Caged Wolf (Tarot Witches Book 1) Read online

  Shielding my eyes, I searched the horizon for the collection of trailers that formed the Ranch. They stood near the hills, white and blocky and decorated in neon. There were definitely people moving outside.

  What do you want? I had asked Trouble. Maybe he wanted a few hours at the Ranch.

  Strange how that thought made jealousy stir deep in my belly.

  I checked the mail behind the bar as the sun heated Bo Peep’s metal under my arm. Lobo Norte wasn’t on any postal delivery routes, yet the mailbox managed to fill itself every few days, as if paper waste blew its way into our little cubby by a twist of magic that had a strange sense of humor.

  It was the usual collection of junk. Ads for used car sales in far-flung places like Madison and Tacoma. So-called “prayer mats” from megachurches in the South with Our Lord and Savior’s blurry, weeping face printed on one side and pleas for donations on the other. Envelopes stamped with messages like “urgent” and “time-sensitive, please respond” on the outside and then generic advertisements for lotteries on the inside.

  Today, there was also a slender black A4 envelope sealed with red wax.

  Intrigued, I tossed the rest of fate’s garbage in our trash can and carried the envelope back to my trailer. The material was thick and silky. Expensive. The red ink on the front should have been too dark to read, but it seemed to have a phosphorescent glow.

  I was surprised to discover that the elaborate calligraphy said my name: “Ofelia Hawke.” No street name or number, no mention of Lobo Norte, no postal code—I was pretty sure we didn’t have one anyway. Just my name in red ink on black vellum.

  My trailer was a half-mile behind the bar, a ten-minute walk through thick brambles and dust. Far enough that the rough-and-tumble patrons weren’t likely to take a casual walk out to visit me. Not so far that I needed a car to reach it. I knew the rocky paths by heart. I didn’t even have to look up from the envelope to get there.

  I traced and retraced the wax seal with the pad of my thumb. It felt warm, soft, newly-stamped.

  This was an invitation to something. I understood that intuitively without needing to know what the envelope held. This kind of fancy presentation was limited to parties where women wore black dresses and heeled pumps and the men looked like James Bond. This kind of invitation didn’t belong in Lobo Norte. Nobody had any business inviting someone like me to this kind of party, either.

  Yet that was my name on the front. It had blown across the desert like a tumbleweed and landed in my mailbox.

  The shadow of my trailer fell over me. I finally looked up.

  Trouble leaned beside my door, muscles lax, a toothpick sticking out the righthand side of his mouth. It should have been a lazy posture but he had somehow fixed himself into it rigid with tension. It was the look of a beast coiled and waiting to attack.

  I thought about throwing my door open and shoving him inside. I thought about ripping open the fly on his jeans, freeing the erection that stretched his zipper even now, swallowing him in one long stroke. I thought of his salty flavor on my tongue and the grunts he would make as he fisted his hands in my hair to drive himself deeper down my throat.

  But all I did was lift the black vellum envelope.

  “Did one of you deliver this?” I managed to keep my voice from quavering when I said it. I was squirming on the inside, desperate to move, barely controlling my traitorous body.

  His only response was to lazily lift an eyebrow. That silent expression was like screaming an admonition at me. Stupid girl, it said. Do we look like the kind of people who write in calligraphy?

  Trouble’s eyebrow had a point. I flushed all over, and not from arousal this time.

  “You have no business near my home,” I said, emboldened by my embarrassment. “Not mine or Gloria’s or Johnny’s.” Their single-wides flanked mine, in similar states of disrepair, with equally dust-blasted paneling and tin roofs.

  He straightened. A slight motion, yet it made me go rigid all over as if he’d swung a punch at my head.

  I didn’t move as he stepped down toward me. He wasn’t the first visitor to think he could make himself comfortable on my private property. Like I said before, the kind of people Lobo Norte attracted weren’t big on personal space. A half a mile of walking wasn’t enough to deter those most determined to violate me.

