by Vivian Arend
Either way, they’d be leaving Lobo Norte.
“No,” I said. Not because I thought I could change anyone’s mind, or even the situation, but just because denying it made me feel better for a brief, shining moment. “We can’t leave the fight unfinished. All that money…”
“No refunds,” Gloria said. “I’ve already paid out the money. Besides, the men won’t go anywhere until the initiation’s over.”
That news surprised me. “You paid out? But there was no winner.”
“This is a special fight. The entry fees went elsewhere. Winners get a different prize.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Gloria pinched me. “Don’t ask questions.”
“We’ll leave tonight,” Johnny said, slamming the panel on the side shut. “Depending on how long it takes the part to come in, and how the pickup handles the drive, we might be back in a week. No more than two. Ofelia, you can handle the girls for a couple weeks, can’t you?”
It was a taunt. He knew I didn’t want to have jack shit to do with the girls, and he didn’t want me to go anywhere near them anyway. His whores, as much as they irked me, wouldn’t be the problem. It would be the bikers. The Fang Brothers weren’t going anywhere for the rest of the month. I’d be stranded with them.
Nothing could make me show weakness in front of Johnny—not even the threat of dealing with the Fangs alone.
“I can handle Lobo Norte,” I said, lifting my chin.
“No, you can’t,” Gloria snapped. “Not by yourself.”
She was probably right. Those bikers were coyotes that would eat me alive the instant they caught me alone and vulnerable. I’d gotten pretty good at taking wild dogs down in Lobo Norte, but I didn’t have enough buckshot to take so many men all at once.
How could I run a bar, a motel, and a whorehouse if I was constantly watching my back, too?
“I’ll help her.”
We turned. Cooper stood behind us. There was no way to tell how long he had been listening. At our attention he rubbed a hand over his jaw, along the stubble on his scalp, down the back of his neck. Like he was trying to wipe our gazes away. All his earlier animosity was gone.
“What’s that you said?” Johnny asked, eyes narrowing to slits, until I could barely see his pupils sunken into his face.
“I’ll help Ofelia run Lobo Norte,” Cooper said. “The gangs won’t go anywhere until we do. You can’t run a bar alone. I used to work at my family’s restaurant, so I can help.”
Gloria rolled up to him, ready to argue. But before she could speak, I said, “Thank you.”
Cooper and me, alone in Lobo Norte.
What could go wrong?
CHAPTER SEVEN
When I returned to my trailer, I found that The Devil card hadn’t burned. It sat in a bowl of cold ashes, totally undamaged.
Something strange was happening at Lobo Norte. Stranger than usual, anyway, which said a lot. This card was the crux of it. The card, the Fang Brothers, the pale-skinned biker that wanted us to delay the so-called “initiation”—it was all The Devil’s fault.
Setting the card on my windowsill, I watched Gloria and Johnny head out in the pickup, carving a path through the night with the flickering headlights. As they trundled along the busted asphalt, their lights shined on glistening chrome, catching all the bikers hunkering down for the night with blow and bitches.
I glimpsed Kelsie, one of the whores, naked on her knees in front of Red Eagle. And then the lights had moved on to a pair of men with needles in their arms. And then the pickup was turned away and I couldn’t see anything but retreating taillights.
They blinked out halfway up the hill. Back to the real world. Away from the surreal, gritty oasis of Lobo Norte.
It had been a long time since I tried to cast magic, but that night I knew I was going to need my trailer warded—protected by powerful spells. I went through the effort of sprinkling salt at all of my windows and doors, burning a lotus smudge, filling my single-wide with purifying energy. I built an invisible wall of magic that nobody would be able to pass without my permission.
I prayed to Hecate. I prayed to the Horned God.
A feeling of safety crept over me, and I wasn’t sure if it was imagined or if the gods really could see me in that forsaken nowhere-place. I would find out if the bikers tried to raid my trailer that night. Hopefully, the hookers would keep them busy enough that nobody would come for the stripper.
