STORY EXCERPT

Holler

Preacher shut the door behind him and dropped into his chair. “Got work. Evan Brinski had something lifted off him, but he’s got an assault warrant hanging over his head, so law enforcement’s off the table.”

“He wants us to recover it,” I said. It was the only reason a man like Evan came to an MC.

“Bingo,” Preacher replied. “He’s willing to pay a grand to get it back.”

“That a grand each?” Ghost asked.

“Grand for the job.” Preacher leaned back, boots thudding onto the table, fingers laced over his gut. “Heirloom of some kind. He’ll fill you in on the specifics.” He slid a piece of paper toward Crowbar, who was slouched in his chair, toothpick rolling between his lips. “Collect the money up front. Split it with whoever takes the job.” He stared at the three of us. “This isn’t a solo gig. No exceptions.”

“Got it, prez.” I was on my feet before he finished. Evan wasn’t a stranger to the Howlers. He’d done some small work, forgettable stuff. Nothing that made him memorable one way or the other.

Crowbar folded the paper, tucked it into his cut, and led the way out of the room. Ghost fell into step beside me, walking silently through the garage. Ramos had his head under a hood. Merk was mid-call. Reaper was flat on his back beneath a red Jeep, and Diesel was posted at the first bay with a customer. He looked over as we passed. I nodded. He nodded back.

Evan’s house was on Temptation’s outskirts—blue siding weathered to something closer to gray, a chain-link fence listing sideways, and a patchy lawn with a rusted swing set standing in it like something nobody had gotten around to hauling away.

Evan opened the door and the heat came with him, thick and wet, like stepping into someone’s mouth. My shirt was glued to my back before I’d cleared the threshold.

The smell hit next. Stale, close, and layered. The particular funk of dogs that hadn’t seen a tub in never, baked into carpet and curtains until it had become the house’s natural atmosphere. The stench was gonna knock me out. I caught Crowbar biting down on his toothpick. He was forcing back his reaction.

“Smells like unwashed ass crack,” Ghost muttered, two fingers pressed flat under his nose, making me grin.

Someone needed to open the windows in this hotbox.

Two Rottweilers materialized from the hallway shadow behind Evan, shoulders low, ears flat. One of them produced a growl from somewhere around his sternum. Probably because of Ghost’s insult.

“Champ, Roscoe, quit it,” Evan said, snapping his fingers. Neither dog listened right away.

I didn’t flinch. Dogs read fear same as people did, and showing either got you nowhere. They were only smelling our wolves. Most animals became curious, but some tipped into anxious, and anxious was where things grew complicated. Not for me. For them. My wolf could handle the two. I was more concerned about the Rottweilers getting hurt if they decided to act on their aggression.

The dogs needed a bath more than they needed to posture. That was on Evan.

Ghost leaned against the door frame, one arm crossed over his chest, still tracking the Rottweilers over the back of his hand. Evan either hadn’t noticed or had decided not to.

“They’ll settle,” Evan said, waving us toward a cramped living room stacked with unopened boxes and a coffee table covered in fast food wrappers. “Sorry about the mess. Been a rough week.”

“Need to be sorry about the stank,” I said, quiet enough that only Ghost caught it. He bit down on a grin.

Crowbar just shifted his toothpick and stood there.

Evan dropped onto a recliner that complained under his weight. “Guy named Terry lifted my grandma’s jewelry box. Mid-sized, wooden, sits on top of my dresser normally. Full of her stuff—rings, brooches, some old watches. None of it’s worth real money. Costume jewelry, mostly. But Terry’s an idiot, thought he hit the jackpot.”

Something about a grown man crying over costume jewelry should’ve struck me as pathetic, but it didn’t. Heirlooms carried weight cash never touched. I understood that better than my cut and ink probably suggested.

My dad’s wristwatch and money clip sat in my top dresser drawer. Neither were worth much, but they were priceless to me. Besides vague memories from my childhood, they were the only things I had to remind me of him.

Evan reached into his back pocket and pulled out a white envelope, thick with bills, handing it toward Crowbar, who took it without comment, tucking it inside his leather cut.

“No rush,” Evan said. “I just want her things back. What happens to Terry isn’t my concern.”

That last part held weight, like he wanted to say more and thought better of it. Ghost’s eyes flicked toward me, just briefly, some silent acknowledgment passing between us.

I scanned the room out of habit—windows, doorways, that narrow hall leading toward the back of the house where the dogs kept glancing. Old habits died hard, and staying aware of every way in and out of a room had kept me breathing more than once.

Crowbar rolled his toothpick again, looking as if he was considering the Terry statement as well. “I’ll talk to Preacher, figure out the details. We’ll be in touch.”

“Thank you,” Evan said, voice cracking slightly on the words, relief plain on his face.

Crowbar just lifted a hand in acknowledgment as we filed out the door, probably ready to breathe in something besides funk.

Stepping back outside felt like surfacing from underwater. The air wasn’t exactly cool, but compared to that stuffy house and rank odor, it might as well have been a mountain breeze. I dragged in a full breath, grateful for it.

“Christ,” I muttered. “Somebody needs intervention.”

“Don’t look at me,” Crowbar said. “I suck at sad or smelly interventions.”

“What if it wasn’t the dogs?” Ghost asked. “Maybe that mustiness was all on Evan.”

I shuddered.

Glancing back once, I caught Evan still standing in his doorway, one hand resting on Roscoe’s collar, watching us walk toward our bikes like he wasn’t quite ready to close the door on us yet. Or he was grabbing some fresh air.

