“I couldn’t agree more.” He kissed her, and for a moment all thoughts of Dave being thrown out disappeared as his world shrank down to nothing but the taste and feel of her lips on his.
“Did I hear him call you ‘Cliffie’?” she asked when they came up for air.
His face reddened as he nodded.
She ran her fingers through his hair. “I like Ken better.”
“So do I.” Come to think of it, he really had grown to like Ken.
Especially since Dewi had been the one to dub him that.
* * * *
Later that night, following dinner and after she’d nearly fucked Ken into exhaustion, he decided to press the issue.
He laced his fingers through hers. “I want to talk,” he said.
He felt her body tense against his. “About what?” Even her tone sounded guarded.
“About your parents. About your whole family. About wolves and…everything.”
“That’s a pretty large discussion.”
He didn’t want to press her too hard, yet sensed if he didn’t press she might not talk about it at all.
He opted to try the path of least resistance. “Your dad was the pack Alpha?”
He sensed her relax a little. “Yeah,” she softly said. “He was a Prime. My mom’s father was the pack Alpha before him. He handed the pack over to Dad when he and Mom got married.”
“I thought you said someone had to fight for it?”
She shook her head. “No. Not if the Alpha is ready to step down. My mom was the youngest of their children. They didn’t have any sons. Her three older sisters didn’t marry Alphas. One married a human instead of a shifter. My grandfather didn’t want anyone else having the pack, so he handed it over to my dad.”
“Why did he want to step down?”
“Because my grandmother was killed in an accident three months before my mom and dad got married. Logging truck lost its load going around a curve on a mountain. She was driving the car behind it.”
He shuddered. “I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. “I never met either of them. He died a year or so after Peyton was born. Car accident. Went off the side of a mountain and into a river. They never found his body.”
“Yikes.”
“Nobody told me this, but I kind of felt it from others. A lot of people think maybe he killed himself. That he was just hanging on until he knew my parents had a Prime Alpha heir to take over the pack.”
“Oh.”
“He was nearly four hundred years old. I guess he’d had enough.”
Chapter Thirteen
Thursday afternoon when Dewi arrived to pick up Ken, he immediately sensed her tension.
“What’s going on?” he asked when she walked in his office door.
“I need to run you home. Badger and Beck are going to meet me over in Brandon. We found the guy’s cousin and I think he knows where Kendra is. Or at least he knows where her husband is.”
“Then let’s go to Brandon.” He grabbed his stuff.
“No. I don’t want to put you at risk.”
He arched an eyebrow at her. “We’re wasting time arguing. I’ll sit in the car, I promise. I’m not one of those ‘too stupid to live’ characters from a book or movie who can’t stay put and stay out of trouble.” He was already heading toward the office door with his things.
“No, seriously, I’ll take you home first—”
“Dewi,” he barked, “I’m not in a mood for this.” He regretted his tone and immediately softened it. “Look, my mom died because no one helped her. I’m not about to let someone else possibly die. You taking me home might be the difference between finding her alive or not.”
She pressed her lips together, thinking, then finally nodded. She leaned in for a kiss. “I’m sorry. You’re right.” She let out a sigh. “I’m overprotective. I can’t help it.”
He pulled her in for a better kiss, longer, sweeter. “I know. But like I said, let me have the battles I know I can win, okay?”
With afternoon traffic, they reached Brandon thirty minutes later. They found Badger and Beck parked in Badger’s truck in the shade at a public park three blocks from the guy’s trailer. The neighborhood was run-down and well past having seen better days. Beck had already scouted their target and discovered the guy was in fact home.
With Dewi following, they drove to the guy’s trailer and parked with Badger’s truck blocking the guy’s shitty old rusted Pontiac Sunbird so he couldn’t leave. The trailer looked ancient, the white paint turned grey by mildew in places, with a decided cant to one end. One of the windows had been repaired with cardboard duct-taped in place. A portion of a ratty, blue tarp on the roof flapped in the breeze on the other end. There wasn’t a yard to speak of, except for dirt, Spanish needles, and more than a few fire ant mounds.
Ken sat in Dewi’s car and watched as Beck quickly walked around the back side of the trailer while Dewi and Badger climbed the three rickety metal steps to knock on the front door.
A guy answered after the third knock. Dewi pushed the door in and Badger followed close behind. He watched as Beck circled around from the other end of the trailer and joined them inside.
Twenty minutes later, the three of them emerged, hurrying to their vehicles. As Dewi jumped into her car, she handed her iPhone and a piece of paper to Ken. “Can you pull that address up for me on the map?” He felt a tense, nervous aura surrounding her.
“Sure.” He started working on it as they drove off. “Did you find out anything?”
“Yeah. Fucker’s staying with another cousin in Plant City.” She nodded to the paper in his hand. “That’s where we’re going.”
With Badger and Beck closely following, Ken gave her directions to the address on the paper. “How do you know he won’t call the guy and warn him?”
She gave him a wolfish grin. “Because unless he can chew his way through duct tape, he’s not going anywhere anytime soon. I told him if he didn’t give us good info he could figure out how to get himself free. And if he gave us good info, one of us would come back and free him after we found Kendra safe and sound.”
