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  Hurricane

  Savage Brotherhood MC: Book Four

  A Paranormal Romance

  by Jasmine Wylder

  Table of Contents

  Other Books in this Series

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  About Jasmine Wylder

  Other Books in this Series

  Tornado (Book 1)

  Blizzard (Book 2)

  Thunder (Book 3)

  Typhoon (Book 5, coming soon)

  Twister (Book 6, coming soon)

  Cyclone (Book 7, coming soon)

  Storm (Book 8, coming soon)

  Chapter One

  Roxy

  The thing about Josef Downing was that he could literally have any girl he wanted.

  Handsome, young, persuasive, with a grin that would make the most steadfast virgin question her life choices. It helped that he was insanely rich and the CEO of not one but two mega-corporations. It did mean he was in the public eye a lot but that wasn’t something Roxanne cared about. Even when it ended up with her face plastered on tabloids, with headlines that declared that she, Josef’s girlfriend, used to work as a high-class prostitute.

  Both of which were wrong. She wasn’t Josef’s girlfriend, and she didn’t use to work as a prostitute. She still did, though she preferred the term call girl.

  She let out a silent sigh as Josef emerged from the ensuite bathroom, freshly showered with the scent of soap clinging to his skin. God, he was beautiful. All muscles under his tanned, tattooed skin. As he flexed, his six-pack came out in full relief and Roxy’s aching parts throbbed with desire, as though they hadn’t just made a marathon out of it.

  “I transferred this month’s money to your account and paid your rent,” Josef told her as he pulled on his pants.

  Roxy’s wolf whimpered, distressed to see him leaving, but Roxy just nodded. “Great. Thanks.”

  “Bills are all up to date.”

  “I know.”

  Josef gave her one of his patented panty-wetting grins. “What’s with the tone? Did it get too rough for you this time? I thought you liked it wild.”

  Roxy traced her fingers over one of the fading bite marks on her neck. “That was supposed to be rough?”

  Josef’s eyes darkened with lust. He loved to be challenged, at least in the bedroom. It was one of the things that Roxy liked most about him. He got her. So many of the men in her past had been so focused on their own pleasure, she had to forgo the things she liked in order to give them the same boring sex over and over and over again. Josef liked trying new things. Even after five years of being his exclusive escort, they still managed to find ways to do things they hadn’t done before.

  “You little vixen,” Josef purred as he pulled his white dress shirt on. “You know I have back-to-back meetings all day. Do you want me to lose everything because I’m thinking of your delectable flesh instead of pie charts and graphs?”

  Roxy straightened up a little, flashing him a grin of her own. “I was just hoping to go out somewhere today… maybe the mall or the zoo or Tiffany’s...”

  Josef let out a laugh as he shook his head. “You want to fly to New York? So not only do you want me to lose everything, you want to bankrupt me, too?”

  “Well, when you say it like that.” Roxy sagged back into the bed, her heart starting to sink, even though she knew enticing him back to bed wasn’t going to be that easy. Honestly, sometimes she wondered. It would mean her being aloof and distant and Josef crashing hard, not the other way around. That’s how it worked all the times before. Of course, she had never been exclusive before—and Josef needed the exclusivity so that he wasn’t accused of paying for prostitution.

  Even though he was.

  Josef finished dressing. He shook his head as he chuckled. “I’ll call you later.”

  He wouldn’t. He never did. Roxy didn’t care about that. She knew that he had his own shit to deal with and that she wasn’t at the top of his list. She honestly didn’t care. Most of the time, anyway. After all, she wasn’t a kept woman and she didn’t intend to become one. Her independence was too important to her—and she had given enough of that away by being financially dependent on Josef.

  “I’m going to go back to school,” she blurted as he reached for the door handle. “I’m going to get some fancy degree and come work at one of your companies, and you’ll have to give me a raise.”

  Josef nodded seriously, though the corners of his mouth twitched up in a smile. “Sure thing, Rox. Harvard, here we come.”

  He left still chuckling and Roxy knew why. She didn’t even have a high school degree. What school would take her now? But she was getting older, though her abilities as a wolf shifter would keep her body toned and strong for another decade or two. The signs were coming, though… she wanted to think that Josef would still want her when she had crow’s feet and strands of gray hair, but she couldn’t count on it.

  She had to view these things logically and if Josef ended their contract, she wouldn't have much recourse except to go back to the Savage Brotherhood and live on-call for when a member got bitten by a vampire and needed sex to take the edge off the aggression that always came with dealing with vampire venom.

  No. School had to happen. Just pick something and go for it, have a safety net for God’s sake.

  Roxy snorted as she threw back the covers of the bed, then lit a few candles around the bedroom to erase Josef’s manly, wild smell. Her wolf still whimpered, wanting his wolf, and she growled at it until it went silent.

