Gambling on Trouble (Shifters in Vegas)

by Anna Lowe

  The man only grew angrier. “I swear this place is rigged. I’m fucking tired of being cheated!”

  Tanner sighed. No, these blackjack tables weren’t rigged. They just had extremely crafty dealers, like Dex — the accomplice his entire plan hinged on.

  The security guards reached for the man’s arms, but he jerked away. He stood tall, practically steaming from the ears, and threw his hands up in a ready-to-attack pose.

  “You trying to intimidate me? I know karate! I know jui-jitsu!”

  The nearest guests backed away, while others turned in eager anticipation of a fight.

  Tanner moved in and fixed the man with a glare.

  “I can take you,” the human went on, then faltered when he saw Tanner looming a few inches above the other two. “I can… Um, I…” he stuttered, waving his hands.

  You’ll what? Tanner let his eyes say. He squared his shoulders, letting them strain at the fabric of his suit.

  The man’s eyes widened, and Tanner nearly chuckled. He’d love to see the guy react to his bear coming out, but of course, he couldn’t do that. Didn’t need those extra couple of inches, anyway. His human form was enough.

  The man’s shoulders slumped as his eyes hit the floor in submission, a gesture Tanner had seen so often in his time. Even at home with the bears of his clan, it was a regular occurrence. His cousin might be the one poised to take over as alpha someday, but Tanner was the peace-keeper — the powerhouse everyone counted on to get jobs done.

  “I’ll just be going now,” the sore loser murmured, following the guards’ gesture toward the casino doors.

  Dex opened a fresh deck of cards and tapped them on the blackjack table. “Next round, ladies and gentlemen. Next round.”

  And just like that, it was back to business as usual. At least, for about thirty seconds, when the piercing sound of a fire alarm shot through Tanner’s earpiece.

  He winced and tapped it, moving into a service hall out of sight of the guests.

  “Confirm alarm. Confirm,” he barked into the tiny mouthpiece.

  “Fire alarms registering on the twenty-eighth floor,” the guard reported. “Wait — and the twenty-seventh, too.”

  Feet pounded down the hallway as the casino’s crisis crew jumped into action. Calling the police or fire department was always a last resort in a place run by vampires.

  “What does Code Blue say?” he demanded.

  Code Blue was their code name for Cassandra, the aging witch with the dye job gone wrong who sat in the control room, keeping an eye on the casino along with the guards. Or keeping as much of an eye out as an aging witch could be expected to while clacking away at her knitting.

  “She’s calling it a Type Four fire. She’s trying to fight it now.”

  His brow furrowed. Type Four meant a fire kindled by supernatural means, not a dropped cigarette or short-circuit kind of fire. And the witch trying to fight it most likely meant failing, because good witches were hard to find, a fact his boss constantly bemoaned.

  Tanner headed for the stairwell and bounded up the stairs, catching up with the crisis crew easily. Tenth floor…fifteenth…seventeenth…

  “Intruder! Intruder alert!” a new report sounded in his ear.

  A fire and an intruder? What was going on?

  “Which floor?”

  “Twenty-ninth.”

  The penthouse level? What thief would be crazy enough to sneak into a vampire’s private apartment? And not just any vampire, but Igor Schiller, the sneakiest, most bloodthirsty, most malicious vampire of them all. The man toyed with humans the way a cat did with its prey. Even Tanner got the creeps around that man. A good thing Schiller was off at a gala dinner. Tanner didn’t need to deal with an intruder and Igor Schiller at the same time.

  “Crew six to the fire,” he told the guard. “Crew four to the penthouse.”

  “They’re already on it,” the guard confirmed.

  His skin prickled in warning as he neared the penthouse, and he wondered who the intruder was. A rival vampire, maybe? A powerful supernatural of some kind? But truly, what was there to steal in Schiller’s apartment other than some really bad art?

  He slammed open the fire door at the penthouse level. The moment he stepped into the hall, he heard a woman yell. She was angry, all right. Downright incensed. Furious. Which she’d have every right to be, if she was Elvira, Schiller’s bloodsucking consort who shared the penthouse with his boss.

