by Eliza Gayle
He was covered in the woman’s scent. Lara. A low growl rumbled in his throat and the bartender shot him a questioning glance. Kane turned away from the door and ground his teeth to hold in the anger. Fur rippled along his skin and his fingers underneath the lip of the bar edge partially shifted to paws and claws as he scraped into the wood.
Kane caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and willed his body to calm. Shifting out in the open was strictly forbidden and could heap a helluva lot of trouble on him and his kind that they couldn’t afford to deal with right now. Not with both of the other guardians shunned from the clan. He sighed. He missed his brothers and it frustrated the fuck out of him that they were both gone. Especially Lucas. Being shunned for mating with a nonshifter just didn't seem right. She carried his mark, for Christ’s sake. Sometimes who you end up with can’t always be controlled. Yeah, keep telling yourself that.
Another glance in the mirror showed a man not as close to the edge as a few minutes ago. He breathed in deep, letting his lungs fill before slowly releasing the air. He no longer scratched at the bar with claws and he raised his hand to wipe the sweat that had broken out on his forehead.
He should be happy someone in the bar carried her scent, it meant he was getting closer. About fucking time. But the rage, where the hell was that coming from?
The man seated next to him threw some bills on the bar and walked out, leaving an open stool the new drunk guy immediately opted to occupy. Kane’s groin tightened with the onslaught of Lara’s scent and for once he wished he didn’t have heightened senses. His body ached and thoughts of her were even more vivid than they had been in his dreams over the past nights. He had come to dread the time he had to sleep because he always dreamt of her.
Not as the vicious bitch he knew her to be. Oh, no. In his dreams Lara was a lush, naked temptress that he ached to get his hands on. He thought about licking each and every sweet inch of her night after night.
“Bartender, bring me a drink. Something strrrrong.” The man slurred his words as he ordered but it brought him back to the present. It was the man sitting next to him, a stranger, not the woman.
He had a job to do and it appeared his luck had finally turned. He had a lead on finding her in the form of a young and stupid drunk.
Kane took another swallow of his drink and grimaced this time over the burn. He would sit here and finish his shitty Scotch and wait. Either this man would start talking or Kane would make him talk when he left the building. He struggled not to groan when some Credence Clearwater poured from the dusty old Juke in the corner.
Could this place be more stereotypical if it tried? He didn’t think so.
When the bartender laid down a shot of tequila in front of the man, he picked it up and turned to Kane. “Here’s to good alcohol and hot women.”
At the man’s words, Kane felt an honest to God tick in his eye and an overwhelming urge to smash his glass into the man’s face and wrestle him down to the ground. Somehow he resisted.
“Here, here.” He raised his glass in a mock toast. After they had both taken several more drinks he opted to move in. “Have a good night with a good woman then?”
“Hell yeah, I did. Fine piece of ass if I do say so myself.” Kane had to bite his tongue as hatred for this man burned through his veins. He had asked for it so the least he could do is play along.
“Lucky man. I’m waiting on my girl now. Your girl got a name?”
The man hesitated with the rim of the glass perched on his bottom lip. His eyes were bloodshot as hell and glazed over to the point he wondered how the man could see in front of his face.
“Yeah—uhm—” He hesitated after every word. “She does or she doesn’t?” “Well, I’m sure she does, but for the life of me I can’t remember what it was.” He snorted as he pelted down the last of his tequila. His face screwed up at the taste and Kane wondered for a moment if he was going to throw up. Either way he was prepared to move fast.
“Well, bud, I’m not sure whether that’s good or bad. Guess it depends on if you want to see her again. A woman doesn’t like a man who can’t remember her name.” Kane swallowed his own urge to vomit at this lowlife who sure as hell didn’t deserve to even breathe the same air as Lara let alone fuck her.
Whoa, where the hell did that come from?
His words must have hit home as the man turned away from him and called after the bartender again. He even turned to his other side and struck up a conversation with the man sitting there. Damn it!
This wasn’t going to work. He obviously couldn’t play nice and the longer he sat there the stronger the urge became to kill him and put him out of everyone’s misery.