  Every fiber of my being said that Trouble was different, that he wasn’t a random cage fighter that wanted a piece of the bartender. That he was here for a greater purpose I had yet to understand. And every fiber of my being awoke at his presence, making me acutely aware of how I stood, where I stood, and the relation of my body to his. Like the sagebrush’s roots straining deeper in the soil to seek the slightest moisture.

  He stopped in front of me without touching me, but just barely. If I took a deep breath, my breasts might brush against his leather vest.

  It was hard to stand without swaying. I licked the sweat off my lips as I looked up at him. Heard the wooden beads tipping my braids clack softly against each other. I thought I might have heard him suck in a breath when our eyes met, too—but I was probably imagining that.

  His eyes were strangely bright, a coppery gold that would be easy to mistake for light brown at a distance.

  I was acutely aware of how much bigger he was than me, how much stronger, how easily he could force his will upon me and how little I could fight against him if he chose. It should have scared me.

  It didn’t.

  He dipped his head. I couldn’t breathe.

  For the first time, Trouble touched me, and it was only a graze of his nose along the juncture where neck met shoulder. Goosebumps erupted over my upper arms.

  Trouble inhaled deeply, dipping his nose behind my earlobe, teasing that sensitive, scarred flesh with his breath. And then he groaned. It was a deep, longing, animal sound, so much better than I had imagined he would make when I sucked him past the brink of sanity. When—not if.

  My thighs clenched together. Any waning resolve I might have had not to let him into my home vanished. I reached up to grab his shoulders.

  But before I could touch him, he stepped back.

  Trouble shook his head as he backed away, wiped the back of his hand over his upper lip, almost stumbled on a rock. I wasn’t imagining the hunger in his eyes. I couldn’t be. He wanted me as much as I wanted him, in every way possible, anywhere and at any time. Yet that hunger was tempered by something else—something that verged on fear.

  He broke into a jog and loped easily across the desert toward the waiting motorcycles. His shadow stretched long in the evening sun.

  Casting a last look at me over his shoulder, Trouble rounded the bar and disappeared.

  I opened the black vellum envelope after Trouble left, once my senses had a chance to return. In the safety of my trailer, sitting directly in the swamp cooler’s moist flow, I slid my thumb underneath the flap until the wax cracked and shook out the contents.

  There was a single card inside. Maybe three inches wide and six inches long. Too long and thin to be a playing card, like the ones that we kept behind the bar to allow drunk, frustrated men to gamble away their souls.

  The card was thick and glossy. Maybe coated with wax. I cupped it in both hands and studied the back for a long time. The art deco designs were red and black and gold, elaborate and industrial, yet somehow organic. The somewhat mechanical abstractions looked like they could have grown from the earth. The sight of it filled me with a strange sense of longing—and foreboding.

  When I saw the image on the other side, I dropped it with a gasp.

  It was a tarot card depicting a satyr crouched on a pedestal. His maleness hung heavy between his furred thighs. His glare was overtly sexual, tongue jutting from between his teeth, one hand lifted in beckoning and the other cradling a torch. A man and a woman stood in front of him. They were naked and chained, caught midstep, drifting toward each other as if the satyr’s lustful presence couldn’t quench their desire for each other.

&
nbsp; The humans looked like Trouble and me.

  A Roman numeral fifteen marked the top: “XV.”

  Across the bottom, it said, “The Devil.”

  III

  I took the pole that night. We had newcomers in town, and newcomers meant money. Money that I couldn’t risk losing by staying at home. Gloria was angry to see me, but she allowed me to climb onto the bar after smacking me around a couple more times. Her way of showing love and concern.

  I’d seen more bikes arriving throughout the afternoon. Not just Fang Brothers, but other guys camping out before tomorrow night’s cage fight. None of the newest arrivals were in the bar. My audience that night looked to be Mad Dog and his brothers—no Big Papa or Trouble—and Gloria put on my favorite song so that I could work at the one thing I was very best at doing.

  The Foo Fighters’ “Darling Nikki” pounded a harsh, cruel beat over the stereo. It was an extended remix with a long guitar solo. Perfect for tricks on the pole.

