by Vivian Arend
Cooper stepped towards us.
“Stop,” Big Papa said.
And Cooper fucking obeyed.
“You’re better than this,” I said. “Don’t listen to him.” But Cooper didn’t do anything as Big Papa slapped me across the face, making the gashes burn anew and filling my head with black stars. I tasted blood. My teeth felt loose.
“This is gonna be a problem, isn’t it?” Big Papa asked. “This bullshit between the two of you. Question is, will your service to the pack be worth Trouble fighting me for your life every step of the way? I picked him because he was strong, but maybe he was too strong.”
“Picked him?” I asked. I coughed on the blood, spit it out.
“You don’t think he volunteered, do you?” Big Papa asked.
I remembered how much Cooper had glowed when he talked about his doctorate. How much he must have loved his life before he had been changed into a werewolf and lassoed into a biker gang. I’d thought that Cooper must have been a volunteer since all the other bikers were gagging for a chance to join the pack.
But he’d been forced into it.
Big Papa had picked him, bitten him, destroyed his life.
That made me even angrier than the idea of being forced to “service” the whole pack. I glared at him through the haze of the blood. “I will never stop fighting you,” I hissed, “and neither will Cooper. He’s better than you. He will break free.”
“Dumb bitch,” Big Papa said, hitting me again.
He didn’t show it, but he was worried. I’d been a stripper long enough to tell a man’s deepest emotions.
Big Papa really was afraid of Cooper.
“Pick up the shotgun, Trouble,” he said. Cooper did. “So is she right? Are you always gonna fight me on this?”
Cooper’s eyes burned with hatred. “Until the day I die.”
“Or the day she dies.” Big Papa’s grinned. “Trouble—kill her.”
Cooper stood over me with the shotgun aimed at my face. I stared back at him, pinned underneath The Devil, helpless to fight back. “Do what you have to do,” I said. Calm filled me from the top of my skull to the tips of my toes.
He squeezed the trigger.
Blam.
I jerked at the explosion so close to my ear. The sound was painful enough that I believed he had really shot me for an instant.
Then something warm and wet began dripping over me, and it wasn’t my blood.
Big Papa rolled off of me with a groan. His back had been chewed up by the silver buckshot, still embedded in the meat of his muscles, baring glistening white bone under his leather vest.
As soon as the shock wore off, I pushed myself to my feet, holding the wall for strength. Cooper was breathing hard, looking just as stunned as I felt. “I did it,” he said. “I shot him.”
Big Papa struggled to get up. “You goddamn stupid fucking—”
Cooper kicked him in the face, driving his studded boot into the other werewolf’s forehead. Big Papa fell. “Don’t get up,” he said harshly. He stomped on Big Papa’s back. Pinned him down with his weight. “Don’t ever get up again.” He extended Bo Peep toward me.
I took the shotgun. She was a familiar weight in my hands. She felt almost as good as Cooper’s cock.
“I brought more ammo,” Cooper said, slipping another silver slug into my hand. “Just in case.” I loaded the weapon mechanically, more by habit than because of any deliberate thought.
Pressing the barrel against the back of Big Papa’s skull, I could almost see the chains that had Cooper and me tied to him. I understood rationally that I was imagining it, but the vision was so vivid.
This was it. This was the end.
I unloaded the second slug into Big Papa’s skull.
The Devil’s brains splattered over the carpet, and we were free.
When the sun rose the next morning, Cooper and I were both still alive.
Trust me—I was surprised, too.
Mad Dog gathered the Fangs, and they were gone before the first rays of light touched the desert. It didn’t escape my notice that the gang was bigger than when they arrived, even though neither Big Papa nor Cooper were with them. The recruitment drive had been successful. There would be more werewolves next full moon.
None of them were going to Los Angeles.
They weren’t going to do the transitions in Lobo Norte anymore, and they weren’t going to change anyone else against their will. Mad Dog had promised me that before leaving. I wasn’t sure why, but I trusted him.
