About
For five agonizing years, I have tried to push Paisley Williams out of my life. She's human, which makes her a danger to the shapeshifters in Night Falls.
She's also my little sister's best friend.
With a shooter targeting the pack and Paisley stuck in the middle, the only way to keep her safe is to hold her close.
Too bad she hates me.
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Book two in the Night Falls series. For maximum clarity, read Braeden and Paisley's story after Ride the Wicked Woodsman. Sign up at christawick.com/wickedreads for email notices on new releases (two per release), sales, free ebooks, ARC opportunities, contests and more.
Comes Now the Wicked Woodsman
Paisley
Hands wrapped around a mug of hot tea, I took a sip and tried to stop shivering.
"Thanks," I mumbled as Clover slid a steaming plate of scrambled eggs and cubed ham in front of me. My stomach started twisting with the demand that I put the mug down and get something more substantial inside me.
"You should have called and told us what you needed done," Clover said, taking a seat across from me at her kitchen table, a dark scowl brewing on her pale features. "And you should have come over as soon as you realized the furnace was broken."
I shrugged. The population of Night Falls was almost nonexistent. My grandmother had lived there from the day she was born until her death four days ago. Everyone knew she kept animals. Heck, half the town bought eggs from her.
Was it wrong to feel like I shouldn't have had to reach out from my university in Michigan to have someone check in on Holly's menagerie for a few days? Wasn't it reasonable to expect someone -- oh, I don't know, maybe my best friend in Night Falls -- to reach out and ask what I might need help with?
But then, we weren't exactly best friends anymore. Something had changed since I left last summer. Since early October, messages from Clover had become more infrequent and downright spartan in their content. If anyone got a call from her that lasted less than half an hour, something was wrong. Same for a text that wasn't immediately followed by ten more texts.
And the change wasn't just with Clover, it was all of Night Falls. My grandmother had told me last Christmas that something happened up on the mountain that autumn, something that involved the motorcycle club that more than half of the city was associated with, including Clover and her older brother Braeden, the club's vice president.
After that mysterious event, the Woodsmen MC had become even more insular.
Almost on cue, Braeden, the man of my wet dreams, walked into the kitchen wearing nothing but some lightweight cotton gym pants that strained to hold in his muscular ass and thighs. I tried to swallow and started choking on the eggs and ham.
Braeden turned, treating me to a view of his chiseled, tattoo-covered chest and that damn crazy V that ran from his hips down below the line of his gym pants. I had just a second to notice that his manscaping had progressed to eliminating the yummy ladder of hair previously running from his navel into his pants before Clover came around the table and slapped me on the back to stop my coughing.
"Thanks," I said, the words scratching at my throat. "It's hotter than I realized."
"Yeah," she shot back, a familiar smirk in her tone as her sly gaze slid from me to her practically naked brother.
For one sweet moment, hearing her subtle tease over my unacknowledged crush on Braeden, it felt like nothing had changed since last summer. But then my gaze lifted to Braeden's face. Reading the open hostility on his features, I knew for certain things had gotten worse.
Since I first went away to college, he had skated as close as he dared to treating me like shit without actually doing something that would upset his cherished baby sister. But not once had he gone so far around Clover as to look at me with a gaze that dripped venom.
"The heat's out at Holly's place except for the barn," Clover said, explaining my presence in their kitchen at seven in the morning. "I told Paisley she could stay here until it's fixed."
His gaze shifted to his baby sister, the hostility mellowing to brotherly irritation. He crossed the room to stand in front of me, those gunslinger hips of his rocking a mesmerizing forward push of left, right, left as my mouth flooded with fresh saliva.
"Give me the key," he said, stopping about a foot from me and extending his hand.
I ripped my gaze upward, neck straining to look him in the eyes. "Huh?"
I had heard what he said, just didn't understand the demand. Admittedly, even in my grief, my brain had stopped functioning properly the second he walked into the room. And this close to me, his unwashed scent filled with lusty suggestions was enough to completely shut down my capacity for coherent thought.
"Mojo will go out and fix it this morning," Braeden explained with a hard edge to his tone. "But he needs a key to get in. That's how doors work."
Clover had retrieved my key ring from my purse while I had been leisurely searching inside my skull for one functioning neural synapse.
"Which one?" she asked, jingling my keys from across the table, her smirk too large to keep hidden even if she had tried. "You've added new ones."
"Either of the red keys," I answered before my lungs reflexively drew in a deep breath and I was drowning in Braeden scent. Salt and earth mixed, but so did traces of a feminine perfume just beneath the fragrance he occasionally wore.
He'd definitely had a Friday night fuck while I'd been driving from Michigan to my dead grandmother's cabin.
"Here," I snapped, a flare of anger causing me to reach across the table and yank the keys from Clover. I started unthreading one of the keys with the red rubber wrap around its head. "If Mojo can fix it cheap, great. Otherwise, I'm just here to sell off the animals and make sure gran's keepsakes are preserved. Got a guy coming in from Hadley on Monday to buy the livestock."
