Malcolm could feel the warmth of Trixie’s arms wrapped around him. Her manicured hands settled against the front of his leather, the soft mounds of her ample breasts pressing against his back. Even as they sped toward the highway, finally free of the bar chaos, her touch felt like an embrace, a lover’s caress. Far more intimate than it should be. But at the moment, he didn’t have the mind to interrogate that.
He’d killed for her. That meant something. He didn’t kill casually.
Not without being paid a giant sum anyway.
Around them, the Idaho night was inky black, a sea of swirling endless stars and constellations that stretched far beyond the dark mountaintops in the distance. His bike’s muffler rumbled, filling the silence and quieting the thoughts in his head with it. His Harley’s single headlight cut through the darkness. They weren’t too far from the Montana border now, from the roads that would lead him back to Wolf Pack Run, to the ranch he was supposed to call home but didn’t.
He twisted the throttle, speeding along the highway toward an upcoming exit. The mountain air was already thick with moisture. By sunrise, the autumn chill would cause the dying short grass to freeze, though snow was a few weeks off yet. Come winter, that same moisture would make for heavy snowfall.
The wind whipped around them, cold and fierce. It wouldn’t be long before the other hands started complaining about the temperature and he’d have to kick on the bunkhouse heater.
But with the open road ahead of them and the sting of the wind on his face, he could almost forget the winter work that lay ahead. The long hours bringing in the cattle, the bite of frost against his skin, the ache in his muscles that never really seemed to disappear, even when he shifted into his wolf. Here, with the open road, the snowcapped mountains in the distance, and Trixie snuggled against his back, he almost felt calm, peaceful, like autumn wasn’t the death of all the beauty summer wrought each year.
Like there wasn’t blood on his hands again.
“Turn here,” Trixie spoke over the wind into his ear.
Until now, he’d thought he’d known exactly where she was leading them, out to Black Hollow Ranch, Rogue’s place. It was a near safe haven for wolf shifters and other supernaturals on the run in the middle of the night. Wolf Pack Run was several hours’ drive, and Trixie was no doubt a friend of Rogue’s from back in his fighting days at the Coyote. But that was one of the many frustrating things Malcolm had discovered about Trixie over the years. Faker than a three-dollar bill or not, she never failed to keep things interesting. No matter how much he despised his own intrigue with her show.
Malcolm followed her directions, tilting the weight of his motorcycle beneath them into their next turn. In the minutes that followed, she whispered several more turns to him, the soft touch of her ruby-red lips brushing against his hair, the crook of his neck, his ear, each bit of nearness sending a warm shiver down his spine. His cock strained uncomfortably against his jeans and the bike’s leather seat. With the wind whipping about them, he couldn’t smell the gardenia scent that lingered in the blond curls of her hair, both too familiar and yet somehow foreign, like a memory he knew well but couldn’t access, but he could imagine it, crave it.
His wolf stirred beneath his skin.
Damn, witch.
By the time they pulled off the road, he was equal parts horny and pissed.
“Right here,” she said when they finally coasted to a stop outside a cheap, run-down motel that looked like some sort of cross between an old Econo Lodge and a Motel 6.
From the looks of it, the place was an even more endangered species—the kind of off-highway, nonfranchised, hole-in-the-wall that’d be damned if it ever left the light on for you. The building was sandwiched between what was, based on the name Kittie’s Korner and the pink neon shape of a woman’s silhouette on the sign, a twenty-four-hour sex shop and a long-since closed Cracker Barrel. In the empty dark, the abandoned rocking chairs and checkerboards on the overly sentimentalized country porch looked oddly ghostlike. The streetlights painted the scattered trucks in the parking lot a glowing orange that somehow tinged the olive hue of his skin a sickly green.
As soon as he threw down the bike’s kickstand, Trixie slid out of the seat, the sound of her heeled boots against the concrete like sharp little clicks. She tore the helmet off her head, shaking her curled hair out in a way that was far too intoxicating even for him. He had to admit, she was effortlessly gorgeous, especially when she wasn’t trying. She passed the helmet to him. Seconds later, she was strutting toward one of the rooms, heels clicking as she made her way toward a numbered door labeled with a crooked nine that appeared more like a six.
“What the fuck are we doing here?” Malcolm growled. He didn’t know what the witch was playing at, but he didn’t care for it one bit. He wasn’t her errand boy.
He was here with one purpose: to get whatever information Trixie happened to have about the pack he was sworn to protect. Or at least that was what he was telling himself.
Standing at the door, Trixie reached into her bra, pulling a key from somewhere inside her cleavage before she wiggled it into the lock. “I live here, asshole. Not all of us can be as wealthy as the Grey Wolves, so mind your manners.”
