by L. J. Longo
EVERNIGHT PUBLISHING ®
www.evernightpublishing.com
Copyright© 2017 L.J. Longo
ISBN: 978-1-77339-270-7
Cover Artist: Jay Aheer
Editor: Karyn White
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
DEDICATION
For Lane, my favorite, to prove that I can write about straight people.
HIRING THE TIGER
Heart of the Mountain, 1
L.J. Longo
Copyright © 2017
Chapter One
“Nav. Navarro, look.” Half-Ear nudged his arm and made Nav spill his rice-beer. “There’s the richest merchant we’ll ever see.”
Nav glared at the wolf beside him. Rice-beer wasn’t cheap, and even with the shade on Yenna’s porch, it was too hot for a tiger to suffer fools.
Half-Ear ignored Nav’s dirty look and turned his attention to the other wolves. “Seeing all that silk makes me wish we never gave up highway robbery.”
Porter and Sock both crooked their arms over the chairs and turned to look at the street. Nav frowned. No subtlety at all in these mountain-bred midgets.
At the other table on the porch, Captain Ramsay looked up from his curry, suspicious of three wolves watching one wagon even if he hadn’t overheard Half-Ear’s wistful sigh.
Nav snorted. “This is why the three of you only have each other to fuck. Porter, Sock, sit forward.”
They both turned sharply. Sock pushed his broken glasses. “I don’t see—”
“Porter, shift the chair so your back is to the rail,” Nav explained. “Sock, you turn like you’re talking to Port, and you’ll both be able to see the street without looking like absolute rubes.”
Ramsay still watched with narrowed eyes.
“Tiger goes to a city once and he talks about rubes.” Half-Ear snickered and drank his beer.
“I’ve been three times,” Nav insisted. “Besides I’ve called you a rube since the day I met you. These two are dumb enough to pick up on your bad manners.”
“Or else too smart to pick up yours.” While the other two laughed at his wit, Half-Ear took the pitcher they’d all chipped in to afford and capped off Nav’s rice-beer.
Though he’d turned his chair, Sock still gawked at the gathering of horses and carts the surrounded the merchant’s caravan. “I don’t see any woman in silks.”
“She sells the silks.” Nav watched the world beyond the witch’s porch with a soft gaze. “She’s wearing the linen suit.”
The woman wasn’t what Nav would call pretty. Too powerful to be “pretty”. Too short to be “striking”. “Handsome” sounded too male for the plumpness of her wide hips and her breasts. Nav associated tidy waists like hers with western women and their corsets, but the delicate curve of her eyes meant she hailed from the Far East. Her black hair shone in the sunlight and dripped with jewels. She wore a tailored brown suit with vest and cravat, and that’s what confused Sock’s poor eyesight, though as soon as he stopped looking for a woman in a silk robe, even he’d notice the roundness of her thighs, the softness of her face, the fullness of her lips.
It was impossible not to notice. Nav had been noticing since she’d jumped from her wagon and started ordering the waiting crowd around.
Half-Ear nudged Nav’s leg. “You like the look of her?”
“She’s a woman, ain’t she?” Porter chuckled.
Half-Ear went on. “I’ll bet you this meal, you can’t convince her you’re for hire.”
“Like a rent-boy?” The tiger chuckled at the wolf’s audacity. “There are pieces loose in your brain, Half-Ear.”
“I bet she’d pay you two western gold coins if you let her tie you up.”
Nav’s skin prickled at the suggestion and an uncomfortable combination of arousal and disgust. “Keep teasing, and you’re gonna lose your other ear, wolf.”
“I believe he could.” Porter, ever agreeable, nudged Sock. “Go on. Tell ‘em what you smell, you blind bone-sack.”
