Quinn Security

by Dee Bridgnorth

  “Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat! What in the good goddamn?”

  Rick cut his disbelieving eyes to Jack then Angel, neither of whom returned his astonished gaze, then Troy who was too concerned with the levitating were-thing to pay Rick any mind, then to Lucy Cooper.

  Creepy little thing that she was, Lucy locked eyes with Rick and shot him the kind of smile that boasted she was born for this type of thing.

  Maybe she wasn’t so bad? he considered as his eyebrows shot up to his hairline.

  “Sweet baby Jesus!” he exclaimed as the blue-eyed girl, who Rick had once feared was lesbianing with his daughter, lit up with blindingly white light.

  Rick had to shield his eyes Lucy glowed so brightly.

  Just what in the Holy Spirit was happening right now? Lucy Cooper was glowing brighter than the summer sun! How in the hell was she doing that?

  The levitating Dante pointed his finger at Angel and cursed, “You have forsaken me! You will pay!”

  But before Dante could swoop down and smite Angel Mercer for having betrayed him, Lucy Cooper, like a bolt of lightning, cut through the sky and slammed into Dante Alighieri.

  The struggle was too damn bright for Rick to watch, though he tried, squinting up through spread fingers to try and see what was happening in the sky above him—Lucy taking on the devil of Devil’s Fist.

  Suddenly, the entire Wyoming sky seemed to light up with the blast of what appeared to be—but didn’t sound like—an otherworldly explosion, and the next thing Rick knew, he and everyone standing on the grounds of the salvage yard were airborne and careening this way and that in the wake of the boom.

  ***

  “Give up, Ronnie!” Whitney strained to hiss through her teeth as she struggled against him on the floor. He must have been trained in Brazilian jiujitsu or something crazy, because the tangled hold he had on her gave her a startling view of her own ass. “We’re on the same side! We both want justice for Delilah!”

  “I’ve learned to obey the dark lord!” Ronnie grunted as he twisted Whitney into an even more crumpled pretzel. “I’m trying to save my soul, don’t you understand?”

  “By following him blindly as he drives the people you love to kill themselves?” she challenged. “You’re better than that, Ronnie! Owe! Jesus, are you trying to break my spine?!”

  “Sorry!” he said, loosening his pretzel hold on her without releasing her. “Is that better?”

  “Fuck you, Ronnie!”

  THUD!

  They both paused from their tussle, their eyes snapping to the barred stable door.

  THUD!

  “Dante?” Ronnie called out.

  THUD!

  The final blow caused the stable door to crack, the wooden plank that held it still in place.

  “Who’s out there?” Ronnie demanded, and Whitney felt him loosening his hold on her even more.

  She jumped free and when Ronnie popped up, Whitney jump-kicked a round-house blow, bringing her sneakered foot to his face and sending him flying sideways.

  She ran to the door and lifted the plank from its slots, but Ronnie grabbed her shoulders from behind.

  She shrieked as he tossed her aside.

  “Whitney?!” she heard Shane call out from the other side of the door.

  “I’m in here!” she cried. She stared dead at Ronnie, her chest heaving as she fought to catch her breath. “Step aside. I’m warning you.”

  “No,” he countered. “I’m warning you. If you value your life, you’ll stay quiet and stay put.”

  She charged at him, yelling as her feet punched into the dirt floor, horses bucking and clomping in their stalls, and wound her fist back to slug him in the face.

  But just as Ronnie hollered out and sprinted at her, a final THUD cracked the stable door wide open and Shane charged in.

  He leaped at Ronnie from behind, shifting into his wolf form mid-air, and pounced viciously onto the young man’s back.

  With a clean snap of the neck, Ronnie was dead, Shane having sunken his fangs hard into his vertebra, killing him instantly.

  Shane shifted back into his human form as Whitney ran to him.

  She threw her arms around him and cried, “You found me!”

  Shane urged her back, holding her shoulders so that he could look her up and down.

  “I’m fine,” she assured him.

  He glanced at the bodies and saw Larry Hardcastle dead on the ground.

