Wolf's Cut (The Nick Lupo Series Book 5)

by W. D. Gagliani

  The fire had nothing to do with it.

  He slipped his hands into her open coat and drew her near. She laid her head on his shoulder, and then they moved and their lips met, and this time they did more than just touch. This time their tongues met and the kiss turned volcanic.

  Lupo tasted the brandy on her tongue. It added a new element to the woodsy flavor of her lips. Even though she might easily have become a model—and she reminded people of a popular eighties supermodel with her looks—Jessie rarely bothered with makeup when she was relaxing at home, in her cottage on Circle Moon Drive, one of several she’d inherited. Lupo was still nominally her tenant, staying in one of her other cottages, but since they’d become a couple he spent most of his time Up North in hers, usually reclining in front of a roaring fire.

  Now they were in front of a fire in the great outdoors, and the heat between them, added to that of the fire, was making them forget about the chilly northern air.

  They made out like teenagers, their hands roaming on each other’s bodies while their mouths connected them symbolically, making them into a single entity with rapidly warming needs.

  Lupo pulled back for a second. “Too cold to, uh, go further here, isn’t it?”

  Jessie was almost breathless. “I’m game if you are.” She swooped in for another lengthy kiss, giving him her tongue to suckle. A low moan erupted from down below in her throat, signaling her need. Their breathing turned rapid, almost desperate. They started to peel clothing layers, the bottle and the fire and the cold almost forgotten.

  Lupo laid his coat on the pine-needle carpet that surrounded them, then added hers. He kissed her shoulders, bare now, and trailed his tongue toward her neck as she struggled out of her sweater and blouse, her bandages in the way until he lent a hand. They knelt on the rumpled coats.

  She wasn’t wearing a bra, and in a few moments he was cupping her breasts gently toward his mouth, his lips on her hardening nipples and alternating from one to the other while she ran her one good hand through his long hair.

  She sighed as his tongue made circles around her nipples, his warmth chasing away her goose bumps.

  He was always awed by her natural beauty and by her need, which matched his even though his was enhanced (as he put it) by the werewolf gene he’d carried ever since his teen years. Indeed, he had to force himself to hold back the Creature, who lurked beneath the veneer of civilization and always threatened to take control. Lupo had improved his abilities in that area, but when he lost control—in lust, as well as in anger—then the Creature began to push against the limits his human brain put upon it.

  Now their needs were being met as he helped her shimmy out of her jeans and he took her hips between his large, scarred hands and gently maneuvered her back down on their flattened coats until she could kick her damp panties off and lay her legs on his shoulders. He kissed from her nipples, down the swell of her breasts, then laid a line of soft kisses down her flat stomach and stopped at her navel, licking around the tiny garnet stud she had recently added to her already perfect cleft, then wandered downward, his lips alternating with his tongue, heading down to the molten center of her heat.

  She sighed contentedly under his hands, under his attentions, and he felt her muscles contract and loosen as he let his instincts take over, slowly working her up into a mild frenzy as she caressed his head.

  He reached her thighs, leaving more kisses behind as he circled around and around, teasing, nearing the spot she wanted him to find. She groaned with frustration as he pulled back, his lips following the curve of her mound without touching her precisely where she wanted to be touched. Now he kissed the insides of her thighs as her breathing increased its rate, and as he abandoned himself to her pleasure, he had one last coherent thought before the animal needs took over.

  He hoped Ghost Sam had gone wherever it was he went when he wasn’t acidly critiquing Lupo’s handling of his life.

  Jessie’s hands in his hair pulled him back to where he needed to be.

  The fire snapped and crackled near them, sending tendrils of smoke up into the evening air.

  Bastone

  Las Vegas

  The Don was enjoying his new television in the den, a sixty-inch Samsung about as thin as a cracker.

  The room was decked out as a theater even though his was the only seat, a triple-wide black love seat crafted in the old country of the softest leather and specially imported. In fact, he thought it was the only one of its kind in the entire country, and the Don was pleased to be sitting on it now. It wasn’t the only one of its kind in the whole country, but since he thought it was, not one of his guys dared break the news.

