Disgraced Cowboys (Lone Wolves of Shay Falls 3) [Siren Publishing Ménage Amour] (4 page)

Getting Misty to safety should have been a top priority, but the idiot bouncers were so involved in their macho thing that they’d forgotten her. Now, she stood frozen, her eyes as wide and unblinking as the rest of the girls. Her heavily glossed crimson lips were parted in shock. She was so dazed that she barely even flinched when a highball glass sailed by, far too close to her glitter-dusted red hair.

“Shit,” Brandi muttered, giving the room another look.

Stephen had finally realized Misty’s plight, and he was shouting her name while trying to force his way through the sea of flailing bodies. He wouldn’t get there in time.

With a quick look to judge her trajectory, Brandi stepped into the bar. The volume was much more intense here, a collective roar-crash of angry shouts, breaking glass, and uprooted furniture. She set her jaw and slid along the relatively undisturbed back wall, edging quickly toward the stage. “Misty!” she called out when she figured she was close enough to be heard.

No response. Brandi kept her head down and ass to the wall as she hurled herself as fast as she dared toward the stage, letting out a surprised breath when she made it there unscathed. She hopped up and went to Misty’s side.

“Misty,” she said, shrugging off her robe and throwing it around the girl’s bare torso. “Come on, sweetie. We have to get out of here.”

The girl blinked, turning to her. “Jesus, Brandi, I’m scared.”

“I know. Come on.”

With an arm across her shoulders, Brandi pulled her away from the pole. When they got to the side of the stage, however, the way was blocked. One of the patrons had seen the girls trying to make a quiet escape.

“Whar you goin’?” the fat man said in a slurred drawl. “You ain’t finished dancin’ yet.”

Brandi’s lip curled back. The man’s plaid shirt was ripped and his eyes were glazed over, and he swayed more than a little on his feet. “Then again, why don’t y’all just come right on down here and let me feel up those ripe titties?”

He reached out for her slender calves, but taking a cue from Angel, she shoved a stiletto square against his barrel chest. “Fuck off,” she snapped.

He staggered back, crashing over one of the few tables that was—or rather, had been—still where it belonged. She helped Misty down from the stage and grabbed her hand to drag her to the safety of the back room. Halfway there, Brandi caught sight of Paulo, shouting orders and trying not to get hit—and about to fail in a major way. A chair was flying straight at him, out of his line of sight.

Brandi stiffened, much the way she’d found Misty. “Look out!” she shouted, knowing it was no use. The roar of the fight was too loud for him to hear.

But someone else did.

Her mouth dropped open as a lanky cowboy type with spiked, platinum-blond hair reached out and snatched the chair from midair. The motion spun him around, but he followed through the turn and set the chair down as gracefully as if the whole stunt had been choreographed for a movie. He and another man with wavy brown hair took Paulo by the elbows and carried him to safety behind the bar. They shoved him down, out of sight, flanking him while scanning the bar for more immediate threats. Two strangers had done for the owner what his own security staff had not.

If the chair-catching act hadn’t been unreal enough, the blond hopped up onto the bar in a single leap, crouching down with a feral look Brandi had seen not long before. An unnatural, golden glow tinged his eyes. And his weren’t the only ones. Several other patrons stood out from the rest, more so than the fact that they were faster, more graceful and much more alert than the rest of the drunks. All had versions of those same eyes. Some seemed to be policing and deflecting the violence, albeit aggressively. Who the hell were they? What was wrong with their eyes?

The curtain parted as Misty slipped through. They’d made it. Brandi heard the other girls pounce on Misty with questions in various shades of concern. Just as Brandi was ducking back inside, however, she spun back around. The other face she’d been seeking had strayed into view close by.

She stood in the doorway, partly hidden behind the curtain as she stared at Marcus. Electric sparks danced across her skin at the sight of his tense muscles and piercing eyes, which were glowing like sun fire. He wasn’t currently part of the active defense force, however. Things weren’t going well for him at all.

