Vice (Fireborn Wolves Book 1) (5 page)

W
ith a tray
of canapés balanced on one hand, Laina entered the crowded ballroom of Hunt Club. Surprisingly, the men, although dressed in formal attire, also wore masks, all depicting predators. The manager, a balding and portly man by the name of Nate, explained that the patrons paid a sizable fee for tickets to the grand opening. Tonight only, appetizers and house drinks were included with admission. She wouldn’t be expected to take payment or make change for anything she served, but the guests were encouraged to tip her for her service. If the patrons asked for high-end wines or top-shelf liquors, they were available at the bar at an additional cost.

“Any other services you wish to provide are between you and your customer,” Nate said with a smirk. “But don’t leave the floor without letting me know.”

“What services might those be?” she asked.

Nate gave her a condescending look and disappeared into the kitchen.

“Sometimes the men ask for a private audience,” Nickie said from beside her. “You are allowed to say no, but you should totally say yes.” She winked. “Lions, tigers, and bears, oh my! Just don’t let them sink their teeth into you.” She wagged her puffy white deer tail and strode deeper into the throng of men, a tray of champagne flutes balanced on her hand.

The idea that one of these men might ask for a private audience made her stomach flip. It wasn’t vulnerability that set her on edge. To the contrary, as a werewolf on the night before a full moon,
she
was the danger, capable of ripping a man apart if she wasn’t careful.

She worked her way around the outer edge of the crowd, along the line of potted trees and flowering bushes that gave the club the illusion of an outdoor garden. The plants gave her a sense of peace and security. The room was dark aside from candles on the bar-height tables and white globe string lights that drooped in zigzagging swags across the timbered ceiling. On a platform at the front of the room, an alternative rock band began playing a tune she’d heard before but couldn’t remember the name of.

“Thank you,” a young man in a panther mask said, lifting a coconut shrimp from her tray and tucking a bill into her apron. His gaze darted to her breasts before turning back to a gray-haired man in a leopard mask. They continued their conversation, something about pharmaceutical investments. The older man lifted a shrimp from her tray without looking at her. He didn’t tip. She moved on.

At the next table, the men were too wrapped up in organizing a charity golf match to pay her any mind. They leaned over the table, trying their best to hear each other over the music. She extended the tray between them and smiled. They each took a shrimp, seeming to barely notice the as-good-as-naked woman holding the tray. Still, they stuffed her apron with bills before she moved on.

Near a set of stairs at the back of the room, a table of four men seemed more interested in each other than in her. They enjoyed what was left on her tray and handed her a tip directly, rather than tucking the money into her apron like everyone else.

By the time she’d finished her first round and returned to the kitchen to replenish her tray, she’d forgotten there wasn’t a thing between her and the night besides a thin stretch of latex. With so many beautiful women serving Hunt Club, maybe she blended in with the scenery, no different than a beautiful blooming plant or a piece of artwork. She picked up another tray and melded back into the crowd, thinking the evening might be easier than she expected. In a few short hours, she’d discreetly drop the fairy box in the kitchen on her way out and put the entire experience behind her.

As the night wore on, she forayed deeper into the crowd, taking an interest in the variety of males drawn to such a place. There was a bachelor party, a job interview, and a politician and his protégé. The bits and pieces of conversation that flitted past her ears kept the work from becoming boring.

She was on her fourth tray when she found herself at the farthest corner of the room, slightly cut off from the crowd, in an area thick with flowers and trees.

“Over here.” A burly man in a brown suit called to her from deep within the burrow of vegetation. The bear mask he wore was designed to look grumpy but the man’s tone made her believe it was a reasonable reflection of his human countenance.

“Canapé?” She lowered her tray from her shoulder so he could take a better look.

“How long have you been working here?” he asked, as he perused the selection.

“Not long.” A meaty hand cupped her ass, making her jump. She tried to step away from him but he gripped her butt cheek harder and grabbed her tray with his other hand.

“Five hundred. Come upstairs with me.”

“No. I’m not for sale.” She squirmed against his grip. Although she was capable of tearing his arm off, she tempered her reaction, afraid she might drop the tray or fall off her stilettos. The damn shoes were the problem. As strong as she was, they set her off-balance.

Playing tug-of-war with her tray, the bear didn’t take no for an answer. “You could be making ten times what you’re making now. I’m good, honey. You’ll enjoy me as much as the cash.” While she was concentrating on extracting her tray from his grip without the canapés ending up on the floor, his hand moved from her ass, over her hip, and, to her great surprise, directly between her legs.

The wolf inside boiled to the surface. Dropping the tray on the table, she grabbed the wrist of the hand between her thighs and squeezed. “Keep your hands to yourself.” She felt his bones compress within her grip. A little harder and he’d need a cast. A lot harder and she’d crush the carpal bones, an injury requiring surgery. She hoped she could restrain herself.

