by Tilly Pope
Hissy Fit
Cocky Cobras Book 1
Tilly Pope
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Epilogue
Also by Tilly Pope
About the Author
Copyright © 2020 by Tilly Pope
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
About Hissy Fit
We’ve been left a terrible legacy…
Can we ever escape?
Connor
Our parents died in a tragic accident, taking secrets with them.
Our destiny now? A snake shifter existence none of us want.
Me and my brothers can never leave Pythos for long.
And to top it all, vigilante assassins are out to kill us.
It’s lonely being damned to stay in this small desert town.
Riding my Harley keeps me sane…until it leaves the road.
Now I’m banged up in the hospital. Waiting to heal.
I can’t see her yet, but I’m falling for my doctor.
Her scent, her voice, her touch, everything about her.
She’s driving me wild…and I have to make her mine.
Short, hot, and over the top! If you love possessive alpha males, totally unrealistic insta-love romance, this one’s for you! No cliffhanger, no cheating, and a guaranteed HEA!
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Who’s your daddy?
1
Connor
I pass the “Welcome to Pythos” sign with barely a glance. I’ve driven by it so many times, it’s just another blur on the road. I do my best to ignore it, because every time I pass it, I have the fiercest urge to jerk the wheel and run it down, until all that’s left are splinters of wood and fractured letters littering the ground.
I hate that damn sign. It’s a constant reminder that I’m stuck this God-forsaken place.
I haven’t always been this disdainful about my hometown. A few years ago, I wasn’t such a miserable, resentful bastard. I used to love this place with its miles of desert, interrupted only by cacti and desert grasses. I loved the hot days, the cold nights, and the never-ending sunshine.
Back then, before the shit hit the fan, life in the desert was simple. I think back to my brothers’ panting breaths all around me as we ran rampant through the neighborhood like a pack of wild animals.
Back then, wild animal was just a metaphor.
Simple times indeed.
I turn onto Main Street, where I pass the worn-out sign directing drivers towards Pythos Lake, a place full of good memories. My brothers and I spent many weekends camping out there as kids, back when it was free to pitch a tent for the night. But that was before they built the community center on the grounds to attract yuppies who loved indoor plumbing and free Wi-Fi. If you ask me, that’s not camping. Camping is roughing it in a tent with the bugs biting and the moonlight shining. It’s pissing in the bushes and waking up to the sound of birds singing and nothing else. It’s not 4G and a flushing toilet.
My oldest brother, Aidan, used to tell the scariest ghost stories at the lake. He gave us all the worst nightmares. Or, at least, back then they seemed scary. Now, I’d gladly live out that faux fear rather than facing up to the true horror of my reality.
Our parents were never strict, but there’s nothing like the bliss of hanging out with my brothers for a few days without anyone telling us what to do, what to eat, when to go to bed. We bonded at the lake. We got to be serious and silly. We learned how to take care of ourselves, and how to take care of each other.
Good thing we did, because our parents have been gone for seven years now. They’d gone to Boulder to celebrate their thirtieth wedding anniversary, and on the way back, their plane crashed in the Rockies. Their sudden deaths left behind pain, sorrow and secrets we’re still trying to understand.
My phone rings, knocking me out of my thoughts.
I let the call ring a few more times as I stop at the light near Wal-Mart. They argued against it for a good year, but it got built in the end, anyway. It’s an eyesore, for sure, but I’m not going to deny the convenience of being able to buy a hammer, oil filter and string cheese all in one stop.
I reach over and hit the answer button on my dashboard. The low, rumbling tone of Aidan’s voice fills the car.
“You nearly here? That bike nut is back, and he says he’ll only talk to you,” comes across the Bluetooth speakers. I can practically hear his frown as he speaks.
“Yeah, I’m on Main now. Just tell him to hold on and I’ll be there soon. And don’t say anything rude to him, Aid.”
Aidan grumbles, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just hurry up.”
Aidan has the worst customer service skills of all of us, which is why we keep him in the back of the shop, where he can play nice with engines and avoid people. He speaks engine better than human most of the time.
Meanwhile, I’m the face of the operation. The one standing behind the desk in the office six days out of seven, taking orders, making calls, ensuring the garage stays functional and everyone gets paid on time. I’m both admin and manager, by choice and by necessity, since I’m the only one who ever listened when Dad told us how to file taxes, which suppliers to order from, customer relations, and pay checks.
So, the responsibility of keeping the family business afloat falls on me. Somehow, I’ve also come to be the head of the family. It doesn’t make any sense, since Aidan’s two years older than me, but that’s how my father wanted it. It’s why he left me the instructions on how to survive in his absence, how to navigate the consequences of his death.
