by Vivian Arend
The chains were slender and strong. He wrapped them around my wrists, looped them around the shiny chrome handlebars, binding me to the motorcycle.
I squirmed on the seat, resisting the growing ache that came from the vibrations. I couldn’t escape them now. Cooper had trapped me.
“But I’ll come,” I said. It came out more whining than I intended.
“I know,” he said.
“We’re outside. Anyone could see me.”
Again, he said, “I know. Won’t be long until Big Papa gets back, actually.”
The idea of that big, gruff, terrifying werewolf Alpha finding me with his newest pack member was terrifying—and thrilling. The fact that I was as excited as I was frightened by it was strange. Confusing. But my entire body and mind was focused on the place where my hips contacted the seat of the motorcycle, the way that the chains bit into my wrists, the fact that I was trapped and there was nothing to do but ride out the pleasure.
“Please,” I said again. I wasn’t sure what I was asking for.
The vibrations built inside of me, but it wasn’t enough. By repairing the engine, he had reduced the shaking just enough that it couldn’t push me over the edge on its own. My heart slammed against the inside of my chest, and my head rolled back on my shoulders, letting the sunlight scorch my sweaty brow.
So close. I bucked against the seat, seeking the angle that would end it all for me.
I was lost in the feeling. The cresting, crashing, rolling inside of myself. Hot wind kissed the globes of my heaving breasts.
Cooper growled, and then he was behind me, on the motorcycle again, straddling the seat behind me.
“Beautiful,” he said. The word slipped through my barely-conscious haze of pleasure. Couldn’t make sense of it. Didn’t matter.
“Cooper,” I breathed.
He was everything. Cooper, the desert and the sun in the sky; Cooper, the heat on my skin and the slickness of flesh against flesh.
Cooper.
“Yes,” he said. “Come for me.”
He sank his teeth into my shoulder, biting down on the scars that would never let me forget how I had ended up in Lobo Norte.
That flash of pain shoved me over the edge.
I lost everything. My mind, my body, my fear. I came undone in Cooper’s arms with my wrists chained to his motorcycle and his erection pressed against my back.
I had never known such pleasure.
CHAPTER EIGHT
When I came to again, the chains were gone and I was no longer tipped forward on the motorcycle. I was reclining against his chest. My head rested on his shoulder. He was stroking my braids, murmuring soft nonsense in my ear. The motorcycle idled underneath us, purring like a satisfied cat. I could relate.
I stretched, letting my arms twine around his neck, pinning his head beside mine.
“If I ever find out who hurt you,” Cooper said, “I’m going to rip him limb from limb and eat his flesh.” He whispered it into my ear, as if it were ordinary pillow talk rather than threats of vengeful cannibalism.
“My brother already got the perpetrator arrested,” I said. “He’s in prison somewhere.”
His hand skimmed over the ridge of scars on my shoulder. “He deserved worse.”
I didn’t exactly disagree.
Cooper turned my chin and caught my lips in a searing kiss, hotter than the sunlight, more painful than the sun against my tender skin. He tasted like tequila and blood. When we broke for air, I asked, “Is there a biker gang called the Needles?”
“Why are you asking?”
Because that was who the pale-skinned biker had said was coming, and I could only think of one group called the Needles. The Silver Needles, to be exact. Just thinking the name made my skin hurt. But they were local to Los Angeles, not bikers, and they didn’t travel.
At least, I didn’t think they did.
His hands slipped around my midsection. “You’re mine. I won’t let them hurt you.” That comforted me so much more than it should have.
Cooper’s hands wandered over my body, familiarizing himself with the shape of my breasts, the plane of my stomach, the ample swells of my hips. My juices had soaked the juncture of my thighs, slicked beyond the hem of my shorts by sweat. Cooper wiped it up with a finger. Licked his skin clean.
“Mine,” he growled, and that single syllable, combined with the sight of him tasting me, was so erotic that I almost lost it all over again.
