by SM Reine
My eyes slid shut. I couldn’t remember the last time I had drawn in a breath, and the world was dizzier than when I was spinning on the pole, with no sense of up or down.
Together, our hands turned the key.
The motorcycle growled to life. What had been a solid, slumbering beast a moment before suddenly came to life, shaking hard underneath me. The engine purred a tone that was music to my ears. Better still when Cooper chuckled warmly. I wasn’t sure I’d heard him laugh like that before.
“Fixed it.” I felt his lips move against the back of my neck.
“Good,” I said breathlessly. “That’s…good.”
Cooper spread his hand over my spine and pushed me forward. Not much. Just enough to roll my hips forward and lean all my weight against my clit, letting the engine’s vibrations spread through my pelvis. I sucked in a breath. “Oh!”
“Stay there,” he murmured. His other hand curved around my belly, pinning me in position. “Right there. Don’t move.”
My heart fluttered wildly as liquid heat spread through my body, unfolding behind my navel, sucking the last wisps of oxygen from my lungs. Getting rolled forward had pulled the hem of my shorts up tight, between my nether lips, and it created a direct line from the engine to my clit. My knees trembled.
“Cooper, it’s too much,” I said, and I was amazed that I could get that many coherent words out.
“Stay.” He was growling now, at almost the exact same pitch as the engine.
Cooper pushed his hips forward a fraction, and I realized that he was hard. Not the kind of hard that came from sitting close to a pretty girl, but the kind of aching hardness that a man got moments before he lost control. I could feel the ridge of him through our jeans. He pressed between my cheeks, found the valley between the muscles, fitted himself against me. The layers of denim seemed too much and yet not enough at the same time.
The desert sun pounded against me. My skin was scorching and hot pleasure writhed in my depths. Sweat rolled down the cleft of my spine, puddled on his hands.
All he’d done was shift me a half an inch and turn on the motorcycle, and I was on the brink of unraveling.
“Something’s still out of alignment,” he said. “Think I gotta tweak the engine a little more.”
He flipped the engine off.
Those beautiful vibrations were suddenly gone, leaving me feeling weak and panting and more than just a little pissed. “Hey,” I protested.
Cooper moved me to grip the handlebars. I could stay in the same position this way, shifted just slightly forward. I felt so empty without his hands on my body. “Hang on to these and don’t let go.”
“Why? Worried the motorcycle’s going to fall while you’re working on it?” I asked.
“No,” he growled against the nape of my neck. “I want to see you stretched out. I’m not done with you.”
He dismounted, and even though it had to have hit a hundred degrees, my back was suddenly cold. I was exposed on top of his motorcycle, sweating and shaking, coming down from the edge of orgasm outside The Lodge where anyone could see us.
My eyes swept over the desert. My bar was only a faded orange block on the horizon, obscured by dust. That was home. That was safety.
I was a long way from safe right now.
But the only person looking at me was Cooper. His chaps, dirty and scraped and battered, encased muscular legs that led up to a hard-cut vee just above his belt, and a dusky brush of hair encircling his navel. He was sweating, too. Sweating and oily and dusty. I wanted to bathe him with my tongue, tongue the ridge of his collarbone, nibble the hollow of his throat.
Judging by his expression, he was thinking something similar about me. His eyes were enough to set me on fire again. His full lips were pressed into a hard line.
He wiped his arm over his forehead. That little motion flexed his abs, bared the rippling bricks of his ribs. The wolf tattoo on his chest seemed to be staring at me, too. Reminding me that this was no ordinary man.
Cooper grabbed something from his tool box. Then he kneeled beside me, fingers skimming over the top of my thigh, tracing the line of my calf. I tried to move so that he could reach the machinery underneath, but his hands locked down.
“Don’t,” he said.
He reached around my leg to adjust something. His stubbled cheek itched against my skin. His breath teased the back of my knee.
Cooper was so close to where I needed him. I was hot and swollen and wanting. Yet he worked on his motorcycle as if I weren’t there, like I was just another piece of the machine.
