High Card: A Billionaire Shifter Novel (Lions of Las Vegas Book 1)

by Ellis Daniels, May

  At first I don’t see a thing.

  Then motion at my boots catches my eye and I glance down, nearly pressing the trigger out of shock, and when I realize how close I came to shooting someone by accident I drop the gun.

  There’s a half-naked man at my feet. Lying with his back up against the Rover’s tire. He’s wearing dirt-stained khaki slacks and nothing else. No shoes. No shirt. He’s covered in sweat. Shaking. He has bright, almost strangely bright golden eyes. And there’s—oh god is that—blood?

  The man’s chest is splattered in blood.

  Drying to black on his hands and forearms.

  Even matted in his shaggy blonde hair—

  My fucking gun.

  Quick as a flash I bend down, snatch Layla from the sand and point it at him. The dude winces. We stare at one another for a moment, a horrible sensation creeping over me.

  I almost recognize—

  Something tickles against my shoulders.

  It’s beginning to rain.

  “…in the truck…” the guy says.

  “Who are you?” I ask, trying to sound like I got my shit together waaay more than I do.

  “…need to drive…run…they’re coming…”

  I spread my legs about shoulder-width apart, push my shoulders back and settle onto my heels. It’s my don’t-fuck-with-me stance. It’s a lot more convincing with the Ruger gleaming in my hands.

  “Who are you?”

  The guy licks his lips. Glances into the desert. Then at me. A slight, almost apologetic smile flashes across his face.

  “Shit in hell,” I breathe.

  “Landon—”

  “You’re Landon fucking Stone,” I interrupt, nearly dropping the gun again.

  He flashes me that same broad smile, but it seems to pain him; he winces, draws a shaking breath, spits a mouthful of blood. I remember how Landon looked outside his casino. Dressed to the nines in a cobalt three-piece suit. His rich-boy meets hipster hair absolutely perfect. A billionaire businessman in total control.

  And now this sorry sack-of-shit?

  Half dead out in the middle of nowhere? Looking like a metal baseball bat and three of Luca’s thugs got the better of him?

  “It can’t be,” I whisper. “What the hell happened to you?”

  Landon gives me a little shrug. He’s too weak to talk. But he looks out in the desert again, and when he meets my eyes there’s something in his expression I don’t like at all.

  Fear.

  “…drive…” Landon says, real quiet.

  He reaches his hand out.

  “…help…coming…”

  I feel like I’m standing at the edge of a cliff. Take the leap. Make the call. I could leave the fucker here. He’s clearly in some sort of danger. Pretty-boy out-of-towner pissed off the wrong people. I’d heard rumors about a beef between Landon Stone and the Abatelli mafia family. Maybe the guys who did this to him are out there, burying someone else and about to come back for him.

  Who knows?

  None of my business. Not my problem.

  I’ve spent a lifetime just trying to deal with my own shit. Keep my head above water. I sure as hell don’t have the time—

  Then a thought hits me. It’s not a pretty thought, and I’m not especially proud of it. But I think it all the same.

  This guy’s rich.

  Landon’s eyes narrow slightly. Almost like he can see what I’m thinking. Maybe he can. I’m too far gone to worry about disguising my motives.

  I’m calculating.

  How much is he worth? What can I get if I help him?

  Landon lays his head back on the Rover. Closes his eyes. Takes a few long, slow breaths, almost like he’s sleeping—

  I swallow hard.

  The rain’s really coming down now. Cool against my skin. Forming rivulets in the sand. Pinging against the Range Rover’s metal panels. Dripping into my eyes.

  With Landon’s eyes closed I take the time to really look at him. I can’t see any obvious injury. No knife or bullet wounds. And now that I’m looking closely, I see he’s not even bruised. I catch myself taking in his ripped abs. His muscular pecs and taut shoulders. He’s built way different than I thought. I guess I expected him to be a desk-jockey who only occasionally works out and so has that weird, unhealthy beach build where only the manliest muscles are in shape.

  But with Landon, it looks like everything is in shape.

  He has the build of a lifelong athlete. A man who trains hours a day.

