“Blake! Blake get off her! Now! I said get the fuck off her!”
Someone’s yelling.
Help me. Please he’s killing me please help me.
The thought pounding through my mind as my knees give out.
But the asshole named Blake keeps squeezing, his grip impossibly powerful, my lungs burning red hot—
“I said get the fuck off her!”
I’m not sure what happens. Only that Blake tosses me hard into the wall. Sinking to my knees, I throw my hands to my throat and take gasping breaths of air—
“What in fucking hell, Blake? You need to fight him down—”
That growl again.
Murderous. Predatory. Lethal.
I clamp my eyes closed. Another wave of terror hits me in an instinctual, primal way that makes me shudder. I want to get to my feet and run as fast as possible. But my legs are rubbery. My entire body’s shaking. I’m not even sure I can stand—
Then another sound. A lower, deeper growl.
My eyes are still closed. Like I’m about to take a bullet in the brain. Like death’s hovering above me and I’m too terrified to look him in the eye.
The second guy says, “Fight him down, brother. Lock him away. Or I will.”
There’s a heavy silence. I finally muster the courage to open my eyes. I’m staring at the pavement, still too frightened to look up. Two sets of shoes are squaring off. Blake’s dusty cowboy boots. And a pair of exquisite, highly polished Testoni dress shoes. Then Blake says, “You saw her, Landon. Bitch played the Savannah. On opening day in my casino.”
Landon? Oh shit.
The billionaire magnate. The man I just got caught stealing from.
I almost wish the dickhead Blake had murdered me.
Because Landon’s going to send me to the box. I know it. Cut off my fingers. Break my arms. Maybe murder me himself. That’s the only reason the boss would be here—
“I know what she did, you idiot. Jesus Christ. Get her up. Help me get her up! Are there cameras—”
“Only ours.”
“Summer here let me help you—”
He knows my name. My real name. I’m still drawing deep breaths, shaking, trying to recover enough to run—
A hand on my shoulder.
“Get the fuck off me!” I scream, batting the hand away.
“I want to help you—”
I haven’t looked up yet. I don’t want to see. Plus I want to recover a little more. So I force a sob, like I’m all hysterical, which I almost am. “Help me? Don’t touch me, you scumbag. Your meathead tried to strangle me. In the alley!”
“Get her up.”
Landon’s voice. Firmer now.
The hands on my shoulders aren’t allowing themselves to be batted away. They’re digging under my arms. Strong. I consider screaming. Like really shrieking. Blake was going to kill me. And that feeling I got from him? The Strip’s only half a block down the alley. Some brainless touron will hear me. Alert the cops. I’ll be better off with them—
Parole.
Okay. No cops. No cops.
“No cops,” I stammer as I let the men lift me to my feet. “Please no cops…”
“Why not, Summer?” Blake the dick sneers. “Worried about another felony tacked onto your parole violation?”
Shit. They know all about me.
I wonder if I was made right when I walked in the front door. Were they watching me the whole time? Letting the scam play out to rope the whole crew?
No. Doesn’t make sense.
They would’ve called it before the fire alarm—
“I’m going to release you now,” the Landon says to me. I still haven’t looked at him. But his voice is…compelling. A baritone, commanding and edged but with a refinement and restraint Blake’s voice lacks. “If you run, Summer? We will catch you.”
Something in how he says it makes me realize running is a very bad idea. “I know,” I whisper, looking up.
Landon Stone is standing in front of me, backlit by the streetlights, his gorgeous, surfer-cut blonde hair seeming to glow gold. His face is shadowed, but his eyes are a stunning hazel-gold. He’s wearing a perfectly tailored cobalt blue suit that reveals his naturally athletic musculature. I blink, taking him in, and suddenly I don’t want his hands off my shoulders. I want him to hold me, there’s a warmth building in my loins and a giddiness in my head—
Damn. I’m more freaked out than I thought.
Wires all crossed.
