Wild Side

Book 2: The Stryker Family Saga

by Allison Martin

Genres: Contemporary Romance; Romantic Suspense; Family Saga; opposites attract; protective hero

Synopsis

Jet Stryker is unlike any man I've experienced before. I almost feel guilty for taking advantage of him.

I would definitely be safe from the men who are after me in the tiny backwoods town of Raston...except all this nature that seems just as determined to kill me.

The only problem is it's obvious I don't belong here. I'm an exotic dancer for a high-end club in Montreal, not some country bumpkin. I'm out of my element and my cash is running dangerously low. I need a plan, and that plan magically appears in front of me in the form of Jethro Stryker.

Did I say magically appear? I mean this sexy lumberjack-ed-up dude barges into my life when he throws a grown man through a plate of glass for insulting his sister.

Now I'm bleeding but my future just became a whole lot less stressful...

Cadence Miller is the most difficult woman I've ever met. But under all that tough-girl attitude, she's terrified, and I need to know why.

Always protect those weaker than you. It's a mantra I live by. The worst kind of men are the ones that feel big by making the small cower. I was raised by a man like that and you might say I find it a bit triggering.

But what started out as a fight over some dude-bro touching my sister ended up with a sultry brunette city girl living in my guest cabin.

When her past finally catches up with her, I might be in too deep to walk away.
---
Wild Side is a standalone opposites-attract romantic suspense with plenty of steam, a bit of mystery, and more small town Stryker family antics.

Release date: March 16, 2021

Publisher: A Martin Books

Print pages: 317

Sample

Prologue

CADE

After nine hours in six-inch stilettos, my feet ache, and the sound of bass still rings in my ears as I peel my exhausted body from the cab. There’s nothing more I want than a hot shower, a bowl of cold ice cream, and a six-hour marathon of House Hunters.

But I’m not going to get that fantasy. The thought of getting up in just four hours to film three classes is one I’m trying hard to ignore.

I hand the cab driver a fifty. “Good luck with your girl, Ranish. You got this, buddy.”

He grins at me in the rearview, and I ache for the poor guy. His girlfriend is totally going to dump him. I got the play-by-play on the way home from my shift at the club. There’s something about the amount of glitter covering my skin that invites men to dump their fucking problems on me. But Ranish was cute. Sweet. And so clueless.

I riffle through my purse and struggle to focus on the deep dark cavern of my enormous bag. It’s like one of those Harry Potter bags with no bottom, and I shove my hand in as far as it will go, rooting around for my keys. I can hear them jingle, but after three rounds on the pole and over an hour on the Top Floor, my coordination is off. My brain is dangerously close to saying fuck it right here and shutting down.

The heel of my boot gets caught in the crack on the sidewalk, and I stumble like a drunk to my stairs, finally gripping the keys. I pause and glance over my shoulder for a moment, a habit I started after I watched a news special on muggers who ambush you as you’re entering your apartment. A shiver vibrates my whole body.

There’s no one around, but it doesn’t settle my unease. The ever-present heavy rock at the pit of my stomach amps up to unbearable. Pain radiates in the arch of my foot, but I ignore it. Exhaustion weighs down my body, but I take the steps as fast as I can. 

Even from a few feet away, I can tell there’s a chip out of the old wood on my front door. The lock on my door is scratched to shit. My intuition churns in my belly, and I slow to a tiptoe as my body turns to ice. Blood thunders in my ears, and I nudge the unlatched door open. I reach in with ginger fingers and flick on the light. With my other hand, I clutch my phone.

Not my phone. His phone.

From one end of my apartment to the other, shattered glass leaves a trail of destruction, leading to my sofa, which is flipped on its side, and ending at a pile of clothes strewn across the floor. There’s no way any part of me is moving now. My feet are stuck to the threshold, and my fingers itch to call the cops, but this isn’t a random break-in. 

I twist the phone around in my hand, not daring to take it out of my purse.

I knew this day was coming.

I knew my time was up.

