Dangerously Fierce

by Deborah Blake

  DANGEROUSLY

  FIERCE

  DEBORAH BLAKE

  Dangerously Fierce

  Deborah Blake

  Copyright 2018 Deborah Blake

  All rights reserved.

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Support your favorite authors. Buy or borrow, don’t pirate.

  PRAISE FOR THE BOOKS OF DEBORAH BLAKE

  "Witchy and wild, this book has everything I'm looking for."

  -Tanya Huff, author of the Peacekeeper series

  "Paranormal romance at its best."

  - Alex Bledsoe, author of the Eddie LaCrosse novels

  "An addicting plot...I never had so much fun losing sleep!"

  - Maria V. Snyder, New York Times bestselling author of Shadow Study

  "[Blake does] a fantastic job building layers in her world and developing interesting characters both old and new."

  - RT Book Reviews

  "An engaging world full of thoughtful, clever details, and a charmingly dangerous heroine...Tightly plotted, with great fidelity to the Baba Yaga stories from Russian folklore that inspired the book."

  - Dear Author

  "An exciting new series."

  - Tynga's Reviews

  "[A] good tale with fantastical creatures described in vivid detail, and with a lovely romance woven in... Equally engaging and enjoyable."

  - Harlequin Junkie

  "[A] fun retelling of the Baba Yaga mythology in a modern urban fantasy setting."

  - All Things Urban Fantasy

  "The kind of paranormal adventure that will keep readers up at night."

  - Fresh Fiction

  OTHER FICTION BY DEBORAH BLAKE

  Novels

  WICKEDLY DANGEROUS

  WICKEDLY WONDERFUL

  WICKEDLY POWERFUL

  DANGEROUSLY CHARMING

  DANGEROUSLY DIVINE

  VEILED MAGIC

  VEILED MENACE

  REINVENTING RUBY

  Novellas

  WICKEDLY MAGICAL

  WICKEDLY EVER AFTER

  WICKEDLY SPIRITED

  CONTENTS

  Praise for Deborah Blake

  Other Fiction by Deborah Blake

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  About the Author

  To the real Bethany, who is the most courageous and dangerously fierce woman I have ever met. You are my hero, and I hope you don’t mind my borrowing your name for my heroine. Nobody could fight harder or do so more gracefully than you. (And your love story is more romantic than anything I could write. Jarrod is pretty damned fierce too.) FGBVs forever.

  Acknowledgments

  I am deeply appreciative of Berkley/Penguin for publishing the Baba Yaga series and the first two books in the Broken Rider series. Sadly, publishing is a numbers game, and in this tough new world, the numbers just weren’t good enough for them to justify giving me a contract for the third one. But there was no way I was going to deprive my readers of Alexei’s story, so I decided to go ahead and write it anyway and self-publish, in the hopes that those who had loved these series would follow me on the next part of this journey.

  Self-publishing is a whole different endeavor than traditional publishing, and although I still wrote the book the same as I would have otherwise, I would never have been able to get it into the readers’ hands without a little bit of help from my friends. Okay, a lot of help. A LOT OF HELP.

  Huge thanks to the amazing Sierra Newburn for formatting and brainstorming and general assistance above and beyond the call of duty. Without you, this book never would have seen the light of day. And kudos to cover artist Su from Earthly Charms for doing such a great job matching the style of the previous covers. It wasn’t easy even coming close to how Alexei was supposed to look (especially since we couldn’t get Jason Momoa to pose, darn it), but she did remarkably well.

  Big thanks and much gratitude to Karen Buys for the brilliant revision notes, which helped make the book much better, and to her and Judy Levine for proofreading and letting me know about the zillion tiny errors I’d made so I could fix them before anyone else saw them. You ladies rock.

  More gratitude to my lovely agent Elaine Spencer, who was totally supportive of this project, despite the fact that it took me away from writing the next book for her to sell. The truly good agents care about their client’s total careers, not just the next deal, and I am fortunate to have one of the best.

  Thanks to Mindy Klasky for the self-publishing advice and general cheerleading, and to everyone else who knew I was working on this and said, “YES, go for it!” You know who you are.

  Most of all, thanks to you, my readers, for taking this amazing journey with me from the first Baba Yaga novel through to this one. Believe me, we’re only just getting started.

  Chapter 1

  Alexei Knight swallowed the last of his beer, hid a grin in his beard, and aimed his pool cue at an innocent looking nine ball. The ball caromed across the felt to tap in three of its fellows before swishing into the corner pocket with an almost smug-sounding sigh. Across the table, his opponent let out a curse.

  “Too bad,” Alexei said, plucking the twenty dollar bill off the edge of the table. “Want to go again?” His slight Russian accent, stronger after an afternoon of drinking at a slow but steady rate, made the first word sound like “Vant.” But his hands were still rock steady. When you were six feet, eight inches tall and weighed two hundred and seventy pounds, it took a lot of alcohol to made an impression, even if you didn’t have the metabolism of a formerly immortal Rider.

