Unbreak the Woodsman

by M. S. Parker

  Ryder pulled me in close to him, and we moved to the music as we stared up at each other.

  “Have I told you that you look beautiful?” he murmured.

  “Yes. But I don’t mind if you tell me again.”

  “You look…” he dropped a kiss onto one naked shoulder. “Beautiful.” He kissed my other shoulder. “Ravishing.”

  I shivered at the feel of his lips on my skin.

  “Come for a walk with me,” he whispered, pressing his lips to my ear.

  I let him lead me off the dance floor and into the shadows that thickened as the sun sank lower. He didn’t leave the view of the reception, but he kept walking until the noises from the party grew muted and soft.

  “If you’re going to try and talk me out of my panties here, you’re out of your mind,” I told him.

  He gave me a wolfish smile. “Don’t tempt me.”

  He pulled me up against him, and I went without complaint, lifting my face to his.

  He kissed me, but it was a quick, light kiss. Against my lips, he said, “Will you marry me?”

  I jolted in surprise, blinking up at him in the dim light.

  I almost blurted out, are you serious, but the look in his eyes answered the question for me.

  I threw my arms around his neck. “Yes, yes, and yes,” I said, kissing him with a loud smack on his lips.

  He curled his arms around me and held me close for a long moment, then he pulled back and withdrew a box from inside his pocket. I swallowed, my mouth suddenly dry as he flipped the box open, revealing a beautiful ring, a diamond flanked with sapphires.

  “If you don’t like it–”

  I shushed him and waved my hand at him. “I love it. Gimme.”

  He laughed as he slid the ring onto my hand.

  Then he kissed me again.

  I hummed in satisfaction when he pulled away.

  “Since you’re so agreeable, I’ve got one more question for you,” he said, stroking his thumb across my lower lip.

  “And what is that question?” I asked softly.

  “Will you move in with me?”

  Again, he’d caught me off guard. I only rarely spent the night because of Natanael, and now Ryder wanted me to move in?

  “Are you certain?” I asked. “Won’t that confuse Natanael?”

  “He babbles for his Ree all the time. I don’t see how you being around more would be confusing. He loves you. We love you.” He kissed me again. “I’ve talked to DeLaria, and she loves the idea.”

  DeLaria was now living with Ryder, watching the baby during the day. Her MS seemed to have stabilized, and as long as she didn’t push herself, she was doing well.

  “Come on,” Ryder said in a cajoling tone. “Stop thinking so hard. If it feels right…it is right.”

  I leaned against him and curled my arms around his neck. Then I nodded, slowly. “I’ll move in with you. I’ll marry you. I love you.”

  His response was to lower his head and kiss me.

  I liked that response. More than anything.

  Turn the page to start reading Claimed by Him, the exciting new spin-off to The Pleasure Series.

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  1

  My heart pounded as I ran through the darkened hallway. He was coming, and if he caught me, I’d die. My hands were slick with blood, but I didn’t think it was mine. My sides hurt from running, and my feet were cold, but I wasn’t injured. Not yet. If he caught me though, I’d be worse than injured. I’d be dead.

  Had he killed someone else? It certainly seemed possible.

  I passed a mirror and my reflection caught my eye. I missed a step. Something was wrong. I stopped and went over to the mirror. This couldn’t be me. I was a grown-up, but the girl in the mirror wasn’t a grown-up. She was tall, but not as tall as I knew I’d be someday. The ash blonde hair and china blue eyes were the same, but the face was too round, too young. The hair too long.

  If I knew I was older, did that mean that he didn’t kill me?

  “Get back here, you little brat!”

  Ice flooded my veins. He was close, and he was angry. He’d been angry for almost a year now. Every day, even if it was a good day. He found something to be angry about.

  “Don’t you go hiding now! That’s just going to make this worse!”

  He was right. Hiding just made him madder, but I was scared of what he’d do if he found me. I’d been protected before, but not anymore.

