by Kyle, Celia
After the “tour” of her van, Persia awkwardly glanced at him, then the ground, then the sky. “Well, um, thanks for the ride.” She spoke quietly.
That was his cue to leave, but he’d be damned if he’d let her park this janky rig off the side of the road. A serial killer could stumble upon her, or even worse, she might be tempted to chill with her ex again. Uh-uh, no way. But he’d have to handle it delicately, so he didn’t scare her off.
“You know, a friend of mine is a local cop, and he told me yesterday that they’re going to ramp up patrols around Wolf Woods to make sure no one’s camping there. Might not be the best idea for you to park at the entrance like you’ve been doing.”
Persia’s face crumpled into a frown. “Oh.”
She glanced around, as if trying to determine whether living in Hux’s parking lot might be an option. Luckily Warren had an alternative that wasn’t his house, which he had a feeling she wouldn’t like at this stage of their relationship.
“I’m sure Trina wouldn’t mind if you parked outside her place. You and your van would be totally safe and out of reach from the local police.”
“You think?” she asked, her distracting eyes lighting up with hope.
“I know.”
The sun glinted off her dazzling smile, and oh god, those dimples. “Back to Trina’s!”
Chapter Five
An hour or so later, Warren proudly pulled into the parking area in front of Wolf Woods with Persia in the passenger seat of his truck. This time her excitement got the better of her and she didn’t wait for him to open her door. It was bound to happen from time to time, but he was determined to keep trying until it became habit. Besides, her excitement was warranted. The bed of his truck overflowed with enough lumber and tools to build at least a couple of treehouses, and more was on the way.
“Are you sure about this?” Persia questioned him for the third time. She’d worried about the cost of all the building materials and using up all of his supplies.
“Too late now, don’t you think?” He winked, which sent a flush of pink to her cheeks. “Besides, there’s more coming.”
The rest of the protestors laid down their signs and wandered over, curious and wary, until they spotted Persia. The skinny kid from the tarp-tent approached but lurched to a stop at Warren’s pointed glare. Warren had caught enough of a whiff to know he was Persia’s most recent ex, Leaf. Leaf! The kid spun on his heel and returned to his spot under the McNish billboard. Maybe he wasn’t so dumb after all.
“I… we can’t thank you enough,” Persia was saying as she pulled down the tailgate.
“Southern hospitality, Red,” he replied, brushing up against her as he reached for a sheet of plywood.
She stiffened against the touch and the scent of her desire hit Warren like a grenade. Yes! She wanted him just as much as he wanted her. Hopefully she would forget about her vow to shun men and give in to her primal needs. Soon.
“Okay, we’ll go with that, country boy,” she whispered and then moved away far too quickly.
A crowd gathered around the truck and Persia startled him by clapping loudly as she turned to face her friends. “Alright, everyone, listen up! This is my friend Warren. He’s doing us a big favor by offering up a load of lumber and tools for our cause. He’s also called in some backup to help. You know what that means—we’re getting some tree-sitting platforms set up today! I want every able pair of hands we’ve got working on the platforms. If you don’t know how to build, help move materials. Let’s go!”
To his surprise, the crowd immediately obeyed Persia’s orders, lining up to help unload the truck. That such a tiny woman could command so many people so skillfully impressed him. But as soon as the bed was empty, a handful of the younger protestors wandered away, trying to melt into the woods so they wouldn’t have to do more manual labor. At least the older ones—mid-twenties, tops—tried to figure out which was the working end of a hammer.
By then a few more trucks loaded down with supplies had arrived, and out tumbled two of his pack mates per truck. Persia rounded up the lazy stragglers and assigned them to different duties, as if she’d done so many times before. From the sounds of it, she had.
The guys he’d borrowed from Zeke’s construction company worked with their assigned teams of protestors, a few shooting him dirty looks for roping them into teaching basic carpentry. They could grumble all they liked, but it was for a good cause. The pack could certainly survive without access to Wolf Woods, but after McNish’s hired hunters had shot poor Little Hux, the seven-year-old son of Hux Davenport, when he was in his wolf form, the Soren pack had considered themselves at war.
