Shifters of Grrr 2 (57 page)

Because Carly looked resistant, Max called in security and begrudgingly asked them to escort Carly up to the Penthouse Wolf's Den Suite.

"I'm sorry," Max said to her, "but you know he's right.
 
As an Alpha, he can take you.
 
And the higher ups at this casino are NOT going to turn down an offer that lets them trade a dealer in order to break even on $10 million.
 
You're just a Beta, like we all are."

"This is bullshit!" she yelled.

"Carly, if you resist," Max whispered.
 
"he'll have you kicked out of your pack.
 
And you'll be completely on your own for the next two years.
 
That means Diamond's Oasis won't be able to employ you anymore."

This can't be happening,
Carly thought to herself.
 

But it was.

Carly was led away by security.
 
She didn't understand what Jason really wanted.
 
The Alpha was messing with her head – and with her heart.

Chapter 8

Jason burst into the Penthouse Wolf's Den Suite, with Carly trailing at his heels escorted by security.
 
He ordered his butler and his two assistants to leave.
 
They complied without question. Then he dismissed security as well.

He was acting irrationally and he knew it, but at the same time claiming Carly in lieu of his winnings strangely made sense.
 
He was so stressed, so tense, that he shifted right then and there.
 
The suite had a built-in outcrop that mimicked an actual canyon ledge.
 
He ran up to the top and stared down at Carly.

In his wolf's form, Jason was impressively huge, with a wide face and thick neck.
 
His entire body rippled muscle under his fur, which was streaked with brown and silver. His piercing amber eyes made Carly weak in the knees.
 

Suddenly, Jason leapt off the outcrop and landed right in front of Carly. He howled – in the same guttural manner as back in the canyon.
 
The same mating call. Then he shifted back into human form.

"If this doesn't make you believe that I want you, then I don't know what will," he said.
 
"You cost me $10 million dollars, and you're worth every penny."

With that, he pulled her to him and she didn't have the physical or emotional strength to resist him. His lips were both soft and demanding, his strength overpowering.

The Alpha would take her away from here, back to his own pack in Palm Springs. This Carly knew for sure. But she also knew that there was no guarantee of marriage, just a kind of formal concubinage.

Werewolves were a bit backwards in this regard. Real old school.
 
Alphas could keep harems if they liked.
 
It didn't matter that they lived in the U.S. post-Feminism.
 
Every she-wolf wanted to have a chance at an Alpha. They would stand in line if they had to, scratching at each other's back to claw their way to the top and maybe get to marry one.
 
Only one she-wolf would get to be the wife, under special conditions.
 
She would, ideally, have an impressive pedigree.
 
Carly most certainly didn't have that.
 
She was raised in a trailer park.
 

Most Alphas did, indeed, set up just such a harem. But Jason Irvine had been a confirmed bachelor and had never so much as had a live-in girlfriend.
 
Thus, his rash decision to take a woman, publicly, as his own de facto property and concubine would stun everyone when they found out.

His own father had been a previous Alpha of the Reno pack, but he was humiliated by Jason's mother, who cheated on him repeatedly.
 
Jason's mother was cast out of the pack as she deserved, but his father never regained a solid reputation as an Alpha.
 
He became a broken man who never got over it. Jason swore to himself that he would never let a woman into his heart and into his life so fully as to risk the same thing for himself.
 

For Carly, this all was humiliating.
 
What she failed to realize was that Jason Irvine had been so compelled by her that he technically had just broken his Lone Wolf status for her. Even if he had done so in poor taste.

When Carly had a moment to catch her breath, she demanded an explanation from him.

"Where the hell is this going – what is your plan here?
 
Are you trying to prove some kind of twisted point, just because I refused to be claimed in the canyon?"

"Maybe I am," he said. "But so what?
 
You belong to me now, legally, at least among our kind.
 
But you will be well taken care of.
 
And not just in the bedroom. You will have a dowry of sorts, and you will have your own mansion, and – "

Carly pushed him away.

"What do you mean 'your own mansion.'? You won't even actually live with me?"

"Well, no.
 
Not right now, at least. But the mansion will be in your own name.
 
You'll have the deed."

Carly was torn. Her head was spinning.
 
In one day she had gone from being a perpetually single woman with not a whole lot going for her, to the concubine of the richest Alpha Werewolf in the West.
 
She believed Jason when he said she would be well taken care of.
 
But how quickly could she be replaced?

"I need guarantees," she told him. "I want a contract.
 
I want a section that lays out parameters in case you take another woman or get married. When you say I'll be well-taken care of, I want to make sure it's in writing."

Jason was stunned.

He was not used to a woman being this savvy. She sounded like one of his own lawyers or financial advisors. And then he began to feel he was losing a hand of poker all over again.

Yet, he relented.

"If that is your wish, then I'm willing to do that. But..."

His voice trailed off.

"But what?" she asked.

"But – I never planned on ever taking a woman, for any permanent arrangement to begin with," he told her.
 
"If you're worried about being supplanted by someone else, I really can't see that happening. I don't know why you have the effect on me that you do, but here we are."

He moved toward her, and she let him kiss her. He took her to bed and made love to her again, only this time they had all night. Sometime around midnight, Jason got up and lit a fire in the fireplace. The desert gets chilly at night, after all.

