Chapter 1
1155 Words
1
BEN
The glaring neon sign over the door cast the parking lot in a hot pink glow. Thumping bass pulsed through the closed door.
“You sure this is right?” Gibson ran a hand over his salt-and-pepper beard as he looked the place over.
I glanced up at the sign, the cartoon of a woman riding a very endowed horse. Naked. Beneath it, the dive’s name: Hoedown. f*****g hell. If we were in our early twenties, our d***s would have gotten hard at the thought of coming to a place like this. Now? Our d***s were only hard because of the scent we’d picked up. We’d stopped at the gas station on our way to Wolf Ranch, caught her scent, and it led us here… Next door.
It was the sweet, vibrant scent that had tickled my nose last time I was in the area. The reason I brought Gibson, the alpha of my pack, back with me this time.
Our mate.
The next deep inhale confirmed this was the place. I shrugged in reply.
“Please tell me she’s not in there letting human men see what’s ours,” he growled, taking in the squat cinderblock building just off the highway. “I don’t want to have to kill every one of those fuckers.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. We may mate in pairs, but it didn’t mean we weren’t just as jealous and possessive as the wolf breeds who mated singly.
“When we get her out of here, she’s going to know how her new alpha feels about her in this shithole.”
That new alpha? It was him. The leader of the Two Marks pack.
I wasn’t alpha, but an enforcer, and I felt the same f*****g way.
“I’ve waited five months to follow this scent again,” I told him, stepping out of the way to let a man leave. It had been that long since I’d been in Montana last, when I’d borrowed Clint Tucker’s truck to get down off the mountain after following a rogue shifter to the Wolf Ranch pack’s land. Back then, my wolf had perked up immediately at the sweet scent that had filled the cab. Some female shifter had ridden with him, and my wolf had been intrigued. In all that time, I hadn’t forgotten. My wolf… and my d**k wouldn’t let me. And now I was sure.
Gibson clenched his jaw because he knew I was right. We carried the same scent gene, meaning we claimed one female together, just like all males in our lineage, our pack.
“Let’s go get our mate.” He tugged open the door. I followed.
The place was dimly lit and western themed. There was one central stage that cut through the middle of the huge room. It had two poles, one at the back and one front and center at the end of the runway. Along the far wall was the bar, but the clientele were being served by waitresses with low-cut, midriff blouses and tiny Daisy Duke cutoffs which barely covered their asses. They might be getting tips, but they weren’t getting much of the men’s attention. After I took a deep breath, none of them got much of ours either. None were our mate.
No, the sweet scent came from the hot little number on stage who currently hung upside down on the front stripper pole. How she was able to hang on by wrapping her legs around the shiny metal in a way that defied gravity, I had no idea.
She popped upright with abs that had to be rock hard then dropped gracefully to her feet and lowered into a squat. Her knees were bent, spread wide apart. She was an athlete, like most she-wolves.
My wolf growled, and I took a step toward her.
I couldn’t look away. She was a slender thing with long whiskey-colored hair, tattoos snaking around muscular arms and a tight dancer’s body but with t**s that made a man drool. Hell, most of the guys watching her had their mouths hanging open, and no doubt, their d***s were hard.
Her breasts were big for her slender frame but definitely all natural, unlike some of the pool floats the other waitresses sported.
Gibson tapped my shoulder and led me to an open table along the side of the runway, right up front. We dropped into our seats and watched her writhe up and down, as if she were scratching her back on the pole, all the while flashing every man in the place her g-string covered p***y that peeked out from beneath a tiny, plaid schoolgirl skirt. With knee high socks and high-heeled Mary Janes, she played the naughty school-girl to a ‘T’. The only thing prim about her white blouse was that it was tucked into her skirt. We’d missed the part of her performance where she’d ripped the buttons off so the two halves of the front were spread wide, hiding nothing. It was as if she knew what would get Gib and me going.
Gib leaned forward, set his forearms on the edge of the stage and held a twenty between his fingers. She caught sight of it and crawled our way.
I growled, and thankfully, the music covered it. She arched her back with the skill of a stripper who knew how to flaunt her assets, making those t**s thrust out, her n*****s plump and ready to be sucked.
She stopped right in front of Gibson and gave him a sly smile. He leaned in, careful not to touch her, and breathed. I heard his wolf growl, and she must have too because she went still, her eyes widening, nostrils flaring and picking up our scent. Yeah, she knew we were shifters and might even have an idea of why we were here.
But then, she slid into motion again, pushing out a hip for Gib to tuck the bill into the waistband of her skirt. I moved close enough to do the same on her other side, so we formed a triangle—her up on the raised stage and us sitting before her.
Oh, we’d put our mate up on a pedestal, probably naked, and once we hauled her out of here—preferably over my shoulder—we would be the only ones to see her bare from now on.
The song came to an end, and the music cut off.
“We want you between us,” I said in the lull between dances. “In the VIP room.”
Her cinnamon-colored eyes raked over us, a smirk curving at her lips. Her gaze, which had held false pleasure, now held real attraction. The glint of her she-wolf in the glow of her eyes.
“Both of you like schoolgirls?” Her voice was like caramel syrup, and my d**k punched against the zipper of my jeans. She grabbed the cowboy hat from my head and set it on top of hers.
“Only the bad ones,” I answered.
“And you’ve definitely been a bad girl,” Gib said.
She smirked and twirled a lock of hair around her finger in mock-innocence. “Are you going to spank me?”
“Count on it, kitten,” I growled.
- Writer
