Leopard's Spots 2: Oscar (7 page)

He’d been struggling with just that, trying to battle back his insecurities over being cosseted during the fall, and over being pissed by Josiah tackling him in the first place. Oscar had been so mad, even when he’d realised his dad wasn’t in any danger. If Josiah hadn’t grabbed him, what would he have done? The fear that he’d have lost it, done something violent, terrified him. He didn’t want to go there, into the dark place he hoped to keep from Josiah. Oscar tried to centre himself but his dad spoke and Oscar got mad all over again.

“Lyndon’s brothers?” he snarled, while Josiah tried to hold onto him. Oscar made a concentrated effort not to hurt him. Josiah wasn’t the cause of the red haze tinting his vision. That particular thing was the fault of the three assholes sitting in or leaning against the car. “Like I give a flying fuck about them!”

Henry narrowed his eyes and pointed at Oscar. “Oscar, watch your mouth and try to calm down.”

“No!” He wasn’t going to listen to a lecture on his language or his temper, especially not in front of the men who’d abducted his dad. “They grabbed you and kidnapped you!” Even if they had brought him back. Unharmed, or so Henry appeared. It still didn’t douse Oscar’s anger at all.

One of them, the smaller of the three, got out of the front seat and actually dared to begin walking over, one hand extended out as if to—what? Oscar thought. What the hell was one damned hand supposed to do?

“Don’t,” Josiah rumbled, and Oscar wasn’t sure if it was meant for him or the other guy, who stopped walking. Oscar decided it wasn’t meant for him, and he’d had enough of being on the damn ground, or on Josiah, at least like this.

Oscar pushed and wiggled, but he refused to throw an elbow or kick, and Josiah refused to let him go. He did make it to his feet, but Josiah was nearly a second skin at that point. Josiah whispered, a bare hint of sound, soft words and reassurances that soothed him. He wasn’t sure if they were actually spoken. For all he knew he was hearing it all through the buzzing of anger in his head.

It was the weirdest thing. Josiah’s calmness seemed to seep right into Oscar through the layers of clothes and where Josiah’s arms rested around his. In fact, the skin-to-skin contact points felt tingly, almost like a faint brush of electricity over him, and even as Oscar tried to hang on to his almost mindless fury, it began to leach from him. He didn’t exactly get a warm and fuzzy ‘love everyone’ vibe in return, but he didn’t feel like he was quickly losing his ability to reason. It was such a relief. He sagged back against Josiah in gratitude. Oscar knew good and well he hadn’t calmed himself down, and he honestly hadn’t realised how much fear was driving him to a self-righteous fury.

“I’ve got you.” Josiah had definitely said those words, breathed them right into Oscar’s ear.

Oscar could hardly keep his eyes open and he certainly couldn’t suppress the shiver that rippled over him. Josiah’s hand on his belly seemed to send strength and peace into Oscar, and when Josiah began making small circles there with the tips of his fingers, the bit of rage remaining evaporated. Oscar gave in to a moment of closed eyes and steady breaths.

When he felt composed, he peeked out and found his father looking perplexed, but not unhappy. And the three morons who’d nabbed him were sending off the scent of nervous arousal.

Oscar gave them a feral grin and mouthed. ‘Mine’ to them. And it felt good, really good, to lay claim to Josiah.

“We get it,” one of the men said, not the same one who had approached Oscar a few minutes ago. “You’re not going to hitch up your leg and mark your territory next, are you?”

“That’d be kind of—oooph!” The second man gave the smallest one an innocent look. “What, Dev? I was gonna say gross.”

“Right,” Dev sniffed, but he smiled and Oscar was actually jealous at how easy the man seemed with himself. He gave off an air of confidence one couldn’t miss. “Because we all know that you are the epitome of tact and aren’t the least bit of a perv, Clark.”

The one who wasn’t Clark—Oscar strained his brain to remember—Chris—clucked his tongue. “I think we have things other than Clark’s sexual proclivities to discuss.” He smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes.

Oscar studied the brothers. They seemed close, like they cared about each other just as Oscar loved his brothers and sister. But Cole Tavares’ had been clear, according to Albert, about wanting all but the strongest offspring to be killed. He tried to picture the three brothers across from him fighting each other to the death but couldn’t.

Yet if their father had his way, wasn’t that what would happen? “As far as I’m concerned, you’re all dead—and not by my hand or teeth,” he added when his father turned greenish, as did the Tavares’ brothers.

