick Lucas out after our shower. Mainly because it ended with him fucking me against the wall, then over the vanity, then somehow found us back in my giant bed with me riding him like my own personal pony.
Even so, after a full afternoon of quite literally the best sex of my life… I still didn’t show him the door. Despite knowing I should. Come Tuesday, he’d be on the books as a 7th Circle employee, and I refused to cross that line. I knew too many sleazy club owners who leveraged their power and authority to “sample the goods,” and the idea of becoming one of them turned my stomach.
Sex for sale was part of the Timberwolf empire I’d inherited, and all of my “back of house” staff were there willingly and happily, earning damn good incomes for their work. I wasn’t my father. Everything was run with the utmost professionalism now.
So why, then, did I find myself falling asleep in Lucas’s warm embrace later that evening?
A loud knock at my front door jerked me out of that half-asleep daze, and I sat up in alarm. Who the fuck was knocking on my door?
I blinked a couple of times in confusion, looking down at Lucas. But he just shrugged as if to say, It’s your apartment; how would I know?
The banging continued, and I sighed heavily. Not bothering to get dressed, I just grabbed a thin satin-and-lace robe and threw it on as I went to find out who in the hell was at my door—even though I already knew, as there was only one person it could be.
“What the fuck, Zed?” I snapped as I jerked the front door open. I wasn’t a total fool; the video display beside the door had showed me it was him before I opened it. And he was the only person who would dare bang on my door like that.
“What the fuck, me?” he replied, his face pure fury. “Me? Are you kidding right now, Hades? Where the fuck have you been all day? I called you at least a hundred times.”
He started to push past me, but I stopped him with a hand flat against his chest. I was barefoot—seeing as I was totally naked under my robe—and it put me at a significant height disadvantage to Zed. Luckily, he was all-too-well aware that height did not reflect danger, and he froze.
“Zed, you’re going to want to check that bullshit attitude right there at the door before you really piss me off,” I told him in a cool tone, my glare hard and uncompromising. “Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to right now?”
His jaw clenched and his teeth ground hard enough for me to hear, but he took a step backward nonetheless. “My apologies, sir,” he growled, his eyes flashing with anger. “I didn’t mean any disrespect.”
I folded my arms under my breasts to glare harder at him, but the effect was ruined when the shoulder of my robe slipped down and halfway exposed my left boob. Zed’s attention immediately shifted to my chest, too, and I cleared my throat in a pointed way as I tugged my robe back up.
He didn’t even have the grace to look apologetic when his cold blue eyes met mine once more. Shithead.
“Get in here,” I snapped, indicating that he enter my apartment. “Sit your ass down and explain what’s got you in such a fucking mood.”
He took my offer, coming inside and waiting while I closed the door and the locks slid into place. As I turned back to him, I caught the way his gaze trailed over my exposed legs. Then he frowned at the two half-empty glasses of wine sitting on my counter. And the man’s shirt on the floor beside my red camisole. Yeah, no prizes for guessing what I’d been busy doing all afternoon.
“Did I interrupt something?” he asked with an edge of sarcasm to his voice.
“You damn well know you did,” I muttered, grabbing my bag from where I’d dropped it to fish out m
y phone, “or I would have answered my phone.”
Oh yeah. I’d turned it off after my meeting with Cass.
I held down the power button to turn it back on and gave Zed a questioning look while it booted up. “So? What happened?”
Zed slid onto one of my barstools, only half sitting on it in a weirdly him kind of way with one foot still on the ground. “You know about the Reaper kids getting picked up with PCP on them. Cass told me you met this morning.” The look he gave me implied so much more than he was saying. I fucking hated that he’d witnessed my moment of weakness with Cass last night.
“And?” I prodded, not in the mood for his bullshit.
“And then you dropped off the fucking radar all afternoon,” he snarked back at me with an accusing glance in the direction of my bedroom. “Who is he?”
"None of your fucking business, Zed, that's who." My voice was like a whip, and he jerked with surprise. "You didn't come here to tell me what I already know, so what else has happened?"
