Chapter 14
Chapter
Fourteen
Dante
L izette doesn’t answer immediately.
“Cat got your tongue?”
Her eyes narrow, but there’s misery, too, and anger. “No, I’m trying not to rip into you.”
Man, this little omega has balls.
“If you think you can, go right ahead, but it’s not going to get you very far.”
She looks past me, over at Knight, who, if he’s smart, has taken himself to the bar. Better yet, out of the fucking club room.
Actually, scratch that. It’s better if he’s here. His presence just might keep me from jumping her bones.
The bartender who’s in early stocktaking certainly won’t help. He’s one of our pack members. He knows his place.
So does Knight, unfortunately, and his place is on the same level as me.
But yeah, better if he’s in the vicinity.
I flick my gaze up at her. “Your boyfriend over there isn’t coming to your rescue this time. ”
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
Fuck, she’s gorgeous, so fucking pretty it could hurt a heart if I had one.
It’s bad enough her scent’s compatible, and somehow, through the bite, I think Knight has temporarily bonded her to us three. We’re a gang, if you want to call it that, but we are still a pack, and a pack with three alphas means the connection felt by one is felt by us all.
I didn’t know it could do that.
Then again, there aren’t many packs out there with more than one alpha.
In the corner near the stage, Sienna is hovering. She’s got girls that she’s auditioned and is going to then run them by me.
Unfortunately, it’s me who makes the final decision. Knight would probably audition them in his bed because they’ll work here, not become pack members. There’s a difference and Knight, for all his pretty boy looks and easy smiles, is a shark when it comes to using the gray area to his advantage.
And Reaper?
I’d love to make him do this. He’d probably lose his mind.
Lizette sucks the corner of her lower lip into her mouth, then releases it. The bruise has healed a lot. But it’s still there which means the fucker hit her hard. It’s now green and yellow.
Her omega metabolism will have it gone in a day or so. She’s lucky, I guess, that she went into heat right when he hit her.
He’s lucky I wasn’t the one who followed. Or Reaper.
Although judging by her face, what Knight told me, I’m not sure who would have been worse—me or Reaper. Reap’s a cold-blooded killer who borders line of psychopathic. But he kills without compunction .
If I do it, it’s either in the line of whatever thing’s gone wrong, or it’s personal. This? I’d have been a sadistic cunt.
Then again, would Reap have taken his time, applied the art of torture?
The bruises are enough to send him back to our childhoods, to take out buried hurts on the asshole would-be rapist. He doesn’t like the weak, old, young, and very innocent getting hurt. I might be the only living being who knows that about him.
I’m not saying it’s a softness in him. More a way to assuage what happened to him.
Lizette’s trying not to glare. “Don’t flatter yourself. I don’t want you either. Any of you.”
“Bold words to a big, bad criminal alpha.”
Lizette sniffs. “I’ve met worse.”
She’s aiming for indifference, but something catches and her vulnerability shows. I’m betting she’s fucking thinking of the asshole who tried to take advantage of her.
I change my mind then and there about Knight. He’s got heart. He’s not a natural killer. He’s suited to run diabolical things using his tech skills. He’s suited to digging the kind of dirt that gets hidden in files and behind firewalls and complex passwords. But he’s killed. He’ll kill again.
The only thing that saved the dickhead, Jake, was her.
Knight wanted to save her more.
And fuck her.
“Reaper?” I ask. “But you haven’t met him yet.”
“No.” She looks around like he might be lurking and there’s a sudden energy to her, a lift.
Of course, Lizette has smelled his scent. And she’s into it. Like with mine. Like with Knight’s.
It’s the fucking mark.
“He’s worse. Bad to the fucking bone, Lizette. A psychopath, they say. Better keep him on your side.”
“It’s hard to keep someone on your side when everyone either wants to fuck me or own me.” Her eyes sharpen. “Or reject me.”
“Got someone in mind with that rejection?”
“And it’s hard,” she says, ignoring me, gaze shifting as she plucks at the material on her thighs that’s like a second skin, “when I haven’t met them.”
I nod, glancing at Sierra and motioning to the stage. The music starts and a girl does a routine like the one Sierra did. I keep my gaze on the lithe, big titted girl.
The girl’s probably Lizette’s age, but she’s decades older in experience. And it shows in her boredom, her hardened, jaded expression.
The girl is good.
She won’t work out.
I need a mix of experience and sex and seduction wrapped in pliant, and one who’s innocent looking.
What I need is Lizette.
Fuck. No. What am I thinking?
I need someone like Lizette.
No way would I put a fucking omega on the stage.
Not unless she had scent blockers as well as O-blockers, and she only danced when she wasn’t in heat.
I know omegas do this kind of job that way. They’re only in heat a few times a year, so they know how to time it all. But I prefer to keep omegas out of our mix.
It’s too much like flirting with fate and the Council.
“You’ve met me,” I say.
She makes a small sound. “Yes. And you despise me, find me repulsive.”
“Do I?” I actually look away from the stage and catch the naked misery I don’t think Lizette knows she’s wearing.
The girl shifts and my being’s flooded with gardenias, that intoxicating and sumptuous scent that makes my cock start to harden. Fuck .
Repulsive? I had to keep away, be like that, otherwise her virtue would be in shreds and the pack would be in trouble.
If I or any of us rutted her while in heat, while she riled us up into the kind of lust I don’t think I’ve ever felt, then…
I don’t finish that thought.
She glances at the stage, pressing her lips together. And I hold up a hand. Sierra scurries over to lead the girl off, and then the next one begins. Lizette looks back at me.
“Guess I can see why. You’re surrounded by sex and beauty. No one needs me in the mix.” She stops. Swallows. “I don’t want to be in the mix. I just meant?—”
“I know what you meant, and I’m getting fucking bored. What do you want, Lizette?”
