Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
RíO
B eing a manager fucking sucked.
Truthfully, it’d been one of the first jobs I applied to when I blew into town, and on each application, only a small portion of my information was accurate. Including food service experience. It wasn’t like I would be able to write down my actual work experience without getting arrested by authorities, human and otherwise. Or, I shuddered to my core, my family would catch up to me.
It wasn’t really all that hard, I’d found. Vinny’s was a pretty well-oiled machine, the menu simple, and the mixture of townie and student employees were far more chill than other… associates I’d dealt with in the past.
But when some perfect storm of food poisoning, no-call/no-shows, and summer vacations hit, I was the one it fell back on. When Robby had started looking pale and slightly green, I’d sent him home despite his protests. We hadn’t been busy by any means, but there was a large gap between manning a closing shift with one other person and doing it in your own. I’d never be frightened by a human, but wow, people got fucking difficult when it came to their food. Combine that with having to make the food and take the orders and shut everything down on my own, I was ready to get the fuck out of here.
One of the last things on my checklist was to take the trash out, and the final task had my skin buzzing with the knowledge that I’d be free soon. The skatepark would still be hopping, alive with people out, and I could already feel the vibration of my wheels rolling on the concrete. Metal and sweat and fucking air. They were all waiting for me.
And maybe a certain honey-eyed girl.
While I lifted the trash bags into my hands and nudged my hip at the door to get it to swing open, I replayed the feeling of her mouth on mine for the thousandth time. How the hot suction of her pretty lips almost did me in. Christ, how she saw Alex kneeling for me, and instead of turning that little nose up and running out of the room, she’d just sunk down beside him.
The first trash bag flew into the dumpster with a heavy, plastic thud, and my back shivered with the memory of Ramona clinging onto me while I touched her. How she’d done it again while I took her home. One was with my fingers swirling between her legs while the other was while I handled us on my bike, but both were her giving me her trust. She handed her body over to me so easily and beautifully, just the barest flash of it in my mind’s eye had my heart picking up and my cock plumping in my jeans.
I flung the last two bags over and into the dumpster, the noise more muffled now. What I wouldn’t give to brush my teeth over Ramona’s soft skin again. For her to let me peel back all that she’d slathered over herself to try and hide what those gorgeously haunted eyes screamed anyway. Would she be able to do the same thing to me? Flay me open and leave tears streaming down my cheeks and my fangs coming out?
My chest started a weird pulling at the thought, and I yanked the hair tie from the top of my head. I breathed a sigh, trying to get my futile desires for Ramona to clear as the tension on my scalp released. My hair fell across my back in a comfortable, swishing weight. I wiped my hands off on my jeans.
Nah—my heart twinged, but I pressed on with the reality check—any long-term thing couldn’t happen.
I locked up quickly, whistling the newest song the band was working on, and climbed onto the back of my bike. Night creatures chittered, barely audible beneath the engine rumble and the whistling of humid wind as I made the ten-minute trip to the park. There were no screaming cicadas within the symphony of sound, which kept me from truly sinking into the comfort, but the heat seeped into my skin, burying in my pores. Dios ayúdame if I ended up sticking around through the winter.
I pushed that awful thought away at the sight of the white fluorescent lights and illuminated concrete. The chain-link fence surrounding the skate park just outside of town was a transparent shadow that kept the place in its own sort of bubble.
After parking amongst the five or so cars and settling my helmet on the seat, I was already pulling my board from the straps that secured it to my backpack by the time I made my way inside. Someone was playing Arch Enemy on a bluetooth speaker, and the sound of boards kicking off into the air and slamming back down helped the rest of my tension from work bleed away.
I dropped my stuff near a free stretch of fence and rolled to the bowl. Some kids were already taking turns dropping in, and once I had an opening, I let myself tip down the steep incline and glide into its depths.
Time slipped away, my worries crumbled and fell, and it was just me and the board. I spent some time grinding one of the rails, laughing along with the companionable hollers when I landed a kick flip.
