Thank You For Not Shifting (Peculiar Mysteries Book 2) (13 page)

“Well, you can start by actually telling me. Have you tried that? Like ever?” He opened his mouth then snapped it shut. “Exactly!” I said. “Unlike Sunny, I’m not a freaking psychic or a mind reader. How am I supposed to know how you feel if you don’t say so?”

“I usually don’t have to spell it out.”

“Usually?” A vision of Bethany Hilliard fawning all over him popped into my head. “Usually! I’m not one of your bimbos, either. I have standards, and those standards don’t include standing in line behind a bunch of women to get my Billy Bob fix. Just because I’m in love with you doesn’t mean I’m going to fall down on my knees and thank my lucky stars you want me. I hate to tell you this, buddy, but you aren’t the only man in town who finds me attractive.”

“What did you say?”

“You aren’t the only one who thinks I’m cute!”

“Before that.”

“I’m not going stand in line behind your parade of—”

“After that.” His voice was low and dangerous. He was up on me again, close enough that the heat of his chest warmed my cheeks.

“I…” What had I said? I’d been so caught up in my angry rant. There was stuff about falling at his feet, and… oh, shoot. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You said you love me.”

“I love a lot of people.” I started counting on my fingers. “There’s Babe, Sunny, Jude, Jo Jo, my parents sometimes…”

“And me.”

I couldn’t meet his gaze, so instead I rolled my eyes.

He cupped my chin and tilted my face back.

Reluctantly, I looked him in the eye.

“And me, Chavvah.”

The way he stared at me, as if I were an oasis at the end of a long desert walk, made it hard to deny him anything, even the words he so badly wanted to hear from me. “Why?” I asked. “Why are you putting me through this?”

“Don’t you know?” He dipped his head and brushed my lips with his. “I’m in love with you, too.”

“I…” Wow, this was not the way I had thought this night would turn out. Not at all. “How can I believe you?”

He stepped back, his exasperation apparent. “Why are you so difficult?” He threw up his arms.

It dawned on me that I never see Billy Bob mad or angry or irritated with anyone but me. The realization made me smile.

“What?” he asked. “Why are you smiling?”

I shook my head and giggled. Damn it.

“And now you’re laughing.”

“You really have no idea, do you?” I stripped my shirt over my head and exposed my naked breasts to him.

“What are you doing?” His tone was suspicious.

I pushed my sweatpants down, after giving only a moment's consideration as to whether I’d shaved recently or not. “Well,” I said to him.

“Well, what?” His erection was pretty adamant now as he stared at my body with a hungry gaze.

I held my hands out to my sides, palms up in invitation. “Are you going to stand there all night, or are you going to come get me?”

The low, rumbly groan that tore from his lips as he closed the distance between us made my thighs quiver. Billy Bob lifted me from the fur-covered floor. I wrapped my legs around his waist, feeling his thickness slide against me. He moaned as his fingers tangled in my hair and he buried his face in the crook of my neck. He nipped and licked my skin, teasing me, as he tugged on my ponytail hard enough to expose my throat. I felt his teeth clamp down over my carotid.

The heat of his breath, the slight pain of his bite, it made me feel heady with need. I whimpered, rubbing myself against his abdomen. “Oh, Billy Bob,” I muttered. “God, I want you.”

His mouth sought mine, and we merged in a dance of lips, teeth, and tongues. It was as if I could feel him pouring his passion into me through my mouth. I fought to give him as good as he was getting, and when he backed me up against the lodge wall support, pulled my legs up higher, and entered me, I cried out at the sheer relief I felt having him so deep inside me.

His grunts and moans matched my own as sweat poured down our bodies. I grasped him tightly, loving the friction of my breasts against his slick chest as he thrust into me over and over.

“Yes!” I made the word a demand. It had been so long since I’d held anyone, and never a man who made me feel one iota of the emotion or pleasure I felt right now. The burning edges of climax warmed my body and heat pulsed through my groin. So when he shouted something unintelligible and guttural, I exploded around him. Pleasure ripped through me like a chainsaw, just as brutal and just as messy.

Billy Bob groaned as his grip on me tightened. His thrusting quickened until he gave one final stroke that he held until he spent himself inside me. I collapsed against his shoulder, my sweaty body slipping as his grip loosened. Gently, he withdrew from me and set me down. My jelly legs could barely hold me up, so I was grateful he kept his arms wrapped around me.

