Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
H e was mesmerized. That was the only way he could describe the hold Lucky had over him.
Light was barely coming through the bottom of the blackout curtains in the hotel suite.
His eyes traced her face and his tiger moved through his chest, urging Kaine to mark her.
He didn’t want to leave without the woman being tethered to him, but business called.
Griff had woken him up at dawn, handing him a change of clothes and letting him know they had an issue with a few of their runners. His phone buzzed with a reminder that his security was on the way up to get him.
For once, he didn’t want to drop what he was doing to handle it.
He’d been ready for a mate, but everything about this and her threw him off-kilter. Kaine had a schedule and a set of rules he followed when he was out, and yet, he spent an entire weekend at an unsecured location where any number of his enemies could get to him. Time with her mattered to him more.
Kaine was anxious to get to know her past the facts in his background check.
Despite the lack of artifice in Lucky, reading her wasn’t as easy as one would assume.
The way she moved through a room full of strangers spoke of her confidence, and the fact that she allowed a stranger to pay for her room displayed her boldness.
But with every hour he’d spent with her this weekend, a soft, vulnerable side was revealed, and that scared him.
Could he and his tiger answer with the level of tenderness required?
Both animal and man were callous and cold, shaped by years of training by men with no give.
A part of him worried how she would fit in his world.
He’d seen the stares they’d garnered at the auction, the whispers wondering who she was.
Lucky stood out in a room full of women trained to move about the world masking their lethal nature.
His mate wore her emotions easily on her face.
She didn’t dim anything about herself and it enchanted his tiger.
Kaine didn’t want to leave without alerting her and leaving a note would send the wrong message.
After the weekend they’d had together, he wanted no mistake about his intentions with her.
He needed her to know that although he was leaving, it was just for a moment, and he had no plans of letting up off her.
He traced her cheekbone with his finger, leaning down and kissing her lightly.
“Princess,” he called to her.
Sometime around dawn when they were finally exhausted, she’d asked him why he’d chosen that nickname for her.
Kaine called her that as a note to himself to handle her with care.
Plus, she would soon come to find out how much pleasure spoiling her would bring him.
He looked forward to it. His brother had always teased him about buying affection and perhaps that was part of it.
Bringing the women he was with pleasure pleased him and his tiger.
He already knew her being his mate would amplify that.
Lucky hummed before her eyes blinked slowly. “What’s wrong?” She attempted to sit up.
He held a hand to her chest to keep her still. “I got some business to handle and didn’t want to leave without letting you know.”
“Thank you for this weekend, I had a great time,” she murmured, pulling his head down for a kiss.
He deepened it, driving his tongue between her lips, wanting a lasting taste of her.
“Are you going home today?”
He’d managed to talk her into staying Saturday night even though she’d been determined to stay only one night. He knew another would be pushing it, but he asked anyway.
She nodded. “I have work in the morning,” she said reluctantly.
“If you change your mind, just let the front desk know.”
She gave him a sweet smile that clenched his heart. “Thank you, Rah.”
He nuzzled her cheek, leaving his tiger’s scent on her.
It was temporary, but that, coupled with the way he’d marked her skin, would satisfy his animal for now.
With one last lingering look at her, he left the bed, reaching the door as soon as his security knocked.
Griff nodded a greeting and filed in behind him, heading downstairs.
His driver was in the SUV idling at the valet station.
He and Griff slid inside and the car took off with no hesitation.
His tiger thrashed within him as they drove away from the hotel and her. Griff handed him a burner phone and Kaine sighed. Business never took a break in his world.
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry to bother you, boss. We got trouble at the parlor.” He recognized the voice of Drew, one of the Kings he worked with directly.
“A problem you couldn’t get your Jack to handle?”
“According to the Jack, it involves one of the Aces. He wouldn’t give information over the phone, and I know how you are about upper management.”
Kaine swallowed a growl. “Have the Jack meet me there,” he ordered the nervous male, ending the call and crushing the phone in his hand.
Griff held out a small trash bag, sliding it into the back for disposal when they were done.
“The old ice cream parlor,” Kaine ordered the driver. He turned his attention to Griff. “Any idea what this is about?”
It was Griff’s turn to sigh. “From what the Jack told me, a few low-level runners were fucking around at the spot and a fight broke out.”
“Drew said upper management. The fuck I care about errand boys?” Kaine got irritated.
He was far removed from their workers and had two levels of people that should’ve been called before him.
Underneath each Ace were a group of Kings who controlled their respective areas and zones, with Jacks under them that handled the day-to-day operations.
Getting Kaine involved was a bad sign for everyone.
Especially since he’d been called away from his mate for this.
“Supposedly, the Ace of Diamonds’ grandson is in trouble,” Griff informed him.
No one knew who the top members of the Aces were, save the Ace of Spades.
Kaine’s role in particular was unique because the ascension ceremony hadn’t been completed, so he wasn’t yet privy to that information.
Their individual ranking members knew who their respective Ace was, but lower members of the Aces had no names other than the captains in charge of them.
Griff was his head of security and had been for the ten months Kaine had been in the Ace of Spades position.
He knew some of what Kaine knew, but even he didn’t know who all the members of the Aces’ board were.
