by Dannika Dark
“I missed you,” I said, trying to keep my mouth closed as he continued licking.
His tail wagged and he whined, but I could still see in his eyes a flicker of Jericho, who hadn’t let his animal take complete control.
A knock sounded at the door and I gasped when Jericho unexpectedly shifted into human form. My hands were wrapped around his naked thighs and my face was right in his crotch, just as Hawk strode in the room with a look of disgust on his face.
“You did that on purpose,” I snarled, glaring up at Jericho.
He winked.
“What the fuck is this?” Hawk exclaimed.
“It’s Jericho being funny,” I said, rising to my feet. “Hawk, I’d like you to meet an old friend. This is Jericho Cole.”
“Yeah, so I see,” he went on, anger stamped on his features. “You have a funny way of saying hello to an old friend, Izzy.”
Hawk was wearing his button-up blue shirt. I hated that look because he always undid the first four buttons and subjected the world to his chest hair. Not that it was venturing into grizzly-bear territory, but enough of it poked out that gave everyone a peep show.
“Hawk, don’t be ridiculous. He shifted to play a joke on me.”
Hawk stepped forward aggressively and sliced the rock star from head to toe with his sharp eyes. “I don’t find my girl’s face in your balls very funny.”
Jericho hiked up his jeans and buttoned them. “Neither do I, but that’s another story,” he said as smooth as molasses. “So you’re the big bird? Hawk? Is that your animal too? My wolf likes to eat them for a light snack.”
Hawk stepped around me and folded his arms. “Why don’t you keep on talking? I’ll show you what the fuck my animal is.”
To be honest, I’d never seen Hawk shift. He alluded that he was a wolf, but we always shifted separately. The way he laid down the threat put me on edge.
“Hawk, let’s go.” I touched his arm, but he shook me off.
Jericho bent down and fished through his blazer until he found his pack of cigarettes. He put one between his lips and began sliding his rings back on. The anger on his face was palpable. He left his jacket and broken necklace on the floor and faced Hawk wearing nothing but jeans, the rings on his fingers, and holding a leather belt in his hand. “Go ahead, Tweety Bird. Scare me with your badass talons and beak. I haven’t eaten breakfast and could use a little… chicken.”
I dove between them and shoved at Hawk’s chest. “If you start a fight and get me fired, I’m not going home with you,” I whispered. “Let’s go.”
Hawk pointed his finger at Jericho. “You lucked out this time. Next time you won’t be so fortunate.”
We turned toward the door and Jericho made clucking sounds.
Hawk froze.
“Jericho,” I said, my voice lowering an octave. “Let it go.”
He lit up his smoke and tucked the lighter in his back pocket. “Sorry, Isabelle. Just thought he might try hitting something else for a change besides you.”
Hawk pushed me to the side and his voice became chillingly calm. “Say again?”
“You heard me, compadre. I noticed you like putting your hands on women. Did you see the marks you left on her neck, or is that your version of a love bite?”
The tension became electric, and my breath caught since I’d seen firsthand the damage Jericho could do in a fight.
“You think you’re going to whoop me with that belt, boy?”
Jericho shot me a glare. “All these years, Isabelle, I thought you had higher standards than a man who uses ‘whoop’ and ‘boy’ in the same sentence. I know we’re in Texas, but I think we can be a little more sophisticated than that.”
Hawk stepped in front of me and obscured my vision with his wide frame. “I think you need to quit running your mouth at my woman and talk to the man in this room.”
“That’s fine by me, Tweety. Be sure to point out who the other man is whenever he comes in the room. Let me tell you a little something about me. I fight dirty—no holds barred. I’ll use my belt, my lighter, the pen in Izzy’s purse, and whatever the hell else I feel like using that’s going to cause more damage. I’ve been in enough fights that nobody talks a good enough game to make me tremble in my boots. All it does is amp me up. Cross me the wrong way and I’m your worst nightmare. And putting your hands on Isabelle stepped right over the fucking line and pissed on it.”