“Fuck. Let me go, bitch.”

She squeezed harder.

“Aah!” His free hand balled into a fist and connected with the side of her face, all his body weight behind it. A blast of pain radiated through her jaw and into her skull. The blow knocked her off her feet and she fell hard, her hip slapping the floor. She recovered quickly, intending to return the blow. But before she could wrestle the damn stilettos back under her, Nate and a man in a lion mask appeared above her.

“That’s enough, Bradley,” the lion said. “You’re out of here.”

Nate grabbed the man by the elbow and steered him toward an exit.

“I have a right to be here,” the bear shouted. “I paid my dues. Are you going to lose a premium member over a fucking waitress?”

“No, over you being a fucking asshole,” the lion said under his breath. Nate had the bear through the door before the man could call any more attention to the situation. The few people who had noticed the skirmish returned to their conversations.

“Are you all right?” the lion asked, holding out a hand to help Laina up.

She rubbed her jaw. “I think so. Thank you. Usually, I can handle guys like that, but he caught me off guard.”

“Even if you can, you shouldn’t have to. You’re serving, not being served.”

“Right. Not on the menu.”

“Do you mind if I…” Still holding her hand from when he helped her up, he reached out with his opposite knuckle to brush her cheek, warm and gentle, a touch that at any other time she might appreciate. But the punch had hurt more than she’d expected; she jerked away in pain.

“I’m sorry.” The lion winced. “He tore your makeup. I thought I could fix it.”

“I’ll find Wesley,” she said.

“He left for the night. Do you need to see a doctor?” The band began another number, and he stepped in closer as he spoke.

“No. I’m fine.” She met his eyes and her inner wolf stirred from her slumber. Through the eyeholes of the mask, she made out hazel eyes, the color of ripe wheat. She traced the heavy bones of the jaw that protruded from beneath the mask and the tightly controlled lips that seemed to war between wanting to smile at her and his obvious concern for her well-being.

“Do you work here?” she asked bringing her lips to his ear. She inhaled deeply. Human, a spicy cologne, and the slightest hint of deep forest. Her eyes widened.
It couldn’t be
.

He stroked his thumb along hers. “Something like that.” Focused on her lips, he licked his own. His gaze flicked to her breasts. The latex around her nipples had puckered from her body’s response to him. Embarrassed, she turned toward the table to gather her tray.

What was different about this man than any other? She’d served over a hundred men that night, of all different heights, weights, and colors, but none had warranted the slightest bit of interest from her or her wolf. He was slightly taller than she was and big, with hard muscles that seemed intractable beneath his shirt and suit jacket, but nothing about his size or physique was alarmingly different. Only her response was exceptional. Her inner wolf was bent over with her tail in the air, begging to be mounted. And although Laina still had control of her body and mind despite the coming moon, the wetness between her legs was instinctual, primal, and completely beyond her control.

“I should get back to work,” she said, her back to him. “Maybe I can find someone to touch up my face.”

“You’re absolutely stunning,” he said. “What’s your name?” He stepped toward her again, so that the front of his suit just barely grazed her back, his face inches from her shoulder. Her wolf begged her to turn, to plant her lips on his and hitch her leg over his hip. An image of herself arched over the cocktail table with his mouth between her legs filled her mind.

Biting her lip hard, she snapped herself out of it. “I have to go.”

His hands landed gently on the sides of her shoulders. “What’s your name?”

Laina wanted to tell him but what name would she give? She couldn’t tell him Laina; it would blow her cover. Anna was out of the question. In this tiny town, it would take a trip to the grocery store and a five-minute conversation to learn she worked for Monty. What was the point of telling him Anita? Anita wouldn’t exist tomorrow.

He waited patiently for her answer. Her wolf wanted him in the worst possible way, to the point she had to swallow against the drool forming in her mouth. The wild throes of desire he stirred within her caused her to tremble. Could she force herself to move away?

The music stopped. A voice came over the loudspeaker. “While the band takes a break, I want to thank you all for coming tonight,” Nate said.

“Wait here. Please,” the lion begged. “I’ll be back. I want to talk to you. I want to make sure you’re all right.” He left her side abruptly and strode toward the front of the ballroom.

Laina picked up her tray and let out a relieved breath. She needed to get out of here. She wasn’t sure she could stop herself from doing something she’d regret. She crossed toward the kitchen at the back of the crowd as Nate babbled on about the success of Hunt Club and this being the sixth club opening this year.

“And now, may I introduce to you the man who makes this all possible, the man we like to call ‘The King,’ Hunt Club’s own, Kyle Kingsley!”

Laina’s mouth dropped open as the lion, who had left her side a moment ago, took the stage and removed his mask. Kyle, the man from her clinic, Milo’s owner, her missed date and her wolf’s obsession, stood at the microphone behind a dazzling smile. The crowd applauded.