He put his forehead against mine, his eyes closed. “That wasn’t how I imagined our first time.”

“Oh,” I said, unable to keep the lazy smile off my face. “And how did you imagine it, because frankly, if it gets more exciting than that I might need a better health insurance plan.”

He laughed now and met my gaze. “You are an unpredictable woman, Chavvah Trimmel.”

“Is that what I am?”

His smile faded and the lines around his eyes deepened. “I am in love with you. I have been for a very long time. I apologize that I did not make my intentions clear to you from the moment I realized you were the one.”

“And when did you realize?”

He smiled. “It was shortly after you’d started to mend your broken femur.” He meant my thigh bone. “I wanted to help you walk, and you wanted to do it on your own.”

I nodded, my forehead rubbing against his. “I remember that.”

“You said, “I’m stronger than I look,” and I thought, you are stronger than anyone I’ve ever met. You kept yourself from shifting while those men did terrible things to you. You kept your will to live after three weeks of starvation and torture. And when you came home, you fought to heal on your own terms. I’d never seen anyone so stubborn and fierce.” He kissed me again, his touch tender and sweet. “And I knew.”

I couldn’t keep the grin off my face. “You have weird taste in women.”

“You’re telling me.”

“Doc,” I said.

“Yes?” He kissed me again.

I kissed him back and traced his face with my fingers. I still found it hard to believe I was touching him, that he was in love with me, and that he wanted to be mine and mine alone. I loved the way his heart beat so hard I could feel it in my own chest, the way his breath cooled my hot, sweaty skin, and I loved the way he looked at me like a woman worthy of worship. “All right,” I admitted. “I am in love with you too.”

“I’m glad,” he said with a happy sigh. “So very glad.”

“So…” I squirreled my mouth sideways. “What’s all the spirit talker nonsense, and how can you explain to me how I’m turning into a wolf?”

“How about if we go up to the house and shower first, then I’ll explain what I can?”

A shower with Billy Bob sounded just about perfect. “Deal.”

He swept me off my feet, literally, holding me in the cradle of his arms. “You’re slippery.”

“Don’t let me go,” I said, embarrassed when a giggle slipped out.

“I don’t plan to.” His gaze narrowed on me. “Ever.”

* * * *

The shower had been just as hot as the sweat lodge, and I wasn’t talking about the water. I never knew how dirty getting clean could be, but I was ready to roll in mud if it would get me back there quicker. Billy Bob kept touching me, even after, as if he thought I’d disappear if we weren’t anchored to each other. Had I really been so awful that he thought I was going to bolt the second I got a chance to really think about the ramifications of being a lycanthrope’s mate?

Holy shit. A lycanthrope’s mate. How the hell did I explain that to my parents? And, crap, I’d never hear the end of it from Sunny. That bitch was never going to let up with all the I-told-you-sos and the happiness talk. What was I getting myself into?

He kissed me, and I swear to God I felt as if he were filling me up like an empty gas tank on payday.

He smoothed back my hair, still wet from our shower. “Let’s get dressed. We’ll talk in the kitchen,” Billy Bob said. “If we stay in the bedroom, I can’t be responsible for my actions.” Billy Bob’s hand trailed down my back, making me shiver in all the right places.

Whatever I was getting into, I knew for certain, I didn’t want out.

While he ran to get my clothes out of the sweat lodge, I hurried to the car and retrieved the star.

By the time I dressed and got into the kitchen, Billy Bob had tea and sandwiches ready. I was starving now—lycanthropes had big appetites.

I sat across from him and said, “Okay, spill.”

“Brother Wolf is an animal spirit. He began talking to me after my grandfather died. He taught me the ways of healing the soul. I went to med school because my calling to heal was so strong, I wanted to be able to help people in all ways.”

His altruism made me feel inadequate. “My only goal was to open a restaurant with my best friend so we could hang out all day together. I’m a total asshole compared to you.”

“True,” he said without a hint of humor.

“Hey!”

“I’m kidding. Brother Wolf was my grandfather’s spirit guide. He was a shaman for our people.” Saying “our people” pained him.

“Other lycanthropes?” I realized I knew nothing about the way wolves lived. Other than Billy Bob, I’d never met anyone of his kind. “Did you live in a pack?”