He paused a beat, studying my face before replying. "Sonny-boy was killed last night."
Those words hung in the air between us, and for a hot second I was totally speechless. Of all the things he could have come to tell me, I hadn't expected that. Not because my Timberwolves were such upstanding individuals, lord no, but because Sonny-boy wasn't even working right now. His wife was expecting their first baby any day now; he was officially on leave from all business, both Copper Wolf and Timberwolves. So there was no way in hell he'd been killed in the line of duty, so to speak.
"What happened?" I asked after swallowing heavily. For all my cold, heartless reputation, I wasn't a damn robot. I cared about my people, and I cared when they were hurt or killed.
Zed shook his head, clearly still furious, which told me it was nothing innocent. "He was shot full of holes like he'd been in front of a firing squad over in one of the old, abandoned houses in the old west side."
My brows hitched, and alarm rippled through me. "That's Reaper territory."
Zed jerked a nod, his expression grim. "The body wasn't found until early this afternoon; Cass didn't know about it when you met."
Well, that was something at least.
"Who discovered him?" I asked, trying to click the pieces together in my head. What the fuck had Sonny-boy been doing in Reaper territory last night?
"Cops," Zed told me with a grimace. "Anonymous tip, apparently. They got there before any of the Reapers’ boys, even, locked the whole scene down too."
"Excuse me?" I exclaimed, half convinced I'd just heard him wrong. Not only had cops been tipped off before the Reapers themselves, but they’d been cops not on the take? The odds of that happening were too low for it to be coincidental.
Lucas chose that exact moment to exit my bedroom, looking next-level gorgeous with his hair messed up and his jeans slung low on his hips.
Zed's brows hitched, and I caught the way his hand shifted to the gun at his hip. Fucker.
"I should probably go," Lucas murmured, picking up his shirt from the kitchen floor and pulling it over his perfectly formed arms.
If I’d been any less distracted, I'd have probably told him to stay. After all, we still had all of Monday before he started work at 7th Circle... But the murder of one of my Timberwolves trumped anything else. Worse yet, I'd been so distracted that it'd all happened right under my nose.
Distracted. So fucking distracted. I couldn't afford that weakness.
Lucas had to go.
As if he could sense the murderous tilt to my thoughts, Lucas threaded his fingers into the back of my hair, tilted my face up, and kissed me. It wasn't a casual peck, either. It was one of those deep, possessive-level kisses that told me he was flipping Zed off.
Fucking hell. As if Zed gave a crap who was warming my bed; he barely even saw me as a woman most days.
"I'll text you," Lucas told me when he released my hair.
"Don't," I replied, my voice hard. "Delete my number."
Lucas just flashed me a wide, mischievous grin, then gave a nod towards Zed. "Boss. Sorry, didn't see you there."
Zed snorted. "Sure you fucking didn't." His hand was fully resting on the butt of his gun now. "Fuck off, kid. The adults are talking."
I bit my tongue, refusing to entertain that little comment. Lucas was two years younger than me, hardly a kid, but whatever. We really did need to talk business, and I wasn't comfortable doing that with Lucas around. Not until I knew whether he could be trusted.
Zed's attitude didn't seem to bother Lucas, though. He just finished buttoning his shirt and sent me a lust-filled glance on his way out the door.
Silence reigned as the door closed behind Lucas and the locks reactivated. Then Zed's eyes narrowed at me in an accusing glare.
"Really, Hades? You're fucking strippers now? You can do better than that." His tone was total judgment, and my temper flared cold within me.
"Oh, fuck right off, Zed. You've screwed how many of our girls over at Club 22? Quit throwing stones from inside your glass house, my friend; it makes you look jealous." I was just taking swipes to piss him off, but his eyes flashed with a darkness that I didn't expect. Maybe things had gone sour with his flavor of the month already and I'd struck a nerve.
His jaw clenched, and he gave an angry shake of his head. "I'm not throwing stones, Hades. But you haven't even done a background check on that guy, and he's here? Inside your home, where Seph lives? What the hell is going on with you this weekend?"
