The Alpha Meets His Match

by Georgette St. Clair

  It appeared she’d stumbled on a gang fight, and both sides had paused and turned all of their attention to her.

  With a roar, Jax and Dominick raced over, just as Bobbi shifted to coyote form.

  What followed was a blur of fur, flying bodies, screams, howls, fangs, and thuds. While Dominick’s lion and Jax’s wolf were huge and fearsome, they were still badly outmatched by the two dozen gang members. Bobbi was a ferocious ally, hurling herself into the thick of the fight, but she was barely holding her own.

  It was impossible to say how much time went by before sirens wailed in the distance, growing louder and louder. At the sound, the hyena and jackal gangs immediately scattered, and Dominick, Jax and Bobbi shifted back to human form.

  Bobbi picked up the scraps of her dress from the ground, groaning and bleeding from a dozen places, and covered herself as best she could.

  “What the hell?” Jax stared at her outfit in astonishment.

  “Long story,” she moaned. “Ow. Let’s go back to your place so I can shift and start healing. Ow.”

  Dominick watched the last of the jackals disappear. “Yeah, you better run!” he yelled through split, bleeding lips.

  “Fucking A’,” Jax agreed, groaning in pain as he popped his dislocated shoulder back in place. “We showed them, all right.”

  “They ran like jackals. Did I mention, ow?” Bobbi tied a piece of cloth around a bleeding wound on her arm.

  “Several times, yeah. Man up and take it like a shifter,” Jax said, earning him a growl and a kick from Bobbi.

  Dominick glanced down at the blinking red ankle bracelet. “God damn it,” he said. “I violated my probation again.”

  “I’ll take care of it. Call your probation officer.” Bobbi reached into her purse, grabbed her phone, and handed it to him. He called, let Bobbi talk to his probation officer, and then gave her back her phone.

  The three of them limped back to their cars, wrapped in the shreds of their clothing, and headed back to Jax’s place. They staggered up the stairs, holding each other up, and soon as they got to Jax’s door, Bobbi stopped in her tracks and a look of rage clouded her face.

  “She’s still her. Your fucking girlfriend is still here.”

  Jax noticed it right away. The smell. Caress, the overeager sub from Caged Heat. His apartment stank of her.

  “What’s going on? What is she doing in my apartment?” he demanded of Bobbi.

  “I could ask you the same god-damned question.” Bobbi glared at him.

  He looked at the lock on his door. “It’s been jimmied. The crazy bitch broke into my apartment.”

  “Oh. Ohhhh…” he could see comprehension dawning on Bobbi’s beautiful face. “I thought you let her in,” she muttered. “That’s why I headed down to the warehouse district. I was looking for an excuse to kick some ass. Tension reliever. It seemed to work for you.”

  “That still doesn’t explain the dress.”

  Jax watched as a blush swept over Bobbi’s face. “It was a surprise. For you. That’s why I wanted you to come meet me here.”

  “Really?” Jax suddenly realized he was grinning like an idiot. “You did that? For me? Babe, I am going to make all of this up to you. As soon as I stop hemorraghing. I swear.”

  The tension and anger that he’d been feeling drained away.

  “Hey, I’m standing right here. Bleeding. And you apparently have a crazy, horny stalker in your apartment,” Dominick snapped.

  “Fine, I’ll deal with it. And quit being such a pussy. Ha. Lion shifter. Pussy. That was a good one,” Jax laughed, as he dialed his cell phone.

  “Oh yeah, it was hilarious.” Dominick didn’t look at all amused.

  The three of them stormed into the apartment. Caress was sprawled naked on Jax’s bed, and she shot up when they banged into the room. Jax had to physically restrain a growling, snarling Bobbi.

  “What is she doing here?” Caress wailed. “Who is that man? Jax, why don’t you want me any more?”

  “That’s it. I’m calling the police,” Jax snapped. He grabbed the handcuffs that he kept by his bedside and quickly cuffed a sniveling, crying Caress to the bed-post.

  The police arrived in minutes. Jax uncuffed Caress and waited while she got dressed; then the police cuffed her again and marched her out of his room.