Ghost swung a leg over his bike. “Costume jewelry,” he said, shaking his head. “Guy really thought he hit gold.”

“Some people can’t tell the difference,” I said, climbing onto mine, “between what’s worth something and what just means something.”

Crowbar fired up his engine, drowning out whatever Ghost might’ve added. We headed toward the garage, engines growling low through the quiet streets of Temptation.

ADULT EXCERPT

Azarie

“I saw that,” I said, dropping my keys in the bowl by the door, noticing Holler staring right at me with those gorgeous green eyes of his.

“Saw what?” Holler didn’t even look guilty as he dropped another piece to Baga.

“The diet. The one the vet prescribed. The one currently being dismantled.” Instant goose bumps surfaced all over from the heated way he was looking at me.

“He told me the diet was a misunderstanding, and I believed him.”

“He lies.” I crossed the kitchen and stole a slice of turkey off the cutting board, mostly to establish that everything in this house still belonged to me, including the food thieves.

He wiped his hands on a dish towel and leaned back against the counter. His eyes moved over me slowly, from my hair down to the bandage he’d put on my finger that morning, a real one this time, with actual gauze. “How was the afternoon appointment?”

“A standard poodle named Winston who behaved like royalty and tipped in drool.” I pulled the elastic out of my hair and shook it loose. The day came off a little with it. “Nobody bit me. Professional triumph.”

“Look at you.” His voice went warm. “Surviving Yorkies. Filing reports. Running an empire out of a van with a duck on it.”

“Don’t.”

“Bleeding for your craft. Facing down deputies.” The dimple showed up. “Somebody should write a ballad.”

“I will feed you to Baga.”

“He’d never. We’re buddies.”

At the sound of his name, Baga groaned from the floor and waddled off toward his bed like a man clocking out. Even my dog knew when to clear a room.

The kitchen fell silent in that electric way it’d been doing all week. Sunlight poured through the window over the sink, molten-gold and slathering dust motes and the sharp angle of Holler’s jaw. He leaned on my counter, sleeves rolled up to show off those stupidly thick forearms.

Three days of this. Three days of my mate crashing on my couch while I lay awake in my bed, every creak from the living room pounding through my skull.

Enough. My track record with men was a graveyard, true. But none of those assholes had planted cameras in my van without my permission. None had swallowed a deputy’s sneer so my paperwork would get done. None had ever stared at me the way Holler did right now, like I was all he’d ever want to see.

Wanting him was a war crime. Fine. I intended to be a goddamn battlefield.

I set the turkey aside. Then I stormed across the kitchen, grabbed his shirt in both fists, and slammed my mouth onto his.

He growled deep in his throat, surprise melting into raw hunger, and his hands clamped on my hips as if they’d been holding that spot forever. The edge of the counter bit into his back. I didn’t give a damn. I crushed my chest against his broad one and felt his heart pounding beneath my fingers.

When I eased back a fraction, we were both panting.

“I like greeting you like this,” I hissed, voice thick.

“Fuck,” he rasped. His eyes were all dark green drowned by pupil, his thumbs rubbing lazy circles just above my jeans’ waistband. Each pass sent a jolt straight to my cock. “That was one hell of a hello.”

“My schedule’s a desert. I’m filling it.”

“With me.”

“With you.” My hands crawled up his torso, fingers tracing the hard ridges of his abs under his shirt. His breath hitched. Power surged at the sound—me making a man built like a roadblock catch his breath. “Unless you’ve got somewhere better to be.”

“Blue.” He growled my name low and rough, the single word vibrating through his ribs into my palms. “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be. Not for days.”

Then he acted.

One second I was planted on the tile floor, the next his arms were under my thighs, and I was airborne, legs snapping around his waist, my hands clawing at his shoulders. I let out a noise I knew sounded ridiculous, a raw, unfiltered moan, and then he was hauling me backward toward the counter.

He slammed me against it, so my knees jiggled on the cool surface. His mouth was on mine again, teeth grazing my lower lip before slipping in to suck and claim. My fingers ripped at the back of his hair, yanking his head back so I could swallow every inch of his tongue.

His hands slid under my shirt, thumbs pressing hard into my chest, then circling my nipples through the fabric. Electricity shot down my spine straight into my cock, making my jeans tight in an instant. I ground against him, hips jerking, breathing ragged.

He chuckled low, voice full of promise. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Fuck yes.” I shoved at his shirt until it ripped at the hem, exposing the hard plane of his abs and a dark happy trail disappearing below his belt. I needed him, needed that thick cock inside of me.

He paused, eyes dark and shimmering. Then his hand dove into my jeans, fingers curling around my cock. I arched against him, thighs trembling as he squeezed and stroked my dick perfectly. Heat and desire whipped through me like gasoline on a fire.

“Shit, Blue,” he groaned, dragging his fingers out and slipping them into his mouth, tasting my pre-cum. “You taste like home.”

He set me down, yanked off his belt and jeans in one brutal motion, and I stared at the thick, glistening length of him. My mouth watered. I sank to my knees without thinking, palms pressing against his hips as I dragged him closer. The head of his cock brushed my lower lip, and I tapped it gently before taking him into my mouth, slow and deep. His hands shot to my hair, chest vibrating with every spit-slick pump of my throat.

I bobbed up and down, tasting him, my own cock dripping. He groaned, hips jerking, and I hollowed my cheeks for deeper service. When he grabbed my hair and pulled me harder, I lifted my head, wet and glistening. He hauled me up off the floor and had me against him again, legs around his waist.

“You’re carrying me,” I said against his jaw as he walked us out of the kitchen. “This is happening. I’m being carried.”