“Oh for fuck’s sake, Trav, of course not. I mean I think they share women. Like four-way sex.”
He made a face and finished the long braid. Wrapping it around the tie that held the mass of her hair back, he tucked the end underneath and reached for the hair spray. “Nothing wrong with playing multiples, Shyne. You might like it.”
She shivered and toyed with a hair tie. “Maybe in another universe I might like to play once with a three-way. But a four-way? I don’t even know how that would work.”
He snickered. “I think they make the girl airtight, baby.”
Images flashed through her mind until she hit on the right one. “Trav, you’ve got such a dirty mind.”
“Hey. I’m painfully single, and I think I’m getting carpal from jacking off all the time.”
“I’m sure you don’t play your pipe to four-ways with a girl in the middle.”
“Hell no, baby girl, but I have stumbled upon the odd image over the years. The Internet is a fucked-up thing.”
She spritzed a bit of honeysuckle body splash in strategic areas and turned around. “Only a gay man would think straight sex is fucked up.”
“Only a repressed woman wouldn’t want to try a four-way with three hot were-hyenas who are richer than anyone we know.”
“We don’t know that many people,” she pointed out.
“Still.” He shrugged and then hugged her. “You don’t like them that way, then fuck ‘em. But not literally. You’ll find your knight in shining armor, and I just hope to hell he’s got a gay brother.”
She hugged him back with a laugh, and then headed out to her car and drove thirty minutes to the fairgrounds where the Temple County Fair was being held. With her exhibitor tag in the windshield, she was able to get in before they opened the main gate and walked the dirt pathway that made up the main circle of the fair’s amenities. Tucked near the arena where the boxing match would take place at eight that night, she found the booth for Stone’s Gym with the boys finishing the set up.
It was going to be a long, hot day.
Chapter 2
“I’m still not sure I see the point of interviewing bands for the bar. Quill’s doing just fine as DJ on the weekends, and during the week we’ve just been running the no-commercial satellite station. It’s worked for the last year. Why fuck with it?” Michael groused to his brother, Jason. Michael had been acting manager of Jake’s bar since they officially reopened it last March. The bar originally belonged to the alpha of the Garra Pack that shared the small town of Allen with them. After the alpha’s son kidnapped Cadence, his brother’s mate, pack justice was delivered in a brutal and final way, and the Garra Pack left town for good. The Tressel Pack – of which Michael was second in rank – took over the bar along with a few homes and a restaurant.
“I heard you the first time you complained, Michael. I told you that eventually you’d need to find a band to do a weekly show. I’ve let you slide for a long time, but now it’s the end of May. I want a house band in here by the end of June, period. Get your act together. The pack alone can’t sustain the bar. We need the humans that come in to drink, and they’re not loving Jake’s as much as they did when it was run by the man himself. If we start to lose business, then it’s everyone’s problem.”
Good point. “So you do it.”
“Nah, you like music, so you can pick out the house band, and then eventually we’ll hire a manager. Maybe you’ll get lucky and one of the bands will have a manager with them who can run the bar for us.” Jason shrugged as if it wasn’t a huge undertaking. Michael couldn’t really deny Jason. Not only was he his big brother, but he was also pack alpha. Right now Jason was being genial. If he decided to put his alpha authority into the order, then Michael wouldn’t have a choice. At least if he went along with it, then it appeared he’d made the choice himself.
Jason wasn’t wrong, anyway, and Michael knew that. If the bar went into the red and had to close, then the pack would go elsewhere to drink. Here, the pack protected their own. Out and about, a wolf could go off alone and get into a lot of trouble.
It hadn’t exactly been his choice to take over managing the bar. He was a mechanic by trade and a smartass by nature, two things that didn’t exactly go hand-in-hand with slinging suds and dealing with customers and employees. So far, though, he wasn’t doing a bad job. He just didn’t want the job.