Anyway, if he broke his promise, Bo Peep and I had more silver buckshot.
Now Lobo Norte was silent as Cooper and I packed to leave. We wouldn’t be following the Fangs out of town. We were planning to head south into Mexico to start looking for the rest of the tarot deck. I needed to know why I was different, what it was about me that attracted the werewolves and the Needles. I had a feeling that I’d find all my answers with the rest of the cards. If not…well, there were a lot of things much worse than getting to travel alone with Cooper.
“You look like shit.”
I turned from Cooper’s motorcycle to see that Gloria had appeared seemingly from nowhere, hands on her ample hips and judgment in her eyes.
Reflexively, I touched my wounded face. I’d tried to heal myself with magic and failed; the gashes from Big Papa’s claws would leave me marked for months. “I had to fix some problems. It got messy.”
“Did you succeed?” Gloria asked.
“You could say that.” I gave her a short explanation of what had happened with the Fangs, holding nothing back. Her penciled eyebrows climbed her forehead as I spoke until she looked like a shocked kewpie doll.
When I finished, she whirled on Cooper. “You told her to kill you?” Gloria asked. “Are you sculpted from pure stupid?”
Cooper glowered. “Better to die than—”
“Blah, blah, blah. You’re talking and all I’m hearing is, ‘I’m stupid, Gloria, I am so fucking stupid.’ You know what else you could have done? You could have gotten me. You could have gotten Johnny. We kill bikers that fuck with us and leave their bones in the desert for the bugs to pick clean.”
She’d never told me that before, yet I was utterly unsurprised. I’d noticed that the most troublesome bikers had a habit of vanishing. I’d just assumed that they left Lobo Norte and didn’t come back.
The idea might have bothered me a few hours earlier. Now my mind was filled with the image of Big Papa’s brains dribbling out onto The Lodge’s tacky carpet and I felt calm.
“We had to free ourselves,” Cooper said. His hand was warm in mine.
Gloria jabbed him in the chest with a finger. “Death isn’t freedom. The road is freedom.” Her eyes gleamed. Was she tearing up? “I don’t think I trust you to take care of Ofelia without doing something else stupid.”
I broke away from Cooper and wrapped her in my arms, expecting her to slap me like she so often did. But she just hugged me tight. Her face was wet against my chest. “Good thing you weren’t stupid enough to listen to him,” Gloria grunted. I think she was trying to tell me that she loved me.
“Someone’s got to have enough brains to find the rest of the tarot deck.”
“So you’re leaving me.”
“Yeah. I’ve finally got enough money.” More than enough, once I pawned all of Big Papa’s crap.
“Don’t you ever fucking strip again, chica.”
“No promises. I like stripping.”
She whopped me upside the back of the head. I staggered. That was more normal for Gloria. She’d kinda been freaking me out there for a minute.
Gloria pulled an envelope out of her cleavage and shoved it in my hands.
“Last bonus,” she said.
I opened it and my eyes widened. It was filled with a stack of crisp hundred dollar bills. “I can’t take this.”
“What, you think I’m going to go and buy a nice fucking TV or something? What the fuck would I do with that? Take it and shut u
p.”
“Thank you,” Cooper said. He tried to kiss her on the cheek. She stepped back and pinched his ass.
“Be less stupid or I’ll fucking kill you,” she said by way of goodbye.
She didn’t stick around to watch us leave.
I ran my hands over Big Papa’s motorcycle, savoring its curves. This beast was mine now. I’d decided not to sell it. I could always ride behind Cooper, but I wanted something to show what I had accomplished—my first werewolf slain, my chains shed, my future and past reclaimed.
Plus, it was a fucking sexy machine.
The saddlebags were already filled with everything I needed. Some clothes, Big Papa’s valuables, even Bo Peep in a holster I’d enchanted to be invisible. The Devil card had a special place in its own pocket with plenty of room to add more tarot cards. I wasn’t afraid of it anymore.