“Did he know if she was okay?”
Her grin turned grim again. “She’s alive, last he knows. Whether or not she’s okay is debatable.”
Dewi didn’t volunteer any clarification, and he didn’t ask.
The old concrete-block house looked like it had been built maybe in the 1950’s and sat alone on the far side of a strawberry field, with I-4 as its backyard to the north. The house’s paint had either been worn or blasted off, leaving the mottled grey blocks exposed to the elements.
A few scrawny chickens pecked in the dirt and weeds in the yard near three apparently disabled cars around which high weeds had grown. A rusted-out Chevy pick-up sat parked near the front door. Due to a lack of weeds growing under it, Ken guessed it ran. Tattered white curtains, stained tan by nicotine fumes, blocked any view through the large window next to the front door. Towels, sheets, newspapers, and even aluminum foil were used to seal off the other visible windows.
She slid the car to a stop and shut it off, but left the keys in the ignition. “Lock the doors behind me.” As she stepped out, she drew a pistol from a holster under the long-sleeved shirt she wore over her tank top.
Badger and Beck hurried up to walk with her, their guns also drawn.
A hard, cold lump formed in the pit of Ken’s stomach as he reached over and locked the doors before sliding farther down in his seat. He felt helpless.
Badger and Beck circled around back while Dewi stood to the side of the front door and pounded on it. “Kendra Barrons. Open the door. Now.”
He noticed she didn’t identify herself, or try to claim she was a cop.
After she knocked again, Ken spotted movement in one of the smaller windows at the front of the house. He guessed from the size and placement that it was likely a bathroom window. Someone inside pulled at what looked like newspaper covering it, then they pressed their pa
lm against the opaque glass.
Ken knocked on the inside of the windshield to get Dewi’s attention. She focused on him, a sharp look of warning in her eyes. But when she looked where he pointed and spotted the hand before it disappeared from the window, she let out a yell to Beck and Badger before kicking in the front door.
From the way it crumpled under her booted foot, he assumed it was due to her strength. She disappeared inside.
When he heard gunshots seconds later, he cringed, but felt Dewi was okay. He peeked up over the dashboard, relieved when he saw Beck emerge from the house moments later. In his arms he carried a young woman who looked like she’d had the crap beaten out of her. Her face bruised and swollen, she clung to Beck’s neck as he took her to Badger’s truck.
He didn’t miss the fact that her dirty, bare feet had been bound with yellow rope around the ankles, and her wrists looked bloody and abraded, like she had recently worked them free.
Ken started to move to get out, but Beck saw him. “No, stay there.”
Another volley of gunfire ripped through the air, but Beck didn’t duck. He got the truck door open and carefully laid her inside before closing the door and running for the house again.
A minute later, Beck, Badger, and Dewi emerged from the house. Dewi bypassed the door and walked around to the trunk. When he heard her knock on the deck lid, he knew what she meant. He leaned over her seat and found the trunk release latch.
She opened it, found what she was looking for, then slammed it shut again and headed back inside. After a minute, smoke began to billow from the front door. Dewi emerged, met his gaze, and nodded.
He unlocked the doors and got out, feeling shaky on his feet. “Is she okay?”
“She will be,” she said as she walked over to the truck, where Beck had untied the sobbing woman’s legs and Badger was trying to check her over for injuries.
Dewi reached past Badger and gently palmed the battered woman’s cheeks. The woman, whom he assumed was Kendra, immediately calmed. Her eyes grew wide, her face blank like when Badger had talked to the detective outside the pub.
“Your mother is coming to get you,” Dewi softly said. “You will go with her. After your husband beat you up, you ran away and called her.”
Kendra nodded. “I called her.”
“Events are fuzzy after that,” Dewi said, even as behind them pops and crackles grew in the fire.
“Events are fuzzy.”
“He threatened to kill you. He was involved in making and selling drugs.”
“Drugs. He made and sold drugs.”
“You heard he was supposed to do a drug deal today. He beat you up because you told him you didn’t want him doing that.”
“I didn’t want him doing that.”
“He was alive when you left.”
“Alive…”
Dewi looked up at Badger. “Get her out of here. Now. Call Collins and have him meet you somewhere to check her out. Tell him it’s on our tab. Then call her mother and turn her over to her.”
Badger looked worried. “All right, but I’ll have Beck go with ye—”
“Now!” she roared, making the two shifter men lean away from her.
Beck held up a hand. “Dewi, what about—”
“I’ll take care of it. She needs help now. Go!”
She headed for her car, Ken on her heels.
“Dewi, what’s wrong?”
She didn’t answer, just pointed at the passenger door. Without another word he climbed in and barely had time to get his seat belt fastened before they roared out of the driveway. Behind them, Badger and Beck climbed into the truck to follow as smoke poured from the house.
From the tense set of her jaw, he knew something terrible was wrong, but didn’t want to interrupt whatever process of self-control he sensed her struggling with.
They turned toward Plant City. He noticed Badger and Beck turned the opposite way, heading toward I-4. After several minutes, they pulled into the parking lot of a Publix grocery store and she parked in the shade far from the store’s entrance and away from other cars.