I suppose I brought it on myself in a way. When I was a kid, I wanted to be just like my dad. I wanted to learn how to do what he did, and he let me, starting when I was thirteen. I had over a decade of learning from him before he died, and in that time, he taught me everything he knew. About running a garage, at least.
The few times I’ve struggled with anything, the answers were always explained in his notebook. It’s an old, leather-bound thing with the cover nearly worn off. It’s filled with scraps of paper and hastily scribbled notes in my father’s illegible handwriting, which no one can read but me.
The handbook is not only meant to help us at the garage. It’s also supposed to help us carry out our family legacy. Or, I should say, help me help my brothers carry it out, since the notebook was left to me, rather than to all of us.
Not that Aidan or our younger twin brothers, Dara and Brodie, know anything about it. I lied and told them it was for all of us. The days after losing our parents wasn’t the time to break it to my siblings that Dad had played favorites. Not after all the other dirty secrets had been revealed and left us reeling. When I opened the safe and saw the notebook sitting there, the big lie came out, smooth as silk.
I still haven’t figured out why they kept it from us.
You see, on my father’s side of the family, they’ve been shifters for over three centuries. Ever since o
ne of my great-great grandfathers married into an Egyptian family. Supposedly, his wife was descended from the asp that Cleopatra held to her breast, and her genes have caused every male McKinley to become a cobra at some point in his life.
My mother, while not a shifter, comes from a line of female were-dragons. The genes from her family sometimes skip a generation, which is why she was fully human, but her genetic makeup, combined with my father’s, gave us the power to shift into cobras.
Slithering, deadly cobras, and Mom and Dad never said a word about it. I only found out in the book he left when they died.
Our cobra genes aren’t like normal genes, though. It’s not like with eye color, where you’re born with blue eyes, and they stay blue. No, with our genes, the first shift sometimes doesn’t happen until we’re grown up. Sometimes even later in life, and from the time we’re born until we first shift, we don’t even know we’re shifters.
It’s usually caused by an abrupt change of circumstances that results in high emotions. Like my parents dying, for example. Their funeral was the first time I shifted, and it scared the crap out of me.
Were-shifters aren’t widely accepted by society. In fact, there are people across the world that want us all dead to ensure the safety of the human race. They see us as monsters who are dangerous to humankind, and they’ve taken it upon themselves to form vigilante groups of serial killers who seek out shifters.
The government does nothing to stop these people. Killing a shifter isn’t even a felony in the United States. It’s a misdemeanor, on the same level as a speeding ticket. It garners nothing more than a slap on the wrist.
Thankfully, there is an underground group of government agents who have decided to take pity on us. They protect us, as long as we stay in one place. It’s called The Federation, and they have an agent in every city that has a known shifter.
Every shifter family gets their own agent, who devotes their time to protecting us. We never learn their names or their identities. All I know is that we can’t leave our registered city, and we can’t escape The Federation.
My dad signed himself into The Federation’s protection when he moved to the U.S. from Ireland in his twenties. His father had just been killed by an Irish anti-shifter gang, and he knew he wasn’t safe. He left the protection of The Irish Federation and moved to the States with a passport, a backpack, a change of clothes, and nothing else.
God knows why he picked Pythos of all places to settle, but he did. Maybe because of the vast desert land. He signed with The Southern California Desert Area Federation and part of the agreement stipulates the shifter family will pay twenty percent of their income to The Federation for their protection.
If a shifter dies, like my parents did, The Federation requires an additional fee to dispose of the body. It’s a complicated, expensive process. Shifters revert to their animal form upon death, so arranging for the recovery of bodies takes effort, and effort takes money. Specifically, half of our shop’s net income until the 300-thousand-dollar bill is paid off, which could take the next hundred years.
I tilt my head toward the hot desert sun. Heat calms the cobra in me. It has ever since I first shifted. No matter how sunny it is, I always need more heat. I crave the sun like a drug. I’d coil up in here all day if I could, letting the car reach boiling temperatures as the sun’s rays heat up my skin, but Benny is inside waiting for me and if I leave that man alone near Aidan too much longer, bad things might happen.
As trying as Benny can be, he’s the only person who understands my love of bikes. Motorcycles. Harleys. I love building them, working on them, riding them. When everything else is so dull, mundane, and predictable, I just hop on my bike and ride.
“Shit,” I say, and get out of the car.
I breathe in the familiar smell of engines, coffee and eucalyptus. The coffee comes from the office, where I almost always have a pot brewing to combat the fatigue that comes with our nocturnal lifestyle and insomnia. The eucalyptus comes from the plants that line the sidewalk leading into the shop.