Jason came back to bed and held her in his arms, stroking her hair.
 
Shadows danced against the wall, and the silence enveloped both of them for awhile. She was so very much tempted to completely let herself relax with him. But she had lived a hardscrabble life, and letting her guard down did not come easy.
 
She was pissed at him, resentful, yet completely turned on by him at the same time.

She told herself to get a grip.

"I still want the contract," she said aloud.

"I know," he said.

She reached for him, and this time she took control.
 

Chapter 9

Carly awoke alone in bed the next morning.
 
The sound of the shower explained where Jason was. She stretched and turned faced down, hugging one of the pillows, feeling languid and well rested.

Her cell phone buzzed. Her purse was on the floor by the bed, so Carly reached down and grabbed it.

The Caller ID let her know that it was Sheila.
 
She let it go to voicemail.
 
But then a text message popped up:

Is it true that Jason Irvine WON you as part of a poker bet???!!!

Carly sighed and flopped on her back.
 
Her thumbs typed away on her Droid.

It's true.
 
I am the spoils of victory.

The phone starting buzzing again.

Carly answered.

"Are you in bed with him right now?" Sheila demanded.

"If I was, do you think I'd be talking to you?"

"Right. But he's there somewhere?"

"He's in the shower."

"Why aren't you in the shower with him?"

Carly thought a moment.

"You're right.
 
Can I call you back?"

"Wait! What happened?"

"It's a long, long, ridiculously long sordid story," Carly told her.
 
"A three-martini minimum story."

"It's too early for martinis.
 
But not mimosas! Jump in the shower, have some morning fun, then come have brunch. I have to bring a costume over for Star Tyler anyway.
 
Alterations."

"Gads," Carly said.

Star Tyler was the headlining showgirl at Diamond's Oasis Casino, and she knew Star all-to-well.
 
Carly had nothing good to say about her.
 
Star was gorgeous, a former centerfold, cunning and devious.
 

Star was the main attraction in a long-running show called
Loup De Lune
. Two years back, when a competing Vegas Diva made headlines at another casino by stripping completely nude while on trapeze – which meant a full aerial crotch shot for the audience – Star decided she would not be outdone.

Without announcing it to anyone beforehand, Star not only stripped but shifted into wolf form on stage, right in the middle of the grand finale of her own show.
 

She shifted on a lyra, rather than a trapeze, at full spin.
 
If one knows anything about circuses and the aerial arts and thus understands how lyras work, then one understands the complexity.
 

The lyra is a circular hoop.
 
It is akin to a trapeze, but it involves a lot of spinning.
 
It is a rare showgirl who can spin at high speed without puking her guts out as the result of a severe inner ear imbalance.
 
It is a rarer showgirl still who can shift into a werewolf at the same time.

Carly would admit Star's theatrics were impressive, but they were way too over-the-top for her personal taste.

When Star pulled off her big finale, everyone in Las Vegas already knew about, and had accepted, the existence of werewolves.
 
But regular audiences had never been exposed to such a bold, in-your-face, public shift.
 

The response was so overwhelming that Diamond's Oasis Casino raked in thousands upon hundreds of thousands of dollars in ticket sales over the next six months.
 
The casino hired a new director to pull together a whole new show – henceforth called
Loup De Lune
("night wolf" in French) written around her climactic shift.
 

The show sold out every night.

Carly set a time to meet Sheila at the casino.
 
Then she ended the call, and decided to join Jason in the shower as Sheila suggested.

Carly edged her way through the dense steam in the suite's luxurious bathroom.
 
She pulled back the shower curtain and got a full view of Jason's well-muscled backside.
 
His skin glistened with rivets of water and soap running over his shoulders and streaming down the full length of his back, ass, and legs.

Jason immediately realized he was no longer alone.
 
He glanced back over his shoulder and gave his new concubine a sly grin.

"Took you long enough," he said.

Chapter 10

Carly felt thoroughly sated by the time she met up with Sheila. Sheila was carting around a glitzy red costume bedecked with rhinestones and cubic zirconia, carefully covered up in a clear plastic bag.
 
Even packed away, the costume was blinding, emitting beams of refracted light that bounced off the ceiling and the walls.

"I need to wear sunglasses around this thing," Sheila told Carly.
 
She was breathless and in a bit of a rush to drop off the costume. "Star goes through costumes like the rest of us go through underwear.
 
She puts a lot of strain on the seams, no matter how much I try to reinforce them."

Carly just shook her head.
 
Never in a million years could she fit into a costume like that.

Never in a million years would she want to.

Carly followed Sheila into an elevator, and they headed up to Star's personal suite in another tower on the opposite end of the casino from where the Penthouse Wolf's Den Suite was located.

When Sheila knocked on the door, surprisingly Star answered herself.
 
Carly had expected that Star would have servants. And Carly was shocked at her state of dishevelment.
 
Star was still gorgeous when hungover and unshowered, but she looked to be a psychological disaster.
 
She was a brunette with huge, fake tits, but skinny and taut everywhere else – naked but for a feather boa and high heels, and she didn't seem to care about answering her door like that. A cigarette dangled from her lips, an inch of which was ash.
 
She had a glass of vodka in her hand.