“Idiots,” Jasmin said to them. “Dinner’s going to be ready in an hour.” She checked the crockpot, adjusting the temperature.
“What’s your point?” Sloan asked, mouth full of reheated fried meat pastry. “This is awesome.”
“You staying for dinner, Brody?” Xander asked. “You should. We’re going to play the Deprived Childhood Game after.”
The rest of the crew groaned.
“It’s fun,” Xander said, ignoring them. “It’s a drinking game. You go around the table, and each person says something normal and ordinary they’ve never done, like going fishing, or flying in a plane. Then everyone who’s done it has to drink.”
Lissa said, “I don’t know why you want to play that all the time. You had the most normal childhood of any of us. You have to drink practically every time.”
Xander grinned at her. “Exactly.” Lissa rolled her eyes.
“Gosh, watching you get sloppy drunk sounds so fun,” Brody said. “But I have to go. Duty calls.”
He saw Jasmin tense up. Shit. She hadn’t forgotten he’d told her he needed the money by Sunday night, and she was more than smart enough to put two and two together.
“You sure?” she said. “Doesn’t seem like they have a right to make you work on a Sunday night.”
“Personal business,” Brody said, and just barely kept himself from wincing. The same words he’d used when saying why he hadn’t gone to Idaho. “And yeah, sorry. It can’t wait. I just have to use the restroom, and then I need to get going.”
“Down the hall on the left,” Jasmin said, pointing. She was still watching him, her eyes slightly narrowed. Fuck.
He used the bathroom and then returned. “Where’s my jacket?” he asked. Everybody looked around.
“This it?” Flynn said. It was slung over the back of the barstool he was leaning on, at the kitchen island.
“Yeah. Thanks.”
Brody liked the rest of the crew, but Flynn made him nervous. The big lion had a habit of staying so quiet you barely noticed him, despite his size and his alpha presence. Like the way a lion could suddenly rise out of the tall grass and pounce, and you couldn’t believe anything that big had escaped your notice long enough to sneak in for the kill.
Flynn might be as crazy as they said. But it was the most dangerous kind of crazy—cool, calculated, and not bound by anyone’s rules or expectations. Not society’s, not his crew’s, not anybody’s. If Brody threatened Jasmin or anyone else in the crew, he had no doubt Flynn would take him down without hesitation or regret.
Brody shrugged on his jacket. “Walk me out, Demazon?”
She gave him a long level look, then followed him outside to the porch. He turned to face her.
“I had a great day,” he said.
Don’t ask questions, he begged her silently. Just let me take care of this on my own. “Will I see you at the fights tomorrow?”
Her eyes narrowed. “The money I got back for you isn’t enough? You still need to fight to get more? Seven hundred, three nights a week—that’s over two thousand a week. What the hell are you into, Brody?”
Fuck. He should have known she wouldn’t let it lie.
“Nothing that threatens you,” he said. “And I want to keep it that way. Please just stay out of it, Jaz.”
He reached out for her, but she stepped back.
“How can I?” she said. “If you really want to be my ‘boyfriend,’ like you said, anything that costs that much and takes over that much of your life is going to affect me. I deserve to at least know what it is before I make up my mind if I’m going to let you in.”
Brody heaved a sigh. She was right, but it didn’t help. He couldn’t tell her.
He hated that he couldn’t tell her.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I just… I can’t. I just have some stuff to take care of.”
“Men stuff?”
“My stuff,” he said. He reached out and cupped her cheek. “I don’t want to get you involved.”
She gave a little snarl and pulled away again. “So letting me in on your secrets isn’t one of those boyfriendy things you were planning on doing. With all those feelings you supposedly have for me.”
He blew out a sigh. “I do have feelings for you,” he said. “That’s why I don’t want to get you involved. I’m trying to work this out, and if I can, then I won’t have to lay it on you.”
“Isn’t that what relationships are supposed to be about?”
