Shakedown

by Vale, Lani Lynn

  I knew that I had a great body. It wasn’t that I was conceited or anything, I wasn’t. Far from it.

  But I’d been told since I’d grown boobs that I was beautiful.

  A ‘dark and sensual beauty’ as my tenth-grade science teacher and gym coach had called me.

  Not that I’d shared my coach’s viewpoints with anyone. But he was just one of many who’d stated my loveliness.

  CHAPTER 4

  Every day I wake up and think ‘today I’m going to be nice.’ Let me tell you something, life never works out that way.

  -Bruno’s secret thoughts

  BRUNO

  The day had been… long.

  Honestly, there were many features of this day that had contributed to the ‘longness.’

  I’d woken up this morning and set out to feed the animals and had found two of them dead from an attack in the night.

  After taking care of that, I’d gotten a flat tire on the way to the strip club I helped Lynn manage.

  I did the books for eight of his ten businesses, and the only reason I didn’t do it on the other two was that there just wasn’t enough fuckin’ time in the day.

  After dealing with the flat tire, getting a ride from a buddy into town, procuring a new tire, and then heading back out to the motorcycle, I’d found the goddamn thing twisted like a pretzel and an elderly lady looking at it from her Cadi like she couldn’t believe she hadn’t seen it.

  That was one of the problems with riding motorcycles, though. They were just hard to see.

  Though, this one had its flashers on way off the road, so honest to God, she had no reason to smash into it.

  So, after having it towed to the impound yard and getting an insurance collector to take a look at it, I’d gone home to get my spare bike and had started my day at least four hours later than I’d intended.

  Needless to say, when I’d arrived at the bar, way later than usual, the last thing I wanted to do was deal with bullshit.

  But that was what I saw the moment that I breached the door.

  Bullshit.

  I’d gone on a couple of dates with the woman that was currently standing in front of me with pleading eyes.

  She wasn’t my girlfriend, no matter how badly she wanted to be, or Six wanted her to be.

  In fact, I was still trying to decide if I liked her enough to have sex with her.

  She struck me as an entanglement that I didn’t want to have any part of.

  She also struck me as the type to accidentally get pregnant and say, ‘Oh, no! Whoops! Now you have to marry me.’

  Well, honestly, I was glad to have a reason not to have anything to do with her now.

  It would get Six off my back for a while, and it would also mean that I could get my pleasures… elsewhere.

  Like the leggy dark-haired brunette at the table next to us going to town on some chicken wings and beer.

  The one with the mouth who’d written me off with a resounding ‘no’ when Six had messaged her in hopes of us ‘hooking up’ on the dating website.

  Seeing her in person, I knew that I would need to make a bit more of an effort to get her to change her mind.

  Because there was just something about her…

  “Bruno, won’t you talk to me?”

  I’d rather talk to the voices in my head.

  Eye twitching, I peeled my eyes away from Belle at the next table to see the reason for my upcoming headache staring at me with sadness in her eyes.

  Sadness that she had no reason directing at me since I wasn’t the one that was all lovey-dovey with another man when I walked in.

  And, just sayin’, but she said that she was ‘goin’ out with the girls tonight.’

  That man was most certainly not a girl.

  “I haven’t seen Benji in a very long time,” Briana promised. “It was just a friendly hug.”

  “Sure, a friendly hug where you suck his tongue into your mouth,” Belle offered. “You know, you’re kind of blocking my light, and it’s really hard to see the words on the page. Do you mind stepping back far enough that there aren’t shadows? Since, you know, you aren’t leaving?”

  Again, the way she delivered the punches, even verbal ones, were making my heart lighten with each word that came out of her mouth.

  Benji, startled by her words, automatically took a step back, which put him closer to Briana.

  Briana looked at him, tensed, and then took a step away from him as if she was worried.

  I just rolled my eyes.

  “Briana, honey. There was nothing to save here.” I gestured between me and her with my beer bottle. “We’re new. I get that. And I’m okay with you finding someone you like.” I took a swig of my beer, groaning. “Damn that’s good.”

  “I agree.” Belle offered up her two cents. “This is the best beer I’ve had in years. And I don’t even like dark beers.”

  Briana started to argue, of course, making Trouper who was beside me groan.

  “Can’t you take this outside?” Belle asked. “This is really messing with my vibe. I’m at the part where they first meet and are getting that love connection, and you’re screwing it up.”

  My lips twitched. “No reason to take it outside. Have a good one, Briana.”

  Briana opened her mouth to continue her arguing but someone called her name. A woman dressed to the nines in a short black dress, big hair, and so much makeup that I could tell it was too much all the way across the bar.

  “This isn’t over,” Briana promised.

  “Them’s fightin’ words,” Belle singsonged as she returned to her book. “Oh, damn. Didn’t see that coming.”

  It was at that point that I knew she’d gone back to her book.

  For the rest of the night, I watched her.

  She sat there, ordered two more beers, had a hamburger and french fries to go with her hot wings, and finished the damn book before she started to call it a night.

  Sadly, as she was walking out, I got a call from Lynn that had me stepping out before her and not getting to see her to her car like I’d intended.