Mistaking fear for arousal.
The trick is to see him as a mark. A victim.
So I mentally go through his appearance, sizing him up for a job.
Suit? Check.
Shoes? Check.
Gorgeous fucking eyes? Check.
Uh…okay. Kinda hard to steal those.
But when he lifts his hand to idly scratch his chin things really get interesting. Landon Stone is wearing the Jaeger-LeCoultre Hybris Mechanica à Grande Sonnerie wristwatch. Only…when a watch costs a cool 1.5 million you don’t call it a watch.
You call it a timepiece.
I can’t help it. My jaw drops open.
Landon sees the look in my eyes and quickly covers up the watch. Gives me an angry glare. Like I’m shit. Like he’s half thinking about turning me over to his brother.
Too late, pretty boy. I got a new game plan.
Escape from these dickheads…with that watch.
I set my jaw, fire Landon a nasty look. The rich bastard.
Let’s see if the pretty boy has the stomach for this town—
Landon frowns. “You scratched her neck,” he says to Blake, inspecting my throat.
I lift my finger to the stinging pain. I’m bleeding. “You asshole,” I say, mustering every bit of disdain I can. I might be a thief. But I’m not a piece of meat—
“Lucky for her,” Blake snaps, “I didn’t snap her neck.”
Landon hasn’t let me go. He turns, real slow, to stare at his brother.
“No. Lucky for you.”
“Whatever,” Blake says, sounding like a chastised teenager.
Concern flickers through Landon’s eyes as he inspects my wound.
“Your brother’s a real class act,” I say, fighting down the weakness in my voice. Damn. This guy…all right. Maybe admitting it will make it go away. He’s making me wet. Just by being close. Another stroke of lousy luck for this evening.
I can’t even hate him properly.
“We should get her downstairs,” Blake says. “Before it gets complicated.”
Downstairs.
The word sends a chill through my blood, cooling the warmth building in me—
“I won’t tell,” I say, looking into Landon’s eyes. “I won’t say…what happened…to anyone. Never.”
“No one will believe you,” Blake spits. “And even fewer will care.”
“I won’t say a word about him strangling me,” I say, needing Landon to believe me.
Landon frowns. God he’s gorgeous. The bastard. His chest almost touching mine. I lean an inch closer.
I want to touch him. Want him to touch me in return—
“You’re better looking than on TV.”
Oh shit. I so did not mean to say that.
Landon’s lips flicker into a half smile. “I hear that a lot.”
“I bet you do.”
Another inch closer. My nipples brush against his suit, sending electric shocks tingling through me—
I reach my left hand down, slip it under his sleeve, aiming for that sparkling timepiece of a million-dollar payout.
Landon tenses. Lets my shoulders go.
Takes a step away.
A little hole opens up in me when I see the look of disgust on Landon’s face.
“Get the fuck out of here, Summer Mason. If I see you in Savannah’s again, I’ll loose Blake on you.”
“Loose? Like a rabid dog?” I rub my bruised neck. “That’s about right.”
“Let me walk her to the Str
ip,” Blake asks.
Landon looks at me, then back at Blake.
“I’ll find my own way—”
“No. That’s a good idea. You walk her, Blake. Get her off my property. Make sure she understands how seriously Savannah’s frowns on thieves.”
Thieves.
A rush of shame slams into me.
The judgmental motherfucker. Try living a week in my shoes. Try knowing what it means to be hungry. Try watching your mother get more and more sick because you can’t afford her prescriptions. I’m about to tell the pompous prick to piss off when Landon slips through the door and vanishes, leaving me alone with Blake. I take three quick steps toward the Strip before Blake’s hand settles against the small of my back.
“Got off easy, bitch,” he says in my ear.
I’m almost running—
“Got off real fucking easy. My little bro might be the boss for now. But I’ll hunt you down on my own time. Get you alone. You like that, huh? You and me alone? You fucking liked my hand on your throat. I know you did. Scummy ditchpig whores like you always do.”