“Of a sort,” he said. “We live in groups, but it’s not like fiction books where there is one alpha for each pack.”

“It rarely is.” I laughed. “I’ve seen what stories get made up about therians. Hell, most writers don’t even get the language right.” I drew him in close to me and relished the feel of his hands on my back as he wrapped me in his arms. “You mean you aren’t going to go all he-wolf-alpha on me? Wait. You already did.” I matched his wicked grin with one of my own. “Okay. Tell me about Brother Wolf.”

“He’s a guardian.” He shook his head. “Of sorts. He can’t intervene with the mortal plane. He can only interact. The fact that he chose you…”

“Because you prayed for me.” And he’d done that before he loved me. It really did say a lot about Billy Bob as a man.

“I wish I—”

“We can’t turn back time,” I interrupted. When he didn’t say anything, I asked, “We can’t turn back time, right?”

“No. We can’t turn back time, but if I could, I would kill them all. I would do it with my bare hands.”

“You’re a healer, not a killer. I like that about you. I don’t want you to change because you’re angry on my behalf.”

“But these killers, whoever they are, I’m afraid, Chavvah. I’m afraid for you. It’s why I want you here.”

“So you can babysit me?”

“Yes.”

His bluntness threw me. “I’m not a baby, Doc. Bad things happen. If anyone knows it’s true, it’s me. But I can’t hide from evil. It finds us no matter where we are. I won’t pretend to understand everything going on with me. These changes. You say I turned into a wolf, and I believe you. You’re stubborn, egotistical, and a general pain in my ass, but you’re not a liar.”

“You have the sweetest way with words.”

“You say this voice in my head that showed up as some dark shadowy figure is a spirit guide named Brother Wolf, I’ll allow it. We both saw him and heard him, which means unless you were burning drugs in that sweat lodge fire pit—” I tucked my chin for a second then tilted my head back to glare at him. “You didn’t put hallucinogens in the fire did you? That shit is still illegal in this state.”

“No, Chavvah. No drugs,” he said, then muttered, “not this time, anyhow.”

I let it go. “So we can discount mass hysteria. The stuff about me being a spirit walker.”

“Spirit-talker.”

“Whatever. Can we push pause on all this mystical hoodoo voodoo monkey magic until we can figure out whose killing people around here? This is making my brain hurt. I wish the Jubilee had never come to town.”

His face held a look of disappointment. “If that’s what you wish.”

“I wish. Definitely.”

“Okay.”

Speaking of the killer. “Having sex with you wasn’t the reason I drove out here tonight.”

“No?”

“Oh, don’t look hurt. You were a pleasant bonus.”

“That’s a consolation.”

“Sheesh.”

“Why did you come tonight, Chavvah?”

Every time he said my name, my heart skipped a beat. I think he knew it too. “I want to get a look at the second body. Maybe the first one as well. And I wanted to show you something.”

He dropped his gaze to my T-shirt.

“Ha, ha. No, I mean something else. But first, did you smell sassafras on them?”

Billy Bob blinked. “Yes,” he said.

“On the second guy as well?”

“Yes.” He tapped his chin. “And little else, other than blood and meat. There’s been a lot of it going around the fair. I didn’t think much of it.”

“Could the killer have used it to mask his own scent?”

“It’s not a bad deduction. I didn’t smell anyone else on the bodies. Just their own stench and the light smell of sassafras.”

I pulled the star from my sweatpants’ pocket and held it out for him to see. “Roger Messer found this while he was cleaning the restaurant for me. It feels important.”

“What is it?” When he reached for it, I pulled it back. He didn’t try to touch it again.

“An eight-point star,” I told him. I turned it in my hand, my fingers tracing the twisted edges.

“It could be something to do with religion or rituals, or it could be some kid’s trinket,” he said.

I clasped the star in my fist, and I swear I felt it pulse again. “I can’t shake the feeling that it has to do with the killings. Do you know who the second victim is?”

“Jerard Blackwell.”

“Blackwell?” I’d heard that name, but where? “Jerard? As in, Jerry? A woman was asking about him this morning at the police station. A chick named Willy Boden.”

Billy Bob groaned. “I’ve met her.”

I grinned. “She’s feisty, for sure. Anyhow, she was looking for this guy. Said he’d gone missing.” Once again, I was relieved that the victim wasn’t someone I knew and loved. “Was it the same as the first one?”