by Renee George
“You smell like the woods and the wind,” Billy Bob whispered to me. “You smell of home.”
I pulled back, curiously freaked out. What game was he playing? “I need some air.” I stepped out of his arms. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“Why don’t you just go on over to the house,” he said. “After the Smarts get on their way, I’ll show you the guest room. Until then, get something to eat or drink from the kitchen.” He raised a brow. “There’s a liquor cabinet in the living room if you want something stronger than water or tea.”
“Thanks,” I told him and meant it. “You have bourbon.”
He smiled. “Yep.”
“Awesome.” I headed out the door of the surgical suite without a single look back. I wanted to lose myself in a glass of liquid amber.
I’d never been in Billy Bob’s home before, the non-medical side of his ranch house, so, I really hadn’t known what to expect. Maybe something rustic, a lot of weathered wood, and oh, I don’t know, dream catchers. Something in the Southwestern motif of design. It was none of that. The walls were pale green but earthy and warm with brown and gold accents. The furniture was modern, but still comfortable and inviting. The living room had a large fireplace, a deep brown semi-circular sofa with a round coffee table made of several types of wood that complimented the rest of the room. On the wall nearest me, I saw a tall liquor cabinet with see-through doors. The alcohol bottles were neatly shelved by type.
I retrieved a highball glass from the lower part of the cabinet where I also spotted a built-in ice maker. Fancy. I plopped a couple of chunks into my glass and grabbed the only bottle of bourbon in the cabinet. I took a long pull straight from the bottle. The potent liquor burned its way down my throat to my stomach. I waited for the blossoming warmth I knew would come. When it finally did, I poured two fingers into the glass and made my way to the sofa. It was July, so there was no need for a fire in the fireplace, but still, I huddled around my glass of booze as if it were ablaze.
I could smell Billy Bob’s scent—earthy musk with a hint of bergamot permeating everything in the room, including my shirt, which had been pressed up against him. Sometimes a heightened sense of smell could be a curse. At least the scent of the freshly murdered man was gone. I reclined against the backrest of the couch, marveling at the comfort, when I heard the door between his clinic and home open, his footsteps down the hallway, his slow, steady breathing as he entered the room.
“Hey, Doc,” I said, without turning around to look at him.
“Hey,” he said back. “I see you found the bourbon.”
I held up my glass and shook it so the ice clinked. “Yep.” I sighed and closed my eyes. “It’s nice.”
“If you’re ready, I’ll give you a quick tour and take you to your room.”
I stood up and turned my gaze on him. He was carrying my overnight bag. “Oh, shoot. Thanks.” I strolled to him and tried to take it, but he waved me off.
“I’ll take it. No, argument, please.”
“I’m too tired to argue anyhow.” I wanted to forget about the night, but I knew some things would be burned into my memories no matter how much brain bleach I applied.
I let him lead the way down a wide, wainscoted hallway, and couldn’t stop myself noticing the nice view aka his firmly, muscular ass in some spectacular fitted jeans. Jesus, why was I thinking about his butt? There was a dead man in the clinic next door, possibly a neighbor, even a friend, and here I was letting my hormones have their way. I felt like the most awful human being ever.
He slowed up, and his scent grew stronger, the bergamot turning bright and citrusy to my senses. He stopped at a door near the end of the hall. I crossed my arms because my stupid nipples had gone rigid with alert. He put down the case and pivoted to face me. The raw expression in his silvery-gray eyes melted me to my toes. I gulped.
“Uh, this my room?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Where is your room?”
His eyes darkened with an expression I hadn’t seen before. “Right across the hall.” He reached back and rapped the knuckles of his left hand on the door.
“Oh. That close.”
“Don’t worry,” he growled in a very un-Billy Bob way. “I won’t bother you tonight.”
“I didn’t…” I realized I didn’t know how to respond.
“If you need me I’ll be in the clinic.”
“Right,” I said. “Right. The guy.”
He pointed at the door just up the hall from the guest bedroom. “Bathroom if you need it.” His words were tight, squeezed, as if his throat had swelled. He didn’t open the door for me. Instead, he skirted around me as if I had Ebola and quickly walked away down the hall and out of sight.
