Stripped (Wolves of Mule Creek #2)

by Katharine Sadler

  “No.” His arms tightened around me still further. “This isn't on you. This is on Leopold and whatever dick taught him that a man has a right to take what he wants from a woman and a right to punish her if she doesn't give it to him.”

  “Why didn't he just come after me? Why'd he destroy my club?”

  He released me until he could look me in the eyes. “Because you are successful in every way that he's a failure. The only way he's achieved the power he has now is by violence and cheating. You are amazing and he is a worthless piece of shit. He's doing what he can to destroy you to make himself feel better about what he is. And I can guaran-fucking-tee he's going to fail at destroying you the way he's failed at everything else. You are light years stronger and smarter and an all-around better human being than he is.”

  I don't have self-esteem issues, but I've never been very good at accepting compliments. “It almost sounds like you like me.”

  He grinned. “I do like you, Abigail White. Very much.”

  More compliments. I was going kind of melty inside and now so wasn't the time for that. “I like you, too.” I slipped out of his arms and wiped my eyes. “Let's go find my girls.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The door to the small, brick ranch house swung open to reveal a woman in her bathrobe, her hair in curlers. “Hi,” I said. “I'm Zara's boss at The Booty Carousel. I've been trying to get a hold of her and I'm hoping you can help.”

  Mrs. Robbins glared at me. “A nice young man came by and told her you'd shut down the club because you were moving on to a better job. Said you couldn't even be bothered to give my girl notice.”

  Crapola. I hated that Zara's mom was angry at me, but I didn't have time to convince her any different. “Where is she now? Can I talk to her?”

  She shrugged. “The guy said he had a club, a better club, and she could dance there. He promised she'd make good money.”

  Fudge, fudge, triple fudge. “Was this guy skinny? With white blond hair?”

  She crossed her arms over her chest and glared harder. “What you going to do about it?”

  “I just want to make sure she's okay. My club was—”

  “He said you'd be by to convince Zara to give you some of her earnings. You leave that girl alone. She worked hard for every cent she made.”

  “I just—”

  But the woman had shut the door in my face. I turned to Zane. “Have any idea where this new 'club' might be?”

  He grimaced. “Got a pretty good idea.” He shook his head. “Damn it, Abby. I'm sorry.”

  My heart sank. What had he done? “Why?”

  “I really believed Leopold was just trying to cause trouble for you. Everything we know about him, everything we've seen points to him being lazy and good-for-nothing. He takes money from people, but is unwilling to work for it. I never…”

  “You couldn't have known,” I said, relief coursing through me. I had a lot of friends, a lot of acquaintances, but no one in my life I felt I could depend on. No one I talked to about stuff that really mattered in my own life. It was nice to have someone on my side. “Let's go find them.”

  Since Zane knew where the vamps might have taken the women, I let him drive, which gave me plenty of time to sit in the passenger seat, chew on my fingernails, and worry. I opened my mouth several times to share my concerns with Zane, but I couldn't say it out loud, couldn't let on how worried I was. It felt like talking about it would make it more real and if he couldn't offer me the unrealistic reassurances I wanted to hear, I wasn't sure I'd hold it together. Leopold had destroyed everything I'd worked for in less than twenty-four hours, I wouldn't let him hurt anyone else.

  “How can he be allowed to do this?” I finally said as Zane parked in front of a two-story, silo-shaped building on the outskirts of town. “How can anyone have this much power?”

  “Fear,” Zane said. “Money. This sort of thing happens with humans, too, all the time. The difference is that he is inhumanly strong and has a taste for human blood.”

  I knew all that and, yet… “I guess I just never expected it to happen to me. I have a lot of friends in this town… I just thought they'd be better.”

  He shrugged. “I'm a werewolf and Leopold put me out of business. He's the reason the pack is struggling financially. Your friends are still your friends, Leopold is just stronger.”

  I turned to him, my worry forgotten for a moment, or maybe I just didn't want to face what we'd see inside. “What was your business?”