I jumped when I heard the sharp crack of a belt.
“So do me a favor and quit running your mouth, Tweety.”
Jericho didn’t give warnings—he stated the facts. He was a lover, a singer, a man with an easygoing personality and a cool demeanor. But anyone who had ever made the mistake of crossing Jericho ended up on the receiving end of an unforgettable beating. He was tall, toned, and terrifying. His lips would curl in and those rings would be the first and last thing most men saw, if they were lucky. The rest had to endure Jericho unleashed. I’d only seen it happen a couple of times, and each fight was justified. I wasn’t so sure what was going on here because I’d rarely seen Jericho provoke a fight.
“You two have fun in the sandbox,” I said. “I’m going home.”
I stormed toward the locker, nudged Jericho to the side, snatched my purse, and flew out the door.
“Ridiculous!” I shouted at nobody. I still had my heels on and jogged down the steps to the parking lot.
Unbelievable. There was nothing sexier than having a man fight for you, but only for the right reason. All that chest-beating in there was about male ego, not me. How did I get mixed up in such a blender full of drama?
Then an unexpected wave of tingles spread between my legs, reminding me just how provocative it was to have Jericho so close without touching me. Had one finger grazed my skin, I would have known he wasn’t a man of his word. But his restraint impressed me, as did the fact he had kept his promise.
But I knew what he was really trying to accomplish. It became a game to get me so worked up that I’d be the one to initiate touch. He wanted to break my willpower and prove how irresistible he was.
“Izzy!” Hawk shouted. “Stay where you are.”
I heard a car door slam, but I’d already made it across the street. When I stepped up on the curb, my heel caught between the jagged cracks of the sidewalk. The force of motion caused me to lose my balance and fall forward, landing on both knees. I broke the fall with the palms of my hands but hissed when I pulled my foot out of my shoe and saw blood on my knee.
Hawk’s red sports car screeched up to the curb on my left. He got out, hooked his arms around me, and hauled me into the car. A shoe flew through the open door as he slammed it.
Yeesh.
Once Hawk buckled up and merged into traffic, he glanced at my knee and said, “Don’t bleed on my seat.”
“My things are in the trunk of my car. Go back.”
“You didn’t seem too interested in retrieving them five seconds ago,” he said, gunning around a corner and staring in the rearview mirror. “We’ll buy you some new shit.”
I glanced over my shoulder. “Is someone following us?”
My body hit the door when he made a sharp left turn.
“Hawk, slow down! I need to go back and get my car.”
“Your car will stay right where it is.”
“How do you expect me to go back to work?”
He reached in the glove compartment and flipped it open. A few maps fell out, and he tossed a package of napkins on my lap. “You’re not going back to work. I don’t like the idea of my woman slinging beer and onion rings all night to a bunch of horny men. Is that what you want to be for the rest of your life, Izzy? Some bar slut?”
“Well done. You’ve managed to belittle my worth in a matter of a few sentences. Pull the car over; this was a mistake.”
Hawk ignored my complaints and made a hard right turn. His erratic behavior began to rattle me.
“Pull the car over! What’s gotten into you lately? I’m not up for th
is kind of craziness!”
“Crazy? Just how high do you think your expectations deserve to go?” he asked in a cool voice. “Izzy, Izzy. No man seems to be worthy of you.”
“What are you talking about? If you had just paid this guy his money, we wouldn’t be driving around the city like Bonnie and Clyde. You’re acting like a maniac!”
“And you’re acting like a ball-sucking whore. Do you know what I risked to drive all the way out here and pick you up, knowing Delgado could have one of his men casing the bar? I walk in and you have your face cozied up in another man’s crotch. Classy, Iz. Real classy.”
My head felt ready to explode. I didn’t even want to argue with him. He should have trusted me, and while I knew it wasn’t an ideal situation to walk in on, the fact he was berating me began to rile me up. It made my wolf want to bite him in the ass.