He gave a frustrated growl. Why was she making this so hard? “I don’t know. Maybe. But this is something—” he broke off. “Just leave it alone. Please.”
She grabbed his arm, digging her claws in. “What is it? Drugs? Gambling? Blackmail?”
He couldn’t do this. It hurt too much, and there was no way he could do what she wanted. What she needed. He felt like he was bleeding inside.
He jerked his arm away, and her claws tore gashes in his sleeve. “Jaz. Please. Leave it. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
He gave her a quick, hard kiss, and left her.
Chapter 14
Jasmin stared after Brody as he drove away, watching his taillights disappear into the darkness.
Fuck caring. Fuck boyfriends. Fuck relationships.
She should have just stuck with getting naked.
Because this was what happened. You opened up to them, and then they went off about their man-business and told you it was none of your affair.
It hurt. It had only been three days, and already it hurt. She fucking hated that it hurt.
She’d fought beside him, stitched his wounds, made love to him. Gone on a fucking date with him. Let him convince her to crack the door to her heart open a tiny bit.
And this was what she got. Men were assholes. All of them.
The door to the cabin creaked, and Flynn came out to stand beside her.
“Fucker took off, huh?”
“Yep.”
“Is he coming back?”
“Not sure.” She paused. “Not sure if I want him to. Men suck.”
She didn’t bother to add ‘present company excepted,’ but Flynn just gave a little snort. “No argument there.”
He paused. “Want me to kick his ass?”
She gave him a sideways look. Flynn protected the crew, but he usually let her fight her own battles. This offer had a big-brotherly tone to it that made her feel a little bit better inside.
“Thanks for the thought, but I can do it myself.”
He nodded. “Some guys need a good jag-slapping to set them straight.”
Damn right.
He waited a beat, settling on the wooden railing. Then he asked, “If you do decide to let his sorry ass hang around, is this ‘duty’ that’s calling him one of those things I should know about?”
Considering his warning to her yesterday, it was a pretty mild question, and one he deserved an answer to. Flynn wasn’t big on the law, so if Brody was into something illegal, it wasn’t necessarily a deal breaker. Not for Flynn, anyway—Jasmin wasn’t so sure. But as alpha, Flynn needed to know if there was any potential threat to the crew—from criminals, from police, or from Council Enforcers.
Jasmin growled in frustration. “I wish I knew,” she said. “He didn’t see fit to confide in me about what he’s doing. Asshole.”
“But I’m thinking you know where he’s going.”
It wasn’t a question. Both of them had been through enough that they didn’t take much on trust. Flynn figured she’d looked at Brody’s messages. Hell, she was surprised Flynn hadn’t found a way to do it too.
“Yep.”
Flynn nodded. “Good. Then I won’t be forced to tell you I checked his phone while he was in the crapper and read the address.”
Never mind. Of course he had. Ever paranoid, ever sneaky. If Jasmin hadn’t been so pissed off, she would have laughed.
“So, I’m going to go check out a potential threat to my crew,” Flynn said. “Want to tag along? We’ll bring Sloan and Xan
der, and make it a party.”
Jasmin cocked her head. “Will there be guns?”
“Hell yeah.”
“Can I shoot Brody?”
“As long as no one’s watching.”
“I’m in.”
They piled into Flynn’s truck and took off for the address Jasmin had lifted off Brody’s phone. No one talked much. Jasmin felt guilty, following Brody and spying on him, and then she felt pissed off for feeling guilty.
So far, this relationship thing sucked.
They cruised past the location slowly. It was an industrial area on the outskirts of Nashville—warehouses and darkened office buildings and chain-link-fenced lots full of heavy machinery.
1303 Sycamore looked like an abandoned warehouse. Flynn cruised by, looking for Brody’s car.
“There it is,” Sloan said.
They drove on to the next building and parked. They exited quietly, careful not to slam the truck doors, and then they sprinted next door, running lightly on their toes to keep the noise down. They heard voices, and flattened themselves against the side of the building in the shadows.