I moved to grab his head, trying to guide his mouth to my thigh. He moved in a flash. He seized my wrist, forcing me to grab the handlebar again.
There was anger in his eyes. Actual anger. “I told you not to move.”
His hand came down on me. The shorts were cut high enough that it bared the lower curve of my ass, and that was where he struck me, his palm curving on the bare flesh to give a meaty smack.
Cooper had hit me.
I was so shocked that I grabbed the handlebar without even thinking. The glint of satisfaction in his eyes was all I needed to know. He liked that I had leaped to obey him, and he liked that it was the strike that had motivated me. He was getting off on this.
My eyes flicked down to the waist of his jeans. The seam was straining.
He was really getting off on this.
Heat flushed between my legs again, almost as powerfully as when the engine had been running. I wanted him to look at me like that again. I wanted him to hit me again, as if I hadn’t been tortured enough by men.
What was wrong with me?
He kneeled once more, just long enough to make a couple more changes. Then he stood back, the wrench clenched in his fist, and his gaze sliced into me. “You can let go long enough to turn it on,” Cooper said. “Then grab it again. And don’t move.”
A thrill raced through me.
I fumbled for the key. Twisted it.
The engine came to life once more, making the seat of the motorcycle shake underneath me, and I thought I understood what he meant when he had said that something had been out of alignment. The rumbling was so smooth now. Smooth and hard and strong.
Pleasure unfolded inside of me, turning my thoughts to white noise. I struggled to breathe. “Please,” I said, my grip white-knuckled on the handlebars.
Cooper didn’t move. He just watched. He was breathing hard, golden eyes bright.
Too much. It was all too much—his stare, being so far from him, unable to touch his body, needing to be stroked and kissed and licked…
I let go of the motorcycle. Pushed myself off the seat with trembling legs.
“I can’t,” I gasped.
Cooper flung the wrench to the ground and slammed my hands back onto the bars, fingers engulfing mine. He shoved his face close. “If you can’t, then I’ll make you.”
There were steel chains—where had he gotten chains? They looked like something that an angry Alpha might use to tie down an errant werewolf on the full moon. But I wasn’t a werewolf. I wasn’t super-strong, with super-healing, and a wild rage that needed to be contained. I was a woman. Just a woman.
The chains were slender and strong. He wrapped them around my wrists, looped them around the shiny chrome handlebars, binding me to the motorcycle.
I squirmed on the seat, resisting the growing ache that came from the vibrations. I couldn’t escape them now. Cooper had trapped me.
“But I’ll come,” I said. It came out more whining than I intended.
“I know,” he said.
“We’re outside. Anyone could see me.”
Again, he said, “I know. Won’t be long until Big Papa gets back, actually.”
The idea of that big, gruff, terrifying werewolf Alpha finding me with his newest pack member was terrifying—and thrilling. The fact that I was as excited as I was frightened by it was strange. Confusing. But my entire body and mind was focused on the place where my hips conta
cted the seat of the motorcycle, the way that the chains bit into my wrists, the fact that I was trapped and there was nothing to do but ride out the pleasure.
“Please,” I said again. I wasn’t sure what I was asking for.
The vibrations built inside of me, but it wasn’t enough. By repairing the engine, he had reduced the shaking just enough that it couldn’t push me over the edge on its own. My heart slammed against the inside of my chest, and my head rolled back on my shoulders, letting the sunlight scorch my sweaty brow.
So close. I bucked against the seat, seeking the angle that would end it all for me.
I was lost in the feeling. The cresting, crashing, rolling inside of myself. Hot wind kissed the globes of my heaving breasts.
Cooper growled, and then he was behind me, on the motorcycle again, straddling the seat behind me.
“Beautiful,” he said. The word slipped through my barely-conscious haze of pleasure. Couldn’t make sense of it. Didn’t matter.
“Cooper,” I breathed.
He was everything. Cooper, the desert and the sun in the sky; Cooper, the heat on my skin and the slickness of flesh against flesh.
