Taken: The Alpha’s Captive BBW/Werewolf Paranormal Romance #1
Taken: Chapter 5

“What the actual hell, lady!” Levi’s eyes went wide when he saw her pull the blunt end of the double-action-only .38 special from her purse and level it at him.

“Pull over,” Harper said, permitting herself a small thrill of satisfaction at his reaction. The bastard had tried to take her Baby. He deserved anything that happened to that pretty face.

“You were headed into Maryland,” he sputtered. “That’s not even legal, there!”

“I used my mom’s address,” she said, shrugging. “I live alone in Baltimore. The cops there don’t even care if you’re raped, as long as they can convince you not to report it. So I got a gun. And I’m from the sticks in Pennsylvania, so I’ve been shooting tin cans off a fence since I was five years old and I got my brother’s hand-me-down BB gun. You better believe that I’m not going to miss you from two feet away.”

Those delicious amber eyes narrowed. “I didn’t have to stop and let you in, you crazy bitch.”

“But you did,” she pointed out. “And now I’ve got a gun.”

She probably shouldn’t be enjoying this so much. After all, the guy had just stolen her car, so he might be dangerous. But he had left behind his bike, so technically speaking, he’d given her more than he’d taken, at least dollar-wise. If the motorcycle really was his.

“So do I.”

Oh, that was honest, at least. Interesting.

“I know. I saw the bulge.” She grinned to let him know the double meaning was intentional. “But yours isn’t drawn.”

Levi looked at her narrowly, as if he were considering something, then turned his eyes back to the road. He didn’t slow down. “So what if I don’t pull over?”

“I’ll shoot you.” She wasn’t bluffing. There was no way in hell she was going to let him keep Baby, even if he was hot enough to melt her panties.

“You might not mind putting a hole in me, but what about your car? Blood will definitely leave a mark on the carpet.”

She laughed. “You aren’t seriously trying to bargain with me after stealing my car, are you?”

“I would have given it back,” he said.

“Really?” she scoffed.

He lifted one shoulder in a kind of half-shrug. “Well, no, but I would have left it where someone could replace it, and it might have eventually gotten back to you.”

Harper was getting tired of his backtalk. “Pull over.”

With exaggerated care, he slid his hand around the steering wheel to flick the turn signal on, then eased onto the brake, his other hand palm-out in a defensive motion as he moved it to the gear shift.

“That’s right,” she encouraged. “Keep braking.”

He did, pulling over onto the grassy shoulder, the car rolling gradually to a stop. He pushed the emergency brake down with his foot and started to lower his hands.

“On the steering wheel!” she barked. She didn’t want his hands anywhere near his waistband and the gun she was sure he had in a holster there.

“Jesus, lady,” Levi said, but he obeyed, looking at her sideways.

“Now, one hand on the door handle.”

“If you want me out, I have to unbuckle first,” Levi said.

“Don’t you put your hands anywhere near your waist.” She held the revolver steady. “I’ll take care of that.”

She reached across with her left hand, keeping her right hand with the gun in it more than an arm’s length away. She kept her eyes fixed on his face, watching the belt buckle in her peripheral vision. Her fingers found the button to free the belt, the metal rectangle flat against his thigh. She pushed—

—And everything became a blur. He lunged for her, faster than a man could move, making a low growl in his throat. Harper’s finger spasmed around the trigger. The bang was like a slap in her ears, and the gun jumped against her palm, the barrel jerking upward as she tried to dodge his rush.

Levi didn’t even slow. He reached across her body, his hand folding over hers on the gun, dragging her arm down easily even as she kicked him and punched him with her other hand. His hard body was over hers, the weight of it pinning her against the bench seat of the car—which in other circumstances, if he weren’t a car-thief psychopath, might be quite pleasant.

He twisted her wrist mercilessly until she cried out in pain. Circumstances be damned, that was decidedly less pleasant.

“Let go of the gun,” he said in her ear.

“No!” She tried to bite him, but he dodged easily.

“I’ll break your wrist. I won’t like it, but I will.”

How could he have done all that? She’d had the gun trained on him, and when he moved, she had fired. It was impossible that she had missed at such close quarters. The bullet should have stopped him dead.

“I shot you!” Harper said. “Why aren’t you shot?”

“Let go,” he repeated.

She considered her options. She didn’t have any.

So she let go.

Still lying full length on top of her, he shifted his weight just enough to shove the revolver into the back of his waistband. She took the opportunity to punch him in the jaw. But he just grabbed her wrists without flinching, one in each hand, and pinned them above her head to the door.

“There’s no need for that,” he said. He was actually smiling down at her with a damnable lopsided grin. She was acutely aware of exactly how attractive he was—pretty shitty timing on her body’s part, as far as she was concerned. A trickle of awareness came up from her belly to heat her cheeks and ears, her nipples tightening against his chest and a sudden slickness between her legs.