Griff had just enough information to keep Kaine safe.
And keep him out of situations like the one they were driving into.
“And how, pray tell, does anyone know that?” He went from irritated to incensed, his tiger swiping through him.
“The fucking jit was yelling it out, throwing his weight around.”
Kaine chuckled. “How many chances do I give, Griff?”
“I’m already knowing, Kaine.”
“I hope the Ace of Diamonds has other grandkids.”
Griff snickered and Kaine sighed. Kenneth had just asked him to be careful with the way he moved, but since he was the only name anyone knew within the organization, he needed their runners to know he wasn’t to be played with.
He was silent on the rest of the drive, frowning at the number of cars outside of the abandoned strip mall where his men sometimes conducted business.
It was a place he’d never stepped foot in prior to this day.
His Jacks handled this kind of stuff, but because one of the Aces were involved, here he was.
Griff shook his head and pulled his gun out before walking around the SUV to let Kaine out.
A Jack met them outside of the parlor. The short, rangy male was dressed as though he’d jumped straight from bed, a rumpled t-shirt on top of a pair of jogging pants with a switch shoved into the front of his pants.
From his scent, he was a cougar shifter.
There was a hard edge to the cougar’s eyes as he lowered his gaze.
“Kaine,” he greeted with a gruff voice. “Sorry to call you in this shit.”
“Did you go inside?” Kaine asked him. The male shook his head. “And your runners didn’t give you any information outside of a rundown of the situation?”
“Just said it involved an Ace. I shut down the conversation once they said that and called Drew.”
Kaine studied him, cranking up his senses to see if the male was lying. Finding no deception, he nodded. The Jack’s ignorance would save his life.
“Get with Drew to find a replacement for this place and the runners you about to lose.”
The cougar glanced up then, a look of understanding tightening his face before he nodded his assent and headed back to his car. Dismissing the Jack, they entered the space.
Kaine recognized the young shifter claiming to be an Ace’s grandson.
That was the irony of the secrecy surrounding the guild.
Oakridge was not a small town, but the families within the guild were part of the same social class.
Their children went to the same schools, attended the same functions.
The whole premise of concealment depended on jackasses like the one laid out on the table keeping their mouths shut.
It was a delicate balance that required all to keep their individual secret because once it slipped…
Knowledge of the top made them all vulnerable to outsiders searching for a way to weaken the guild.
Kaine looked around the space, observing the cards on a booth table along with drinks and food, scattered as though there had been a party here. There was a dead male on the floor.
“What happened?” he asked.
The young male on the table whimpered, further grating on his nerves.
“Somebody speak up.” He didn’t raise his voice, but everyone in the room flinched.
“We were just hanging out and shit got out of hand.”
“Out of hand? One of my runners is dead on the floor, and another motherfucker who ain’t got no business over here is whining like a bitch on the table. That’s just out of hand to y’all?”
Kaine turned his attention to the dumbass on the table. The whining stopped immediately and the temperature in the room dropped. Kaine’s tiger filled his body.
“This grandfather you keep throwing around know where the fuck you at?” Kaine asked.
The male shook his head, his eyes wide, the shape changing as his animal tried to force the shift. Fur sprouted along the young male’s arms as his cat attempted to heal the bullet wound on his side.
Kaine sighed and waved over one of his enforcers. “Take this jackass to the clinic.”
The shifter nodded and guided the injured male from the room. He trusted his security to keep the lion quiet until his family could be contacted.
“Anything stored in here?” Kaine asked the remaining males.
His gaze swept the room again. The place was an old abandoned ice cream shop that the guild used to store bodies when needed and these idiots were hanging out like it was a hookah lounge.
“Whose idea was this?”
The remaining males eyed each other before the older one stepped forward. “We met the lion at a club last night and it was his idea to come back here.”
“And how did he know about this location?”
They both shrugged, but the guilt was in their eyes.
“Y’all some talking motherfuckers,” Griff snapped before leaving the room to check the other areas.
“Once ol’ boy started shouting about who his grandfather was, I figured we needed to call someone,” one of the males said.
“And who did you call?” Kaine rolled his shoulders, hoping his tiger wouldn’t buck out of his control.
“I called my Jack and told him there was a problem that needed to go up to Drew,” the male answered.
“And did you tell the Jack details about the male’s identity?”
The male’s answer would determine how far they would have to go today.
“Just that we had a situation with an Ace,” he answered, sealing his and everyone else’s fate. “Kaine, man, it won’t happen again.”
“I don’t want to hear it actually,” Kaine told him, nodding at Griff once his head of security re-entered the room. “Phones.”
With shaking hands, the remaining males pulled out their phones and handed them to Griff as he passed.
Griff opened the door for Kaine and the young shifters in the room released the breaths they had been holding.
Kaine turned his back on them and headed toward the door, shaking his head at their foolishness.
Knowing confidential information about the Aces was a death sentence.
“Make sure the phones are swept,” Kaine ordered Griff as they got back into the SUV.
He spotted his men slinking from the side of the building where they’d been planting explosives. The ice cream shop was now compromised. Leaving it exposed posed a liability, and Kaine didn’t deal in liabilities. By the time they pulled out of the parking lot, the building was exploding.