Warren didn’t follow Persia around as she organized everyone, but he also never let her out of his sight. She moved with an agility that belied her stature, which got him thinking about how flexible she might be. A flash of an image of her with her knees up near her ears brought on a coughing fit he couldn’t control. It was better than walking around the group with a raging hard-on, but just barely. Turning back to his pile of supplies, he discovered Persia strapping a tool belt around her waist and giving him a big thumbs-up.
“Ready?” She was so full of energy and enthusiasm.
Strapping on his own tool belt and hefting a pile of two-by-fours onto his shoulder, he jerked his head toward the trees. “After you.”
Warren enjoyed following her into the woods as she looked for the perfect tree for her treehouse. About a hundred yards in, she found it. It was a sturdy old sycamore that had plenty of space in its branches for a platform. Maybe not a big one, but it would be temporary at best anyway.
“Ooh, she’s perfect,” Persia crooned as she gazed up at the gnarled branches and lush canopy. “What do you think?”
“Perfect,” he agreed, his eyes never leaving her lush curves and fiery hair.
She must have heard something in his tone because she turned a curious blue eye on him. Whatever she saw on his face—pure, unadulterated lust, most likely—sent an adorable pink flush high on her cheeks, and she turned back to the tree quickly.
“Let’s get started.” She grabbed a two-by-four and then stood there, looking at it with no idea what to do next.
Working side by side with his mate was Warren’s idea of heaven. Persia took instruction well and caught on quickly, almost as if she’d worked on job sites a time or two in her life. Pretty soon she didn’t even need any direction from him. As the other teams searched for their own trees, Warren and Persia had already found a rhythm.
Generators and power tools found their way to the general area the protestors were building in, and then construction really got underway. Climbing the tree freestyle, he wrapped a few climbing ropes over a thick, sturdy limb and sent the bitter ends down to Persia to set up a lift system using pulleys to haul up the wood and themselves. Without hesitation, Persia strapped herself into a climbing harness, clipped into the rope, and pulled herself up with the pulleys. A couple of guys remained on the ground to send up their supplies.
“Phew, hot up here,” Warren commented as he pulled his shirt over his head.
“Uh huh,” she murmured absently, which drew his attention. Persia stood with a hammer hanging loosely from her hand as she stared at his bare chest.
“You seem to know your way around a hammer,” Warren teased, giving her a wink as she shook herself back to reality.
“Don’t get any ideas,” she laughed, settling onto a branch. “I might know what to do with a hammer and handsaw, but that’s about the limit of my skills.”
Warren grabbed the first piece of plywood and she helped stabilize it between their two branches. “Was it a gig between protests?” he asked as he started hammering the wood down.
Her silence caught his attention, and when he glanced her way, she was busy looking at the spot she was holding onto. “I worked during the summers when I was at school.”
“Oh? What did you study?”
“Poly sci as an undergrad and then law.”
“Law?” He nearly dropped the hammer. “Damn, I knew you were smart, but I didn’t realize we had a lawyer on our hands.”
“Environmental law,” she spoke casually, as if it were no big deal and not a huge accomplishment that Warren felt secondhand pride for. “You could say this kind of thing is in my blood, y’know?”
“A woman who knows what she wants. Gotta appreciate that. “
“You seem to appreciate a lot about me.”
Her expression held a promise and a warning, and Warren couldn’t decide which excited him more. Still, he’d been trying to play it cool with her, but she’d sniffed him out. Not above flirting with his own mate—even if she didn’t know it yet—he let his lips twist up into a slow, seductive smile.
“What’s not to appreciate?”
Heat and attraction vibrated between them, filling the air high up in the tree with tension. As if the risk of falling to their deaths wasn’t enough already. Tree sex would definitely be risky, but Warren was up for it if Persia was. Before he could figure out a way to broach the subject without sounding like a total perv, she got to work nailing down her side of the platform. Then she sang.