Malcolm scowled in response. Grey Wolf or not, he wanted to tell her that by no stretch of the imagination was he some elitist ass who’d look down on her for not having extra cash to spare or living in a motel. He still had far too many memories of windy Chicago nights where he’d had to choose between using whatever coins he could scrounge from beneath the cushions of their old plaid couch to venture out of their shithole apartment and find a meal to eat from the nearest fast-food dollar menu or watching over his mother, passed out in a drug-induced stupor on that same sofa, to make sure she didn’t stop breathing.
She never had. She was still kicking as far as he knew, which wasn’t very far, considering he hadn’t checked the human obituaries in several years. It made all those nights watching over her feel like a waste, and wasn’t that some messed-up shit…
Malcolm locked up his bike, quickly trading his helmet for his Stetson and dismounting before he followed Trixie through the still-open door.
Inside, her motel room wasn’t anything near what he’d expected. Sure, the single queen-size mattress was propped up on four little white plastic wheels and likely sported a coin slot to make it vibrate, and the bedside drawer looked like it held multiple copies of some never-been-read Mormon bible, but clearly Trixie had taken care to try to make the space more homelike on what limited budget she had.
White lace doilies covered several of the old furniture pieces, giving an obvious old southern flare. They looked like subtle antiques passed down from distant family. An overabundance of fresh, green plants sat in terra-cotta pots throughout the room, a small hothouse worth of flowers. A vintage poster from an old Dolly Parton tour and another from Patsy Cline were framed on the far wall like shrines to the women depicted in them.
“You live here?” Malcolm mumbled. He realized how inane the comment was the moment it left his lips.
He watched as she pulled a small, pink leopard-print bag from the top of the closet. She opened several dresser drawers and began shoving clothes into it.
“Obviously.” Trixie rolled her eyes. “What’s so hard to believe about that? I’m socking away every bit of cash I can for when I can get the hell away from the Coyote. Plus, my tips took a real hit when the bar moved from downtown Billings out here to the middle of fuckin’ nowhere.” She gestured out the open doorway to their remote Idaho location.
He knew bartenders in rural areas made shit for pay. It was why he always overtipped her, but…
“I expected something more…” His voice trailed off.
If he was honest, he wasn’t entirely certain what he’d expected.
“Bar-like?” Trixie stopped what she was doing and turned to look at him. She placed her hands on the generous curve of her hips. Her waist was narrow, but she had curves to spare.
Curves he’d spent far too much time considering. Long nighttime hours in the bunkhouse with only himself, his thoughts, and his hand.
Malcolm shrugged. He supposed bar-like had been what he expected, though he didn’t say as much. Conversation, small talk especially, had never been his strong suit. He was far better at ending discussions than starting them.
Trixie rolled her eyes again, letting out an annoyed little huff before she returned to her packing. “I work at the Coyote, darlin’. I don’t need to live there, too. My mama always said you shouldn’t shit where you eat, or live there in this case.”
He supposed he could see the crass wisdom in that. “What’s with…?” He tilted his chin to all the surrounding greenery. He wasn’t certain what compelled him to ask, but the questions kept coming all the same.
“All the plants?” she finished for him.
She was always two steps ahead, thinking twice as fast as he did. He supposed she had to. Bartenders needed to be quick on their feet to deal with the chaos around them while maintaining a level head.
“I don’t have a pet or any kids,” she said, picking up a purple plastic watering can on the small kitchen table and setting it in the tiny kitchenette sink. She twisted on the faucet to fill it. “Girl’s gotta have something to care for other than herself.”
Malcolm leaned against the doorframe, watching her. The thought of Trixie with a family seemed oddly…foreign. He guessed he’d never really pondered her existence outside the Coyote’s tap-lined walls, and now that fact somehow seemed foolish. Narrow-minded.
“Would you want that?” he asked. “Kids, I mean.”
The question came out far more personal than he intended it. Immediately, he wished he could take it back.
Trixie paused for a moment, staring down at a tiny bonsai tree in a bronze planter in front of her before she finally said, “No, I wouldn’t make a great mother. Not with the kind of life I live.”
But as Malcolm watched the way she gingerly cared for something as insignificant as a houseplant, trekking about the room with her plastic watering can in hand, careful not to injure even so much as one little leaf with her watering as she whispered little reassurances to the plants, he wasn’t so certain. The thought made something inside him coil and tense, his perception of her uncomfortably changing with it.
He didn’t like it one damn bit.
He wasn’t entirely sure what he’d expected Trixie to be like in the comfort of her own home, but it hadn’t been this. It hadn’t been anything that would make him think perhaps there was something more caring underneath all that cheap glamour and glitz. That exactly what he wanted from her had been there all along, hidden beneath the surface. Inaccessible to him.
He scowled at the thought.
