Big Bad Bite
Authors: Jessie Lane
Tags: #werewolf romance, #shifters romance, #shifters, #paranormal romance, #demons, #adult paranormal romance, #werewolves, #shapeshifters, #urban fantasy
Big Bad Bite
Jessie Lane
Dedication
From
Crystal
: To my grumpy grizzly.
Your love, support, donation to our kids DNA, and general Alpha
overbearing you-will-get-this-shit-done attitude is the thing that
keeps me getting up every day with a full heart, and going to bed
knowing that I am absolutely blessed.
Thank you my love.
From
Melissa:
To my other half, my
hubby. Your humor in everything you see, your impeccable timing
with those stop-what-you’re-doing one-liners that keep me laughing
all day long. Here’s to you for always telling me that I can do
whatever I want and not let anyone or anything stop me.
“
I shall call him Squishy, and he shall be
mine. And he shall be my Squishy.”
Dory from Finding Nemo
.
Thanks babe! Love You!
Acknowledgements
We are so blessed to be surrounded by so many
who wish to see us, and this book, succeed. So here’s a shout out
to just a few of those individuals, to let you know how much we
appreciate your love, help, and support.
To our editor, Jackie McPherson, you will
always be The Queen of Awesome to us! We’re absolutely sure that
one day you’ll be one of the most famous editors on the planet.
Thank you for your hard work, dedication, and extreme patience for
our goofiness.
To the ever-cool Crystal at Reading Between
the Wines, you rock sister!
(No really you do!)
Your input
was a lifesaver. To the rest of our beta readers, our Moms (
Hi
Momma!
), Samantha, and Fiona…lots of love ladies! Thank you for
tagging along with us on this occasionally stressful, but
ultimately very cool ride in life.
To the reviewers we respect, such as Laura at
Little Read Riding Hood and many others, who have spread the word
in their blogs about the good vibes they have about our books, we
adore you! Seriously, reviewers make the world go round.
Lastly, to our readers, thank you, thank you,
thank you for supporting us! You are amazing. We wouldn’t be here
without you.
Copyright © 2013 by Jessie Lane
All rights reserved. No part of this
publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any
form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system,
without the prior written permission of Jessie Lane, except as
permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976.
Published by Jessie Lane
Cover Art by Jessie Lane
Edited by Jackie McPherson and Crystal
Folk
ISBN: 9781301993611
Big Bad Bite
is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental.
Big Bad Bite
Big Bad Bite Series, Book 1
Jessie Lane
Published by Jessie Lane at Smashwords
Copyright © 2013 by Jessie Lane
Edited by Jackie McPherson and Crystal
Folk
Cover Art by Jessie Lane
ISBN: 9781301993611
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thank you for not sharing your copy of this book. This purchase
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Table of Contents
Big Bad Bite
Who said the wolf was what you had to worry
about.
Welcome to the real world.
Sweaty gym socks. That’s what the inside of the Wilmington Police
Department’s SWAT van smelled like. Which in a word was… nasty.
Tamping down on the overwhelming urge to reach over and grab the
offending socks so that she could shove them down the owner’s mouth
before giving him a stern warning to wash them, was downright hard.
But somehow, Jenna O’Conner managed to keep herself in check.
Because overpowering a two hundred plus gym jock when you were a
woman of only five feet four inches who looked as if you might
weigh a hundred and thirty pounds soaking wet, would be hard to
explain. So sometimes it seriously sucked to be her.
Sitting on the steel bench seats running the
length of the black van with bulletproof dark tinted windows, she
did her best to ignore the eyes that were staring at her. Being the
new girl on a testosterone overloaded team was more than awkward.
It was a pain in the ass, but she couldn’t complain because it came
with her dream job. Sandwiched in between two guys on her left,
another guy on her right, and four sitting across from her made it
feel as if she was drowning in caveman stupidity.
Jenna could deal with their basic Neanderthal
urges of women being inferior, but she utterly hated being stared
at. It’s annoying, and not to mention rude. It made her hand down
right twitchy to punch someone. Didn’t their moms teach them some
manners? She could keep calm though. They were just curious if the
new girl on the force could hang with the big bad asses they all
thought they were. Little did they know that this little woman
could kick every single one of their mammoth muscled butts. That
was part of her little secret though.
Being a woman who is also a dedicated cop was
sometimes hard. People tended to assume that you’re going to be the
weak link in the chain. Not strong enough. Not fast enough. Too
compassionate. None of that applied to Jenna. But these guys didn’t
know that yet. Perhaps she couldn’t show them that she was capable
of bench pressing a hell of a lot more than all of them, combined,
but she had no qualms about using some of her abilities to outrun
them if the need arose. And she sure as hell wasn’t known back in
her old department for compassion. Heck, if she hadn’t been related
to the Police Chief back home, then Jenna would have been arrested
or fired for her behavior against a couple of drunk abusive
backwoods bums.
