Caged Wolf (Tarot Witches Book 1)

by SM Reine

  Then he pulled something shiny out of his pocket. Peyton rolled his fingers inside the silver-plated knuckles, balling them into a fist.

  This was what he had meant about no rules tonight. He wasn’t going in bare-fisted. He was going in with one of the only things that could kill a werewolf.

  My heart leaped into my throat. “He’s got a weapon!”

  I only took one step toward the cage before a hand gripped my shoulder. I twisted to see Big Papa holding me back. “Keep your mouth shut,” he said.

  “He’ll kill Cooper!”

  “If he can kill Trouble, then Trouble deserves to die.” He tightened his fingers. “Keep your fucking mouth shut. I know what you are. I can ruin your life.”

  I didn’t care if he knew who I was. I didn’t even care if he wanted to hand me over to the incubi—not at this moment.

  All I cared about was Cooper.

  But I couldn’t move. Big Papa squeezed every time I shifted the tiniest bit, and it was clear he wouldn’t hesitate to break my shoulder if I interfered. I tried to catch Gloria’s eye instead, but she was just as fixated on the cage as everyone else in the bar.

  Mad Dog rang the bell.

  Peyton and Cooper circled each other, fists lifted. Sizing each other up.

  The other bikers didn’t seem to be cheering as hard now. The quiet was almost reverent.

  And then Peyton attacked.

  He swung his fist, and I was shocked by how quickly he moved. He was almost as fast as Old Yeller had been. Cooper jerked back and the silver knuckles whizzed past a centimeter in front of his face.

  Cooper landed the first blow. He sank his fist into Peyton’s stomach. The breath gushed out of Peyton’s lungs, and he sagged.

  But only for an instant. Then he slammed his knuckles into Cooper’s face.

  Blood sprayed over the floor anew. He had opened a gash across the werewolf’s cheekbone as long as my hand, and it wasn’t healing.

  I didn’t want to watch the fight. I couldn’t stand it.

  Yet Big Papa held me in place as every blow landed, forcing me to hear every grunt, watch every cut open on Cooper’s face and shoulders.

  Peyton slammed Cooper up against the side of the cage, driving his knee into his gut so hard that I could hear ribs creak. Cooper slammed him to the floor. Threw his head back, baring sharpened teeth. Then he sank his teeth into Peyton’s shoulder.

  He ripped the flesh away. It shredded.

  Peyton rolled them, ended up on top. Time seemed to stretch endlessly as they grappled on the floor, legs tangled together, fists slamming into each other. I kept looking at the clock. It didn’t seem to be moving.

  These two halves of my life struggled against each other—my horrible past, and the man I’d come to see as the path to my future. A future without Peyton, without Lobo Norte, without chains. I couldn’t tell who was winning. There was so much pain. So many rippling muscles, so many cuts and bruises.

  Blood flowed. I heard the crack of bones breaking, and I couldn’t tell whose they were anymore.

  Somehow, five minutes passed.

  The bell rang. Mad Dog slammed the mallet into it hard enough to knock it off the wall.

  Neither men stopped.

  Blood flowed freely down Cooper’s face. I could almost feel his pain. “Stop them,” I begged Big Papa. “Peyton survived. He fucking made it. Just pull Cooper out!”

  I could tell by his hungry smile that the head of the Fangs heard me—he just didn’t care.

  Peyton snapped Cooper’s nose with the silver knuckles.

  “Please!” I cried, nearly shrieking.

  My voice pierced the grumbles of the bikers. Cooper’s eyes focused on me through the blood coursing down his jaw and neck, slicking his skin. He pointed at me through the bars as if to say, This is for you.

  Peyton pulled back his fist to hit Cooper again, but the werewolf caught his wrist, twisting hard, then jerking back.

  He ripped off Peyton’s hand, silver knuckles and all, and tossed it aside.

  My ex-boyfriend was too stunned to react in time. Cooper shoved Peyton onto his back in a blur of incredible speed. Cooper pounded his fists into Peyton’s face again and again, no holding back. Wet pops and crunches split the air.

  Peyton cried out once.

  Only once.