  I looked down at my hands, at the blood soaking my clothes. It was her blood. He’d hurt her. Killed her. She was gone, and no one would protect me anymore.

  But I didn’t need someone else to protect me. I was an adult. I could protect myself. Besides, this wasn’t real. It was a dream.

  The trees around me began to sway, bending low, reaching for me with their branches. I pushed them away, thin needles like razors that sliced my skin, mixing her blood with mine. I barely registered the pain. Pines. The smell of pines filled my nose. My chest tightened, and it was hard to breathe. I needed to get away.

  I started running again, rocks cutting into my bare feet, bruising them, but I couldn’t care about that. Not when I could hear him behind me, breaking things. I slammed the door behind me and then looked around, trying to find something I could put in front of it.

  But it was glass. Even if I did manage to block it, he could just break through.

  But I couldn’t just wait here, unprotected either.

  I spotted a rock. Not like a little stone or even some medium-sized flowerbed edging rock. This was huge. The kind of thing people put in their yards with their house numbers on them.

  I went over to it and put my hands on it. It was rough, like sandstone, but at least my hands wouldn’t slip. The blood was tacky now, clinging to the rock as I braced my feet and pushed.

  A blow shook the door and my muscles screamed as I put more force into it. I needed to get this in front of the door. He was going to get inside.

  Crying. Someone was crying.

  An animal?

  No, a kid. I was sure it was a kid.

  He was screaming now. Not words. Just sound. So loud that people had to hear him.

  No, wait, there were words. Bad words. Words that I wasn’t allowed to repeat.

  The rock didn’t move, and the glass cracked. Fear dumped even more adrenaline into my body and I could taste it in the back of my mouth. I was going to be sick.

  I dropped to my knees and buried my face in my hands. The smell of blood filled my nose. It was sharp and metallic and made my stomach hurt.

  I made a pained sound. My eyes started watering.

  This was more than just an upset stomach. It felt like fire was inside me, and I was being pulled apart. I retched, and it just made things worse. My head hurt, and I felt like I was going to pass out.

  How could I pass out in a dream?

  This had to be a dream. If it wasn’t, it would be too horrible to consider.

  The crying got worse. Why wouldn’t someone shut him up? Why was he crying when I was the one who was hurting?

  The glass cracked, and a dog started barking far away.

  I screamed and someone else screamed and the dog barked, and the kid cried and the door broke and–

  I jerked away, another scream dying in my throat. My heart was racing, my breathing ragged, and I leaned over to turn on the bedside light. Soft white light flooded the room and I looked away to give my eyes a moment to adjust.

  “Just a dream.” I said the words out-loud, as if that would make it all just magically disappear.

  I shivered, the sweat on my body rapidly drying now that I was awake. My breathing and pulse were beginning to return to normal too. If this had been just a normal nightmare, I’d get up, maybe get some water, then climb back in bed.

  I’d had these sorts of nightmares before.

  Falling off a bridge. Spiders. Monkeys. Spider monkeys. Not actual spider monkeys but a creature that looked like a cross between a spider and a monk
ey.

  Typical monsters that nightmares are made of.

  This hadn’t been one of those nightmares, the ones that were easy to shake off because they were ridiculous in the light of day, which meant that I wasn’t going to be getting back to sleep anytime soon, if at all. I knew myself well enough to know that it’d be pointless to try.

  I ran my hand over my hair, thankful for the short haircut that didn’t require a lot of maintenance. I leaned back against my pillows and stared up at the ceiling. I needed to figure out what I was going to do now. I had hours before I had to be anywhere, and I wasn’t going to be able to concentrate enough to read. I could’ve watched some tv, but the walls here were pretty thin and I didn’t want to bother anyone else. Besides, if I couldn’t sleep, I could at least find something worthwhile to do.

  I got out of bed and turned on my overhead light before turning off the lamp. I wasn’t quite ready to be in the dark again. By the time I stepped outside, however, I was comfortable enough to appreciate the stars speckled across the rich, deep blue sky. I was too close to the city for it to be completely pitch black, so that helped too.