Sock, who’d lapped at his rice-beer very purposefully to avoid the conversation, frowned at Porter, but obliged. His poor eyesight probably didn’t improve his nose, but he sold his role. He didn’t deign to turn his nose to the street, but sniffed the air. He announced with a discerning languor. “Her laundry has the aroma of several different men, notes of whiskey, sake, and semen. I detect hemp and metal in her personal luggage, which might be jewelry though it has the smell of being very thoroughly sanitized. She’s traveled for at least a week, likely more. And…”
He inhaled deeply and finished with a shy leer. “She’s ripe for the taking.”
The four of them laughed, just loud enough to trigger Ramsay’s suspicions. The captain of the guard put down his bowl and walked over to their table, hand on his pistol.
“Good evening, Captain Ramsay.” Nav tipped back in his chair sociably.
“What are you wolves howling at?” Ramsay demanded.
“Your mom,” Sock answered, and the other three laughed.
“Very droll.” Ramsay pointed at the business in the street. “I don’t like you boys sitting around idle, and I especially don’t like it when you’re leering at merchants.”
“Oh relax, Ramsay,” Nav said. “We always haunt my witch’s porch. The merchant just happened to decide to stay in one of Yenna’s rooms. No harm.”
Ramsay could not find them at fault, and it obviously vexed him. “Do you have the money to pay for that beer?”
Nav answered. “We do. Plucked two bushels of tea leaves today.”
“Thank you for the concern about Ms. Yenna’s business, sir,” Half-Ear added.
“Do you have the money to pay for your curry, sir?” Porter sipped at his mug.
Nav said, “Yenna asked us to carry in cargo for the foreign merchant, but I’m sure she’d let you help, too, sir.”
The western man’s pink cheeks burned at the idea, but Ramsay laughed and pretended to enjoy the joke. “Never thought I’d see the day a tiger would be reduced to plucking tea leaves and carrying crates. Don’t you ever miss highway robbery?”
Nav’s smile disappeared, but Sock saved him. “About as much as we miss your prison, Ramsay. Now, leave us in peace or we’ll complain to Yenna.”
The captain made a mock bow and wandered back to his curry.
Nav growled low at him and promised, not for the first time, “Someday we’ll do something better, boys, and it won’t be robbery, either.”
“Sure, we will,” Half-Ear agreed, though he didn’t sound convinced.
The merchant stared at Nav again. She didn’t shy away when their eyes met. If anything, she looked more thoroughly. Her eyes traveled from his face to his bare chest and over his abdomen as if she knew the terrain intimately.
Sock never turned. “She eying you, Nav?”
“Yup.”
“Yeah,” Sock admitted. “She likes you. You could win his bet easy.”
“Oh, the challenge isn’t her.” Half-Ear grinned. “It’s him. That’s a woman who hires her men. Our tiger’s too proud to shill himself.”
Nav drained the last of his beer. Half-Ear wasn’t wrong, but Nav was too proud to admit he was too proud. He wasn’t desperate enough to be a rent-boy—he doubted any tiger ever found himself that desperate, even with a captain of the guard eager to clap him in irons—bu
t Nav couldn’t pass up a bet.
“Just remember when the bill comes, I had the lamb curry and naan.” Nav tapped the table and stood to learn if he could humbly approach a woman.
****
At first, the merchant was too involved in her own business to notice he’d left the table and leaned against the porch column in the sunlight. She ticked through a checklist, tracking every crate the locals unloaded from her cart and loaded into a farmer’s wagon. A dragon slept on top of her cart, and Nav fixed his eyes there as if the loong interested him and not the powerhouse who’d tamed it.
She wasn’t some simpering village girl he could sweep off her feet, not some neglected wife who needed to be told she was beautiful. The merchant didn’t have time for seduction or pleasure, and Nav, for the first time, considered he might be rejected. Wouldn’t Half-Ear have a grand time with that?
Nav caught her eye again and smiled. Meek was not easy for a tiger, but the checklist flagged in her hand, and she studied his brown skin, his baggy trousers, his bare chest with the hawkish interest of an appraiser about to swindle her customer.