Only twenty yards until the bright lights and happy faces of the Strip.
I clamp my mouth closed, forcing down tears.
Ten yards. Five.
“I got a gift for you, Summer Mason. Call it a parting kiss.”
Fast as a flash Blake snatches my hand, wraps my pinkie in his strong fingers and twists. There’s a sharp pain, then a loud pop as my finger breaks. I scream, a quick burst before I bite my lip to silence myself, and then I’m among the blank-eyed camera-toting touron hordes, refusing to look back to see Blake’s smug smile—
CHAPTER FOUR
LANDON
“YOU DIDN’T SEE him. He was nearly out of control, Rachael.”
I’m sitting in my older sister’s office. It’s right beside mine, on the fiftieth and final floor in the tower that looks out over the safari jungle and grasslands inside Savannah’s. The casino is built like a giant ‘L’, with hotels and administrative offices inside the vertical skyscraper. A giant sweep of blue-tinted glass drops from the top of the skyscraper to meet the bottom of the ‘L’ nearly a mile away. Beneath the sparkling glass curtain there are gaming floors, restaurants, amusement rides…and the centerpiece of the casino, a roaring waterfall that spills out of the skyscraper and tumbles through the world’s largest self-contained and artificially-created wilderness habitat.
Rachael gives me a cold look.
“I mean it. I scented him. He almost lost it on that girl. Another minute or two…” My voice trails off. Rachael knows what I mean. Another minute or two and we would’ve been calling the Wildblood Council, turning our own brother in for murdering another human. The girl…Summer? Her corpse would’ve been unrecognizable.
“It’s opening night,” Rachael says in her unhurried, always calculated manner, and not for the first time I’m grateful for my sister’s presence. Without her this pride would have self-destructed long ago. “Blake’s on edge. Give him some space. It doesn’t help, you hovering over him.”
“Hovering?” I shift slightly on the white leather armchair. “If I wasn’t hovering Blake would’ve murdered that girl in the alley.”
Rachael flashes me a tight smile. “She tried to steal from us.”
“I will not dignify that with a response.”
I try and say it in a way that proves I’m not emotionally invested in Summer Mason, but simply afraid for my family pride and my investment. But I remember holding Summer in the alley. Her lovely green-brown eyes that seemed to swallow me up. Her anger and fear were obvious.
But was there something more there? A…feeling? An attraction?
I think so. It was in how she scented beneath the cheap perfume. How my animal responded to her presence. Demanding her. It’s been a very long while since I’ve experienced that need with any Wildblood lion female.
It’s never happened with a human.
It’s not supposed to. Wildblood and human relations are biologically doomed. Worse, human-shifter unions are a crime the Council punishes with death—
These thoughts, tangled up in my need to hide my arousal from my sister and pride and my worry about Blake, make my stomach fill with churning nastiness.
Rachael’s watching me. Intently.
Like she scents something’s not quite right—
Then she sighs. Plucks at the jewels on her rings. Sapphire, mostly. Rachael says it reminds her of the open sky. She also misses the wilds, although she’ll never admit it. She walks around her desk and settles on the edge right in front of me. She’s wearing a black gown that highlights her close-cropped blonde hair. A lovely gold and sapphire necklace completes the ensemble. She has quick eyes and our father’s proud nose. She’s pretty in an intelligent, even severe way. “Blake’s trying, Landon. You might be his younger brother, but you have no idea how much he looks up to you.”
Shit. Everything comes back to Blake.
“You didn’t see him. He almost turned. In public.”
Another crime punishable by death—
Rachael nods. “Let me talk to him.”
“No. You’ll let him off too easy.”
“Oh? Then what do you propose? We turn him into the Council—”
“I have more loyalty to family than that,” I snap.
“What, then?”
