Nightfall

Joey
W. Hill
&
Desiree
Holt

Ranch owner Quinn Pedraza has to
find someone to run the saloon he won in a bet, but more than that, he needs a
woman who can handle his alpha personality…and closet submissive sexual
cravings. When vampire Selene Torres arrives on the scene, he gets everything
he wants—and learns what he really needs.

Inside Scoop:
Quinn’s BDSM
journey is not for the faint of heart and includes extreme sexual situations
and dubious consent, as well as male/male scenes.

A Romantica®
paranormal erotic romance
from
Ellora’s Cave

Quinn Pedraza stared at the stack of bills and swore
colorfully to himself. He didn’t need this aggravation. The After Hours Saloon
had become nothing but a pain in the ass to him. Vendors wanted payment right
now and, even though it was crowded every night, the place wasn’t generating
the cash he’d hoped.

What did you expect out of a place you won in a poker
game?
He’d thought it would give him an extra source of income. What a
laugh that was.

The office, its tiny space filled with the desk, a filing
cabinet and two chairs, was a symptom of everything that was wrong. The floor
and furniture were scarred and scuffed, paint was peeling on the walls and it
seemed every day he accumulated more trash. He’d even stopped changing from his
work clothes before heading out here. What difference did it make if the smell
of horses and cattle and everything else still clung to him? The saloon wasn’t
much better.

The inside of the building needed work and the bar setup
needed a good overhaul, but with the end of summer and work ramping up at the
ranch he didn’t have any time to get to it. He’d shut the damn place down,
except in Nightfall there wasn’t another spot for people to hang out. That
included men and women, ranchers and hands, good people and bums. If he shut
down, they’d probably lynch him.

On the plus side, bad as things were going, he was lucky
there was no competitor within miles of the place. But working the ranch all
day then spending hours here at night was draining him, and not just
financially. He’d spent too many years on the rodeo circuit, living out of
trailers and tents, crowded into places with mobs of people. Privacy was important
to him now. So why did he hang onto this place where he was thrust in the
middle of people every night?

His Comanche grandfather, his mother’s father, would have
berated him for even having a place that sold alcohol. Which was ironic,
because Quinn had kept the place thanks to the advice of another Comanche—Sam
Red Elk.

The Indian who looked as if he was a baked part of the Texas
landscape had been in and out of Quinn’s life since his teens, the kind of
steady mentor his volatile father never had been. He had an odd way of showing
up at unexpected times, giving Quinn counsel that, while sometimes cryptic,
usually steered him onto the right path.

The night Quinn had won the saloon, Sam had pulled one of
his unexpected appearances at the game. He hadn’t wanted to play. Instead he
propped himself in a chair in the corner, whittling on a stick. Didn’t say a
word until Quinn won the saloon. Then Sam looked up, dark eyes meeting Quinn’s.
He nodded and rose, leaving the game as if his task was done. When Quinn caught
up to him in the parking lot, he mused aloud about selling it, but the Indian
shook his head.

“You’ll want to keep this, Quinn. It will bring something
good into your life.”

Quinn knew Sam was considered a shaman among his own people.
He himself had seen enough in Sam’s company to accept it without a doubt.
Though when it came to the saloon, he was starting to wonder if the man had
been in a snake-bite delirium. Not that he’d ever say that where Sam could hear
him. The shaman might be able to turn him into a coyote or something. Though if
he had to deal with this mess much longer, that might start to look pretty
appealing.

Leaning back in his chair, his booted feet up on the scarred
old desk, Quinn closed his eyes and rubbed his temples, trying to ease the
headache that wouldn’t quit. Beyond the closed door he could hear the usual
noises of a rowdy crowd, warming up as the evening wore on. He needed to check
on Artie. Make sure he was taking care of business out there.

He’d thought hiring a manager and a couple cute local girls
to help him bartend and bus tables would keep him from putting in all these
hours at the saloon at night. But he’d quickly found out he couldn’t afford a
good bar manager, not when the bigger cities had more to offer one. Hiring Artie
Sampson had truly been a last resort. The man had been fired from every job
he’d ever had, but Quinn was desperate and told himself he was giving the man a
second chance. Apparently, some people didn’t deserve second chances. The girls
seemed too busy flirting most of the time to be any help at all.