  “Jax! Don’t let them take me, Jax! Why are you doing this to me? I just wanted to be with you again,” Caress whimpered as Jax and Bobbi followed them to the door

  “I’m filling out a restraining order against you,” Jax snapped at Caress. “And while I’d never hit a lady, if you ever come near me again, I won’t save you when Bobbi rips your face off and you spend the rest of your life eating through a straw.”

  Bobbi half shifted and lunged and snarled to bring home the point, jaws snapping inches from Caress’s throat, and Caress let out a scream of terror, cringing away from her.

  The cops glanced at the three bleeding, battered shifters, standing in their tattered shreds of clothing.

  “Man, you guys know how to have a good time,” one of them said, shaking his head as they led Caress away.

  “I guess they never heard of safe sex,” the other one added.

  The three shifters limped into Jax’s living room.

  “All right, here’s the plan,” Jax said through split, puffy lips. “Dominick, you’re welcome to shift and heal for a few hours here. Bobbi and I will be in the bedroom, doing the same. Then when my bones are back in place, I’m going to come out and politely ask you to get the hell out, unless you want to listen to Bobbi show me exactly what she’d planned to do to me when I got home.” He looked Bobbi up and down appreciatively. “Babe, I think I like the dress even better now. What’s left of it.”

  With a look of disgust, Dominick limped off, shifting as he walked, and curled up in a giant ball of golden fur on the floor in front of the sofa.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Jax stretched langorously on his bed. After he’d healed last night, he’d let Bobbi demonstrate exactly what she’d had planned for him. Then he’d shown her a few new tricks off his own, tricks which included ropes and intricate knotwork, and the new vibrator he’d bought just for her, so he could stimulate as many pleasure points as possible on her body, simultaneously.

  Her shrieks of pleasure and pleading still rang in his ears. Screams of “If you don’t let me come right now, you mangy useless back alley mutt…” A smirk formed on his lips.

  He’d warned her a while back. Payback was a bitch. And he was a complete and utter bastard.

  Even the fact that Hammersmith had royally screwed him out of a small fortune wasn’t bothering him this morning. Bobbi was in the shower, and he was planning on following her in there…until his phone rang.

  It was Kenneth, so he answered it.

  “Good morning,” he said, in a ridiculously good mood.

  Kenneth’s serious tone caught him up short.

  “Are you alone?” Kenneth demanded.

  “Not really. Bobbi’s in the shower. Why?”

  “I need you to come to my house. Without her. And don’t say anything to her until you’ve spoken to us.”

  A chill ran over Jax’s body. “Tell me what this is about,” he demanded.

  “Jax. Just get over here.” Kenneth hung up.

  Jax swallowed hard, glanced longingly at the shower, and then climbed out of bed and pulled his clothes on quickly. Damn Kenneth. He could smell Bobbi’s sweet, clean smell, drifting from the shower, the soap, the shampoo, her own special aroma…

  He wrote a note which he left on the bed.

  “Kenneth has an emergency, I’ll be back with breakfast. Be here waiting for me, and ready for more, or there will be consequences. Love, the biggest bastard in the universe.” One of the things she’d called him last night.

  He added a little smiley face next to the writing, just to be a jerk.

  He pulled in to Kenneth’s driveway twenty minutes later, a scowl stamped on his face,
and stomped up to the door. The butler showed him in, directing him to Kenneth’s office on the second floor.

  Kenneth and Tyler were there waiting for him. He didn’t like the look on their faces.

  “What?” he demanded uneasily, without so much as a hello.

  “Bobbi Jo’s been talking to a drug dealer who used to be Tony’s boss. And to some man in prison,” Tyler said, also without preamble. “She’s been filling the drug dealer in on all the details of the investigation.”

  “What?” Jax felt as if Tyler had literally hit him with a sledgehammer. He staggered back a step, his world suddenly reeling. “There has got to be some mistake. There’s no way.”

  “We’ve been monitoring her calls ever since you told us how she lied about her older brothers,” Tyler said. “I hacked into her cell phone. And I wish I were making a mistake. The drug dealer she’s talking to is Vaughn Waverly. The man in prison isn’t related to her; he’s from Arizona, the same city she grew up in. It’s possible she’s romantically involved with him. She told him she loved him, and she wouldn’t let anything happen to him. Vaughn made it quite clear to her that if she didn’t keep him filled in, the man in prison would suffer the consequences. His name is Heath Gallagher.”