I wanted to agree with him so much, but I barely knew him. Being brought to climax on a man’s motorcycle was hardly a first date. Okay, it was much better than a first date. But who was he? How had he ended up with the Fangs? What was going on between us?
Sex was one thing. I could do sex. Any more than that was expecting too much, too soon.
He wasn’t the first biker to roll through Lobo Norte that thought he could sweep the stripper off her feet, but he was definitely the most convincing of them.
I knew we were no longer alone when I felt Cooper tense behind me.
It was Mad Dog. “Big Papa wants you.”
Cooper’s hands tightened on me. “What for?”
“Because he does. Who knows? It doesn’t matter. He calls, we come.” Mad Dog ambled around the bike, his expression inscrutable. I refused to move. I was comfortable resting against Cooper and I wasn’t going to let some werewolf intimidate me.
“I’ll be there in a minute,” Cooper said.
“You know what’s good for you, you’ll have been there five minutes ago.”
That definitely sounded like a threat. “We got the message,” I snapped. “Thanks.”
Mad Dog had the nerve to look amused. “Collar the bitch, Trouble, or you’re both going to be in deep shit.”
I rolled my eyes. You’d think a werewolf biker could come up with a better insult than “bitch.”
“He’s right,” Cooper murmured. “I should go.”
Reluctantly, I allowed him to get up. I double-checked the kickstand before joining him. Didn’t want to drop his beautiful bike in the dust.
Cooper snagged his shirt off the ground and pulled it over his head. “I’ll take you home first,” he told me.
I laughed. “No thanks. I’m fine.” My trailer was all of a half a mile away, and I wasn’t afraid of walking around Lobo Norte alone during the day, even when it was filled with bikers. I didn’t need an escort.
“Suit yourself,” he said. His gaze raked down my body. “I’ll see you soon.”
I shivered.
He left to find Big Papa, and I suddenly felt so much more alone than I’d expected. I wondered if I’d made the right choice blowing him off.
Mad Dog didn’t move to follow Cooper. He gazed down at me with heated gold eyes.
“Your smell,” he said.
Could he tell what Cooper and I had been doing? Just how good was a werewolf’s nose?
I lifted my chin. “What about it?” He reached for me, and I stepped back. “You don’t touch me without money first.”
He ignored my protest, grabbing me by the hip with one hand as the other slid roughly up my thigh. Mad Dog smelled his fingers. His eyes rolled into the back of his head. The only thing he didn’t do was lick his chops.
Gloria had taught me a thing or two about teaching respect to men who were all hands. I rammed my elbow into his solar plexus. “Fuck off,” I said, and I spat on his feet.
He didn’t try to touch me again. He also barely reacted to the blow. Guess I was going to have to learn a few new tricks to handle werewolf men. “What is it about you, Ofelia?” he asked. “My little brother’s got a huge hard-on for you, and I get it. I smell it, too. You’re not just any woman. But why?”
“I’m just that great,” I said with confidence that I didn’t feel.
“How’d you get those scars?”
“I cut off a man’s balls and ate them. He tried to get revenge.” I gestured to the scar tissue. “I killed him for it.”
“You’re lying,”
Mad Dog said. He tapped the side of his nose. “We always know.”
Then he should know that it also wasn’t any of his fucking business. The only person I’d told about my scars was Gloria, and I planned on keeping it that way.
He popped two of his fingers into his mouth, sucking on them slowly, licking my scent off of his skin. There was promise in his eyes. Not the promise of lust that I always saw in Cooper, but the promise of violence.
I turned my back to him and walked away, showing no fear.
But I didn’t need to show it. He could probably smell it on me.
I didn’t open the bar that night, or the night after. Being alone in Lobo Norte during the day was one thing. Being alone during the night was another entirely.
Just because it wasn’t the full moon didn’t mean there was no reason to fear.
It was strange to go through my day without Gloria and Johnny. They weren’t friends, but they were family in our twisted way—the people I relied on seeing day in and day out. And I hadn’t seen Cooper since Big Papa had summoned him, either. So typical of a man. Incredible orgasms one day, and then no calls for a week.