A loud crash jerked him out of the chair. Rolling up his
sleeves, he yanked open the office door and stomped out to the saloon, his
boots striking the boards loud enough they should have been heard over the noise.
The scene he walked into made him want to shoot someone. Or himself.

The blast of the old-fashioned jukebox overrode the hooting
cheers of the beer-guzzling crowd, egging on the two men pummeling each other
in the middle of the room. As Quinn watched, they rammed into a table,
overturning it and shattering the wealth of uncollected empty glasses it had
been holding. A chair splintered under the men’s weight as they rolled over it.

Fucking shit.
Drawing a breath, Quinn prepared to
wade in and yank the two drunks apart by the front of their shirts. But then
she
beat him to it.

He was sure no one like her had ever walked into After
Hours, or any other local bar or saloon he’d experienced. She couldn’t have
been more than five feet tall, but the high heels of the fancy dress boots she
wore beneath a pair of snug jeans gave her at least another four inches. Hair
like spun gold fell in waves to her shoulders, shimmering as she moved. A thin
blue short-sleeved top with a light spray of sparkles across a New Orleans bar
logo hugged breasts that would be a nice handful, and Quinn had large hands. A
silver pendant that looked like a tiny dagger through a heart pointed right
down at the tempting hint of cleavage, a warning and invitation together.

When he pushed himself past the usual focal points to get to
her face, he found features like blown glass, perfect and delicate. At first
glance, he thought she wasn’t much older than the pair of twenty-one-year-old
girls he’d hired for low wages to pour drinks. But a second look said this was
a fully mature, sexy woman. Ethereal yet earthy. Her eyes matched the blue of
her shirt, the smoky color of an early dawn sky.

When she stepped between the two men without hesitation, he
bit back an oath. He was ten paces away, too far to keep her from getting
mashed like Spam between two slapped-together pieces of Merita.

Instead, one slim hand landed on the barrel chest of Howie
Gold, a regular, the other on the arm of a drugstore cowboy who’d probably said
something stupid to set off Howie. They both had clenched fists and
alcohol-induced stupid written all over their faces, but then she leveled that
blue gaze on them. “You’re interfering with my getting a drink. And that pisses
me off.”

She didn’t raise her voice, but she didn’t need to do so.
The impact of her expression turned them into deer frozen in the headlights,
waiting for a truck to hit. Those blue eyes held something… Well, he knew how
crazy it sounded, given he could have picked her up under one arm, but the word
that came to mind was
dangerous
.

Mesmerizing
was a close second, and he meant it
literally. Something about her quieted the crowd and held both men in place,
those fists loosening into uncertain curls.

In contrast, that sense of danger made Quinn want to keep coming
toward her. His cock had hardened, pressing against the denim of his fly and
demanding release. No, demanding to be plunged into the tight wetness of her
body.

There was no way she could sense his reaction. A handful of
occupied tables were between him and her, plus a bunch of people on their feet
to corral the fight. He was just one in the crowd. Yet when his cock stiffened,
her gaze flicked away from the two men and lasered right to him.

He had a voracious sexual appetite and liked a dozen
different kinds of kink. All the women he’d chosen in the past fifteen
years—and the rodeo circuit had provided a lot of those—had seemed to enjoy sex
with him. He tried to be a generous lover and, without ego, he knew he had the
kind of alpha male personality women liked, strong and demanding in the right
ways. Their willing compliance should have been enough for him.

Yet sometimes, lying awake in the hours before dawn, a
sleeping woman next to him, he wondered if they were too obedient. Too
acquiescing. And damn it all, that didn’t make any sense. It wasn’t as if they
just lay there and waited for him to give them orders. Most of those
relationships had had some substance to them, such that a couple became more
than just casual sex. Annie had been the last of those, some time ago.

Since then, he’d had the occasional casual fuck, but it was
halfhearted. He’d told himself it was because of how hard he was working, but
he knew that was a lie. Every relationship had lacked some intangible thing he
couldn’t put his finger on.

Something that he had the oddest feeling had just put its
finger on
him
.

In her eyes, he saw a deep, reciprocal interest. Deep as in
dark and mysterious, a cavern that held unknown hazards. But almost as soon as
he registered it, her attention went back to the two would-be combatants. “You
can take this outside,” she said. “Beat the shit out of each other in the
parking lot. I don’t care. It’s not happening in here. But whether you do that
or you stay inside and behave, you’ll go give the bartender an extra twenty for
the glasses you broke. That’s only fair, right?”

