by Alana Hart
That had been an accident. It had been a while since he shifted, and for a moment he lost control. But she wouldn’t know any better.
He dropped back into his own seat, wiping his fingers on his jeans, leaving her to fix herself.
For a moment, she just lay there, staring at the roof. And then she pulled the handle, the seat jerking her upright, fastened her belt and rebuttoned her shirt. He could still hear her heart racing, but now it was from rage, not lust.
He shouldn’t have done that. Once Frankie got a hold of her, he was going to do everything in his power to make sure Frankie believed it was Casey who’d been hacking into his computer, at least until Connor found the evidence the alphas needed. If he managed to finish the job before Frankie killed her, then she could go on her merry way, doing whatever it was Casey Keene was out to do.
But, if Frankie got to her before Connor could get to him… well, he could at least hope it would be quick.
Casey crossed her arms and glared at him. “You’re an asshole.”
“I’ve heard.” He kept his eyes on his mirrors.
“Why’d you do that?”
“Because you let me.”
He felt rather than saw her face flush.
“I didn’t let you.”
“Didn’t hear you telling me to stop.” He met her eyes then. Hers were bright green, like new foliage in the beginning of summer. He liked them, and he didn’t want to. Right now they were narrowed at him, anger coming off her in waves.
“What if Frankie decides to use sex on you?” she spat. “He’s not picky about gender. He could try to rape you into telling him why you’re really there.”
He grinned. “Did you want to give me a taste of what he might do to me? I doubt you could handle it, but I’m more than willing to let you try.”
She pressed her lips together. “You don’t care if Frankie fucks you?”
“Why are you so interested? Did you want to watch?”
She was fuming, but trying so hard to keep her cool.
“Is that what turns you on? Watching two dudes go at it?”
Her face flushed, and her heart beat faster. Connor grinned, enjoying himself. Until he glanced in the side mirror. At the same moment a roar like thunder shook the car.
Two motorcycles pulled in front of them, two behind, and a black van. He could see Ronan in the passenger seat.
“Shit.”
Casey stared around wide-eyed. “This is your club?”
“Stay put,” he growled and got out, leaving her in the car.
It was hot outside, the air singeing his skin. The bikes’ guttural roar ceased as the riders climbed off. Ronan O’Neill stepped out of the van, his white hair tied back with a leather band, his handlebar mustache and beard reaching his belt. For a man in his eighties, he was fit, built like an ox, and tall. Connor was tall, but Ronan made him feel like a child.
Connor went to the bikes in front of him first, where his brother Aidan was coming toward him. Emmett , his cousin, was there as well. He embraced Aidan. Behind him, two riders pulled the tire from the van and got to work attaching it to the trailer.
Aidan was taller than Connor. Somehow, both his younger brothers had grown to be taller than him, but he could still beat the shit out of them if he needed to. Aidan pulled his helmet and sunglasses off, his curly mass of hair tied back.
He spoke quietly, his lips barely moving. The others might still hear, but Connor was hoping the traffic would hide anything they said. “They’re not happy.” Of course not. The alphas thought that every job should be quick and clean, but they forgot what it was like to be in the field. Things took time, especially when you needed proof before carrying out the execution.
Connor embraced Emmett before his young cousin joined the others. Aidan spotted Casey. She sat, biting her nail, watching them.
“Do me a favor,” Connor said, moving toward Ronan who was waiting for him. “Look more into her background. She has a lot on us. Look into that, too.”
Aidan met Connor’s eyes before pulling out his large phone and bending his head over it.
Ronan stood with his thumbs in his belt loops. Though he hadn’t ridden, his wore leather chaps over his jeans, boots, and a leather vest over a plain gray tee shirt, old tattoos snaked up his arms. Their patch was simple; a howling wolf. They didn’t have three-piece patches because they weren’t in the politics of MCs, as Casey had guessed, it was just a cover for their pack. Though she didn’t know they were a pack. The howling wolf adorned the back of all the riders’ jackets and vests, whatever they wore while they rode.
Connor’s leather vest was in his apartment, waiting for him to return to it.
He greeted Ronan with a respectful embrace. The old man’s hold was strong.
“Who’s the woman?” His icy blue eyes watched Casey where she stared at them out the back window.
“Favor for Frankie.”
Ronan’s eyes met Connor’s. He did his best to keep himself calm. Ronan would pick up on any lies. Not that he would lie to an alpha. He valued his life too much.
“This is a job, Connor,” Ronan said, turning his gaze on the riders as they finished with the tire. “You’re not here to mess around with Frankie’s mate.”
“I’m not—”
Ronan’s hard look cut him off. “Do I look like a fool?”
Connor could have kicked himself. He’d just had his fingers inside Casey, wiped them on his jeans, there was no way Ronan and the others couldn’t smell her on him. He felt his face warm.
He bowed his head in apology.
The riders finished. Ronan clapped a hand on Connor’s shoulder, the squeeze painful enough to buckle Connor’s knees.
“Finish the job and get home. We’ll discuss punishment for you lack of control when you return.”