  I did watch from a distance, though, as she got into a sweet little Pontiac GTO and drove off without a single glance in my direction.

  Damn.

  Girl was smokin’ and she drove a nice car.

  A very lethal combination.

  CHAPTER 5

  A male bee’s testicles explode during sex, killing him. That means if you see a bee flying around, he’s a virgin. Fucking nerd.

  -Text from Laric to Bruno

  BRUNO

  I had a headache.

  It was about five-foot-three, a hundred and twenty pounds, and had hips that I’d once daydreamed about wrapping my hands around.

  Now, seeing her anywhere was like an ice pick to the temporal lobe.

  “Please can we talk?” Briana begged.

  I sighed. “Briana. Seriously. There is nothing to talk about.”

  “But…” Briana started, but she was interrupted when Belle, who I hadn’t seen near me until now, came out of the clothes rack to my right and walked right up to me with a package of underwear in her hand.

  “I couldn’t remember if you wanted boxer briefs or tighty-whities.” Belle held up a package right in front of my face and got so close to me that she placed herself between me and Briana, who’d just showed up and placed her body in my personal space. “What about these? Too big? Too small?”

  I looked at the package of black ‘tighty-whities’ and said, “Those are technically black, so you can’t call them tighty-whities. They’re probably more appropriately called briefs.”

  She pulled back and turned the package around, confirming my words.

  “You’re right.” She paused. “Damn.”

  I grinned and hooked my hand around her hip, taking advantage of our closeness to pull her closer to me.

  Her pupils dilated, and the confidence in her demeanor went from one hundred percent to almost nil in a matter of seconds.

 
She blinked, her eyes going to my hand, and I wondered if I should remove it.

  But then Briana hissed. “Didn’t take you long to move on, did it?”

  Belle turned, then placed her delectable ass against my dick, and I had to will my body to stay under control.

  I dropped my hand and fisted it at my side just as Belle said, “Extreme circumstances brought us together.”

  “It’s only been a day.” Briana paused. “This has been going on a lot longer than a day if you’re already buying him underwear.”

  Briana did have a point.

  “Umm,” a hesitant voice said from somewhere beside us. “I’m really sorry to do this, but your yelling is disrupting other customers. We’re going to have to ask you to take it outside.”

  I jerked my chin in the direction of the doors. “Go on ahead, Briana. I have a few things left to get.”

  Briana, pissed as hell now and obviously thinking that this was way more than it was thanks to Belle’s words, stomped off indignantly.

  Belle turned back around and took a giant step backward.

  Yeah, she was uncomfortable with my touch.

  Shit.

  Had something happened to her?

  I knew that one of the first times that I remembered seeing her was when we were in middle school—at the time, I’d been a freshman and she’d been a few years younger—and she’d actually punched me in the throat and threatened to do it harder if I ever touched her again.

  I wondered if she remembered me.

  Which had my mouth running before I’d even had a chance to think about what I was saying.

  “Do you remember punching me in the throat when we were younger? I was probably thirteen or fourteen and you’d just nearly been clobbered by a bunch of football players,” I explained.

  Belle’s head twitched as she sifted through her memories.

  Then her eyes widened as she said, “You tried to help me up.”

  I nodded.

  “That was a bad day for me,” she admitted. “I’m sorry.”

  I hadn’t realized.

  I mean, I knew that the football players had been assholes. They’d seen a young girl—and Belle was young. She was all of ten or eleven at most, that I knew for sure because it’d been the talk of the school—a young kid arriving at the high school to be placed as not a freshman, but a sophomore. And, they’d decided to be giant assholes to her instead of thinking about the girl as young, in a new school, and scared.

  Me being the kid that always—and I do mean always—was getting the same treatment that they’d given her that day, I knew how bad it could get and be.

  Belle hadn’t lasted more than two days, though.

  After her parents had learned that she was being practically tortured all day and not learning a damn thing, they’d pulled her and put her in a school that was made for students exactly like her—smart as fuck.

  She’d graduated with honors from what I’d heard.

  “So you remember me?” I guessed. “You remember everything else, too?”

  There was one other thing she’d seen that day.

  One other instance that had been the thing that had made me think that’d been why she really turned me down for a date.

  Belle smiled.

  “You think it upset me to see you beating the absolute shit out of my abusers?” She rolled her eyes and tossed the underwear she’d been holding to the shelf that was holding a pair of jeans beside her. Then she frowned, picked it back up, and tucked it underneath her arm. “That was the highlight of my eleventh year.”

  I gestured to the underwear. “You gonna buy those after all?”

  She frowned. “No, I’m going to go put them back on the rack where I found them. It bothers me to have things out of place.”

  Then she just… left.

  I started to follow her—and did for the most part—when I got a call.

  “He’s coming your way,” Sin said in my ear. “Black t-shirt now. He took off the sweatshirt.”

  I picked him up immediately, heading right for a woman with a baby strapped to her chest, and three young kids running wild around her.

  The littlest of the young kids was standing directly next to Belle, looking up at her and reaching for a long, bouncing curl that was playing with the small of her back.

