STORY EXCERPT

A spotlight came on, illuminating one end of the plywood stage, and a disembodied voice came over the loudspeaker. “Get ready to drool, men, because tonight we have a new dancer and he’s gonna turn up the heat. Here he is, for the first time on our stage, or any stage for that matter. Let’s hear it for Slade.” The crowd went wild and men started moving toward the platform to catch a scent of the newcomer.

Jaxon Castle took a seat at the bar, and Quinn slid a bottle of mineral water in front of him. Jax never drank anything stronger than water at his club. He knew what the other shifters called him behind his back—control freak. They didn’t mean it as a compliment. Jax preferred to think of himself as a detail-oriented manager. Things tended to go wrong if he didn’t attend to every detail himself, and he needed all his animal instincts functioning at their peak in case of trouble. That meant staying stone-cold sober.

The bartender leaned over to make himself heard over the noise. “Fresh meat, huh?”

“Yeah. All the way from Los Angeles.”

“What’s he doing here?”

“The same thing all the strays are doing,” Jaxon grunted. “Running from the law. Dogtown is turning into a fucking dog pound.”

“You don’t give them all jobs in your club. What’s so special about this one?”

Jaxon shrugged. “His timing was good. Korey didn’t show up today. The little prick left me high and dry, and on a Saturday night. Fucking unbelievable. Then this guy walks in, fresh off the bus, and looking for any kind of job, and a place to stay. I sent him over to Benjamin to see about renting an apartment and told him to come back tonight for an audition. I sure hope he’s good.”

“You didn’t check his credentials?” Quinn feigned a surprised look but couldn’t hold back his laughter.

“I didn’t want to scare him off.”

“He doesn’t look like he scares easy.”

It was true. With a six-foot-four, muscular frame and rugged features, the newcomer looked like he could hold his own. Jaxon took a big swallow from the bottle.

“Well, I wouldn’t worry about it, boss. The men like a variety of inventory.” Quinn winked. “I know for a fact most of the guys would like to see you up on that stage.”

Jaxon choked and spewed water across the bar.

Quinn smirked and wiped his face with the back of an arm. “You all right, boss?”

“Fuck you.” Jaxon scowled at him, swiveled on his stool, and leaned his elbows back on the bar. He heard Quinn laughing behind him, but he focused on the stage. The men were more than curious about his private life, but the subject was strictly off-limits.

Not that he had much time for a life. The Kennel Club took up most of his waking hours. The club wasn’t fancy, but it was all his. The bar was here when he bought the place, dented and scarred like it had been through a war and almost as long as the room. Wood and leather stools lined the length, and there were also a number of tables scattered around the room. Between the bar and the stage there was a small dance floor and a side room with two pool tables and some dartboards. Jaxon’s office and apartment were upstairs. Downstairs there were private rooms where a wolf-shifter could take a fuck buddy if he got lucky.

Jax had added a few modern touches over the years. He’d put in a small kitchen where he served up a simple menu including burgers, hot dogs, and fries. But when he’d put up a stage and added a dancer, business had really taken off. It had been Korey’s idea. The young wolf needed a job, and jobs were scarce in this economy, especially for shifters. Humans didn’t hire Weres, and most shifters in Dogtown couldn’t afford to pay employees.

Korey was one hell of a dancer with a sexy little body that drew attention. He offered to work for tips, and his gig went so well that Jaxon hired him on the spot and paid him a small salary. It wasn’t like him to not show up, but Korey wouldn’t be the first kid to take off looking for greener pastures. Still, it would have been nice if he had given Jaxon some notice.

Yeah, the bar had grown since he took it over, and he had big ideas to make it even better, so it benefited him to hang around to make sure there’d be no trouble. If he wanted trouble he’d have stayed in his apartment in Chelsea where he had to hide his identity as a Were or deal with discrimination and hostility. He couldn’t wait to get out and live among his own kind. Shifters had been buying up abandoned properties for years and finally took over a blighted section of the city and rebranded the area as Dogtown. Any humans still living in the area had moved out when the wolves moved in. His people had started co-ops and businesses that catered to their own kind. They kept to themselves, satisfied to live a parallel, peaceful existence with humanity, and for the most part humanity stayed away from Dogtown.

So any trouble in Jaxon’s club was caused by the wolves themselves, and those kind of scuffles he could handle. The shifters were horndogs. Ingesting a little too much alcohol caused all those pent-up animal instincts to rise to the surface. It was the nature of the beast. Whoever said an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure hit it right on the nose. Hiring a big, beefy doorman helped a lot, but most dogfights broke out on the dance floor, so Jaxon had recruited a few enforcers and stationed them around the room, while he sat at the bar. The precautions had saved him from a mountain of trouble and a big loss of revenue. Maintaining a testosterone-friendly atmosphere was cheaper than paying for renovations every time somebody started a fight.