  But it wasn’t Elvira. This woman’s voice was lower. Stronger. Huskier. This woman’s voice reached deep into his soul and warmed every drop of blood instead of turning it to ice.

  He stiffened in incredulous recognition. No way. It couldn’t be.

  “Get your dirty hands off me!” the woman yelled, making the bison shifter guard coming around a corner wince. Tanner stood rooted to the spot, hoping against hope that the person who appeared next wasn’t who he thought it must be. She ought to have been miles away from Vegas by now.

  “Or should I say, get your dirty hooves off me. Off!” the woman snapped.

  Another guard appeared, pulling someone along by the arm.

  “I can walk, you know.”

  The thinner arm the guard was holding wrenched itself free, and the woman stepped into view, holding her head high.

  She moved with a regal step, like a queen. Not in the snobby, new-money way Elvira did, but with an understated, old-world kind of class that came naturally. Her auburn hair shone reddish-black, and even the fluorescent lights couldn’t flatten that rich color out. Her lips were full and wide, her cheeks flushed.

  Mate! His inner bear jumped up and down in glee. Mate!

  Karen. God, it really was her. The woman he’d met two weeks ago—

  One week, five days, and eleven hours, his bear corrected absently.

  —the woman he’d lost his heart to on their very first night together. Their only night together, because everything afterward had gone wrong. Schiller had sent him to supervise an unscheduled delivery of new chips, and when he returned, he discovered Karen had been taken captive by the vampires. He’d spent a week tearing his hair out trying to figure out some way to free her without blowing his cover and sabotaging any hope he had of getting the money his clan needed. But then her sister had come along and sprung her first, and he figured that was fate’s way of assuring him Karen wasn’t his destined mate.

  Now, he wasn’t so sure.

  “I said, let me go!” Karen jerked away from the guard and turned his way.

  God, she was beautiful when she was mad. Almost the same kind of beautiful as when she was aroused. He knew. He’d seen her. Held her. Touched her until she came in a shattering high that had him flying out of control too, making him imagine all kinds of impossible things. Like falling in love with a stranger at first sight. Like knowing his life would never be the same. Like wondering if she wanted him as badly as he wanted her. As in, forever.

  The second she saw him, her eyes narrowed, and she stopped dead in her tracks.

  “You.”

  Not a greeting. An accusation that came with a couple of crackling sparks that flickered around her nose and mouth.

  Yep, his feisty she-dragon was angry, all right.

  He nearly slipped up and said her name. Very nearly strode over and punched the guard the hell away from her, too, but he caught himself just in time. He couldn’t let on that he knew Karen. Not here, in the den of the enemy. He was her only chance, and if he became a suspect, that chance was gone.

  Shit. If he became a suspect, his chance at seeing his plan through was fried, too. He’d fail his entire clan for the sake of a stranger.

  Not a stranger! his bear bellowed. My mate!

  He clenched his fists, grappling with the beast for control. He had to act with his brain, not with his heart.

  But damn, was his heart ready for a fight.

  Her best chance comes from us keeping cool, he told his inner bear. In fact, her only chance comes from us keeping cool.
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  The bear huffed in frustration but slowly backed down.

  Tanner tried telegraphing with his eyes and shouting into her mind — Karen! Please, just play along! — but all she gave him was that slitty-eyed death stare.

  “I can’t believe you work for the vampires and their Keystone Cops.”

  He cut her off quickly, barking at the guard. “Where was she?”

  “In the boss’ apartment, with this.” The boar shifter held up something that reflected blue-black in the light.

  His breath caught in his throat, and three words slipped out. “The Blood Diamond.”

  Igor Schiller had recently acquired the diamond, and Elvira had been parading the thing around all week wedged between her meaty tits. It was still the talk of the town — seventy carats, some said, and worth a fortune. Its mysterious origins only served to heighten the hype — an Indian pasha’s diamond, or the dowry of an African princess, others said. The story circulating around the shifter world, though, said its unique coloring came from the blood of a dragon.