It was a pop song, filled with angst and love and longing. Something he’d heard before but couldn’t place. It was old, he knew that much, but as a country music fan, he couldn’t identify it. Of course, it could have been the delivery. Persia’s rendition was badly off-key and almost painful to listen to. And he loved it.
“What?” she asked, when she caught him grinning at her.
“Nothing. What song is that?”
“Endless Love. Why don’t you join me? You have to know Endless Love. It’s a classic.”
Nothing would have pleased him more than to join her in endless love, but she was probably talking about the song, not their future together.
“Nah, no one wants to hear that.” He pushed another board in place. “Besides, I like the way you sing it better. In fact, I wouldn’t mind hearing more. Maybe a private concert somewhere quieter?”
He lifted a suggestive brow at her, at which she rolled her eyes with the drama of a soap opera actress.
“Jeesh, didn’t your daddy ever teach you to buy a girl some flowers before propositioning her?”
Damn, wrong move. He shrugged, trying his best to cover up his sad attempt at seduction, and blurted out the first thing that came to his mind.
“You’ll have to pick your own flowers. Too frou frou for me.”
He immediately regretted it. If Persia wanted flowers, he’d pick a whole hillside worth, just to get to see her dimples again. He’d only wanted to ease any worry she had about him, not turn her off him completely. Idiot!
“Nice,” she drawled, her tone implying she thought otherwise. He’d really stepped in it this time.
They worked in silence after that. He tried to crack a couple of jokes, but she couldn’t even manage enough of a smirk to activate her dimples.
“Well, this thing looks pretty sturdy.” She climbed into her harness again. “Guess it’s about time for some lunch.”
Hope flared in Warren’s chest that she might invite him to eat with her, but his rude comment had obviously made her think better of that.
“Think I’m gonna slip off and grab some frou frou lunch in my van, maybe take a walk and pick myself some flowers.” She began lowering herself to the ground. Before her head disappeared below the platform, she caught his gaze. “Alone.”
Good god, this woman frustrated him! The scent of her desire clouded his senses, but he had enough of his faculties to know her running off like that wasn’t the way it was supposed to work. Watching every move as she lowered herself down the tree like an expert, Warren knew what he had to do. It wasn’t his first choice, but he’d screwed that up royally. Time to pull out the big guns.
“She might not like me very much, but I know who she does like.”
Chapter Six
“Persia, you didn’t say anything about doing construction work when you recruited me for this gig,” a rail-thin young brunette named Joy whined.
Her boyfriend, Rustle—not Russell, but Rustle—joined her, oh-so-eloquently agreeing. “Yeah.”
Pretty soon Persia was surrounded by the group she led, some complaining about physical labor, some wanting to know the best tree to build in, and a couple bitching about hurting the trees by pounding nails into them. Normally, she wouldn’t have minded being bombarded with questions and gripes, but her nerves were already on a razor-thin edge. Especially after being in such close proximity to a certain sweaty, impeccably ripped, handsome as hell redneck. It was all she could do to hold her temper at bay.
It took a good fifteen minutes to hear everyone’s concerns, but Persia counted herself lucky they hadn’t insisted on a peace circle, where they all stood around holding hands and voicing any and every thought that came to them. They were good people—for the most part—but damn, they could be exhausting. As most of them wandered off, Leaf hovered around the perimeter, shooting sly glances her way.
“What is it, Leaf?” She released an annoyed sigh. The woods were calling to her, and the thought of having Leaf beg her take him back got on her last nerve.
“You, uh, never came back last night,” he ventured, his tone soft and maybe a little sad.
She didn’t want to hurt him, but she didn’t dare show any vulnerability or he’d try to take advantage, as he always did. “Very astute.”
