Page 13 of Bad Blood Wolf

Chapter 5

It was Saturday night, and Brody had one foot up on the brass rail at the bar inside the Mad River Road House, tossing back a beer and watching Bastian and his minions running the pool table.

Staking themselves with his money.

Six months ago, they would never have gotten away with it. Six months ago, he had friends at his side, who would’ve helped him bleed those suckers and get his money back.

But all his friends had moved to Idaho with Donnie Jenkins to start a new pack, and Brody was stuck here. He didn’t even know why the fuck he’d come to the bar tonight, except that he wasn’t in the mood for the hip downtown clubs he used to go to, and if he had to stare at the walls of his apartment any longer, he’d go wolf and tear the place apart.

This was mostly a shifter bar, full of Nashville wolves, but the beer was cheap and the nachos were good, and he told himself there was a miniscule chance one of the women would get drunk enough to want to have a one-night fling with the last of the ‘traitors.’

Self-delusion was a beautiful thing.

Especially since he was still burning for the Demon Queen of the Amazon. The more he tried to stop thinking about her, the more she assaulted his memory. Her scent, her touch, the sexy way she moved—both her cat and her human form.

And the way he’d felt when he kissed her. Hot and wild, gentle and protective. One damn kiss, and now he was ruined. He’d barely been able to get his dick to lie down and take a rest since last night, and none of the girls here even looked pretty anymore.

They weren’t her.

Thinking about Jasmin almost made him forget the rest of his problems. He needed money by tomorrow night—needed it bad. Even if his credit card weren’t maxed and his bank account tapped out till payday, he couldn’t take big cash withdrawals from his regular accounts without eventually drawing suspicion from the wrong people.

But people needed to be paid. People needed to be kept safe. Everything depended on it.

Which was the other reason he was here tonight. Trying to convince himself it was worth the risk for him to challenge Bastian at pool, and try to win his money back.

He wished he could just straight-up go after the bastard. He could take Bastian—despite all that muscle and swagger, he was a coward at heart. But he couldn’t take Bastian and all his friends—and he couldn’t guarantee he’d get the money back even if he did.

He needed to win it publicly, so Bastian would have no choice but to hand it over.

He’d been going back and forth in his mind for the last hour, weighing the risk, trying to figure out if it would even work.

What he needed was a fucking miracle.

And at that moment, the door opened and his miracle walked smack into the middle of the bar. The Demon Queen of the Amazon herself.

Dead silence followed her, rippling through the room until all conversations had stopped.

She had on tight jeans with cowboy boots, and some kind of slinky red tank top with thin little straps, despite the fact that it was cold as fuck out. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and the material clung to her breasts and showed off her sleek muscular arms.

Her hair was loose, spreading down her back like a silk waterfall, slipping and sliding in a way that made Brody want to grab handfuls of it, tangle his fingers in it and pull her head back so he could kiss her neck, biting his way down the sensitive skin and hearing her moan.

What the hell was she doing here?

One tiny sparkling place in his chest blazed with the hope that she’d come to find him. The rest of him figured she’d come after Bastian and the minions, and this bar was about to erupt into the mother of all brawls.

Jasmin gazed around the room like she owned the place and was deciding if she was going to kick them all out, or let them stay. When she was done with that, she walked her ass straight over to the bar, not three feet away from Brody.

Everyone between them immediately left.

Conversation around the room was picking back up, but she was still getting wary looks. So was he.

Fuck.

He should talk to her. If only the scent of her—wild jag and mango shampoo—hadn’t erased all the words from his brain.

His wolf was in favor of just kissing the fuck out of her, getting his throat torn out and dying happy.

“Dos Equis,” Jasmin said to the bartender. “Bottle. I’ll open it.”