Just in case, I slept cuddled up with Bo Peep that night, watching The Devil watching me from the windowsill.
It seemed counterproductive to ward my home with that thing still inside.
I wasn’t sure if I was imagining things, but in the half-light of the moon, I thought that The Devil’s leering face looked very much like Big Papa.
The fact that I woke up in the morning unmolested was a pleasant surprise. Sunshine poured through my window, warming Bo Peep’s metal to body temperature. She was a better bed companion than any of the bikers I had ever allowed to join me before. She felt solid and comforting against my chest. I slept better with the scent of her lubricant lingering in my sinuses than the musk of a man’s sweat.
The fact I’d slept so well was no small feat, considering that the bikers’ carousing had kept me awake until the brink of dawn. They always got into fights after a cage match. Gunfire and screams were a Lobo Norte fixture on those kinds of nights. But last night, most of the men hadn’t gotten to work out their frustrations in the cage, and all that bloodlust had to go somewhere.
They had fought for hours. I’d be surprised if there weren’t a couple dozen dead bodies waiting for Johnny’s oven.
But they hadn’t come to bother me, which meant I didn’t care, and it wasn’t my problem.
I whispered thanks to Hecate, released my wards, and headed out with Bo Peep broken over my arm, loading her as I walked across the sun-baked soil toward The Lodge.
The generator looked forlorn when I passed it, standing silently behind my bar, all its mechanical parts unmoving. The perpetually illuminated “OPEN” sign on the bar’s front window was, for the first time, lightless.
Between the bar and The Lodge, the bikers’ encampment sprawled over the dusty earth. Some men slept in the shadow of their bikes. Others hid underneath tarps and blankets. Tents were a rare sight—camping out in Lobo Norte seemed to be a dick-measuring contest of who could be most rugged. If they were happy to get sunburned in the pursuit of looking tough, then far be it from me to judge. I would have taken a tent, though.
I wasn’t sure what drew me to The Lodge, yet Cooper was waiting for me, alone behind the row of motel rooms, as if we had prearranged the meeting.
It was the first time that I had seen his ride. I was inured to motorcycles by now; I’d seen so many skull-shaped decorations and shiny chrome parts that I hadn’t thought anything could impress me anymore. Yet Cooper’s motorcycle was as breathtaking as the sight of his shirtless body. It was a deep cherry-blue, lean and mean, with arching handlebars and fat tires. A cruising machine with a massive fucking engine. I had no doubt that it could shake a man’s teeth out of his head when it was turned on.
He was crouched beside it with a toolbox, working intently. I thought that he hadn’t noticed my approach until he said, “Morning.”
I glanced at the sky. Judging by the position of the sun, it was almost midday. But it definitely felt like morning with all the snoring bikers spread around my town. “Good morning. What are you doing?”
“Something’s off about her timing,” he said. “I’m fixing her.”
I took a long time to study him as he worked. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. That was good. I was thinking that I needed to write it into Lobo Norte’s charter that he wasn’t allowed to wear shirts within our borders. Not that we had a charter.
His wounds were already on the brink of healing. It had barely been thirty-six hours since his mauling by Big Papa.
“The generator was sabotaged,” I said, surpr
ising myself with the pronouncement. “Someone wanted to delay the fight last night.”
“It worked,” Cooper said. “Big Papa says everyone’s hanging around until the next fight.”
That meant we’d have a full house, so to speak, for two weeks. That pale-skinned biker would be among them. As if the Fang Brothers alone weren’t bad enough…
“They want to be initiated into your pack,” I said. It wasn’t really a question.
Cooper sat back on his heels, a wrench dangling from one hand. He squinted at me through the sunlight. He looked out of place against the desert. He should have been lurking in chilly alpine forests, splashing through rivers, kissed by rain.
“Some people want to be like me,” he said. “Got a pair of hands? I need help.”
I set Bo Peep on the ground. “Did you want to be like…this?”