“Stop the car and drop me off. I made a mistake. Izzy Monroe made a big, fat, whopping mistake. There. I said it. I’m not saying you’re evil and I’m good and that’s what this is all about. We’re just not compatible. We’re not even combustible in the sack together. I’m not even sure why you’re hanging on to a girl like me if you clearly don’t respect what I do for a living. And by the way, I love my job. Maybe I have to deal with a few jerks, but that goes with the territory, and I don’t think any job is jerk-free. I serve. Why do you have such a problem with the fact I serve others? Maybe if you tried it once in your life, you’d have a little humility. Not everyone is meant to be a doctor or banker. And who are you to talk, Mr. Drug Pusher?”
Oh hell’s bells. Evil Izzy just walked in the door, put her boots on the table, and ordered a drink of devil’s tongue.
“I own a house and pay for your fucking clothes. That’s who I am to talk.”
Did he just say that to me?
I turned to my left and wagged my finger at him. “First of all, the money you used to purchase that house came from drug addicts. Men and women who have an addiction and need help. All you do is feed them pain and misery and take away their hope. You don’t seem to care that you might have been responsible for some of them overdosing or committing crimes!”
“Like you’re Miss Goody Two-Shoes.”
“Yes, I smoked a little grass when I was young, but I’ve left my wild ways behind. At some point, you have to grow up and do the right thing. You’re not doing drugs, Hawk, you’re distributing them. And on top of all that, you’re stealing. Not stealing from a collection plate in church. Nooo. You’re stealing from a drug lord.”
“Delgado is not a drug lord. He’s a businessman who owns a few strip joints in the area. He’s also a human who doesn’t have a clue of the street value of his drugs and what people will pay for them. His stupidity is my gain.”
“Let me out.”
Fear swam through me with every sharp turn and throttle of the engine. I’d been trying to change my ways about giving people second chances because I wanted to believe others would do the same for me. But his aggressive and unpredictable behavior put a knot in my stomach, and I didn’t have a family or pack to protect me.
I slowly wrapped my fingers around the door handle, my heart racing. When he stopped at a light, I opened the door and leaned to get out. Hawk seized my left arm.
Pulling it free was as impossible as his grip, and when I turned to fight him off, he punched me hard in the face.
“Lights out, Izzy.”
Chapter 9
A ringing sound drew me out of a torturous slumber. I moaned, struggling to open my eyes. I began to feel pain in various places, from the throb in my head to a dull ache on my cheek. I’d never had anyone punch me in the face before. Ever. Not even in the house I grew up in. My conniving siblings had devised subtle methods of abuse, but they’d never struck a blow with a closed fist.
“Hello?”
It was still dark, and I thought the lights might be out until I felt something tight against my face. Not only that, but my wrists were bound. When I moved my legs and fabric brushed against my knees, I felt a stinging pain where I had skinned them. I could sense I was lying on a bed, but the house didn’t smell familiar.
“Hawk?” I croaked. I attempted to clear my throat and turn my stiff neck. I heard the sound of a television in the distance.
“Hawk,” I called out in a loud voice.
Footsteps approached, and a door opened. “I see someone’s awake.”
“Take this off me.”
“No can do.”
“I hate to break the news on your kidnapping attempt, but I might as well let the cat out of the bag. I already know what you look like.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Did you drug me?” I still felt groggy and didn’t think he could have knocked me out that long with a punch.
“Brought something for you,” he said.
“Ah!” I cried out when something icy touched my cheek.
“Hold still. It’s just an ice pack.”
I turned my head away. “Why don’t you let me shift and heal?”
“Because, Izzy,” he began with an intolerant sigh, “that would mean letting you free, and I don’t feel like chasing your crazy ass down.”
“Who says I’ll run?”
He chuckled. “You’ll run. That’s the thing you do best in this world.”
That hurt worse than a punch to the face.
“What is this about? You don’t love me enough to tie me up to a bed.” My fingers stretched out and I realized those weren’t ropes around my wrist. It felt smoother, like a cord.
