Page 5 of Running on Empty

Chapter3

“That’s what you’re wearing?!”

I nearly jumped ten feet in the air at the comment. I’d just stepped out of the pub, ready for the Spencer pack to pick me up. After finally finishing my shift, I got changed in one of the storerooms, one where I could push some heavy boxes of booze in front of the door to stop Jonesy from ‘accidentally’ walking in on me. Now the stupid booby top was gone, replaced with something a little more subtle.

A cowl-necked halter top made my shoulders look amazing and still made a feature of the girls, it was just a little less in your face about it. I’d fastened a glittering collar around my neck, because I’d found the symbolism of it was alpha crack. Anything that made me looked owned, even though none of us actually wanted that. I’d reapplied my eye makeup so it was much darker and slicked my lips a deep red. When I’d stepped back to look in the cracked mirror over the sink, I’d nodded at my reflection. I looked like the perfect little slice of alpha-bait.

Which was perhaps why Ash was giving me the once over.

“Who are you?” I asked, “My dad?! I always wear this kind of shit when I go out.”

He snorted out a breath at that, blue eyes narrowing as he pushed himself away from the wall of the pub to move closer.

“You’ve never been to the Viper Room.” Ash stepped nearer and nearer until he was looming over me, close enough to touch. “And wearing… that… will send a message there.”

“It’s supposed to be a hot club,” I said.

“It’s an alpha playground,” he corrected. “A dangerous one. You…” I could see that he wanted to tell me what to do, to go home, wash my face clean and nestle down in my nest, watch movies and eat popcorn, just like he did when I was a kid. But I wasn’t a child anymore, the evidence of that was right in front of him. His eyes took me in, sliding over every inch of me before meeting my eyes. “I don’t want you going there. It’s taking everything I’ve got not to scoop you up and take you home–”

My wolf whined, wanting him to do exactly that.

“Don’t you dare,” I growled.

He nodded, staring into my eyes.

“You need to be careful there, Stevie. Don’t fuck around with anything or anyone you don’t want. Don’t hesitate to say no if you get in over your head. Don’t get too drunk. If those… alphas you’re going out with don’t listen to that, you get help from someone in the club and then you call me… us.”

“Yes, Dad.”

His brows jerked down at my sarcastic tone. Making him react was always fun. Ash might be the Big Bad Wolf, but mine liked yanking his tail. Then, right when I was going to needle him some more, a slick black car rolled up, the motor throbbing with power.

Ooh, Stevie likey.

The window rolled down and I recognised the alpha who hung his arm out from the Howlr profile pic. He inspected me just as thoroughly as Ash had done, though with much more lascivious intent. I checked out the sleeve rolled up over a muscular forearm, the finely inked tattoos snaking up his arm, and took a step forward. Yeah, moving my schedule up was going to work tonight.

“Ready, baby?”

Urgh, I hated alphas giving me pet names, but when the guy grinned at me, his tongue playing with his lip ring? I figured he could call me anything he liked, as long as he could use that tongue for a whole lot of other purposes. I sashayed forward then, putting a little sway in my step which the alpha followed with silvering eyes.

“I’m Jack,” he said. The back door opened and a stupidly tall alpha emerged, ushering me into the car. “That’s Blaine.” Blaine shot me a cheeky smile as I slid in the back seat next to another alpha, this one more muscly than tall. “The big prick next to you is Rock.”

“As in The Rock?” I asked with a frown, and while the guy seemed as big as the wrestler cum actor, that seemed the only similarity.

“You can call me any damn thing you like, omega,” he purred.

“And this is Snake.”

Jack jerked his thumb to the front passenger seat and a tall man with white blond hair turned around to check me out silently, the similarity to the serpent obvious. He seemed to catalogue every part of me, not giving away anything in terms of his reaction.

“Rock? Snake? Didn’t your mother like you, or something?” I asked.

“She liked us just fine,” Jack replied, watching his brothers do my seatbelt up in the back. “Now, sweetheart, you want to go dancing before we hit the Viper Room? Because that club’s not really one for dance floors.”

“I suck at dancing,” I replied.

I did. I seemed to have missed some essential girl lesson growing up, probably due to all my desperate trailing after the guys. I could either move my arms or my legs to music but not both, having no sense of rhythm at all. So I just looked like an electrified octopus most of the time.

“Viper Room it is then,” Jack said, revving the engine as he turned his head to throw a look at Ash, before we roared off.

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