Shivs
Every bad feeling started in my teeth. At the Stillwater mansion, it was the molars—hunger, ache, the urge to gnaw.
Tonight, it was the canines, hot and bright and mean, as I trailed behind Carrie into the biggest bourbon industry gala in five states.
My suit itched. The building crawled with predators who didn’t even know it.
It was at the Louisville Distillers’ Society, the last truly old-money haunt left in Kentucky that could still make a man in biker denim feel like a dog on a leash. All the stone and brass and crystal, like someone took a church and lined the altar with top-shelf liquor and lawsuits.
Carrie moved through the entry like she’d been poured into her dress: midnight blue, slit at the thigh, and open at the back so the whole goddamn city could see the constellation of freckles at her shoulder.
The kind of fabric that clung everywhere it touched, which tonight was less than half her.
It turned every eye in the lobby, most of them hungry, a few already cataloguing the cost. She kept her chin up, her bourbon voice warm and dry, but her heels bit the marble as she walked, and she never unclenched the hand clutching her purse.
My job was to hover one step behind, six inches to the left, always in frame but never in focus.
Security, they called it. Bodyguard, if you were feeling generous.
Fucktoy, if you wanted to see her blush.
I preferred “wolf,” and so did the part of me that couldn’t stop tasting every motion in the room.
She waded into a pod of industry suits, all tailored and trimmed, the air between them dense with money and the low-key threat of legacy.
“Caroline, my condolences,” said one, some walking toothpick from Sazerac.
“Your father was a lion.” His handshake lasted a beat too long.
Another poured her a neat from a bottle older than I was, and a third circled, trying to edge me out of the ring.
I bared my teeth at him, the smallest flicker, and he flinched.
Carrie’s laugh—pitch-perfect, perfectly hollow—rippled across the group, but I watched her other hand.
The left one, nails painted gunmetal, tightening and releasing around her phone in a rhythm that had nothing to do with the conversation.
She was tracking something, or someone. I followed her gaze and saw Marcus Ellery on the far side of the room.
Marcus. If you ever wondered what an apex predator would look like in a Brioni suit, he was it.
Tall, hair full and fake-silver, with the face of a man who’d never known a day of real work in his life but still somehow had the handshake scars to prove he’d bled.
His eyes were pale, almost blue, and when they landed on Carrie, it was like he’d stuck a pin through a butterfly.
He detached from his cluster of hangers-on and made for us, bourbon in one hand, phone in the other. The crowd parted. You could feel it—not fear, exactly, but respect. Or maybe just the sense that something ugly was about to happen.
He slipped an arm around Carrie’s waist, casual as old friends, and pressed his lips to her cheek. The wolf in me registered it as a hostile move. So did her spine, which stiffened under the silk. “Caroline,” he purred, “I didn’t expect to see you here. Or with him.”
His glance at me was dismissive, but the smile never broke. I nodded, nothing more, letting the tattoos at my throat do the talking.
Carrie smiled, polite as a blade. “Marcus. You remember Shivs. He’s with me tonight.”
There was a moment, an audible pause. Someone poured another round nearby, the click of glass on glass sharp enough to cut the air.
Marcus held out a hand to me, like we were equals, like he hadn’t ordered men to shoot me last week. I shook it. My grip was firmer. I let him feel it.
“I heard about the unpleasantness at Stillwater,” Marcus said, voice honeyed, just loud enough to travel to the nearest six people. “So sorry, truly. You know you can always call me if you need real security.”
The words stung. The threat underneath them was louder than the jazz trio in the corner.
Carrie sipped her drink, perfectly still. “I have all the security I need. Thanks to Shivs.”
Marcus eyed me, then let his gaze drift down the line of my body: black shirt, black jacket, no tie, boots polished to a dull shine. “Of course,” he said.
He shifted, turning away from me, and in the pivot, his glass tipped. Bourbon sluiced down the front of Carrie’s dress, a fat, deliberate splash that caught her just below the collarbone and streaked lower, soaking the silk and blooming dark down her ribcage.
She didn’t flinch. Not even a blink. But every man in the circle froze, reading the move for what it was: dominance, the mark of the true alpha. The wolf in me snarled.
“Oh, my,” Marcus said, reaching for a cocktail napkin. “I’m all thumbs tonight.” He blotted at the dress, his touch lingering at the hollow of her shoulder, then sliding lower as if it were his right.