Before Braeden had whipped out his hostility, I'd been willing to stay with Clover, even eager with the hope I could figure out and patch over the cracks that had appeared in our relationship. Now I just wanted to disappear as quickly as possible, sell the chickens and goats and get back to school.
I dropped the key in Braeden's outstretched palm then forced my attention back to the cooling plate of eggs and ham. "I can stay at the Crockers' place until then."
From across the table, an indignant huff told me Clover wasn't pleased with my choosing to pay the Crockers for one of their seedy little cabins instead of staying with her for free. But I wasn't sure I could bear the growing awkwardness between us while my grandmother's death was so fresh and Braeden's face warped into a scowl every time his gaze landed on me.
"What time on Monday?" Braeden asked, still standing uncomfortably close to me, all of the once tantalizing odors clinging to his body reduced to some other woman's perfume so that he suddenly stank of patchouli. "Rooster can be there to make sure you get a good price."
"Having them gone and taken care of is all the price I need," I mumbled before shoveling some eggs into my mouth, my back hunched forward to shield me against his continuing presence.
It was clear he didn't want me in their house. So why the hell was he standing so close? And what did it matter to him how much I got paid for the livestock? The money wasn't going into his pocket.
"I'll tell Rooster to be there at eight," Braeden growled and crossed back over to the coffee machine. "No one's getting here from Hadley before then."
I shoveled the rest of the eggs and ham into my mouth as he filled his cup. Leaving the
plate on the table because he had his sexy ass braced against the sink, I stood and power walked to where my purse hung on a peg by the kitchen door that opened onto the gravel drive.
Snapping open my coin purse, I pulled out a wad of twenties and started peeling off ten of them. "Tell Mojo my furnace budget is two--"
Growling, Braeden put his coffee mug on the counter with a heavy thunk. "The budget is what I say it is, baby girl."
Baby girl...
A load of concrete dropped on top of me. Braeden hadn't called me "baby girl" since before I first left for college. Blinking, I shoved the money back in my bag, my keys slipping from my numb fingers at the same time.
Without looking at either of them, I offered my excuse for leaving so soon. "Thanks for breakfast, Clo, but the feed store should be open by now and I've got to get enough food for the animals to last until Monday."
I fished the keys out just in time to look up and see Braeden stalking toward me, his chin dropped low like some prize fighter while the green eyes stayed focused on my face. I spun and grabbed the knob but couldn't turn it before he planted a big palm on the door.
His free hand pulled the door's lacy curtain aside. Seeing my gran's beat up blue Chevy truck parked next to Clover's Jeep instead of my little two-seater, he grunted and removed his hand.
"Roads are supposed to be icy," he said, turning and leaving the room without a backwards glance. "Drive safe."
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Braeden
Soapy hands running up and down my cock, I tried not to think about Paisley Williams. I'd been trying not to think about her for the two days since news filtered through the clubhouse that Holly Ulster, one of the oldest and probably best liked humans in Night Falls, had been found dead in her cabin a few days before.
Growling, I turned the hot water hotter then wrapped both hands around my dick in a firm grip and squeezed. I didn't need Paisley Williams distracting me right now, not with the way things were falling apart in the club after last fall. I didn't need to wonder why she'd known about Holly's death the morning it was discovered but hadn't contacted Clover, didn't need to puzzle out why she seemed pissed I was trying to help her with the furnace and livestock.
Deep down, I knew that my little sister and her best friend finally drifting apart was for the best. Clover would hurt at first, hurt hard, but it was inevitable. That their friendship had lasted a decade without Paisley discovering our secret was more than a small miracle. It was unbelievable. And every day that passed, the odds of Paisley finding out doubled.
The discovery would put the pack at risk. Worse than that, with practically every damn Woodsman jumping at his own shadow since the Champaign packs had threatened to annihilate us last October, Paisley's life might well be forfeit if she found out any time soon and the news got out.
Groaning in defeat, I let go of my cock and squirted a glop of body wash in my palm. Paisley's appearance -- especially her defiance at the end -- had sparked a hard rush of lust in my body. She always did excite me with that lush frame and innocent beauty she didn't seem to realize she possessed. But I wasn't going to get any relief from it today, not with the demands of how quickly life seemed to change in a town it had once felt like time forgot.
Paranoid club members, Holly Ulster dead, Paisley home just long enough to unload the animals and then leave, maybe for the last time...
All of that added up to no fun in Dicksville for the foreseeable future.
Got some last night.
A shudder ran through me. Closing my eyes, I mentally squinted through the dirty lenses of last night's drinking goggles. Knowing Paisley's arrival back in town was imminent, if only for a weekend or so, I had thrown back more than a few pitchers of beer and an uncounted number of shots of whisky.
Mistake number one.
A second shudder ran through me as mistake number two began to replay in my still foggy brain. The MC's only sweet butt, Landa Judd, in the clubhouse kitchen. A vague outline formed of her bent over, short skirt, no panties, with her fingers between her thighs and rubbing furiously when I walked in on her.
The she-cat had been aiming to hook me ever since Taron, the club's president, and his mate Onyx announced a cub was on the way. I figured it was half because I was next in line to lead the pack and half because Landa had developed a particular hate for Clover.
