Tempting Bounty (Inter-Galactic Bounty Hunter Series Book 2)

Tempting Bounty

Book 2 Inter-Galactic Bounty Hunter Series

By

KD Jones

© Copyright November 2014 Publishing

All cover art and logo © Copyright November 2014 by Publishing

Artwork by KD Jones

All rights reserved:

This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission. All characters, places, and events in this book are fictitious or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, actual events, locale, or organizations are strictly coincidental.

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Blurb

Warning: For Mature Adult Audiences. Contains language and actions some may deem offensive.  M/F

Lexi Tanner wants to kill her ex-husband. Just when she was making strides with her new business on the Bazin planet, the jerk shows up and brings trouble to her doorstep. It was trouble in the form of a tall, sexy bounty hunter with a set of horns begging to be licked.

Vic loves his life. What could be better than co-owning the Inter Galactic Bounty Hunter business with his cousin? Only one thing was screwing it up for him — the fugitive he is after who takes him on a wild chase all over the damn Galaxy. When he finally catches up to the bond jumper, the male’s gorgeous ex-wife throws him a curveball.

The moment he set his eyes on the blonde bombshell he knew she would be nothing but trouble. He needs to keep his wits about him and get the job done. However, Vic isn’t the only one hunting Lexi’s ex-husband. If he can keep his hands off the female he might survive this hunt, but Lexi is proving to be one tempting bounty.

Prologue

“I don’t care what you have to do, find the man and kill him!”

Marcus Roland, businessman and drug dealer, slammed the phone down.

“Marcus, stay calm. The men are doing their best to hunt Stratford down. He is one wily human.” Another man sitting casually in a leather chair across from Marcus’s desk tried to ease the tension in the room.

“Leland, I am furious. How does this guy just disappear? Even the bond company has had no luck finding him. Who was assigned to follow Stratford?”

“Reginald was assigned to him, but it wasn’t his fault. Go easy on him,” Leland told him.

“Where is he?”

“He’s waiting outside.”

“Send him in now!”

“Yes, sir.” Leland got up and went to the door. He opened it and left the room.  A few minutes later he returned and a balding man with frightened eyes followed him.

“Reginald, how did Stratford elude you?” Marcus demanded.

“Sir, I had been watching his apartment. There had been no activity in twenty-four hours. I answered my phone and was distracted for just a few minutes. When I hung up, I continued to watch the apartment until my replacement came. It was then that I realized that things were too quiet. I checked out the apartment and found that Stratford had gotten out without anyone noticing.”

“What was this important phone call you received that kept you from performing your duties?”

“My wife was complaining that I spend too much time at work. I was letting her know that I would be off work soon. I apologize.”

Marcus was rubbing his chin with his hand. “Well, Reginald, your wife won’t be complaining about your spending too much time at work anymore.”

Reginald’s eyebrows rose. “Does this mean I’m fired?”

“No... it means you are dead.” Marcus raised his arm, his hand firmly gripping a gun, and shot Reginald in the forehead. The man fell backward onto the floor. Marcus put his gun away. “Get this piece of shit out of my office and find me Stratford!”

“Yes, sir.”

Chapter 1

“Just sign here, Mrs. Stratford.” The bond writer pointed to a place on the bail bond contract. The woman signing had her blonde hair pulled up and sunglasses on. She was chewing gum loudly.

“Is that it?” The woman asked.

The bond writer nodded her head and motioned for the guards to release the man standing behind them. “Mr. Stratford, let me remind you that you are restricted from leaving Fin-Dieskau until your hearing comes up. Mrs. Stratford, if your ex-husband fails to show, you will be held financially liable. Do you understand?”

The blonde bobbed her head and blew a huge bubble. “Sure, no problem.”

The bond writer stood up and began to walk away. She stopped for a moment and looked back. The blonde was kissing Stratford heavily and allowing the man to fondle her breasts in public. She turned away and left the detaining center. Some people had no sense of decency.

He was just another criminal free on bond.

*****

Two weeks later

Vic threw his fist through the hotel window, causing the glass to shatter into tiny pieces. “Damn human!”

“Easy, boss man, we’ll find him,” Isaac told him from a safe distance.

“We’re going to have to pay for that window,” Blade whispered next to Isaac.

“Shh... never draw a Decaros’s attention when he is in a rage,” Isaac warned the other man.

“He’s always in a rage. It’s not just because he’s a Decaros. It’s mostly because he’s an asshole.”

Vic snorted as he listened to his fellow bounty hunters being idiots, but their levity did help him calm down. He reached up to feel his horns, which had straightened out during his partial rage.  As a full Decaros, his horns came out whenever he felt a very strong emotional response to something. Becoming angry or becoming aroused would always do it. Because he was usually surrounded by species that were non-Decaros, he constantly had to work to keep his temper in control so that they didn’t come out.