  He gestured to the building in front of us. I'd driven past it before, but never given it much thought. “Yoga and meditation classes, a sort of spa for the mind and body.”

  I stared at him for a moment, shocked. I'd heard about this place, had heard good things, but yoga and meditation weren't something that interested me enough for me to learn more. “Wow,” I said. “Really?” I studied him, thinking about what I'd seen from him. “I guess I can see it, I just…”

  “Never would have imagined a bloodthirsty, aggressive werewolf as the type to teach yoga and meditation?”

  He was smiling, though there was a bite to his words, and I wondered if maybe I wasn't the only one who'd questioned his career choices. “I wouldn't go that far,” I said. “It's just unexpected.”

  He relaxed a smidge. “Not a lot of other options for a guy with a PhD in Philosophy who needs a pack to keep his wolf from going primal.”

  I stared at him a moment longer, feeling like I was seeing him for the first time. He was a good-looking guy, a werewolf, a breed not known for deep or particularly intelligent thoughts or actions. I'd gotten to know him better and my opinion of him had begun to change, but I had still thought of him in terms of his good looks and his primal nature. I was a woman who prided herself on not judging, and I'd judged him. “I'm sorry about your business.”

  He nodded, his expression grave. Losing his business had really hurt, maybe almost as much as losing my club was hurting me. “Let's find out what Leopold's done to the place.”

  We got out of the car and walked to the building. I could hear the thumping bass of the music before we'd gotten close to the door. There was no sign on the building, no way to identify it as a strip club. Whatever they were doing in there, they weren't advertising. Zane pulled the door open, but before we could step inside, two pale, very tall men moved into the doorway, shoulder to shoulder. Their fangs were prominently displayed, so they clearly weren't worried about scaring away human customers. “Wolves aren't welcome here,” one of the men said, his fangs causing a lisp that might have been humorous if I didn't know he could drain all the blood from my body in less than five minutes.

  Zane reached for my hand and laced his fingers through mine. “I just want to see what you've done with the place.” His tone was light, but his jaw was clenched. “Abigail wants to see what new line of work her dancers have taken on.”

  I swung my head around to look at him, my stomach dropping. Darn. I'd hoped it was just a paranoid fear when I worried the girls wouldn't be dancing, but would be doing something much, much worse.

  “She can come in, but you stay outside.”

  I took a step forward, but Zane tightened his grip on my fingers. “Not happening.”

  I sighed. I didn't appreciate a man taking charge of me, but I wasn't dumb enough to think going in there alone would be a good idea. “Let Leopold know Abigail White is at the front door,” I said. “I have a feeling he'll want me to see whatever is going on inside.” I just hoped I could stomach it and didn't get myself killed trying to rip his head from his shoulders.

  One of the two men disappeared behind a curtain. He returned a moment later and nodded to the other guy. They both stepped to the side, allowing us just enough room to enter, but we had to do it single-file and we brushed against their chests and other parts as we walked in. “Leopold is on the second floor,” the guy closest to me said. “VIP lounge.”

  I pushed through the curtain, Zane so close behind me I could feel the warmth o
f his body against mine. Which was good, because the cavernous room we stepped into was cold. Freezing cold. It was a round room, with a stage in the center and a pole that rose two stories to a second-floor stage with a see-through floor, so guys could look up and see the dancers above, every intimate bit of the dancers above. And there weren't just women on the stages. There were also women in aerial dances, hanging from ribbons suspended from the ceiling, and there were women working the crowd, some of them performing lap dances that had gone way beyond what was accepted at most strip clubs. I saw one woman sitting on a man's lap, his teeth in her neck while she rocked her hips against him. Another woman was on her knees, her face between a man's legs, her head bobbing.

  My stomach roiled and I swayed, this was so much worse than I'd expected. Zane released my hand and wrapped an arm around my shoulders, pulling me tight to his side. “Do you recognize them?” he asked.

  I looked closer and was relieved to see that the bitten woman wasn't an ex-employee of mine. Roxy and Lizzie were dancing on the stage, and I couldn't be sure about the women above, but I crossed my fingers that everyone who'd worked for me was just dancing.