  He looked from the diamond to Karen, whose eyes shone in exactly the same hue.

  “That’s mine.” Karen grabbed for it, but the guard swung it away.

  “It belongs to the big boss, lady,” the man said.

  “Your boss?” she snickered. “Freddy Fucking Fangs?” Then she shook her head. “That diamond belongs to my family.”

  Her voice wavered a little, and Tanner’s heart pinched. Whatever her connection to the jewel, it was a personal one, because Karen never wavered. Karen was tough and brash and ballsy, and she rarely showed her soft side. Not when anyone was looking, anyway.

  His bear swelled with pride, watching her stare down a bison shifter twice her size. None of the women at home had that spunk, that defiant spark. Was he really going to settle down with someone nice and plain and boring?

  No way, his bear declared.

  Three more guards rushed up, which meant he had no chance to attempt what instinct demanded — namely, grabbing Karen and the diamond and hightailing it the hell out of the place.

  “That diamond belongs to my family,” she repeated, stomping and nailing the guard’s foot in the process.

  The guard jumped away with a muffled howl as Karen whipped the diamond out of his hand.

  “Mine!” she yelled, defiance outshining the desperation in her eyes.

  One little dragon shifter up against all those guards, and she was holding her ground.

  Of course, she is, his bear hummed.

  She backed up a step, then another, ready to wheel and flee. But she backed right into the next guard, who caught her wrists. She wriggled and hissed like a banshee, to little effect.

  Without thinking, Tanner shoved the guard away. No one was manhandling Karen that way. He growled and stared the guard down with murderous eyes.

  No one touches my mate! his bear roared inside. No one!

  The guard stumbled backward, holding his hands up.

  Tanner gritted his teeth. A good thing those assholes couldn’t read his mind, because hell, this was no time to give himself away.

  He cleared his throat, wrestling for self-control as Karen stared at him with big, round eyes. Her gaze was softer, as if she felt it, too — this warm-bath feeling that seemed to wash over him whenever he came close to her. A feeling of peace and rightness, just like he got when snoozing in the springtime sun back home, when the world around him was all warmth and freshness and promise.

  God, she was so close. Her minty breath warmed his neck. Her green eyes locked on his. Her hands felt so small in his and yet they fit together just right. The way she would fit tucked up against his chest.

  But a dozen questioning eyes burned into his back, and he had to pull away. Everything hung in the balance. His duty to his clan. Karen’s safety. The success of the plan he’d been working on for months.

  “The boss will want her untouched,” he said, trying to cover up his too-gentle hold on her arms.

  And just like that, the brilliant green eyes that had gazed at him with hope and wonder slipped right over to fury again.

  The guards snickered, and his heart plummeted through his shoes. He’d just implied that he’d hand Karen over to Schiller like a prize, and the possibilities made his gut lurch. Like Schiller, sucking Karen’s blood. Schiller, touching Karen’s body. Schiller—

  He dragged his thoughts away from those horrors and locked eyes with Karen, trying to make her understand.

  I will never let him harm you. I will never let anything happen to you.

  But the eyes that gazed back were stony. Cold. Loathing. And shit, could he really blame her?

  It broke his heart, but he had to keep up the charade. He was the security chief here; she was the intruder. He’d have to find a way to help her escape later. Maybe on the way to the holding rooms. Maybe later that night. Maybe…

  Another guard stepped up and motioned to Karen. “Hand over the diamond, lady.”

  “Over my dead body,” she hissed just as near-silent footsteps edged up from behind.

  The guards around him stiffened and gulped, and Tanner didn’t have to look to know who it was. Only vampires moved with a powerful silence that knifed every other sound out of existence. Only vampires turned the air in a room cold. And only one vampire had that ice-edged voice that made the blood shiver in his veins.

  Igor Schiller, owner of the Scarlet Palace, stepped right up to Karen and looked at her with his cobra eyes.

  “That, my dear, can be arranged.”

  * * *

  Thank you for reading Gambling on Trouble and this sneak peek of Gambling on Her Bear. Get your copy of the full story HERE now!

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