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Chapter One

“The buzzards are back, Chuck,” Tiger said. “Think they know something we don’t?”

Chuck squinted up at the two large birds, hunched in expectant poses on the back corner of his liquor store roof. He wiped the sweat off his brow with a forearm, his other resting on the push mower handle. “In this heat, maybe they’re thinking, ‘Hot damn, this might be the day that fat bastard will drop. While mowing a twenty-foot strip of grass his wife insists on having for that spoiled poodle to take a crap.’”

“Can’t fool me. You love that little bugger.” Tiger chuckled. Leaning against the pole of his garage’s covered back patio, he lit a cigarette. The corrugated roofing mounted on the rusting poles provided shade from the New Orleans heat. When he and his crew were busy—which was most of the time—they grabbed a quick lunch out here on benches made of cinder blocks and planks.

Maryshka, his one female mechanic, had stacked up old tires and put an additional heavy piece of wood on them for a table. At the end of their long workdays, sometimes it served as a place to play cards. Some of his people didn’t have much of a home to go to. His garage had the things home was supposed to provide.

Tiger was glad it gave them that. But he had another place that gave him things no other did. As he took another drag on the cigarette, he stretched his shoulders, his neck. He’d been at the club just last night, and his body still ached from it. Mistress Skye had worked him over in all the good ways.

Tiger didn’t attach himself to any one Mistress; he rotated sessions among several who liked the same fluid arrangement. But Skye was stuck in his head today.

He was a big man, so most women were short to him. Skye was about five and half feet. Spiky blond hair, short on one side but long on the other, the strands artfully placed to enhance her graceful throat and frame the softness of her moon-shaped face. A good body, nice curves. She wore things to the club most women didn’t. Last night it had been flowing slacks and a white sheer blouse tied at the waist. Lace bra beneath, enough open buttons to draw a man’s gaze to the tempting cleavage.

Chunky, new age type jewelry. She’d slipped off her heels, done the scene barefoot. Seemingly casual, yet when a sub met her gaze, he saw nothing but Mistress in the glitter of her dark eyes, the set of the soft pink mouth, as if it held all sorts of commands ready to be spoken.

But they never were. Not from that mouth.

Skye was mute.

She communicated through body language, a voice software app on her phone, and something indefinable. If a sub paid attention, he’d know what she wanted. What she expected. Skye didn’t insist on the Mistress title, or even ma’am or anything else, but she left no doubt of the impression, like a fucking Mac truck parked on his ass.

Though he and she had been having sessions for a while, something had been different about last night, which was probably why it was on his mind.

She’d started in a playful mood. Had him kneel on a mat, then move into a push-up, arms at full extension. Trailed her fingers down his back, to the rise of his clenched ass. He wore only jeans. As he held the pose, she reached under him, cupped his cock and balls, rubbed against denim. She’d put pressure on his back, her other palm shifting to his abdomen, guiding him into a slow descent, his arms bending as he went down. She stopped him inches from the ground.

When his arms started to quiver, she’d moved to his head, her feet in his downward view as she squatted, knees spread to position her closer. And taunt him with what lay between them that he couldn’t see.

He’d put his lips on the top of her foot with its daintily painted purple toenails. Then she let him go all the way down, guiding his arms out to either side. While he laid on his erection, she stretched out on him, her soft ass in the small of his back, her body contoured to the shape of his. She braced her feet on the outside of his thighs, spreading her legs.

She’d stroked herself, let him feel the rise and fall of her body as she used him as a bed, but kept it intimate, her head tilted back over his shoulder. When she shifted, twitched, he grew concerned that her neck was getting tired. He risked the transgression and brought his arms back in, lacing his hands behind his neck so she could rest her head on the wider surface of his biceps.

He'd relished the sound of her breathing as it became more erratic. Even lying uncomfortably on his cock, he got harder. Her desire made him ache. Other men dreamed of having a woman suck them off. His dreams were an echo in a canyon, What can I do for you, Mistress?

He wanted to fill that canyon up with his answer.