Finally, his dancer stepped into the light, and the shifter’s appearance brought a fresh round of cheers and applause. The animals are restless. I hoped they’re not disappointed.

ADULT EXCERPT

For a shifter, a man like Mike was an exotic, blue-eyed treat, and right now he looked good enough to eat. His lover’s cut cock, long and thick, and his big, low-slung balls made Jaxon’s mouth water. His own cock came to life as he wrapped his fingers around Mike’s awakening erection. The gorgeous, heavily veined cock was already leaking fluid, and Jaxon used it to lubricate the shaft.

Mike tensed, but he didn’t pull away. “I want to go to the club tonight,” he blurted out. No one has to know who I am. You don’t even have to acknowledge me. I’ll come in for a drink, have a look around.”

“Not a good idea.” Jaxon started working on Mike’s prick, stroking from the top all the way to the bottom then releasing as his other hand stroked from top to bottom, creating an alternating motion that never failed to get a rise out of Mike.

“Damn you. I want to sleep in your bed for a change.”

“I want that, too, but The Kennel Club is off-limits to humans. You wouldn’t even get past the door unless I brought you in. The men get rowdy sometimes, and if they find out you’re a cop…” His voice trailed off. Mike’s cock was filling nicely, and Jaxon really didn’t want to talk about the club.

“I’ve heard all this before.”

“And you’ll hear it again. It’s for your own good. If anything happened to you, I’d never forgive myself.” Jaxon couldn’t wait another minute. He needed to have Mike inside his mouth.

“Oh, God. Jax!”

* * * *

With no warning, Jaxon swallowed his prick until his nose was rubbing Mike’s pubes. Damn him. Mike had wanted to throw him out, he really did, and for more reasons than one, but he couldn’t do it. First off, with all that hand action going on, it made it impossible to think straight. Now Jaxon’s hot mouth had swallowed his anger along with his dick, and he was lost.

Mike never meant it to happen, but somehow, he’d fallen under the shifter’s spell and become totally smitten with the wolf. He had not an ounce of self-control when Jaxon got near him, and that was part of the attraction. It was nice to give up control sometimes, especially to someone a man could trust, and he trusted Jaxon—completely. Oh, he might give him a hard time once and in a while, but he knew Jax would always be honest with him. They had something good between them, and it made doing his job so much harder. A job he now wished with all his heart that he could quit. But once the Feds had a man under their thumb, they would never let him go.

Mike had started service with NYPD as a probie, a probationary police officer. After six months he was automatically promoted to the rank of police officer. Ultimately he wanted to be a detective, and he’d already worked a few investigative assignments, but the budget-conscious department had been dragging their feet on promotions. He became increasingly frustrated until his Captain called him in the office one day and offered him a proposition he’d almost refused.

He’d been assigned to the Division of Shifter Affairs, better known as the DSA, a fairly new branch of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It had been set up as a watchdog for Were population across the country, and right now they were knee-deep in the middle of investigating the wolf-shifters in New York. The Feds believed that the growing community of wolves had formed a resistance movement and were preparing for an armed rebellion against what they considered unfair practices against all shifters. DSA had asked for help from the NYPD. In order to keep their investigation as quiet as possible, the Special Ops unit was only asking for one man to join them, but that man would have to infiltrate the Were community and bring back whatever information he could gather. Mike had been picked because his Captain knew he’d befriended Jaxon. He didn’t know they were lovers, but if it helped the investigation, he’d probably encourage it. If Mike completed his assignment successfully, he’d be assured of a promotion to detective, or a permanent post with the DSA, but that wasn’t the real reason he took the job. He accepted because he saw it as a way to help Jax. He intended to prove that Jax had done nothing wrong. His new boss warned him to keep his position a secret. He would have anyway because he knew Jax would go crazy if he found out.

In hindsight, he felt he should have turned it down, but it was way too late for second thoughts. Mike had nobody to blame but himself for the permanent knot in his gut.  It is what it is. Although his superiors wouldn’t believe him, Mike knew Jaxon was not a terrorist. Now he consoled himself with the thought that at least he was in a position to help Jaxon. And if the government decided to start pulling in members of the shifter community, he could warn them. 

Right now he just wanted to forget the job, forget everything but how great Jaxon’s mouth felt on his dick. Most people, men and women, didn’t know the first thing about sucking cock. They thought all they had to do was close their lips around a man’s penis and bob their heads up and down.  But Jaxon was an expert cocksucker. His hot mouth slid up the length of Mike’s cock, tongue swirling around the head. Then his wet heat engulfed Mike’s length once again. Only Jax’s tight hold on his hips kept Mike from thrusting into his throat. “You’re fucking killing me,” he groaned.

Jax hummed around his cock and slipped a hand under his ass to finger his hole, and his eyes rolled back in his head. There was no point trying to string a few words together because he’d lost the power of speech. All he could do was moan his pleasure and hang on for the ride.