More than anything, I knew they’d go to whatever lengths they needed to get this phone. This means what I have on them is a whole lot bigger than I thought.

 

 

Chapter One

CADE

 

 

All I care about is a shower. I’m desperate enough to even take one in this disgusting place. The air smells damp and musty with a decaying undertone. I lean over the counter of the dim hotel reception to check if there’s someone dead on the floor, but nope. No one.

“Hello?” I call toward the faint shuffling sound in a back room.

The August heat streams in through tall windows and boils the unease in my gut. Sweat clings to my forehead thanks to a car with no air conditioning on a day with no clouds. I unstick a strand of dark hair from my skin with a manicured fingernail and try to tuck it into my messy ponytail.

Finally, a man backs out of the door, and when he turns, he startles, his body contracting in on itself as if he saw a spider.

“I’m so sorry, Miss,” he said. “I didn’t hear you out here. How can I help you?”

He’s wearing a baseball cap, Wranglers, and a plaid button-down. Hardly the kind of hotel reception I’m used to.

The first hotel I stopped at off the highway at least had a uniform. It was one of those chain hotels filled with soccer teams and cheap employers and moms who want to fuck their husbands without kids banging on the door.

Unfortunately for me, there’s some sort of music festival, and that hotel was all booked up for the night. This relic is where they sent me.

There’s a loud bang behind me. I gasp and wrap my arms around my purse as a woman with long blonde hair and deep smokers’ wrinkles around her lips walks by. I force my body to slow down with a long breath, inhaling the stale cigarette smell that clings to her.

I should jump in my car and drive to Vancouver as I planned, but now it’s my turn to shudder. The pinch of my shoulder muscles screams at the thought of spending another minute in the car.

I grunt out a sigh and slam my purse on the desk. I will survive one night here. Maybe.

“Um, can I get a room, please?” I ask, pulling my wallet out of my purse, and the receptionist frowns at my expensive bag. This hillbilly is aware I shouldn’t be pushing five-hundred-dollar sunglasses on top of my head and placing designer leather on the counter of this dusty old hotel. He can tell all of my things are fancy, but I am gross.

That’s what happens when you leave your apartment in the middle of the night and drive clear across the entire country with a single suitcase. Flashes strobe across my vision of the door to my apartment. The sight of all my things smashed, scattered, or broken—the threatening note left on my counter.

If you tell anyone, both of you will pay.

The terror on her face as he pinned her to the wall by her neck haunts me, and in the receptionist, I see a flash of him. I see flashes of them everywhere, in all men.

“Miss?” the man says, and he’s back to him, with a kind but confused smile.

“How long would you like to stay with us?” He glances at my wallet as I hold five one-hundred-dollar bills in a haze.

“What’s one night?” I hold the cash out to him, but he’s stuck in a gaped-mouth position with a light dusting of facial hair and soft brown eyes shaded by the baseball cap. I wiggle the bills to get his attention again, my limbs like Jell-O from thoughts of Gigi.

“Uh, seventy-five.” His eyelids lower with a slithering suspicion.

I pluck one hundred from the fold and set it between us, doing my best to control my expression.

Seventy-five isn’t even a decent tip in the hotels I’m used to staying at. But judging by the stained carpets, garish 80s decor, and cracking grungy walls, it seems fair. I hope the room doesn’t come with roommates of the six-legged variety.

 

 

I sit naked on the edge of the bed and towel dry my hair, which helps to scatter my thoughts and banish them to the fringes of my attention for a while. Steam billows through the room from the scorching hot water, and condensation drips down the walls, pulling yellow streaks of age down the white paint. 

A small fraction of the muscle-coiling tension I brought to this place rinsed down the drain, and I feel vaguely human again. If nothing else, I smell better.  

Wrapping the towel around my hair and securing it, I let the rest of my body air dry for a few minutes before starting with the lotion. As I rub the moisturizer between my palms, calm sinks into my flesh. I move from running circles in my mind to being present in my body. My showers are a ritual, one of my most sacred practices to keep me centered and in control. There are more products in my suitcase than clothing, which may become a problem if I can’t find a laundromat soon. 