What the hell was that all about? I’d never seen Billy Bob act so strangely. It had to be the body. Had he found something? Something that affected him personally? Or me? “Oh God.” I put my hand to my mouth. What if it really was someone I knew? Someone close to me? I hadn’t looked close enough to determine the height or build of the corpse. I’d wanted so badly to get away from it. I couldn’t even put a voice to my worst fears. I wouldn’t. I’d already lost one brother.
My hands shook bad enough that I dropped the highball glass. It didn’t shatter but ice skid across the hardwood floor and bourbon splattered everywhere. I sprinted up the hall, my wet soles sliding as I tried to slow down for the transition around the corner. I slammed to the floor, landing hard on my backside. The impact made my right leg throb with renewed pain, and my elbow bleed where it had smacked into wainscoting trim. It made me angry that I couldn’t keep the tears from my eyes as I pulled myself up from the floor and limped down the next hall toward the clinic.
Chapter 3
I couldn’t calm my racing pulse or my ragged breathing as I burst through the door. The stench of death overwhelmed me for a second. It was sweet, I noted, almost gamey, like the way rabbit meat smelled.
Billy Bob stepped out of the surgical room. I must have been a hot mess because his eyes widened with alarm. “What’s happened? Is someone in the house? You’re bleeding.” He stripped the surgical gloves from his hands and rushed to me, his speed dizzyingly fast. He grasped my upper arms, his face a mixture of panic and rage. His voice grew unnaturally low. “Who hurt you? I will kill him!”
His aura, which is the only way I could think to describe what I felt, surrounded me, heady and heavy, until I thought I would pass out. “I’m…No one,” I finally said. “The body. I just…Is it…” When he wrapped me in his arms again. I didn’t fight him. I let the heat of his comfort seep into my skin.
“No, Chavvah,” he murmured softly. “No. It’s not Babe. It’s not your brother.”
I let the tears fall as relief flooded me. Still, I was sickened. This was someone’s brother, husband, son… someone loved the person on the table as much as I loved Babe, and they would soon grieve in a way that no one ever expects when the life of a loved one is ripped away from them under such violent and evil circumstances.
When I finally calmed myself enough to speak, and sadly, had smeared my snot across Billy Bob’s chest, I asked, “Do you know who it is?”
My stomach dropped at his solemn expression. “No,” he said, his voice so quiet I could barely hear him. “But it might be Ed.”
“What?” I shook my head. “Ed Thompson?” He’d just been in for lunch today. He was fine. Right as rain. I couldn’t be Ed. Not Ed.
Billy Bob nodded.
“Oh.” My hand went to my mouth. “Ruth. Oh no. Who is going to tell Ruth?”
* * * *
I sneezed. Twice. The feather top guest bed was comfortable, but my allergies to goose down along with my fears for Ed, knowing he was killed just outside the back door, and I hadn’t even noticed. I’d been in my own bubble for what? Forty minutes? That wasn’t enough time to remove the skin from a fresh corpse. No. He had most likely been skinned somewhere else and brought to the dump site.
My skin
itched and my fingers lingered over a deeper more substantial scar on my forearm. I recalled the injury with terrible clarity…
“Stubborn bitch,” one of my captors said. He had brown hair and blue eyes, and he smelled like wintergreen chewing tobacco. I pulled against the restraints, but three days without water had left me dehydrated and weak. “All you have to do is change into the animal you are, and this will end.”
The other man, a middle-aged blond, held his phone up and recorded us.
Wintergreen waved a chisel, one used for woodwork, in front of my face. He held the angled tip against my forearm. “Last chance,” he said.
I closed my eyes.
The sharp sound of the hammer as it struck the metal chisel rang out against the aluminum walls of the Morton building.
Noise, small and pathetic, snapped me from the memory. I realized it had come from me. A whimper. Better than the screams I could still hear when I thought of that torturous night. That’s when I noticed the tall shadow inside the room by the closed door.
