Read Online Walk on the Striped Side by Jessie Lane - Free Book Online

man saunters up to the end of the
bar, and Elena immediately knows who he is. Alec, Gage’s brother. The man who
was on the other end of that phone listening to Gage tell him how Elena was just
a piece of ass. How she would never be good enough for something more permanent
with him. Alec looks just like the man who was once the love of her life,
except he’s the light to Gage’s darkness. His hair is white and in a mohawk , his eyes are a weird arctic
blue, his arms are covered in tattoos and there’s a smug panty dropping smile
plastered to his face. While Gage is glowering at her, his brother Alec is
eye-fucking Chloe. If she weren’t so concentrated on not showing the asshole in
front of her how much he broke her heart, she’d laugh at the differences
between the brothers.
    Gage loudly snaps, “Why would you
be looking for me, you little harpy?”
    Elena refuses to let his animosity
affect her. She widens her grin widens because she knows it’ll bother him. “I’m
here to ask you about your sister, Ivanov. Seen Lulu lately?”
    Gage leans across the bar to get in
her face. “Why are you looking for Lulu?”
    Reaching into her back pocket,
Elena pulls out her new business card and pushes it across the top of the bar
so that it’s right in front of Gage. “I got drafted into the family business
recently, so I’m just here doing my job.”
    Gage shoots her a disgruntled look,
and then drops his gaze to the card. Wiping his face to display the best blank
look Elena’s ever seen on him, she watches as he brings his attention from the
card back to her and says, “That’s not possible. You can’t work for AI. That
would mean you’re-“
    Oh this is the good part. This is
where she gets to rub it in his face that she’s so much more than that hot
piece of ass he’d labeled her as in that phone call to his brother years
before. And by that bead of sweat that just rolled down the side of his neck,
Elena knows that Gage is already well on his way to putting together the truth.
“That’s right, Ivanov. Amazon International would mean that I come from a line
of Amazons, wouldn’t it?” she asks in a sickly patronizing voice as if she’s
talking to an exceptionally small child.
    Elena sees Gage’s fingertips turn
white as he grips the bar top. The only other outward side besides that small
drop of sweat that lets her know he isn’t as unaffected as he’s pretending to
be. So she goes in for the kill because she’s more than ready to make her
point, rattle him up, and then get the hell out of here. “And I’m here with my
sisters to investigate your sister, Lulu, for the charge of murder.”
    When Gage lets a fierce snarl out,
she considers it a total win that she didn’t pee her pants in fear.
    Gage
    Was this a fucking joke? At the
moment he’d give his left nut for someone to jump out from some hidden spot and
yell at him that he’d been punked . So of course, it
was just his luck that it didn’t happen. No, reality was sinking in fast.
    The only woman he’d ever almost
given in to the urge to take as a mate was sitting in front of him, pretending
to be calm and collected as she informed him that she was descended from a long
line of Amazons. This species of human was genetically superior to those around
them. As a result, while they still lived an average human life span,
everything else in them was wired for survival. They were literally born and
bred with unique traits that made them the ultimate fighters. Every single one
of them had been endowed with either a unique understanding for strategizing,
an uncanny ability with fighting and the use of weapons, or extreme
intelligence. It was Mother Nature’s way of taking the next step in human
evolution.
    Elena fell nicely in that middle
category. Why in the hell hadn’t he seen it before? Granted, most women were
already better shooters than your standard human male, but Elena’s skills with
weapons had always been exemplary. Gage had gone and