Cooper returned his attention to the bike. “Lots of men want to be in the pack. Real bad men. It’s an honor. And it’s useful to be able to fight and heal like this. You can get high on any drug, as much as you want, without dying. You can get shot in the gut and live on.”
That wasn’t an answer. Not really. But his tone was pained, and I didn’t want to push.
“You said you need help?” I asked.
“Get on,” Cooper said. “Hold it in place for me.”
It took a moment for the command to sink in, and once it did, a flush climbed up my cheeks.
He was telling me to get on the motorcycle.
That was only a few degrees less filthy than what I had initially thought he meant. There was something intensely personal about a man’s machine. This was something he loved more than life itself, caring for it with obvious adoration. It was his partner on the road. His pride and joy.
I climbed onto the motorcycle. It felt solid between my legs, and somehow right, like I was meant to clutch something so large and hard between my thighs. The leather was hot from the sunlight. It burned against the tender edge of flesh exposed by my shorts. I lifted myself an inch, shifted, spread my legs a little more. It pressed my core right against the hard leather. Kind of took my breath away.
Bracing my hands against the seat in front of me, precariously balanced on my toes, it felt like I was sitting on top of a beast that might leap at any moment. It felt dangerous. There was no way I could control such a monster.
“Think it should work now,” Cooper said.
He settled behind me with a creak of leather and denim, pressing his chest against my back, his hips sinking in behind mine.
Now I was trapped between man and machine, engulfed in the sour smell of lubricant and the musky warmth of his sweat. If I’d had any thoughts of escaping, it would have been too late now. But I didn’t want to escape. I wanted to be there, with Cooper’s chaps burning against the backs of my legs and his breath on my braids, the too-hard shape of the motorcycle under me.
He took my hands in his. “Turn it on,” he whispered into the back of my neck, guiding my fingers to the ignition.
My eyes slid shut. I couldn’t remember the last time I had drawn in a breath, and the world was dizzier than when I was spinning on the pole, with no sense of up or down.
Together, our hands turned the key.
The motorcycle growled to life. What had been a solid, slumbering beast a moment before suddenly came to life, shaking hard underneath me. The engine purred a tone that was music to my ears. Better still when Cooper chuckled warmly. I wasn’t sure I’d heard him laugh like that before.
“Fixed it.” I felt his lips move against the back of my neck.
“Good,” I said breathlessly. “That’s…good.”
Cooper spread his hand over my spine and pushed me forward. Not much. Just enough to roll my hips forward and lean all my weight against my clit, letting the engine’s vibrations spread through my pelvis. I sucked in a breath. “Oh!”
“Stay there,” he murmured. His other hand curved around my belly, pinning me in position. “Right there. Don’t move.”
My heart fluttered wildly as liquid heat spread through my body, unfolding behind my navel, sucking the last wisps of oxygen from my lungs. Getting rolled forward had pulled the hem of my shorts up tight, between my nether lips, and it created a direct line from the engine to my clit. My knees trembled.
“Cooper, it’s too much,” I said, and I was amazed that I could get that many coherent words out.
“Stay.” He was growling now, at almost the exact same pitch as the engine.
Cooper pushed his hips forward a fraction, and I realized that he was hard. Not the kind of hard that came from sitting close to a pretty girl, but the kind of aching hardness that a man got moments before he lost control. I could feel the ridge of him through our jeans. He pressed between my cheeks, found the valley between the muscles, fitted himself against me. The layers of denim seemed too much and yet not enough at the same time.
The desert sun pounded against me. My skin was scorching and hot pleasure writhed in my depths. Sweat rolled down the cleft of my spine, puddled on his hands.
All he’d done was shift me a half an inch and turn on the motorcycle, and I was on the brink of unraveling.
“Something’s still out of alignment,” he said. “Think I gotta tweak the engine a little more.”
He flipped the engine off.
Those beautiful vibrations were suddenly gone, leaving me feeling weak and panting and more than just a little pissed. “Hey,” I protested.
Cooper moved me to grip the handlebars. I could stay in the same position this way, shifted just slightly forward. I felt so empty without his hands on my body. “Hang on to these and don’t let go.”
