Stormy Night Publications Publishers of BDSM and Kink Erotica
Chapter One
Shasta studied the extra-large dumpster. It was indistinct in the moonlight and her vivid imagination conjured up an image of a huge dragon. Grinning, she flicked on the headlamp affixed to her head. The band had been slipped on over a pink bandana that covered her hair. It was important to be dressed for the job at hand and dumpster diving was a messy job.
She was dressed in her normal attire for dumpster diving: overalls, lace-up boots, protective goggles on her forehead, ready to be slipped over her eyes, her mask around her neck to pull up over her nose and mouth before she climbed inside the big beast. She pulled her goggles down to cover her eyes and raised the mask before pulling on her work gloves and climbing up the sides of the dumpster.
Easily swinging her leg over the side, she turned to sit perched on the edge of the dumpster for a minute before dropping down inside. Two bags hung over her shoulders—one for glass and the other for whatever odds and ends she discovered.
Shasta loved this part, exploring through people’s discards to find the treasure buried within. She never knew what she might find; all sorts of goodies were waiting inside this so-called trash… goodies she would use to make beautiful things.
Shifting a large roll of dubious-smelling carpet to one side, she found a large piece of a tiled countertop.
“Eureka!” She grinned as she slipped the foot-wide piece into one of the bags. She continued digging through the refuse to see what other riches awaited her discovery.
Shasta was so involved in looking through the garbage, she didn’t notice anything until a large hand grabbed her by the back of her overalls and lifted her out of the dumpster.
“What the hell!” She kicked and swung her fists at the man dangling her above the ground.
“Settle down, little girl. I’m not going to hurt you.” The big man set her on her feet in front of him.
Shasta looked up into the square face of her attacker. She pulled back her steel-toed work boot and kicked him in the shin. “I am not a little girl!”
“Damn!” The big man stepped back and reached down to rub his shin as Shasta ran for the street.
“Come back here, you little hellion!”
She heard heavy footsteps on the ground behind her and ran even faster. Oh, god! He was going to catch her.
She pumped her short legs as fast as she could, but a hard arm wrapped around her from behind and she found herself flying through the air and then falling, cushioned on the rock-hard body of her assailant.
Stepping out of one of the apartments he was renovating, Gideon Trace froze as an intoxicating scent filled his lungs. He looked around to find the origin of the aroma teasing his nostrils.
He froze when he saw what he thought was a little girl climbing into the large demolition dumpster. His nose told him this had to be a woman, but she was as small as a child.
He didn’t feel a woman or a child had any business in a dumpster any time of day but especially not at eleven o’clock at night in this neighborhood.
So when he pulled her out, he couldn’t believe the little shit kicked him. Of course he gave chase; it still wasn’t safe for her to be in this neighborhood at this time of night. He had to fight down his wolf as he went after her. Despite her humanity and delicate size, his wolf smelled a potential mate.
She was as fast as a deer so he tackled her, wrapping an arm around her waist and flipping to his back to take the brunt of the fall. When they landed and a decidedly rounded ass began wriggling around over his dick, he realized he’d miscalculated. This woman wasn’t nearly as delicate as he’d thought.
This was no dainty flower, this was a five foot nothing curvy woman. A woman who in his opinion still had no business in this neighborhood. “Hold still, you little hellcat.”
His wolf raged. Claim… take… knot… mark…
Gideon took a deep breath and forced those primal instincts down. He’d spent the last two years since he’d become the alpha of his pack explaining to other males that times had changed. They couldn’t just mark and claim a woman without her consent.
His mother had been miserable with his father and the autocratic way he ruled her life. She’d been a fiercely independent woman before they’d met. His father had barely spoken to her before he’d claimed, knotted, and marked her.
Once claimed, she’d been relegated to the kitchen and the bedroom when his father had been in the mood to claim his property. Any backtalk had earned her a beating and sometimes he went after Gideon as well to ensure she fully understood the dangers of defying him. Maddox Trace had not been a nice man. He’d been an even meaner wolf and a tyrant of an alpha.
His mother had named him Gideon because she’d considered him her angel and was determined he be nothing like his brute of a father.
The entire pack had been relieved when a new alpha, Jackson Harris, had come into their territory and taken over after battling Maddox and banishing him from the state. Jackson had allowed Gideon and his mother to stay with the pack for their own protection. Gideon had been ten at the time and had seen firsthand the differences between the way the two men governed. Jackson married Gideon’s mother a year later and had raised him as his own.