Jasmin crouched near the ground to peer around the corner, so that Flynn could lean over her head and look too.
The shadows were deep except where one of the warehouse’s loading doors was rolled up, spilling a square of light onto the parking lot. Brody was standing next to the waist-high loading dock entrance, arguing with a short, bulky man wearing a black leather jacket.
“Fuck, man, you told me you’d have it this week,” Brody was saying. He sounded frustrated, and a bit desperate. “Do you know what I went through to get this fucking money?”
The other man shook his head. “I don’t make the shit, dude, I just sell it,” he said. “It’s not like I can solve your shifter problems with over-the-counter meds. You want something that rare, you get it when I get it. Now, you want the regular stuff or not? I don’t have all fucking night to stand here listening to you whine.”
Shifter problems? Jasmin sniffed the air. She didn’t have a wolf’s sense of smell, but the scent drifting toward her from the man in the leather jacket was human, not shifter.
She looked up at Flynn, who looked down at her with a shake of his head. Shifters dealing in black market goods with humans? Not a good sign.
Brody blew out a sigh. “Fine. Give me whatever you have.”
The man drew several vials out of his jacket pocket and handed them to Brody, who gave him a wad of bills in exchange.
So it was drugs. That was just fucking awesome.
Brody pocketed the vials and walked toward his car. Jasmin straightened up, and Flynn raised one eyebrow in a question.
Should they confront Brody now?
Jasmin shook her head. She wanted a chance to think before she blew everything up with Brody. And she wanted to have the chance to talk to him alone.
If she fucking decided to talk to him at all.
They flattened themselves against the side of the building once more as Brody drove past, and then relaxed.
Flynn said, “I’m going to find out what kind of shit that fucker’s peddling.”
Sloan said, “If you do that, you’ll blow Brody’s source.”
Xander chimed in, “And that’s a bad thing, why?”
Sloan shrugged. “Depends on what he’s getting and what he needs it for.”
Jasmin said, “It’s not like it’s medicinal. Shifters don’t have medical problems.”
“Maybe not,” Sloan said. “But whatever he’s buying, it’s illegal as shit, obviously, and if we storm in there and start asking questions about Brody, the dealer could decide he’s a liability and take him out.”
Shit.
Flynn said, “I can fix that. Sloan, you’re with me. Get your weapon ready. Jasmin, Xander, go back and wait in the truck.”
Jasmin opened her mouth to protest being left behind, but Flynn shook his head. “You’ve been seen publicly with Brody. Best the dealer doesn’t get a look at you. Wait in the truck. That’s an order.”
She felt the press of his alpha presence and took the hint.
“Fine.” She walked off, growling in her throat, Xander a step behind her.
Ten minutes later Flynn and Sloan appeared out of the shadows and climbed into the truck. Flynn started the engine, and they rolled away.
“I hope you didn’t kill him,” Xander said. “Because I’ll be really pissed if you did it without me.”
Flynn shot him his crazy crooked grin. Adrenalin was humming off both him and Sloan, but there was only the faintest whiff of blood.
“Nah,” Sloan said. “We just had a little civilized conversation.”
“Sloan can be very persuasive,” Flynn added.
Wait. What the hell did that mean? Sloan was the quietest one among them, the submissive one. At least, he’d always seemed to be.
But she had other things to worry about besides Sloan.
“Awesome,” Jasmin said sarcastically. “Did you get any answers? About my so-called boyfriend, who all this is about, even though you did the same damn thing he did and told me to mind my own fucking business while you did men things?”
Sloan said, “It wasn’t like that.”
Flynn said, “Yes it was. I’m the alpha, and some shit gets done my way. Deal with it.”
Jasmin growled.
Flynn went on, “The dealer won’t connect us with Brody. We posed as normal drug dealers, wanting to make sure he’s not horning in on our territory. Turns out he’s a human who deals in esoteric shifter drugs. The kind the Professor was fucking around with.”