  While the man he’d beaten conferred with his companion, Alexei let his gaze swing idly around the room. He’d been in so many bars over the last year they were all starting to look alike. This one, The Hook and Anchor, was someplace in Cape Cod, although he wasn’t sure exactly where. He’d started out in California, methodically drinking and fighting his way across the country, hitting every state other than Alaska or Hawaii. (The thought of flying made him shudder, and there was no way he was leaving his beloved Harley behind.)

  But eventually he’d run out of land, ending up here in this nautical themed bar, whose sign bore an anchor crossed with a pirate’s hook. It wasn’t too bad; clearly aimed more at the locals than the tourists, and slightly threadbare at the edges, which was just the way he liked them.

  The floors were wooden planks, worn down by time and use, and the walls were hung with battered fishing gear - old harpoons, frayed netting, empty lobster traps, and the like. The lighting was dim and the music a low throb of jazz that would have seemed better suited to a more upscale establishment. But as long as the beer kept coming, he was happy to hang around for another few hours and use his considerable skills to separate his fellow drinkers from their money at the pool table. It wasn’t as though he had any other place to be. Ever.

  The two men came around the table, glowering, their ruddy faces alike enough to mark them as brothers. The one Alexei had just beaten clenched callused hands. “You’re cheating,” he said in a low voice. �
��You suckered us.”

  Alexei shrugged. “No. And yes,” he said. “But nobody forced you to play. If you don’t have the stomach for the game, run along and let somebody else have a chance.”

  The second brother growled and waved his pool cue threateningly in Alexei’s direction, and a couple of other men who had been leaning against the wall and watching started to drift in their direction. “Give us back our money,” the man demanded. “Or you’ll be sorry.”

  Alexei grinned, large even teeth gleaming whitely in his brown beard. This was more like it. He’d been getting bored with pool anyway. “Not going to happen,” he said, and as the others started closing in, he lifted his own stick in both hands, getting ready to break it over his knee to make it into a better weapon. But for some reason, the stick didn’t move.

  He blinked, looking down. A small, surprisingly strong hand hung on to the middle of the cue, pulling it downward and him along with it until his eyes were looking into the steely-eyed glare of a petite red-headed woman.

  “NOT IN MY BAR,” she said with the hint of a Scottish accent. “And not with my pool cue. Those things aren’t cheap, you know.” She plucked the stick out of his grasp and leaned it against the wall before turning her glare on the other men. “Tommy and Jonah, I think I’ve made my feelings clear on the subject of fighting in this bar. You’ve had enough. Go home.”

  “But he stole our money!” Tommy whined. Or maybe it was Jonah.

  The woman snorted. “Nobody forced you to play pool, Tommy Carson. And nobody forced you to bet on it, and keep betting on it after it became clear that you were seriously outmatched. Go home and sleep it off, and take your brother with you. Get, now.” She shooed them out the door, and everyone else scuttled off to sit at tables and try and look as though they hadn’t been about to pile four-deep onto a perfect stranger.

  She turned to Alexei, tilting her head up so she could look into his eyes. “You,” she said. “Bar. Sit. Now.” She pointed at an unoccupied stool towards the end, away from anyone else. When Alexei didn’t move right away, a little bemused by the small dynamo who had just ordered around a room full of men twice her size, she narrowed her eyes, crossed her arms over her chest, and added, “Unless you’d rather go after the Carson brothers than have another beer.”

  “Make it a vodka,” Alexei said, trying to hide the laughter in his voice. “Since you’ve insisted on spoiling all my fun.”

  “Fine,” she said, stalking off toward the bar. “You can pay for it out of your winnings.”

  She went to the other side and waited for him to sit before and pouring him a drink.

  “I’ve been watching you,” she said. “I’m Bethany McKenna. This is my place, or near enough.”

  “Alexei Knight,” he said, holding out a massive hand. Alexei couldn’t figure out how he missed noticing her. He must be worse off than he thought. There was something special about her. And considering the women he normally hung out with, that was really saying something. “You’ve been watching me?”

  “I don’t much appreciate you hustling my customers. I realize those two boys are none too sharp, but still, I figure you took about eighty-five dollars off them, and that’s enough.” She pushed a stray stand of red hair back into the clip that held the rest off her slender neck.

  Alexei shrugged. “How am I supposed to get the money to pay for my beer, then?” he asked in a reasonable tone.

  She pointed at an well-dressed man currently being rude to the lone waitress. “Feel free to entertain yourself with the tourists,” she says. “Just don’t hustle them. I don’t need this bar getting any worse a reputation than it already has. Play an honest game. Anyone still dumb enough to bet you after the first one, well, I’ll consider it a cheap education.”

  Alexei thought he might like this woman. He’d tell her so, but he had a feeling she’d just smash a bottle over his head. “Okay,” he said instead. “Fair enough. You get a lot of tourists in here?”

