Subduing the Shark (Kinky Kritters: Las Vegas #5)

Chapter One

The guards at the holding facility didn't tell Jack where they were taking him.

He'd stopped asking questions three months earlier, when it became clear that no one assigned to watch him considered conversation part of the job.

Shifter council holding wasn't prison, technically, but the distinction had stopped mattering around week two.

Small room. Delivered meals. No phone. No visitors.

No information about when or whether he'd get out, because that decision didn't belong to the council, the guards, or the community defenders who'd processed the other three sharks through the system months ago.

It belonged to a lion bartender Jack had helped kidnap, and Amani hadn't said a word about Jack's fate since the day of the sentencing hearing when he'd looked at the council and said, "When I'm ready. "

Jack had spent a lot of time thinking about what ready would look like for Amani.

Whether it would come at all. Some nights in holding he'd been sure that the lion would simply never say the word, and Jack would sit in that room until the council got tired of paying for his meals and tossed him back to the shiver.

Other nights he'd thought maybe Amani would say ‘yes’ just to watch Jack suffer up close, which was fair enough.

Jack would have let him. The suffering wouldn't be new, just different.

When the guard opened his door that morning and said, "Get dressed, you're going," Jack didn't ask where.

He put on the clothes he'd arrived in three months earlier, tried not to notice how loosely they hung on him, and followed the guard to a van with blacked-out windows.

A different guard drove. Neither of them spoke.

He smelled where they were going before he saw it.

Deep in the warehouse district south of the Strip, the air shifted.

Concrete and car exhaust gave way to something warmer, denser, layered with the musk of dozens of shifter species packed into the same city block.

The van turned off the main road and pulled up in front of a glass-fronted office building that looked entirely ordinary from the outside.

A few stories of tinted windows. A lobby with a front desk.

Nothing that suggested what was underground.

Kinky Kritters.

He'd been there before, plenty of times.

Always at night, always with the shiver, always when the club was open and packed and the music shook the elevator on the way down.

He'd never been there in the daylight. The building looked different in the sun.

Smaller. Cleaner. Just an office building with a lion's den hidden inside.

The guard walked him to the front door and left. Didn't say goodbye, didn't wish him luck, didn't explain what was supposed to happen next. Jack stood on the sidewalk for a full minute before he made himself walk through the glass doors.

Bethany was behind the front desk. He hadn't forgotten what she looked like.

Amani's sister had the same amber eyes, the same high cheekbones, the same lean predator's build that made people forget she was barely five foot six until she opened her mouth and the lioness roared out.

She was doing a crossword puzzle when he walked in, and she didn't look up right away.

When she did, the pen in her hand went still.

"So, they finally said you could come."

Jack wasn't sure if she meant Amani or Lady Leo. It didn't matter. He nodded.

Bethany set the pen down and leaned back in her chair.

Her amber eyes were hard, the playfulness he remembered from his nights at the club scrubbed clean out of them.

She looked at him the way she'd look at a stain on the floor that someone else was going to have to deal with. "Downstairs. They're waiting."

He moved toward the elevator. Her voice followed him.

"And if you ever so much as breathe on my brother wrong, I'll shift and tear your throat out. I won't wait for my mother's permission."

Jack hit the elevator button and didn't look back.

The doors opened, he stepped in, and the smell of the club hit him like a wall.

Alcohol. Sweat. Leather. A dozen different musks from a dozen different species, soaked into the walls, floors, and furniture over years of use.

Under it all, faint but unmistakable, the warm heavy scent of lions.

This was their territory. Everything about the place announced it.

The elevator opened into the club and Jack blinked against the lights.

Full brightness, no music, no crowd. He could see everything.

The bar stretched along the far wall, bottles arranged with a precision that suggested someone who cared about every inch of it.

Tables and chairs spread across the main floor, most of them empty.

A hallway led to the private rooms. The whole space felt exposed without the crowd and the noise and the low lighting to shrink it down.

Lady Leo stood beside the bar with a martini in her hand.