  A gymnast or boxer—

  Shit. I’m thinking about touching him. Slipping my hands down his soaked khakis. What’s the rest of him like? Also perfectly proportioned? A warm flush spreads through my belly, and my nipples, already rock hard from the cool rain, tickle against my tank-top and send tiny ripples of pleasure through me—

  Then something so fucking awful happens it makes me stagger into the Rover, fighting just to stay standing.

  I’m looking at Landon, and suddenly an…image…flashes before my eyes. Landon and the desert and the Rover and all the rest of the real world are gone. Instead there’s this blinding flash of light and right there, right in my face, above me, is the snarling, blood-soaked maw of a bloodthirsty male lion—

  “Holy fucking hell,” I gasp, reeling as the vision vanishes, leaving me clutching at the orange SUV, blinking, wondering if I’m losing my mind—

  “The blood on you,” I stammer. “Where did it come from?”

  Landon’s sitting more upright now.

  Staring at me with an intense, penetrating gaze.

  “What did you see?” he says, his voice still weak. “Summer? Tell me you saw.”

  That awful coppery taste fills my mouth again. Same as after I collapsed on the sidewalk. I spit, glare at Landon, summon my bad bitch with a gun voice and say, “Don’t you fucking mo—”

  The coyote’s cries come again, louder this time, closer, several at once. The sky darkens as thundershowers sweep down from the canyons, carried by the strengthening wind. Thunder rolls over us, shaking the Rover. I look into the desert and suddenly the bone-chilling fear is back, and from deep within a hidden recess of my mind there’s a single command beating in time with my thumping heart—

  Run.

  Run.

  “Holy hell,” I say, my voice brittle as I stare into the rain-whipped desert.

  “We’re too late,” Landon says. “They’re too close.”

  They.

  The coyotes.

  I forget everything that worried me up until that moment. My mom’s health. Money. Parole. School. My shitty life prospects. Because loping down from the hills are six of the biggest—

  “They can’t be coyotes,” I say. “They’re too big. They’re wolves. But there can’t be wolves this close to Vegas—”

  “Wildblood wolves,” Landon says, his voice so quiet I barely hear. “On the hunt.”

  We lock eyes.

  That word again. The one Alfie and me were puzzling over.

  Wildblood.

  My world seems to pivot on its axis. I get the feeling everything I once believed I understood about the world has changed. Forever.

  “Can you stand? Hurry!”

  Landon lifts up his hand. I reach down and our hands touch and something surges through me, desire and fear and something else, a kind of power. Landon’s eyes light up.

  He feels it too.

  “What are you, Summer Alexis Mason?”

  “I’m fucking terrified, that’s what.”

  I tug Landon to his feet. I hear the wolves snarling and growling now, moving in for the kill and there’s no time to question what the hell they are and why they’re here, I fling the passenger door open and scoot over the console and into the driver’s seat. I’ve got the key turning in the ignition before Landon’s even all the way in.

  “Fucker won’t start!” I say, trying not to scream.

  “It’s already started.”

  I look at him like he’s insane. “I k
now when a damned truck is—”

  “It’s electric,” Landon says, impatience straining his voice. “You can’t hear the engine. Now be careful—”

  I roll my eyes, slam the bitch in gear and floor the pedal. The truck rockets forward faster than a sports car. I shriek as the wheel tears from my hands. The Rover ploughs through a Joshua tree, then drifts into a sickening slide. The passenger-side wheels catch in a rut. The truck’s right side lifts up, threatening to roll, tosses me half over the console and onto Landon—

  “Off the gas!” Landon yells.

  I slide my foot off the pedal. The truck quiets instantly. All four wheels settle into the ruts. The rain’s really pounding down, blurring the windshield, drumming off the roof. We’re in a narrow wash.

  It’s filling with water. Very quickly.

  Landon’s hard chest is pressed against my cheek. His smell, wild and complex and totally crazy-making, fills my nose. A bad bad thought flashes through my mind.

  Put your hand on his cock.

  What’s wrong with me? This rich douchebag called me out here to execute me and somehow shit didn’t go his way and now I’m gunna get eaten alive—

  “Flash flood,” Landon says, eyeing the water rushing down the wash. “Let me drive.”

