by Dannika Dark
“I’m not on the menu tonight, honey. But if you sit back in your seat and have a drink, I can hook you up with Ren. None of you has a shot at Trevor; he’s a virgin and saving himself.”
Trevor was either going to kill him or thank him for that later.
Gina glared at her friends and then evaluated Joker. She slyly hopped off her stool and poured herself a glass of brandy from the bottle sitting on the bar. Her eyes remained watchful of Jericho, and it made him uncomfortable enough to polish off his drink. While she refilled his glass, he went to help Trevor adjust the level on the amplifier to a volume that wouldn’t piss off Austin.
Tina lifted up her shirt in front of Ren and stroked her ample breasts, quickly lowering the hem again and sitting in the beanbag next to him. It was obvious by his hard-on that Ren wasn’t going to last long in this session.
All Jericho could think about was Isabelle. The way her wolf had taken care of that human to protect April filled him with pride. He admired her strength and resilience, despite the fact he would have preferred if she took it easy for a few more days.
The diamond ring he’d bought her was sitting inside his dresser drawer on top of her Pink Floyd shirt. Jericho wrote heartfelt lyrics for a living, but he didn’t have the right words to give her with that ring. Nor did he know where and when to ask her to be his mate. It had to be right. Didn’t all women want hearts and flowers? Shit, his palms were sweating just thinking about it.
When he returned to his seat, Gina had a cunning grin on her face as he took a sip of his drink.
“I think I’ve changed my mind about your friend,” she said. “Why settle for the consolation prize when the trophy is in front of me?”
“Because the trophy isn’t up for grabs,” he reminded her.
She crossed her legs and licked the edge of her glass, speaking quietly. “We’ll see about that.”
***
I could hardly sit still in Wheeler’s Camaro as we headed back to the Weston house. He had stuffed Hawk’s money and narcotics in the trunk of the car, although I didn’t see the point. If a human cop had pulled us over, Wheeler’s scary ass would have initiated an automatic search regardless.
I rolled the window up as the trees thickened, and we took a left turn that led up their private road.
“So, what are your feelings for Jericho?” Wheeler asked unexpectedly.
The headlamps shone eerily across the dirt road, illuminating a set of eyes in the brush that belonged to a wild animal.
“He’s my best friend.”
“That all?”
“I can’t tell you.”
He glared over his shoulder with his light eyes. “And why’s that?”
I flipped some of my tousled hair back and unbuckled my seat belt. “Because I haven’t told him how I feel. Not in all the right words.”
“He told you, but you didn’t tell him. That’s the deal?”
Who is this asshole? He wants to sit here and judge me when he probably hasn’t been laid since the early nineteen hundreds?
“I can’t talk about this with you, Wheeler. It’s personal and… just know that I care more about Jericho than anyone else in this world. But if I’m going to say the words, I’m not going to say them to you.”
“Just don’t hurt him,” he said under his breath.
Wheeler pressed down on the brake, and I jumped out of the car, excited to tell Jericho the good news about finding Hawk’s stash. Once all this craziness was behind me, I planned to find a cute apartment near work. Living with the Weston pack was temporary, and while I would be forever grateful, I couldn’t continue taking advantage of their hospitality.
I lightly rapped on the door and heard live music playing, but it was jarring and uncoordinated.
Ben opened the door with an irritated look on his face, which quickly brightened when he set eyes on me. How strange for two men to be so similar and different all at once. Ben’s smile threw me off because Wheeler never cracked one.
“Well, if luck don’t be a lady,” he said admiringly, his eyes roaming down to the damp dress that clung to my thighs.
“Is Jericho here? I need to speak with him.”
“Come on in,” he said, holding the door with his arm so it left me with a tiny opening to squeeze through.
Before I could walk under his arm, Wheeler forcefully shoved him back and spat curses in low words I couldn’t hear.
“Go fuck yourself,” Ben said. “Since no one else will,” he murmured, stalking toward the kitchen.