She didn’t bring herself to climax. Instead, she got him so hot and bothered, listening to her arouse herself, he had to bite back a growl of need. Then she chose a different way to taunt him.

Rising, she had him turn over. Arms back in the same outstretched, self-restrained position. Then she lay back down on him, also facing the ceiling. With the pressure of her agile, teasing toes, she guided him to bend his knees so she could put the soles of her feet against his thighs, toes curving over his kneecaps. Returning to the workout she’d given him at the beginning, she had him lift her upper body with his arms, hold her suspended in the air over him. Then she started stroking herself again.  

This time it was obvious she intended to take herself over. Her shoulder blades flexed against his palms, feet shifting against his thighs. When his arms started to shake, she was so close, he wouldn’t safeword, couldn’t do it. He gritted his teeth, strained, locked his muscles and held the position until she went over. Until he was sure she’d had her full measure of satisfaction, putting substance in that canyon of need he had. Until she let him know he could lower her back to the cradle of his body.

When she did, using a two tap signal, he brought her down, their bodies pressed front to back again. She immediately pulled his sore arms around her, her hair brushing his face as she rubbed up and down their lengths; shoulders, biceps and forearms, soothing the strain she’d put upon them.

It was an unexpectedly intimate pose, her letting him hold her like that, arms wrapped over her breasts, palms curved around her upper arms. Even as she took care of him, she was shuddering through her aftershocks, her sweet buttocks quivering against his dick. She hadn’t taken off a single item of clothing except her shoes, and yet her body felt as close to him as if she were naked. He held her, breathed her in. Absorbed all the sensation she offered, and just breathed.

It was different. Something had been different. But the nice thing about aftercare was no one had to talk or analyze.

Then he discovered that she wasn’t ready for aftercare.

Pushing herself out of his embrace, she turned over and straddled his abdomen. Leaning forward, her silk-covered breasts were so close to his face he had to press his lips together to keep himself from taking advantage. Especially with those undone buttons and the valley of cleavage. He swore the faint heated scent of her skin was like a teasing touch, coaxing his lips to close the distance.

She reached for the chain attached to a pole behind him, a hard point for restraints. She glanced at his arms, the only cue needed for him to raise them over his head. Wrapping the chain around his wrists, she manually closed his fingers over the end of the links to hold that binding in place.

She caressed his knuckles before she withdrew, her gaze covering his expression, noting his reactions. She rose, moved to his feet. Another chain was brought into play, this one attached to the wall, the links long enough to reach his feet so she could wrap his ankles, use a carabiner clip to hold the chain in place. Before she did that, she had him extend his legs as far as he could, to give him a feeling of being staked out. He could get loose if needed, but she was using the restraints as a physical command.

When she had his body stretched out for her, she knelt next to him. He sucked in a surprised gasp as she opened his jeans, released his dick. Reaching under the gauzy fabric of her blouse, into the cup of her lacy bra, she withdrew a condom. Opening it, she rolled it over him, gave the base a hard squeeze, made him jump with a seemingly playful slap that sent sensation rocketing right to his balls.

His hands flexed on the chain, making it rattle. Her gaze went to it, slid back over him, a heavy-lidded look that offered him everything and nothing, because she was in control of all of it. She parted her lips, then shifted her attention back to his groin.

Fucking hell. It startled him, her leaning over and covering him completely with her mouth, sliding down. She’d teased him with oral before, but not after this much of the session had already happened. She went after him in full Mistress mode, working him, pulling on his cock like she owned it. And in this moment, in this room, she did.

A Mistress could use oral as a torture. She was good at it, bringing him up and up and up, her head moving even as her hand lifted imperiously toward him, one finger lifted to show him he had to wait until she was ready.

When she finally turned that finger, gave him a come- hither gesture, like a martial artist inviting an opponent to unleash their best effort, his cock spurted into the latex. He gripped the chain so hard it dug into his palms, his hips bucking up, feet yanking against the binding down there.  

She’d sat back when she gave him the permission, watching him hump air, her satisfied mouth still wet from her efforts. Looking at that alone was enough to keep him going, even without her touch. Yet when she added her hand on him at the end to milk out a few more intense convulsions, demanding more, he gave it to her.