She wasn’t patronizing or sarcastic, which might set them
off again. If anything, her no-nonsense tone reminded Quinn of the way his own
mother used to handle problems between him and his brothers. She had a quiet
firmness that convinced them of two things—she loved them, and she would beat
the hide off them without remorse when they deserved it. Even when they reached
the ages that they towered over her, they respected her the same way. She also
stood between them and their loud, domineering father, the only one he seemed
to listen to.

This woman gave Howie’s chest a light tap, her fingers
tightening on the drugstore cowboy’s arm. “I’m not in the habit of repeating
myself, boys. Do we have an understanding?”

“Yes ma’am,” Howie mumbled as the other man dragged his hat
off his head.

“Good.” She gave them a tight smile and glanced over her
shoulder at Maria, the goggle-eyed waitress and barmaid on shift tonight.
“Charge my tab for one of those pizzas with all the fixings and bring half to
each of them with a pitcher of ice water. That’ll soak up some of the alcohol
interfering with their better judgment.”

Releasing them, she stepped back. With only a brief shift in
expression, she made it clear they were dismissed to do her bidding. Quinn
watched in amused disbelief as the stubborn cowhand and dumbass kid both moved
to the bar, reaching for their wallets.

Then he had bigger concerns. As the crowd started to wander
back to their tables and own conversations again, her gaze came right back to
him.

He knew he had features that most women found pleasing—a
rugged physique, thick brown hair and brown eyes. One woman had told him when
he looked her way it was like falling into a vat of melting chocolate. However,
this woman considered him from head to toe as if she was watching molasses
meander down his naked body. It was the first time a woman had looked at him
like he was something she was literally considering eating.

That disturbing thought should have given him pause, but his
dick was doing the compass pointing as he drew closer. Since he’d been getting
worried about its lack of interest in anything lately, he was kind of glad for
the proof otherwise. But now it was time he took hold of himself. Mentally,
that is. This was
his
bar and she’d just handled something that was his
job to do. Or his worthless, nowhere-to-be-seen bar manager.

“Thanks, I could have taken care of that. You shouldn’t get
in between two cowboys in a tussle.”

She shifted to one hip. The men at the table behind her
glazed, suggesting they had an enviable view of her ass working that denim.
“You’re such a little thing,” Quinn added, clearing his throat. “You could have
been hurt.”

“I’m in more danger from alcohol poisoning from the drinks
your poorly trained bartender is over pouring. Or the old cooking grease in
your food.”

She had the voice of a black-and-white movie starlet, the
words mulled on her tongue like they tasted sweet. She’d taste sweet, for sure.
Thank God he’d pulled his shirt out of his jeans while doing paperwork, but as
she criticized his bar, he had to resist the urge to tuck it in, try to look
more professional.
Yeah, that adolescent hard-on I’m sporting would be real
professional.
Best to leave the shirt out.

What the hell? He’d worked a full day and didn’t have time
for this shit. “Thanks for the customer feedback,” he said coolly. “We’ll cover
the pizza. Tell Maria the house owes you a free drink. Watered down so you can
handle it.”

She arched a brow, blue eyes sparking. Taking a side step,
she picked up a full shot of whiskey off one of the tables. The patron sitting
there, a gruff ranch hand from the Bar Q, began to protest, but she merely laid
a hand on his lean shoulder, stilling his protest as she tossed it back in one
swallow. No cough, no eye watering.

When she put the glass down with a decided thunk, a wave of
whistles and catcalls came from the other three men at the table and those
around them, but her face remained impassive. She never took her eyes off Quinn.

“Put that one on my tab,” she said.

As the men guffawed, Quinn shot them a quelling look. By the
time he brought his gaze back to her, she’d stepped in front of him, close
enough their conversation was just between them.

“Your biggest problem is your bar manager is a drunk,” she
continued as if the interruption hadn’t happened. “I can smell the alcohol
coming out of his pores from across the room, and he eyes the bar like a kid
who can’t wait for the candy store to close so he can take his fill. He’s also
not ringing up a good percentage of your sales, so he’s stealing from you,
during and after hours.”