Her giddy mood didn’t last long; her dad called no sooner than she had left the lot. Hitting accept, his voice filled the cabin of her car.
“Quite a performance you put on out there with the wrong King. If I needed a slut for the job, I would’ve hired one of their girls. Kansas will never want you now that you’ve been used by one of his brothers. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, I see. I will have your slut of a mother thrown out of the hospital before you can get there to pick her up.”
His words caused her anger to rise, but not as high as her panic. She had to salvage this for now and come up with a better plan late.
“I did what I could to salvage the situation, since Kansas preferred the company of another. It would’ve been helpful to know they were wolves before you sent me in there blind.”
As a female born to a shifter and human pairing, she wasn’t a wolf, but she did know that shifters existed and had inherited some heightened instincts. With that knowledge, she wouldn’t dismiss the telltale signs that others wrote off as a trick of light or acoustics.
She could also sense shifters, and she didn’t sense her father’s wolf anymore, but he wouldn’t explain why. It was the only reason she’d trusted him enough to get roped into this mess in the first place. If his wolf was suppressed or gone, she assumed he was less dangerous.
Huge mistake on her part. Her sperm donor was a bigger bastard than ever, and she didn’t know how she was going to get out of the mess he created without harm to the Kings and therefore Monster, her mother, or herself.
THREE
MONSTER
Strolling into the clubhouse the next day, Monster was restless. Both he and Ulf were antsy, but he couldn’t tell why. The last time he’d felt anything remotely like that as an adult was when Taylor had been taken. It was as if his skin was itchy and had shrunk, leaving no room to even breathe.
In hindsight, he should’ve let Diamond blow him when he aimlessly wandered back into his office at the brothel after Carys left, and Diamond had made the offer. But after Carys’s lips on his cock, he just hadn’t been up for it.
That should’ve clued him into the fact that something was up, that she meant … something.
Monster knew his tastes weren’t typical. They weren’t twisted either, just not vanilla. Usually, women like Carys would’ve run screaming. The only ones who pretended to like it were either paid well to act the part, or they wanted a patch so bad that they’d do whatever he’d ask.
It wasn’t genuine though, thereby lessening his enjoyment, but Carys was different. She ate that shit up. He could see it in her eyes. When he ordered her not to swallow, it was like she understood what he’d want next. Not to mention she never protested his hands on her throat.
There was something about holding a woman’s delicate neck and feeling her pulse, her swallow reflex, her breaths, that just did something to him. It was the trust she placed in just one of his hands. That level of surrender was heady. Monster wanted to be on the receiving end too, but he’d never trusted anyone enough. But with Carys? He was definitely considering it.
Carys had gotten off on it too. That realization had him asking her out on a date. Like dinner and a movie shit type of date. Something he hadn’t done since high school when he wanted to get into someone’s pants.
He definitely wanted into Carys’s pants, but there was more to it than that, and it confused the fuck out of him.
“Let’s go,” Prowler ordered, and the officers filed into church. Monster hung back. He was just out of sorts, but when Prez called, there was no excuse for ignoring the dog whistle, so to speak.
Once the door was closed, it was all business. The party, the women, the booze—it was all irrelevant as Prowler gaveled the meeting open.
“First order of business is finances. What are we looking at for the month?”
Boogeyman piped up, as this was his area of expertise. Not that many didn’t already have a finger on the pulse of the individual businesses, but Prez was asking for the accounting as a whole.
“Up sixteen percent overall from last month. The new properties account for some of that, and the rest is just good business practices. One business was down seven percent. It’s the check place.”
That was to be expected. It was little more than a way for their income from the casino to get squeaky clean. There was the occasional poor sap who wandered in off the street for an advance on his paycheck by taking out a payday loan. However, down seven meant that the book money was going to get backed up if they didn’t clear up the logjam.
“What can we do about that?” Bulldog asked the room at large for suggestions.
“We could have them sponsor our Christmas charity ride. Meet the donations mile for mile. Could even tap the bar to match that amount too.”
Prowler agreed.
“Do that and give our regulars the unadvertised Christmas penny special. Checks cashed for a penny through the new year and extended payment terms with penny-interest loans for regulars. That should clean some extra green.”
“That’ll clear a lot. Especially during the holidays.”
Their normal rate was staggering. Reporting that but only charging the customers a penny left a lot of room to wash.
“Done,” Boogeyman said. “Also, what do you think about renting one of the open slots to the Kings Toy Drive? Not that we don’t have space already, but, you know, squeaky green.”