  “There's too many vamps here,” Zane said. “Double what they had before Leopold.”

  I looked around at the crowd again and realized he was right. The room was packed and I only recognized about a third of the faces. “What's going on?”

  “I don't know, but I doubt it's good.”

  “Welcome,” Leopold said, stepping forward to block our view of the club. Alice was on his arm, two red dots of blood on her neck. She looked up at Leopold and smiled like he was everything she'd ever wanted and never thought she'd find. “I figured you'd be too chicken shit to come up and see me, so I brought the party to you.”

  He reached back and pulled Carly forward, also with dots of blood on her neck, also looking at Leopold like he was the sun and the moon and every life-giving entity.

  “Where'd all these vamps come from?” Zane asked.

  Leopold's smile widened and he looked around the club. “Quite a crowd, isn't it? Bigger than either of you ever drew with your businesses.”

  “Wasn't trying to attract bloodsuckers,” Zane said, his arm tensing around me.

  “Maybe you should have been,” Leopold said. “Maybe your business would still be here if you'd paid attention to the population demographics here in Aspens Whiten.”

  I looked around the full club. “You're saying all these vampires live in Aspens Whiten?”

  “I'm saying I could use a manager for this new club I've opened, someone to look out for the girls. If you decided to ditch the wolf on your arm and hop into my bed, you could have the job.”

  Leopold leered as he said it, the hand around Alice's waist dropping to fondle her ass. “If I was manager,” I said. “I'd have rules. No feeding on the girls in my club, no sexual activity of any kind in my club.”

  Leopold frowned. “This is my club, Sissy.” He slid his hand under Carly's short skirt and she moaned. “But I imagine I could fuck that rule-following attitude out of you in a day or two.”

  It was almost tempting. If I took the job as manager, I'd at least be able to keep an eye on the women I cared about, but I knew all I'd really be able to do was watch as they were turned into blood groupies. “Let them leave with me,” I said. “And I won't report you to the sheriff.”

  His grin widened. “You mean sheriff Walpole? If you want to talk to him, he's right over there.” He pointed to our respected sheriff, a man with a wife and kids at home, sitting at a table in the middle of the crowd, his eyes glued to the stage. Sheriff Walpole had never frequented my club and I wondered exactly what Leopold had done to get him there. “I doubt he's in the mood to do much talking at the moment, seeing as his girlfriend is dancing right now.”

  On stage, a third woman had just shown up and her eyes were on the sheriff. What the hell was going on?

  “She's been keeping him real good company since his wife took the kids and left town. Rumor is she didn't appreciate the time he was spending with me.”

  I shook my head and focused on what I needed to do. “I want to talk to my employees. Legally, they still work for me.” I really had no idea if it worked that way at all, it's not like any of them had signed a contract saying they wouldn't go work somewhere else, but they were on the schedule for my club. And Leopold seemed cowed by nothing else.

  “Go ahead,” Leopold said. “But I doubt they'll want to talk to you.” He turned to the women on his arms. “Ladies, you want to talk to Sissy?”

  “I'll call her tomorrow,” Alice said, her eyes on Leopold. Carly said nothing.

  I looked to the stage, but Roxy and Lizzie were no longer there. I wasn't too keen on rushing into a crowd of vampires to try to find my employees, my friends. “I'll be in touch,” I said to both women. “Tell the others I want to see them.”

  “'Kay, Abby,” Alice said, but her focus was on Leopold. She traced his bottom lip with her finger and smiled dopily. I had little faith she'd do what I'd asked.

  I was halfway to the exit, Zane's arm still around me, when Leopold grabbed my elbow and yanked me back. Zane's arm slipped from my shoulders, but he grabbed my hand. He tried to pull me back, but Leopold held me tight against his chest. He nipped my neck with his teeth, not enough to break the skin, just a promise. I shuddered and not in pleasure. Nothing about vampirism had ever appealed to me. “I'll let all your girls go, never let them work here again, if you are mine.”