Landa had been working it extra hard last night, rubbing up against me with each drink or fresh pitcher she delivered, the scent of her pussy heavy with her arousal. The first hour into my ill-considered binge, I'd pushed her back each time. But as the night wore on, my pushes grew less adamant and, when she took too long to come out with a fresh bottle of whisky, I had ventured into the kitchen to find my own.
Bile filled my mouth, burning my throat and tongue. I swallowed it down, grabbed the body wash and squirted an even bigger glop.
Fuck, I had really done it, hadn't I?
I scrubbed ruthlessly at my skin, nails scraping hard enough at the surface to leave long trails of red that took a few seconds to disappear. I would have to dip my dick in bleach a couple times before it was clean enough after Landa. No wonder it didn't want to work.
A fist pounding at the bathroom door snapped me out of my panic. I yanked on the handles and stopped the flow of water just as Clover finished shouting through the thin layer of wood, her words lost on me.
"What?" I snarled and jerked the shower curtain to the side.
The bathroom door flew open, Clover's mouth instantly going from the shape of the rant she was about to deliver to a shocked O. She spun around, hands jumping to shield her eyes far too late.
"Some scars don't heal, dude," she complained. "Not even for a shifter."
"Who the fuck told you to open the door?" I slid a towel from the rack with a snap then wrapped it around my waist, my noncompliant half-erection finally fading now that my little sister had barged in.
"You've been in here forty-five minutes," she said, ignoring my perfectly valid question. "Paisley's probably back at her grandmother's from the feed store and I need to go."
"She didn't ask you," I said, my body blocking the door to keep her out as I swiped a palm along the steamed up mirror.
I didn't actually know that Paisley hadn't asked, but things had been falling apart at a faster clip these last few months, so I figured I was right. And pointing it out would help bring a quicker death to their friendship.
The sooner the better, I thought, running a comb through my beard. They were both headed toward a far bigger heartache than a lapsed friendship.
"Paisley knows she doesn't need to ask for help," Clover growled, pushing her way past me to grab her cosmetics bag.
"Just like she knew we'd eventually find out about Holly dying on our own or her arrival?" I prodded.
Clover's face went haywire, the top half scrunching together while her lips pulled wide and down, a visible tremor running through them. I instantly felt like a complete asshole, but the tears were inevitable. I was just trying to control their timing and how long they lasted.
"Fuck you," she said, her face still a twisted mess as she slammed her cosmetics bag on the counter and tried to squeeze back into the hallway.
Turning, I wrapped my arms around her and tried to pull her to my chest. She fought me but her muscles were no match for my strength. I pushed a gentle wave of alpha energy to stop her struggling before she hurt herself.
She rewarded my efforts with a sharp bite.
"Don't pull that shit with me!" she growled, nothing but pure fury shaping her expression. "Just because you're afraid to act on how you feel about Paisley doesn't mean I'm cutting her out of my life. Fuck you if you're not alpha enough to handle that."
My hands dropped to my sides. Despite all her struggling a few seconds before, she didn't move, just looked up at me with her soulful green eyes.
"I don't have any feelings for Paisley," I said, the mechanical voice unfamiliar to my ears.
"Liar," she whi
spered then escaped down the hall.
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Paisley
With Mojo heading back to Night Falls to pick up a few parts for the furnace, I went into my grandmother's room. I skirted the bed, eyes averted, and dragged the footstool in front of her reading chair over to the closet.
Pulling on the chain for the closet light, I did exactly what I criticized her for at least a dozen times a year by stepping onto the rickety footstool. The top shelf where all her treasures were kept was just out of reach without the damn thing. They were dangerously within reach with it.
Teetering forward, I grabbed the pink and white box decorated with roses and slid it toward me. Hopping down, I stood on tiptoe and eased it the rest of the way off the shelf.
Bumping my shin hard against the footstool as I turned, I shook my head. All I needed to do was go out into the barn and grab the step ladder. But just like my grandmother, I was too obstinate to concede that I was one of the shortest people in Night Falls.
Forgetting myself for a few seconds, I bent to place the box on the bed but immediately pulled back. A chill ran down my spine. A habit of creature, Holly had laid center of the bed pretty much every night since my grandfather's death. The mattress had changed a couple of times since then, but not the sleeping pattern, and enough years had passed since the mattress was new that I could see the outline of her shape.
They'd found her there, covers tucked up to her chin and a serene smile on her face. If she hadn't been so notoriously habitual, it might have been days after she died in her sleep before the discovery was made. But if Holly Ulster said she would sell you eggs at seven thirty in the morning on Tuesday, she would be in the barn waiting for you at seven fifteen. When she wasn't, her first customer of the day had immediately investigated.
"Sorry, gran," I whispered, backing up from the bed. "I can't sit with you, not yet."
Taking the box into the living room, I placed it on the coffee table and removed the lid. White mailing envelopes yellowed with age, their size uniformly nine by twelve, rested one on top of the other within the confines of the box.
Comes Now the Wicked Woodsman (A Night Falls Alpha Wolf BBW Shapeshifter Romance) Page 1