  —or drowned and all I can think about is how hot and panty-melting he is, how he must look naked, his cock buried in my wet pussy.

  I give my head a shake. Idiot girl.

  Landon’s hand’s on my shoulder. His warmth burns into me like it did in the alley. His powerful heart thumps in his chest. I’ve only been this close to him for a few seconds but it feels like a lifetime, like I know him somehow—

  “What the hell is this truck?” I say, somehow managing to regain my dignity, push myself off Landon and smack at the wheel. “Piece of shit!”

  “I told you. It’s powered by an electric fuel cell. Takes some getting used to. Scoot over. Let me drive.”

  “Not a chance, douchba—”

  The entire front windshield shatters inward.

  All I see are the wolf’s hellish red eyes and huge black fangs and his jaws leaking spittle before I fling my arms over my head—

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  LANDON

  THE WILDWOLF SINKS his fangs deep into Summer’s forearm.

  Her scream fills the truck. My lion responds, racing through me, demanding I free him so he can maim and kill and feed on whatever’s harming his—

  Oh shit.

  I choke him back down. No way I’m gunna let him tear me apart again. And no way I’m gunna let this girl see what I am—

  The wolf’s a huge, vicious-looking bastard. His chill breath fills the Rover, making my animal roar. If Summer hadn’t thrown her arms up the wolf would have her by the neck.

  She’d be dead already.

  As it is she’s pressed back against her seat while the wolf tries to squirm through the shattered glass and onto her—

  I still feel like I’ve been run over by a bus, and I’m so weak I know there’s no way I’ll be able to kill even one wildwolf, nevermind six of the bastards, but seeing Summer’s blood and realizing it’s my fault she’s hurt brings an unexpected surge of strength. I grab the wildwolf by the snout and drag him deeper into the cab, then smash my fist into his face, over and over, until his skin splits and he yelps and releases Summer’s arm and tries to wiggle out of my grasp—

  “Oh shit oh fuck oh shit oh fuck…” Summer’s saying, frozen in terror while I wrestle with the rabid wolf—

  “Give me the gun!” I shout.

  Summer looks at me blankly.

  The passenger window explodes.

  I duck inward just in time to avoid another wildwolf’s snapping fangs, and outside I see them flitting through the desert, circling, sensing weakness and a feed while the rain washes into the Rover and Summer’s blood leaks down her arm, splattering on her jeans.

  “Oh shit oh fuck oh shit—”

  “The goddamned gun!” I shout again, still holding my left hand clamped over the first wildwolf’s snout. He’s trying to get his front paws into the cab so he can gore me. The second wolf sinks his teeth into my shoulder, sending a rush of pain so intense my vision flashes white and I know if I wasn’t already so weak from changing only minutes ago my curse would be screaming to the surface—

  Summer sticks the pink-handled Ruger in my right hand.

  I feel my strength slipping. The Wildblood curse can kill the weak.

  For me…it just leaves me feeling like I’m so hungover I can barely move.

  I press the gun to the wolf’s temple.

  Summer flinches back, covers her ears.

  I press the trigger.

  Click.

  Not loaded.

  “What?” Summer yells, her eyes rolling wildly. “But I—”

  “Fuck!” I scream, remembering how I told Cole to tell his surveillance crew to strip any weapons they found in Summer’s apartment. Her bullets are siting safely in the Rover’s glove compartment.

  That’s gunna be a treat to explain.

  Assuming we live through the next three minutes.

  The wildwolf uses the opportunity to rake his claws into my leg. I elbow the second wolf hard in the snout to keep him off my neck, then flip my grip on the gun and slam it into the first wolf’s brow. His skin spits open and he goes limp for half a second, but it’s enough time for me to heave him out the front window.

  “On the gas!” I yell at Summer.

  She hits the pedal again, too hard. The Rover’s wheels spin in the soaked sand. “Too much too much you’re sinking us!”