I stand in front of my suitcase, staring at my meager options with my hands on my bare hips, and my stomach rumbles. 

Tossing on a pair of tight jeans and a loose top, I busy myself getting ready. With my entire life upside down, this simple and familiar routine helps to soothe the near-constant flutter in my heart. Blow-drying my hair and adding enough makeup to be put together doesn’t take much time, but my stomach reminds me every few minutes that it’s been a while since I ate. 

I grab my phone and wallet, noticing a missed call. My adrenaline surges for a quick moment before I see who it was. A few slow breaths calm my nerves before I redial.

He answers on the second ring. 

“Hello?” His fragile voice crackles. It twists me up the same as always, with the confusing mix of missing him and avoiding all the memories of life with him. 

“Hey, Pops,” I say, flopping onto the floral bedspread. “How are you?”

“Oh, I’m fine,” he dismisses the question with a slight country twang in his voice. His farm could be burning down around him, and he’d say the same thing. A man who will hold his true feelings in a closed fist until the day he dies, like the rest of them.

“How are you, Cady-girl?” 

I bite my lip hard and swallow my desire to tell him everything that’s happened in the last couple of weeks of my messed-up existence. If we were in person, I would. One stern look from my grandfather, and I’d spill my guts. It’s part of the reason I haven’t been home once since Gran died. He knows me better than anyone, and he should. He raised me.

“I’m okay. Tired and about to go grab a bite to eat.” I stare out the third-floor window over the rooftops of tiny downtown Raston. The sun is just about to set behind the looming mountains in the distance.

“Oh, yes, I suppose it’s late there. I can’t make sense of these time zones.” 

Again, I force the truth to the pit of my stomach. Pops thinks I’m in Montreal. Quebec is now covered in darkness. But I’m in British Columbia, still bathing in the summer heat, and he cannot know that.

“Are you filmin’ one of them classes tonight?” he asks, and my limbs shake as I lock the truth inside. I stare at the crack in the hotel ceiling and wait for my gut to settle. 

“Yeah. It’s a stretch class,” I lie. It’s not a total lie. I do film on Sundays: Stretch class, heels, and pole fitness classes for the Fit n’ Fierce Fitness app. Pops thinks all I do is teach dance. But I’m also one of the most popular girls at the prestigious gentleman’s club, La Lueur. Another secret I’ve kept from him as a promise to Gran.

“Did you get the money?” I ask, and he gruffs out a yeah like usual. He’s also a man who refuses help, but every month I send him all the money from the classes I teach, and I live off the club. Montreal is an expensive city to live in, the club keeps me busy, and the staff have become like family. Tears burn down the back of my throat. Until the Wallace Brothers came in and tainted it all. Charming, handsome, rich, violent, and abusive.

“You should be keeping your money,” Pops argues, snapping me back to the conversation. “Start up your own thing, like you were talking about before. With the ballet and the tricks and such.”

“You know I can’t while I’m under contract with Fit n’ Fierce.”

He has no idea my dance shifted from gymnastics and ballet to pole dancing and stripping. He also has no clue I moved from riding horses to taming men.

Gran did, and the memories hit hard, embarrassment blooming in my gut at the stupid childhood dream that drove me far away from my family. The one I choked on before I could even get started. What would make this dream any different?

I sink deeper and deeper into these thoughts I can’t sort out.

“Have you told her yet, George?” I hear a muffled voice in the background, yanking me from the threat of having to revisit my past. 

“Hello?” My aunt’s voice sounds.

“Aunt Nina?” I ask, sitting up, and I’m overcome with dizziness. “Is everything okay? Tell me what?” 

Pops manages stables full of horses for the wealthy city kids to come to ride on the weekends. He’s in his seventies now, all on his own trying to make ends meet. Gran was always the one that kept the money together. We all knew the day would come when he’d have to give up the farm, and it went up for sale months ago, but my fire-spitting grandfather has been fighting it every step of the way.