Two men had caught either arm and were holding him firmly between them while a third—the man whose lap dance Marcus had interrupted—reared back with his fist. She flinched when it connected with his jaw, the force of the blow snapping his head sideways. The glare Marcus shot when he straightened was weighted with deadly intent, and restrained or not, he looked ferocious enough to tear the entire bar down around him. Brandi wondered why the idiot in the suit didn’t just turn and run while he had the chance.

As it happened, that would have been the smart thing to do.

With one vicious yank, Marcus shrugged off both men holding him as though they weighed nothing. They fell away in comical fashion, reminding Brandi of the clown-shaped punching balloon she’d had as a child. As she gripped the curtains tightly, she watched Marcus turn his sights on the suit guy, and her stomach fell.

“Shit,” she whispered, gaping at the inhuman red tinge shimmering around the golden irises.

Marcus flashed out without warning. The swing connected with the jaw before the other man even registered Marcus had thrown the punch, and it took him off his feet. She gaped in shock as he landed in a pile of already overturned tables. Sure, she’d kick-shoved a drunk and made him stumble back into a table, but this wasn’t remotely similar. Marcus’s punch had literally sent the man soaring through the air.

“An eye for an eye, you said,” Marcus told his barely conscious attacker. “Afraid my eye packs a whole lot more wallop.”

The two accomplices scrambled to their feet and did what the suit guy should have—they ran. Marcus was turning her direction now, and her already pounding pulse raced as she waited for him to make eye contact. She waited for the flip in her stomach that she knew would happen when he did.

Just before his gaze found hers, his attention was diverted. The cowboy she’d seen Marcus with at the bar took hold of his arm and said something she couldn’t hear. Two others walked up whose presence seemed to surprise him. They spoke in hushed, urgent tones. Every one of them had those eerie, glowing eyes, though Marcus’s glowed brighter than any. His bar mate cocked his head toward the rear exit, and with a curt nod, Marcus turned on a boot heel and led the way.

She watched their retreating backs, fisting the drapes tighter to try and stop herself from what she wanted to do next. She shouldn’t, she knew. She should let it go. But something told her to listen to her instinct, and as the men filed out the back, she cussed under her breath and followed.

The back alley lacked even the grandeur of the roughly graveled front parking lot. Reserved for trash and the occasional ousting of rowdy drunks, the dirt alley featured little more than a Dumpster, a couple employee vehicles, and a span of dense woods to the rear. Moonlight shone down fiercely, negating the one anemic floodlight. Beneath the ethereal lunar glow, the four cowboys stood in a loose circle, talking.

Lucky for her, she’d managed to catch the door before it closed behind them. She’d been able to slip out and hide behind the Dumpster without being heard. The night air bit into her bikini-clad skin, but she ignored the chill and crouched among a scattered pile of cigarette butts with a hand against the rusted metal Dumpster to steady herself. This was where the smokers took their breaks, no doubt. She was stepping on something, and shifted her foot off a cheap lighter someone had dropped.

Wrinkling her nose against the stench of garbage, she turned her attention to following the weird conversation.

“Are you crazy?” one of the men was saying to Marcus, who was indirectly facing her. “You’ll have him at all our throats, bringin’ attention to yourself like that.”

“I didn’t start the bar fight, Caleb,” Marcus said. “Not exactly.”

“Exactly enough,” said the man beside Marcus, the one she’d thought was his boyfriend. “You shouldn’t have pissed off that guy by bustin’ up his lap dance.”

“He had no business havin’ her on his lap,” Marcus snapped.

“Seth’s right,” another of the men said, pulling off his hat to scruff at short, stubbly brown hair. “What’s it to you if some asshole gets his dick rubbed on by a stripper? It ain’t worth gettin’ Kade’s fangs in yer neck.”

Marcus growled. “Kade didn’t say shit about us accidentally triggerin’ a brawl when he disbanded the pack.”

Brandi frowned. Pack? Were they part of some cowboy gang?

“But him findin’ us all here together is a whole other can of shit,” Seth said.

“Yeah,” the shortest one added. His eyes were black yet still glittered with gold flecks in the moonlight. Maybe not a gang, then. They must all be related somehow.