Guilt rippled through me at the truth in his words. I was acting reckless. Stupid. Distracted. It wasn't good enough. I needed to be better than that, above it all.
Fucking hell. I needed to kill Lucas.
"I'm getting dressed," I announced, ignoring Zed's pointed comments. "Tell me the rest of it, then call a meeting with all the heads in the area. It's time we all had a chat."
He followed me through to my bedroom, eyeing the mess of tangled sheets on my bed with thinly veiled rage. Whatever had his panties in a bunch, it had nothing to do with me. He could take all that baggage elsewhere because I wasn't interested in becoming an outlet for his personal drama.
I crossed over to my huge walk-in closet and pulled out some fresh clothes but blew out a frustrated sigh when nothing but silence followed me.
"Talk, Zed. Fill me in on everything you know." Anger colored my own tone of voice now, and every passing second had me feeling more and more murderous.
Sonny-boy had to have been killed sometime last night—while I was busy sulking about my rejection from Cass or fucking Lucas in a supply room. Or maybe while I’d slept off all my many drinks after Zed dropped me home. Either way, it had been while my back was turned, and that simply couldn't happen.
"We don't know all that much," Zed said after a moment's pause.
I shrugged off my robe right there inside my closet, even though I’d left the door wide open, and pulled on some fresh underwear. There was no time to shower, but it hadn't been all that long since my last shower with Lucas, so... fuck it.
Irritation pricked at my skin, and I had to take a calming breath before responding to him. "What do we know, Zed?"
I glanced out of my closet and found him with his back turned to me. I expected nothing less, given how carefully respectful he was around me these days.
"Just that he'd been shot all up, riddled with bullets. Same with the room he was found in, so it's likely that's where he was killed." He scrubbed a hand over his short hair, and I could tell he was frustrated as hell. We were used to being in charge in every situation. This lack of information must be burning him as badly as it was me.
I took a moment to consider it as I dressed in skin-tight leather pants and a black lace top that showed my bra underneath.
"Why did no one hear the shots?" I asked, grabbing a pair of high-heeled ankle boots from my shoe wall and coming out of the closet.
Zed stiffened a fraction of a second before he turned around, and I gave him a suspicious look, the
n looked past him to my dresser... or the mirror above it. Had he been watching me?
"You look—" he started, then caught himself and clamped his mouth shut tight.
I gave him a confused scowl as I sat on the end of my bed to put my shoes on. "You're acting fucking weird, Zed. What gives?"
He let out a long exhale, shaking his head. "I know. It's this shit with Sonny-boy; it's got me all fucked up, boss." He paused again, rubbing the back of his neck as I zipped up my ankle boots and stood up. "The cops claim they found PCP on him."
I blinked several times. "Excuse me. Fucking what did you just say?"
Zed grimaced. "They—"
"I heard you the first time," I snapped, stalking across to the hidden panel beside my closet. Pressing the release, I opened my weapons safe and loaded myself up. Not that I needed a huge amount of firepower on my person—that's what I had Zed for—but it didn't hurt to get my own hands dirty every now and then. It reminded anyone who might be eyeing my throne exactly why I'm Hades.
"It's not what we think, boss," Zed told me firmly as I slammed my weapons safe shut again and made my way back to the kitchen. I'd left my Desert Eagle there, and there was no way I was leaving the apartment without it. Not now.
I stuck it in in my shoulder holster, then gave Zed a hard look. "Of course it's not. That's not even remotely possible. But someone wants to send us a message, and that in itself is bad enough."
Angel dust had been wiped out of my territory for five years, now it was resurfacing in the most suspicious circumstances? Not a coincidence. No freaking way. But the most likely culprit, the one who might want to send a message to me... he was dead. I'd shot him myself.
So who the fuck was playing the part of his ghost?
8
Zed drove and I sent out summons from my phone on the way to my chosen meeting point. It was an old church and had been the Timberwolves’ base of operation when my father was in charge. It was also a solid three-hour drive away from Shadow Grove in the heart of old Timberwolf territory.