He was going to have to file them down again. He didn’t like to leave them in their naturally pointing stage because people always referred to him as the devil. So he filed the tips so that they would only show as little stubs if they showed at all. Unfortunately, in a few weeks the pointy horns would return back again.

There were times he wished he were more like his cousin Jagger who was only half Decaros. Jagger didn’t have to be a freak with horns. Vic envied Jagger that. He always felt like it would be easier to not have the damn horns than to constantly have people scared of him. The last part, though, did come in handy when doing his work as a bounty hunter.

“I’ll pay for the window. You two get our gear together and be ready to leave.” Vic stormed out of the hotel room.

“Should one of us go with him? You know, to make sure he doesn’t break any more windows.” Isaac walked over to the broken window to inspect the damage.

“No way. I’m not getting between him and whatever his fists want to hit. Besides, he looked calmer when he left. Let’s pack up and wait for him in the car.” Blade grabbed the black duffle bags.

“Next time, you tell him when a jumper gets past us. I hate always having to give him the bad news. I never know if he’ll take it out on me or not.”

“Pussy!” Blade called out over his shoulder as he carried his bags out of the hotel room.

“Asshole!” Isaac yelled back.

*****

Vic knew he was overreacting, but this damn jumper — one Daniel Franklin Stratford — was pissing him off. They had been so close to catching the male this time. After speaking with the few friends Stratford had listed on his bail bonds application, they discovered that Stratford had a girlfriend that lived in the town one hundred miles away. So Vic took two of his fellow bounty hunters and came out to speak with the so-called girlfriend, Bubbles. That didn’t go over so well.

They arrived that evening to a small party town named Crow’s Nest. Bubbles was not at her apartment when they first arrived. One of her neighbors saw them and thought they were law enforcement so he told them that Bubbles worked as a stripper and would not be home until after three in the morning.

Of course, Blade and Isaac wanted to scope out the strip club from the inside, but Vic did not want them to become overly distracted. So they set up a base in the hotel one block away. Isaac, their tech whiz, put up cameras and sensors so that they would know when Bubbles came home. It should have been an easy surveillance job. He had not counted on the neighbor tipping Miss Bubbles off. She never returned to her apartment.

Vic and his team had gone to her apartment and let themselves inside. It looked like someone had been in a hurry to leave. Clothes were left on the floor, items had been yanked out of drawers and only a few items were still hanging in the closet. Somehow, Bubbles had managed to get to her apartment without setting off the sensors. Vic’s frustration and anger over the female Bubbles escaping their detection was showing.

“How is that possible?” Vic had yelled at Isaac, making the younger man cringe.

Isaac, to his credit, continued to check the monitoring sensors. “I don’t know. I set it up to go off if anyone comes in. It should have gone off.” Isaac rubbed his curly hair. It was a sign of frustration.

“What about when someone leaves the apartment building?” Vic suspected that Stratford may have been hiding inside the apartment the entire time. They found evidence of a still cold drink left on the table and food still in a frying pan. The stove was left on. Clothes were half hung out of open dressers and clothes were lying on the closet floor with their hangers still on them. Someone had been here and left in a hurry.

Isaac shook his head. “I didn’t want the neighbors setting off the sensors. This seemed to be a busy traffic apartment complex so I wanted to keep the neighbors from setting things off. I think maybe Stratford went out an open window over to another apartment, then exited the back of the building. Sorry, Vic.”

Vic grunted. “Let’s go check out Bubbles’ place of employment.”

They found the dance club closed when they arrived, but the owner of the club was there directing the cleaning crew. Vic noticed how defensive the owner became. The owner lost his temper and threw the picture across the room.
Wow was he pissed
, Vic thought to himself
.
.

“How the hell should I know where the slut is? I take a chance on her and she does this to me. I knew the minute she brought her boyfriend by that things were going to go to hell.”

“Boyfriend? Did he look like this?” Isaac showed the owner the mug shot of Dan Stratford.

“Yeah, that’s him, except his hair is red now. She brought him with her while she worked her dances. I had to kick his sorry ass out. He became too distracting.”

“He didn’t like other males watching Bubbles strip?” Isaac asked.

“No, he seemed to enjoy that. It was Bubbles who couldn’t handle seeing the other dancers offering him lap dances. We have had some catfights that ended in one of my girls having to be taken to the ER for a split lip. I told Bubbles to leave her boyfriend at home when she worked. I hadn’t seen him since then — until last night.”

“He came by the club last night?” Vic asked, perking up at this news.

“Yeah, came running in through the back entrance, straight to the dressing room. I wasn’t there but one of girls told me. He said something to Bubbles, then she told my girls to let me know that she was quitting. Then they high-tailed it out the back. Stupid bitch left me with an empty slot.” The owner glared at one of the cleaning crew people. “Mop that shit again! I don’t want to smell urine or anything else over there!”