“To leave.”
“I’m not finished with you.”
She turns a little pale. “You know I need to be at the Council building very soon, so you’ll have to let me go.”
I offer her a small, hard smile. “You think you’re that important, they'll come looking for you?”
“Well, they tracked me down, so yes, maybe they will. Do you want to take that chance?”
Nice move, right there. I’ll give her that.
She’s angry but she managed to pull reason out of the hat. Because it is reason.
If we hadn’t thought of this already.
If the call hadn’t gone through today with Darcy pretending to be her.
The appointment’s been pushed back.
I watch the latest girl. She’s okay. In looks and demeanor, she fits the part. She’ll make a great waitress down here. Some of the girls will be topless waitresses at private events, but that’s up to them. Whatever… She’ll be scantily clad and make money. Not as much as performing on the stage, but money.
And she’s what the punters want.
“If I’d known you were that anxious to register and be on your way to your new handpicked-by-the-fucking-council mate, I’d have driven you myself.” I pick up my coffee and take a sip. “We can go now.”
“I just want to go home.” She drags in a breath, fingers worrying at the too-tight top she’s got on.
Dark colors suit her. Tight and body revealing is a honey pot. It’s a distraction. A thing to stir desire.
She needs to wear layers. Baggy, long fucking dresses. The baggier the better.
Yeah, and that’ll do fucking nothing.
Her appeal is more than tight clothes and curves that caress a man. It’s fucking her .
God, I’d love to send her far away and forget her, but with the mark, which could lead others right to us…I don’t fucking think so.
“Do you know what we saved you from?” I ask.
“Knight saved me.” She crosses her arms. “From a bad situation and I’m thankful. But I want to go home.”
Broken fucking record.
I’m about to taunt her, rile her, offer her a choice, when I catch movement near the door.
Reaper comes in and goes to the blackest corner of the bar. The bartender stops stocktaking and serves him.
I glance at Lizette, and her gaze is glued to him, cheeks flushed, and her pulse throbbing.
Then she meets my gaze, and it throbs harder, that pulse. “Is that?—”
“You’re not staying, not your business.”
She frowns as her cheeks redden. Fuck, it’s hot. I stand, crowding her.
“What do you want from me?” she asks breathlessly.
Oh, so many things…
Do we send her away, stick to plan A and let her go and make it so she has no choice but to choose to come back into our fold—until we can fix the problem with Knight’s nibble mark—of her own free will? Yes.
In her mind, it’s free will and her choice.
We’ll make it so we’re her only option.
“Nothing really. I’m busy enough. Shipments, bars and establishments to run.” I move a hand through the air. “Clubs. The Council and structured fucking society to tumble. Fortunes and power to take as ours. We’re busy men. We’re a busy and productive pack. You…you’re a pain in the fucking ass. Just rust on the gears, not oil.”
“That’s a lot of metaphor.”
“Think of it as a hobby.” I lean in. “So, little omega, are you going to stay and see if we can remove Knight’s mark, or do you want to explain it to your geriatric mate-to-be? Those are your choices. Pick one.”
“You’re a prick.”
“So I’ve heard,” I say. “You know going home would be temporary.”
“I know.”
My phone buzzes on the table, lighting up. It’s Knight and the one word, shipment , flashes. Fuck. I do have a shit-ton to do today, and I forgot about the drugs and booze coming in. Some of it legal, some of it not.
I nod at Sierra and motion for the next girl. Then I text Knight back.
Handle it.
I’ll join him when I’m done on the three fronts in this room. The burlesque dancers and strippers, Lizette, and Reaper.
“Then again,” I mutter, “I could make you fucking stay and you can’t do a thing about it.”
“They’ll look,” she says. “And I’ll find a way to get a phone or a way out. Then…I’ll report you.”
Her triumphant check-mate smile is adorable.
Because I can, because I want to, because I need to, I lean in close to her, lips brushing her soft, sweet-smelling hair, and I breathe in her skin, that scent, deep into my lungs and blood and bone.
“That outs you, too, sweet Lizette,” I say. “And when they find out you’re not so pristine…” I trace the mark on her throat, pushing in a little to make her moan. “They’ll probably nix the old guy and auction you off to someone far, far worse.”
She recoils, staggering. “You disgust me.”
Her eyes tell a completely different story.
“Right back at you.” I raise a brow. “And that’s exactly what they’ll do.”
I’m not lying.
“I don’t care.”
“Yeah, you do.” I laugh and shake my head. “I’m out of time and this was a fuck-ton longer than five minutes. Go and see Julien. He’ll get someone to take you home.”
I turn and go over to Reaper.
He’s watching the girl on the stage, but he didn’t miss a moment of our exchange just then. “Not her.”
I stop, look at the dancer. “Her? Why?”
He shrugs. “She’s weak. She’ll steal and try to blackmail us.”
“You know that by looking?” I get a drink from the bartender, Mason.
“Yes.” He pulls out his phone and types some things in, then slides it to me. “But I’ve met her.”
I nod and pick up his phone. It’s a picture of Craig Edmonton but young.
Wait. No it’s not.
It’s his son. Who’s a weak alpha, but is looking to carve a name. The article doesn’t say that, but it’s the gist as I scan the gazette from Hover Valley.
“Do you think this is why they really want Lizette?”
“It’s interesting.” He takes a swallow of his rum. “You’re letting her go? Plan A?”
“Yeah. I wanted to wait until tomorrow, but she’s antsy. She’ll find herself in trouble and come back for our protection. Then we can work at removing the fucking mark”
Reaper nods, taking a sip of his rum. “And when we fix it?”
“Then we release her somewhere to make her own way. Far from Starlight City.”
Far from us.
Far from me.