Cooper stepped up behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist. His lips traced along my shoulder.
“You sure you want that?” he asked. “It stinks of him.”
I couldn’t tell. My nose wasn’t sensitive enough. But I turned in his arms, sliding my fingers along his belt buckle. “We could fix that real quick.”
He grinned. It was a beautiful look on him.
We fucked on Big Papa’s motorcycle, long and slow. We marked it with the scent of our mingled sweat. I came screaming, back arched over the handlebars, and Cooper bit my shoulder hard enough to bruise. Marking me as his mate with the harsh desert sun as witness. By the time we were done, Big Papa’s stench was covered in ours.
And then we left, tearing down the road toward Mexico with the music of the engines surrounding us.
When we got halfway up the hill, Lobo Norte vanished without so much as a ripple. There was nothing but empty desert behind us. I wasn’t sure I’d ever see it again, and I felt a little bit sad.
There were seventy-eight cards in a tarot deck. One had gone to Gloria. I had another.
Only seventy-six left to go.
MORE FROM SM REINE
Dear readers,
Thanks for reading Caged Wolf! The next book in the series (Forbidden Witches) is due out later in 2014. If you’d like to receive a new release email alert when it comes out, sign up for the Army of Evil here: http://smarturl.it/armyofevil
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Sara (SM Reine)
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OTHER SERIES BY SM REINE
Seasons of the Moon
The Cain Chronicles
The Descent Series
The Ascension Series
Preternatural Affairs
JUMP TO...
Copper King by Vivian Arend
Marked by Temptation by Deanna Chase
Rumpel's Prize by Marie Hall
Tank by M. Malone
Shattered Web by Crista McHugh
Caged Wolf by SM Reine
Collateral by Roxie Rivera
Beyond Solitude by Kit Rocha
Blue Roses by Mimi Strong
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Collateral
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
More From Roxie Rivera
COLLATERAL
Mechanic and mob enforcer Ben Beciraj can't believe his eyes when Houston socialite Aston McNeil storms into his chop shop and demands the return of the car he's just repossessed as collateral on her stepbrother's defaulted loan. When the fiery blonde heiress offers him anything to get it back, he counters with a deal he never expects her to accept--one week at his beck and call for the keys to her late father's classic car.
But Ben's plans to have a little fun with a girl way out of his league are shot to hell after one taste of sweet, beguiling Aston. When her stepbrother's shady dealings are revealed, Ben will do anything to protect her from the seedy underworld he inhabits--even if it means crossing the only family he's ever known.
CHAPTER ONE
"Aston, do you want me to come inside with you?"
Filled with dread, I glanced away from the rusted façade of Merkurie Motors and Towing to the driver's seat where Marley eyed me with concern. "Is it pathetic that I want to say yes and ask you to hold my hand?"
My best friend bit her lower lip and studied the garage where an illegal chop shop allegedly operated. "It's not the kind of place I would want to visit after dark. Actually, it's exactly the kind of place Dad has forbidden me to visit, like, ever."
That tidbit didn't fill me with the warm and fuzzies. Spider, Marley's stepdad, was the vice president of the Calaveras, Houston's scariest outlaw motorcycle gang. When he gave an instruction like that, it was for a good reason.
The snick of a seat belt unbuckling drew my attention. Marley slipped her arm out of the belt and tugged the hair elastic from her wrist. As she gathered her auburn hair into a high ponytail, she said, "I'm coming with you."
"But Spider—"
"His name will keep us safe," she replied with a look. "This crew knows better than to mess with Octavio Ruiz's kid." She glanced away from me and tugged her keys from the ignition. "Their boss wouldn’t like it either. Not after what he did for me."