Carrie’s eyes flashed, but she let him. For three heartbeats, I watched his fingers play over her bare skin, slow and proprietary. He dabbed at the bourbon, thumb brushing the edge of her bra, and smiled for the crowd.
I moved in, a shadow at her back, and he hesitated. I didn’t have to say a word; the threat of my presence was enough. I saw the microexpression—fear, or just surprise—flicker across his face before he smoothed it over.
“I’ll send the cleaners bill,” Carrie said, voice perfectly pitched, “but for now, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t touch me again.”
Marcus’s smile faded by a millimeter. “Of course, darling. Didn’t mean to overstep.”
She took a napkin and finished the cleanup herself, shoulders squared, daring him to say anything. The crowd relaxed. The show was over. But I kept my eyes on Marcus, and he kept his on me.
He lingered, then melted back into the crowd, suit shining. I watched the way he walked, the deliberate confidence, the way people bent toward his gravity.
Carrie’s hand found my forearm. Her nails dug in, just a little, and she steered me away from the bar. We moved through the crowd, past a dozen eyes pretending not to stare, and out into the hallway. The smell of bourbon and blood and sweat followed us.
We ducked into an office, and she didn’t speak until the office door closed, and the world shrank to the pulse in my jaw and the silhouette of Carrie against a window.
The outside glass frosted up quick in the night humidity, blurring the bourbon lights into smears of gold and blue.
For two beats, three, we just stood—her facing me, back pressed to the window, hands braced like she might bolt.
I couldn’t breathe right. I wanted to tear the room apart, tear myself apart, or maybe just tear her apart in the best way I knew how.
She said my name, real quiet, “Shivs.”
The sound of it yanked something loose in me. I stalked toward her, slow and soft-footed, and she didn’t move, not an inch. Her eyes were black in the low light, mouth parted, the stain of bourbon still visible at her collarbone.
‘You look like you’re about to kill something,” she said.
“Not a thing,” I said. “Not even close.”
She set her jaw, but I saw the flicker of excitement under the mask. The old animal in her, the one that knew my smell and never backed down. “Then what?”
I closed the last of the distance, hands on either side of her head, caging her but not touching, waiting for her to shove or slap or tell me to get the fuck out. Instead, she leaned forward—half a centimeter, maybe less—and I broke.
I kissed her so hard I tasted blood, hers or mine, I didn’t care.
Her fingers laced in the hair at the back of my neck and yanked until my eyes watered.
My body pressed against hers, chest to chest, my cock already straining against the zipper of my pants.
I could feel her heart racing through the silk and bourbon, every beat feeding the monster inside me.
I slid my hands down her arms, then lower, cupping the curve of her ass and lifting her onto the desk. The blue dress rode up, bunching at her hips, the fabric cold and slick under my fingers. She wrapped her legs around me and ground herself against my thigh, eyes wild and daring me to go further.
I was past daring. I reached up, grabbed the deep V of her neckline, and ripped. The sound was obscene in the hush—a tearing, raw animal noise that made her gasp and laugh at the same time. Her breasts spilled free, nipples hard, the skin there so pale and soft I wanted to bite.
She shimmied her hips, shoving the dress higher, and fumbled with my belt. Her hands were fast and desperate, not careful at all, just intent on getting to skin. She freed my cock, fingers wrapping it, pulling it out so the head slid against her soaked panties.
“Goddamn you,” she whispered, and the words were all need, no venom.
“Say it again,” I breathed, nipping her jaw, her collarbone, the hollow at the base of her throat.
She said it, louder, voice echoing in the glass and wood. “God. Damn. You.”
I hooked her panties to the side, pressed the tip of my cock to her entrance, and paused. She looked at me, a challenge in her eyes.
“Do it,” she said.
I did.
She was so wet it was no trouble at all, but she was tight, tighter than I remembered, maybe just from the adrenaline or the need or the fact that she was still riding the edge from the ballroom.
I buried myself in her, slow, letting her adjust, then faster, hard enough to shove the desk across the floor an inch with every thrust.
She met me, move for move, her fingers digging into my back, her heels locked around my ribs.
Her head rolled back, eyes closed, and I bent to take a nipple between my teeth, biting just enough to make her yelp.
She grabbed my hair and held me there, rocking herself against my face, making me drink in the taste of her skin.