It wasn’t as if a few houseplants and a couple of lace doilies somehow made a difference. She was still the same person. Still the same oversexed bartender whose outward appearance was as trashy and hot as her ruby-red lips and whose words were as cold and callous as the way she’d no doubt hurt him, break his heart.
Women like her always did.
But the image of her in the crowded bar earlier, risking it all on that coyote fighter who’d been little more than a kid, said different. The candid response she’d given as to why she’d bothered to save the kid was still ringing in his ears.
He looks at me like I’m a person, not some sexy plaything meant for his amusement.
When she’d said that, it’d struck some deep chord within him. He knew what it was like to have everyone around you perceive you as something you weren’t.
Reaper. Killer. Predator. His own false labels played out in his head.
He pushed the thought aside, watching as Trixie continued to tend to her plants and pack her bag. He tried to see past it all now, all the fake glamour, to what really lay beneath. Suddenly, the heavy mascara that coated her eyes, the bright rouge on her cheeks, and her ruby-red lipstick didn’t seem showy. Instead, it looked like a warrior’s armor, meant to deflect and deter. The longer he stared, the more he saw the real woman beneath. Maybe she wasn’t some sexed-up, callous witch of a seductress who’d break his heart in an instant.
Maybe she really was what he’d seen glimpses of underneath—a scared, insecure woman, as hurt and wounded as she was fierce, a sad soul who’d been savaged by the world around her, unwilling to give anyone the benefit of the doubt, not because she was cruel but because life had taught her it wasn’t worth it.
And maybe she was right. Maybe he wasn’t worth it.
He’d played right into all her fears after all.
“What?” she said, turning to look at him.
He hadn’t realized he’d been staring so long until she said it.
Malcolm cleared his throat. “I know a thing or two about shitty moms,” he admitted, harkening back to their last point of conversation. “I was thinking you might not be so bad at it. If that was something you wanted, I mean.”
Trixie’s eyes widened, dark lashes fluttering, and she looked at him as if he’d grown two heads. “I–I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
Malcolm tensed, pawing at the back of his neck as he glanced toward the floor. He suddenly felt naive, foolish, hell…worse. Like exactly the kind of monster everyone wanted him to be. All for the way he’d treated her. He’d never been kind, never made it easy to be near him.
Which like her was by design, of course.
He was exactly what he needed to be, to stay guarded, protect himself.
Bo had seen right through it, and maybe so had Trixie.
Thankfully, Trixie took pity on him, turning back toward her packing and plant care. She was putting little white bits of plant food in the soil of each pot now. She looked toward him. “You’re hurt.”
He glanced down. There was a decent-sized gash on his hand where one of the bears had sliced him after shifting their meaty hands into those long freaking claws of theirs. The bleeding had slowed, but it’d be closed within a day. His kind mended quickly. He still remembered the alarm on his mother’s face when whatever wounds his monster of a stepfather had left on him as a kid had disappeared the next day.
“It’ll heal,” he said.
Trixie shook her head, ignoring him. “I’ll get some antibacterial and some gauze.” She flitted into the bathroom, returning a moment later with the supplies and pointing toward the bed. “Sit.”
Malcolm grumbled, but he didn’t fight it. “I’m no dog.” He sank down onto the mattress.
“Wolf. Dog. It’s all the same, innit?” she teased. With him sitting on the bed and her standing beside him, the curve of the cleavage she’d put on display tonight was far too close to his face. It was always a battle not to look. Not that he’d been raised to be a gentleman.
She gripped hold of his hand and poured some peroxide from a brown plastic bottle on top. The chemical stung, but he didn’t wince. “What’s it say?” She nodded toward his tattooed knuckles.
“Angel wings.” He didn’t elaborate.
Thankfully, she didn’t pry further.
Silence stretched between them while she gently stroked his hand with a warm cloth. Tender. Caring.
“You’re good at that,” he said roughly. “Caring for things, I mean.” He glanced away.
She watched him knowingly. He could feel it. From the corner of his eye, he witnessed a small smile curve her lips. She seemed pleased with herself, or maybe with him. He wasn’t certain. “The only way I know how to care for someone is serving up a liquor bottle to them and sitting with them in the silence. That’s no way to care for a kid.” She placed the washcloth in the sink and then returned with the gauze.
He didn’t believe what she said for a second, but the fact that she’d cared for him exactly like that for years didn’t escape him.
Maybe it was the only way she knew how. Though he’d been telling himself she didn’t care, that he’d be no more than another notch in her bedpost. He watched as she wrapped the gauze around his hand. Soft. Tentative. She took extra care not to hurt him. Her kind of care wasn’t Bo’s sweet words or soft affirmations. Trixie would never be good for that. But every month when he’d come into the Coyote, there to pay his homage to the man he’d loved and lost, she delivered the bottle no questions asked and at the end of the night had sat there with him, a quiet presence by his side.