“He’s fine, Cadence. Don’t you worry about George. He’s gotten an offer on the farm, but he’s being a stubborn old goat about it.” Nina’s voice dips into frustration, and Pops breathes a sigh somewhere in the distance. 

“I ain’t selling my farm to some suit.” Pops’ harsh judgment conjures a laugh from somewhere I’ve long forgotten. Suits. It’s what he calls men from the city. Men with money that don’t work with their hands as he does. The same kind of men that come to watch me dance with smug arrogance on their lips and folded fifties between their fingers.

“It’s the second offer you’ve turned down,” Aunt Nina grumbles, and I can see it: Pops’ wrinkles all toppling in on each other, twisted in defiance, and Aunt Nina rubbing the dark brown skin at her temples with her manicured fingernails. Aunt Nina married into my family, a city girl herself, who fell for a white farm boy. There were many hurdles to get over for her and Uncle Matt, one of them being my old-school grandfather. But by the time I was old enough to form working memories, Nina and George were best friends—bantering like they were the married ones.

“Don’t kill him, Aunt Nina,” I plead through a chuckle. 

“Lord help me, some days I don’t have the strength,” she grits through her teeth.

“Give me the phone back,” Pops says, and there’s more shuffling. “I’m fine, Cady-girl. You go get your dinner.” 

I want to ask about the sale. I want to ask how he’s doing. I want to go home. The admission is jarring, and I absently trail my fingers up my thigh where a long scar hides beneath my jeans. But home to Alberta isn’t an option right now. For more reasons than one. 

“Love you, Pops. Go easy on Aunt Nina.” 

“You tell her to go easy on me. Natterin’ at me all day long about don’t lift that, sit down, rest, eat a vegetable, should you put that much butter on your potato. It’s maddening.” 

“She loves you. We all do.” I yank closed the blinds to block out the sun in hopes it won’t be a thousand degrees in here tonight. I’d rather not run the monster of an air conditioner that sounds like a backfiring muffler.

Pops mumbles and grumbles, and I shake my head, slipping my feet into bright red pumps. Pops has a lot of emotions. They all get stuck in his heart. Uncle Matt says it’s why he had a heart attack three years ago. The man held in everything so tight after Gran died, he exploded. I should have gone home to take care of him. Instead, I took a second job and sent him the money—and pretended that was good enough. 

My stomach reminds me that butter on a potato sounds about perfect right now, and I remember passing a sign for a festival and barbecue in town tonight. I say goodbye to my family. The slight pang of guilt that follows me everywhere plucks somewhere deep inside, and on any other day, I could ignore it. Tonight, the pain of my past comes out for a stroll.

If Pops finds out how I lived my life, the danger I’ve gotten myself into, the next heart attack will kill him.

 

 

 

Chapter Two

JET

 

 

The August heat turns the air thick, and I swipe my finger in the collar of my button-down shirt to loosen it, even just a little. Like every Sunday, people dressed in their finest pack the pews. My mother sits in the front row, back stiff and hands folded in her lap. She’s latched on to every word of the sermon, but I’m itching to get out. Not only because of the heat. I’m desperate to find out if the buzz in my pocket was an email I’ve been waiting for.

The music begins, and everyone stands. The service is over, and I need to get out of this building before I suffocate. Mom has a whole thing she does where she mumbles a string of prayers, and I’ve learned if I rush her, she’ll start all over again. I jam my hands in my pockets and tip my chin to my chest, doing my best not to pass out. 

As we leave the pew and file down the center aisle, I tug at my shirt again. Sweat beads on my brow, and the sun streams through the glass behind Pastor Jerrison, now standing by the door, shaking everyone’s hand as they leave. I can’t take it any longer, and I sneak a glance at my email. It’s Jenna.

Congratulations, Mr. Stryker. Your offer has been accepted, and the possession date is set for a week tomorrow.

“Jethro,” Mom hisses and smacks my arm like she did when I was six, not twenty-six. “Stop your fidgeting. Put that damn thing away.”