People came and went, and a little while after I discarded my shirt on top of my backpack, Tyler showed with his board and waved me over.
He pulled two Tecates out of his backpack that he’d dropped next to mine. I accepted the one he thrust toward me and popped the can open. The cold, hoppy taste slid comfortably against the loose calm I was already feeling. Goosebumps prickled my heated skin that’d become a little damp from me working my body with no break since I’d gotten here.
Tyler’s sharp elbowing at my side had my eyes flying open, not sure when I’d closed them, and his babyface filled my field of vision. He was scrubbed clean from work, probably, and it always weirded me out to see him without his usual get up. To make him look less soft. Older.
“You left with her the other night, right?” His eyes cut somewhere over my shoulder, and like a fucking Pavlovian bell, my body heated from the inside like a rolling fire. My tongue licked droplets of beer off my lips, testing, hoping, that some lingering taste of Ramona was still there. The bar in my tongue clicked against my teeth in a gesture that I would never fucking admit was nerves.
Annoyed with myself and excitement shooting all the way down to the ends of my fingers and toes, I didn’t even bother acting nonchalant. What would be the point?
I turned, and, sure enough, Ramona was sitting on one of the concrete ledges that’d been waxed and grinded on thousands of times over.
She was in a delicious pair of denim shorts and a white sweatshirt that made her light brown skin look even deeper. A long, black plait sprouted from the back of her scalp, fell down her neck, and bounced softly against her chest while she laced up her hot pink skates.
“Yeah. I gave her a ride back home.” My voice was steadier than I felt, watching the meditative way Ramona secured her laces and lifted her over-ear headphones into position like she always did.
Tyler said something else, but I was drinking in the sight of those long, brown legs straightening as she stood and began to roll over to the flat area that wasn’t much a favorite for everyone else here. At first, I thought she hadn’t noticed me, very brazenly, staring at her as she rolled around. She circled her shoulders, rolled one-footed while shaking out each leg, and when she’d apparently warmed up enough, she pulled her phone from her back pocket. After tapping on the screen a few times, she cut those honey eyes to me as she stuffed her phone back in her jeans.
I grinned and swept my stare down to the quad wheels under her feet and back up to her face. Now that she was back in front of me, no longer a crystalized version in my memory, I felt my usual bravado slip into place. I made no mistake in my perusal of her body. The cute little furrow between her brows just before she twirled and began skating in rhythmic loops and bounces made my mouth water. What an intriguing minx she was.
“So, did you hit it? Is that why you didn’t come back after you left with her?” Tyler’s voice filtered back into my awareness while I watched Ramona dance to whatever music was playing from her headphones. If I’d really been concentrating, I’d have probably been able to discern what it was, but the forms of her arms and legs making fluid shapes out of the song she listened to, and Tyler’s presence pressing against my side, were stealing all of my attention.
It took me about ten seconds longer to process his question than it normally would’ve, but when I did, I didn’t even bother keeping the venom out of my words. “Why the fuck does it matter?”
I looked back at him, but he was just drinking his beer and watching Ramona, interest clear in his stare. Just to make it worse, he answered with eyes still glued on her, “I mean, I usually prefer dick, but she’s hot as fuck.”
I had to breathe through the possessive wrath that crashed into me and almost took him out at the same time. My hand crumpled the aluminum of my half-empty beer, and moisture spurted around my fingertips where my claws had sprung out to sink into the can. “Shit,” I muttered and willed the razor-sharp points to retract.
This wasn’t me—I didn’t dream up ways I could murder one of the few friends I’d made in town just because he expressed interest in the same piece of ass I couldn’t go more then five minutes without thinking about. Sex was fun, and combine that with my commitment to put down roots a total of nowhere, there was no room for certain stuck-up girls with wolf shifter blood and the most enticing scent I’d ever encountered.