* * * * *
Three weeks into June and Michael wasn’t having a good time of things. He rubbed his temples and glared at the call sheet. He’d placed the ad a couple weeks ago in local papers around Kentucky and on an online posting website for bands. They were offering very little in the way of perks to start, but they’d had a good response to the ad:
“Small town bar needs house band for weekend gigs. $200 per show plus all the beer you can drink.”
As the bands trickled in over the weeks to audition, Michael grew steadily more disappointed. Were there no decent bands not already house bands elsewhere?
Thursday afternoon, as the deadline for finding a band before the end of June hovered over his head like a battle axe, the first band of the day took the stage. One look at their punk clothing, and he knew that even if they played amazing, the town wouldn’t go for them. He knew what would fly here. A band that could play both rock and country, would do covers on request, and had a nice looking girl as part of their entourage. Maybe that last part was all his thinking. He was damn lonely.
The last girl he’d been with, well, that was a long while ago. He flirted around with the females because that’s just the kind of guy he was, but he hadn’t slept with anyone in a long time. Tired of the get-out-before-dawn fucks that most of his friends enjoyed, he’d figured out that none of the females in the pack were a mate for him, and then he’d soured on the whole casual sex thing.
He wasn’t the only one going through a dry spell, but the numbers were dwindling. Linus, fourth in rank, had found his mate in Karly, who was a supernaturally perfect mate for him called an Angel Mate. Bo was still single. As third in the pack, he was moody as hell because of an old injury that caused him to limp, but he also didn’t go for the few she-wolves in their age group or any of the human groupies. That was the hard part. If you went human, you had to figure out if she liked you for all of you or just because she was fucking the big bad. Michael had been disappointed every time.
So for all intents and purposes, he was currently celibate. The first month was hardest, going through the full moon cravings that tended to make a wolf think about nothing but hunting and fucking. But that first month had happened a while ago.
Shuttering the all too depressing thoughts that he was twenty-seven now and still single, he cringed through the band’s very British punk sounds and mentally cursed Jason. Three hours later, after sucky-punk-band, all-girl-hate-men-band, and screaming-not-singing-metal-band were gone, his ears were still ringing.
One more band to go. He hoped to hell they didn’t suck. They were the last band that had responded to the most recent ad, named TrayneWrek. It appeared to be an all-sorts kind of band, boasting to play anything, anywhere. Judging from the picture, the four men and one woman were related somehow, maybe siblings. From the picture, she was pretty, but it was hard to tell for sure. And he couldn’t exactly hire them just because she was cute.
“Something up?” Toby, one of their regular bouncers, asked as Michael stepped outside onto the sidewalk in front of the bar. Toby was a big man, not fat but just solid. He had legs like tree trunks and a body like a brick wall. He made an excellent bouncer, and he was part of the pack.
“Nah. I just needed a breath of fresh air.”
A loud engine broke the afternoon silence, and an incredible Viper SRT pulled to a stop at the traffic light. Just behind it, a black van that looked like it came out of an old A-Team episode eased behind the car so close that they almost touched, and then a Ford F-350 joined them. The Viper swung into the parking lot of Jake’s suddenly, and so did the truck and the va
n.
“This must be TrayneWrek,” he said out loud. If Toby cared, he didn’t acknowledge it. Right now, Toby was just hanging out before the evening shift, pulling guard duty while the bands played in case Michael pissed them off, which had happened more than once. He couldn’t keep his mouth shut to save his life.
A woman eased out of the car and Michael's jaw dropped to the sun-heated concrete at his feet. Hello, angel. Dressed entirely in white, from her stiletto heels and tiny mini skirt to the form fitting tank top, she looked like she’d just dropped right out of heaven. Sunshine-blonde hair fell to her waist in fat curls, moving like a lush wave. He half expected to see a halo nestled in those curls.
And then she cursed like a sailor to the man that climbed out of the A-Team van. “You run up on my ass like that again and I’ll skin you alive!” She threw a punch at him, and he ducked with a laugh. Spinning deftly, she elbowed him in the kidneys, and he doubled over with a groan.
“That was not fair,” the man laughed, standing up and pressing his hand into his side. “You better hope I can still sing.”
