Black Hills Desperado (Black Hills Wolves, #3)(3)
What the man on the bike called her amounted to a racial slur and insult, but Xio let it pass because she needed his help. Even though she was only one-quarter Asian, her long, dark hair and almond-shaped eyes dominated her features, to the point she’d been mistaken more than once for full-blooded Chinese. She could understand his assumption. Whatever. He could call her Lucy, for all she cared, but only once. The man was her ticket out of Los Lobos—and on a Night Rod.
Xio turned to him to let him know she wouldn’t let it pass a second time. “Some people would consider that rude.”
“Would they? How about you? Do you consider it rude?”
“Not this time. Let’s leave it at that, but don’t do it again.” She glanced down at a Bowie knife she kept sheathed on the side of her boot. The boots had been a gift from her twin brother, Xan, sent to her via mail from somewhere unknown, after he’d joined the CIA. Custom-made to hold a sticker, something she handled quite well, they were her most cherished possession. As long as she had them, all would be well.
His gaze traveled down and stopped on the bone handle, inlaid with a jade dragon. A huge grin spread on his face. “Something tells me you can be more than a handful if you want to be.”
“Test me and find out, cowboy.” Not that she needed a blade. She and her brother had been taught to fight since they could walk—the one thing Magnum had done right. Aikido, karate, judo, all the fine defensive arts, and a few of the killing ones, too.
She could be lethal without the blade, but it got her point across a lot quicker, so she always carried it. Besides, with her petite frame and delicate features, it kept the predators from mistaking her for prey.
And he was right about being a handful. Restraint had never been one of her strengths. Her wolf was wild and had a bit of a temper. Some said she was Alpha material—if she could learn a little self-control. Yeah, like that was going to happen. Besides, to be an Alpha, you kind of had to hook up with one, and she had no inclination to seek out another pack or find a mate.
No man would ever control her. They could try to tell her until they were blue in the face that she would stand beside them, but she’d yet to see an Alpha that let his mate do that on equal terms. Magnum certainly hadn’t. That was why she was getting out of Los Lobos, before Magnum got any ideas and used her to make a political play with another pack, enslaving her to some wolf. Xio lifted a brow. “So, you’re going my way?”
“Just point me in the direction, beautiful.”
The rider looked to be about ten years her senior, but not hard on the eyes, attractive in that bad-boy way that made her heart pound and her stomach flutter. Full-sleeve tats covered his arms, and eyes the color of ink stared at her in pure lust. It didn’t take a genius to know what he wanted. And if it got her out of this state, away from the Alpha pack, she’d let him have it. She wasn’t exactly a virgin anymore, anyway.
Screw pack law. Screw living in this godforsaken place in the middle of nowhere. Xio gathered her long hair, twisted it into a knot at the nape of her neck, and grabbed the motorcycle helmet the stranger offered, placing it on her head.
She was tired of being told whom she could date, where she could go, what she could do, and being watched by the other wolves as though she needed a babysitter. She was nineteen, a free spirit, and didn’t need them up her ass and in her business anymore. She’d live independently from here on out. Yes, she’d lost her parents as a child, but so had her brother, and they’d let him go off and live his life.
Just because the pack had taken it upon themselves to raise Xander and her, bouncing them from house to house, whatever place was convenient, didn’t mean they owned her. Even so, the Hills had never been home. Now with Xan gone, they felt like a prison.
“Where to, sweetheart?”
“Anywhere but here.” She’d leave wearing nothing but her cutoff shorts, black combat boots, and the thin T-shirt she’d stormed out of the lodge wearing, and that would be more than enough. The stranger didn’t look like the kind that would be opposed to a little shoplifting if she needed to stock up on supplies. If what he’d ridden up on reflected what he had in the bank, she could do worse. She couldn’t risk tapping into her bank accounts and triggering an enforcer pursuit. Her money didn’t matter anyway. It looked like she might’ve just found herself a bad-ass sugar daddy.
She normally wouldn’t go anywhere with a stranger. But Magnum had caught her smoking a joint behind the lodge, in a rather intimate post-coital moment with an enforcer’s son. And after the Alpha had told her to stay away from him. Something about him not being good enough for her.
The term off-limits had worked like bait, and she hadn’t been able to leave him alone. To be honest, Magnum had been right. The enforcer’s son wasn’t good enough for her, and her wolf had found the sex ho-hum. What a way to lose her cherry, and that should have been regret enough, but Magnum had made living with her mistake worse.
Since her mother had been human, not wolf, and the hybrid genetics tossed the possibility of an unexpected pregnancy into the equation, he’d ordered her to piss on one of those pregnancy tests every week for the last month. Fucker.
To punish her further, he’d clamped down on her freedom, and made it his mission to find her a mate—someone worthy of her family’s genetics.
Fat chance that would happen now. He’d have to find her first. She smiled at the man on the bike, who cocked a brow. Magnum was going to explode when he discovered she’d escaped and the thought turned her smile into a grin. She swung her leg over the seat and settled behind him, closing her eyes. Inhaling deeply. The stranger—her new best friend—smelled like trouble. Whatever. Couldn’t be worse than what she planned to leave behind. Adios, Los Lobos.