“Thank you for coming to the grand opening of Hunt Club, Sable Creek, where we cater to your inner beast,” Kyle said.

He continued talking, but Laina didn’t listen. She’d had enough. She rushed from the room, remembering at the last moment why she’d come in the first place. Reaching into her apron, she retrieved the small box. As Monty had instructed, she turned the lid to activate the spell. It was surprisingly easy to navigate through the kitchen unnoticed with everyone distracted by Kyle’s speech. She slid the box into a dark corner under the sink.

Moments later, she’d passed through the gate on the way back to Monty’s, all the while ignoring her inner wolf who whimpered bitterly over the lingering ache between her legs.

L
aina slipped
into a warm soapy bath and started working the latex from her skin, peeling and scraping and thanking the good lord that Nickie had made her shave. How did the models do this regularly? Her feet and back were killing her, her jaw ached from being punched, and her skin was tender where she’d extricated it from the clingy latex. Removing it from her nipples was almost as bad as detaching it from her nether regions.

But when most of the paint was off and she could finally settle into the warm water, it was Kyle she thought about. Her near miss was now a hit-and-run. Just picturing him in her mind caused the rosy tips of her breasts to tingle and her legs to cross against the delectable pressure of desire growing between them. How long had it been since she’d had sex? Three years? Four?

A knock on the door chased her thoughts of Kyle away and brought her to her senses. “Yes?”

“Can I talk to you?” Jason asked through the door.

“Hold on.” She pulled a towel into the water to cover herself. “Come in.”

When he entered the bathroom, her brother’s eyebrows shot up, his expression morphing from surprise to disgust. “What the hell happened to you?”

She touched her cheek, wondering if she’d missed some of the zebra makeup, then remembered the reddening bruise that took up a large portion of the left side of her face. “Oh, this. A patron of Hunt Club took it upon himself to punish me for not responding to his advances. Tried to stick his finger where it didn’t belong and got testy when I went wolf on his wrist.”

“Who? I’ll kill him.” Jason’s face did indeed reflect his pledge to do her assailant in. For how casually he treated his female companions, he’d always housed an undeniable protective instinct when it came to her.

“Not worth the effort. I would have taken him out myself if given the chance. He just caught me off guard. And then one of the head honchos had him hauled away.”

“The head honcho? Wait, do you mean, Kyle Kingsley?”

“You know of him?”

“Uh, yeah. Anyone who hasn’t spent the last five years under a pile of textbooks knows of him. He’s like a reclusive billionaire playboy. Every time the guy is seen in public it’s a social media event.”

“Oh.” She sighed heavily.

“What’s wrong, sis?”

“That seals it then. Not only is he a misogynistic playboy, he’s completely unreachable.”

Jason’s eyebrows pinched over his nose. “Am I missing something? A guy hit you in the face and Kyle Kingsley threw him out of his club. You’ll likely never see either again. Why, exactly, does his status as a billionaire playboy matter to you?”

She took a deep breath and folded her arms over the towel on her chest. “Because my wolf seems to think he’s breeding material.”

Jason blinked at her for a moment, the corners of his mouth twitching. Eventually he gave in to a deep, erratic laugh. “You. You, the feminist, princess werewolf, have a bitch boner for Kyle Kingsley?”

“You see the problem, then.”

He leaned his elbows on his knees, his laughter dwindling to something more like concern. “So what? You were attracted to Kyle. Big deal. Maybe you just need sex. How long has it been, Laina?” It was a personal question for a brother to ask a sister, but he had good reason.

“Years,” she answered. “But it’s never been like this before.”

“Your wolf wants him.”

“She presses against my skin like he’s carrying the moon in his pants.”

Jason groaned. “Laina, what you’re describing isn’t just attraction. Kyle’s your
vice
.”

“No!” she growled and bared her teeth in his direction.

“Yes. This is exactly what it’s like.” Jason’s voice grew raspy with emotion. “Your wolf wants him.”

The closest thing to a vice in the human world was an addiction; only in werewolf world, the experience was metaphysical. The inner wolf attached to something unexpectedly and could not be denied without risking madness or physical pain. A vice became stronger during the full moon. Different wolves had different vices. Jason’s was sex. It didn’t matter with whom, as long as he had enough of it. Other wolves were known to eat pizza before every full moon, an entire extra-large pizza loaded with every meat topping imaginable. If a vice was denied, the need grew stronger, until the desire consumed the host wolf. In wolf world, there was one very simple rule: deny the vice; pay the price.

“I can’t… I can’t want him in that way. Kyle can’t be my vice.”

“Maybe your wolf just needs sex, like mine,” he said. “Try with someone else.”