Cooper.
“Yes,” he said. “Come for me.”
He sank his teeth into my shoulder, biting down on the scars that would never let me forget how I had ended up in Lobo Norte.
That flash of pain shoved me over the edge.
I lost everything. My mind, my body, my fear. I came undone in Cooper’s arms with my wrists chained to his motorcycle and his erection pressed against my back.
I had never known such pleasure.
VIII
When I came to again, the chains were gone and I was no longer tipped forward on the motorcycle. I was reclining against his chest. My head rested on his shoulder. He was stroking my braids, murmuring soft nonsense in my ear. The motorcycle idled underneath us, purring like a satisfied cat. I could relate.
I stretched, letting my arms twine around his neck, pinning his head beside mine.
“If I ever find out who hurt you,” Cooper said, “I’m going to rip him limb from limb and eat his flesh.” He whispered it into my ear, as if it were ordinary pillow talk rather than threats of vengeful cannibalism.
“My brother already got the perpetrator arrested,” I said. “He’s in prison somewhere.”
His hand skimmed over the ridge of scars on my shoulder. “He deserved worse.”
I didn’t exactly disagree.
Cooper turned my chin and caught my lips in a searing kiss, hotter than the sunlight, more painful than the sun against my tender skin. He tasted like tequila and blood. When we broke for air, I asked, “Is there a biker gang called the Needles?”
“Why are you asking?”
Because that was who the pale-skinned biker had said was coming, and I could only think of one group called the Needles. The Silver Needles, to be exact. Just thinking the name made my skin hurt. But they were local to Los Angeles, not bikers, and they didn’t travel.
At least, I didn’t think they did.
His hands slipped around my midsection. “You’re mine. I won’t let them hurt you.” That comforted me so much more than it should have.
Cooper’s hands wandered over my body, familiarizing himself with the shape of my breasts, the plane of my stomach, the ample swells of my hips. My juices had soaked the juncture of my thighs, slicked beyond the hem of my shorts by sweat. Cooper wiped it up with a finger. Licked his skin clean.
“Mine,” he growled, and that single syllable, combined with the sight of him tasting me, was so erotic that I almost lost it all over again.
I wanted to agree with him so much, but I barely knew him. Being brought to climax on a man’s motorcycle was hardly a first date. Okay, it was much better than a first date. But who was he? How had he ended up with the Fangs? What was going on between us?
Sex was one thing. I could do sex. Any more than that was expecting too much, too soon.
He wasn’t the first biker to roll through Lobo Norte that thought he could sweep the stripper off her feet, but he was definitely the most convincing of them.
I knew we were no longer alone when I felt Cooper tense behind me.
It was Mad Dog. “Big Papa wants you.”
Cooper’s hands tightened on me. “What for?”
“Because he does. Who knows? It doesn’t matter. He calls, we come.” Mad Dog ambled around the bike, his expression inscrutable. I refused to move. I was comfortable resting against Cooper and I wasn’t going to let some werewolf intimidate me.
“I’ll be there in a minute,” Cooper said.
“You know what’s good for you, you’ll have been there five minutes ago.”
That definitely sounded like a threat. “We got the message,” I snapped. “Thanks.”
Mad Dog had the nerve to look amused. “Collar the bitch, Trouble, or you’re both going to be in deep shit.”
I rolled my eyes. You’d think a werewolf biker could come up with a better insult than “bitch.”
“He’s right,” Cooper murmured. “I should go.”
Reluctantly, I allowed him to get up. I double-checked the kickstand before joining him. Didn’t want to drop his beautiful bike in the dust.
Cooper snagged his shirt off the ground and pulled it over his head. “I’ll take you home first,” he told me.
I laughed. “No thanks. I’m fine.” My trailer was all of a half a mile away, and I wasn’t afraid of walking around Lobo Norte alone during the day, even when it was filled with bikers. I didn’t need an escort.
“Suit yourself,” he said. His gaze raked down my body. “I’ll see you soon.”
I shivered.