I plugged the opening on the top of the can with my thumb and turned it sideways so I could shotgun the rest of the beer through the holes I’d made. No use wasting a good Tecate when it was so hard to find in this town.
The fizzy cold shot down my throat, cooling off the instinct to shift and maul the shit out of Tyler’s face and throat. It didn’t, however, douse the flare of possessiveness and desire I felt while I watched Ramona wind and spin on her toes, arms outstretched and braid swaying. Her black lashes fluttered against her cheekbones, and it reminded me of how prettily she’d held me in her mouth and tasted. Choked.
After I’d downed the whole thing and crushed the can the rest of the way, I shoved the empty into Tyler’s chest and caught his surprised startle. “Don’t touch her.” I knew that I was being an asshole to the first person that’d been nice to me when I moved to town, but as I started rolling over to Ramona, I couldn’t make myself care. I wasn’t a stupid dog that had trouble sharing, but the thought of Ramona leaning in and trusting someone else made me want to roar.
The closer I got, the more I recognized the music sound coming from her headphones. It was a deep, groovy sound that just emphasized the buttery way she moved and bopped on her skates.
On my board, I circled her imaginary dance floor while she did some intricate repetitive crossing pattern with her feet. Her gaze rested on a fixed point on the ground in front of her, but every few seconds, she’d look up at me with a wary expression and flick her eyes back to the ground again. As I made another revolution around her, I sniffed the air, but there was no fear.
“Working on something new?” I asked, letting my board screech as I pivoted to keep circling her. She was chewing on her lip, continuing the pattern over and over. It lacked the fluidity of her other movements, and every so often, she’d lose the rhythm, pause, and start over.
After a few seconds of her flying through the movement, she lost pace again. This time, though, she huffed and made a quick spin with a jarring stop, as if it was its own gesture of irritation. “I was.”
A warm tug pulled at the middle of my chest, and I brought myself to a stop, facing her. Ramona managed to cock a hip, thigh muscle flexing with the movement, and her eyes were challenging.
“Am I bothering you, Princess?”
She flicked her braid over her shoulder and tugged at the cuffs of her sleeves. Like she’d done when she walked in on me and Alex.
She lifted her chin, just a little bit. “No. What’s up, Río?” Damn.
I stepped off my board and crossed the few steps to her. Ramona didn’t look away as I approached, but she did that tugging at her sweatshirt again.
Her shifter blood called to mine, made it hum, but where the specific note of Wolf usually just made me irritable, the hint of it on her was smoother. Twisting with the half-there human scent that was lighter. She was a mixture of soft and wild, sweet and sour, other and alike. I leaned into her ear, letting the strands of my hair be the only part that brushed her heated skin. “I like it when you say my name, rich girl.”
Ramona’s answering shiver was fucking delicious. So much so that I shoved my hands into my pockets to keep from pulling her close to me so that I could drag her somewhere dark and lick the sweat that was running down the sides of her face and neck.
She didn’t move to touch me either, but she also didn’t roll away. Desire was wafting off of her like thick trails of steam, and I fought to keep myself on the edge. So that I could stay trapped in it.
“Well, I don’t like it when you call me ‘rich girl’.” Her voice was steadier than I expected, and when I pulled back to see her face, her honey eyes were narrowed in defiance. My lips pulled up, and the corners of hers twitched in answer before she wiped her face flat.
Again, I leaned forward, but this time, Ramona gave the barest tilt with her expression still nonexistent. Our mouths were a quarter breath from touching. “But that’s what you are, Ramona. A pretty rich girl who looks even prettier on her knees.”
She sucked in a hitching breath, and my half-hard cock went fully stiff at the challenge I felt rumbling within her like the rearing of a wave before it crested and crashed into you. “And you’re an arrogant fuckboy. Isn’t it about time to go home and lick your own asshole? Or whatever cats do.”