Jamming a hand into the pocket of her jeans, she pulled out several twenties and shoved them at him.
“Meat,” she croaked, her eyes closed and forehead now resting on the steering wheel. “Red meat. Beef. Not ground. I don’t care which cuts. Several pounds.”
He thought about asking for clarification, but their first night together came to mind and he understood what she needed. He bolted for the store’s entrance and snagged a hand basket from the storage rack by the front door.
Meat…beef…not ground. He raced to the meat coolers at the back of the store, his eyes flying over the selections of beef. Badger had fixed her two huge-looking steaks Saturday night, but there was a line of people waiting for service at the meat counter, where the more prime cuts and steaks were displayed in a large case.
From the cooler he scooped two London broils, a couple of roasts, and all four flank steaks that were on display into his basket. As he ran down an aisle toward the registers, he did an about-face and found the picnic aisle.
He made it back to the car in less than ten minutes and found Dewi sitting with her door open, her feet on the ground, and her eyes closed. He dropped to his knees in front of her and ripped open one of the London broil packages, putting it into her hands.
Her eyes flew open as she tore into it, her eyes looking glazed with something he couldn’t quite determine, whether rage or pleasure or struggling to maintain self-control, he didn’t know. By the time she devoured that one in less than a minute, juices dripped off her arms onto the asphalt below and he had the other London broil unwrapped and ready for her.
As he watched, both fascinated and sickened at the way she ripped into them with her teeth and bare hands, he noticed how she once again made the shnurfling sounds she had Saturday night.
She worked her way through one of the roasts and a flank steak before she let out a long burp and focused her gaze on him.
Back to his sweet Dewi.
He wanted to grab her and fuck her brains out right there in the middle of the parking lot. Swallowing back that urge, he instead asked, “Are you okay?”
She nodded, letting out a sigh. Then she caught sight of her hands and upper arms, which were covered in gore and blood from the meat. “Crap. I look like an escapee from a grindhouse movie.”
“It’s okay.” He opened another grocery bag and pulled out a container of wet cleaning wipes. He handed her several of them, and a bottle of water, which she used to finish rinsing off her hands. Then a few paper towels from the roll he’d purchased.
And a cold iced tea from a cooler at the register.
She looked at the tea before meeting his gaze. This was all his Dewi, the sweet and sexy woman he knew he would gladly spend the rest of his life buying meat for when she needed it. “Thank you,” she said, a tear sliding down her cheek as she swallowed half of the bottle’s contents in several gulps.
He brushed the tear away. “What’s wrong?” he quietly asked. “Is it what happened back there?”
She looked away and shook her head.
Capturing her chin, he tilted her face so she had to look at him and he planted a long, deep kiss on her lips. “Tell me,” he said.
She threw her arms around him, her face pressed against his stomach. “You shouldn’t have to deal with me like that. You don’t even like meat. And here you are taking care of me.” She let out a half-laugh, half-snort. “You even thought to get stuff so I could clean up.”
He stroked her hair. “But I love you. I don’t know if I could butcher a cow for you, but yeah, I’ll make your London broil runs if that’s what I need to do to take care of you.” She laughed and looked up at him. “You ready to tell me what happened in the house?” he asked.
With her face firmly pressed against him again and his hands stroking her hair, she did. Kendra had been tied up in the bathroom. Her husband and his cousin were running a meth lab out of
the house. He had dragged her up there against her will after he found out she was pregnant. That’s when he started beating her.
When she said she wanted to leave him, he threatened to kill Tayla if she did. Both the husband and cousin, as well as another guy inside, had been armed.
Come to think of it, he realized Dewi’s holster had been empty when she got in the car, as had Badger’s and Beck’s.
“Where do you get the guns?” he said.
“Peyton and Trent have a source. We buy them directly through a guy at a factory who’s a shifter. They’re bootlegged and have fake serial numbers on them. Untraceable. So when we need to, we wipe them clean and leave them.”
“Like Badger did with your gun from the pub?”
“Yeah.” She let out a deep sigh and sat back to look up at him. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For dragging you into all of this.”
He couldn’t get the battered woman’s face out of his mind. Pulling Dewi to him again, he said, “I’m not sorry. You saved her life and took out a couple of scumbags in the process. I’m proud of you. And I’m proud to be yours.”
* * * *
She helped him clean up the mess left from her impromptu gorging and they headed back to the house. He made her join him in the shower, where he made slow, languid love to her, turning her around and pinning her against the shower wall as he entered her from behind and fucked her until she’d come twice for him.
He laced his fingers through hers and let his own release follow. As he caught his breath he kissed the back of her neck. A week ago he would have run, screaming in terror, from the events he’d seen today.
Tonight all he wanted to do was love the stress from her soul.
He ordered her to bed to watch TV and went downstairs to heat leftovers for them for dinner. By the time he returned, she was curled around his pillow and softly snoring.
Carefully, so he didn’t disturb her, he climbed into bed with her and ate his warmed-over vegetable lasagna while watching the news. When he heard Badger and Beck return a little before eleven, he went downstairs to talk with them.
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