A smile tugs at the corner of my mouth, and the untrimmed mustache tickles my lip. I tuck the phone in my pocket and smooth out my mustache and beard, making note to trim it. Mom loops her arm through mine and tsks me. This stern, low-brow disappointment is what Mom did to us as kids when she dragged us all here, whacking us if we made a single noise. To her, the church was about silent communion with the Lord, but even if the six of us were quiet, I’m not sure there was much communion going on.

But now it’s only me that comes. I’m not even sure why. I have no interest in maintaining the level of faith my parents raised us on. My older brother, Alexander, thinks it’s because I feel sorry for Mom. My younger brother Zeke says I’m a pussy. I suppose they’re both saying the same thing. I have a weakness for the weak, and Mom is the poster child for frail, helpless women. She only leaves the house on Sundays to go to church, then get groceries, then returns to her room to pine after my father, who’s never coming home. We make sure of it, but she’s not aware of the extent we go to. She would curse us all to hell if she knew.

If I didn’t come to church with her, I don’t know. Maybe she wouldn’t care. Maybe she’d keep coming on her own. But every Sunday, here I am. Everything about my existence in Raston is ingrained in me by this point. The robotic line-up every Sunday to shake the hand of the same guy who talked about the same stuff and responds in the same way. That’s life here. That’s my life.

The blip in my heartbeat reminds me that’s not all it is. I do steer myself off the beaten path. I just do it in secret. That side of me, not even my siblings see.

Like gambling my life savings by buying a fucking farm.

“Mary,” Mr. Jerrison says, wrapping one of Mom’s tiny, frail hands in both of his. “So good to see you.”

“God bless.” Mom smiles, which makes her appear more her age, bringing a youthful energy to her eyes. Here at church is one of the only places I see her smile. Maybe that’s why I come with her, to remember the days when she was a good mom. Hell, I’ll take remembering the days she was a functioning human.

Jerrison turns to me, his smile losing all its genuine glow. He juts out a stiff hand, and I take it.

“Jethro.” He nods and squeezes my hand tighter than necessary. 

Things have been a touch awkward every Sunday these past few months with these terse hellos and aggressive handshakes. It irks me he would challenge me in a place like this.

But I guess I can’t blame him.

I did fuck his wife.

Another one of my secret ways to inject some excitement into my life.

“Sir. Great service today. I could tell that part on forgiveness was right from the heart.” I pat my broad chest, and I’m well aware I’m a cocky bastard right now, but this passive-aggressive exchange injects me with a rare jolt of life. His ears redden before he moves on to the person behind me. 

Mom beams up at me, threading her arm through mine again as we descend the steps to start our walk to the store. She’s proud of me for paying attention to the service. She’s smiling at me because I complimented Jerrison on his sermon.

She has no clue it’s a jab I was taking at the hypocritical prick who separates from his wife but won’t give her a divorce—and then gets pissed enough to threaten me when she demands my body. 

He’d have never found out, but I fucked her on the hall table, and her hand was on her phone. She dialed her ex-husband by accident.

But she screamed out my name very much on purpose.

Sex was not the goal that day. I had made a casual stop by her place to drop off some ball gear. The kids were with their dad. Nancy was two glasses of wine deep. News of my brother’s secret kid with his high school girlfriend had sidelined me, and Xan was disappearing into the bottom of a pint glass. 

Mrs. Jerrison could tell I was wounded. I am a small-town guy with not many options, and I was very, very lonely. I’ve never met a woman here that held my attention, but they can grab it, at least for a while.

“Mrs. Jerrison,” I say as I pass her on the sidewalk and her pointed lips quirk up at the edge. She doesn’t respond. Instead, she returns her attention to the crowd of mothers talking on the sidewalk while their kids run around on the churchyard grass. Again, I don’t blame her. I’m half her age, and it would be a social disaster. But I guess it was easy to ignore that part when I’m also twice her size. That was the last time I got laid. Four months. That’s a long time.

“Are you taking your sister to the festival tonight?” Mom shatters the dirty reminiscing. But there’s no better way to throw cold water on a guy than by talking about his sister. 