  Just as she was about to jump in the shower, her phone started to ring. Her heart jumped to her throat at once, then dashed when she saw that it wasn’t Josef. It was her younger brother. She answered, fingering the tattoo on her shoulder that indicated she had once been a member of a local brothel—a place where clients were vetted carefully and birth control had been provided to the girls—but the city government had shut it down. Roxanne knew three of the girls she used to work with had been murdered, another two now were dying of STDs and the rest had just sort of disappeared, like her.

  She shuddered to think of what would have happened to her if the Savage Brotherhood hadn’t taken her in, where she met Josef.

  “Andy,” she greeted as she answered the phone. “What’s this about?”

  “Roxy, we need you.” Andy panted. “Stew and I got into a bit of trouble.”

  Her brothers were always getting into trouble and she was always getting them out. She sighed as she headed into the bedroom again, cellphone pinched between her ear and shoulder as she spritzed herself with perfume to cover up the scent. Not that it would be much good since Andy had such a keen nose.

  “I’m on my way,” she promised.

  She grumbled to herself even as her stomach twisted with worry, as she headed to her brother’s house. It wasn’t as fancy as her place, just a two-bedroom basement suite in a part of town that was halfway between in need of repair and run-down. When she entered, the scent of blood hit her at once.

  Her stomach dropped. Easthallow was the center of Savage Brotherhood territory and so rival gangs usually didn’t get this far.

  Vampires, however, were always on the prowl.

  Roxy rushed down the stairs, her heart in her throat as she flung the basement door open. The smell of blood only got stronger. “Andy! Stewart!”

  “In here,” Andy called from a bedroom.

  Roxy rushed in to find Stewart lying on the floor, in the middle of a circle of burnt herbs and candles. His face twisted in pain, as he held his arm over his head. Blood poured down his wrist, though Andy had tied a tourniquet around his elbow which had stopped the worst of it. Roxy went to Stewart’s side and was shocked to see deep puncture wounds in his wrist.

  Tooth marks.

  “What the fuck did you do?” Roxy snarled, turning on her other brother.

  Andy flinched back. “Hey, it’s not my fault that it didn’t work!”

  Roxy resisted the urge to smack Andy upside the head. It was clear what had happened. While Andy and Roxy both had been born as shifters, somehow Stewart didn’t end up as one. There were certain rituals that could be done to turn a human into a shifter, but those rituals were closely monitored and guarded. The fact that her brothers thought they would somehow be able to perform such a ritual on their own?

  “Have you called Mia?” Roxy fixed Andy with a glare, as she yanked open the first aid kit nearby, found the gauze, and wound it tightly around Stewart’s wrist. Andy often forgot that Stewart, as a human, was far more susceptible to injury and didn’t heal as fast as shifters did.

  Andy shuffled on the spot, and this time Roxy did hit him. His action had put his brother in danger—and he didn’t even call a doctor!
>
  “What? Last time it was working and she stopped it,” he snarled at her.

  “And this time our baby brother is bleeding to death! Go call her now!”

  Stewart made a groaning noise, as though he wanted to protest but didn’t have the strength for it. Roxy ground her teeth together. She understood why he wanted to be a shifter. Not only were his own family shifters, but he desperately wanted to join the Savage Brotherhood and help Andy fight against vampires. Only shifters were permitted to join the gang.

  There were successful examples of humans becoming shifters. But this? This was ludicrous. How many times did these two think they could try without killing him?

  “It’s going to be okay,” Roxy promised as she tied another tourniquet at his shoulder. “Stewart, stay with me, okay?”

  She hefted him up, wincing at how heavy he was. Andy came back in, cellphone clutched in his hand. On seeing Stewart’s pale face, horror filled his own. He quickly joined Roxy in helping their brother and together they were able to get him up to the car. Roxy kept up a string of curses under her breath, focusing on her anger at her brothers rather than allowing the fear of what might happen next to overwhelm her.

  “We should take him to the hospital,” she mumbled once they were driving. But if they did that questions would be asked.

  The staff would take one look at Andy in his jacket with his tats and come to their own conclusions. It would be a miracle if they didn’t call the cops on them! Not to mention, she had only put on a spaghetti-strap tank when she’d left her apartment. Her own tattoo was clearly visible, which would only cement the doctor’s assumptions about them. They could explain it away as a dog bite, but in the past, that hadn’t worked out so well.

  No, Mia was their best bet. She doctored up all the gang and wasn’t averse to taking care of the occasional human that got caught in the crossfire between shifters and vampires.

  When they arrived at the clinic, Mia was waiting. She growled under her breath and gave Stewart a death glare as Andy and Roxy carried him in. She shook her head, her eyes flashing. “Put him on the table. I swear, I’m going to have to kill you boys to stop this!”

  Andy frowned at her. “Lighten up.”

  “I might kill you myself,” Roxy snapped at him and he ducked his head. She helped lift Stewart onto the table, and Mia got to work at once, quickly peeling back the bandages to see how badly he was bitten.

  She cursed. “Had to get an artery, didn’t you?”

  “Is he going to be okay?” Andy asked anxiously.

  “Yeah. But if you’d come sooner, he’d be a lot better. Are you gonna answer that?”