  “You’re a warrior, you know that?” he told her as he let out a breathy, relieved smile. He pulled her in close again and said, “Your wild, unbridled spirit saved you.”

  “My dark horse did as well,” she added, thanking him.

  Shane was a dark horse. Her dark horse. One whose spirit she’d never want to tame, no matter how flawed he might be.

  “I realized something, Shane,” she said as she searched his eyes.

  “What?”

  “I accept you,” she told him with a smile. “Flaws and all.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  SHANE

  Seeing Whitney embrace her father in the salvage yard of Damned Repair made Shane’s heart swell to ten times its natural size.

  “Girl!” Rick exclaimed, holding her tightly and rocking her in his arms. “Thank God! I can’t tell you what would’ve become of me if anything had happened to you!”

  “I’m fine,” she assured him. “Shane found me. He saved my life.”

  Shane knew that wasn’t true. Whitney was one hell of a badass and she’d saved herself, but he had found her, and he thanked God for that as much as Rick did.

  Troy neared him just as Shane caught sight of Lucy Cooper who was sitting on a stack of old tires, Kaleb beside her with his arm around her. She looked spent, drained as all hell, like her inner light had been nearly snuffed out.

  “He got away,” Troy informed him through clenched teeth. Shane felt his brother’s fury. “Dante slipped away again. There’s nothing any of us could’ve done.”

  “We’ll get him, Troy,” Shane assured him with a raw edge of conviction in his tone. “Something tells me Dante Alighieri wants this town. We aren’t going to let him take it.”

  “No, brother, we won’t,” Troy agreed.

  His brother broke away to join Kaleb and Lucy, as Conor and Dean neared the otherworldly couple as well.

  Shane looked at Whitney and Rick and smiled as he started over.

  “Baby girl,” Rick said to his teary-eyed daughter as he pulled Shane in for a group hug. “For a long time, I thought the Quinns were no damn good,” he admitted, looking Shane in the eye before setting his sights on Whitney. “A wise man knows when to admit he’s wrong. I’m telling you both right now, I was wrong. This here is a good man, Whitney. A damn good man. And I’d be a fool to stand in y’all’s way.”

  “Really, Daddy?”

  Right then and there, even though he didn’t have a ring, Shane got down on one knee and took Whitney by the hand.

  “Whitney Abernathy?” he asked, staring up into her gorgeous, emerald green eyes that were misting over with tears of joyful anticipation. “Would you be my one true mate for all of eternity?”

  “Yes!” she exclaimed.

  And in that moment, Shane Quinn became the happiest werewolf in all of the Fist.

  Chapter Twenty

  WHITNEY

  “But we’re also getting married, right?”

  Whitney gazed up into Shane’s dark eyes as she wrapped her slender arms around his muscular shoulders, loving the feel of his hard weight pressing down over her.

  The stark, Wyoming sun was cutting through her bedroom window, marking the onset of dusk that was settling in over the Fist.

  It had been a long day and nothing made Whitney happier than having slipped in-between the sheets with the man—no, the werewolf—she loved most in the world.

  Shane grinned down at her, bringing his lips to brush hers and promised, “Hell yeah, we’re getting married.”

  “Good,” she told him before they
pressed their lips together in a deep kiss. “Because I want it all with you, Shane. Everything I can get.”

  “I do, too, trust me.”

  There was that word again. Trust. But this time, finally, Whitney knew that she did.

  Trusting Shane Quinn was the easiest thing in the world for her to do.

  “I trust you,” she told him. “Do you trust me?”

  She melted into the feel of his hot skin against hers. She spread her nude legs, welcoming him to settle even deeper in-between. She could feel the hard length of his arousal pressing against her thigh and it made her body turn to cream, every inch of her opening up and aching to finally be filled by his sexy dimensions.

  “You thought I killed Delilah?” he asked.

  She winced, ashamed of her kneejerk assumption. “I did,” she admitted. “And I hate myself for it.”