A very large man unfolded himself from the passenger seat of the Viper. How he fit in there, Michael wasn’t sure, but he was huge. And not just big like Toby, but he wore his flesh like armor, like he was protecting himself.
The angel spied them, and he was sure his mouth was still hanging open like an idiot, so he tried to remember how to work his jaw to shut it.
The closer she got, the more he felt like he was looking directly into the sun. Her pixie face, complete with heart shaped mouth, loomed into view, and she said, “You Gerrick?”
Finding his voice, he managed, “Yeah. You guys TrayneWrek?”
“You bet.” She stuck out her hand, and he shook it. “Name's Jazlyn. With a ‘y’.”
He said, “Oh, you’re a wolf?”
“Yeah, you too?” She cocked her head to the side. “Is this a pack-run bar?”
“Yeah. I’m managing it for a while until we can find someone to take over. We kind of inherited it. Are you part of a pack?”
“We’re our own pack. We broke ties with our former pack a while ago. We’re not looking to join up.”
He nodded. “I’ll let the alpha know; he’ll probably want to talk to you if you get the job.”
“Well,” she grinned and flashed perfectly white teeth, “we're awesome, so you should probably call him.”
He opened the door into the club with a chuckle. Four men followed her, each carrying a piece of equipment, and then the mountain man brought up the rear. He was fairly certain the man could snap him in half like a piece of kindling. Best to stay on his good side. Mentally locking his mouth, he walked inside with Toby.
The mountain man stood protectively next to Jazlyn, and they looked like an odd pair. He dwarfed her on a grand scale. His head was completely shaved, and he had a goatee that made him look like a serial killer. And a freaking cross tattoo on his neck. Could that be her boyfriend? She seemed like such a delicate thing, with a big mouth. That must be why Michael liked her already.
Remembering he had a job to do, he walked over to Jazlyn and said, “When you’re all set up, you can play a couple songs, no pressure, and then I’ll let you know.”
He tried not to make eye contact with the mountain, but he could feel his gaze on him like it was made of acid and would burn him alive. He glanced up at him and darted his eyes away. The man was a complete freak show. He had one weird eye that was almost entirely white.
She elbowed the mountain, and it looked like it should have hurt her elbow. “Introduce yourself, dink.”
The voice was deep like a cave and just as dark. “I am Shayne.”
She quipped, “With a y, too.”
Immobile, not even a smile cracked Shayne's face.
“Nice to meet you, Shayne.”
Michael went to sit down at one of the booths where he’d set up shop. She joined him. The mountain, aka Shayne with a y, stood next to her. Michael was trying damn hard not to look at him. As if sensing his unease, she said, “I’d tell you his bark is worse than his bite, but that’s not actually true. And at any rate, as long as no one threatens any of us, he won't cause trouble, okay?”
That sounded a lot like a threat, but Michael let it go. For one, she was just clarifying their position, and, for another, they hadn't done anything threatening yet. He was definitely not one of those wolves that went looking for trouble when there wasn’t any. “No worries.” Except for the large foot that’s always popping in his mouth. “Nice car you got out there.”
She grinned again. Dimple. Adorable. “Right? Shayne got it for me. Fucking love it.”
“Car girl, are you?”
“Eh,” she shrugged, “I like things that are powerful and make a lot of noise.”
Hello, double-entendre.
As the band tuned up, she said, “So what kind of music you guys dig around here?”
“Well, what kind do you prefer to play?”
“Anything, really. Country, rock, pop, blues, jazz, Irish, hard rock, 70s, 80s.” Another shrug, and it made the thick curtain of her hair bob on her shoulder.
“Really? So many kinds?”
“Sure. You have different kinds for different places. We’ve been traveling around, looking for a place to set up shop for good. They’re a little tired of not being in one place. Makes the booty calls harder to deal with.”
“I’ll bet.” He grinned. She was feisty as hell.
“So?” She prompted.
“Ah, the people who hang here like country and rock.”