“Your father is Cole Tavares,” Oscar pointed out quickly, not wanting Josiah to think he’d just threatened to kill three more people. “He’s pitted all of his offspring against each other, which means…” Oscar paused and visually checked each of the men over as if trying to calculate their odds of survival. He snorted. “It probably means you three are going to be killed by some bigger and definitely smarter sibling.” The Tavares brothers, or at least these particular ones, weren’t exactly intimidating. None of them were overly muscular, although Devon came closest. The other two were just average height and a little on the thin side.

And they obviously weren’t bright, in Oscar’s opinion.

“First of all, Dad saw you outside watching the place.” Oscar put his hand over Josiah’s on his belly. “And so did Josiah, didn’t he?”

None of the brothers nodded. They just stood there until Devon wedged himself between Clark and Chris, then gave them each a shove.

“I told them it was a stupid idea,” he mumbled.

Devon turned to Oscar with such a pleading expression Oscar almost wanted to pet him. Maybe the brothers were smarter than he thought, or at least skilled manipulators. It was next to impossible to imagine them as vicious killers.

“It’s okay.” Devon gave each of his brothers a big-eyed look before trying it on Oscar. “It’s just…they know.”
About Albert.
Devon didn’t say it, but he didn’t have to. The air between them was heavy with the implication.

Something too much like fear coalesced in Oscar’s belly.

Desperate to keep his darkest secret from being spilled—even if he knew there was no way Devon or anyone but Oscar’s family could know it—Oscar started peppering the Tavares’ brothers with questions. “Why are you here? And why the fuck did you grab my dad? Why’d you bring him back? Is this some kind of a set-up?”

He would swear Devon had given him a knowing glance, but Devon didn’t try to direct the conversation back to the point that had made Oscar so uncomfortable. Instead, Devon actually seemed to relax as he pointed at Henry.

“Why don’t you ask him how we found out y’all were here?”

Henry actually sputtered before pointing back at Devon. “You are a shit. I should have bent you over my knee. No doubt your brothers would have cheered me on.”

“Someone needs to spank all three of them,” Josiah grumbled.

“Someone’s into kinky stuff,” Devon countered with a leer he turned on Oscar. “Lucky boy.”

 Oscar wasn’t sure what pissed him off more, Devon’s assumption over who would get spanked, or the arousal trying to plump his dick up at the idea of being bent over Josiah’s lap.
What the hell? I’ve never wanted to get hit!
But even as he thought it, Oscar knew there was a difference between an erotic spanking and one dished out in anger or as punishment.

Devon didn’t need to be so familiar, or think such talk was permissible. Heaven forbid he manipulate Oscar into being friends. Too easy then for Devon to take advantage. Oscar glared at the jerk as if he could annihilate him on the spot.

Devon paled slightly and shrugged.

“What’s going on here?” Henry asked, and Oscar went into deflect mode again because he sure wasn’t going to tell his dad he was thinking about getting spanked.

Oscar arched a brow at his dad. “You never did tell me where you were last night, but I’m guessing it was somewhere very interesting.”

That set the brothers to snickering and Henry’s cheeks to flaming. Oscar felt kind of bad for his dad, so he reminded him of his own misadventures at the club. “It couldn’t have been as bad as the mess I got into last night.” And for reasons he couldn’t explain, Oscar caressed Josiah’s arm. It wasn’t until he’d done so that he realised he’d worried he might have hurt Josiah’s feelings, and he didn’t want to do so.

Henry scrubbed a hand over his face and shot Devon a nasty look. “Well, no decent father wants to tell his son he was at a strip club, but I was, because I’d managed to find out it was owned by a corporation named TavTec.” He nodded before Oscar could ask. “And yeah, TavTec is one of Cole Tavares’ dummy corporations, of which I suspect he has more than I could ever find.”

“I manage the club for Mr Tavares,” Clark said.

It was weird hearing Clark refer to his own father so formally. Or maybe not, considering his father was a sick fuck.

“Devon is the assistant manager and Chris is the bar manager and he helps keep the dancers in line. So when Henry here came in and started ‘subtly’”—Clark made air quotes around the word—“asking questions about Cole Tavares, yeah, we were notified pretty quickly. Henry even left his name, cell and hotel room number with half the people he talked to. Y’all are damned lucky it was us who showed up, and that we have a very loyal core of employees who all despise our father.”