I shift without issue from that inner space and into the one I spend most of my time in.

Service to my family.

 

 

I brace myself on the doorway, feeling better after a shower with a happy ending and a return to my regular clothes. Jeans and a black t-shirt with my work boots are what I live in. Unlike my sisters, who have closets bursting with color and fabric all over their bedroom floors. It makes Xan’s eye twitch. It confuses me. Why the hell would anyone want to complicate their lives with that many different shirts?

“Tabby, I swear I’ll leave without you,” I holler up the stairs. I hear her squeal from her room and then thunder down the hall. She hurries down the stairs in a frilly dress under a blue jean coat. A jean coat in August?

“I’m coming,” she shrieks, squeezing under my arm into the front porch. Wafts of thick perfume follow her, and I choke.

“God, did you bathe in it?” It’s thick enough I can taste it.

Tabby rolls her eyes at me, stepping into a pair of Del’s cowboy boots. “You sound like Xan.”

“Why aren’t you going with Pris and Del?” I ask, following her out the door to my truck, wondering why she would go with me when she has two big sisters. I lean across her and open the door. The passenger seat is piled with work stuff, papers, and a few empty bottles, and I don’t remember the last time someone’s been in my truck. Just me. Always just me.

“They went to the bar first.” She scrunches up her nose. Right. Tab’s only eighteen, one more year until she can drink in BC. I pause for a moment, stuttering at the realization that in no time at all, all my siblings are grown up.

Tab was supposed to graduate in June. But because her anxiety rendered her nonfunctional when her douchebag of an ex-boyfriend left her, she decided to drop a class and make it up in summer school. In three weeks, my baby sister will be done. In four months, she’ll be moving across the country to go to a school Xan and I can’t afford. Until this moment, standing like an ass staring at her curled purple hair and thick eyeliner under big glasses, I never really digested what that means. She’ll be leaving us. Other than Xan’s brief stint in college, we’ve always been together. The six of us.

“Jet.” Tabby takes the door and flicks my fingers from the frame. “You’re creeping me out right now.”

I snap out of it. “I just realized you’re like, officially an adult.”

She laughs as I jump in the truck and start it up.

“Hardly,” she says.

There’s a bang on the glass, and Tabby screams, and I grip the steering wheel hard enough the vinyl groans.

“Hey,” Zeke calls, yanking open the door.

As if it’s instinct, Tabby starts punching his chest. “Oh my God, you asshole. You scared the hell out of me!”

“Ow, okay! I’m sorry. I need a ride,” he says, shoving Tabby forward as he jams his body in the back seat.

“I thought you hated Q.” Tabby settles in her seat, and it’s like I’m sixteen all over again: a taxi for my siblings.

“First of all,” Zeke says, hanging over the seat and pointing at Tabby. “Don’t ever fucking call him that again. You’re not twelve.”

I chew on a smile, invisible in this conversation, as I am in most conversations between these two. Zeke hates country music, but all three of my sisters like this Quintin Thompson dude, so the sound of his voice is familiar in the Stryker house. Because when it comes to controlling the speakers, my sisters always win.

“Second of all, I’m going to ask someone out, and she’ll be there.” Zeke flops back into the seat, looking mighty proud of himself.

Tabby gasps as the buildings turn to trees zipping by the windows. “The girl you hooked up with?”

“No.” Zeke’s expression falls for only a moment, and I wonder who this mystery girl is. Xan saw her, told me her name was Nova, and she knocked Zeke down pretty hard. Fucking ghosted him. It’s good she did. He went through a short, nasty phase right after where he doubled down on his who-cares attitude, but the last few weeks, he’s been almost unrecognizable. He even put on a nice shirt.

“Jess Lorish.”

“Really?” Tabby wrinkles her nose. “Her?”

“Why do you say it like that?” I ask, turning into the packed parking lot behind the fairgrounds.

“She’s like, super sweet.” Tabby raises an eyebrow at me as if I should understand, and I do. Jess is the kind of girl you take to church, have tea with her parents, have picnics in the park, and wait until marriage to consummate. She was in Tab’s class, but I’ve met her enough to know my brother would eat her innocence alive.

