take.
On his hip the cell phone, the one called Darel had given him last night, rang. He wanted to keep tabs on him; Rolando could relate. And he’d accepted it. For now.
“Yes?”
“Meet me at the club at eight. Don’t be late.”
“Right” was Rolando’s only reply. He didn’t want to go to that damn club unless Caprise was going to be there.
But she’d left with someone he’d later learned was another shifter, one with some type of rank here in the States. He wasn’t sure she’d come back to the club, not if they suspected danger, which if she left with another shifter through a damn window they probably had.
Still, it wasn’t Rolando’s goal to piss off anyone here. He just wanted his female. So for now, he’d accept the orders given by the angry-ass shifter they called Darel.
Darel snapped the phone closed and tossed it on the table in his apartment. He walked to the wall in his dining room and removed a picture of some sort of dogs fighting. His walls were painted a dingy green color that had appealed to him on some dismal level. Nothing in Darel’s childhood had ever been clean and pure. He embraced that fact and had long ago decided to live his adult life in the same manner.
The house his parents had was a shithole, a two-bedroom jail in the dirtiest part of Brooklyn, New York, they could find. His best friends would have been rats and roaches if he hadn’t come into his shift early and scared the bejesus out of those suckers with his sharp fangs and vicious roar. Cats and dogs roaming the neighborhood without a real home or a bath also rubbed him the wrong way, and they met a hellacious end sooner rather than later. His father was a cruel bastard, so it stood to reason Darel would turn out the same way. As for his siblings, he’d never paid too much attention to the younger brother and sister who had been cursed to be born into that household. The one he had paid a lot of attention to was his mother. He’d listened to everything Elora said, hanging on her every word as if it were the gospel, as she’d called it. But year after year, time after time, when she’d preached to him about honesty and integrity paying off in the end, Darel had begun to suspect the untruth.
They never moved up, never had any more than the scraps they’d always had. And his father grew angrier and more violent with each passing moment. Darel never asked what the guy’s problem was, never really cared. All he knew was what he saw. And what he saw was the brutality inflicted on his mother, whether verbal or physical. What he knew was the answer, beyond honesty and integrity, was payback. His father had been his first shifter kill, and it had been a glorious one at that. He still remembered the scent of his blood as it ran down his jaws, dripping onto the floor. His teeth still tingled with the thought of sinking into the thinning, putrid flesh of the man’s neck. He’d approached him from behind and bit into his neck with enough force that it broke on contact. The other ripping and shredding he’d done was for his mother. He deserved every minute of the torture.
The next day he’d left that awful house, left his father’s shredded and bloodied body on the floor in the bedroom while his mother’s lay in the kitchen completely bled out after his father’s brutal attack on her, and never looked back. Ever.
For more than fifteen years Darel had been working with Sabar. At first it had been here and there, Sabar visiting him on the streets of New York at intervals. Darel had never asked questions. Even when Sabar had come back one time with scabbed-over scars that looked like they’d come from a whip all over his body, Darel had remained silent. He’d respected Sabar because there was an air about the shifter, a total fuck-you attitude that Darel shared. He believed one day they’d be partners in whatever mischief they could come up with. And that dream was coming true.
Except now, that bitch was here.
With the remote in his hand he switched the ON button and spoke clearly through the intercom. “I’m ready.”
Through a ten-by-five slit in the wall he watched what was taking place in the bedroom. Yeah, he could just get his ass up out of the chair and go in there to see them, but he preferred to be in his own space during this time. It had taken him a while to figure out what worked best for him, what gave the most satisfaction at the appropriate time, and so far this was it.
The male, a shifter who worked at the club, was just buff enough. His honey-toned skin looked like a succulent piece of candy. Darel’s tongue extended of its own accord in an attempt to lift the male’s scent from the air and taste it. He was naked, his buttocks taut and muscled, biceps flexing as he stood over the female. His dick was long and thick and had the bulk of the pubic hair shaved down to a neat trim. Darel was meticulous when it came to body hair.
The female knew this. She wasn’t a shifter, but one of the girls who danced at the club. Her pubic hair was completely shaved off so that her mound looked like a glossed piece of meat. He could never remember her real name and hadn’t really tried, but her stage name was Raven. She had long black hair, falling in deep curls down her back. Her tits were bigger than Darel’s fists and heavy as they hung from her chest like overfilled balloons. Her skin was an olive complexion that went surprisingly well with the darkness of her hair and the somber dusky blue of her eyes. She had an ass that jiggled when touched. Cheeks that made Darel want to bury his face inside and never come up for air. She was fine and she knew it, worked it like a pimp did his whores.
Darel’s dick was already rock-hard. He released his length from his pants and made himself comfortable.
Raven went right to her knees, taking the male’s length so far into her mouth Darel half expected to see it burst from between her breasts. They’d turned to the side so he could see everything, from the male’s ass cheeks hollowing out as he pumped into her mouth to Raven’s cheeks doing the same in-and-out dance as she held on to that long rod. The male wrapped Raven’s hair around his wrists then pulled on all that mass until she groaned over his shaft. Darel’s eyes focused on the wet shaft, watched the bulbous head swell and begin to drip with desire. Raven’s masterful tongue scooped the white bead quickly.
“Enough!” Darel yelled through the intercom minutes later, and they quickly broke apart.
The male bent Raven over the back of a chair, spreading her cheeks wide enough for Darel to see. Still, Darel sat up in his chair, moving his face closer to the slit in the wall. His dick was in his hand, palm moving on the up-and-down stroke that had him gasping for more air.
“More,” he spoke again and sighed as the male stretched her butt cheeks open wider.
Darel could see her anal entry clearly, could imagine the feel of that tight passage, and growled.
“Now!” was his next directive.
Without preamble the male positioned himself behind Raven and thrust his length into her anus. She yelled so loud the first wave of release hit Darel and his dick jerked in his hand, spurts of come dripping down to his wrists. As the male pumped hard and fast into her, Raven’s knuckles turned white as she held on to the back of that chair while Darel pumped his cock faster, harder.
The shifter came with a roar of his own, a slight shifting of his spinal cord, and a jerk of his taut buttocks. Raven’s body convulsed as her release took over and Darel growled, his teeth pressing into his bottom lip until they drew blood. His dick exploded with come.
“Go home” was Darel’s final instruction as he stood and walked to his bathroom, where he’d work on the hard-on that was once again emerging.
Chapter 12
“Nick’s pissed,” Caprise said from her seat across from X as she clicked off her cell phone.
They were aboard the private jet owned now by the Stateside Assembly via Reynolds & Delgado, PA. From what Kalina had told Caprise, they were working to make the Stateside Assembly a corporate infrastructure that would supply aid to all Shadows in the United States and in the Gungi. The shifter democracy was taking shape right before her eyes, and Caprise wondered if her parents were somewhere in their corporeal state doing the happy dance.
“Nick is always pissed about something” was X’s droll reply.
