“Good deal.” I tilted my head back to check the Kit Kat Klock ticking away on the kitchen wall. “Oop, gotta run if I’m gonna be ready on time. Love ya, bro!”
“Love you too, brat,” Taylor answered, his raspy voice warm before he disconnected the call.
Heads turned and people waited to cross the sidewalk intersecting the entrance to the garage that my bike rumbled into; one girl even gave a thumbs-up and a huge grin as I passed. Maybe it wasn’t the smartest strategy for being discreet, riding on a bright red Ducati, but much to Taylor’s dismay my bike was not one of those sacrifices I was willing to make. His compromise was wearing a dark-tinted, full-face helmet whenever I was out and about.
I pulled into one of the designated bike spots close to the entrance and kicked the stand, pulling the helmet off to shake out my natural curls crushed beneath it before throwing the whole mess up into a sloppy bun. The Scorching Chick Cafe, one of my favorite local cafes and my proposed meeting place, was just around the corner. I could afford a couple spare minutes to slap on a layer of lip gloss and pull myself together.
Not that I should give a damn what the likes of Grant Black thought of me.
“Enough,” I gave myself a stern reprimand. “Just another feckin’ guy. You’re a bad bitch, act like it!”
If anyone had been close enough to hear me talking to myself, they’d probably think I was a loon. It was a fair assumption. I tucked the helmet under my arm and began my short trek up the entrance ramp to the street level, digging around my satchel for the lip gloss blindly tossed into it before leaving the club, grumbling when it didn’t immediately materialize among the jumbled mess. When I finally pulled it out and realized it was a vibrant red, I sent a Hail Mary to apply it without a mirror and not look like a clown.
Why was I like this?
I could feel my primal pace anxiously beneath my skin, rankling my nerves and making me antsy. Times like these made me regret deciding to settle in the middle of a fucking desert, when I was much better suited to the forests as a fox shifter. To be fair, this was the absolute last place anyone in my past expected to look for me, and that’s what I wanted. Hiding in plain sight was my specialty. The only other organize crime group in Vegas was the Twisted Sixes, and after I killed J.J.'s uncle during my escape from Elio they crumbled from the inside like a house of cards. By the time I made it here, they were easy enough to get under my control. There was no fucking way I was getting run out of my own home.
I didn’t appreciate the likes of the infamous Bloodhound sniffing around where he didn’t belong. This wasn’t the first time someone in the hacker community came looking for me, but it was the first time one confronted me in real life. He flew too close to the sun this time, and I was looking forward to lighting his ass on fire.
“Speaking of sniffing,” I muttered to myself and shoved my hand back into my bag. The hard plastic bottle was easier to find than the lip gloss, despite its best efforts to hide beneath some random receipts. Pulling it out, I gave the pheromone blocker a few good shakes before dousing myself liberally with its sweet vanilla scent. Usually, a few spritzes at pulse points would last me the whole day, but when I rode my bike, it tended to wear off faster. Plus, Grant had a freakishly good sense of smell, and the last thing I needed was to risk a mating.
The formula was something a friend of Taylor’s cooked up in his home lab as a way to avoid being detected by his unique scent. It was designed to hide the more prominent scent markers of a shifter in human form so we could blend into the human population better, as well as mask our pheromones from each other. Using a generic smell like vanilla kept my identity safe from every shifter I’d encountered thus far… but I had my suspicions it didn’t work as well on Grant as it did on me. I could hardly smell anything past the artificial sweetness of the blocker.
“Bad bitch,” I muttered again as a last bolster of confidence, and stepped out into the bright mid-morning sun.
The Scorching Chick was a regular haunt for me, a bohemian-chic brunch café I was a silent partner in with a former escort from Masked Merrow, Molly. In truth, I owed her my life several times over. She was my body double before Patty, when I had to appear in two places at once. It was a common tactic among bosses who kept their identities secret.
Like right now, Patty was with Jerel over at the largest Red Riot warehouse, wearing a copy of my signature mask and some of my clothes with a wig. They were making themselves visible in case anyone was tracking my meeting with Grant under the pretense of checking stock. Just another precaution Taylor insisted on. Nodding to one of the Riot members lingering on the corner as a lookout, I stepped into the intersection to make myway over to the café. Almost every table was full in the outdoor area surrounded by a low wrought-iron fence. Only one table had a lone customer, his back turned to me as it stretched out a black short-sleeved shirt, his dark hair just barely brushing the collar where it flipped up at the ends. A black backpack was slung across the back of the iron chair that matched the fencing.