Gideon had become the alpha last year when his stepfather retired and said he wanted to grow old with his wife without the worry of the pack. He was always available as a pack elder and ready to give advice to the younger wolves. He agreed with Gideon that the pack needed to let go of their old ways.
They needed to bring themselves into the twenty-first century or they would end up tied to mates that would never fully accept them.
His thoughts were brought back to the wriggling dervish lying on top of him and grinding her sweet little ass into his cock.
“Settle down, young lady.”
“I will not!” she yelled, twisting and jerking in his hold until he turned her over on his chest and delivered a hard swat to the baggy seat of her overalls. Then he reached up and pulled the headlamp off of her head so the light was no longer blinding him.
“How dare you?” she exclaimed as she shifted in an effort to bring her knee up into his balls. Since this was not Gideon’s first rodeo, he easily avoided her effort to emasculate him. He grabbed her knee, pulling it across his hip, causing her to straddle the target area.
“I’ll dare a lot more if you don’t start behaving yourself, little girl.” Gideon delivered another series of sharp swats to her bottom before sitting up and holding her tight against him.
Her eyes widened when she obviously noticed his wayward cock pressing against her groin and she gasped. “Pervert!”
“It’s an instinctual reaction any man would have when a curvy ass grinds against his cock… I mean no harm, little one.”
She tried to twist away from him but he held her fast. “I am not a child! Let me go!”
Gideon grinned. “Not a child, but you are a little bit of a thing. Are you ready to behave yourself so we can talk?”
Her response was to spit at him so he got to his feet, still holding her wrapped around him like a monkey. He held her completely immobilized as he carried her through the apartment complex to the apartment one of his pack members was renovating. Since he was the chief of the police in their town and the pack alpha, he’d told Rand he would regularly patrol the complex until Rand completed the renovations.
Gideon sat his furious package down on a stool in Rand’s kitchen. He still couldn’t tell what she looked like because goggles covered her eyes and a mask covered the lower half of her face. He’d pulled the bandana off when he’d jerked the headlamp off so he could see a mop of short red curls in delightful disarray.
She yanked the goggles from her head to glare at him with green eyes that were spitting fire. When she pulled the mask down he could see she had a pert nose covered in a smattering of freckles and a stubborn chin. “You spanked me!” Her little body was fairly shaking in righteous indignation.
“I gave you a few piddling swats, which you deserved,” he told her and held up a finger when she opened her mouth to yell at him. “Careful, little girl, or I’ll finish the job and do it up right.”
Her mouth shut with a snap and her eyes sprang wide as she stared at him in shock, and unless he was mistaken a tiny bit of curiosity.
She stared at him for a full minute before breaking the growing silence. “You can’t go around threatening to spank people.”
He grinned. “I didn’t threaten to spank people, I threatened to spank you. I would still argue that you need it.”
Her mouth popped open like a fish gasping for air and then she gave a hissing sound as she let it out with a whoosh.
Both the man and the wolf inside him found the woman adorable. It was all Gideon could do to hold his wolf in check.
“Now, little girl. How about you tell me your name and why you were digging through garbage at eleven o’clock at night?”
Shasta frowned at the infuriating man. “Again, I am not a little girl, I regularly dumpster dive to collect materials for my work.” She studiously avoided the man’s piercing blue eyes and tried to ignore the way his gravelly voice calling her little girl sent a zing through her lady bits.
I am not aroused by this Neanderthal or the way he smacked my ass. She repeated the mantra over and over in her head hoping it would make it true. The way her clit was throbbing with slick heat dashed her chances of ignoring the truth. She was obviously attracted to cretins.
She shivered as she imagined him making good on his threat and turning her over his knee to smack her bare…
“If you don’t want me to call you little girl, how about giving me your name?” The deep voice slid over her senses like an invisible caress, pulling her away from her naughty musings.
“I… um… my name is Shasta… Shasta D. Ludlow.” She straightened her overalls and shot him a prim look that she hoped looked completely disinterested.
“Shasta D.? Interesting name you have, little… I mean Miss Shasta, now tell me about this work you have that requires climbing into dumpsters in bad areas in the middle of the night.” The man’s piercing stare made her squirm in her seat.