Wheeler slammed the door and slouched in a nearby chair. I jogged up the stairs and followed the sound of a guitar string being plucked over and over, then a girl laughing like a hyena.
The thick smell of cigarettes filled the hallway, and it sounded like one of his usual jam sessions. It reminded me of the early years when we’d hang out in hotel rooms with his band. To an outsider, it might have looked like a bunch of guys goofing off, but those were the nights they had written the most inspiring music.
I filled the doorway and scanned the room. Joker was lying upside down in the beanbag chair, tapping his drumsticks on his knees. Ren leaned on the bar with two women attached to him like vultures. Trevor was sitting on the floor making notes on several sheets of paper, strumming a few chords and writing more down. This looked like the tail end of a session and not the beginning, so I turned around and headed toward Jericho’s room. A red glow spilled from beneath his door.
I turned the knob, ready to wake him up with the good news. If only I had brought in the money and drugs to show him, although waving narcotics in his face might have been insensitive. I didn’t think he’d mind the cash.
“Guess what we found, Jericho?”
In the glow of the cruel light, a blonde sat astride Jericho on the bed. I blinked in horror, lost in a cutting memory from decades ago. Reliving a night I’d spent years trying to forget. As I stood there, the hope of what might have been between us was crushed out like a cigarette in a dirty ashtray.
“Take a picture, it’ll last longer,” she said over her shoulder.
I stepped back, my feet itching to run. But something caught my eye. She was topless in a pair of panties and had her hands all over his bare chest. Jericho’s shirt was pulled up to his neck, but his eyes were closed.
This was so wrong.
“What’s going on?” I asked, my voice shaking as much as my hands. “Jericho? Why isn’t he moving?”
“Mind your own business,” she slurred, leaning down to kiss him. Her mouth ran across his face, and Jericho’s head lolled to the side.
Something vicious snapped within me—a fiercely protective emotion that gripped my heart.
“Get off him!”
My heart raced wildly as I rushed forward and fought to pull her off. She scratched my arm, and I tossed her on the floor.
“What the hell?” I heard Austin say. “I leave the house for one goddamn hour…” His voice trailed off, and there was a commotion in the game room of profanities, apologies, and girls vocalizing their complaints.
“Jericho, wake up,” I said, slapping his cheek. I pulled his eyelids back and he groaned, struggling to open them.
“Hey, baby,” he murmured. Then a string of unintelligible words mumbled out, and I slapped his cheek harder.
“What’s wrong with you?”
As soon as the words left my lips, I grabbed his arm, looking for tracks. Then I searched the room for coke, pot… anything.
“Is he awake?” Austin stormed in the room and flipped on the light. “One of the girls spiked his drink with some kind of date-rape drug.”
Rage consumed me to the point where I couldn’t think straight. I flew out of the room and ran after the trail of voices moving out the front door.
“Is he conscious?” Wheeler asked, running by me up the stairs.
I couldn’t answer because all I saw was red. I blew through the front door and onto the porch like a hurricane, cutting a trail through the grass as
I approached Jericho’s entourage.
I snatched the back of the girl’s shirt—the one who had decided it was okay to give drugs to a former addict. She whirled around, swinging her mane of blond hair.
“Hey!”
I punched her in the face and she went out like a light.
Her friends looked at me wide-eyed and began helping her up, dragging her to the car as they hurried to get away from me.
Joker approached me guiltily, hands wide. “I’m sorry, Izzy. I had no idea that was going to happen. Never thought a girl would slip drugs into one of our drinks. That’s scary as hell,” he said, wiping the sweat from his face. “I don’t tolerate drugs very well. Ren could give a damn, but Jesus, Jericho said he wasn’t feeling well, and we got so distracted that I didn’t notice Gina had left the room. Tell Jericho I feel like shit about the whole thing.”
“Tell him yourself.”
I went back in the house and found my keys hanging on the wall behind Jericho’s keys, covering the letter J. One of the boys had brought my car back to the house, and it was time for me to go.
Not because I wanted to, and not because I despised Jericho for shredding me apart with infidelity.