  I climbed to the top using my upper body strength, trapped it between my thighs, and hung upside down with my back arched. My breasts jutted toward the gathered men. The pole rotated and turned me with it.

  My dizzying view of the bar seemed right somehow. Lobo Norte was an upside-down place filled with contrariwise characters on the best of days. From this perspective, the “OPEN” sign was unreadable, the TV flickering as football players darted across a sky of grass. Gloria stood on the ceiling to serve drinks. The men hung in front of me and leered upside-down leers that looked like strange frowns.

  Blood swirled through my head. I gripped the pole with both hands at the juncture of my thighs and did the splits, stretching my Lucite heels far over my head.

  Mad Dog lifted a shot that looked like it held whiskey against the laws of gravity. He tipped it right-side up and it drained upward into his throat. He was seated closest to my corner of the bar, elbows resting on my platform, face tilted back so that the lights spilled over skin sunburned by long hours chewing pavement on a motorcycle.

  The new men had names on their vests, too: Old Yeller, Pit Bull, Smoky. All Fang Brothers. The one in the middle was waving pesos at me.

  Even upside down with all the blood rushing through my skull and my braids reaching for the bar, I did the quick currency conversion. It was something like a hundred pesos per dollar, and he was holding just a few hundred. Barely worth getting off the pole over. But I couldn’t be choosy, not when business was so rare, and not when I needed the money so badly.

  I made a smooth dismount and the entire bar flipped the wrong way around again.

  Crawling to the edge, I turned and performed the splits once more so that my ragged shorts were within Pit Bull’s reach. They had large slices to bare either butt cheek. His hands wandered freely as he slid the pesos into my waistband. Pit Bull introduced himself to my ass and slid his thumb between my legs while he was at it. His fingers were cold.

  He was so occupied with everything below my waist that he didn’t notice the damage above my ribcage. I didn’t bother hiding my scars when I stripped. I was just one more strange feature of Lobo Norte, a girl whose history was exposed on her shoulders, as damaged as our wind-blasted trailers.

  “How much for a lap dance?” Mad Dog asked in his twangy American accent. He was holding American money, too. At least two tens. Good money here—unusually good.

  I never hesitated to perform for the clients, whether it was on the bar or straddling their thighs. The men that came through Lobo Norte didn’t bother me. Not the ugly ones or the fat ones or even the ones sticking needles in their arms as they begged for me. Dancing was easy, dancing was fun; any performance beyond that was up to me, and that’s where I got choosy.

  But Mad Dog was Trouble’s brother in a way that I intuitively understood to be different than these other men. For that reason, I hesitated.

  “Girl’s gone shy,” Old Yeller laughed.

  Maybe I was going shy. Trouble hadn’t even spoken to me yet. It didn’t matter if Mad Dog was his brother in name or blood or if they were married, for fuck’s sake. It wasn’t like I belonged to Trouble.

  I slithered off the bar and the men hooted. Mad Dog spread his knees.

  It was a joke to call what I did against him a dance. I twisted, I writhed, I simulated all the terrible dirty things that I could imagine without actually riding his dick.

  He liked it, of course. They always did. I was good but their standards were low.

  When it came time to pay me for services rendered, he held the money between his teeth. I pushed my arms together, offered him my cleavage.

  Mad Dog shook his head.

  I bent down and gently caught the bills with my lips. Very nearly a kiss.

  More hoots and catcalls. The men were encouraging Mad Dog to see what else he could get me to do. They would be disappointed. Johnny had made it clear that he didn’t want me competing with the Ranch girls for clients, so I didn’t fuck for money. But Mad Dog was as perfect a gentleman as bikers get; he didn’t try to act on any of his brothers’ suggestions.

  My eyes flicked up as I pulled back with the money, and I realized that there was someone new standing in the doorway to the bar.

  Trouble was staring at me. The flashing lights of the bar reflected in his eyes.

  A baffling twist of guilt guttered through me.

  For a long moment, I was trapped in Trouble’s stare. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, whether he disapproved or was disdainful or disgusted.

  He left, making the door bang behind him.

  I didn’t think. I just reacted.