“One more question. Do you have any idea where they might have gone?”

The owner paused to think before answering. “She said something about going to paradise with her boyfriend a few times. This doesn’t make any sense. She just asked me a couple of days ago if she could work extra shifts so that she could earn enough money for a trip, but she hasn’t worked but maybe two extra shifts since then. That wouldn’t be enough, she mentioned going somewhere off planet, she called it a real paradise.”

The owner turned to look away when a chair was knocked over on the floor. “Hey, I have to go watch this crew, they are new and I don’t want them to screw up or break anything.”

They left the club and went to the nearest transport station. No record of a Bubbles or Stratford or of a couple matching their description was found that indicated they would have left from there. They could have gone to the next town over and got transportation.

Damn it!
Their perp left Fin-Dieskau and could have gone anywhere in the galaxy. There were so many planets to choose from. It had to be a planet that was tropical or with water based on what this Bubbles told her boss. That could be Avryn where people lived on mountains surrounded by clouds, New Earth that had all types of climates and landscapes, to Bazin a water planet with millions of small islands, which would be nearly impossible to find anyone on. This case was becoming much more complicated than he liked.

Vic and his team headed back to their hotel to get their stuff. Vic went to check them out of their hotel. When he was done he found that Isaac and Drake were already loading their car. “Where do you think this paradise could be?”

“Could be anywhere,” Isaac groaned.

“Abe said that there is an island on Bazin that they call Paradise. I remember because he talked about how the native females go topless there,” Drake told them.

Vic pulled out his sat phone and pulled up Stratford’s bond application. “Listen to this. Stratford’s ex-wife has a club on Bazin on an island called…Paradise.”

“Looks like we are heading to Paradise, boys,” Drake said, smiling.

Vic retrieved a picture of Stratford’s ex-wife. Lexi Tanner Stratford, a twenty-eight-year-ol
d
female human with long blonde hair and pretty blue eyes. She had a police record for petty stuff in her late teens. Her marriage certificate stated that she married Stratford when she was eighteen. Her work history was not exemplary. She had worked for three different nightclubs since she was eighteen. He looked at her image and felt his horns and cock react immediately.
Damn, this could be bad.

Chapter 2

Lexi watched the men sitting at the table close to the dance floor. They had walked in two hours ago and had been drinking non-stop. The more they drank, the rowdier they got. Being surrounded by inebriated people wasn’t new to her. She was used to it.

She had been working in nightclubs since she was sixteen. She let her friend make her a fake ID when she turned fifteen so that they could get into the adult clubs. When she turned sixteen, she had wanted to earn some quick money so she used her fake ID to get an exotic dance club to hire her.

She learned early on that drinking and drugs were part of that partying type of environment. Lexi was grateful she had never done drugs. She had watched other girls get caught up in the whole scene and their lives deteriorated from that point onward. No matter how much money they made, it was never enough to keep their drug and alcohol supplied.

She married young and her ex-husband was a deadbeat. He was gorgeous, but lazy as all hell. She worked for the money and he spent it. He was always getting into trouble and she always had to bail him out. She had finally had enough of him and filed for a divorce five years ago.

After that, she had danced for a while but grew tired of always being grabbed. She learned to bartend, then worked her way up to managing different bars. Lexi was good at the nightclub style of business. It was really all she knew. She took business classes so that she could develop a business plan and open her own business. She saved for years to have something to put down for her new business. It would have taken a lot longer but then something happened that changed her initial time line.. 

Her grandmother had gotten sick. Lexi had to reduce her hours so that she could take care of her grandmother. She didn’t mind doing it because she loved her grandmother and would do just about anything for her. When her grandmother died, she left Lexi enough money to help her start her business. She searched her options then the perfect opportunity came up.

A run-down strip club was up for sale. She got it for a steal. She had a plan to turn it into a simple nightclub with dancing, no stripping. She planned to run it for two or three years, cashing in on the quick money, then sell it and open up a bigger nightclub. Unfortunately, as she worked on trying to change it into a regular nightclub, she found that the clientele and the employees were reluctant to change everything.

When she opened the club, called Night's Paradise, she changed the basic layout of the club. The raised stage was taken down and a dance floor was put in place. She kept some of the previous clubs’ dancers and paid them to interact with the male customers and dance with them but they were to keep their clothes on.

She did something not many nightclub managers she knew did. She required that all applicants presented multiple IDs so that she didn’t hire anyone underage. She required all employees to agree to submit to random drug and alcohol testing prior to starting their shifts. She purchased the drug scanner that could be run along side the weapons scanner at the front door. She didn’t want anyone drinking while on the job. She also required security to be there to escort dancers in and out of the club. Dancers were not allowed to have their families visiting while they worked.