None of that here though. She had to keep her
temper in check. Keep her secrets safe. Not to mention that she was
not going to flush four years of a Criminal Justice Bachelor’s
degree, six months at the Police Academy, five years of
busting-her-ass on-the-job experience and her life’s dream down the
toilet. She had to prove to her family that she could live out from
underneath their thumb without fucking it all up.
All of that may not seem like much of an
accomplishment to the other guys sitting in this van with her, but
that was because they didn’t know her circumstances. Not that she
would share those circumstances with them anyways. When they
eventually found out how young Jenna was, they would inevitably
shoot her dubious looks of disbelief. More than likely they would
begin to doubt that someone so young would be cut out for the
job.
Her over protective family had home schooled
her in their exuberant efforts to keep her hidden, and safe. So
sitting at home with nothing to do but study with her mom, she
managed to obtain her high school diploma at the tender age of
fifteen. After graduating, Jenna enrolled in an online University
where she finished a four year degree in three, since her mother
obviously didn’t trust Jenna to be out of her sight without doing
something monumentally stupid to get herself ousted for what she
was. So at the age of eighteen, she had a high school diploma and a
Bachelor’s degree.
When Jenna then told her mom that she wanted
to be a cop like Uncle Rick, her mother had no problem shipping her
off to the academy, because that didn’t mean Jenna was out of her
family’s sight for six whole months. No, her Uncle Rick had a
friend at the academy that knew just enough to keep an eye on her,
but not enough that he would be a danger to her. So now at
twenty-three, almost twenty-four, Jenna was the youngest member of
this SWAT team with a whole lot of job experience, but almost no
life experience.
Leaving the small town of River Bend for the
bigger city of Wilmington, North Carolina had always been a goal of
hers. It only took five years to prove to her Uncle Rick that she
could handle what he considered to be big city problems, without
outing herself to the populace. When his friend, who happened to be
the Captain of one of the Wilmington precincts, told him that he
was interviewing for a new SWAT team officer Uncle Rick threw her
name in.
A month after a stringent application process
and many, many tests, here she was sitting in the back of this van
in black BDU’s with a bullet proof vest on. She had a standard
issue duty weapon strapped to her waist, an assault rifle in her
hands and a solid fifty pounds of equipment strapped to her body.
Just like the nine other officers in the vehicle. Black hair that
fell just past the bottom of her shoulder blades was secured in a
tight bun at the base of her neck, and the lower part of her face
was covered with a black mask that only left her eyes visible. A
helmet strapped onto the top of her head completed her uniform, she
was clearly ready for action.
Heat was pumping along with excitement at the
thought of going out on a suspect retrieval mission the first day
on the new job. This was the kind of shit Jenna lived for. Most
women wanted to bask in the luxuries of shopping, high heeled
shoes, and days at the spa. Definitely not her. Sure, she had sexy
clothes and shoes in her closet, but most of it was bought for
undercover work. Instead of the usual womanly highs, Jenna got off
on the chase of a suspect. It was the best high of all. If she got
to tackle the suspect to the ground, and accidentally elbow them in
the head, well that was just a bonus.
Silently running through the particulars of
the suspect they were going after kept her occupied so that she
didn’t get the urge to look any of the guys in the eyes. It wasn’t
that she was afraid of any of them. Jenna could kick their ever
lovin’ asses from here to China, but she didn’t want to intimidate
any of them either. Yet. Most men weren’t used to having a woman
stare them down. It unnerved them. Not to mention gave them a bum
rap with other guys. So she just stared off into space, in no
direction in particular, while mentally going over the facts.
Suspect was a white male in his early
thirties. Approximately five feet eleven, so he was seven inches
taller than her. Weighed approximately one hundred and ninety
pounds, sixty pounds more than her but still not a problem. Blond
hair, blue eyes. Wanted for the murder of a woman whose husband was
still listed as missing. Suspect is supposed to be apprehended
alive to be interrogated for information regarding the missing
husband.
“Hey O’Conner.You nervous yet? Should we drop
you off somewhere so you don’t piss your pretty little pink
panties?”
Moron
. Note to self – trip jackass into a
wall.
Oops. Did my foot get in your way?
Turning her head to look the idiot straight
in the eyes she sneered, “I’m good Dubinski. But maybe we should
stop at the store and buy you some big boy diapers. So that when
you scare yourself shitless, it will be an easier mess to clean
up.” The men surrounding them snickered as Dubinski gave her a
grudgingly respectful look.