  Cooper kept hitting him long after he stopped moving. He hit him until the entire bar had gone silent and all I could hear was the sound of knuckles meeting pulverized flesh.

  Big Papa finally released me. I scrambled up the stairs to the cage, the only person in the room moving or making any noise. The scrape of my boots against concrete seemed horrifically loud. I ripped the door open, climbed over the bars, slipped to my knees on all the blood.

  Peyton looked like Jell-O from the neck up. There was no question—Cooper had killed him. He’s dead, I realized with a giddy thrill deep in my gut. Peyton is dead.

  The man who had used me as his whore, pumped me full of drugs, and sold me to the incubus mafia was never going to hurt me again. It felt like the chains that had been tying me to Lobo Norte had finally fallen away.

  I suddenly realized that this was what The Devil meant. Not bondage…but freedom.

  A growl made me look up, and I realized that Cooper wasn’t celebrating his victory. He had doubled over. The skin over his shoulders was rippling.

  Cooper was starting to change.

  Mad Dog climbed into the cage and grabbed him by the back of the neck, using his hands like the jaws of a wolf. The grip seemed to calm Cooper fractionally. “Good job, man,” he said gruffly. “Now let’s get out of here before you fuck everyone else up, too.”

  XVI

  I think the fights continued after we left. I didn’t know, and I didn’t really care. Whatever happened with the Silver Needles and their werewolf food just didn’t seem that important anymore.

  Peyton was gone. The darkest nightmare from my past…dead.

  All thanks to Cooper.

  If you had asked me a few days earlier, I would have told you that there was no way I could ever delight in a man’s murder. It wasn’t that I considered myself a moral person. I fucked whoever I wanted to fuck, I enjoyed stripping, I’d done enough drugs in my life to choke a wolf. But murder—that was something else. A line that you just weren’t meant to cross.

  He had earned it, though. If anyone had earned it, it had to be Peyton.

  As I helped carry Cooper to a shed behind The Lodge, all I could feel was a strange, stunned kind of gratitude. I was floating, not walking.

  Mad Dog was much more grim.

  “Hurry up,” he said, kicking the door to the shed open and dragging Cooper inside. I tried to hurry, but apparently I was still going too slow. He wrenched Cooper away from me and pushed him against the wall.

  Cooper couldn’t stand. He slumped to the floor.

  There were heavy chains waiting for us in the shed, hanging from reinforced o-rings. Mad Dog didn’t waste any time wrapping them around Cooper’s wrists and hooking them high enough that it pulled his arms over his head, stretching his muscles into long lines.

  Cooper didn’t fight against Mad Dog, but he did struggle. It seemed to be a fight against himself. He was writhing, groaning.

  I ran to The Lodge’s front office, wet down a towel in the bathroom sink. There was nobody to stop me from taking it. Nobody had really run The Lodge as long as I’d been there.

  Within moments, I returned to wipe the blood off of Cooper’s face and chest. He wasn’t healing. He also didn’t look at me as I wiped him off. It was like he had sunk deep into a fever haze. “What’s wrong with him?” I asked, wringing out the towel. Bloody water spattered on the dirt.

  “Nothing,” Mad Dog said. He lit a joint and gestured at Cooper with it. “The silver knuckles wouldn’t have left any metal inside of him, so he’ll heal as soon as he changes. But young werewolves have a few rough hours on the nights of the full and new moons. Feel like shit for hours. He’s still got a
t least until midnight before he gets all the hair.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m fresh, but not as fresh as him. I’ll change around the same time. It just doesn’t hurt as bad in the meantime.” He took a long drag on the joint, then offered it to me. I hesitated. “The curse isn’t transferred by saliva, or you’d already be fucked.”

  I dropped the towel and took the joint. Inhaling it, catching the smoke in my lungs, made my head spin pleasantly. Warmth suffused my veins. My eyes dropped closed. The relaxation settled over me bit by bit, and I gave into it. I needed that calm.

  “What about Peyton?” I asked, passing the joint back.

  “Not your problem,” Mad Dog said. “Not anymore. And nobody’s gonna give a fuck and a half that he’s dead, so he won’t be Trouble’s problem, either. No consequences.”