I felt like I was going to punch out of my fucking jeans. Before I could catch myself, my hands were around her waist and pulling until there was absolutely no space between our fronts anymore. I gave into the urge that’d been tugging at me since I’d rolled over to her and dragged the flat of my tongue up the side of her face.
Ramona stopped breathing all together and clung to my bare shoulders, fingers scrambling in the same way she had when I’d made her come. The memory of it was engraved in my mind and my body. My chest rumbled with a purr that would’ve surprised me had I not already been all-in with this girl. It was like I was in quicksand or some shit. “I’d rather taste that little pussy of yours, Ramona.”
She stilled. For a split second. Tiny. But when she moved her hands with a forced smoothness, it was as if someone had shoved my head into a bucket of cold water. My body was slower to calm, but the coolness was closing in. My grip on her waist softened. I chastely kissed the edge of where I’d licked. “Or I could have you on the back of my bike again.”
A gust of tension left her body. “Uh. Sure.”
I smacked another kiss, barely there and gentle. “Can I give you my number, Ramona?”
“Um, yeah, that’s fine.” She paused, but when I didn’t release her, she just fumbled her hand into the back pocket of her shorts and produced her phone. After opening up her contacts, she held it out to me, silently asking me to put in my number.
Instead, I bent again to whisper in her ear. “Put it in for me, Princess.”
She shivered, even though I knew she was damn-near overheating in that sweatshirt. With shaky fingers, Ramona typed in the number I recited slowly for her. She spelled out my name into the contact last, and her thumb on the ‘save’ button felt final. A voice in the back of my mind, laced with warning, tried to stop me from what was already done. Because she was far from a piece of ass or some tasty souvenir to remember this town by.
Shit, shit, shit, “Text me,” I said with a finality that I knew I desperately needed.
I felt Ramona’s stumble when I turned to grab my board and march over to get my stuff. Out of the corner of my eye, I made sure she wasn’t going to fall, and when her body slowly began to bob and sway again, I focused my attention on shoving my shirt into my backpack and strapping my board to it. Tyler was over by the bowl, talking with whoever, which was good. I didn’t know what I would’ve done if he’d still been gawking at Ramona. Probably not something smart.
It was absolutely not fleeing when I shoved on my helmet, got on the back of my bike, and started her up. It totally wasn’t running away when I felt Ramona’s eyes on me but didn’t meet them. My body was still antsy, vibrating with the release of skating and wound right the fuck back up with my princess in front?—
No. She’s not ‘my’ anything, I growled into the air coursing past me as I rode home. This town and this life was just another stop. Temporary. Sure, I could use her to pass the time, go back and forth and explore both of our bodies together until time was up.
And watch those honey eyes darken and truly close off when I packed up my shit and moved on to the next place.
Maybe she wouldn’t care, I turned down my street and tried to reason with myself. Antler Pointe’s historic downtown was small compared to other cities I’d been to, but when I’d been passing through those weeks ago, it’d been unknown to me and those from my past, had a skatepark, and a large enough forest to get lost in when I needed it.
My apartment wasn’t anything fancy, but it had large windows and a loft so that I could sleep high up. After the less than ten-minute ride from the park—what with literally no traffic due to the small town streets being completely dead at this point—I was pulling up to the souvenir shop I lived above and went around the corner. There was a small parking lot for employees and those of us that lived in the units above this block’s shops, and I snagged one of two spots left.
I sucked in a deep breath that did nothing to calm the conflict in my head. Everything in me wanted to bolt back down the street to the park. To catch Ramona before she went home.
To that Pack Leader she lived with.
“Fuck,” I muttered and climbed off my bike. I’d forgotten about that fucking detail. Packs were annoying, insular groups, and in my experience, their leaders were the worst of them all. Territorial on a whole, irritating level, baring their fangs and touting claim to land that should belong to everyone. Once I’d set my sights on this town and learned that there was a Wolf pack, I reasoned that I wouldn’t be here long enough to ruffle their fur. If I’d been a Wolf, that would’ve probably been a different story.