She released his ankles from the chain, then gently pried open his fingers and unwrapped the chains from his wrists. She put her back to that pole and arranged them so his head was in her lap, his hand in hers as she massaged the indentations in the palm. As she moved from that to a more thorough massage of his shoulders, neck and biceps, she alternated that care with occasional drifting touches over his hair, his face.

He noted she seemed pensive, gazing at him. He wanted to make sure she was okay, but he was still too out of it. She’d worn him out. It had been a hard day at the garage, and he did something he rarely did. Never, actually. He fell asleep.

When he woke, he apologized, feeling like an asshole, but she shook her head. After he sat up, got his bearings and took the water she offered, she patted his shoulder, pressed a kiss to her fingers, bestowed that kiss on his forehead. A Mistress’s blessing and approval.

She retrieved a black silk shawl from a hook. After wrapping it loosely over her shoulders, she tapped his clothes, folded by the door. She slipped out, leaving a lingering fragrance of cool vanilla ice cream.

Remarkably, he hadn’t craved another Mistress that night. Usually he’d have two or three full sessions in the same evening, different Mistresses. Nuclear reactors could be fueled by his energy reserves. She’d proven her energy had matched his, at least for that memorable session.

Might be just a fluke, but things felt…different today.

Enough of that. Time to get back to work. And to less pleasant things. The purr of a familiar engine had intruded into his consciousness. As he crushed the cigarette out against the pole and put it in the ash container, Chuck gave him a critical glance. “Keep smoking those, the buzzards will be perched there for you.”

“I’ve had my head under a car hood since I could walk,” Tiger answered. “The exhaust and gas fumes will get me long before the nicotine.”

“Or the thing that’ll put you in a grave long before my burgers or your cigarettes. The wrong woman.”

Chuck sent a meaningful glance toward the parking lot. It confirmed what had made Tiger’s shoulders tighten and speared his gut with the usual conflicting feelings.

Chuck didn’t know all of his business, but he knew enough to know trouble had just pulled in. Though he probably didn’t realize exactly what kind.

Nicole emerged from her 1989 Jaguar XJ6 sedan. She was wearing those needle heels she liked, and looked as damn good as she always did. Her thick brown hair formed silken waves around her face, framing golden-brown eyes vivid and inviting as honey straight from the hive. Her full lips had that perpetual pouty look that made a man think of them wrapped around his cock.

Those looks and her curvy body came with charisma and intelligence, and she’d put it all to good use, scoring a successful career in the porn industry. First as an actress, and then as part-owner of one of the production companies. That part had happened after she married Tiger’s brother. Though he gave Nicole full marks for her drive, Tiger knew his brother’s connections had helped seal the deal.

The expert makeup, beauty and wet dream body made most men overlook important details, like her wedding ring. And their conscience.

Tiger wasn’t most men when it came to what he noticed about women. First off, he’d had extensive reward training in why those details were important. Second, he had a different criteria and trigger for his dick, and Nicole didn’t have them. Finally, she was his brother’s wife. She could strip down and do a pole dance using his cock and he wouldn’t touch a hair on her head. 

Nicole held the back passenger door open for a six-year-old girl whose short hair had her mother’s gleaming brown color, though she had Tiger’s dark blue eyes. A color he and his brother shared.

When the girl sighted Tiger striding across the parking lot, she ran toward him. “Uncle Tiger!”

He obligingly dropped to a squat as she reached him. In this heat, he’d unzipped and pulled the coveralls down, tying the sleeves around his waist. Even so, he would have given her a light hug, not wanting to transfer grease to her, but Aubrey didn’t have patience for such half measures. She wrapped her arms over Tiger’s shoulders, her slight body plastered against his chest. Then, with that rapid shift that kids did, she pulled back to pet the elephant in his tattoo.

The gray tank he wore under the coveralls exposed the ink, mapping his right shoulder down to his elbow. The image was a jungle populated with animals, exotic flowers and foliage. The elephant, its curling trunk and butterfly-like ears, was the center of it.

