Black Market Bear (A BBW Paranormal Shape Shifter Romance) (Genesis Valley Book 2) by Amelia Jade Read Free Book Online Page A

Benjamin.”
    The whole situation was…off. The only one who seemed surprised by what was going on was him. The revelation of shifters in the nightclub—that they knew who Benjamin was, even his nickname—surprised him. But nobody seemed surprised by his presence. It was as if they knew about him already.
    Almost as if they had been expecting him…
    “Ajax?”
    He turned and stepped back from the guards. The voice belonged to Arianna, but something was amiss. As he rounded on her, angry that she had shown herself to the guards, he saw what had caused the quaver in her voice.
    On either side of her was a second pair of hulking shifters. He knew instantly that they had “escorted” her from wherever she had parked herself to here. It was a subtle threat on the part of the guards.
    “Can we go?” she asked, looking acutely uncomfortable, surrounded as she was by so many shifters.
    Ajax nodded. “Yeah, you know what, I think we can go. That’s probably for the best anyway.”
    He made to step toward her, but as he did a heavy hand fell on his shoulder. Ajax froze.
    “If you want to keep that hand, I suggest you remove it right now,” he said, his voice utterly tranquil, completely without worry.
    There was a moment of hesitation, then the weight disappeared. “My apologies,” a voice followed. This belonged to the second shifter, the one in charge. He wondered what was coming next.
    “Move aside,” Ajax gestured as he came to Arianna’s side, waving the two new guards away.
    They stood their ground.
    “Really?” he asked, his temper beginning to flare. “Can you move…please?”
    The only response was for one of them to glance past Ajax.
    “I think, instead, that the two of you should come with us.”
    It wasn’t an invitation; it was an order. Ajax’s teeth ground together as he tried to keep his anger in check. For the moment he was keeping it bottled up, but his cage for it was slowly coming apart at the seams as the world continued to conspire against him and Arianna.
    “I’m not going with you,” Arianna spoke up from his side, her voice firmer than it had been before. “Now move out of our way so we can go home.”
    Around them, the party-going crowd seemed to sense the coming conflagration and began to move backward as if pushed. An open space on the floor suddenly appeared, surrounding the six of them.
    Despite that, and despite Arianna’s command, they didn’t move. Realizing that he wasn’t going to get out of this peacefully, Ajax began formulating a plan. To his left was the exit. Two behind him, two in front of him. Couches to his right. Arianna directly in front of him.
    Wait. Couches. Pillows.
    An idea coalesced in his head and he acted without thinking. He picked Arianna up and gave her a heave into the nearest couch. She screamed, a noise quickly picked up by the rest of the crowd as they scrambled to put as much distance between themselves and the fight as possible. Only a few, either foolhardy or drunk, stayed close enough to be in any danger. Ajax filed them away in his head, in case they were neither and in fact more reinforcements for the guard.
    “Oomph,” he grunted, taking a hit to the stomach as the price for getting Arianna clear of the danger.
    Out of the corner of his eye he saw her bounce on the couch, flip over once, and end up in the lap of another girl who hadn’t moved fast enough. Knowing that she was safe, and ignoring the mixed look of fear and loathing in Arianna’s eyes, Ajax went to work on getting them out of there.
    He stepped back abruptly, driving his left elbow hard into the guard coming up behind him. Ajax had meant to hit him in the stomach, but he felt and then heard ribs cracking under the blow. The man cried out, the sound silenced as Ajax spun in place, driving a solid forearm into his face. Bone broke and blood began to spray freely from his mangled nose as the guard collapsed into a heap.
    Large, powerful arms closed around Ajax from behind,