Conquer Me (Sawtooth Shifters, #4) (3 page)

“Good thing I’m not one.” She grabbed my chin and brought my face back to hers. She smelled incredible; jasmine, vanilla, and a breath of fresh fucking air. “I just read my little girl a story about how she was going to find her happily ever after, and after I refrained from adding what kind of bullshit it was, I decided maybe I was the one who should be proven wrong.”

I laughed. “If I remember correctly, you never are.” Except for when she married Walter.

“God, I missed you, Major.” She put her hand on my chest, over my heart.

“You shouldn’t have come here, Cass.”

She pulled away from me.
Fuck.
“Oh, you think you’re going to tell me what to do now?”

I don’t think I had genuinely smiled since before the capture. “You’d know if I was giving you orders, Cass.”

“Indulge me.” She bit her lip, sitting down on the stool next to mine and calling over the bartender. “Let me play in your world.”

Cass wrapped her lips around the longneck bottle, and I couldn’t tear my eyes away. She licked the tip of the bottle, winking at me before she put it on the bar. She knew exactly what she was doing. Asking for trouble.

“I’d make sure this beautiful body didn’t have a stitch of clothing on it.” I ran my finger from her knee to the hem of her dress. I let it catch there, not going any further. I’d never bring Cass to Red Heaven, and more importantly, she’d never go. “And I’d bend you over, that glorious ass high in the air—“

Cass leaned forward, cheeks and cleavage flushed. “Is that all you think about?” She took another sip of her beer. This woman was trying to kill me. “Sex?”

A dark thought flashed in my head. Fuck. She could’ve been sent as a decoy. Cass had to do as her husband wished. His father’s blood may still be underneath Shadow’s fingernails, but it wouldn’t stop Walter from wanting me gone. “With you around? It’s in the top two.”

“What’s the other thing?” she asked.

“Spending the rest of my life with you.”

C
ass

This was a mistake.

I’d stormed out of the house, sick and tired of being surrounded by Walter’s family all week. They treated me worse than the hired help. Connie, they talked to like family. She was an old widowed wolf who knew how to play the sympathy card. When Emma needed something, they brought her to Connie. They looked at me like I was something crawling on their skin that needed to be slapped away.

So fucking what, I was born poor. Wolf trash, as they loved to remind me. My dad had liked to gamble, especially with the Ryker’s dowry, and sometimes my mother forgot to pick me up at school. Get over it. I was also born with some equipment the Rykers needed badly enough to pay for. It took me a while to get pregnant, but everything had been as good as it could have been until Emma was born. I’d served my purpose, somewhat. I’d given my husband a beautiful baby girl.

Not good enough.

Especially after he found out I’d been sneaking my human friend’s birth control to keep from getting knocked up again. Now I was back to being trash.

All I’d been able to think about lately was Major since Renee told me she saw him, and that’s why I’d come here. To get him out of my head, once and for all.

Because that was going to work.

It was an obsession, what could’ve been. I looked at the past with amazing clarity. In a perfect world, I could’ve married Major. In my fantasies, we never fought and we never grew old. We stayed in that lust-drunk haze forever. That’s why obsessions weren’t healthy. They made reality that much harder to deal with.

Finding him with some chick riding his lap like a carousel horse was exactly what I needed to see. Major wasn’t different than any other man, accepting the lowest bid to get the job done. I almost lost my nerve when I saw him. Nearly turned around and went back home, where I belonged.

But I was a glutton for punishment, and I went over to them. Major pushed the girl off. Forgotten, just like that. Fuck. Present day Major was going to torture me even worse than his memory did.

Now we stood by the bar with his arm around my waist, our faces barely more than an inch from each other. And every eye in the room on us.

Of course they stared. I wore the last name of one of the most powerful men in the state, accessorized with my husband’s sworn enemy.

“I was hoping we could go somewhere a little more private and talk.” I glanced back at the room. “And don’t you dare take me to Red Heaven.”

Major stood up, his hand still on my back. “Let’s go.”

I hated sneaking around, like I was ashamed of Major. More like I was ashamed of myself for not listening to my heart all those years ago and refusing to marry Walter. I owned my choices, but the barrage of bullshit and danger we’d have to deal with from my husband for this little show wasn’t worth it.