She turned on her heel and headed for the woods. The sandwich she’d left in Warren’s truck could wait till she was calmer. She wasn’t about to stand there and let her ex-boyfriend shame her for living her life the way she saw fit, even though she’d spent the night in a clinic rather than a certain someone’s bed.
“Were you with that guy?”
She stumbled slightly and looked at the ground, pretending to search for the root that had jumped out to trip her. Glancing back, she shot Leaf a dark stare.
“What I do, and with whom I do it, are none of your business, Leaf. Now if you’ll excuse me…”
Leaf snorted, a hateful sound she’d never heard come from him before. “You’re fucking him. Aren’t you?”
This time Persia stopped cold, darting a quick glance up her tree—no sign of Warren. He must have slipped past as she dealt with the mob, thank goodness. Having him hear Leaf’s accusation would have killed her with embarrassment.
She slowly turned her fiery glare on Leaf. He didn’t even wince. Instead he jammed his fists on his hips in a defiant move. A few of the other protestors leaned toward them, trying to hear the latest juicy gossip.
“Not that it’s your business—” she skimmed her gaze across the others “—or any of yours, but no. I’m not fucking him.”
If they’d asked if she wanted to, she’d have a hard time lying because her fair skin would turn beet red, revealing her true feelings. Stupid passion skin!
“He’s a guy who has a vested interest in keeping Wolf Woods wild, just like us. He and his friends wanted to help, so I invited them to join us. They’re good people and we’re lucky to have them. Not only are they doing most of the work y’all should be doing, but it’s always best to have locals on our side. Don’t you think?”
Leaf glowered and a few others exchanged skeptical looks, but no one uttered a word. Persia didn’t waste the chance to get the hell out of there. The woods enveloped her quickly and before long she could breathe again. Slowing to an easy stroll, she let the tensions of the past twenty-four hours melt from her shoulders. The bump on her head was still tender, but other than that, she felt fine.
More than fine.
Something about Warren called to her, just like nature. She’d always felt whole walking in the woods, sitting on a pristine beach, or hiking up a magnificent hillside. Like a missing part of her had finally been found. Inexplicably, Warren had a similar effect on her, only with the added delight of sexual tension.
Recalling the way he manhandled that sheet of plywood turn
ed her fifty shades of tingly. When he’d tugged his shirt over his head, she’d nearly tumbled out of the tree ass over teakettle. Taut, flat muscles spread across his chest and down his belly. Not bulging muscles like a bodybuilder’s, more like a swimmer’s or a guy who’d achieved such magnificence through physical labor instead of a gym.
“Get a grip, Persia,” she snarled at herself.
After all of her self-righteous declarations about being done with men, here she was fantasizing about a brawny good ol’ boy she’d just met. The last thing she needed was a distraction, especially in the form of a sexy country boy who knew how to handle his tools. Definitely not at such a pivotal point in the protest against McNish. It was too much of a risk.
She’d been playing her protest game long enough to know better than to let a couple of minor victories make her complacent. Men like Dick McNish prided themselves on operating above the law. He’d wait and watch for her to lose her edge. The group needed to keep their eyes on the prize. Her people, as nice as most of them were, needed her to keep up the momentum and energy. They all looked to her for guidance and leadership
It was a lot of responsibility, which she generally relished. She was a born leader, one of the few benefits of her schooling, but sometimes it weighed her down. That was when she found some way to commune with Mother Nature. No matter the setting, she always felt small in a way that comforted and inspired her. Like she was a tiny piece of a massive, beautiful jigsaw puzzle.
Taking her familiar route, Persia broke through the dense underbrush and into her favorite clearing. To her delight, the same sandy-furred wolf sat in the center, his intelligent blue eyes tracking her every move as he panted and wagged his fluffy tail. What were the odds a human woman and a wild wolf would be in the same exact spot on two different days? Astronomical, which planted the completely illogical seed that the wolf had been waiting for her, as if he knew she was on her way. It was stupid, utterly ridiculous, but she couldn’t shake the feeling.