A big grin stretched my face as I slipped through the gate and snuck up behind him. What little wind there was in the stifling summer day was blowing my scent away from us, so he was totally oblivious.
“I’m so glad you could make our little lunch date.”
My hand rested lightly on Grant’s left shoulder, making him tense as I ran my fingers across to the other while I walked around his chair. My nails dug in just enough to make the hairs rise along the nape of his neck in response. Obviously, he was uneasy meeting me in the open on my terms. He was the kind of guy who didn’t like being out of control. Unfortunately for him, all I did was thrive in chaos. I half expected him to stand me up when I sent the message early this morning to meet in this very public, very busy local café. I even picked lunch time so I could get some food regardless if he showed.
He stuck out like a sore thumb. This was a particularly artsy part of Vegas, so his all-black button up and jeans combo was a dark spot in a blast of bright colors. Not to mention how hot he must be, baking under the unforgiving desert sun. In contrast, this was precisely my scene. After not having a choice in what I wore under Elio’s control, I reveled in the ability to wear whatever loud patterns and bold colors I wanted. The neon pink crop top barely stretched to my navel, paired with some black jeans so shredded there was more skin visible than not, and a pair of hot pink Doc Martins. I kept the tight black riding jacket on but left it unzipped. It was enough to satisfy my basicrequirement to keep my arms—and my scars—covered at all times.
When I passed by his cup, I snatched it from the table and took a healthy swig. The overly-sweet taste made my nose wrinkle, and I visibly balked at the taste. "Bleh, caramel latte? You struck me as a bold, black coffee drinker. They went pretty heavy on the caramel, huh?”
He tried to look unbothered. It was a valiant effort. But his jaw clenched tightly enough to see the muscles flutter under his skin even from across the small café table, giving him away. Those deep brown eyes narrowed behind the simple black-framed glasses perched on his tall nose as recognition flashed in them. “Well, I wasn’t ordering the drink for you, obviously. And last I checked, it was rude and unsanitary to drink someone else’s coffee without permission.” His judgmental eyes looked me up and down and up again as I braced my elbows on the small circular table and propped my head between both palms. “Respectfully, why the fuck are you here?”
The laugh that erupted from deep in my chest made him jump a little. I should probably feel a little bad for leading him on like this. The poor puppy had no way of knowing he was talking to the hacker Andrea sent him to find. His nose flared and he tried, discreetly, to take a deep breath like he was capturing my scent. Then the bridge of his nose wrinkled in disgust and he recoiled slightly.Nice try, motherfucker.
“Hmm, I must have missed several etiquette lessons,” I replied cheekily. With a pleasant smile I waved down a nearby waiter. “Hi, can I get a large London Fog please? That doesn’t come sweetened, right?”
The waiter was getting an eyeful with my barely there top, so my question startled him. “Uh, sorry, no, it doesn’t,” he tripped over his answer. “Are you on the same tab?”
“God, no!” I flapped my hand Grant’s way. “He can pay for his own drink. Can I also get a turkey and swiss cheese sandwich on rye? Extra tomatoes and lettuce with a bit of Dijon mustard.”
“Certainly,” the man turned to me, still looking a little dazed at our whirlwind interaction. “Can I get you anything, sir?”
Grant’s glare was locked on me. “No.”
As the waiter left to turn in my order, I leaned forward to set my elbows on the table and prop up my chin on folded hands. Grant took another long moment staring, starting from where he could see above the table and slowly working his way over my pushed-up boobs, the silver chains circling my neck at various lengths, over glossy lips, and up to the messy bun I’d thrown my hair up into. I waited until his eyes settled back on mine as he took another measured sip of his coffee. His lips pressed right against where mine were, and the mere thought of it sent happy shivers down my spine. One of his eyebrows raised at the visible jitters.
“To answer your oh-so-polite question,” I began cheerfully. “I’m the person you’ve been hounding my people to set a meeting up with.”
He blinked. I fluttered my eyes in return and gave him my best shit-eating grin. “You’rethe boss of Red Riot?” As soon as he asked the question he looked around cautiously, as if he was afraid to blow my cover. I shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal. Grant’s brow lowered over those chocolaty eyes as his expression darkened like a threatening storm.