I scrambled to sit up, rolling off the bed on the far side to put distance between the intruder and me. I summoned my animal, using my coyote eyes to scan the room and get a better look. I saw the painting of the rolling Ozark hills, the eight-drawer dresser, a tall bookshelf, a closed closet door, and the very bright moonlight streaming in from the window.
No intruder.
I scented the air, but I couldn’t detect anything foreign. Besides, what kind of idiot would intrude on a werewolf’s territory? Billy Bob wouldn’t allow it.
“You’ve suffered much, little wolf,” a familiar voice said. My friendly neighborhood imaginary buddy … except he was more like an actual presence than a pesky voice in my head.
“I’m losing my mind,” I muttered.
“I would not choose someone feeble-minded,” said an offended male voice.
Not in my head.
In the room.
Movement near the door startled me. I crouched low, my hands up, ready to attack. “Who are you?” A gravelly rumble built in my chest. No way I’d be taken again. Not this time. Not ever again.
“I am known by many names, sister. Pia’isa, kweo kachina, and mai-coh to name a few.”
“Well, your new name will be mud if Doctor Smith, the owner of this house, finds you. He’ll rip you a new asshole.”
He wasn’t a town resident, which meant he had to be one of the men who’d come in for the Jubilee. His face was shadowed. Even with my coyote-vision, I couldn’t make out his features. I tried to hone in on other appearance landmarks. He was well over six and a half feet tall. His shoulders were as wide if not wider than Billy Bob’s. His language was stiff and stilted as if every word cost him something. Finally, and most oddly, it felt as if his breath stirred the air around me. But the weirdest thing of all was the sense of calm that overrode my stirring panic.
“What do you want?”
“Ah.” The dark figure shook his head. “There is no need to fear me. I mean you no harm, little wolf.” I felt another wave of calm. “You know me. We often speak, sister.”
The voice in my head sometimes called me sister, and the awareness jolted me. At some point when my imaginary pal first started talking to me, I’d convinced myself it had been Judah, my older brother, the one who’d been killed.
“I’m a coyote,” I said. Because that’s soooo important. “A therian, not a lycan.”
“You are wolf, child. That above all else.”
The denial died on my lips. Recently I’d found out that my grandmother had been half-lycanthrope, but as a werecoyote, I’d grown up despising werewolves. My brothers and I had been taught that lycanthropes were dangerous and unpredictable. A rogue pack had killed both my grandparents before I was born, which only strengthened my family’s views about the species. So, I had no intention of claiming the heritage, let alone giving it precedence over my coyote blood.
I’d backed up to the window, my fingers on the frame. I had no doubt the huge, hulking figure between me and the door could take my head off. My claws bit into my flesh as my fingers began to shift. I needed to hold it together. Keep the element of surprise to myself.
“You don’t need to run from me, sister. I am not your enemy.”
“A friend doesn’t sneak into your bedroom,” I said.
“I do not sneak,” he said. Again, his tone reflected offense.
Noise in the hallway had him turning his head away from me. I used the opportunity to throw myself backward through the window. I cried out when the broken glass bit into my back as I landed on the grassy lawn, but I didn’t wait for the weird dude to chase me. I didn’t know what scared me more, that he claimed ownership of my imaginary friend or that I wasn’t nearly as frightened as I should’ve been.
Who cares? Run, you moron.
I shucked my nightgown and my underwear, finding freedom as my body mid-run began to change. My bones moved and reformed, fur sprouted down out of my skin with a whispering tingle that the full shift to animal form always brought on. It was pleasure, not pain, and it was why my family always warned against changing when it wasn’t necessary. During the first night of the full moon, the shift came without being called, and unfortunately, therians become true animals on those nights. Acting on pure instinct alone. It was dangerous for everyone around, humans and shifters alike. But when therians chose to change at any other time, they could think and remember as if they were still in human form. It made the impulse to stay a beast strong, the feeling of being in animal form while able to keep clear headed, intoxicating. I tried not to think of the joy. It would distract me and get me kidnapped again, or worse, killed.