  Zane jerked me from Leopold's arms before I could answer and Leopold made it clear he'd let me go, his hands high in the air, his grin cocky. “She belongs to me,” Zane roared. “You don't touch her. Don't even fucking look at her.”

  “If I want her,” Leopold said. “I'll have her, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it, pretty boy.”

  Zane growled and dragged me from the club. He dragged me to the car, opened the passenger door and pushed me inside. I had several things to say about him rescuing me, mostly thank you, but I forgot all those words when he paced outside the car, looking truly pained. His hands were shifting from human to furry and back again and he looked about two seconds away from shifting into a wolf.

  It was probably one of the stupider things I'd ever done, but I got out of the car and met him halfway in his pacing. He tried to go around me, but I grabbed him around his narrow waist, wrapped my arms around him as best I could and squeezed. “It's okay,” I said. “We're out of there.”

  His whole body was tense and hard, but slowly, very, very slowly, he relaxed. His arms dropped to my shoulders and he hugged me back.

  “You could be them,” he said, his voice rough.

  I didn't loosen my hold, but I tipped my head back to look at him. “What?”

  He met my eyes and the hardness in his vanished. “If I wasn't here, if he'd gotten you into that club without me. You could be one of those women on his arm. He could enthrall you and rape you and there wouldn't be a damn thing I could do to stop it.”

  “Rape me?” I asked. “How…” My heart sank. “Are you saying the women in there with him have no control over their actions? That's not real. Vampires can't really do that.” I wasn't an idiot. I knew that people could get addicted to vampires feeding on them, but I'd never heard of vampires compelling anyone beyond maybe a mild persuasion that could be explained away as charm.

  Zane's eyes clouded and he looked into the darkness over my shoulder. I could see the debate waging behind his eyes. He looked down at me, into my eyes. “They can do that. There are rules against it, especially now that the vampires are out, and the council will kill a vampire who's found guilty of enthralling and using humans or even other supernaturals, but it appears Leopold isn't concerned about that.”

  My stomach roiled. “So those women in there… He's going to force them…” I couldn't even say the words. I pulled against Zane trying to get back to the club.

  He held me tight in place. “It appeared they were in thrall
to Leopold. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they really adore him. Vampires can be very charming, very persuasive even without the thrall and they might—”

  “No,” I said. “Don't lie to me. You were furious when we came out here because you know they're under his spell. You know how easily it could be me in there. We have to help them.”

  He looked around again, like he expected vamps to start pouring out of the club at any minute. “We can't go up against an entire club of vampires, Abby. And, even if we did, we can't break the thrall. The women wouldn't come with us because they're convinced they want to be with Leopold, that leaving him would break their hearts.”

  I shoved against his chest and bent just in time. I vomited in front of him for the second time in two days, but at least this time it didn't get on him. He held back my hair and rubbed my back, whispering soothing things to me. Once I felt like I could handle it, I stood and faced him again. “There has to be something we can do. Can't we call the council and tell them what's going on?”

  He kicked at the gravel and growled. “The council has been siding with the vamps lately, even actively working against our pack.” He paced for a few moments, tapping his fingers against his thighs. “There is something… But we'd have to get back in the club…”

  “I don't think they're going to let us back in the club.”

  He paced some more. “What about your ex? That faun guy, Rockford.”

  “Rixton. I'll call him, but he's not very reliable.”

  “I just need twenty minutes of his time. All he has to do is go in there and pull the fire alarm. Vampires are terrified of fire, it's one of the only things that can kill them.”

  Rixton arrived twenty minutes later, two lovely women in the back seat of his car, snuggling up together. He hopped out and wrapped his arms around me in a warm hug. “I'm so bummed about your club, man,” he said. “I still can't really believe it.”

  “Me, either,” I said. “I'm sorry to tear you away from your night out, but Leopold's got Alice and Carly and all the dancers in there and he's enthralled some of them. I just need you to go in and pull the fire alarm and get everyone out.”