“Why? Worried the motorcycle’s going to fall while you’re working on it?” I asked.
“No,” he growled against the nape of my neck. “I want to see you stretched out. I’m not done with you.”
He dismounted, and even though it had to have hit a hundred degrees, my back was suddenly cold. I was exposed on top of his motorcycle, sweating and shaking, coming down from the edge of orgasm outside The Lodge where anyone could see us.
My eyes swept over the desert. My bar was only a faded orange block on the horizon, obscured by dust. That was home. That was safety.
I was a long way from safe right now.
But the only person looking at me was Cooper. His chaps, dirty and scraped and battered, encased muscular legs that led up to a hard-cut vee just above his belt, and a dusky brush of hair encircling his navel. He was sweating, too. Sweating and oily and dusty. I wanted to bathe him with my tongue, tongue the ridge of his collarbone, nibble the hollow of his throat.
Judging by his expression, he was thinking something similar about me. His eyes were enough to set me on fire again. His full lips were pressed into a hard line.
He wiped his arm over his forehead. That little motion flexed his abs, bared the rippling bricks of his ribs. The wolf tattoo on his chest seemed to be staring at me, too. Reminding me that this was no ordinary man.
Cooper grabbed something from his tool box. Then he kneeled beside me, fingers skimming over the top of my thigh, tracing the line of my calf. I tried to move so that he could reach the machinery underneath, but his hands locked down.
“Don’t,” he said.
He reached around my leg to adjust something. His stubbled cheek itched against my skin. His breath teased the back of my knee.
Cooper was so close to where I needed him. I was hot and swollen and wanting. Yet he worked on his motorcycle as if I weren’t there, like I was just another piece of the machine.
I moved to grab his head, trying to guide his mouth to my thigh. He moved in a flash. He seized my wrist, forcing me to grab the handlebar again.
There was anger in his eyes. Actual anger. “I told you not to move.”
His hand came down on me. The shorts were cut high enough that it bared the lower curve of my ass, and that was where he struck me, his palm curving on the bare flesh to give a meaty smack.
<
br /> Cooper had hit me.
I was so shocked that I grabbed the handlebar without even thinking. The glint of satisfaction in his eyes was all I needed to know. He liked that I had leaped to obey him, and he liked that it was the strike that had motivated me. He was getting off on this.
My eyes flicked down to the waist of his jeans. The seam was straining.
He was really getting off on this.
Heat flushed between my legs again, almost as powerfully as when the engine had been running. I wanted him to look at me like that again. I wanted him to hit me again, as if I hadn’t been tortured enough by men.
What was wrong with me?
He kneeled once more, just long enough to make a couple more changes. Then he stood back, the wrench clenched in his fist, and his gaze sliced into me. “You can let go long enough to turn it on,” Cooper said. “Then grab it again. And don’t move.”
A thrill raced through me.
I fumbled for the key. Twisted it.
The engine came to life once more, making the seat of the motorcycle shake underneath me, and I thought I understood what he meant when he had said that something had been out of alignment. The rumbling was so smooth now. Smooth and hard and strong.
Pleasure unfolded inside of me, turning my thoughts to white noise. I struggled to breathe. “Please,” I said, my grip white-knuckled on the handlebars.
Cooper didn’t move. He just watched. He was breathing hard, golden eyes bright.
Too much. It was all too much—his stare, being so far from him, unable to touch his body, needing to be stroked and kissed and licked…
I let go of the motorcycle. Pushed myself off the seat with trembling legs.
“I can’t,” I gasped.
Cooper flung the wrench to the ground and slammed my hands back onto the bars, fingers engulfing mine. He shoved his face close. “If you can’t, then I’ll make you.”
There were steel chains—where had he gotten chains? They looked like something that an angry Alpha might use to tie down an errant werewolf on the full moon. But I wasn’t a werewolf. I wasn’t super-strong, with super-healing, and a wild rage that needed to be contained. I was a woman. Just a woman.