I look out over the indoor jungle. See the zip lines snaking through the trees. No one’s on them at this hour, but tomorrow they’ll be filled with patrons zipping through the jungle canopy. Having the time of their lives. A sudden pang of envy drills into me.
“It was a mistake,” I say, very quietly.
“Pardon me?”
“All of this. The casino. My hope it would bring the pride together. That was my hubris. It’s only opening night. And already—”
“You have a flair for brooding, Landon. I’ll speak with him. Blake will settle down. Trust me.”
Trust me.
“And if not?”
“Give me a chance, Landon. That’s all I’m asking.”
“If not I do it myself. I’ve beaten my brother down to where he belongs once before. I’ll do it again if I have to.”
“I’m certain you will. We’re all certain of that.”
There’s a sneer of condemnation in my sister’s voice. They blame me for the strife in the family. Always have. I don’t understand why, except that there’s some kind of natural instinct to protect the weaker members of a pride. Not to mention Blake has our matriarch of a mother wrapped around his finger. It’s part of what made me move to Europe and start Blue Line. I needed away from them. Some time to sort shit out for myself.
It didn’t work. You can’t outrun family.
I think about what I want to say next. A question’s been hanging between my sister and I for months. There’s no way of asking it without implicating her in the scheme I suspect Blake of. Problem is that’s all it is right now: a suspicion. There’s no evidence Blake is working to undermine me, and certainly nothing approaching proof. But I have to ask.
“Where’d he get it?”
“Get what?”
“The money. To buy his share of the casino. Blake’s never had a dime to his name. Then he shows up with three million and the casino proposal. Without that buy-in I never would have agreed to the proposal.”
Rachael gives me her corporate accountant frown. She’s damn good at what she does for my businesses. Manages my accounts, traces paper trails, reads contracts. “I traced the money. Verified the win. You know that.”
“I know you said you did.”
There it is. Mistrust.
Rachael nearly tisks, a disapproving sound she learned from our mother. But Rachael catches herself. Our mother is nearly dead. When she passes I’ll assume control of the Stone Lion Pride and the Western Division of the Wildblood Council. Until then…this uncertainty.
My animal stirs.
Uncertainty makes him edgy.
Maybe the best
thing to do is murder Blake.
We’d be better off without him—
“We’ve already had this conversation, Landon.”
“Tell me again.”
Last time she told me I was distracted. Blake was there, right in my face while my sister backed up his story. I need to look my sister in the eyes.
“Blake hit it big here in Vegas.”
“All those years of fruitless gambling finally paid off.”
Rachael shrugs. “He won the Bellagio’s Set For Life slots. Could have been anybody.”
“But it wasn’t just anybody. It was Blake.”
“You’re getting distracted,” she says. “Letting old animosities cloud your judgement.”
“You honestly believe that?”
“Yes.”
Damn. I take Rachael at her word. I don’t know what I’d do without her. I check my watch, then remember the look in Summer’s eyes when she saw it. The…greed coming off her in rank waves.
Everyone wants something.
At least with the grifter girl it’s obvious what she wants.
“I need you to look over these and sign them,” Rachael says, dropping a few files on the desk.
“What are they?”
Rachael shrugs. “Standard paperwork for taking Blue Line public.”
I flick the files a few inches across the desk.
“You can’t procrastinate forever, Landon.”
“Why not? It’s my company.”
“Yes. And Blue Line has reaches a crucial sage in its development. Either we continue to grow…or we don’t. Are you happy with a company that’s already peaked? You’re twenty-seven years old. Ready to retire?”
“You know I’m not. And just for the record…if Blue Line has peaked? It’s been a damn good run, don’t you think?”
Rachael smiles. “Sign the papers, Landon. Make Blue Line a publicly traded corporation. Let your baby take her first independent steps. You have a majority share by a long shot. You’ll still be CEO. Still decide the company’s future. Plus there’s the shares Elliot owns—”
High Card: A Billionaire Shifter Novel (Lions of Las Vegas Book 1) Page 4