  “Don’t,” he told her. “Don’t worry about it. Everything we’ve been through has brought us to this moment. I wouldn’t take a second of it back.”

  “You forgive me?”

  “Do you forgive me?” he countered.

  “For having turned me werewolf against my will?” she asked with a grin. “Like you said, everything we’ve been through has brought us to this moment. And I agree. I wouldn’t take any of it back, none of it.”

  He pressed his mouth against hers and when he lifted up again, he searched her eyes and said, “Are you ready to become my one true mate?”

  “I’m pretty sure I’ve been ready since the day I met you.”

  That made him grin and he growled into her ear, “I’ve already turned you so this is the fun part.”

  She giggled then cried out as Shane thrust himself into the tight, slippery sheath of her core.

  As he held himself deeply inside her, Whitney ached and tingled, feeling her body gradually relax against his thick erection.

  Her breaths clipped out of her as a rush of heat swept across her skin.

  Then Shane began to move.

  She cried out at the sweet, stinging feel of him. He thrust in sharp, hard motions that caused her body to clench and expand, welcoming him deeper and deeper.

  “We’re going to do this every night,” he growled in her ear.

  It sounded like paradise and she smiled, her head arching back, body swelling and bursting with the hard, hot clenches of a powerful orgasm.

  She loved everything about Shane Quinn, flaws and all, and couldn’t wait to start their lives together.

  As he brought her to the brink of her climax, and beyond, Whitney clutched his face, stared deeply into his eyes, and said, “I love you.”

  “I love you with all my heart, Whitney,” he growled out in return as he pumped into her harder and faster, bringing himself to the brink.

  Little did they know that across town in the heart of the Fist, the joyous relief that Sheriff Rick Abernathy felt was about to be sucked right out of him.

  ***

  “Good evening, Sheriff,” said Dante as he stepped inside Rick’s office at the police station.

  No sooner than Rick cut his eyes up from the paperwork he was filling out to discover Dante Alighieri was standing in his open doorway, a slice of doomed dread cut through him.

  Faster than the speed of light, Dante was suddenly upon him, Rick’s wrist in his fangs, blood flowing.

  Dante slapped their bleeding wrists together and informed the good sheriff, “You belong to me now and we have a lot of work to do.”

  CONOR

  Chapter One

  CONOR

  The Quinn clan, and all of the innocent residents of Devil’s Fist, Wyoming, were at silent war with an adversary who had succeeded in eluding them time and again.

  Conor could feel the next battle looming. An edge of dread was constantly twisting through his stomach. Dante Alighieri—the rogue werewolf, the dark devil who was trying to take the town, the one who was all of the Quinn men’s uncle by illegitimate means—was out there, lurking, plotting, and biding his time. The residents weren’t aware that their safety was at risk, mortal as the majority of them were. Though Dante had turned some of them. He’d been quietly building his dark army, and there was no way for the Quinns to tell who among them was friend or foe.

  Devil’s Fist had always been a peaceful place. Yes, werewolves had called it home for centuries. In fact, the pack had taken root on the land before settlers had pressed west and eventually erected the town. This side of Wyoming was teeming with wildlife, the Yellowstone National Park to its immediate west, the Great Plains to its east. The heart of the Fist wasn’t longer than three blocks. There was a diner—Angel’s Food—a little souvenir shop, one bar called Libations, the town library, and of course a police station, but that was about it. On the outskirts of town sat an autobody repair shop and while there were a few boutiques along Main Street, the whole of the Fist didn’t have too much excitement to offer, but that’s how the residents liked it.

  The peace had been disturbed. Greatly. And it was gnawing into Conor as he sat across from his youngest brother, Dean, in one of the red, vinyl booths inside of Angel’s Food.

  Dean appeared to be about thirty years old, but the reality was that he’d walked the earth for much longer than that. In human years, he was upwards of seventy years old. He raked all ten fingers through his thick, brown, cowlicked hair, and when he planted his elbows down onto the table, he looked undone, as if he was coming apart at the seams.

  More accurately, he looked how Conor felt.