  The water in the wash is nearly up to the top of the Rover’s tires. Another few inches and it’ll soak the fuel cell, frying it instantly—

  “Piece of yuppie shit!” Summer screams, tossing the truck in reverse and trying to rock us out of the ruts. “Piece of idiot yuppie shit!”

  I pop open the glove and dig around for the Ruger cartridges while the wildwolves howl. Summer puts the truck in first and hits the gas, gentler this time. The Rover shudders forward—

  I click the cartridge into the Ruger and kick out the shattered front windshield. I’m shaking, so weak I can barley hold the gun, blackness pooling in the edges of my vision. I’ve got the sickness bad, the after-effects of turning animal—

  Summer steers the truck into the middle of the wash. “Easy, easy,” I say, thinking about the fuel cell and scanning the desert with the Ruger raised. The wolves have vanished, but I know they’re out there, watching us, waiting for the best moment to pounce. “Don’t swamp the engine. You can’t get the fuel cell wet—”

  “You can’t get it wet? What kind of piece of shit invention is that? It’s a car, for shit’s sake. It goes outside.”

  “You can’t swamp a gasoline engine either.”

  “No. But it can get wet.”

  Summer’s doing her best to inch the Rover through the flooded wash. I hold my breath, waiting for the zapping sizzling sound that will announce our deaths. Hell, even if we make it out of the wash we’re dead. We have at least four miles of rough desert before we hit the highway, and even on the highway I doubt we could outrun the wildwolves—

  “What the hell were those things?”

  “Concentrate on driving.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Helpful, I’ll—”

  The Rover’s front end plunges into a rut. Water washes over the hood, lapping at the custom air intakes above the wheel wells. I cringe, holding my breath. C’mon, I think. We ran the tests. The cells should be good for this kind of water intrusion—

  Then I see one. A wildwolf, black as night, standing on top of a small rise on the other side of the wash. A bold motherfucker. Maybe even the pack alpha. I lean out the window, raise the Ruger. Release a slow breath. Sight the wolf’s chest—

  The Rover shoots forward. The Ruger booms in my hands.

  The bullet misses buy a mile. “Shit!”

  “Where’d you learn to shoot?”

&n
bsp; “Where’d you learn to drive?”

  “Oh I can drive fine, asshole. It’s this idiot truck that’s the problem—”

  Summer eases off the gas, inches forward again. The rain’s coming in hard through the shattered window, soaking us both. I wipe the water from my eyes and peer outside. I’m too weak to call my animal and hope to control him. The fucking monster. He broke loose once already. Driven mad by something I can’t even name. Plus there’s this pain-in-the-ass human girl. If she sees what I am the Wildblood Council will hunt her down as well—

  No. I need to get Summer out of here.

  The wildwolves will leave her alone. It’s me they’re after. So we make it to the highway, and after we put a little distance between us and the wolves I jump out—

  Another shattering crash, this one from behind.

  Summer screams and floors the pedal, which is real bad—

  I whirl in my seat. There’s a snarling wolf clawing his way toward us. I press the trigger, emptying three rounds at point-blank right into the wolf’s head. The gunshots are thunderous in the cramped space. The air fills with the acrid reek of burnt gunpowder. The wolf collapses, head torn open, motionless.

  “You got him?” Summer shouts, her voice high-pitched in hope and fear and pain.

  “He won’t stay dead long.”

  “What do you mean he won’t—”

  The Rover’s front wheels hit the edge of the wash and rise up onto the rutted dirt track. I permit myself a quick sigh of relief. It’ll be a short-lived victory, but at least I no longer have to worry about frying the fuel cell.

  Unless Summer drives us into another flood.

  The wounds in my shoulder and thigh burn as they heal over. All I need to do is get Summer to the highway. It was a mistake, bringing her out here. Involving her in this—

  “Where are they?” Summer says, peerign through the shattered glass.

  “Stalking. Waiting. They hunt as a pack. Do you have more Ruger cartridges in your bag?”

  Summer nods. “What kind of wolf launches itself through a truck window?”

  “Do you mind if I—”

  “Root through my stuff? Oh, sure. Why not? I mean, neither of us has anything to hide, right? Especially since you put hidden cameras in my fucking bedroom.”