A howl in the distance startled me. On four legs now, my senses heightened, I ran in a full out sprint toward the woods behind Billy Bob’s house. I caught a fading scent of a wolf on one of the trails and the faint aroma of bergamot. Billy Bob. Of course, he ran these woods in his lycan form. I had been born and raised in Kansas City, and I’d never been much of a country girl, not until these past couple of years, but even then, I hadn’t done much exploring. Would it be safer to follow where Billy Bob had roamed, or try to make my own way deep into the Ozarks?
Another howl drove my choice. I took off through thickets of briars and stick’ems, past oaks, maples, and evergreens. A fallen tree just up ahead of me had to be four feet thick in diameter and gray with age and decay. I leaped with all my might to get over the top. The wind ruffled my fur, my belly scraping against the dry bark as I dove head first into a shallow creek on the other side. I yelped then inhaled the water, the cold liquid soaking me to the skin. I stood up and shook, droplets spraying everywhere. The running stream chilled the pads of my paws.
I sloshed toward the far bank, only twenty feet away, the stream rising until my paws could no longer touch. I paddled hard, keeping my nose above the water.
“Chavvah!”
The sound of my name brought me up short. I glanced back, and my head went under as I saw a very naked Billy Bob standing on this side of the log. I turned back toward the other side of the creek bed and kept going until I was able to get on dry ground on the opposite side. We’d had plenty of rain this month and fighting the current had taken it out of me.
I panted, trying to gather my wits. Had the wolf howls come from Billy Bob and not the intruder? In my panic, had I been running from him the whole time? I felt like an idiot. A fool. A scared foolish idiot. I stared at Billy Bob, the moonlight dancing on his flawless skin, the shadows enhancing every cut of his muscles. He didn’t make a move toward me as if he knew I would rabbit if spooked. He simply waited, his brow furrowed with concern.
Finally, I shook out my fur again, allowing the shift back to my human form. When the change completed, I was crouched low on the ground still staring at the doc.
“Are you okay?” he asked when my heavy breathing died down.
“There was a man in your home,” I said. “In my room.” God, what if it had been the killer? Had he foll
owed me from town?
His eyes widened. He pursed his lips. “Are you hurt?”
The glass in my back stung suddenly as if to remind me that I’d thrown myself out of a window. I turned so he could see my back and said, “I’ll live.” I hadn’t felt it in my coyote form. “How did he get inside, Doc? How did he find me?”
“You’re safe now,” he said. “If someone were near, I’d smell him. It’s just you and me now.” His voice was low and soothing.
I plopped back onto my ass. I appreciated that he didn’t ask me if I’d had a bad dream or try to tell me I was overwrought. Now that I was away from the intruder, the strange Zen I’d experienced had evaporated under a cold dose of fear. The sharp rocks from the shore dug into my skin. I ignored the pain. I’d had worse. I hugged my knees, burying my face in the crack between them. I’d never forget the man. His presence had been weighted. Undeniable.
“Do you want to come over here?”
“No,” I told him.
“Do you want me to come over there?”
I remained silent and let him interpret my lack of response how he wanted. The water sloshed and a small sense of satisfaction slid through me. I lifted my head and peeked. Billy Bob was nearly waist deep in the creek and half way across. As the water level lowered, I got a really great shot of his package, and… “Wow.” Let’s just say that the cold water had very little effect on him.
He stopped just shy of the shore. “What?”
“What?” Crap, I’d said, “Wow,” out loud. He really was gorgeous. His skin was a perfect shade of heavily creamed coffee and completely unblemished. Unlike my own, which was scarred and knotted in multiple places. I suddenly wished he hadn’t crossed. Self-consciously, I hugged my knees harder to hide my ravaged skin.
“Chavvah,” he said.
I looked up at him, reluctantly meeting his gaze.
“Is it so difficult to look at me?” He held his hands out to his side. “Do you really dislike me so much?”
I didn’t want him to know how much I cared. How much my feelings had grown for him since my rescue. He was the only one who hadn’t made me feel all victim-y and TSTL, too stupid to live. But he’d always been strictly professional with me, and I knew how much he liked, maybe even loved, Sunny. I wouldn’t be second best, not for any man. I wanted someone who wanted me above all others.