  I’d already stretched, so once I hit the cool early morning air, I didn’t have to stand around before jogging a few feet. I was just glad that it was May and not January.

  I started off down the path, gradually moving from jogging to running. I wasn’t doing a flat-out sprint, but I was moving at a pretty good clip when I turned onto the sidewalk and made my way deeper into the city.

  Virginia and Indiana weren’t really that similar in weather or terrain, but I had the strangest feeling of déjà vu as I ran. My nightmares – the really bad ones – did that to me sometimes. Made me feel like I was a kid again. It made sense that I’d feel that now. I’d loved to run as a kid too, and I’d been good at it. I’d actually done track in high school and made it to state a couple times.

  One of the main reasons I’d always loved running was that it emptied my mind. I didn’t have to think about anything but putting one foot in front of the other. Some people liked music when they ran, but I didn’t. I preferred to hear what was going on around me. Birds. Traffic. People. Some of it was because I liked those sounds, but I knew that most of it was because I always wanted to be aware of my surroundings, even while my head was empty.

  I’d made it a couple miles when I realized where I was. The hotel was nice enough, not too high end, but not too tacky either. It was perfect for businesses, especially ones who had guests staying for more than a few nights, and that was exactly why I’d ended up here, even if it hadn’t been a conscious decision.

  I headed inside without second-guessing myself. If I wasn’t wanted, I’d go back, maybe go to the weight room until breakfast. But if I was wanted…well, that was going to be vastly more fun.

  I waved at the man at the front desk and he wiggled his fingers at me. I’d seen Hal a couple times over the last few weeks and as long as he didn’t get any complaints about me, he had no problem letting me walk right past. Unless someone high up found about my clandestine visits, no one was going to say anything, and I didn’t intend for anyone to find out. If it looked like that would happen, I had no problem walking away.

  Right now, however, I intended to wipe my mind of everything that had been in it tonight. Give myself something better to think about. More enjoyable anyway.

  I knocked on the door twice, and then waited.

  2

  The man who answered the door to the suite was thirty-three to my twenty-two years, but he was as fit as any field agent in his twenties. A fact that I could currently see since he wasn’t wearing a shirt. I took a moment to appreciate the view, from his unruly dark brown hair to the blue-gray eyes that were still muddled with sleep, all the way down his chest to the trail of dark hair that disappeared under the waistband of his pants.

  “Agent Kurth.” I gave Clay a snappy little salute.

  “Rona?” He rubbed the back of his neck as he looked behind him. “It’s three in the morning.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Are you going to invite me in?”

  We didn’t need to do the dance about why I was here so early. He’d known me for years, and he knew about my nightmares. He didn’t know exactly what they were about since the subject had always been off-limits, but he knew they often resulted in insomnia. When he’d showed back up in my life seven weeks ago, I’d been glad to see him, but things hadn’t become sexual until one night a few weeks later when I’d had the nightmare and I’d gone for a run. Like tonight, I’d found myself outside his hotel room door, and one thing had led to another. We hadn’t really talked about it since, but it’d become a thing between us, our friendship adding some ‘benefits.’ We could walk away at any time, opt out whenever we didn’t feel like hooking up.

  It was just sex between friends. That was all.

  For a moment, I thought he was going to turn me away. It was early in the morning, after all, and he had to work early. We both did. Just because I couldn’t sleep didn’t mean he had to lose sleep too.

  He didn’t opt out though. He gestured for me to come in, then shut the door behind me.

  “I wish you’d see someone about that nightmare,” he said as he stepped past me and walked into the little kitchenette.

  I kicked off my shoes and yanked down my pants, kicking them aside. “And I wish you’d stop talking and start working on distracting.”

  His eyes slid over my body, and heat followed his gaze. I hadn’t worn anything sexy, but he never cared about that. It wasn’t about what I was wearing, but what he was thinking about doing to me. I’d had a couple partners over the years, some of them bad, some good. Clay was better than good, and he was…inventive. It was a combination that kept me coming back for more, but not one that would get us past being friends who fucked.