  On the crystal-clear screen, two extremely comely and highly flexible women were pleasuring a well-hung stud with their mouths, taking frequent breaks to suck each other’s tongue before getting back to business.

  This had been the Don’s favorite pastime since he’d turned fifty and put his father into the ground.

  The new Don had immediately indulged his two main interests by uniting them. He had become a walking encyclopedia of both Mafia history and pornography.

  You weren’t supposed to say the word Mafia. But that was bullshit. Gus Bastone said the word all the time.

  Gus had a theory. His old man was secretly embarrassed to be a gangster, a made man, a wise guy in the old tradition, and he liked to pretend none of that stuff existed. He wanted nothing more than to be considered a legit businessman. So whenever he’d had the chance to buy up some small chain of convenience stores or gas stations, even if he had to use some dirty money to seal the deal, he always maintained it would be clean money soon enough. He never called it laundering. He had funny ideas about his family enterprise.

  Technically his father had been a straight-laced, old-country, old-school Mafia guy. One of the so-called Mustache Petes. A slightly younger one, but still firmly anchored in the older generation and most of their ways.

  But then the old Don finally gave up the ghost and left the Bastone Family business to his only son to steer, and young Gus liked wrapping himself up in all the trappings of the Mafia and everything that came with it.

  The Don was dead, all hail the Don.

  But the new Don Bastone was very different from his father, and the little porn addiction was all his to enjoy. Hell, some of his father’s colleagues collected shrunken heads, others pickled fingers and worse.

  Porn had been a favorite of his before that, of course, but as the Don’s son he had been obligated to hide his interests in the shadows. Only some of his best men knew how he spent his free time. That he had an entire room filled with a porn collection that might be the best in Vegas, if you didn’t count the “sex museums”. That he tended to let the porn run in the background even when he was in his office, taking care of business.

  So this was not a quirk he was willing to share with all his soldiers, only a few of the captains—by and large those who were interested in the same things. The one captain who hadn’t taken it seriously had disappeared. His family thought he had run away with a showgirl. There had been evidence to that effect. But actually Don Gus “The Stick” Bastone had personally put a bullet in the back of his head and then dropped the body in a vat of quick-drying cement, and the dumb bastard was now part of the foundation of an overpass on-ramp off US 15.

  It wasn’t the only killing Gus Bastone had done. Unlike his old man, he found he liked occasionally reinforcing his image. And he wasn’t against getting his hands dirty.

  Right now he wasn’t soiling his hands, but the chick on her knees in front of him was definitely dirty. She was a showgirl at the Flamingo, so she was incredibly attractive, and she was a part-time escort, so she knew what she was doing. She was in the middle of showing him exactly why she commanded top dollar, her eyes locked on his while her mouth and tongue did the work.

  There was a knock at the door. Don Gus, as he liked his most trusted men to call him, was not happy.

  His attention slippe
d.

  Kimberley Kandy fell out of rhythm and robbed him of his imminent orgasm. Since there was little that came close to the feeling of mouth-fucking a gorgeous showgirl who was on her knees while she happened to be in full costume and makeup, Don Gus became immediately irritated.

  “Goddamit,” he snarled, shoving Kimberly aside and knocking her to the floor. The door opened because he’d forgotten to turn the lock. She squealed when she hit the floor, smacking her head on a lamp base.

  “Sorry to bother you, boss,” said a thug named Tony as he pushed open the door right after the courtesy knock. He’d been on bodyguard detail only a week.

  By then the Don had pulled his engorged flesh out of the girl’s mouth and was halfway into hitching up his pants over the drooping member, but the damage was done.

  Being caught with his pants down, literally, was not something the old Don’s son took in stride.

  Stuck with his hands in the folds of his skewed briefs and dress shirt, Don Bastone stopped struggling with his clothes and stood facing the door. He glared at Tony, who stopped abruptly as his eyes took in the view of his boss’s embarrassment.