My mom planted them over a decade ago and the smell still makes me think of her. Her laughter lines crinkling the corners of her green eyes, her long auburn hair and her kind smile. I’d always thought her to be so open and honest.
But, as it turns out, she wasn’t. If she were honest, we would have known about being shifters way before they died.
Even now, I don’t hate her. I just miss her.
A lot.
Way more than I miss my bastard of a father.
2
Connor
I walk toward the car in the middle of the shop, a blue Honda Civic with the hood up.
Aidan is leaning under the hood and he doesn’t look up, but he can smell me. Something we adapted to when we found out we were snakes. At first, smelling each other was way too creepy, but we’re used to it now. “He’s in your office, and before you ask, yes, I offered him a drink, and no, I was not rude.”
“Thanks. The part you wanted is in the trunk when you get a chance, and I picked up a few things for dinner.” He grunts in response, which is normal for him. Or, normal now that Aidan’s in the midst of emotional turmoil.
I open the door to my office and sitting on the sofa lining the wall directly next to the door is Benny Jackson. Benny’s a local motorcycle fanatic who has been coming to us for the last six months after we connected on a bike-focused Facebook group for enthusiasts like me. He’s from back East originally and moved out here so he could escape the trappings of his past as a stockbroker with a membership at the local golf club and his own collection of personalized cufflinks.
Now, he has a beard that would make Gandalf jealous and a closet full of leathers, black t-shirts, and boots.
“Hey, Benny. How you doing?” I say to him, pouring myself a cup of coffee before taking a seat in the corduroy armchair on the wall adjacent to the couch. It’s comfortable, if not a little ratty, and has a lever that make a footrest pop out. It’s the closest thing to luxury that I’m likely to get on my budget.
My dad painted this office a bright blue when he first opened the shop, but I redid it the second we officially took over ownership. I figure if I’m going to be stuck here forever, I should at least be able to decorate my space how I like.
So, the walls are light green and there are pictures of rainforests and deciduous trees littering the wall, allowing me to escape the desert whenever I want. My desk is an antique oak piece I picked up at a garage sale one weekend with Dara, and behind the desk is a bookcase full of spy thrillers I page through on the rare days when business is slow.
My dad built something of a name for the shop when he ran it, so we have enough regular customers to keep us busy for life. And there are always new car fanatics coming in to see Brodie, begging for help with their Teslas and other ultra-modern vehicles.
I take a sip of coffee and lean back in my chair.
“I’m good,” he says. “I talked to your brother, but as usual he was a big ass about it, so I gave up on him. What’s his problem, anyway? I swear he’s grumpier every time I come in here,” Benny says, shaking his head. I’m glad Aidan has music blaring in the garage, because I know he’ll storm in here and tear Benny’s head off if he hears anyone talking about him.
Poor Aidan recently had his heart broken by Allison Harley, his girlfriend of two years and, until last month, his fiancée. Aidan walked in on Allison and her ex-boyfriend having sex on the brand-new couch Aidan had just bought when he and Allison moved in together.
Needless to say, Aidan doesn’t deal well with his feelings and right now, he’s an asshole. He communicates in grunts and mumbles, and walks around all stiff, like someone starched his underwear.
“Who knows. Man is a complicated animal, Benny,” I say by way of explanation, unwilling to get into personal matters with a customer, not even Benny. I don’t want it getting back to Aidan, and frankly, I don’t want to talk about my family right now. I want to talk about bikes.
&
nbsp; “Yep,” Benny says, and I look back up to see the man nodding at me like I’m a wise old sage, rather than a confused thirty-year old. “Well put, Connor.”
I smile at the compliment. If he only knew I was shooting the shit with him to get out of my own head, he wouldn’t think I was such a grand philosopher.
Benny leans forward and rubs his hands together. “Now, onto my business. I need you to help me fix up a bike I picked up at an estate sale. She’s a real beaut, but has some problems, and I know you and your brothers specialize in fixing up classics.”
“She a classic, then?” I ask, answering Benny’s lean with one of my own. I can already feel my heart beating faster, anticipating the start of a new project. Benny brought in one vintage bike before, and God, was it a beauty, both to look at and to work on.
“’50-’53 Chief?” he says.
“Fuck, no man. For real? A 1950 Indian Chief? Fuck! Where is it? It’s like the Holy Grail of vintage bikes.”
I’ve looked for one for years, but I don’t have time to go to the sales and auctions that would give me the best chance of finding one. Not when I have a shop to take care of, and my own shit to fix up.
Although, I did go to a used car lot a few years ago with Aidan, looking for a classic we could fix up on the weekends and sell for some extra cash, and then I saw her.