At least, she beckoned him over.
“Mr. Saily, you may load your silks once I’ve inspected them and not before. You three, hurry up!” she barked at the local merchant, at the farmer’s men, then muttered to her checklist. “Honestly, these men are either in a hurry or dawdling. You’re one of the wolves I hired?”
“Yenna hired us, but I’m not a wolf.” He brushed his dark hair behind his ear and waited for her to ask.
She didn’t. “What are you selling, boy?”
It galled him to be called “boy”. “Tiger” he would accept, but “boy”? Still, Nav remembered his role and smiled coyly. “Oh, I don’t have the personality to be a salesman.”
“Said like a salesman.” She snorted and began to turn, then stopped to look over his body again with an unashamed desire. Her eyes lingered on his crotch, but he still wasn’t expecting it when she boldly groped him. She squeezed his cock, like testing fruit in the market, long enough to know his size and girth, and too fast for Nav to gather his wits and react. “All right. What’s your hourly rate?”
He blinked at her, so beyond his ken words didn’t exist.
“Never mind, we’ll discuss terms in the room. You might not be able to give me what I want.” She handed him an iron key from the front pocket of her vest. “It’s the third story. Carry that red chest in the caravan to my room. Then wait for me.”
Nav stared at the key, at her stern eyes, then at the chest. He didn’t like taking orders, being dismissed, or how easily she’d brought him. But he hated the idea any woman would question whether he could satisfy her. And he wasn’t going to lose the bet now.
He nodded meekly, as if he were the same as any other baggage boy she bought and sold in her travels. “Sure.”
She smirked and watched him carry the chest under one arm up the stairs. Then she called, unashamed of their transition. “Be ready when I come.”
Oh, he’d be ready. No woman had to worry he couldn’t give her what she wanted.
Chapter Two
That man did not know his worth. Jasprite would have sold her dragon if he proved otherwise. Queens and witches in the west would pay very handsomely to have a shifter on their arm with those eyes, that height, the deliciously dark skin and the sculpted muscles beneath. Jasprite had the nearly overwhelming desire to seal him in a crate and sell him to the highest bidder back home.
Of course, no daughter of Sir Jaspar Doughton trafficked in an industry as sordid as selling shifters to witches or queens. Even if she did, Jasprite tended to keep the best of everything for herself.
Mr. Bornot paid for his new farming equipment, bowed respectfully, and took his men as he left. So they would be fresh to travel in the morning, Jasprite’s own men rested at their hotel across the town. And by rest she almost certainly meant drinking and gambling, which was fine with her since she planned on whoring.
“Mr. Saily.” The local man who dealt in silks leaned into her wagon again. She couldn’t tell if he meant to steal her jewelry or touch her unmentionables, the dirty bastard. Either way, the man jolted when she called. “I’ll be with you as soon as these wolves unload Ms. Yenna’s goods.”
“But you said—”
“You three.” She snapped her fingers at the wolves gathered on the porch. “Once Ms. Yenna inspects these crates, you’re ready to carry them in?”
The wolves stood at attention at once, and a gawky fellow with a half-bitten ear trapped in its wolf form stepped forward. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Oh, miss, no!” The man in uniform on the porch called out to her. “Don’t tell me you hired these ruffians to do your work? Let me call some proper men to help you with your cargo and not these miscreants.”
God, she hated being called “miss”. She was a lady and an adult. “Miscreants cost less than soldiers, Captain, and I’ll thank you to leave me to my own affairs.”
The biggest wolf failed to suppress his chuckle, and the captain—if one could call such an inelegant man a captain—shot to his feet. “What’s so funny, dog?”
The wolf was taller than the man, but he shrugged mildly. “Nothing at all, sir.”
“I’ll fetch Ms. Yenna.” The littlest wolf—for heaven’s sake, did he have spectacles?—ran off toward the cafe.