Kane threw down some bills and headed to the parking lot. He could either wait outside and take care of things the old fashioned way or go next door and wait in the strip club. Either way he was out of there.
Kane paced along the tree line that surrounded most of the bar parking lot. Two hours had passed and the little shit had yet to come outside. He had leaned against the building wishing for a cigarette, sat in his Jeep listening to some rock music, and when he finally tired of doing nothing he hit the edge of the woods and shifted. The brush was dense and the parking lot not all that well lit, so it was easy for him to hide without losing sight of the entrance doors to both clubs.
More than once he’d considered the other club. He could slip in, find a nice girl to take him home, and maybe then he would finally stop having all those fucked up thoughts about a woman with a death wish. Strippers were usually a lot of fun, always willing to try new things. Not so uptight like most of the feline bitches in his clan.
A couple of times the door of the club had opened and he’d gotten a glimpse of naked flesh wrapped around a silver pole, long dark hair that brushed the ground with every dip, and long long legs that seemed to go on and on. He shook his muzzle. Yeah, he needed an outlet real bad.
A run would help. It wasn’t as if this idiot would be hard to track later. But he wanted to talk to him now, while her scent was fresh. Kane would give him another ten minutes and then he was going in. He took a few more minutes to enjoy the cool grass underneath his paws, he even scratched at the tree, stretching his legs and sharpening his already lethally sharp claws.
He envisioned being back in human form and he thought of Lara. His body shifted from cougar to human and he looked at himself. It irked him to see his arousal jutting out from his hips. He couldn’t understand how thoughts of the woman he’d been sent to kill could make him harder than he’d ever experienced in his life. It wasn’t right to want to fuck the woman who’d been trying to kill his brother for weeks. The day Lucas had left the clan he’d received orders to hunt her down and eliminate her. The council didn’t like the idea of a witch on the loose who was not only willing and able to use black magic, but had made several attempts on the Guardians. An offense punishable by death.
Yet every time he closed his eyes he saw images of her. He couldn’t deny she was a beautiful woman, even with the constant scowl she had on her face when looking at him or his brothers. But the eyes, well, they haunted him day and night. She may have been a tough bitch, but if the eyes are supposed to be the windows to the soul, then she hid far more about her than what she allowed on the surface.
He’d seen flashes of anger, distrust and pain, but there had been even more if he wasn’t mistaken, and his instincts usually weren’t. She hated them and he wanted an answer to that. Hatred like he’d seen didn’t come from nowhere. There was a lot more to her story and he planned to get to it sooner or later. Once he captured her, the council could afford to wait a few days for him to carry out her sentence. He would have his answers first.
He crossed over to the rock he’d stowed his clothes behind and donned his jeans, buttondown shirt, and shit kickers. His patience had run out and it was time to go inside and drag the little fucker outside. He stalked across the parking lot once again and the door popped open, and the man Kane had been wait
ing for stumbled out. If he’d thought the man was drunk a couple of hours ago he was positively loaded now. This wasn’t going to be any fun. While he’d been spoiling for a fight, the stumbling, bleary-eyed man could barely walk let alone take him on. Still, when Lara’s scent overpowered the reek of alcohol and sweat, rage bubbled in his blood. This man had done more than just touch her, and for that he should die. She was his.
Fuck! He couldn’t keep having stray thoughts like that. It wasn’t right. She was a dead woman.
But first...
He grabbed the man by the collar of his shirt and threw him back against the building like a rag doll. The sound of his body crashing might have been loud, but Kane heard nothing beyond the blood rushing in his head. He let out a cry before pouncing against the guy pinning him to the wall.
“What the—” The man’s eyes widened to huge orbs in his face. Shock glared from his face.
“Tell me about her.” “Her? Her who? What the hell?” Kane shoved his arm across the man’s throat and applied hard pressure against his windpipe, cutting off his air supply. “Do not fuck with me. Not if you want to wake up tomorrow to your pitiful existence in this shit hole town.”
Hands frantically clawed at his forearm as the man struggled for breath, but Kane couldn’t be budged. It would be so easy, even in human form, to just kill him. Precious seconds ticked by and he removed his arm, the man falling unconscious to the ground at his feet.
He grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and dragged him to the woods. This conversation would be best had in private and he didn’t want to have to take care of someone else who might exit the bar at a really bad time.
He didn’t have to walk far before he found a small clearing that even had some light from the near full moon above. He shook the man awake and had to restrain himself from laughing out loud at the fear written all over his face. Served the bastard right.
He took a few steps away. “Don’t even think about running. You could never move faster than me and you’ll just piss me off even more.”
“What do you want from me? I don’t have any money.” Kane released a sigh of frustration.
“Focus, you idiot. This is not me robbing you. The girl. I want to know everything about the girl.”
“What girl?”
Kane crossed back to the man in one big stride and slammed his fist into his face. The man cried out and stumbled back a few feet. His hand cradled his face as drops of blood ran from his nose.
“The girl whose scent is all over you. What do you know about her?”
The man hesitated. He was probably afraid to say the wrong thing.
“You mean the hot chick I met at Junior’s earlier this evening?”
Kane glared, waiting for the man to go on.
“Why didn’t you just say so, dude? I’m more than happy to pass on her information. She was all over me earlier tonight.” When Kane made a move again towards him he raised his hands in resistance. “Whoa, hold on. It was the dance floor. We just danced. She your old lady or something?”
“Or something.”
“Well, you might want to have a chat with her, ’cause she was all over every man there. Flirting and rubbing up against them. Hard to resist such a fine, fine woman, you know?”
Kane wondered if this idiot had any brain cells at all. It should have been obvious to anyone by now that he was holding onto control by a thread, yet the asshole kept babbling on about Lara in a way that incited him.
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know. Last time I saw her was over at Junior’s before he kicked me out. Stupid bastard, I wasn’t even doing anything.
“Yeah, I just bet you weren’t. Did she say anything at all to you?
“Just that she wanted to fu—” The man’s few smarts must have finally kicked in or maybe the warning snarl that had escaped Kane’s mouth unbidden woke him up.
“What else?”
“That’s it. Really she wanted me to meet her at the Happy Hills Motel for some uhm—further discussion.”
“Yeah, I’ll just bet she did.”
Luckily Kane already knew where the motel was. It sat just a few miles outside the center of town secluded in the woods except for the blinking sign out on the roadside. Perfect.
“Leave.” The man stood frozen to the spot looking confused. “Leave now or die here.” Kane’s words finally sank in when the man shuffled past him and headed for the parking lot. Kane waited until he heard a car screeching before he dug into his jeans and pulled out his keys.
He had a bitch to corral.
Read More
Also by Eliza Gayle
Southern Shifters Series:
DIRTY SEXY FURRY
MATE NIGHT
ALPHA KNOWS BEST
BAD KITTY
BE WERE
SHIFTIN’ DIRTY
NEVER KISS A WOLF
BEAR NAKED TRUTH
ALPHA BEAST
ONE CRAZY WOLF
Devils Point Wolves:
WILD
WICKED
WANTED
FERAL
FIERCE
FURY
Pentacles of Magick Series:
UNTAMED MAGICK
MAGICK IGNITED
FORCE OF MAGICK
MAGICK PROVOKED
Single titles:
VAMPIRE AWAKENING
ALPHA WOLF RISING
WITCH AND WERE
Books Writing As E.M. Gayle
Contemporary Romance
Purgatory Masters Series:
TUCKER'S FALL (also available in paperback & audio)
LEVI'S ULTIMATUM (also available in paperback & audio)
MASON'S RULE (Also available in Paperback)
Purgatory Club:
ROPED (also available in audio)
WATCH ME (also available in audio)
TEASED
BURN
BOTTOMS UP
HOLD ME CLOSE (also available in paperback)
What Alex Wants Series:
WHAT ALEX WANTS
ALEX TAKES
Pleasure Playground Series:
PLAY WITH ME (also available in paperback & audio)
POWER PLAY
Single Title:
SUBMISSIVE BEAUTY (also available in paperback & audio)
Gypsy Ink Books
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
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