  Jax found himself struggling to breathe. He recognized the name Vaughn Waverly. Vaughn was one of the biggest dirtbags on the continent, an untouchable drug lord and pimp who operated out of Mexico.

  This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t.

  “You’re lying to me,” he growled, his body shaking with the effort to stay human.

  “Jax. I wish we were. I heard it myself.”

  “You had no right!” It came out in an anguished howl, and suddenly Jax lost control and his wolf was hurling through the air at Tyler.

  Instantly Tyler and Kenneth shifted, and the three of them briefly battled before the panther and the wolf pinned him down.

  After his struggles slowed, they let him up, and he turned and raced from the room.

  “Jax! Get back here! Jax!” Kenneth yelled.

  Jax ignored him.

  He had to get back to Bobbi. He had to. She’d explain this to him, she’d make it right, she’d put his universe back together. It couldn’t be true.

  But when he got back to his apartment, Bobbi was gone.

  * * *

  “Pixie, I am going to murder you. I mean it. I am going to dismember you.”

  “You’d have to catch me first.” Pixie sounded annoyingly cheerful on the other end of the phone.

  Bobbi was walking down the street in front of Jax’s house, frustration sizzling inside her. After reading Jax’s text, she’d been headed out to grab a coffee, when Pixie called her to tell her she was still on the Rage case.

  “I’ve caught you before. You’re human, it’s not that hard.”

  “First you have to find me, then catch me.”

  “I told you, very clearly, very many times, that I did not want you investigating this case any more. It is dangerous. You could die.”

  “Do you want to hear what I found out, or not? Because you’re the one who’s all like, this case could ruin human-shifter relations, it could start a war, et cetera, blah blah blah. And I know where Tony LaRosa is going to be tomorrow morning.”

  “What?” Bobbi stopped walking. “What did you just say?”

  “Tomorrow morning at 8 a.m., Tony LaRosa will be at the old Engstrom Tomato Canning Plant, selling his stash to a dealer named Raj, for a quarter million dollars. He let Raj test out the samples last night. And I didn’t ask around, by the way, I did some skulking and eavesdropping, so nobody even knows that I know.”

  “I may not kill you,” Bobbi conceded, “but I will maim you a little bit. Pixie, that’s brilliant. Now get the hell out of that neighborhood, and come back to my place. I want you staying in my hotel room until Tony’s picked up. You hear me? I’ll meet you there in fifteen minutes.”

  Silence.

  “Are you still there? I was only kidding about maiming you. I’ll just slap you around a little.”

  “Someone’s following me,” Pixie said in a strained voice. “Same guy who I saw a few blocks back. I just saw him again.”

  “What? Get to a place with lots of people. Don’t hang up. Just run.”

  Bobbi heard a strangled scream, and then silence, and then more screaming and cursing.

  Then another voice came on the phone, and her blood turned to ice.

  It was Vaughn Waverly.

  “Hello, Bobbi. A car is coming towards you now. See it?”

  “Yes,” she said coldly.

  The limo with the tinted windows pulled up next to her. “Get in the back. Hand your phone to the man in the back seat. If you do anything else, your friend will die…very slowly, over the course of the next several days. And you’ll get to listen.”

  The door swung open, and she climbed in, heart pounding.

  She handed her telephone to a big, burly man, and watched while he stomped it into the floor of the limo.

  Then he grabbed a copper collar from the seat next to him, and snapped it on her neck, which began to sting immediately.

  Now she couldn’t shift. Smart move on Vaughn’s part.

  Before she could move, the thug had grabbed a hood and put it over her head, then he quickly bound her hands behind her back with a zip tie. She sat silently, listening for cues and paying attention to their twists and turns. It was a half hour drive which felt as if it took years, but she had a pretty good idea where they were.

  She was dragged out of the car; they had parked in a garage. Next she was marched down a long hallway and through a door, and then then the hood was yanked from her head. She was in a specious, luxuriously decorated livingroom with overstuffed white sofas and white fluffy carpet. All of the drapes were pulled.