Lobo Norte was a tiny, isolated town, yet I had never felt so lonely there as I did now, trapped within its magical borders with a bunch of bikers waiting for the chance to beat the shit out of each other in my cage.
With nothing else to do, and without risk of Gloria catching me, I pulled the altar out of the hidden cubby. I’d tried to set fire to The Devil again. It was probably insanity to try the same thing a dozen times and hope for a different result, but I wasn’t crazy enough to be shocked when I found the card undamaged.
“Guess you’re used to the fires of Hell, aren’t you?” I muttered at his grinning visage. The card hadn’t even been scalded by sitting in a bowl of smoldering coals.
My ritual skills were pretty rusty after months of disuse, but I wanted to know more about this card. Abuelita had taught me a thing or two about tracking magic. I could try tagging the card to see where it had come from.
I pulled together everything I could. Some sagebrush blossoms, a little sand, rattlesnake skin, sulfur-infused water from the geyser a mile behind my trailer. Walking through the desert heat to collect them left me drenched in sweat and exhausted. But I knew it was worth it. I could feel the power in everything I pulled together, just waiting for me to direct it.
Habit made me lock my bedroom door before I got down to casting. I knew Gloria wasn’t home yet—she couldn’t bother me. In truth, I was much more afraid of Pops, my grandpa who lived in Los Angeles. Silly, right? I was afraid of a guy who lived in another country. In another world.
Teenage paranoia was a hard habit to shake.
As I ground the sand and sage together, Pops’s voice whispered at me from memory. “Hawke women don’t cast magic,” he’d said. “You know what’s good for you, you’ll never touch so much as a coil of enchanted copper. Got it?”
Abuelita had disagreed with him. Their arguments had shaken the walls of our tiny house.
I rolled the wetted mixture of plants and sand in the rattlesnake skin. It was warm to my touch, almost electric. It reminded me of Abuelita. A comforting sensation. She’d always smelled like good cigars and whiskey, and her skin had felt like the sweet kiss of magic. I’d loved curling up in her lap while she cast the old magic, watching her spin smoke into shapes for my entertainment.
“This is your past,” she’d told me once, blowing a butterfly out of cigar smoke. I had been a small child at the time. The sight of it had made me clap and giggle. “And this is your future.” Another puff.
“What is it?” I’d asked, reaching up to grab for the coils of smoke.
“You’ll know,” she’d said.
Maybe it was my imagination, or the distortion of memories through time, but I was pretty sure she’d blown a smoke wolf at me.
I whispered an incantation with the snake skin between my palms. “Blessed Hecate, work your will. Show me the truth behind the veil. Show me where the card hails from.”
And then I opened the skin and scattered the sand on the face of The Devil.
Magic swelled within me, connecting me to the card. A coil of smoke rose from its image. It was almost as thick as when Abuelita had blown the smoke from her cigars, and it thrilled me to see the spell working.
It writhed, twisting into an arrow upthrust toward the sky, its base planted solidly on the center of the card.
That was how it froze.
I waited to see if it would change, but it remained still. My eyes tracked the path of the smoky arrow toward the roof. I hadn’t expected my spell to work miracles—I hadn’t expected it to work at all, actually—but I had hoped that it would form a shape that told me where it had come from.
Yet it pointed skyward. Not toward any city or individual who might have given it to me.
Somehow, I was more surprised that the arrow wasn’t pointing down to Hell.
Someone knocked on my front door and I lost my concentration. The spell snapped. Scrambling to my feet, I beat the smoke out of the air, stuffed The Devil in my back pocket, and tossed my duvet over the altar. Even I wasn’t sure why I was being so paranoid. It wasn’t like Pops had come down from Los Angeles to yell at me for casting magic.
I hoped for Cooper when I opened the door, but it was Tatiana, one of the Coyote Ranch girls. “You’ve got to open the bar,” she said, wringing her hands together.