The captain put out his hand and caught the little wolf. The spectacles flung off his face from the impact. The captain held the wolf’s over-sized tunic to stop him from picking them up. “I told you three to leave the merchants alone.”
“Sir, doesn’t the bloody Captain of the guard have anything better to do than harass paupers? Let the fellow go. If you’re in such want of work, you fetch Ms. Yenna.”
She waited for him to answer her, ready to trade insults. Instead, the man sensibly returned to his meal and only said, “If they rob you, you can’t say you weren’t warned.”
Jasprite rolled her eyes. “You with the spectacles, come here.”
When Jasprite summoned him, the little one met the biggest wolf’s eye and wordlessly traded tasks. The bigger disappeared into the café, the one with the bitten ear took up glaring at the captain, and the little one hopped over to her.
“Give those here.” Jasprite held out her hand for the spectacles, and the wolf gave them without hesitation. One of the arms was bent, and the nosepiece was gone. “Bit shabby, aren’t they?”
“They’ve been through a lot.” The little man scratched at his long hair, a sandy gray, without the proper luster of a wolf’s pelt. “Broke when I was on the chain.”
Ah, ex-convicts. No wonder the captain was worried. She wondered what the little fellow’s crime had been and if it was under the leadership of the handsome man in her room. Still no reason for him to go without proper fitting spectacles. She held the frames in her two hands and muttered a spell she’d bought from a word-witch along her journeys.
The frames twisted in her fingers, strengthened. Little pieces of stone jangled loose from the ground, reshaped and fixed themselves at the bridge of the nose.
She handed them back to him. “There you are. I doubt they’ll ever be good as new, but that ought to stop them flying off your face as you work.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” The wolf put them on, seeming startled by the proper fit. “We didn’t know you were a witch.”
“Some spells are easy enough to buy,” Jasprite answered.
The captain snorted from the porch. “Your kindness is wasted on wolves, miss.”
“Kindness is never wasted.” Jasprite had more to say to chastise him, but the old witch staggered into the daylight. The crone, brown and dry as the dust, leaned half on the big wolf’s arm and half on an ebony crane. Her father had warned Jasprite to respect Eastern witches. They didn’t have covens and laws to keep their curses in check … or their blessings.
Jasprite bowed low. “Greetings, Mother of the winds, how may I serve you?”
The old
woman preened at the title. It always pleased these grass witches to be treated as if they’d gone to academy. “Ah, Lady Doughton, one of the men I promised has stolen away and the others won’t tell me where he’s disappeared to.”
Jasprite knew full-well where the fourth man was, and she intended to work him hard. “These three will make up for his laziness, and I’m sure they’ll reproach him later.”
“Look, Ms. Yenna.” The little one held out his spectacles. “She fixed my glasses.”
The old woman hummed and squinted at them. “Why didn’t you tell me they were broken, dear? Open the crates. Let’s see if it’s all here.”
It was all there and in perfect condition. Still Jasprite waited patiently as the old woman looked at her new linens and bowls, spoons and knives, herbs and rice. The sun baked the world, and there was hardly a breeze to stir the field of bright blue fey wheat across from the witch’s café.
When the wolves opened the crate of rice-beer jugs, Yenna handed one over to the wolf with the bitten off ear. “Don’t forget to share.”
Jasprite lifted her eyes to the third-floor balcony. Her reward lurked in the shadows, and she saw him half tucked away behind the gossamer curtain looking down. He noticed her gaze and smiled with a lazy warmth. How long had he been watching her?
She wanted nothing more in the world than to touch his golden-brown skin, to delve into his dark hair. The man ran his hand over his bare chest and dipped just the tip of his fingers into the hem of his loose trousers. Bold bastard.
He grew bolder. While she watched, he pushed the hem of his trousers under his balls. His cock swung in the hot breeze, half-hard and long. He stroked it with the leisurely air of a prince, and a knot of desire twisted in her gut.
“That missing one.” Ms. Yenna spoke, and her aged croak surprised Jasprite.