He left Connor standing on the side of the highway, his skin icy under the hot sun. Finding his legs, he walked Aidan back to his bike. Emmett was close, so they didn’t speak openly.
Aidan tucked his phone into his pocket and put his sunglasses back on.
“I’ll be in touch,” Aidan said. They embraced, and Aidan climbed back on his bike.
Connor stepped back as the four bikes roared to life, cutting into traffic with the help of the large van. He watched them go, a shiver of apprehension rippling over his shoulders as he thought about how he was going to be punished.
God damn woman. God damn him. He’d have to be more careful around her. No more getting too close. She was Frankie’s problem and not part of Connor’s job.
He climbed in the car, the cool air shocking him.
“Everything okay?” Her voice was loud in the silence.
Connor didn’t answer. He put the car in drive and eased into the traffic.
“No more talking,” he said as he sped up. He needed to get some miles behind them if they were going to make Frankie’s by nightfall. The sooner he got there and proved that Frankie was a heartless dogfighter, the sooner he could kill him and go home.
And face the alphas.
Chapter Sixteen
Casey watched Connor from the corner of her eye. She didn’t dare speak after he’d declared they talk no more. He seemed in a foul mood, and she didn’t want to give him a reason to touch her again.
She could still feel him inside her, the pressure of his fingers, the weight of him over her. She licked her lips, pulling her knees up in an attempt to stop the heat from pooling low in her belly.
Why had she responded like that? She didn’t like rough sex, never had, but when Connor pinned her, all caution had gone out the window. She’d let him do that to her, and, what made her sick was she wanted him to do it again.
Casey wasn’t a prude; she used sex as a way to get close to people during a job, a way to distract them from her real intentions. Nor was she into girlish fantasies. Sex and love were two separate things, and her response to Connor was purely sexual. He was fucking gorgeous, and dangerous, and those two together brought out some
animalistic desire in her. Easily forgotten. At least, that’s what she told herself.
And she knew he was right; if Frankie was going to use sex as a way of interrogation, it was going to hurt. She would handle it; she could handle anything, even rough sex with Frankie Sway, as long as she didn’t end up dead.
What she was beginning to think she couldn’t handle, was being in this car much longer with Connor McKinnon.
He smelled too good, distracted her. She needed to focus, needed to remember that she hated him; that he was in the way. If she was going to convince Frankie she was there for him—until she got his dogs out of there anyway—she needed to get Connor off her mind.
Another two hours passed and Casey was bored as hell. She’d spent enough time as the docile Jenny Cartwright, quiet and unassuming. She didn’t feel like being her anymore, but she had to, she reminded herself. They would be at Frankie’s soon, and she was supposed to be a swooning mess, all over that murdering bastard. She was so close to finishing this mission and there was a very real chance that it could all go so wrong so quickly.
“Was that Aidan?” she said, startling him.
“What?” he snapped.
She wasn’t deterred. She was bored. “The one with the glasses, that was Aidan, right?”
He grunted.
“He’s cute. Doesn’t look like a guy who’d be into hacking.”
He kept his eyes on the road.
“Did you tell him how much info I found on you?” She grinned when he pressed his lips together. “If it makes you feel better, I’m a really good hacker. Had to bypass some walls to find what I did.”
He only stared ahead, mouth set, grip hard on the wheel.
She sighed. “This is going to be a long trip if you don’t talk to me.”
“You could stop talking.”
“Not likely.”
He turned to her, his eyes full of anger and heat. She felt her lower belly clench in response to those eyes. And then his look changed, became curious. “Hungry?”
“Starving.”
Twenty minutes later they were sitting in the car, the A/C blasting, paper bags of food open in their laps. Casey swallowed a bite of salad, watching Connor devour a cheeseburger.
“Meat’s not actually good for you, despite what we’re told,” she said.
“No?” he said, but seemed utterly uninterested. He stuffed a few fries in his mouth. Casey felt her stomach clench when his tongue darted out, licking the salt off his lips.
“I don’t eat meat, but not because it’s bad for me. Well that, too, but I don’t kill. Not even for food.”
“Very noble of you.” He took a bite of burger, the grease dripping down his chin. She had the crazy urge to lick it off.
“We don’t need meat to survive, you know. You can live off other forms of protein.”
“I like meat.”
“I don’t. I can’t look at a burger and not think about the cow it was.”
He finished his burger and turned those mesmerizing eyes on her. He stared at her for a moment, and then his mouth quirked up at the corners.
“Me and my family are big meat eaters. Can’t live without it.”
“Yes you could.”
“We really couldn’t.” The way he said it, the earnestness in his voice, it sent a shiver of unease through her. There was something in his eyes, something sad and buried, and it shut her up about eating meat.
While Connor eased back into the slowing afternoon traffic, Casey reached back into her bag and pulled out her handheld. It was lucky she’d been keeping it in her bag; otherwise she doubted Connor would have grabbed it.
She woke the device, a cross between a mini laptop and a tablet, but much more advanced, and opened a new search. Connor, old fogie that he was, paid her no attention; probably assuming this was a handheld video game. He must have told Aidan about her ease at finding out about them; much of the information she had found earlier was gone, wiped somehow from the Internet. She was very interested in meeting this Aidan McKinnon.