And the hardness against her thigh—the one that was most definitely not his gun—told her she wasn’t the only one affected.

Cursing him and her body equally, she struggled in his grip. It did no good. “I want my car back.”

“Okay. Fine. You win. You can have it back—when I’m done with it.”

She glared at him suspiciously, searching those laughing eyes for some clue as to his sincerity. “And when will that be?”

“When this cover’s blown,” he said. “Or I get to where I’m going.”

“What cover? Why did you ditch your bike, if it really is yours?” She tugged against his hold. “And when are you going to let me go?”

“There are some really, really bad guys after me. Guys who make you and your peashooter look like a joke,” he said. “And as far as when I’m going to let you go—just as soon as I do this.”

He lowered his head, and before she could do more than squawk in outrage, his mouth came down on top of hers, hot and hard and every bit as good as she’d hoped.

It was a kiss without finesse, demanding and angry. After a second’s shock, she kissed him back just as hard, tasting his mouth as he took hers. The scent of his hair overpowered the sharp smell of cordite, a combination of the outdoors, soap, gasoline, and fresh sweat. He started to pull back, and she caught his lower lip momentarily, warningly between her teeth before she let him go.

Eyes smoky with raw need, he looked down at her.

“Well, then,” she said, raising a challenging eyebrow.

“You’re crazy,” he said. He released her hands and pulled away, but the look in his eyes didn’t change.

“Definitely.” She pushed upright and gave him a sideways look. “You really will give my car back?”

“Yeah. Sure. No problem,” he said, turning back to the road and shifting the car into first.

For some reason, she found the offhand comment more reassuring than a concentrated attempt to persuade her would have been. Probably because most guys who tried hard to convince her of something were blowing smoke.

“And my gun?”

He glanced sideways at her as he merged back into the single northbound lane. “I’m not so sure about that. You planning on shooting at me again?”

She looked down at his chest for the first time. There, in the brown leather of his motorcycle jacket, was a perfect hole, right on his shoulder.

“I did shoot you!” she said. She reached out.

He shied away from her touch. “It’s a graze.”

Narrowly, Harper considered the location of the wound. Yeah, right. “There’s no way that’s a graze.”

Harper kind of felt sorry for him, but he’d had it coming, stealing her Baby. She could hardly believe that she’d actually shot another person—and she really couldn’t conceive of how he could have kept coming after she did, much less how he could sit there like nothing had happened. Whatever he said, a .38 had decent stopping power. She examined the bottom edge of his jacket, expecting to see blood flowing down over his pants. But there was nothing.

“I told you, it was a graze.”

Harper lunged for the collar of his jacket, and this time, she caught it despite his attempt at a dodge. She pulled the leather open with a single jerk. The heather t-shirt underneath had a matching hole, a blossom of crimson around it, right in the center of his shoulder. That couldn’t possibly be a graze, but the blood splotch was far too small for a direct hit. Hell, it was too small even for a graze.

She dragged the collar of the shirt down. There wasn’t even a scratch under the smear of blood, just a slight puckered mark, like a very old scar. She prodded the muscle there, and he flinched slightly, making a sharp sound.

“Do you mind?” he snapped. “That hurts.”

“There’s no entrance wound,” she said.

“It still hurts,” he said.

“Where’s the graze, Levi?” she demanded. “There’s nothing here. There’s blood, but there’s no wound.” She looked up into his face.

He seemed to make a decision. “And what if there isn’t?”

“Then I’d ask, what the hell are you?” she said.

“And I wouldn’t tell you,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because there’s no way that you’d believe me.”

She snorted. Arguing didn’t seem to be worth it. “All right. Fine. Why are you running, then?”

“I have something that somebody wants really bad.”

Harper let go of his shirt and sat back. “Hmmm. Twenty questions. Could it be…that you’re the real-life Wolverine, complete with insta-healing, and the research lab wants you back?”

That coaxed a grin from him. “Not exactly.”

She snorted. “Come on, Wolverine. Out with it. You can at least tell me whether this thing you have is really yours, all legit and everything.”

Levi shook his slightly shaggy head. “Fine, then. I stole it. But I wouldn’t say that what I stole was legitimately his or anyone else’s, either.”

“Oooh, a riddle. I like those. Not,” she said. “I’m going to replace everything out eventually, anyway, if I’m coming along. You might as well tell me.”

Levi shook his head. “No, you won’t. Not unless everything goes terribly wrong. But I’ll tell you that the man I stole it from is a bad, bad guy. And what I took will mean that he’ll leave me and a whole bunch of the rest of us alone for a very long time.”

Without warning, he hit the brakes and swerved down a narrow, unmarked dirt road. Harper peered out the windshield, but all she could see was more cornfields and a group of outbuildings, an old-fashioned Pennsylvania barn with overshot walls above a stone foundation with prefab storage units and various sheds around it.