  Roxy became aware that her phone was ringing. She pulled it out of her purse and quickly went to another room to answer.

  “Hey, sexy,” Josef’s voice came over the line. “What are you wearing?”

  Roxy sucked in a deep breath, trying to calm herself. If she said she was wearing her brother’s blood, would he come to her? Tears burned her eyes as the scent of blood curled into her nostrils, and Stewart gave a soft cry from the other room.

  “Roxy? You there?”

  “Yeah.” Roxy’s throat was so tight she could hardly speak.

  Josef’s tone became concerned. “What’s wrong?”

  “Andy tried to turn Stewart again. He’s fine. They’re both fine.” Another cry, and Roxy’s heart clenched. “I’m just freaking pissed at them, you know?”

  “Oh.” The tone was suddenly very disinterested. “You still going to be able to make it to dinner tonight?”

  “Yeah. No problem,” Roxy lied and put on a sultry tone that she didn’t feel like at all. “I’ll be there. What do you want me to wear?”

  Josef chuckled. “That red dress. Your black heels. Nothing else.”

  Roxy let out a breathy chuckle. “Looking forward to it.”

  She hung up without saying goodbye, as Stewart cried out again. And she leaned her head back against the wall, fighting tears still. School. Get independent. Then she wouldn’t have to cling to Josef and hope that one day he’d feel about her the same way she felt about him.

  Chapter Two

  Hurricane

  His wolf snarled and paced in his chest, but Josef ignored it as he hung up his phone and turned to the woman sitting across his desk.

  When she first came into his office, Josef wasn’t certain what he wanted more, to sweep everything off the desk and fuck himself senseless or to throw her out the window. Fawn-colored hair fell in curls around her fair throat, and lamb-like eyes stared pleadingly at him. She wore a simple summer dress, shoulders covered by a shawl, but she still looked beautiful.

  The only thing that stopped him from giving into his second urge was the bruise under her right eye and the split in her lip. Vampires didn’t bruise or bleed, not like this at least.

  His cellphone was still clenched in his hand, Roxanne’s abrupt departure setting off warning bells in his head. There was something wrong with her. He desperately wanted to ditch the rest of the day and go to her to find out what that was—she never showed any emotion, but if her brother was in a bad spot, she’d be dying inside—but with a vampire queen in his office, he was frozen.

  “Hello, Hurricane,” she greeted softly.

  Josef shoved his cellphone into his pocket and glared at her. “Not Hurricane anymore. Thanks to you I was ousted from the Savage Brotherhood.”

  Guinevere glanced around the office, taking in the expensive, minimalist design. “It looks like you’ve done well for yourself outside of it. You made something of yourself.”

  “Why are you here?”

  Guinevere flinched at his harsh tone, but Josef didn’t let that soften him. After all the crap she had put him through, did she really think he was just going to roll over and let her rule him again? She wet her lips and shifted in her seat. Josef glowered at her. The desire to be between her legs again was rapidly fading. His wolf snarled and snapped. Throwing her out the window was starting to look more and more enticing.

  “I need...” She dropped her gaze to her twisting hands. She had the innocent look down pat. “I need asylum.”

  That was the last thing Josef had expected. He let out a breath, his anger fleeing in shock. He stared once more at the bruise on her face and the cut in her lip and scrambled to take that anger back. “I know the process that allows you to be human enough to walk in sunlight involves shifter blood. You’ve been keeping prisoners and—”

  “No. I set up a collection bank for volunteer shifters to donate. They were paid for it.” Guinevere glanced up, eyes flashing briefly, but she dropped her gaze quickly enough. “And this is the reason I need asylum. Some of the kings have grown tired of my method of ruling my kingdom and want to take it over. They’ve infiltrated my ranks and attempted an assassination. I barely escaped with my life.”

  “And you want me to help you win it back?” Josef snarled.

  “No. But I can’t go back to my kingdom until I’ve recovered and returned to my full abilities as a vampire. If I’m discovered in shifter territory, I’ll be killed. I just need a place to hide for a little bit. Please, Josef. Nobody will know. I hardly smell like a vampire.”

  It was true. The overly sweet scent of rotting fruit was hidden beneath layers of perfume on her. The stubby fangs in her mouth, though, were enough to tell people what she was.

  She lifted her face to his, those big eyes pleading. How often had he been lost in them? Josef ground his teeth together, even as stabs of sympathy started to burst through him. He had to remain strong, or else he was going to end up giving in without a fight, and he’d end up in a terrible position. Even as he opened his mouth to tell her to get lost, though, a hopeless look came to her eyes.

  Josef’s heart clenched. Guinevere had lied to him before, when they first met, about being a queen among the vampires. But she had never hurt him, never hurt anybody he cared about. And as much as he wanted to deny it, he still cared about her. She had been the brightest light in his life for so long… sometimes Josef wondered if she was the reason he could never seem to attach to women emotionally. Why he eventually ended up keeping an exclusively sexual relationship with Roxy.

  She’d never expect more than what he was able to give her.