Sheesh, why did he make her feel like she’d been naughty? She had every right to dumpster dive… well, technically she didn’t have permission but still!
“I use them to make mosaics and create things to sell. My products are currently on sale in Rosie’s Antiques and Uniques. I’m hoping to expand to some other shops once I have more inventory. Shasta’s one of a kind gifts and collectibles.” Shasta smiled; she was very proud of the way she’d been able to use her art degree to make a living. It wasn’t a huge living at the moment but her stuff was starting to sell more quickly than she could make it.
“Interesting, now explain the part that necessitates being in bad neighborhoods in the middle of the night.” That same stare pinned her in place as one blond eyebrow lifted over his left eye.
“What are you, a cop?”
“Actually, I am. A friend is renovating these apartments and I agreed to patrol when I can while he’s at work. My name is Gideon Trace, by the way.”
“Where are you a cop?” She was doing her best to brazen it out but she recognized a losing battle when she saw one.
“I am an officer with the City of Wolf Creek.” Gideon winked at her as she began to lose her bluster.
Wolf Creek was a very nice suburb located on the edge of Dallas, Arlington, and Ft. Worth. It was strategically located to be close to all three major cities in the Metroplex. She lived just inside the Arlington city limits.
Shasta couldn’t believe she’d managed to dive into a dumpster being guarded by an off-duty cop. There was no way she would be able to convince him it was her right to dive into dumpsters once the trash was in them.
Technically, everything in it was still his friend’s property until the city picked it up and she knew it.
She was busted and would probably be banned from the best dumpster find she’d had in ages. She sighed and slumped against the counter behind her.
Gideon tweaked the end of her nose. “Why so glum?”
“There’s a lot of good stuff in your friend’s dumpster. I hate the idea of losing out on the possibilities,” Shasta told him honestly.
“You don’t have to lose any possibilities, little girl.” The smile he sent her went straight to her clit and she decided to ignore the little girl reference.
“Really?” She sat up and shot him a hopeful smile.
“Really, my only request is that you only come when I am here and we do it during the day,” Gideon told her.
“The city comes in the morning! Please, can I finish tonight? I promise next time I’ll come during the day.” She leaned forward eagerly on her stool.
“You really saw something good in there?”
“I saw a lot of something goods!” Shasta exclaimed.
“Well, it sounds like we better get busy. Come on, my little dumpster diva.” He led her out the door and back to the dumpster that held her current dreams and aspirations. She decided she even liked the new title.
She was the dumpster diva!
Gideon helped her climb back in and followed to help her go through the trash. She squealed with delight when she found a broken Tiffany lamp, quickly filling her glass bag with the different shards.
She put the metal pieces from the lamp in her other bag and went back to scavenging. By the time they’d picked through the dumpster her bags were both overflowing and heavy.
Gideon took both of them from her when they got out of the dumpster and shushed her protests. “I am being a gentleman and you will let me be one.”
Shasta felt herself flush. “Yes, sir.”
He winked at her. “An obedient diva; careful, little girl, you’ll make me blush.”
She snorted in response but then had to take a deep breath to quell her raging hormones as she led him to her trusty ’89 station wagon. This man was so hot her panties were in serious danger of bursting into flames.
She opened the back so he could put the bags inside.
“Well, my little dumpster diva, do you know me well enough to go on a date with me Saturday?”
Her heart nearly pounded out of her chest; this magnificent man was asking her out! Licking suddenly dry lips, she looked up at him from beneath her lashes. “What do you propose?”
“Well, I was just thinking how important it is to know your quarry.” Gideon placed a hand on the hood of the car, making her feel caged but protected at the same time.
“Quarry? Are you hunting me?” She felt another blush building, which she absolutely hated when she was trying for nonchalance.
“I always think it best to spell out my intentions. You interest me, Shasta D. Ludlow… you interest me a lot.”
Shasta found she didn’t mind that at all and the idea of this man hunting her caused a flood of wet heat to fill her panties.
“Is my interest all right with you? I feel like it probably is, but I’d like to hear you say it.” He suddenly seemed even closer.
“It’s fine with me.” Her voice sounded hoarse to her ears and she felt her face heat even more. “So what did you have in mind for Saturday?”
“I thought I’d take my little dumpster diva to the city dump.”
Hell’s bells, this cretin might just have discovered the way into her heart and her panties!