Her general search about Alphas, the name of their MC, brought up articles about an old TV show, a website for the MC with very little information, and wolves.
She bit her lip, her brow furrowing. She narrowed the search to wolves and alphas. There were links for information about the animals. Something was gnawing at her. She felt like she was on the right track, but she had no idea what she was looking for.
Connor yawned; his teeth bright white and flat; normal teeth. His canines didn’t look that sharp. She touched her collarbone, remembering the sharp pain when he’d bitten her.
For shits and giggles, a term her father used to be quite fond of, she searched for information on werewolves. Most of the stuff available to the general public was ridicules nonsense. But she could access the kind of information that was normally given to high-level government workers.
It took a lot of digging, bypassing so much security, and a few passwords she overrode with her own algorithm. And she found nothing. Nothing out of the ordinary. Casey bit her lip, staring at the blinking cursor in the search bar. He was keeping something from her. Something to do with his teeth, with wolves… She searched “werewolf sightings.” And she found it.
The sun was low, shining through the windshield, hot on her face. The A/C chilled her skin. She felt herself go cold.
Casey stared at the grainy image on her screen. She’d found a story from the sixties; one of those supermarket rags, the kind people laughed at while waiting to buy that night’s dinner. There was no more information about it on the Internet, but with everything Connor had said about needing meat, with his teeth getting sharp and then not, she had the horrible feeling that this was one story that wasn’t fake.
She stared at the picture, a grainy image taken on the edge of the woods, of a man with a huge handlebar mustache and beard, in the middle of turning into a wolf. If she hadn’t seen Connor’s president just a couple of hours ago, she could have laughed off this photo and the accompanying story. But she had seen Connor’s president, and there was no mistaking him, even if this picture had been taken years ago, before Connor was born, before there was an MC.
Ronan O’Neill was a werewolf. Which meant Connor’s entire family were werewolves. A pack.
Her hands shook.
“You okay?”
Casey jumped, meeting those intense eyes. She nodded, her heart racing, and turned off her device. Could he hear her heartbeat? Smell her fear? If he could, he wasn’t showing any sign.
She took deep, calming breaths. No. It wasn’t true. It was just a doctored photo. It if had been real it wouldn’t have ended up in that cheap magazine. The government would be all over it, scientists would be clamoring to do tests and find out all that they could. There was no more truth to that story than there were to stories about Bigfoot and the Boogeyman. The man in it just happened to look like Connor’s MC president. He was human. His family was human. There was nothing to be afraid of.
And then they turned off the highway. Frankie’s farm was getting close. There was plenty to be afraid of.
Chapter Seventeen
Connor breathed a sigh of relief as Frankie’s farm loomed up out of the dense tree line. They had been driving on his property for twenty minutes, following a winding road past an orchard, horse stables with larger than life horses grazing serenely nearby, and then a huge pond when he finally saw the big, white house in the distance.
Casey, for whatever reason, had been silent since they ate. He wondered if she had come up with a plan on how to best convince Frankie of her undying love. But it didn’t matter, they were here, and Connor didn’t care. She wasn’t his problem anymore.
He parked the car and trailer in front of the house. A wide porch wrapped around the first floor, tall windows stood open to a warm summer breeze, and a wreath of flowers adorned the front door. It looked like a perfect, peaceful farmhouse, but Connor knew the horror that it contained would be concealed somewhere beyond this pi
cturesque sight.
“Let’s go,” he said, reaching for his seatbelt. Casey jumped as if he was going to beat her. She finally looked scared. “I’m not gonna drag you inside. Frankie’ll be waiting,” he said and climbed out.
He had no doubt that Casey wanted to run, but she wouldn’t get far and running would make her look guilty, so he went around to the trailer and began unhitching it.
Victor came around the side of the house, his hulking frame donning a black, canvas jacket, and thick, leather gloves. Apprehension slid into Connor’s stomach. He watched Casey step out of the car, her legs a bit shaky, her heart racing too fast. She needed to calm down if she was going to put on a good show.
“Frankie’s waiting for you both. Leave the bike here.” Victor turned and headed back the way he came, obviously expecting them to follow.
Casey hesitated, her bright eyes wide. Connor stepped toward her, and she flinched, backing away. He understood why she would be scared right now, but not of him.
“Ladies first,” he said.
Her big eyes turned in his direction and he saw the fear that she was trying so hard to mask. Not fear of Frankie and the death she might meet at the hands of a psychopath, that was there, but she had fight in her for that battle. It was fear of him, of Connor. He could think of only one reason she would be that afraid of him, but how would she have found out?
And then he remembered that thing she’d been playing with in the car. Maybe it wasn’t a video game after all.
With a blink, she hurried ahead of him. They rounded the house, followed a path through high, flowering hedges, through a privacy fence, and into a large, enclosed area that included a long stable and huge barn.
Victor led them into the barn. In the middle there was a low wall, and inside, two dogs were viciously attacking a weaker, slightly smaller dog.