“What do you think you’re doing now?” Harper demanded.

“There’s a barn ahead,” he said. “We can hole up in there.”

Of course. Hole up. Why hadn’t she thought of that? She shook her head. This was like something out of a bad action flick. “Sure we can. Until what?”

“Until they’re looking ahead of where we are. They’ll pass by, and we’ll be behind their search line.”

Harper frowned. “Just how many people are we talking about here?”

They neared the barn. It might be empty this time of year, late spring before any of the harvests were in. She bet that Levi would know that, too—she bet that he knew a lot of things.

“Not a clue. Probably? A lot. He’s got the Baltimore police in his pocket, and I have good reason to believe that his influence crosses state lines.”

It just got better and better. Of all the cars out there, why’d he have to take hers?

He pulled to a stop in front of the barn. “Well?”

“Well, what?” Harper returned.

His amber eyes were laughing again. “Well, open the door. We can’t get in through a closed one.”

“Go ahead,” she returned, folding her arms across her chest.

“Fine,” he said. He put the parking brake on, killed the engine, then waggled the keys at her before stepping out of the car and shoving them into his pocket.

Well, it’d been worth a shot.

He sauntered over to the barn, and she couldn’t help but admire the long lines of his body as he walked the big doors out of the way. He didn’t seem to hold the fact that she shot him against her—though, of course, it had mostly been his fault. Then again, he didn’t seem to stay shot, either.

What was he? She wasn’t the type to get freaked out by much of anything, but the magical healing thing still threw her for a loop.

Levi could be some kind of cold-blooded killer as well as a superhuman healing machine. And here she was, going into a barn with him.

But she didn’t think so. When it came to men, her judgment didn’t exactly have the world’s greatest track record, but she was good at steering clear of the guys who were really bad news—the ones who hit girls or got into serious kinds of trouble, dealing hard drugs or boosting cars for cash or doing dirty work for anybody.

Killing girls in barns would definitely fall into that category, and though she barely knew him, she couldn’t believe that Levi was that type. After all, he’d stopped the car because he was afraid she’d hurt herself.

And anyway, at least she still had her knife.

Levi returned to the car, started it, and let the transmission’s idling speed roll it into the shadows of the barn in first gear.

The interior was dark except for the big rectangle of sun from the door and the thin lines of daylight that gilded the cracks between every board in the upper levels of the barn. A massive pile of tools and the skeletons of old furniture leaned in a tangle against one wall, taking up a third of the interior. The rest of the vast, echoing space was empty, waiting for the harvest.

“You gonna close it for me?” Levi asked, cutting the engine.

Harper realized that he meant the door. Right. He wasn’t going to take off without her from inside the barn, and she certainly wasn’t going to trick him into leaving the keys in it, so why not?

She rolled her eyes at him but unbuckled and got out, walking through the haze of dust that danced in the yellow block of light. Harper reached the door and squinted at the horizon. The sun was high overhead, glaring down on the fields and the distant ribbon of the road, where a single car glinted on its way south.

She pulled one door, and it moved easily on its rail. A few seconds’ effort brought them together. She returned to the car in the sudden dimness and bent down at the driver’s side window, resting her forearms on the edge of the door.

“Now what, Superman?” she asked.

He narrowed his eyes, taking her in with a long look that lingered on her cleavage. “I thought I was Wolverine.”

“Well, you certainly aren’t Batman,” she said. “When he’s hit by a bullet, he keeps bleeding.”

“I’m not telling you a thing, babycakes, so you can stop fishing.” He pulled out a cell phone and waved it at her. “And what happens now is that I have a little chat with my friend. In private.”

She sighed and pushed away from the door. “You should trust me.”

“And why’s that? Because you shot me?”

“So you admit it now.” Harper put a hand on her hip.

“Mmm,” he said noncommittally, swinging open the door. “Why don’t you stay out of the car while I have my chat?”

“Maybe I’m tired. Maybe I want to sit,” she said.

“More like you want a chance to hotwire this car, too,” he said. “Stay out of the car. I mean it.”

Damn. Was he a freaking psychic, or was she just that obvious? She sighed and walked to the front of the car, where she braced her legs to perch with her rear on the bumper.

“Happy now?” She looked back over her shoulder at him.

He flashed her that smile again, the one that made her heart skip a beat. “Sure.”

Levi went into the shadows of the barn. Harper strained her eyes as he slipped into the tangle of old furniture, disappearing into the darkness. She shifted against the bumper, considering whether he could see her.

Yeah, probably.

Hot biker dude had taken her along for a ride, after all, even if it was in her own car. And, well, after that kiss, things just might get even more interesting. So looking at it from one perspective, she’d gotten what she’d wanted and more. Just not quite in the way she’d been expecting.

Harper began to suspect that nothing about him would be.