Comes Now the Wicked Woodsman

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.

********************

Book two in the
Night Falls
series. For maximum clarity, read Braeden and Paisley's story after
Ride the Wicked Woodsman
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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."

********************

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.