Jack's stomach dropped.

She looked exactly as he remembered. Perfect posture, heels that made no sound on the concrete floor, dark hair pulled back in a bun so tight it seemed to hold her entire face in place.

Her gaze found him the second the elevator doors opened, and she watched him cross the floor without blinking.

She was a lioness. She could hold a stare longer than he could hold his breath.

There were three other people in the room.

Two of them were cops, or had been. They had an air about them.

Competent and ready. The one closest to Lady Leo was lean and angular, compact muscle under a button-down that was tucked in too precisely to be casual.

Dark hair, dark eyes, a face that gave nothing away.

He stood with his weight balanced, hands visible, positioned so that he could reach Lady Leo and the person behind the bar with equal speed.

Jack recognized him from the investigation.

Nero. The ferret. Amani's Dom and the head of security at Kinky Kritters.

He'd been a detective when Jack first encountered him.

In the early days after the kidnapping, Nero had been the one who'd come to the shiver house to take Jack's statement.

He'd been calm then too. Controlled. Reading everything Jack said and probably half of what he didn't.

The other cop stood further back, arms crossed, watching Jack's approach with an expression that mixed professional assessment with something harder to name.

He was bigger than Nero. Broader shoulders, thicker arms, brown eyes that tracked Jack's movement across the floor with a focus that felt almost physical.

A bloodhound. Jack could smell it on him.

Earth, warmth, and wet loam, like damp soil after rain.

Harold. Jack remembered the name from the holding facility paperwork.

He'd been the one to track Amani's scent to the van.

And behind the bar, half-hidden by Nero's position, stood Amani.

Jack's feet nearly stopped. He forced himself to keep walking, to keep his face neutral, to give them nothing.

But Amani. Amani looked nothing like the lion Jack remembered from the club.

The Amani he knew had worked the bar in tiny black shorts and nothing else, had grinned at everyone who came through the door, had moved through the room like he owned it because he did.

That Amani had been fearless, loud, golden, and alive.

The Amani who stood there in the bright lights was wearing a gray hoodie two sizes too big, with the sleeves pulled down over his hands. Jeans instead of shorts. He was thinner. His amber gaze found Jack and stayed there.

Jack watched something move behind them that he couldn't read.

Not fear, exactly, though that was part of it.

Amani's body was doing things his face wasn't admitting to.

His fingers worked the hem of the hoodie.

His weight stayed on his back foot, ready to move.

He tracked Jack's position in the room the way a prey animal tracks a predator, constant and automatic, even though Amani was anything but prey.

There was no doubt, Jack had done this to him.

Not alone, not by himself, but he'd been part of it.

He'd held the rope. He'd driven the van.

He'd known what Grainger was like, what the crane did to the people delivered to him, and he'd handed Amani over anyway.

Because the shiver needed a body. Because Amani was available and Lady Leo had recently upset the shiver.

Because Jack had wanted to belong badly enough to trade another person for it.

He'd known all of that in holding. He'd thought about it every day for months.

Thinking about it and seeing it were different things.

The hoodie was a different thing. The way Amani wouldn't come out from behind the bar was a different thing.

The fact that Nero was positioned like a shield between Jack and the man he loved was a different thing, and Jack deserved every inch of distance in this room.

"You showed up," Lady Leo said. It wasn't a compliment. It was a check mark on a list.

"Yes, ma'am."

She sipped her martini, studying him over the rim. "Months in council holding. I'm told you were cooperative. Didn't cause problems, didn't try to contact your shiver, didn't complain about the wait." She set the glass down on the bar. "None of that earns you anything here. You understand that."

Swallowing, Jack nodded.

"You're here because my son decided he was ready to have you here. That decision was his alone. The council didn't rush him. I didn't rush him. If he'd needed another few months, or a few years, you'd still be sitting in that room. Are we clear on that?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Lady Leo stepped away from the bar, heels silent on the floor. She stopped six feet from him. Jack resisted the urge to step back. She was a head shorter than him but the size difference was laughable. He was a shark on dry land. She was a lioness in her own den.