I gave her the once-over. She was wearing a baggy skirt, a tank top, flip flops. Her sleek black hair was pulled back in a practical ponytail. She wasn’t wearing any makeup. “What’s wrong?”
“You’ve got to distract them,” Tatiana said. “Kelsie is sick. She took too much lethe.”
Lethe was one of the weirder drugs Johnny sold. It was a super-strong mix of stimulants and hallucinogens that was powerful enough to knock any supernatural creature on her ass for a night-long high. I’d seen the girls snorting it before. It made them happy, made the sex and alcohol better, made it so they could turn tricks all night long.
It could also kill a human woman if she took more than a few grains.
“Is she going to die?” I asked, my alarm climbing.
“I don’t know. But she can’t work, and Leanne is taking care of her, so I’m on my own.” She wrung her hands. “I can’t handle that many guys. They’re bored, Ofelia. You need to distract them or they’re going to become violent.”
Become violent? If the scuffles I’d been hearing over the last few nights weren’t violence, then I didn’t want to see what would happen once it got worse.
I was safe in my warded trailer. All I had to do was stay locked up until Gloria and Johnny came back, fixed the generator, and finished off the cage fights. The Ranch girls weren’t my problem. They stayed out of my bar, and I stayed out of their whorehouse.
But her pleading eyes made me waver.
A figure approaching my trailer caught my attention. He was obscured by the dust storm, but I could tell instantly that it was Cooper. Relief and arousal were a powerful mix. I grabbed the doorframe to keep myself standing.
“I want to help, Tatiana,” I said, and I was surprised to mean it. “There’s just no power in the bar. There isn’t much I can do to entertain them.”
“We’ve been using candles at the Ranch. You can have all of them. And I think we’ve got some camping lanterns, too. Battery-powered.” She gave a sheepish smile. “We have plenty of batteries.”
Cooper stopped at the bottom of the steps, and my breath stuck in my throat. His right eye was swollen shut. Someone had been beating on him. “Is there a problem here?”
Tatiana drew in on herself, as if unsure how to conduct herself around one of the bikers when she wasn’t in costume and on the job. She bit her fingernail and shook her head silently.
I touched her shoulder. “It’s okay. He’s not like the others.” The gratitude in Cooper’s eyes warmed me.
“Ofelia needs to open the bar,” Tatiana sai
d in a small voice.
“Okay,” he said. “So we’ll open the bar.” Like it was such an easy thing to do. I never did night shifts without Gloria.
But Cooper was going to be there for me. I could see it in his face now. He was ready to work, just like he’d promised on the night of the cage fight.
Lonely as I was in Lobo Norte, I wasn’t alone.
At least for now.
CHAPTER NINE
The bikers poured into my bar in droves. Tatiana was right. These were restless men in desperate need of entertainment. Most of them showed signs of having been in recent fights: black eyes and bloodstained shirts and cracked teeth. They clambered into the cage room, hanging off the sides of the bars,
I wasn’t sure if I was glad that the Fangs weren’t there.
Cooper served drinks while I stripped in the darkness, illuminated only by camping lanterns and the candles. We played music on a battery-powered tape cassette player that played mullet-rock from the eighties. It had no bass. It was still better than nothing.
With a hand locked on the pole, I kicked my legs up and swung a broad circle over the crowd. I gave them a good view of my legs, my abs, my ass. I wasn’t a particularly skinny woman, but I was solid muscle under my soft curves. I looked good, and I knew it.
I’d gone simple with my costume for the night. I was wearing a string bikini—basically just three triangles covering my nipples and cunt—with leather chaps borrowed from Cooper and a cowboy hat. But the men were cheering for me to take even that little cloth off. Demanding to see it all.
Glancing down at Cooper, I noticed that I had his full attention, even as he served drinks. He was good, I had to admit—almost as good at whipping out whiskey and beer as I was. And he was doing it while he stared at me. Silent. Hungry.
I wrapped an arm over my chest as I reached the other hand back to untie my bikini top, hips undulating in time with the music. The bikers screamed.