But I’d gotten a taste of the sister of the Pack Leader. When he’d stormed out of the house, I could immediately scent the familial bond between them.
The competitive part of me, the fuckboy, as Ramona had called me, wanted to pull her into a tree, right there on her brother’s land, and fuck her until she screamed. To give us both something to claim on Wolf land.
I was lost in the fantasy of that as I started toward the little alleyway where the door leading upstairs was. What it’d be like to sink into Ramona and drag my claws across her side as I held us pinned and steady, way up high. She’d make that groaning and screeching noise of hers, wrapping her legs around me with terrified pleasure.
“Ayo, cousin.” As soon as I rounded the corner, the familiar voice echoed softly in the darkness, and I stopped in my tracks.
Benny pushed off of the brick wall he’d been leaning against, and a mixture of fear and brain-splitting rage crashed inside of me. This couldn’t be fucking happening. Not today, not here, not now.
He walked closer toward me, bringing himself and his black, perfectly tailored suit into the light. I never understood why my father insisted his employees dress the way they did, other than the fact that he was infuriatingly old fashioned. About a lot of things.
But Benny was low-level, a hanger-on that was tolerated because he did whatever bullshit job was thrown at him. “You’re not my cousin,” I forced my spine still and faked a rigidity to disguise my muscles already descending into that slinking place.
He shrugged and tried to stand taller at the same time. Now that we were just six feet or so from each other. I wasn’t short, but he had a good few inches on me and at least fifty pounds. His suit fabric shifted softly as he put his hands in his pockets, but I saw the sleekness of a gun tucked in a holster underneath his jacket.
“We were basically raised that way. You never used to have a problem with me calling you that before.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “I think you’ve got the history confused. But it doesn’t matter. What do you want?” How had this happened? How in eight years had I finally been discovered?
His dark hair was slicked back with some gel that made it look shiny under the yellow-toned security lights. Benny gave me an unimpressed once-over, undoubtedly taking in my ripped jeans, helmet tucked under my bare arm, and windswept hair. But being underestimated by anyone from my father’s life was to be expected. They’d always treated me that way. Maybe that was why I let my guard down. Put down more roots here than I had anywhere else. Madre de Dios, I’d even fucking joined a band.
“I was sent to scout out this area, and wouldn’t ya know it? I caught scrawny little Río’s scent while walking to grab some dinner? Followed it back here and figured I’d wait to see what happened. You caused quite the stir when you slunk off into the night, cousin.”
He was going to have to stop calling me that. Although, he wasn’t going to be speaking for much longer, so I guessed it didn’t matter.
“So,” he continued, inching closer to me, “now that I’ve laid eyes on you, how about we head back and smooth over this whole thing? Your old man will be relieved to have you back.”
I fought the bile trying to rise in my throat and the phantom lashes, the torture that’d reached almost every inch of my skin. “Didn’t you hear? I don’t have a father. He’s dead to me, and I should’ve stayed dead to him. Trying to offer me up so he’ll throw some promotion at you is fucking pathetic, Benny.”
The easy demeanor cracked, frustration crumpled his face, and he put a hand on his gun like that would do anything. “Name’s not Benny, and you know that, you piece of shit. I’m letting them know I’ve found you, and then we’re gonna go back to Georgia.”
Quick as if it hadn’t been there, my fear was snuffed out. What Benny just let slip was that he was here alone. And that he hadn’t told anyone of this personal mission to follow my scent and ambush me. I’d tried so much to be like Mamá, to kill all parts of me that were like Dad and my sisters, but the darkness that spilled over me like ink running over my soul was like putting on a favorite, worn jacket. It fit perfectly and was an armor I’d been kidding myself into thinking I’d shed forever.