"Here's how this works. You'll be here three hours every night, starting tonight.

During those three hours, you will do every single thing my son tells you to do.

You will dress how he says. You will clean what he says.

You will serve who he says. If he tells you to scrub the toilets with a toothbrush, you'll scrub until they shine.

If he tells you to stand in a corner and not speak for three hours, you won't make a sound.

" She paused, letting each word settle. "Anything less than your complete obedience will result in consequences I don't think you want me to describe.

You've seen what I do to people who hurt my family.

You were part of the reason I had to do it. "

Jack held still. He deserved it. He'd known it was coming and he deserved it.

"The safe word at this club is Lioness." Lady Leo's voice dropped half a register.

"You say that word and everything stops.

Your punishment ends and you go back to the council for whatever they decide to do with you instead.

That's the only out I'm giving you. Use it if you need to, but understand what it means. "

Lioness. Her title. Her word. Woven into the foundation of the place so deep that even the safe word belonged to her.

"I won't need it," Jack said.

Her eyes narrowed. "That remains to be seen." She stepped aside, turning the floor over to the person behind the bar.

Amani didn't come out from behind it. He stayed where he was, hands on the bartop, Nero within arm's reach. When he spoke, his voice was steady, but Jack noticed the fingers pressing into the wood.

"You don't come near me. Not within arm's reach, not ever, unless I tell you otherwise." Amani's gaze was level and direct and it took visible effort to hold it there. "When I need something done, I'll relay it through Nero or Harold. You talk to them. Not to me. Not directly. Not until I say."

Jack nodded. "Okay."

"If I change my mind about this, you're gone. No argument. No second chance."

"I understand."

Amani held his stare for another moment, then looked away.

His hand returned to the hem of his hoodie, pulling at it, and Jack felt the weight of that small gesture like a fist to the chest. Months ago, Amani hadn't needed armor.

Since then, he wore it every day and it was a gray hoodie with sleeves long enough to tuck his hands in, and Jack's shiver had put him in it.

Nero stepped forward, not between them exactly, but close enough that the message was clear.

His dark gaze moved over Jack with a professional calm that revealed nothing and probably missed less.

"You'll check in with me at the start of every shift.

I'll tell you where Amani wants you and what he wants done.

You have questions, bring them to me or Harold, if he happens to be here.

Not to Amani, not to Lady Leo, not to Bethany.

You do your hours, you leave. That's it. "

"That's it," Jack repeated.

"Your shift starts at nine tonight. Don't be late."

Lady Leo picked up her martini again and turned her back on him, which was either a dismissal or a statement about how little of a threat she considered him.

Probably both. Nero returned to his position near Amani.

Harold stayed where he was, arms still crossed, still watching Jack with those deep brown eyes.

Jack looked at Amani one more time. The lion wasn't looking at him anymore.

He was rearranging bottles behind the bar, his hands steadier as that they had something to do, his face turned away.

The hoodie swallowed him. He looked smaller than Jack remembered, and Jack was suddenly, violently certain that Amani wasn't smaller at all.

He was just hiding. Pulling himself in. Making himself a target that was harder to find.

Jack turned and walked back to the elevator. Hit the button. Waited.

Behind him, the club was silent except for the faint clink of bottles being rearranged by hands that used to move through this space like they owned every inch of it.

The elevator arrived. Jack stepped in, pressed the button for the lobby, stood very still as the doors closed.

The smell of the club faded. The weight of what he'd participated in settled into his bones in a way that three months of thinking hadn't managed.

He had nine hours until his shift started.

He needed to find out if the shiver would take him back, because he had nowhere else to sleep.

The holding facility hadn't given him money or a phone.

He had the clothes on his back and a sick feeling that had been building since he'd seen Amani's hands disappear inside those sleeves.

He walked out of the building and into the Las Vegas sun and started walking toward the shiver house. It was a long hot way. He had time.