“She didn’t just want sex, she wanted
him
.” Laina leaned her head back and stared at the ceiling. “He brought his dog into Four Paws in Carlton City.”

“Huh?”

“He was just passing through. The dog got sick. Becca took care of it after I left. He asked me out the night of the ball. I missed our date. But, my wolf wanted him then too. She’s asked for him
twice
.”

“Shit, Laina.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Well, if he is the playboy the tabloids make him out to be, maybe you can find a way into his bed.”

She sat up quickly, causing bathwater to splash onto the floor. “I will not! I’m not a whore, and if I have an affair with a human, it sure as hell won’t be one who promotes the objectification of women.”

“It’s not like that and you know it. The wolf wants what she wants. You get in there, you do the deed, and you take off. She’s happy; you’re happy. This is about physical needs and your metaphysical health, nothing more. You don’t want to become a stalker, do you? You don’t want to find yourself three months from now masturbating outside his window.”

“It doesn’t have to be like that. There have been cases when a vice has faded with time and distance. I’ve never indulged my wolf’s desire. I might be able to redirect her.”

“Good luck with that.”

“Turn around. I’m getting out.”

Jason slid to the other side of the toilet and stared at the door. She pulled the plug on the drain and stood up to grab a dry towel from the rack. Wringing out the wet towel, she hung it up to dry before wrapping the new one around her body. “Okay.”

“What about the fairy box? Did you do Monty’s dirty work?” Jason asked, turning back toward her.

“Yes. The box is activated and in the dustiest corner of the kitchen. The place will be crawling with rats by tomorrow. If the health inspector doesn’t close Hunt Club down, at least temporarily, Monty hasn’t bribed the right people.”

“Good. Hopefully, that’s the end of it. The packs should be here tomorrow. We need Monty to be cooperative.”

“It’s three o’clock in the morning. I think we can officially say the packs will be here later today, which is why I sorely need to get some sleep.” She started for her room.

The toilet rattled as Jason removed himself from its porcelain lid. “Hey, Laina.”

“Yeah.”

“I know you think that if you work hard enough and study long enough, you can cure yourself of being a werewolf and escape what it means. You can’t. This isn’t a disease. There is no cure. You’re a supernatural being. It’s magic, not medicine. And if your wolf wants Kyle, there’s no shame in it. Do what you have to do.”

“Just like there’s no shame in marrying someone I don’t love to perpetuate the Fireborn bloodline? Like how there will be no shame in cheating on whoever the male might be because marriage is nothing more than a practical business arrangement and I am simply a uterus in need of impregnating?”

“Come on, Laina…”

“No. Don’t deny it. That’s exactly how the pack thinks. That’s how Silas thinks. Maybe that’s how
you
think. Well, let me tell you how
I
think. I think love exists, real love, the kind of love that brings you to your knees and holds you tight during the storm. I believe that sex means something and so does marriage.”

He groaned.

“Maybe it doesn’t
hav
e to mean something, but I want it to. I don’t want to grow old with someone who simply served a purpose in my life, like an ugly Christmas sweater I wear every year because it’s become some kind of preposterous tradition. I need intimacy. I want tenderness and love. Yes, real love.” Tears had formed in her eyes and her voice was narrowly short of yelling. “I want what Mom and Dad had.” And that was that. There was no holding back the tears. They stormed her face with a vengeance.

“So that’s it then. This is about our parents.”

She whirled on him. “Don’t you want what they had? The pure, unadulterated affection we grew up with?”

Jason frowned. “Everyone aspires to that, Laina, but you have to remember, they were both purebreds. They were one of the lucky ones who loved the person they were supposed to marry. It’s not like one of them was human.”

“Cameron asked me to marry him at the ball,” she said suddenly.

“Cameron is gay.”

“You caught on to that, huh?”

“Uh, yeah. I think most people know. They just don’t talk about it.”

“Well, is that good enough for me? Should I be happy that someone asked? Should I be satisfied with a platonic marriage?”

“Only you can answer that, but I would think choosing Cameron would be far preferable to having someone chosen for you. You’re twenty-nine and female. You’re running out of time.”

“I could refuse altogether.”

“Disobey Silas? How? You’d have to break your connection to your alpha.”

“It’s possible. It’s been done before in extreme circumstances.”

“You’d be shunned by the pack. It’s suicide, not to mention it would break my heart. We could never shift together.”

His forlorn expression caused her to start crying again. Jason strode up to her and pulled her into his arms. “Don’t cry. Whatever you decide to do, I’ll always be your brother.”

She hugged him back. “I miss Mom and Dad. I hate Alex Bloodright. I hate Jonah. I hate what they’ve done to us.” She sobbed into her brother’s arms. “Will we ever be free to move on from this… nightmare?”

“I don’t know, sis. I just don’t know.”