And maybe that’d been exactly what he needed, someone to sit in the silence with him.
Though at the time, he wouldn’t have admitted it. Thought it intrusive.
She was no friend of his.
Except maybe now she was. Maybe somehow in that time, he’d allowed his heart to open and let her slip in. Time softened him, made him more pliable.
“There,” she said as she finished patching him up with a pleased grin. She returned the supplies to their place in her bathroom cabinet, and then it was back to the plants. Like she hadn’t left him sitting on her bed, burning with want. She whispered something soft to a rhododendron. But not him. He’d never been jealous of a fucking plant before.
He frowned. Her passing him the bottle every time he came to the Coyote had gone on for several months—longer even—until he’d been in his grief so long he was certain he would lose himself to it. But she’d forcibly pulled him out, practically kicking and screaming. He still remembered the first time she’d taken the bottle away from him, the harsh look in her eyes that said it was time to move on or he never would.
She’d grabbed that damn bottle of bourbon straight out of his fisted hand and said, “That’s enough.”
He hadn’t known two words could be so painful, cut him to the core so quick.
But he hadn’t made it easy for her.
She was slipping on a pair of floral purple gardening gloves now. She nodded to the plant before her. “Hemlock,” she said in response to his raised brow. Her amber eyes darted to his hand again. “Does it hurt?”
“No,” he answered.
She frowned at him, clearly sensing the lie.
He’d told himself her care hadn’t hurt then, too. That nothing was as bad as losing Bo.
In a way, that was true, but it wasn’t fully honest either.
In the months after she’d started refusing to let him drown himself in a bottle, he’d been a true prick. Snarling, growling, hurling nasty, hurtful words, any insult he could get past his lips with little thought to what it did to anyone, especially the woman who wouldn’t serve him. His grief over Bo had been like a living monster that threatened to consume him so completely that he’d never cared, never stopped to consider what that darkness had done to those around him—to her.
But Trixie had kept taking the bottle, telling him he couldn’t wallow in his pain anymore. He’d tell her it wouldn’t work, that there was no saving him, and then one day, like magic, he hadn’t fought her because he hadn’t needed it anymore. He’d made his way out of his personal hell because she’d made certain he did, ensured Bo’s loss didn’t kill both of them.
And all that’d been before she’d kissed him in that godforsaken alleyway.
Before she’d woken up a part of him he hadn’t realized had been dead, a part of him that’d been buried in the caverns right alongside Bo. Something wild, hot, hungry.
He hadn’t known he needed it until then.
She removed her gardening gloves, washing her hands in the bathroom sink before digging in a small black makeup bag next to the basin. She pulled out a coppery tube, removed the cap, and freshened her lipstick in the mirror with a ruby-red smack.
He’d had that damn lipstick all over him after that kiss. Hadn’t wanted to wash it off.
And what had he done? Only hurt her further, held her at arm’s length, blamed her for the mixed feelings she’d stirred in him, which she did… She did stir something inside him. No matter how much he didn’t want to admit it. All because he was afraid of feeling that same shattering inside his chest whenever she decided that she didn’t feel the same. He didn’t imagine she was the kind of woman who stuck around for long. Most people he’d been with, men or women, didn’t. Save for Bo. Bo had been the exception.
And in the end, even he didn’t.
He knew that wasn’t fair. Bo hadn’t asked to die. But logic didn’t govern grief.
“Something on your mind?” Trixie had finished the last of her makeup tending and was zipping up her overnight bag. She asked the question in the way she would to any of her patrons searching for a bartender in whom to confide instead of a priest, but he had more than a passing suspicion that for him, she meant it.
And for once, Malcolm thought about telling her the truth, about what he really wanted and needed from her, what made him so resentful of whatever this was between them. But he didn’t. What was the point when she’d hurt him eventually anyway?
“You need to tell me what you know about the Grey Wolves,” he said.
For a moment, he thought she might have looked disappointed, but he couldn’t allow himself to consider it. Not when the lives of his packmates were at stake.
That was why he was really here, wasn’t it?
He’d keep telling that lie to himself as long as it worked. As long as it kept whatever this was between them at bay. Maybe then he wouldn’t get hurt.
Trixie stiffened. He saw the change in her, the way her glamourous persona slipped back into place, any kindness and caring hidden beneath. He couldn’t shake the feeling that subtle sheen in her eyes spelled her own hurt. He supposed both of them were so hung up on protecting themselves from the world around them that there never could have been something between them to begin with.
“I already told you…when we reach somewhere safe, and not a second sooner.” She trudged out the door, back toward his bike, hips swaying…
Taking the moment and any chance of honesty between them with her.