Unable to resist the temptation of the prone body, he ran his knuckles over the hairs on the man’s stomach as pictures from Dex’s video passed through his mind.
If this man had already been ripped out of the civilized world and tossed away, would it not be a kindness to keep him? He’d die otherwise. Frank had told him to dispose of a body, but this was a person, and it wasn’t like Frank would ever find out. The location of Jag’s den was secret, and the junkyard—vast.
Jag licked his lips and sat on his haunches, admiring the colorful planes of skin in front of him. Maybe this was Mother Nature’s gift to him? A big, tall man with strong arms yet with a softness to his hands and frame, as if he were made to be loved and cuddled.
Yes.
Jag would accept what he’d been given.
Chapter 2 – Dane
A flash of pain ripped Dane out of black nothingness. Everything was an orange blur, but as strong hands pushed him down, Dane tried to swing his arms up in defense. They wouldn’t budge, trapped by fingers as solid as steel. His body cried in anguish, anticipating yet more punches and kicks, but adrenaline flooded in, and he roared, trying to push Rob off him.
His brain ached, as if the bastard’s betrayal had left Dane with spikes on the inside of his skull, but he wasn’t about to die at the hands of such a damn lowlife!
“Let go of me!”
“Stay put!” Rob growled and shoved him down to… furs?
And the voice was nothing like Rob’s Texan accent either.
Dane was still dazed when his gaze fell on where a face should have been, but instead was a metal mask with panther spots painted on it in black, and several sharp spikes above the eye holes. A headbutt from this thing could kill.
He couldn’t hold in a scream. Green eyes flickering with gold in the light from a crackling fire, pierced him from behind the disguise, and the other man cocked his head, flashing two giant fangs attached where the mouth ought to be. The sturdy shoulders and naked chest left no doubt about the stranger’s sex.
“R-Rob?” Dane uttered and looked around in hope of seeing something that would explain his situation, but without his glasses, everything that wasn’t directly in front of him became a colorful blur. “What... what is this?”
“Your eyes.” The man leaned forward and grabbed Dane by the chin to pull him closer as if he were examining an animal he was about to purchase. He even petted Dane’s beard with his thumb.
Dane stalled, shaking as the flat mask attached to the other man’s head with leather straps loomed closer. The voice sounded dull from behind it, but it had a raspy quality that in another life Dane would have called pleasant. Like Rob’s. Following his instinct was clearly a bad idea.
“W-what?”
The stranger moved Dane’s chin left and right. “One’s brown, one’s blue.”
It was such a strange comment to make, Dane stayed still and just met the other man’s gaze, which shone at him from behind the flat features of the disguise. “Um… yeah… is Rob coming back?” Because if he was, then Dane needed to get the hell out of here. The fucker had attempted to kill him, and Dane wasn’t about to let him finish what he started. And for what? A few files Rob had asked him to delete off the computer in his motorcycle club’s office?
The man lowered his eyes, as if he were pondering the question, but then pinned Dane to the furs with an intense stare. “No. Now let me finish,” he said with surprising gentleness. He pointed to Dane’s arm, and a single peek at it had Dane’s stomach twisting in horror.
He must have been high on adrenaline, because there was no way he could have ignored a half-open gash otherwise. The scent of blood and alcohol hit him like smelling salts, and his head spun as if someone had cut off its blood flow when he realized the stranger had already put in some stitches, and a needle was hanging off the edge of the wound.
“Oh God… oh fuck,” he uttered but met the green eyes once he regained a degree of composure. “Did you… save me from him?”
The stranger hummed. “Yes. Now lay down and don’t strain yourself.”
Dane absorbed more details with each passing second. He was in some kind of… cave? And while a campfire crackled with a yellow glow just beyond the safety of the uneven ceiling, past a low doorway, the man had put a large flashlight next to Dane’s injured arm. Above it, a chunky wrist watch hung from the wall, sparkling with crystals of some kind as it told Dane it was around 3a.m.
Rob had once told him the motorcycle club dumped bodies in drug dens, because it made the cops investigate the murders and beatings with less scrutiny and took the heat away from the MC, but this space smelled of fur, dirt, and some kind of herb, not rot, vomit, and piss. So where was he?