The bed depressed as he sat to my left. “And how do you know what I feel?”
I frowned. “Don’t pretend you love me when all you feel is a sense of possession. You buy things for the sake of having them, not because you need or want them. You’ve done a great job at keeping me in a gilded cage, but I’m not a bird. I’m a wolf, and you can’t cage a wolf.”
His fingers combed through my hair. “I only want to keep what’s mine.”
I bit my tongue, deciding it was not in my best interest to argue.
“Can you at least remove the blindfold?” I asked in a calm voice. “It makes my head hurt worse when I can’t see. Please, Hawk. Just the blindfold.”
“I like the submissive side of you,” he said approvingly.
My hair tugged in the back, and I winced as he untied the heavy cloth and pulled it away. I blinked through blurry vision and widened my eyes in an attempt to see more clearly. Hawk’s shaggy hair covered the tops of his ears, and his jaw was peppered with black whiskers.
“You want a bottle of water?” he asked.
The civility of his question contradicted with the thin cords that painfully bound my wrists to the bedposts.
“Whose house is this?”
“Ours.”
I let that word hang in the air for a minute. Ours. That meant this wasn’t temporary, and he planned to keep me here. Bile rose in my throat when I glanced down at my body. I was no longer wearing my work clothes, but a white satin nightgown that stretched all the way to my ankles. And it wasn’t mine. Did he buy this while I was unconscious? Or did it belong to someone else?
“What do you mean by ours?”
“Maybe it’s about time we get to know each other a little better,” he suggested, getting off the bed and tossing the blindfold on a dresser. “You said you didn’t want any secrets, and I need to see if what we’ve got between us is going to work out. I own three houses. This one is smaller than the others, but it’s a good place to lay low.”
I glanced around the windowless room. The walls were the color of cement, and while I couldn’t see the floor, I thought it was wood from the sound his shoes made walking across it. The only light in the room came from a brass lamp on the nightstand next to Hawk. The wall in front of me had an open door on the left and a closed door on the right that looked like a closet. Unlike the other house, there wasn’t a single shade of pastel blemishing the room. This was cold and depressing, perhaps reflectin
g a darker side of Hawk I’d never seen.
Until now.
While he rummaged through the dresser, fear gripped me stronger than ever before. I wasn’t sure how to play Hawk’s game so he’d let me go. He wouldn’t respond to arguing, so I needed to earn his trust. No one at work would care if I didn’t show up. Rosie was the only one I’d bonded with, and she had the night off.
I crossed my ankles and decided to keep them locked. A flush of heat overtook my body from the stuffy air in the room, but all I wanted to do was cover my body with the blanket.
“Last chance for a drink.”
“Yes. Water would be great,” I said.
I just wanted him to leave. Once Hawk changed into a white T-shirt and boxers, he left the room. I leaned forward and glanced at my wrists. The cords were thin, and I couldn’t tell if the material was plastic or metal, but he must have bought it at a hardware store because it didn’t look familiar to me. The cords were secured to the bedposts and wrapped around several times. I tugged, but they only tightened around my wrists and bit into my flesh. I didn’t want to lose circulation, but my shoulders were beginning to cramp. I twisted to the left and then to the right, turning my arms and trying to stretch out some of the soreness.
Hawk returned and unscrewed the cap from a plastic bottle. He moved around to my right side and lifted my head, holding the rim to my mouth. I took a few deep swallows and water dribbled down my cheek. He wiped it with his hand and placed the bottle on a stereo shelf to the right. It was one of those old systems with the turntable on top and massive speakers on either side.
“See, I’m not such a bad guy,” he said in a velvety voice. But I could see right through him. He enjoyed having me bound and at his mercy—it empowered him.
“Can you untie me?”
“No can do. Stretching the arms and binding them will keep your animal from shifting.”
“Hawk, you can tie my wrists together, but this position really hurts. I’m losing circulation in my arms. I don’t know what your endgame is here, but I don’t think you want to injure me to the point where you’ve done irreparable damage.”