They all growled at that. The Professor was the one who’d experimented on them in Alexander Grant’s lab. Bad shit, bad memories.
“What does Brody want with shifter drugs?” Xander asked. “Was he working with Creston?”
Jasmin sucked in her breath.
Randall Creston was the Nashville pack psychiatrist who’d led the attack on their compound. The pack had been after Jesse Travis, but getting rid of Jesse was just Creston’s bribe to the pack for backing him up. Creston had been after one of the Bad Bloods, Tristan Barnes, and his sister Terin—who were rare white wolves—and a little boy named Brock Wells, whose father came from the same isolated Alaskan pack as Tristan’s family.
That pack was famous for having unusual mental powers. Whoever Creston had been working with had wanted them badly enough for him to be willing to take out the whole Bad Blood Crew in order to get to them.
If Brody had been working with him…
Fear and anger burned in her. Surely if he were that evil, she would have felt it. She wouldn’t have these feelings for him—whatever they were.
There had to be some other explanation.
Flynn glanced over at her. “I got the names of the drugs,” he said. “I’ll call Tristan and ask him to find out what they do, and why Brody might be taking them. One of the Silverlake pack—Kane’s mate, I think—knows about that shit.”
Jasmin nodded. She felt heartsick. Women are soft. Soft things get crushed.
They pulled back into the compound and Jasmin was the first one out of the truck. She handed her weapon off to Sloan and then pulled off her clothes with trembling fingers, desperate to let her jag take her.
Xander stood back, his assault rifle cradled in his hands, watching her with a troubled look on his face. Fuck. When even Xander felt sorry for you, you were in a bad place.
Her jag skin slid over her, but somehow that didn’t make things hurt less, the way it usually did.
She didn’t even want to bleed someone. She just wanted to run.
Flynn put one hand briefly on her neck before turning and walking into the house, his shoulders slumped as if all the adrenalin had left him. “Be careful out there.”
Sloan knelt down, grabbed the back of her neck, and rubbed the side of his face up against hers in a catlike gesture of affection. Jasmin was stunned. He’d never done that before.
Then he picked
up her clothes and her weapon and headed for her shed.
Chest aching, Jasmin ran for the woods, trying to leave her heart behind.
Hours later, Brody sat in his car in a trailer park at the edge of town. His head felt like someone was pounding a spike through it.
Every time he came to see her, it was worse. Being around her did something to him. It dredged up the monster that had been locked away inside him for so long, and it was getting harder and harder to keep that door closed.
One day soon it would fail altogether.
The only thing that would stop it was for him to stop coming here. Stop seeing her. But how could he do that?
She needed him.
The pain spiked through him again, and a harsh growl ripped from his throat.
Hand shaking, he stabbed the syringe into his arm and pushed the plunger. Heat surged through him, and then an icy rush like a winter waterfall.
And then sweet, sweet relief.
Chapter 15
Brody tried all day Monday to get hold of Jasmin. It was a busy day at the office, trying to get everything done before the Christmas holiday.
He’d never cared less about his job.
Brody felt even more out of place today than usual. And not just because Bastian’s buddy Jimmy worked in the same division, and was still limping a little from the ligaments Brody had torn in his knee Friday night.
Not that the fucker didn’t deserve it.
No, Brody was used to murderous looks and barely concealed aggression.
It was the office itself. It felt claustrophobic, with its recycled air and bland furnishings. Brody found himself longing for fresh air, the smell of the forest.
It took him until noon to realize that when he pictured all that, he wasn’t picturing the forest around the Nashville compound.
He was picturing Bad Blood territory. Already, his wolf was feeling like he belonged there.
Which sucked for him, if Jasmin had been so pissed about his leaving last night without telling her where he was going, that she decided he wasn’t worth it.
Ah, hell, he knew he wasn’t. He’d just held onto a thread of hope she wouldn’t figure that out.
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