Apparently, the fear I’d shoved off of myself and over a cliff fell right onto Benny. He tried to hide it, but the wisp of it in the air made my mouth water. What this idiot cabrón, as Mamá would have called him, and others like him always seemed to fucking forget was that I’d been given the same treatment as my sisters. Just because I wasn’t a sociopathic bitch, or untethered more than not, didn’t mean that I was any less dangerous.
“Well, Benjamin . Seems like your shifter blood was good for something. But I’m not coming with you.” The thin trail of who I liked to think I really was silently apologized to Ramona for what I’d said.
It did land the mark that I wanted it to, though, because Benny pulled his gun and lunged toward me. Probably to try and get his arms around me and put the gun to my temple.
At this point, it was just insulting. But flashes of that time with my father were a low soundtrack as I twisted, dropping my helmet, and pounced. Dark rooms, blows to the head, punishing lacerations that left me bloody and malnourished and hollow when I did anything that was deemed incorrect. I wasn’t going back. I wasn’t.
I clung onto his back, letting my claws sink through his suit and into his flesh, and used my weight to twist us back into the darkness of the alley. I heard the gun clatter to his feet, and it thankfully didn’t go off. There weren’t any security cameras back here, as far as I knew, but I’d have to check back afterward to confirm.
He grunted and gasped in pain and surprise, and we both hit the ground, with him first and me still on his back. Benny tried to throw me off, and that sick part of me was disappointed with how little of a challenge this was. If he’d been smart enough to call in my location to someone with half a brain, they would’ve discouraged this half-cocked plan that wasn’t a plan at all. He bucked and hissed beneath me, shouting curses and trying to get the upper hand.
It was messy but oh so satisfying as I released my fangs and clamped them over the base of his skull and the top of his spine. Teeth crashing through tissue and bone and blood. I tightened my jaw that’d grown wider with my fangs and severed his spinal cord.
Blood smeared on my face, tasting delicious on my tongue, and his last twitches and garbles just made me hold on tighter.
I killed Benny in the alley behind my apartment, and I didn’t feel an ounce of remorse. Or, much of anything aside from inconvenience and the trails of adrenaline.
As much as I hated it, my father’s training continued to drive me as I listened for any concerned neighbors that may have heard our struggle. When there were none, I lifted his limp, heavy body into a fireman’s carry and went up the two flights of stairs to my unit.
On autopilot, I unlocked my door and dropped him gently to the ground. After running back to the alley to grab my stuff and his gun and confirm that there were indeed no cameras that could’ve captured the whole bloody encounter, I went home to deal with the body.
I kept the lights off as I stripped the suit from Benny’s body to properly dispose of later. His limbs flopped lifelessly as I moved him around, and once everything of his was in garbage bags by the door, I unbuttoned my jeans and kicked off my Vans.
A ding from my phone reverberated against the robotic calm. With a bloody and dirty thumb, I swiped open my screen.
Unknown
Hey, this is Ramona. Wanted you to have my number, too.
I blinked at my phone, reading the message over and over until who Ramona was sunk in, and the roots of her in my mind grew even more. Honey, acid, winter cold, soft skin, haunted.
A burning sigh forced its way from my lungs and through my nose. I clicked off my screen and threw my phone onto the couch.
Naked and tired, I closed my eyes and shifted, letting the magic woven through my body take over and rearrange. My muscles and bones contorted, and my psyche rode the current, bobbing with the change. Never fighting it but not getting lost to it either.
When it was over, my front paws thumped to the ground, and I was still Río. The most important parts of him, anyway. A roaring hunger that I’d been ignoring since I left work had curved and shifted to one that was more than content with the body I was dragging up to the lofted area near my bed instead of craving something like a burger.
The rest of my evening was spent making my way through Benny. Filling my belly with the meat and bones I pulled from his body. My Jaguar wasn’t fond of the taste of intestines, but my rational mind pushed us through. There couldn’t be anything left of him, and eating everything was killing more than a few birds with one stone.
So, I crunched and tore, tail swishing, while I looked out of the large windows that let in the ghostly glow of the moon.