He left to find Big Papa, and I suddenly felt so much more alone than I’d expected. I wondered if I’d made the right choice blowing him off.
Mad Dog didn’t move to follow Cooper. He gazed down at me with heated gold eyes.
“Your smell,” he said.
Could he tell what Cooper and I had been doing? Just how good was a werewolf’s nose?
I lifted my chin. “What about it?” He reached for me, and I stepped back. “You don’t touch me without money first.”
He ignored my protest, grabbing me by the hip with one hand as the other slid roughly up my thigh. Mad Dog smelled his fingers. His eyes rolled into the back of his head. The only thing he didn’t do was lick his chops.
Gloria had taught me a thing or two about teaching respect to men who were all hands. I rammed my elbow into his solar plexus. “Fuck off,” I said, and I spat on his feet.
He didn’t try to touch me again. He also barely reacted to the blow. Guess I was going to have to learn a few new tricks to handle werewolf men. “What is it about you, Ofelia?” he asked. “My little brother’s got a huge hard-on for you, and I get it. I smell it, too. You’re not just any woman. But why?”
“I’m just that great,” I said with confidence that I didn’t feel.
“How’d you get those scars?”
“I cut off a man’s balls and ate them. He tried to get revenge.” I gestured to the scar tissue. “I killed him for it.”
“You’re lying,” Mad Dog said. He tapped the side of his nose. “We always know.”
Then he should know that it also wasn’t any of his fucking business. The only person I’d told about my scars was Gloria, and I planned on keeping it that way.
He popped two of his fingers into his mouth, sucking on them slowly, licking my scent off of his skin. There was promise in his eyes. Not the promise of lust that I always saw in Cooper, but the promise of violence.
I turned my back to him and walked away, showing no fear.
But I didn’t need to show it. He could probably smell it on me.
I didn’t open the bar that night, or the night after. Being alone in Lobo Norte during the day was one thing. Being alone during the night was another entirely.
Just because it wasn’t the full moon didn’t mean there was no reason to fe
ar.
It was strange to go through my day without Gloria and Johnny. They weren’t friends, but they were family in our twisted way—the people I relied on seeing day in and day out. And I hadn’t seen Cooper since Big Papa had summoned him, either. So typical of a man. Incredible orgasms one day, and then no calls for a week.
Lobo Norte was a tiny, isolated town, yet I had never felt so lonely there as I did now, trapped within its magical borders with a bunch of bikers waiting for the chance to beat the shit out of each other in my cage.
With nothing else to do, and without risk of Gloria catching me, I pulled the altar out of the hidden cubby. I’d tried to set fire to The Devil again. It was probably insanity to try the same thing a dozen times and hope for a different result, but I wasn’t crazy enough to be shocked when I found the card undamaged.
“Guess you’re used to the fires of Hell, aren’t you?” I muttered at his grinning visage. The card hadn’t even been scalded by sitting in a bowl of smoldering coals.
My ritual skills were pretty rusty after months of disuse, but I wanted to know more about this card. Abuelita had taught me a thing or two about tracking magic. I could try tagging the card to see where it had come from.
I pulled together everything I could. Some sagebrush blossoms, a little sand, rattlesnake skin, sulfur-infused water from the geyser a mile behind my trailer. Walking through the desert heat to collect them left me drenched in sweat and exhausted. But I knew it was worth it. I could feel the power in everything I pulled together, just waiting for me to direct it.
Habit made me lock my bedroom door before I got down to casting. I knew Gloria wasn’t home yet—she couldn’t bother me. In truth, I was much more afraid of Pops, my grandpa who lived in Los Angeles. Silly, right? I was afraid of a guy who lived in another country. In another world.
Teenage paranoia was a hard habit to shake.
As I ground the sand and sage together, Pops’s voice whispered at me from memory. “Hawke women don’t cast magic,” he’d said. “You know what’s good for you, you’ll never touch so much as a coil of enchanted copper. Got it?”
Abuelita had disagreed with him. Their arguments had shaken the walls of our tiny house.