  I’d wanted to do the same damn thing.

  But, sadly, I had a job to do.

  Hanging back in the sock aisle, I kept my eye on the chaos around me, my gaze going from the kids, to the mom, to the man that was looking suspicious as fuck hanging out in the lingerie.

  Neither Belle nor the frazzled mom noticed the man.

  Which was his entire damn job. Be inconspicuous, follow young moms around, and relay that information to his buddies outside.

  From there, those buddies would make their move while the mother was trying to control chaos and get her kids into the car.

  Then, when she least expected it, the man would nab a kid—two if he was lucky—and run.

  Child trafficking at its finest.

  We’d heard that two children had been nabbed by neighboring bulk stores in the area, and then we’d gotten the call about the man about an hour ago.

  Hunt had been doing some research online when a social media article had popped up and practically condemned a suspicious looking man.

  Everyone had played it off as if it wasn’t a big deal, even the police, and Hunt had gotten us on it.

  Sin and I had been the only ones available to go immediately, leaving us to walk around the damn store for the last hour trying to find this guy.

  Finally, Sin had spotted him.

  Which led to now, me watching him watching those kids.

  It made me sick to my stomach.

  Belle broke off when the child finally got ahold of the tip of her hair and pulled.

  Belle grimaced, disentangled her hair, and then immediately scooted out of the aisle.

  Yeah, she really didn’t like being touched.

  Not even by a toddler.

  That made me feel remotely better knowing that it wasn’t just my touch that she spurned.

  Just as she was about to head even farther away from me, I got her attention by softly calling her name. “Belle.”

  She paused mid-step, then turned her head curiously to the side, causing that mass of curls to fall all around her left side.

  “Yes?” she asked.

  I jerked my chin. “Come here.”

  I needed a cover if I was going to stand here for any longer, and she would be a great one.

  Frowning, she marched her way toward me, her face an adorable mixture of confusion and curiosity.

  “What?” she asked when she was practically toe to toe with me.

  Her head was tilted way back on her neck, and she was staring at me like she could see straight into my soul.

  I brought my hand up, not quite touching her, but giving her the understanding that I was about to.

  She didn’t flinch away, so I pressed my hand to her arm and closed my fingers around her wrist.

  She didn’t flinch.

  Okay, so maybe it wasn’t my touch, or anyone’s touch, as much as she just needed warning that the touch was happening.

  Noted.

  “Do you mind standing here with me for a few seconds?” I asked, squeezing her wrist lightly.

  Her small wrist felt tiny in my hand. I could practically wrap my fingers twice around it.

  She frowned. “Why?”

  I reached up and tucked a swath of curls back behind her ear, not even realizing I’d done it until my fingers touched the inky, silky strands.

  My eyes flicked to the man that was on the move, but again, following the woman and her unruly children.

  “Because I want to keep an eye on that man right there.” I jerked my head toward them. “And I don’t want to make the woman nervous. I’m not dressed very inconspicuously, but he is. She hasn’t made him, but she’s definitely made me.”

&
nbsp; To give her credit, she didn’t whip her head around and stare at the man and woman behind me.

  She stayed exactly where she was, head practically all the way back, and stared at me.

  “The one with the seventeen kids and the man following her around in the lingerie section?” Belle asked, surprising me.

  I nodded.

  “I clocked him in the frozen section,” she mused. “I actually called the cops about him. Or, at least, I called my dad. Who said he would call someone. But since we’re not in his jurisdiction, he couldn’t come himself.”

  Souls Chapel was no-man’s-land. Nobody worked this particular stretch of the county. The one and only cop that we had that roamed around here, Briggs, was actually out doing fuck knew what at the interstate.

  “We were called,” I said. “Since we do a lot of the patrolling in the area. No cops means that we get to do a lot more stuff our way. And this is going to be done our way.”

  Belle tilted her head, shrugged, then turned around and started walking. “Let’s go find out where they’re going,” she urged.

  I fell into step beside her. “I’m going to hold your hand.”

  Belle looked over her shoulder at me, wrinkled her nose, and then offered me her hand.

  “You telling me that you’re going to take it helps me do better,” she admitted. “I don’t do touch well unless I can see it coming. Or initiate it myself. Sorry about that flinch where Briana was concerned.”

  She was apologizing for no reason.

  And before I could tell her that, she turned the corner and I saw the man that’d been doing the following around the store now standing directly behind the woman.

  “I guess I can buy these for myself,” Belle mused as she got into line.

  I looked at the underwear.

  Honestly, she could probably pull them off easily.

  Before I could relay that, she continued to talk.

  “I moved here because I liked the peace and quiet, and I liked how close I was to this superstore. I don’t know why they have it out in the middle of nowhere, but I love this place. No joke.”

  I’d thought much the same thing about the massive bulk store out in the middle of nowhere. At first, I’d wondered if they’d made a mistake on the placement, because why the hell would they want a big store like this somewhere that was so far from civilization? But then I saw how busy it was, day in and day out, and realized that it was really the only store for about an hour around. It saw more action than the local grocery store at times.