She caught the eyes of the one with the lead guitar that she’d punched outside, “Hey, we’re going to play some rock to start.”
“Why don’t you leave the decisions to the big boys, Jazz.” He flipped her off.
She huffed. “You’ve got a lot of nerve, you asshole! You play what I tell you, or you’ll wake up with all your hair shaved off again.”
The man raised his head with a jerk, looking worried, but schooled his features into casual nonchalance quickly, turning his attention back to his guitar. Had she been the one to shave him before? She looked at Michael and smiled sweetly. “They’re all my brothers, so, you know, we fight a lot.”
“But you shaved him?” Michael laughed.
“Well, he pissed me off.” She was too cute.
“Remind me not to piss you off.”
She winked her gorgeous bright blue eyes at him. He hoped to hell the band played well so she would stick around. Hell, even if they sucked, he’d hire them anyway just to keep her close.
She joined her brothers up on the stage and, much to his pleasure, the band played extremely well. They laughed and joked on stage, and Jazlyn’s voice was just as incredible as her looks.
The band seemed content to keep playing, so he made some phone calls, and in no time, the bar was slowly filling up with the top ranked in the pack. The band was jamming, and everyone loved them.
When they took a break, Michael brought Jason over. “I’m alpha of the Tressel pack, Jason Gerrick.” He shook all their hands. Cadence stood next to him. “This is my mate, Cadence, our female alpha.”
Jazlyn introduced her family: Shayne, Fray, Parker, Torn, and Gio.
“This is strictly a bar gig. As long as you stay out of town on the full moons so you don’t interfere with our hunting parties, then there’s no reason to think there will be a problem with you taking the job if you want it.”
She looked around at her brothers. Everyone was smiling except Shayne. “Sounds great. Any decent rentals around?”
Michael told them about a week-to-week rental place in town that had a few vacancies. After a few minutes and some cold drinks, the band returned to the stage and played for an hour. It was the best time that he’d had in a while at the bar. Almost like old times. Before everything went to hell between the packs.
He made quick arrangements at the rental place so the manager would be available and sat back down at the booth
where Jason and Cadence were nuzzling each other. He stifled the exaggerated sigh that wanted to break free. He was glad his brother and Cades were married and happy. He just didn’t need to see it. People who were getting it regularly tended to forget about the people who got it very infrequently and how annoying it could be to see those kinds of displays front and center.
The only problem that Michael could see was that the beauty on the stage wasn’t his mate, either. He’d wanted to deny it, but he already knew the hard truth. His wolf had fairly much gone to sleep in his mind. She might be stunning, but she was going to be stunning for someone else. Damn wolves picking out their mates!
“She’s pretty,” Cadence said, pushing Jason away from her neck with a growl. She was over halfway through her pregnancy and in her own words “horny as hell”, but Michael knew she didn’t like being pawed in public. Even by her husband.
“Yeah,” Michael sighed. She was pretty. Just not for him.
* * * * *
Saturday afternoon, he’d taken a run to the shop on his bike to fill it up and check out the mod he was working on. It was taking him forever because he was only working half days at the shop, but he loved working on bikes, so he wouldn’t ever stop.
“Hey, Fritz,” Michael said to the young wolf behind the counter.
Fritz straightened and smiled. “Hey, man. Bike’s looking good back there.”
“Thanks. You going to Jake’s tonight? The new band’s playing.”
“Um, oh. I don’t know. I don’t usually, you know.”
Michael did know. Fritz’s father drank himself to death when Fritz was a teenager. Younger than him by a few years, he was pretty sure that Fritz had never touched a drop of alcohol in his life. Sometimes the fuck-ups of the parents really take a toll on the kids.
“No worries, man. The band’s great, though, and it’s good to hang around the pack other than just on the full moon.”
“I’m here at the shop.”
“Yeah, but on the off shifts. You run the tow truck during the week and then this on Saturdays. I just think you might be happier if you spent more time with the pack.”
The Wolf's Mate Book 4: Michael & Shyne Page 2