“How did the four of us end up here tonight?” Marcus asked. “That’s quite a coincidence.”

“Not just four,” Caleb said. “I saw Russell in there, too, helpin’ the owner. Russ was with one of our kind, but an outsider.”

“This was damn careless,” Marcus said. “We should have sensed each other and steered clear. Maybe we’re losin’ our connection since Kade severed the pack bond.”

Brandi grimaced. Despite her toned dancing muscles, her legs were beginning to protest her cramped position. Meanwhile, her brain was protesting the fact that she didn’t understand a damn thing they were talking about.

“I sensed you,” Seth said to Marcus. “Right before I saw you in the bar.

Marcus glanced at him. “I sensed you, too.”

A look passed—no,
charged
—between them, setting loose butterflies in her stomach. Maybe she hadn’t been far off about the boyfriend thing after all.

“I didn’t sense any of you at first,” Caleb said. “But I do still catch flickers when we’re apart.”

“Same here,” said the short one. “But they’re fading. With Russell, I caught a huge flare of lust not long ago, then his fear. Then I stopped sensin’ him altogether.” A couple of nods seemed to indicate he wasn’t the only one. “I thought maybe he was dead when I stopped feelin’ him. I was shocked as hell to see him tonight.”

“It’ll be a lot harder to obey the alpha command if we can’t sense one another,” Seth said. “Avoidin’ one another in a small town will be tricky. But I can still sense Kade loud and clear, and I know he can still feel us.”

“And maybe he’s inclined to make good on his threat if he senses we were all here durin’ the trouble,” the short one said.

“We shouldn’t even be havin’ this conversation,” Caleb added, his dark eyes glittering with more than just fear. “He could be on his way. We should shift and scatter before he shows up to tear heads.”

“Agreed,” the short one said. “Let’s go separate ways and forget this happened.”

Marcus and Seth were still eyeing one another, and Brandi could almost see a thread of connection between them. The reluctance in their eyes was obvious. They didn’t want to part.

Conversation ceased, and all the men looked at one another. The distant cry of a lone wolf pierced the silent pause, and four heads whipped around in alarm.

“It’s him,” Caleb said. “I’m leavin’. Best you all do the same.”

Brandi thought her befuddlement over the bizarre discussion couldn’t get any worse. When the man claiming he was about to leave peeled his T-shirt over his head and unzipped his pants, however, her confusion sharpened. What the hell was going on?

The man began to quiver with an odd vibration that didn’t quite seem explainable by the cool mountain air. While she stared in amazement, hair shot out over his body, and he hunched over unnaturally. Impossibly. With the pop of resettling joints, the man-shape contorted and dropped down on all fours. Within moments, a pile of clothing on the ground was all that remained of the cowboy. A grayish-brown wolf stood in his place.

She barely managed to stifle the gasp that followed but fell backward and hit the dirt square on her ass. The wolf’s head snapped around at the sound of the muffled thud, sniffing the air.

It saw her.

The wolf snarled and crept toward her, its head lowered and eyes glowing menacingly. Those eyes! They were lit by the same golden fire shared by all the men who were now sweeping the area behind the Dumpster.

“Shit,” the short one said. “Got ourselves a fuckin’ eavesdropper.”

“Oh, God,” she murmured, unable to get to her feet. The wolf was closing distance rapidly. She scooted back on her hands and ass, feeling pebbles dig painfully into her skin. Why had she come out here? So much for trusting her instincts.

“Leave her alone,” Marcus said with an authoritative air. The wolf paused but bared its fangs at her.

“But she
saw
,” the short man said, sneering at her almost as angrily as the wolf in front of her.

Marcus stepped forward until he was beside the animal. “It’s all right. She’s with me.”

He leaned down to offer her his hand, and after a moment, she took it.

“You mean she’s…” the squatter man started, trailing off when Seth shot him a warning look.

Marcus’s hand was blessedly warm, as was he when he drew her tightly beside him and turned to face the others. Nevertheless, a chill swept over her at what she’d just seen.