  Pixie sat in an overstuffed arm chair, her lip swollen, her right eye blackened, her cheek puffy. Her hands were folded in front of her, and she glared sullenly at the floor. She was wearing a plain white t shirt and white leggings, and she was barefoot. . Her leaf necklace still dangled around her neck.

  Similar clothing lay in a pile on a couch next to Pixie’s chair. A beautiful cougar shifter lay curled up on the couch next to the pile of clothing. She had long, streaming black hair, and wore a copper collar. Her face and arms were bruised, and she was sallow and covered with a sheen of sweat. Drug withdrawal.

  Pixie glanced up when Bobbi walked in. “You shouldn’t have come for me,” she mumbled through swollen lips. “This was my mistake. I screwed up; I’m the one that should be paying for it, not you.”

  “It’s okay. We’ll be fine,” Bobbi said, although she sincerely doubted it.

  Two large, burly men were standing behind Pixie. “Strip, and put those clothes on,” one of them barked at Bobbi, as the thug from the limo slashed open the zip ties on her wrists. “Everything off. Bra, underwear, jewelry.”

  Bobbi did as she was told, changing into a form fitting white t-shirt and white leggings. There was no way she’d be able to conceal any weapons underneath those clothes; Vaughn wasn’t taking any chances. The bodyguards collected her clothing and weapons, and one of them walked out of the room with them.

  Bobbi sat down on the couch next to the shifter, and turned when she heard footsteps approaching her.

  “Hello, Bobbi Jo. We meet at last.”

  The drug lord stood before her, impeccably groomed in his hand tailored gray raw silk suit. He was handsome, his eyebrows perfectly shaped, his fingernails manicured. His tie was lavender and the little folded pocket square above his left breast pocket matched it perfectly.

  “You didn’t need Pixie,” she told him. “You already have my brother.”

  “Extra insurance,” he smiled gently. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t trust you, but I know that you’ve been hiding information from me, and you’re a fucking fleabag mangy animal whore just like all the others of your kind.” He said it in the same polite, civilized tone he’d use if
he were complimenting her on her dress.

  Bobbi didn’t react. His opinion meant nothing to her. “What do you want, Vaughn?” she asked.

  “I want to know where Tony LaRosa is.”

  She kept her expression completely neutral, but relief washed over her. He didn’t know that Pixie had told her about the meeting tomorrow morning. This was the only card she had left in her hand.

  Here in this house, with a copper collar on her neck, surrounded by armed men, she had no chance. But if they travelled to meet Tony LaRosa, maybe she could create some kind of diversion, so Pixie at least could get away.

  “I know where he’ll be tomorrow,” she said.

  Vaughn’s eyes lit up. “Where?”

  She turned to look at him. “If I tell you now, you have no reason to keep me alive. I know you’re planning on killing me, and then my brother, and Pixie, once you get your hands on Tony. And I know how much you want Tony. So listen carefully. As a shifter, I am capable of willing my own heart to stop. If I die, the knowledge of where Tony is dies with me.”

  “Don’t!” Pixie protested. Bobbi ignored her. Vaughn’s eyes had grown murderous, but she plowed on.

  “Tomorrow morning, Pixie and I will get in the car with you, and I will tell you where to start driving. I will keep giving you directions until we get there. It is in a remote location, so it will be easy for you to grab Tony. I am not telling you anything else until then.”

  “I’ve never heard that about shifters,” Vaughn snapped. “I think you’re bluffing.”

  “Humans don’t know everything about shifters. If you think I’m bluffing, try me.” He made a move towards her. She didn’t flinch, didn’t blink.

  He stopped, and began pacing, his face darkening with rage, muttering a stream of curses. “Fucking bitch, whore, scumbag lying slut, shifter cunt…”

  Finally he spun to face her. “Fine. But tomorrow morning, you’re going to find out what happens to people who mess with me.”

  He jerked his thumb at her and Pixie. “Lock the bitches up.”

  “Wait, I thought we got to play with them,” one of them men protested, and then flinched when Vaughn swung on him. “Did I stutter?” he hissed.