A symbol of remembrance. To remember why he’d made the decision he’d made, and the ink the jungle tattoo covered. He always felt it there, branded deeper than flesh. Like the pain that family could inflict.

“Hello, how are you? Has Uncle Tiger fed you today?” As Aubrey addressed the image, she sent him a severe look. “Hermione likes ice cream the best, you know.”

No cliché name like Peanut or Dumbo for his precocious niece.

“I know,” he told her gravely. “Just before you got here, she had a quadruple scoop of chocolate in a waffle cone.”

Nicole had reached them, her heels clicking on the hot asphalt. Tiger squinted up at her. The sun haloed her thick mane of hair. “Car giving you problems again?”

“Just needs a service for a road trip. Colter wanted me to let the boys do it, but I’ve told him you’re the only one touching this car.”

There was a tiredness around her eyes, a tension to her mouth and slim shoulders. “Everything okay?” he asked.

She parted her lips but hesitated, resting a manicured hand on Aubrey’s shoulder. “Hey,” Tiger said. “Maryshka’s working this morning. Want to go see her?”

“Yay!” Before she could bolt, Tiger snagged Aubrey’s purple top, printed with a polar bear carrying an umbrella for some mystifying reason. Kid clothes.

“What’s the rule?” he asked.

Aubrey screwed up her face, sighed, but she recited it dutifully. “Go in through the office, ring the bell. Wait for Maryshka. No going into the garage by myself.”

“And?” He cocked a meaningful brow at Nicole and Aubrey looked up at her.

“Mama, can I go see Maryshka?”

“Yes, you may. But stay with her until I come get you.”

“Okay.” She ran off after giving the elephant on Tiger’s shoulder one more pat. “See you, Hermione.”

Tiger straightened. Since Nicole’s pleasant expression immediately dropped, he cut right to the chase. “What’s up?”

“Nothing that anyone can fix.” Nicole shook her head, spoke in a tone that tried for weary humor, but it had too much pain in it. “I just wish…I wish what I always wish. That he’d done what you did. That he’d come see you. I always try to get him to bring you the car or pick it up, but he says he’ll have a prospect do it.”

Because none of the actual Fallen Angels members would have anything to do with him. Which was fine with Tiger. It had to be, because it was better that way.

“I like seeing Aubrey,” Tiger said lightly. “You need to stop trying to fix something that can’t be fixed, Nicole. I mean it.”

She looked in the direction that Aubrey had gone, her dark-lashed eyes troubled. “They’re about to do a lockdown again. The usual reason, some kind of trouble, and this time I said I’m not doing it, Tiger. I’m just not. I’m tired of me and Aubrey being jerked around by the bullshit between the MC and whatever they’re dealing with.”

“So what are you doing to stay out of harm’s way?” Before he could pull up places in his head he could suggest she go, she waved a hand, letting him know she was on top of it.

“We’re going to my parents’ place down in Florida for awhile.”

“Okay, good. So, let me get the car in the garage and we’ll get you set up for the drive.”

When Nicole put the keys in his hand, her fingers abruptly curled over his. She shifted her gaze to the street, trying to hide it, but Tiger saw her blinking back tears. Nicole was a tough woman. This was bad. Her fixed look said she wasn’t seeing anything in front of her, but what was inside.

“When Colter and I met, I was a different person, Tiger. All of the MC stuff, it was a part of him, and I got it. His brothers…that’s a strong thing. I get it.”

Yeah, it was. He still felt the ache of it, an amputation. He’d wielded the axe that had cut off the limb.

“I love him so much,” she murmured. “But Aubrey changed things. You know?”

“You coming back?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” She tossed him a half-despairing look. “Maybe love is sometimes just as much about saying good-bye. To preserve what memories of it you have left.”

Yeah. He knew that feeling, too. Sadly, by the time it was figured out, the love was already half-way gone to poison.

Chuck was putting the mower in his storage closet, the wheels rattling. Tiger heard the buzzards take off, a heavy rush of wings that blended into the four-lane traffic noise happening on the boulevard a quarter mile from the garage. A mockingbird heralded their departure with a long, piercing note.