I was scared.
Scared shitless by how deeply I loved him. My heart had shattered seeing him in that condition, and I realized that maybe I couldn’t have it all. Maybe Jericho was just as unattainable as he made himself out to be onstage. Just within reach, but something I could never hold on to.
What scared me the most was how much I wanted to hold him and never let go. The visceral pain of seeing him hurt made me realize how it would crush me if something ever happened to him. I couldn’t bear the thought that if I gave him my heart, it wouldn’t be enough. He could end up killing himself with this careless lifestyle! I’d never lost anyone before, and as foolish as it seemed, I wanted to let him go now before the choice was no longer mine.
His pack didn’t stop me. They were busy helping Jericho, which is where I should have been. Tears stung my eyes as I started up my car and sped down the road, leaving a cloud of midnight dust behind me. I needed time to think—I was so confused and still shaking. I could have shifted and ripped that woman’s throat out, that’s how close I was to losing control. My heart ached with a torrent of emotions ripping through me: anger, rejection, guilt, and disappointment.
But I was so damn mad that Jericho put himself in that situation. I had been attacked the previous night in the trailer, not that I expected him to be wallowing around about it, but to walk in on him and his band partying with a bunch of groupies?
And in his house! If I moved in with them, who’s to say that wouldn’t still go on? Women would always be a constant temptation. A constant threat.
And there it was again. So pathetic. Maybe it boiled down to that irrational fear women have that somehow we’re not enough. I had all the self-confidence in the world about the kind of woman I was, but was it enough for Jericho?
A tingling sensation struck me warmly between the legs—I was going into heat soon, just as the alpha had predicted. Super. Just what I needed. Jake was going to fire me for sure. Technically, he couldn’t. There were Shifter laws that protected women from job termination due to hyperactive ovaries, but he was only keeping me on because of Jericho.
When I turned on the radio, the Beatles lamented the death of Eleanor Rigby. I should have changed the channel, but I rolled down the windows and let it go. Human artists seemed to understand the impermanence and sorrows of life. Maybe that’s why I’d been so attracted to Jericho’s lifestyle when we’d first met, because he shared those views and showed me how to live in the moment.
God, he was unbelievable. Just a shining light in the world, one of those people you meet who you know is going to leave his footprint. How tragic he would never rise to the fame he so richly deserved, all because he was a Shifter. You can fake your death and change your name, but you can’t erase your face from people’s memories, or your voice.
As the melody ended, I remembered the Beatles song he’d sung in the bar about yesterday. Oh hell’s bells, I was turning into a sappy sentimental fool, just like those girls I always rolled my eyes at. But now I understood how confusing and painful love could be.
So many conflicting emotions swept through me that it became impossible to know what the right thing to do was. He’d told me he loved me, and that resonated. Jericho seemed so willing to open up to me, and I was beginning to close like a book that didn’t want to be read.
Now I was the one with all the insecurities, fears, and trouble. Jericho had cleaned up his act, and here I was dodging drug dealers, playing kidnap victim to my ex, and losing control to my murderous wolf.
That’s why packs rarely took in rogues like me. They’d never trust a girl who grew up in a house full of cougars. I felt like fate had steamrolled right over me.
In fact, I began to get mad at myself. I decided to give me the silent treatment.
Of all times to be going into heat. Now I needed to find a motel and ride it out. With luck, it would end quickly.
Chapter 23
“Eat,” Austin insisted, shoving a plate of food in front of Jericho.
It must have been around three in the morning, and Jericho had a killer hangover. He wrinkled his nose at the corn and leftover greasy sausage. “I’m not hungry.”
Austin angrily rapped his knuckles on the table. “You can pick it up and put it in your mouth, or I can shove it down your throat. You’re still unsteady on your feet; I want you to drink more water to flush that shit out of your system.”
The last thing Jericho remembered was listening to Trevor hum out a melody, and then everything had gotten fuzzy and tangled. He saw glimpses of images in his head, but he wasn’t sure if they were memories from long ago or hallucinations.