A few weeks earlier, Marley had been kidnapped with a coworker and his son who owed a debt to a drug cartel. In the standoff that followed, she had nearly been shot by a cartel assassin gone rogue. Besian Beciraj, the notorious Albanian mob boss and loan shark reputed to own this auto shop, had thrown himself into the line of fire to save her. He had taken a bullet meant for Marley and had barely survived the shooting.
She hadn't been very forthcoming about why this man she hardly even knew would so something so heroic, and I hadn't pressed the issue. We had been friends so long I could read her easily. She didn't know what to think about the mob boss and she didn't want to talk about it. When she was ready, she would say something. Until then? I was staying out of her business.
"Look, we probably won't even get inside the shop tonight. Ben Beciraj, the guy who runs this place, isn't going to be very enthusiastic about two girls like us wandering into the middle of this outrageously illegal operation."
"I have to try." Gripping the door handle, I tried to work up the nerve to get out of her car. "Baby has been missing since eight. It's nearly midnight. If I don't get in there now, I might lose her forever because that asshole stepbrother of mine wanted to get back at me by taking her and deliberately leaving the keys in the ignition in that awful part of town."
Marley's eyebrows arched. "You realize you sound like you're talking about a person, right? It's a car, Aston."
"It was my father's car. His favorite car," I added, thinking of all the Sunday mornings I had spent at his side, buffing and polishing the '63 Aston Martin DB5. Of all the cars in his vast collection, Baby had been the one he had loved best. "He named me after that car. I learned to drive in Baby. I had my first kiss in that car." Swallowing hard, I choked back the tears that threatened to overtake me. "I sat in the driver's seat of that car when Daddy told me he was dying." Gritting my teeth, I shook my head. "I'm not losing her now."
Marley sighed loudly and reached over to squeeze my hand. "Even if they let us inside, and even if you're able to negotiate for the car, it won't be cheap."
With a careless shrug, I opened the door. "I guess it's a good thing I'm so disgustingly rich."
She snorted indelicately. "Embrace that bitchy attitude you worked so hard to lose in high school, Aston. You're going to need it in there. We're walking straight into the lion's den."
"Don't you mean eagle's nest?" I asked, thinking of the double-headed eagle symbol the Albanian crime family had chosen as their own. Though I wasn't part of this seedy underbelly, I w
asn't naïve or uninformed. I understood that a parallel world existed to the privileged one I lived in and enjoyed. My stepbrother Calvin had been flirting with the dark side of the city for years. Now I was the one getting burned by his fascination with these criminals.
Side by side, we crossed the quiet street and made our way to the garage. We exchanged nervous glances as the whine of saws and the snapping zips of impact tools filled the night. Gulping down my fear, I balled up my fist and beat on the closest garage door. When that received no answer, I kicked the door while pounding on it, suddenly glad I had chosen the red suede pumps with metal toe points that morning.
The noise inside the shop grinded to a halt. Seconds later, I winced when the heavy metal door started to rise and made a terrible screeching noise. Inch by inch, the rising door revealed a man. First a pair of big, dirty work boots and then a pair of jeans flecked with oil and dark stains on the knees. A white muscle shirt smudged with grease and grime came into view next.
But it was the brawny arms emblazoned with tattoos from knuckles to shoulders that enthralled me. I had interacted with Marley's stepdad enough to be accustomed to the sight of gang ink, but the sleeves on this man were breathtaking. I noticed the marks on his neck and the tattoo on the underside of his wrist. I tried not to think about what types of things a man might have to do to earn that double-headed eagle and an invitation to the inner circle of the mob boss who had saved Marley's life.
Up and up, my gaze drifted along the imposing height of him and settled on his handsome face. A wicked thrill fluttered through my belly. He had a hard face, his jaw angled and his nose sporting the telltale signs of having been broken at least once. His dark, unkempt hair fell carelessly around his ears. He had eyes like jade, the color pale, but they seared me with their intensity. When he crossed his powerful arms, the muscles flexing menacingly, I couldn't help but wonder what it would feel like to have them wrapped around me.