  Dean was heavily tattooed, had a wrestler’s physique, and stood at 6’2”. He wasn’t former military like Conor, but he possessed the same fighter’s spirit. But today, he was worried. All of the Quinn men were.

  “I can’t say I have much of an appetite,” said Dean, flipping a giant laminated menu over in his large hand and perusing the lunch options with little interest. “Can’t go wrong with steak though, right?” he commented optimistically.

  If Dean looked about thirty, Conor didn’t appear to have that many years on him. He’d gotten into the habit of telling folks he was thirty-two when asked, but like his brother, the reality was far different. Dean had an inch on him and his hair was a shade darker. Conor was the only Quinn with light brown hair and he’d had enough crew cuts back in the day when he’d served as a Marine that he now chose to keep his hair shaggy despite the risk of always having bedhead because of it. It added to his boyish good looks, as did his light eyes, which were green. If any of them truly blended with the residents and didn’t at all hint at his werewolf roots, it was Conor. He just had one of those faces. Trustworthy eyes. Approachable expression. A real all-American type, not that the sheriff round these parts had ever thought so. Sheriff Rick Abernathy had remained consistently on their cases since day one. Outside of Dante Alighieri, Rick was hands-down their biggest contender and adversary, which was a real kick in the shins because they both happened to be hunting the same man.

  “The sheriff was at Damned Repair that night,” Conor reflected as he thumbed his one giant menu.

  “No one in the pack revealed themselves as werewolves,” Dean reminded him, which was technically true.

  It wasn’t two weeks ago that the sheriff’s daughter, Whitney Abernathy, had been abducted by Dante himself. Shane Quinn had managed to save her—he’d also managed to turn her into a wolf. As far as Conor was concerned, that should be a huge point of concern. It was only a matter of time before Whitney would tell her father what she now was. She was Daddy’s little girl after all. They’d always been tight. Eventually, the information would be passed, and it wouldn’t matter that Rick hadn’t discovered at Damned Repair the night they’d conjured Dante that the Quinns, and a good third of this town, were werewolves.

  Lucy Cooper had revealed herself that night. Her one true mate, Kaleb Quinn, had turned her werewolf, but her blood hadn’t been entirely human in the first place. Lucy was an Astral Goddess and had otherworldly powers that had saved the Quinns on more than one occasion. That n
ight, Rick had seen with his own two eyes just what exactly she was—a being of powerful light.

  The hammer was destined to come down on all of them.

  “It’s only a matter of time,” Conor grumbled as their waitress swung around, filled their mugs with coffee, and found her order pad.

  “What’ll it be, boys?” she asked, all business.

  “Steak for me,” said Dean, and Conor seconded the notion, ordering a steak as well.

  They waited for her to jot it down and start through the diner, busy as a bee and making the rounds in her section before they continued their hushed discussion.

  “If you ask me,” Conor went on, “we’re sitting on a ticking time bomb.”

  “You want to worry about it?” Dean challenged and Conor took it as a dig.

  He was regarded among his brothers as the worrywart of the clan, but Conor didn’t feel that moniker was especially accurate. He was pragmatic. A realist. And he knew how to weigh the facts and proceed accordingly, though he admitted that he tended to be conservative in his approaches.

  “Everything that goes wrong in this town can be linked back to Dante Alighieri,” he pointed out and Dean seemed in full agreement. Conor went on to list the many crimes that Dante had been at the helm of. “Reece’s abduction, the murder of Lucy’s parents, the murders of Holly van Dyke and Leeanne Whitaker. Hell, even Delilah’s disappearance and eventual murder was Dante’s work, and none of us were able to do damn thing about any of it.”

  “What are you proposing?” Dean asked, but it sounded confrontational, a guarded mix of challenge and exasperation.

  Conor took a deep breath and admitted, “I’m not sure. But I can feel the energy of this town has shifted. The air feels toxic. Everything’s changed. We can’t go on like this.”

  “I agree,” Dean allowed. “But our only option at this point is to maintain a uniform front and obey the orders of our king. What other choice do we have?”