  “Oh Jesus,” he muttered. Then he soldiered on. “Boss, you wanna talk to—”

  “Fuck you doin’?” Gus shouted, spittle flying. He was building up to a full blow of a temper, and all his oldest men knew to avoid it. But Tony was too new.

  “It’s Johnny, boss, he said it was urgent—”

  “The fuck you doin’!” Gus shouted. “The fuckin’ door was closed, you moron. I left word not to fuckin’ disturb. You get it?”

  Tony was slow, but he surveyed the scene again and his eyes widened. Don Bastone, pants wrapped around his ankles. Half-naked showgirl wriggling on the floor, crying and holding her nose. “Yeah, boss, but Johnny insisted you hadda be told he was on the phone from out east.”

  Bastone gathered himself and turned to help Kimberley to her feet. She was whimpering, still holding her nose. “I dink it’s brogen,” she mumbled between sobs.

  “I’ll get ya to a doc, my sweets,” he said, surveying the damage. It didn’t look like a break to him, but he tended to always be good to his women so he would follow through. “Just hang on a few minutes, and Tony here is gonna drive you to the doc’s office. I’ll make a phone call and you’ll be all set.”

  “I’m supposed to work, Gussy.”

  He sighed. The day was pretty well ruined already. “I’ll call your boss at the Flamingo. You’ll be fine.” He patted her shapely rear, regretful of his lost orgasm. “Tony is gonna tell me what the fuck Johnny wanted, then he’s gonna run you over to Doc Shapiro’s. Just wait outside, okay?”

  She nodded. Her nose did look swollen, all of a sudden. He figured that line of sex was dried up for a while.

  Fuck!

  He waited for her to leave, then turned to the new kid. “Okay, now what?” Tony swallowed and repeated what he knew about the call. “Okay, put Johnny through to this phone here.” The kid nodded. “And from now on, you interrupt me while I’m workin’ and I’m gonna get Robb to have a talk with you. Know what I mean?”

  The kid stammered, retreating. “Y-yes, boss.”

  “And don’t call me boss.”

  Jessie

  After the sweat had dried on their bodies and they started to feel the cold breeze, they still warmed each other’s skin with their remaining heat.

  Jessie nuzzled his chin and neck, feeling his gaze slide over the top of her head and into the trees around and over them.

  Good thing we’re both warm-blooded, she thought. They’d made outdoor sex part of their routine whenever they were apart longer than a week, although by nature it tended to happen near Eagle River and not in Milwaukee, where he was nervous about being caught.

  “The MPD might have a word to say about one of their detectives cavorting in the buff in some city park,” he’d said once, after just such a vigorous outing.

  “Hm, I seem to recall some scandals of the sort back in the day,” she’d responded, half-punching his shoulder.

  “I was barely a patrol rookie then,” he said, nodding. The eighties had been full of cop scandals in the city, but a series of improvements at the chief level had slowly eroded most of the bad-boy behavior, though it had become apparent that there were still some entrenched racism and corruption issues. This was why the MPD had brought in the attack dog Griff Killian. Now Lupo had good reason to try and forget the name, but he probably never would. He would forever remember the terrible task of covering up Killian’s murder—which had been committed to inculpate him.

  Jessie knew the situations he’d faced, the crimes he’d been forced to commit, were not his fault, but they weighed on him nonetheless.

  She snuggled into his warm embrace, felt her nipples harden at the touch of his muscled torso. His hand behind her rubbed her back to generate some heat by friction, which she appreciated, but then snuck farther down to trace the lush curve of her buttocks.

  “Mmmmm,” she purred into his neck. “That’s nice, mister. Can you spare a dime?”

  Where the hell had that come from?

  His response was to caress her firm butt even more sensually, his fingers slipping into the cleft between the globes of her ass until she was adding a deep growl to the purring. And reaching down for him, feeling his hardening desire.