  The woman grinned. “At the end of March? Nope. Hardly any.” She gave him an assessing glance. “You’re not from around here, but you don’t seem like the tourist type. What brings you to the Cape?”

  He shrugged again. “I started out on the West Coast, and I’ve been drinking my way across the country. Near as I can tell, I’ve about run out of road.”

  Bethany took this in without any notable reaction. “Yup, I’d say that’s probably true, although technically you’ve still got about half the Cape to go before you hit Provincetown.” She shifted a couple of inches to the left so she could wash dirty glasses and still continue their conversation, her eyes constantly roaming over the bar to see if anyone needed her attention. “So what are you going to do now?”

  “Not sure,” Alexei said. “Turn around and do it all over again, maybe. Or get on a boat and go drink my way across Europe. Haven’t done that in a while.”

  She put a clean glass upside down on a drying rack. “A boat? Not a plane?”

  Alexei shuddered. “Not a chance. Flying is for birds and dragons. Not for people.”

  Bethany laughed. “I wouldn’t have pegged you for a man who was afraid of flying.”

  “Not afraid,” he said. “Just smart enough to know when something is a bad idea. I don’t have many rules. Do not trust a machine to carry you through the sky is one of them.”

  Another glass joined the first. “So, what are the other rules?” she asked, sounding half curious, half dubious. He understood that. He knew he didn’t exactly give the impression of a man who followed many rules. And he didn’t, although the few he thought were worth following, he’d stuck to without exception for more years than most could count.

  “An empty beer bottle is an abomination,” he said, looking pointedly at the one he’d carried over from the pool table, until she took the hint and replaced it with a full one. He took a swig and thought for a moment. “Never hurt an animal that isn’t trying to hurt you. Picking on those weaker than you is wrong.”

  Bethany bit her lip, trying not to smile. It made the cleft in her strong chin stand out even more. “I’m guessing that doesn’t leave many folks for you to pick on. That’s a pretty short list. Anything else?”

  Alexei took another drink and stared blankly into the mirror behind the bar, not really seeing his own reflection. “Never pick a fight you can’t win, unless you’re backed into a corner and don’t have any choice.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d have ever lost a fight,” she said, waving a wet hand to indicate his size, in case he’d somehow forgotten the way he dwarfed most other people.

  “It only takes once,” he said with a growl, and tossed down the shot of vodka, slamming the shot glass back down on the bar. “It only takes once.”

  * * *

  Bethany had the guy pegged as trouble from the moment he walked through the door. It wasn’t just his size - although admittedly that was part of it. She’d seen men who weighed more, but that was usually mostly fat, and this guy was incredibly tall and broad, with muscles on his muscles. There wasn’t an extra ounce on him that she could see, which was kind of amazing when you considered the way he was currently putting away the beer.

  Some of it was how he was dressed; the black leather jacket dangling with chains, black jeans, and the black tee shirt that stretched tightly across his chest and abs as if it had been molded to him. Add in the long brown hair pulled back with a leather thong and the braided beard that made him look like something out of Lord of the Rings, and he stood out even in a bar full of tough sailors. But mostly there was something about the way he moved, the way he carried himself, that just shouted dangerous to every instinct she had. Dangerous in an attractive way, if that kind of man was your type (hers was more of a button-down shirt intellectual sort), but dangerous all the same.

  When he gleefully prepared to wade into a fight with the Carson brothers, she figured he’d proven her right. She’d been tempted to toss him out of the place right then and there
, and would have if he’d given her any sass at all. Instead, he’d let her take away the pool cue without an argument and sat quietly at the bar, even had something like a civilized conversation until she’d said something that had caused him to slide back into glowering silence.

  She’d kept a subtle eye on him since, but other than devouring three of her extra-large burgers and a mountain of fries around dinner time, he hadn’t done anything worth remarking on. Just sat there and drank slowly but steadily, without getting obviously drunk. Either he had an amazing tolerance, or all that mass burned up the alcohol as fast as he drank it. Or else he’d simply fall over as soon as he finally stood up. She’d seen that happen too.

  By mid-evening, she’d almost stopped worrying about him when he suddenly appeared down at the other end of the bar, somehow moving so smoothly she hadn’t even seen him get off of his stool. He stood next to a couple who’d come in a few minutes before; Bethany thought they looked vaguely familiar, so probably locals, but not regulars.

  Please don’t let him be hitting on some other guy’s date, she thought, edging slowly in that direction. That’s all I need.

  But Alexei’s expression was composed and his posture seemed purposely unaggressive as he said casually to the woman, “I don’t think you want to drink that wine.”

  Bethany blinked. Admittedly, the house red wasn’t exactly a prime vintage, but it wasn’t that bad. She stopped where she was, waiting to see what happened.

  “I beg your pardon?” the woman, a pretty blond in her mid-twenties said.

  “I don’t think you want to drink that wine,” Alexei repeated in the same calm tone. “Your date put something in it.”

  “What?” The woman looked from Alexei to her companion. “Don’t be ridiculous.”