“I can’t date sweet girls?” Zeke scrunches his face up like an idiot.

“When was the last time you dated?” I ask, slipping out of the truck, and he follows me. The festival’s sounds swirl around us as the sun lowers to touch the shadowed mountains surrounding Raston.

“Do you even know what dating is?” Tabby laughs when Zeke throws his arms out in a shrug. “You’re aware you don’t date with just your penis, right?”

Tabby points at him, and I laugh at the way Zeke recoils at the word penis.

“No.” Zeke covers his ears, and Tabby bounces around him, saying penis over and over until Zeke launches at her. He grabs her around the waist and lifts her feet from the ground. She screeches and smacks at him, but they’re both laughing, and when he puts her down, she hugs to his side, his arm slung over her shoulder. As the youngest, Zeke and Tabby share a bond similar to the one Xan and I have. However, Xan’s been pretty absent since Briggs came back to town with their daughter Millie. I get it, and I don’t want to be a selfish prick about it, but moments like these are where I realize I rely on him a lot to nudge me through this zombie existence.

I’m left behind, sauntering through the growing crowd, wondering why I even came here. Usually, Xan would be with me. We’d drink beer and dance with our sisters when they demanded it. Then we’d either try to pick up women we didn’t know or make it home before one of us did something stupid.

This time it’s me, wandering through crowds of people I don’t recognize in a town I’ve lived in my whole life, and I’m not feeling it at all. Every year for one weekend, our town gets overpopulated with visitors from all over. I swear the three-day economic boost is the only reason Raston still exists.

I hear a familiar war cry from behind me, and I glance over my shoulder the moment one of my sisters jumps on my back. She wraps her arms around my neck, and I grab her forearms to keep her from choking me. I can smell the alcohol on her through the thick perfume. Delilah is the smallest Stryker, but she has enough energy to exhaust anyone. A whirlwind of glitter and anger.

“Onward to the beer tent,” she points, and I refuse to move.

“I’m not a horse, Del.” I peel her arms off without much effort, and she jumps to the ground, shifting her curls from her face. Pris, our other sister, catches up, her lips synched like usual, but a slight upturn at one edge means she is also drunk. Pris doesn’t smile in public.

Del lasts about ten seconds before she spots people she knows and takes off to be her usual outgoing self. Pris and I grab beers from the fenced-in area for nineteen and over, and I scan the grounds. The stage is empty, and music plays from the giant speakers as the bands change. People crowd the dance floor, and I take a slow sip of my beer.

“Is Xan coming?” Pris asks, and I shrug.

“Louis is bringing Millie to watch the band. With Briggs to himself, I doubt he’ll show up.”

“Gross,” Pris says, wrinkling her nose, and we fall into silence. This is what Xan and I would be doing if he were here. It’s familiar, but also different. It’s comfortable, but the ever-hungry dissatisfaction gnaws at the pit of my stomach, making it impossible to focus.

I’m committed to spending the night standing in this exact spot pouting when I catch sight of a woman I’ve never seen before. All the energy inside me warps without warning. The motion tips me forward, and I have to lean on the fence to brace myself.

Her sinfully dark hair falls around her pale cheeks as she scans the gardens. She meets my gaze with eyes dark enough to be reflective, and it locks my limbs in place as I lift my beer to my lips. Her thumbs hook in the pockets of high-waisted jeans that hug the curve of her hips. Her legs are long and lean in sexy red high heels. My sisters told me once that high heels make legs seem longer and more toned, and I fucking get it now.

For a moment, I’m thrown by the visceral reaction to her. I don’t remember the last time a woman’s beauty has enraptured me with this fervor. It’s not even that she’s hot—because she is—it’s the way she carries her tiny frame, shoulders squared, eyebrows low, and her full pouty lips set into a distrusting scowl.

She looks like she’d rip my balls off if I tried to talk to her.

And I kind of want to take the risk.