He shoved the damn sausage in his mouth to appease Austin even though his stomach roiled. “What happened last night?” he asked around a mouthful of food. It’s not a question he’d had a chance to ask because the last two hours had been spent hovering over the toilet. Man, did that bring back some dark memories.
“Your band. Need I say more? It’s a good thing Lynn wasn’t here.”
Jericho rubbed his eyes wearily. Denver was still at the festival, and Reno had gone out with April. Everyone else was asleep. “Can you just tell me what happened? I only had a couple of drinks; it doesn’t make sense.” He was growing tired of Austin’s elusive answers.
Austin rubbed his bristly chin and laced his fingers together. “One of the girls had drugs in her purse, and she slipped one in your drink.”
“Ah, Christ.”
Jericho had heard of some of the drugs human men used on women, but he’d never experienced it. Shifters were a little more resistant to drugs, and it required more to knock them out. It’s why he was awake and not still passed out in the bed. But the gap in his memory made him uneasy. He scooped up a forkful of corn and reluctantly took a bite before washing it down with water. “And?”
“Look, we’re all adults,” Austin began. “If you want to have sex in the house, that’s none of my business. But your buddies were using the game room upstairs like a brothel. That ain’t cool.”
Jericho snorted. “Joker? I doubt it. He’s shy.”
“I don’t give a damn about shy; that’s not the example I want to set for Trevor. He’s new to the pack and new to your band. I can’t stop him if he wants to be part of your group, but if you mess his head up—”
Jericho’s fork hit the plate with a clang, and he scooted his chair back. “Look, Chaz was the only bad influence in our band, and he’s out. I’m not going that route again. Trevor’s also a grown-ass man who can decide what the hell he wants in life, but yeah, I’m keeping my eye on him. I know what fame can do to your head, and I’ll keep him grounded. I’ll have a talk with the boys about our sessions and make sure we don’t have company in the future. You can bet that idea was all Ren’s. He’s a young wolf, and you know how hor
ny they get.”
“Keep it under control, Jericho. I mean it.” Austin rubbed his face wearily. They were both sitting at the long kitchen table that was large enough to accommodate more pack members, should they ever get any. Austin had been taking his time adding to their pack. Some Shifters were all about size—and true, there was strength in numbers. But unless the Packmaster was a dictator, large packs became divided because of strong opinions.
“I’ll keep an eye on Trev,” Jericho said, knowing Trevor wasn’t the kind of guy who was going to fall prey to the rocker lifestyle. “Joker knows he’s in the doghouse because of this, so you can bet he’ll give Ren an earful before I get a hold of him. You don’t have to worry about Trevor. I know his type, and that’s not his scene.”
“It sure didn’t seem to be Izzy’s scene,” Austin said offhandedly.
He slowly lifted his eyes, struggling to speak. “Say again?”
“I think she decked one of those girls on the lawn. That’s what Ben saw from the window.”
Jericho lurched forward and seized Austin’s arm. “What the hell happened?”
“She walked in on you and that woman.”
“Walked in on us doing what? Oh, fuck!” he said, leaning back and tunneling his fingers through his long hair.
“Yeah. Some girl was half-naked on top of you, and Izzy didn’t look too happy. Good thing you two aren’t mated. If Lexi had seen me in a position like that, her wolf would have torn out that woman’s throat. In fact, I’m pretty sure she would have come after me,” he said with a low chuckle.
Jericho felt like the lowest scum on the planet. They’d finally reconciled after a tumultuous past, and he’d just made her relive the nightmare all over again.
After a thoughtful sigh, Jericho’s voice came out weary and broken. “What else happened?”
“Izzy yanked her off the bed like a heap of dirty laundry. For a minute there, I thought she’d stick around. But when I was hauling you off the bed, she got a crazy look in her eyes and ran out. For what it’s worth, I don’t think that groupie got far with you.” Austin scratched his ear and looked away, as if embarrassed. “She still had her uh… her panties on.”