“Otherwise y’all would probably be dead already,” Chris piped in. He tipped his head towards Oscar and Josiah. “Except for the big bad wolf behind you. Mr Tavares wouldn’t have known about him, but I bet he will soon—if he doesn’t now.”

Devon leant forward, a look of concentration on his face. “Hey, aren’t you one of Alpha Baker’s sons? Y’all have a gay club down the street, right?”

Josiah sighed so forcefully that the heaving of his chest jostled Oscar. “Yeah, my brother Bobby actually owns the place. I just help him out. I’m Josiah, by the way.”

Before Josiah could get all chatty with the Tavares brothers, Oscar wanted some damned answers. He didn’t elbow Josiah, but he did lean back a little and try something he wasn’t sure would work, pushing the thought that he’d really like to find out why his dad had been taken and returned, if Josiah wouldn’t mind.

“Got ya.”
Oscar heard the two words clearly in his head, and they sure sounded like a certain wolf shifter’s, even carrying the deep tone of Josiah’s voice. Oscar decided there were definitely some benefits to the whole mental bond thing.

He refocused his attention on Clark before he could get distracted again. “That doesn’t explain why you grabbed my dad. I really want to hear an explanation for kidnapping him even if you did bring him back.”

Clark bit his bottom lip and Chris huffed as Devon turned to him.

“Because we were scared,” Chris admitted, reluctance tinging his voice. “We knew someone had killed Albert when he went after one of our half-brothers. Mr Tavares told us. The tracking device in Albert just stopped.”

“Tracking device?” Henry asked. “What kind of screwed-up person—well, never mind. I think we know just how screwed up Cole Tavares is.”

“Do you three have trackers implanted in you?”

Oscar grunted at Josiah’s excellent question.

Chris shook his head. “No, not that we know of, at least. Mr Tavares said he only had them put in his offspring that he didn’t help raise.” He shrugged one shoulder. “Be a good bet there’s one in Lyndon. Anyway, all we wanted was to make sure y’all weren’t here to kill us and help Lyndon inherit everything. Henry convinced us that wasn’t the case, and we brought him back while he bitched us out every second of the drive.” Chris smiled almost fondly at Henry. “It must be cool to have a dad who cares, you know. Ours wants us to kill each other off, and it’s not going to happen.”

Devon nodded and placed a hand on each of his brothers. “And that’s something else we wanted to talk about. Finding a way to put a stop to this sick crap that’s going on. We aren’t the only offspring Mr Tavares has, obviously Lyndon isn’t either. I caught a glimpse of files on his desk, and I believe there were approximately ten of them, maybe more, each labelled with a first and last name, followed by a birth date and their gender.”

Devon canted his head to the side as looked at Oscar. “And that wasn’t counting us. At least, I didn’t see our files. But there was a Lyndon, and Albert, and more than a dozen others. Chris, Clark and I can and do absolutely refuse to kill each other, but there’s nothing stopping our other siblings from killing us.”

Or Cole Tavares from killing them.
“What a fricking mess.” Oscar sighed. He was finding it harder to hate the Tavares brothers when his senses told him they weren’t lying. He was uneasy over the mention of Albert being killed. He didn’t want to see Josiah look at him like he was a murderer, but maybe Josiah wouldn’t pry. And maybe, hopefully, Oscar would get a chance to tell the three cougar shifters not to spill any more of his secrets, or he’d kick their asses. He could have hugged his dad when Henry spoke.

“I’ll tell you what, first we need to get out of this hotel as soon as possible. Then we have to find somewhere to hole up and decide on some kind of plan, because, yeah, Oz,” his dad tipped his head at him, “I think you were right. Cole Tavares isn’t going to listen to anything I have to say. I had actually hoped—” Henry flinched, and Oscar wondered if he’d literally bit his tongue.

“What? You hoped our father wasn’t really a psycho?” Devon asked, and Oscar knew that was exactly what Henry had hoped, since they’d discussed it already. “Yeah, it’d be great if it had just been Albert being the only crazy one. Unfortunately, we can vouch just how sick and hateful he is. He didn’t bat an eyelash when he told us two or all three of us were going to die.”

“I just can’t fathom it.” Henry held up a hand towards the brothers. “I believe you, I do. That’s why I’m willing to take the three of you to my home.”

“What?” Oscar yelped. He hated that it came out so high-pitched and loud, but apparently even his vocal cords were shocked by his dad’s invitation.