  “Good,” I said.

  Mad Dog’s nose brushed along the back of my neck. “There’s something about you, Ofelia. Especially tonight. You smell like…” He took another long whiff. “Better than weed. Better than pussy.”

  “Cooper killed Peyton for thinking that he could touch me,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t. You don’t smell like you’re mine.” He jerked his chin at the other werewolf. “You’re his.” Cooper groaned as he stirred, head rolling on his shoulders.

  My heart skipped a beat. “His what?”

  “I don’t know,” Mad Dog said. “Never smelled something like you before.” He brushed his hand down my arm, and this time, I didn’t stop him. Goosebumps lifted on my skin. “You can help him. When he changes, he’s going to get all tangled up in his clothes.” His eyes sparked with dark mirth. “Take them off.”

  I swayed on my feet. “Take them off,” I echoed, swallowing hard.

  Cooper was straining against the chains now. He looked like he was suffering from fever, sickly and sweaty. His muscles glistened.

  “Here.” Mad Dog stuck the joint in the corner of his mouth and drew a switchblade. “Help him, Ofelia.”

  I took it, but didn’t move. “Won’t he change and…hurt me?”

  “No. I don’t think he’s going to hurt you.” He brushed his hand over me again, over my braids, almost like petting me. “Whatever you are, Ofelia—I don’t think any of us could hurt you.”

  He was right. I knew I was safe with Cooper, even if I couldn’t put into words why that might be. He was a wild beast. An animal trapped inside a man. Before midnight—less than an hour away—he was going to shift into something four-legged and furred with fangs longer than my thumb. Yet there was a current between us. A sense of belonging.

  With the switchblade heavy in my hand, I moved to kneel between Cooper’s legs. He was a little cleaner now that I’d wiped him down, but blood still caked the lines of his skin.

  At my touch, Cooper’s eyes opened to slits. “Ofelia,” he said. His tongue sounded heavy, clumsy, like he was already forgetting how to speak.

  “I’m here,” I said, spreading my hand over his chest. His heart pounded underneath my palm. I tried not to brush the gashes that Peyton’s silver knuckles had left behind.

  “Get away from me.”

  I ignored him and tried to unbutton his pants. His position was too awkward to get them off like that. “I don’t want you to get hurt when you change. I’m going to help free you.”

  “Your smell…” He snarled, baring his teeth. It seemed to take all of his will to speak coherently. “I want you.”

  Heat flushed my body. I licked my bottom lip, and his eyes followed the motion. “Cooper, you know that you killed him, right?” I asked softly, brushing my hand over his jaw. “He’s coyote food now.”

  Pain flashed over his face. “Good. Still better than he deserves. But if that means you don’t want me now—”

  “No.” I couldn’t even let him finish that thought. It was too ridiculous. I leaned into him, lowering my voice so that Mad Dog wouldn’t be able to hear. “I owe you, Cooper, in so many ways that you can never understand.” I hesitated, tracing the lines of his wolf tattoo. “I’m yours. Completely.”

  He twisted to look at me. Our faces were only an inch away. His eyes filled my vision, like two giant burning moons that seared deep into my soul. “Mine,” Cooper said. He stretched to the edge of his chains and claimed my lips. His tongue invaded, shoving against mine, exploring the recesses of my mouth. He tasted faintly of blood. Peyton’s blood.

  He will never hurt me again.

  I clutched at his chains with my free hand, using them to leverage myself against Cooper’s chest. I couldn’t tell if the pulsing in my body was because of my pounding heart or his, or even if we had two separate hearts anymore.

  “I need you,” Cooper said against my mouth. “But tonight—I’m dangerous, Ofelia. I’m changing.”

  “I don’t care,” I said.

  He was mine. Wolf or man, he was mine, just as much as I was his.

  I traced the point of the blade down his collarbone, to his hardened nipple, circling the areola and leaving a line of white from the pressure. He panted, abs clenching as I brought the blade past his navel and scraped the trail of hair vanishing into the waistband of his pants. The cutting edge of the blade was sharp enough that his hair shaved off with the slightest brush.

  My blade sliced into the hip of his jeans. I carefully carved them away from his thighs and peeled them down.