“You’re riding your motorcycle this time of year?” Major left his bike in a random parking lot near the edge of town, and I picked him up behind the building. Nothing ever changed for us. We came to this same place as kids. He brought the chill in with him, and he hesitated before doing anything. Our eyes caught. Time stopped.

Major was better looking than he ever was. All man now, those broad leather clad shoulders filled the inside of my SUV. Dark hair fell past his shoulders, and his eyes glowed gold with desire. His lips moved softly, framed by a beard I was dying to have scrape against my most delicate skin. I squirmed in the driver’s seat, the thought alone causing a deep pulsing sensation in my core I’d become unfamiliar with. There was so much I missed about Major.

“Yeah. I like riding this time of year. The air’s different. Not just cold—crisper. It changes everything.” He leaned closer, picking a piece of hair up from my fuzzy collar. Faux fur, of course. Only my husband was a barbarian. “You ever been on a bike?”

“Nope.” I closed my eyes for a long blink as Major’s fingers brushed against my jaw. The only thing I was interested in riding was the man in front of me. It would’ve been so much easier if we just mauled each other in the front seat of my SUV. The backseat was out of the question; Emma’s giant car seat filled the space, in case I needed a reminder that I shouldn’t be here.

“Please let me kiss you,” Major pleaded softly, fingers resting on my cheek.

Major was the first man I’d ever kissed. We were fifteen, in this very spot, by the train tracks. My friends, who were lucky enough to be courted by the wolf they were promised to, liked to go to the Overlook, a scenic area holding court over a dramatic dip in Sawtooth. Even if Walter had been interested in wooing me back then, he was thirteen years older than me. He had to wait for me until I was an adult. All the more reason my kisses with Major had to be under the cover of night and secrecy. So we started coming here, fantasizing about jumping in a freight car and going anywhere else. To a place we could love each other, out in the open. Twenty years later and I still had the same fantasy. Our kisses echoed like the hammer of the engine, pounding, powerful, urgent, and then disappearing into the nothingness like they’d never happened.

This wasn’t just a kiss. It was the beginning of the end. I closed my eyes, melting as an approaching train wailed in the distance. I leaned forward.

He still tasted so sweet, like pine and unbroken promises. My heart rattled against my ribcage, like I was still a kid and looking ahead to a life with Major, not back at a bunch of regrets without him. I’d been married for twelve years, and not one of Walter’s kisses had ever been like this. I leaned back, surrendering to Major. He pinned me down with his body, holding my hands against the frosted window as our tongues tangled, and I wrestled with my conscience. He nipped my lips, planting little butterfly kisses on my cheeks and eyelids, and finally one on the tip of my nose.

“Relax.” He placed his finger over my lips. “I know it’s hard. After all this time, I want you here with me. You don’t know how much I missed you. Every fucking night, you’re the last thing I see when I fall asleep. One of these nights, you’ll be in my arms when it happens.”

“I have dreams like that, too. But that’s what they are. Dreams.” My voice shook. Usually I had to hide it, but with Major, I could be myself. It made it hurt that much worse that we couldn’t make those dreams come true.

Major cupped my chin. “Look me in the eyes, Cass, and tell me that you’re happy. If you can say it and make me believe it, I’ll leave you alone. But if you can’t, I’ll stop at nothing to make you happy. Deal?”

It sounded like heaven. “My husband will kill you if he catches us.”

“Your husband is already killing me.” Major tightened his grip. “If I’m lucky, your lips will be the last thing I taste before I die.”

**

“W
here have you been, Cassidy?” Walter sat in the kitchen, reading the paper when I came home. He never stayed up late like this, unless he was out with his human. But his phone had probably been buzzing nonstop. Every unattached wolf in town had been at The Redheaded Stepchild, and many of them worked for my husband.

“You know I hate it when you call me that.” I dropped my keys on the counter and kept walking. “I don’t ask you questions when you stay out all night.”

He followed me to the bedroom. I ignored him, hanging up my coat and sliding out of my heels. “You don’t have any right to know what I do.” He laughed at something that definitely wasn’t funny. “But when you go out for the night in
my
car, in that slutty dress that
I
bought you, and spend
my
money, I deserve to know what you’ve been doing.”