  Leaping over the bar, I shoved the tips from the first songs underneath my pile of clothing—more than thirty, a good take for the beginning of the night—and I ran out the back door into the night.

  We hadn’t spoken. There was no reason to think that Trouble would be waiting for me outside.

  But he was.

  He caught me the second I stepped through the door. Fear and adrenaline lanced through my veins as his hands shackled my arms, lifting me off the heels and shoving me into the dark corner behind the door.

  I was so small against him. Unable to do anything but be dragged under by his heat.

  Trouble’s mouth slanted against mine. His tongue thrust between my lips, taking possession of me, showing me what he thought of the dance for Mad Dog rather than speaking it.

  He wasn’t happy.

  Oh, but he tasted so good. He took what I would have happily given with harsh strokes, tilting his head to go deeper, fisting my braids in both hands.

  I didn’t even know his real name. All I knew was this: I needed him. Desperately.

  Fingers still tangled in my hair, his thumbs stroked over my cheekbones, back to my ears, up to my temples, tracing the lines of my face and leaving fire in his path. Such small, gentle motions from such a big man that overpowered me so easily. Harsh and tender all at once.

  “Wait,” I gasped, “I can’t breathe—”

  He didn’t wait. He sucked the breath from my mouth. I was dizzy, flying, falling. Drunk on his touch.

  It was a full moon. The desert was bright, painted in shades of blue and silver. The reflected sunlight glinted off of Trouble’s muscles as I shoved his shirt up, ripped it over his head, tossed it aside. And then he was kissing me again. All I could see was his face. Blind, I familiarized myself with his chest using my hands, learning his hard ridges and scars and digging my fingernails into his ribs.

  He was sweaty from a day of riding on his motorcycle. I thought I could smell the exhaust on him, and it filled my mind with images of the endless road and a brutal wind.

  I dragged furrows into his skin with my nails as his mouth traveled down my jawline, treading the path his thumbs had discovered. His growl rumbled through me, even louder than the beat of music from within the bar. It was a Muse song. One of my jams. A song I usually used to strip down and bare it all in front of a bar full of hungry, lonely men.

  My body ached
to be exposed, but tonight I had an audience of only one. The only one I wanted.

  And I still didn’t understand why.

  It didn’t seem to matter. He reached my collarbone and nipped the flesh hard enough to bruise. Even with the line of scar tissue that had reduced sensitivity, it almost hurt too much.

  Trouble ripped my shirt down. My right breast sprung free.

  He sucked my nipple into his mouth, working it with his tongue, and every little flick tugged at my core. His mouth was hot and wet and I was shocked that the contact didn’t leave me burned.

  It was too much all at once. I wanted him to stop. I never wanted it to end.

  “Please,” I said, and I wasn’t sure what I was begging him to do. I clutched at his head, his shoulders.

  He sank to his knees, pulled my thigh over his shoulder. He was face to face with my ragged shorts. I hadn’t taken all the money out of them—he ripped the bills away and crushed them in his fist.

  I fumbled to take them back. “Mine,” I said. He threw the money to the ground, caught my hand in his, fingers tangled. He pushed my arm back against the wall. Pinned me.

  Trouble turned his head and sank his teeth into my thigh, silencing me with a bite so close to where I wanted his mouth, so close that I began to shake.

  And then it was too sharp. Too painful.

  “Hey!” I protested, trying to jerk away.

  He glared up at me and bared his teeth. He hadn’t broken the skin of my thigh—it wasn’t bloody—and I was shocked that he hadn’t, because his canines had elongated.

  Trouble suddenly had fangs.

  With a shriek, I tried to pull away. There was nowhere to go. His body had me blocked against the wall. His hand was twitching in mine, and the shivers traveled up his shoulder, cording his muscles into hard lines.

  His mouth opened in a roar. No—a howl. It shattered the heat of the night and echoed over the desert.

  Twisting, I slammed my knee into his face. His head snapped back.

  I leaped over him and stumbled, landing on hands and knees. Trouble snarled. He caught my ankle as I struggled to crawl away.