  “So soon, sir?” she said, chuckling, the long fingers of her unbandaged hand encircling him and making him pant.

  He whispered, “The wolf gets what the wolf wants…”

  “Let’s help the wolf,” Jessie said, sliding over his waiting body without letting go of his flesh, then positioning herself on top of him and slowly taking him, making him a part of her again.

  “I love you, Nick Lupo,” she muttered as he grew within her, and he started to rock her, reaching her best buttons with the ease of experience.

  He didn’t have to respond verbally, and she didn’t expect it. His hands reached up between them and he tweaked her nipples in opposite directions as their lips met and they shared each other’s essence despite the cool breeze that washed over them. They were making their own heat, and the snapping fire nearby didn’t seem even nearly as warm as what they generated.

  They increased the pace until she arched her back and screamed out in the throes of her orgasm, drawing him along with her until he also exploded, the two of them riding the widening ripples of their fulfilled lust and finally melting into the serenity of their rekindled love.

  Jessie smiled then, because this time they shivered as they threw on clothes, tossed some sand on the fire, and ran for her cottage, their laughter following them until they were safely inside the cozy radius of another fire, this time in her stone fireplace.

  Finally sated, they sat cuddled together on her sofa and he splashed B&B in their glasses. Jessie reached out hers and they clinked before sipping the warming nectar.

  “I’m sorry you have to head back already,” she said, swirling her glass. “These weekends always go by too fast.”

  She was the reservation doctor, and since the casino had taken off, she’d found herself on call a lot more often, dealing not only with the tribal emergencies but also with any that the many bused-in visitors might suffer. Now that the hotel portion of the complex was half-finished, there was always more work—construction sites being notoriously rife with accidental injuries from minor to fatal.

  If being honest, she’d come to hate the responsibility of running the hospital, though it was a symbol of the tribe’s increasing fortune, its coffers starting to swell again with the casino take. How could she argue with that?

  Well, except for the therapy Nick had insisted she undergo. The therapy that turned the casino and its siren call into a sin for her.

  Was she a gambling addict? Somehow it seemed she had become just that, though she had no idea how it had happened. Something buried deep in her psychology, triggered by the stress of Nick’s situation and the evil that had come their way since they’d
gotten together. Now that the sinister Wolfpaw Security Services had been vanquished, she hoped the therapy would take.

  And Heather Wilson, what of her?

  Jessie tried not to think of her often, and indeed she’d come close to killing the woman.

  First of all, she was just too perfect a beauty. Heather elicited lust merely by being in the room, or within sight. Then she’d been turned into a werewolf, not by design, sure, but it had happened, and unlike Nick, she’d fallen in love with the shapeshifting. Whereas most people, like Nick, would have seen the condition as a curse, Heather took to it like…what would DiSanto have said?

  Like a duck to water.

  So besides being fifty shades of desirable in every way you could measure, plus intelligent and charismatic, she was also just like Nick…and that bond had jabbed Jessie in the heart more than she could possibly have imagined.

  She still wasn’t sure whether Nick had had a fling with the TV newswoman, but most days Jessie thought it was true, that something had happened between them. He’d more or less confessed, but to what? It was unclear.

  Lying here in his arms, after two very nice sessions of what anyone would have called great sex, she still wasn’t sure if she trusted him. Not with her.

  Good thing Heather was far away, recovering from the wounds Jessie had inflicted. She’d been so angry that Nick had stopped her from doing what she had intended, but at the same time, she knew she was wrong to want revenge.

  Nick would have said, Revenge is what my people do. Hell, we invented the word vendetta. But then he would have chuckled. Nick Lupo was the least vindictive man she knew.

  She reached up and traced the line of his eyelids one at a time with her good hand. The other had been cut while he’d wrestled the Vatican blade from her grip. But she was lucky, it could have been worse…

  She could have awakened from that encounter as a werewolf herself.

  “Hmm,” he sighed. “I could go for that all day.”