The way she shouted my name is something I’ll never tire of hearing. As she came down from her climax, I gently sucked and cleaned her and lifted her into my arms. A heart filled with profound satisfaction at pleasing my mate was my reward.
A quick shower and we were ready for work.
The Road King ate gravel like it owed us money. Juliet’s thighs vise-gripped the saddlebags. Oh yeah, we’d fuck on this bike the first chance we got. I throttled past Pearl’s neon sign. I knew everyone would smell her on me before we hit the shop doors. Her fingers walked up my ribs under my cut, accountant nails finding the scab from where she’d clawed through my shoulder blades.
The shop exhaled burnt rubber and betrayal as we rolled in. The lights glowed bright enough to find whatever was hiding. Menace’s doing. He’d retrofitted the old airplane hangar with prison-grade lighting that made everyone look guilty. Juliet’s heel caught in floor grating meant for oil runoff. Her stumble transformed into a predatory crouch that showed off the knife she’d stolen from my boot.
“Get to work on those ledgers.” I growled, throwing her the office keys that jingled like Marine dog tags. She moved through the partition of wrenches hanging in size order, past the bulletin board papered with local takeout menus. Skeeter’s shadow detached from the parts cage, all nicotine fingers and guilty shoulders.
Her office area reeked of Windex and motor oil. I watched through the greasy window as she spread invoices like tarot cards, lips moving over part numbers like she was committing them to memory. When the air compressor kicked on, she startled, momentary vulnerability before the calculator’s click-click-click lulled her back into familiar territory.
Skeeter materialized with a camshaft that didn’t need fixing. “She’s workin’ hard.” His chuckle sprayed chewing tobacco on my boot.
“Yep.” I palmed a ball-peen hammer, testing its heft. “She’s going through a couple of bookkeeper’s worth of files. She’ll be feeding discrepancies to my wolf.”
The lie curdled as Juliet’s red pen circled something fatal. She’d pinned her hair with a pencil, tendrils framing her beautiful face. When our eyes met through the glass, she mouthed “love you” with scarlet lips that still shone from my mouth’s attention.
I gave her a wink, knowing I was the luckiest bastard in Texas. Toolbox drawers screeched warnings as I stalked the shop floor. Every grease smear told a story. Skeeter’s boot print on invoice #4421, the fresh grind marks on a supposedly defective cylinder head. I trailed fingers across a motorcycle seat indentation from her thighs; the leather remembering what my hands couldn’t forget.
Her scream was a piston misfire. I took the stairs three at a time, wolf eyes catching the blood first—crimson polka dots across freight manifests. Not hers. The ledger showed a Rorschach test in red transmission fluid blooming around part number C-442.
“Mouse got nervous,” she deadpanned as she set aside the dented can, wiping hands on her overalls that hung too temptingly low. “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.” She was embarrassed because she thought she looked clumsy.
I wrapped her in my arms. “Not your fault. Too much clutter.” I had to slow my heart rate down. Her frightened scream was not a sound I wanted to hear again. “Only scream I wanna hear out of your mouth is my name when you come around my cock or on my tongue.” I told her in a low whisper.
“Bronc. Don’t be giving me talk like that when you can’t immediately back it up.” Her smoky laughter was as sexy as any dirty talk.
I tilted her chin and gave her a quick kiss, knowing she wanted to get back to work. Through the floor grates, Skeeter’s shadow stretched long and shameless across crates of “lost” spark plugs. I kept my eyes on him as I headed back down the stairs.
The sharp tang of motor oil clung to everything in my office—stained blueprints, the cracked leather chair behind me, even my coffee mug from this morning. I was elbow-deep in inventory spreadsheets when boots thudded hard against the shop’s concrete floor outside. Two pairs. Heavy, purposeful. The hair on my forearms lifted before the door even creaked open.
Menace filled the doorway first, shoulders nearly brushing both sides of the frame. His scarred knuckles rapped once against the steel doorjamb—a courtesy knock swallowed by the grind of overhead fans. His short-cropped blond hair always perfect. Wrecker slipped in behind him like smoke, shutting the door with a click that sounded too final for midday Wednesday, running his hand through his dark hair.
“Got trouble,” Menace growled by way of greeting. He tossed a crumpled map onto my desk; state lines crawled across it like spiderwebs—Nebraska and Missouri, bleeding together under red marker circles.
Wrecker leaned against my filing cabinet, arms crossed over his grease-streaked Henley. “Seven shifters gone in three weeks,” he said quietly. “Scent trails just… stop.” His thumb tapped restlessly against his bicep—once, twice—before he caught himself stilling it with visible effort.
The spreadsheet numbers blurred as I leaned back in my chair. “Rogues?”
“No, they are from different packs. They’re just now putting pieces together.” Menace’s jaw worked like he was gnawing on something foul. “Once word started getting out that shifters had gone missing, packs started comparing notes. If you check your email, you’ve likely gotten something from the Council. They’ll be meeting soon. I’m sure to compare notes with all the packs.”
Outside, an impact wrench screamed through metal somewhere in the shop bay.
“Damn, you think it’s hunters?” I kept my voice steady even as adrenaline prickled under my collar.
Wrecker exchanged a glance with Menace before answering. “Maybe, but why are they only taking one here and one there? If it were hunters, they’d be wiping out packs.” He pushed off the cabinet to tap a circled area near St. Louis. “But here’s what keeps me up—disappearances started almost a year before Juliet got here. Might be completely unrelated. But that fiancé of hers. He owns the largest pharmaceutical outfit in the country. Think it’s possible?”
“Fuck.”
Wrecker repeated my sentiment. “Right. Fuck.”
The A/C unit rattled in the window briefly before choking off into silence.
“I think it’s best if we keep that speculation under our hats for right now. I still need to explain all of the Council business to Juliet. I don’t want to overwhelm her too much. Finding out that shifters aren’t the only supernaturals there are in the world could really knock her for a loop. Especially when she learns that her best friend from college is a vampire.”
Menace jabbed a finger at my calendar still flipped to June’s photo of some snow-capped mountain. “Full moon’s what, four nights out? Your girl—”
“Juliet, your Luna.” I corrected automatically, though we all knew her name, her position in the pack.