  “Come here.”

  When I reached him, he motioned toward the counter and I lifted myself onto it. At two inches under six feet and an athlete’s build, I wasn’t the sort of woman who got literally picked up by guys. I didn’t mind though. I wasn’t sure I’d ever met someone I trusted enough to let him manhandle me. If Clay didn’t fit that particular qualification, I doubted anyone else would.

  “Do you ever stop thinking?” Clay asked as he put his hands on my knees.

  “What do you think?” I countered, wrapping my legs around his waist and pulling him closer.

  Instead of answering, he captured my mouth in deep, hot kiss, his tongue plundering, exploring. I ran my hands over his chest, his dark hair rough against my palms. He made a sound in the back of his throat when I rubbed my thumbs over his nipples. I used my nails then, blunt as they were, scraping them over the darker flesh, and he dug his fingers into my thighs.

  “Damn, Rona,” he groaned, tearing his mouth away from mine.

  I flicked my tongue against one nipple, then the other. One hand moved under my shirt and I stiffened for a moment, then relaxed, his signal that he could continue. We’d established boundaries the first time we were together. He could touch my breasts over my bra, but the shirt stayed on and he didn’t go anywhere else. I knew he’d felt some scar tissue a time or two, but he’d been careful to stay away from it.

  And to never ask questions.

  His free hand dropped between our bodies and his thumb pressed against the damp fabric between my legs. I made a low sound, my eyes closing. My head fell forward onto his shoulder and I ran my hands up his back and then down to his ass. As his thumb pushed the material between my lips, he found that bundle of nerves and pressed against it. I slid my fingers under the waistband of his boxers, dipping my fingers into the two little dimples at the base of his spine.

  Soft kisses trailed up my jawline, and then he took my earlobe between his teeth. Mouth and fingers worked together, stoking the fire low in my belly. For all the banter we’d had, when we finally got down to business, there was no waiting around, no dragging things out. This wasn’t making love. It was having sex. Fucking. Physical
pleasure and stress relief with a friend.

  I squeezed my eyes closed, muscles tensing in anticipation of the relief that was only seconds away. He rubbed my clit harder, faster, and I came with a cry. I turned my face into the place where his shoulder and neck met, panting. He gave me a moment to come down, and then he was taking a step back. I let him go, raising my head in time to see him drop his boxers. His cock was average length, but a little thicker than most, which meant it rubbed against a lot of nice places.

  He fisted his cock as he opened a drawer and rummaged through it for a moment before pulling out a condom.

  “You have them in every drawer here?” I laughed as the feeling returned to my legs. I could usually get myself off pretty well, but sometimes it was nice to have someone else involved.

  Clay shrugged and gave me that cocky grin of his. I’d masturbated to that smile plenty of times since I’d first met him, and it still turned me on. He was one of those pretty-boy sorts that people usually underestimated, but I’d always seen the intelligence in his eyes, and that just made him sexier in my opinion.

  “Down,” he ordered as he rolled on the condom.

  I slid off the counter and took a moment to drop my panties before turning around and leaning over. I spread my legs and heard an appreciative sound from behind me.

  “You have an amazing ass,” he said as he ran his hands over both cheeks before dropping one hand down between my legs. “Damn, you’re wet.”

  I nodded and braced myself on my forearms. He shoved two fingers inside me and I let out a shaky breath. His fingers pumped in and out of me, twisting on every other thrust until he could add a third finger.

  “Fuck!” I slapped the countertop. “Just get on with it!”

  He chuckled and pulled his fingers out. “All right.”

  A moment later, he was pushing his way inside me, an inch at a time. I let out a long groan as my body stretched and molded itself around him. When he was finally inside, he reached under me and put his hands over my breasts, squeezing them for a moment before moving his hands back to my hips. He set a brutal pace, knowing that I’d tell him if he was being too rough. He hadn’t gotten to that point yet. If anything, a part of me wished he’d push just a little bit further.