  He was already erect. It was the first time I’d seen him naked and fully hardened, skin stretched, corded with veins. There was a faint purplish tinge to the shaft. It looked like it must have hurt.

  Even having felt it grinding against me, and seeing him soft, hadn’t prepared me for the sheer size of it.

  I cut away the remainder of his jeans. Tossed them aside. I was literally salivating at the sight of his erection, and I longed to feel it. “Please?” I asked, closing the switchblade and setting it aside.

  Cooper gritted his teeth and nodded. His unspoken consent made something relax inside my chest. My fingers curved around its base. It was silky smooth, yet impossibly hard. When I squeezed gently, I could feel the pulse of blood under my fingers.

  He groaned and threw his head back.

  I lowered myself in front of him, breathing warm air onto his cock, inhaling the musky scent of his sweat.

  Keeping my eyes on his, watching for him to change his mind, my tongue darted out. I lapped a long line up the base of his cock, from the soft edge of his testicles to the ridge of his head. The taste was warm and masculine. His responding growl was better than any aphrodisiac.

  Encouraged, I swirled my tongue around the head, tasting the smooth skin, closing my lips around the top. I had to open my mouth wide to take his entire girth without scraping my teeth. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to actually go down much farther than the head alone.

  “Ofelia,” he grunted, straining against the chains. They jangled. His biceps flexed.

  I pulled off with a slight pop. “What?”

  I think that Cooper tried to respond, but he couldn’t seem to get any words out now.

  He was starting to change.

  “When I touch you, is it easier for you to stay human?” I asked.

  “When you touch me…” He let out his breath as a growl. “It’s like the wolf calms down.” His eyes glimmered bright gold. “But you still make me feel like a beast. Big. Strong.”

  If I touched him, he was calm. He wouldn’t need to be chained.

  I didn’t know what made me different for him than other women. I didn’t know why I was drawn to him the way that I was. But I understood now that what we had was special in more ways than one.

  I stood in front of him. His eyes were on level with my hips as I popped open the button of my shorts and slid the zipper down, baring the lacy edge of my thong.

  His breathing quickened. “Ofelia…”

  Hooking my thumbs in the waistband of my shorts, I shimmied them down my hips, turning as I bent over so that he could get a full view of my ass.
/>   The chains rattled as he struggled to reach for me.

  “I’m going to break these,” he snarled.

  Not if I touch you. I could see what I needed to do now—that I needed to soothe him.

  Free him.

  That was what The Devil was about, wasn’t it? The chains weren’t tied to anything. The woman and the man were tied up by choice. We could choose to liberate ourselves, if only we could find the strength. And we could choose to liberate each other, too. He had already released me. It was time to return the favor.

  I crossed my arms, grabbed the hem of my tank top, lifted it up over my chest. My breasts sprung free, heavy and large. I wasn’t wearing a bra. My nipples were puckered.

  Then I slipped down to him again, straddling his thighs, spreading my fingers over his chest. His cock jutted between us. It was intimidatingly large now that I was naked and just inches away.

  He was sweating. His skin rippled as if a hand was pushing underneath. “I’m out of time,” he said desperately, helplessly. “I can’t stop myself.”

  “I’ll touch you,” I murmured.

  I wouldn’t let the change hurt him. This was what I was meant to do.

  My lips fell to his. I kissed him slowly, and where my mouth traveled his trembling subsided. I skimmed my lips up his cheek to his ear.

  “Trust me, Cooper.”

  His shoulders unknotted slowly. He leaned against the chains, pushing as far forward as he could so that our chests molded against each other, lifting his thighs so that they pushed me flush against his erection. The head bumped against my lower lips. The elastic band of my thong was between us, but nothing else.

  No more secrets, no more chains.

  I pushed up on my knees, arched my spine, lifted my breasts. He gazed up at me with increasingly wolfish eyes as he lapped at the skin between them, nuzzling the soft flesh. He sucked the nipple into his mouth, massaging it with his tongue, pulling hard so that it extended into a long peak.

  His teeth grazed my skin, and he kept watching me. Seeing if I would react. If I really trusted him.