Like hell he did. I glared at him as I pulled a fresh pair of pajamas from my dresser. “I went to dinner with Renee.”

“Where?”

“The Pizza Pub.” It was the first place that came to mind, and Walter would never bring me there. Too trashy for his taste. They didn’t have his favorite vintage of wine or something ridiculous like that.

Walter stepped in front of me. “Since when does Renee reek of motor oil and lager?” He backed me against the bed. I clenched my jaw but refused to look at him. After being so close to Major, my husband was even uglier than usual. Walter was actually a good looking man, with silver hair and blue eyes, but the snarl on his lips and the contempt in his eyes erased any attraction. “Take your clothes off.”

“I was just about to put on my pajamas.” I attempted to get away from him, but Walter caught my arm, digging his fingers into my skin.

“Take your clothes off and lay on the bed,” he instructed through gritted teeth.

I didn’t move. “Since when does pizza give you a hard on? I’ve been asking to go there for months. But no. I bet you take your girlfriend there all the time, though.”

His slap landed on my cheek with a sting. My lips had already been swollen from my time with Major, and the blow landed just right to make me taste blood and erase any warm, fuzzy feelings that lingered from my outing. Walter consistently treated me like shit, but he saved hitting me for special occasions, like when I snuck out to meet another man. At one point in my life, I would’ve been devastated he was treating me like this, but I’d come to expect it. I mourned for the girl who would’ve stood up for herself. But now I didn’t even care. 

Walter tugged on my arm with his other hand. “Don’t make me rip this dress off you.”

“Fine.” I pulled the dress up over my head and let it drop to the floor. This was no strip tease. I flung my bra on top of the discarded dress and stepped out of my stocking and panties. “Happy now?”

He didn’t look at my body. It hurt worse than the slap. “Lie down.”

I shook as I crawled backwards on the bed. He laughed, pulling my feet out from under me so I landed flat on my back. He separated my legs, and brought his face down to my skin, inhaling deeply.

“What the hell are you doing?” I asked. If he was going to force me to have sex with him, I’d fight him with everything I had.

“This close to the full moon, I can smell your lies, Cassidy. I don’t need you to tell me the truth to figure out what your punishment should be.”

“You’re going to sniff me? Like a dog?” I couldn’t breathe. I squeezed my eyes closed to keep the tears from coming. I don’t know what the hell got into him. This was worse than him calling me names and ignoring me. This was worse than being slapped around. It was worse than him cheating on me. All the shit Walter pulled, this was the thing that made me feel like wolf trash.

Walter lingered when he reached my crotch, hoping for a top note of deceit in the aroma. Major had me drenched before he’d even laid a finger on me. His smoldering expression, those hot and sweet things he said to me.

He
should’ve been my husband.

But instead, my husband insisted on humiliating me. He frowned, unable to detect anything unfamiliar. I wanted to knee him in the face so bad, but tonight I really did believe I had a punishment waiting for me and I didn’t want to make it any worse than it had to be.

His hot breath basted my breasts; I expected the flesh to melt away from the bone. “Open your eyes,” he instructed, exhaling stale air in my face. I shook my head. “Don’t make me repeat myself.”

I did as he asked, just enough to not make things worse. Walter looked like a cartoon villain hovering over me. “I know exactly what you did. I’m not going to waste time asking for details when all you’re going to give me is lies. Next time you do it, I’ll bring him back here, and you can watch me kill him. See if that turns you on. Do you understand me?”

I’d never understand anything my husband did. I narrowed my eyes until he became an angry blur. I was terrified, much more for Major than I was for myself. If Major saw what just happened, he’d rip me out of this room, consequences be damned. My husband made good on all his promises, but I’d learned something in twelve years of marriage to Walter Ryker: Never show fear. It was the lifeblood of your enemies. “Whatever.”

M
ajor

Pleasure and pain. The sensations vibrated through me after seeing Cass last night, tying me in knots. The euphoria of putting my lips on hers, her heart banging against my chest through the layers of winter clothes, and the ache of knowing I’d forever be hungry for more. She’d been fucking brave last night, coming to me at the Full Moon Fever party. Cass didn’t just let me know what she wanted, she brought the whole town along for the ride.