His garage was located down a dead-end side street, an ideal setting because that lack of outlet and the neighboring lots—a Hurricane Katrina-abandoned gas station and an empty lot populated with scrubby pines and spiky grass— gave him space. He could park his customers’ finished vehicles along the curb when his fenced backlot was full of overnights.

As his gaze coursed over today’s line-up and how fast his crew was working through them, he calculated how to squeeze Nicole in and get her on the road. And goddamn, if a white van wasn’t even now turning down his street to add to the challenge.

He took care of a lot of contractors, and because their vehicles were key to their business, he tried to turn them around pretty fast, but there were a couple other vehicles he might be able to shift into tomorrow.

Then he noted there was no company logo on the van. As it bumped over the curb into the parking lot, the sun’s angle gave Tiger a blink’s clear glimpse of the driver and the guy riding with him. Their intent, not dropping-off-a-car-for-service look.

He also saw the muzzle of the gun the guy riding shot gun was holding at the ready.

Nicole turned at the same time he did. Tiger lunged for her, but the side door of the van slammed back and bullets peppered out from it, adding to the barrage from the front passenger side. They punched into her body, flinging her against him. As the collision knocked him onto his ass, a burning in Tiger’s shoulder told him he’d been grazed or hit.

Violence wasn’t new to him, but his reaction time had gotten too goddamn rusty. He struggled to get his feet under him just as the van occupants slung a couple Molotovs. One sailed into the garage bay. The other smashed through the front office window.

He had to leave Nicole lying there as he scrambled for the garage, already roaring to his employees. “Get out of there!”

The van was spinning around, screeching away. In some distant part of his brain, he registered Nicole had been their target, the rest just chaos to slow down any response. Had they known Aubrey was with her? Maybe she was too small to be seen in the back seat.

Maryshka burst out of the first bay, Aubrey in her strong arms. His first priority answered. Red and Larry were on her heels, and that was everyone. Maryshka looked toward him, spiked hair glaring crimson, piercings in lip, nose and eyebrow flashing from the afternoon sunlight.  Her mouth opened on a scream, but he was running into the garage, eyes seeking that Molotov, where it had smashed down, if there was time to douse the flames, before…

The explosion lifted and hurled him through the viewing window between the garage and front office. Pain sliced through him, his skull suddenly like a balloon filled with too much water, the rubber expanding without breaking, excruciating.

His head hit something and he landed on the desk, toppled over it. Disoriented, he laid there, staring up at the ripped hole in the ceiling, the flame licking across it, sparking wiring. Glass was underneath him, cutting and sharp.

A hard jerk as he was pulled to his feet. Chuck’s ham-sized hands on him. The guy huffed and puffed, but he was souped-up on adrenaline, dragging Tiger’s muscled body out of the office like he didn’t weigh anything.

As they emerged, Red and Larry were there to help him pull Tiger to a safe distance. They sat him down next to that strip of grass at the back of Chuck’s liquor store. Aubrey was there with Maryshka. The little girl looked like she was crying, screaming, hands clutching Maryshka’s shoulders. Maryshka kept her hand firmly cupped over her skull, so the child could only look toward the liquor store rear entrance. Chuck’s wife held the door, a sturdy woman with feathered silver-gray hair and navy-blue slacks. Her cell phone was clutched in her hand as she seemed to urgently entreat Maryshka to bring Aubrey inside, which the girl did.

Dazed and staring around him, Tiger saw what they didn’t want Aubrey to see. Nicole, lying in the parking lot a few feet from her debris-covered Jag, head turned toward them. Eyes staring and fixed, her chest soaked with blood.

The world swam into squiggly lines and Tiger toppled over. Nausea emptied his stomach as he tried to hold onto his head before it came apart. He tried to form words. Tried to regain control.

People were gathered around him, worried. The buzzards were gone. But they could come back. They needed to move Nicole. Needed to keep them away from her. Needed…

He couldn’t think. He could see, he could feel, he could smell the smoke of his garage, his business on fire. But he couldn’t hear any of it.

He couldn’t hear anything.