Brick House: Blue Collar Wolves #2 (Mating Season Collection)
Read Brick House: Blue Collar Wolves #2 (Mating Season Collection) Online
Authors: Ronin Winters,Mating Season Collection
Blue Collar Wolves #2
Mating Season #11
Ronin Winters
Romantic Geek Publishing
BRICK HOUSE (BLUE COLLAR WOLVES #2) (MATING SEASON #11)
Romantic Geek Publishing
Copyright © 2015 Ronin Winters
E-book ISBN 978-1-938593-26-0
Kindle Edition
Publication Date: July 2015
Editor: Sara Lunsford
Cover Design: Croco Designs
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ALL RIGHTS RESERVED:
This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons – living or dead – is purely coincidental.
Mating Season – Books Released so Far
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The Mating Season
The mating moon is rising…
Blue Collar Wolves
Steel
(coming soon)
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FACEBOOK FAN GROUP FOR THE MATING SEASON!
The mating moon is rising…
Books Currently Released (In Order):
1.
Temptation (Grey Wolves Rising #1)
2.
Brindle (Winter Valley Wolves #1)
3.
Hero (Wolves of Angels Rest #1)
4.
Jace (Wolves of the Rising Sun #1)
5.
Iron (Blue Collar Wolves #1)
6.
Wild (Devils Point Wolves #1)
7.
Obsession (Grey Wolves Rising #2)
8.
Bosun (Winter Valley Wolves #2)
9.
Joker (Wolves of Angels Rest #2)
10.
Aiden (Wolves of the Rising Sun #2)
11.
Brick House (Blue Collar Wolves #2)
The Mating Season began when six friends (who also happen to be Paranormal Romance Writers) got together and starting talking about how it was funny that authors could take the same premise but make such different stories around it.
A little more talk (and perhaps a little more wine – no telling) and they began to brainstorm about a werewolf world revolving around The Mating Season, a special time of year which would be the only time a werewolf could take a mate. One author suggested she would take a story this way while another laughed and cut her off and said, nope, she’d tell a story like this.
And then they all stopped and thought,
Hey, why don’t we write these different stories and release them all together in one collection?
So they did.
Six Authors. Six Different Packs. Eighteen Stories. And all of it revolving around One Premise – The Mating Season.
We are proud and excited to have worked on this project together. I hope you enjoy my take and my pack as they navigate The Mating Season, and please check out my friend’s packs and their takes on it as well.
–Ronin
‡
“Y
eah Dad, I’m
glad it’s just a sprain as well. You should tell Mom to quit panicking so quickly.” Melissa Harris took a sip of the too-sugary, too-milky coffee which was the usual start of her day and prayed to the gods of caffeine to hurry the eff up and start spiking through her system. With a night that included her son needing emergency care, the adrenaline rise and crash that came with getting that news, and then dealing with Danny’s ups and downs through the night as he dealt with the discomfort, sleep had been non-existent.
Her Dad chuckled at the long-running joke. Her mother was not and would never be a picture of calm and rational. “She feels bad, sweetheart. We’ve been talking about that stair for awhile.”
Dad didn’t say anything about feeling bad himself, but the self-disgust was evident in his voice. Her dad had bad knees and a bad back, and couldn’t fix their old house anymore, which meant every day was a new problem with never enough money to take care of it. If only she could wipe away the failure in her Dad’s voice, tell him he always did his best and the fact he couldn’t fix a step that ended up hurting his grandson didn’t lessen him, but it would be of no use. Her Dad had his pride, and the fact he couldn’t take care of her mother and his family like he used to was a blow to it.
Danny wasn’t the only reason she wasn’t sleeping last night. Lately she’d been having too many stupid fucking sleepless nights, where there was too much to think on. Once the mental listing began, she couldn’t turn her traitor brain off. It had to keep the refrain going on everything crazy in her life right now.
Dad, and how he and Mom were no longer getting old – they were old. Hopefully she had another thirty years with them, but they could no longer solely care for their house or for Danny.
As much as her mom loved Danny and as wonderful as they were together, Mom didn’t have the energy to look after her grandson anymore. Which meant babysitters. Which meant more money on top of the stacks of bills she already had and she was going to accumulate, because she needed to get someone to do several handyman jobs around the house, including that fucking stair. Yeah, Dad was going to take that well.
Brick and House, and how they were turning everything around inside her, bringing forth long-buried yearnings, making her wet and making her want.
They were
always
there, in reach. If she moved her hand only a little, covered only the distance of the bar, she would have skin against skin, warm skin, always carrying the tinge of oil and sweat and forest, making her mouth water with the desire to suck on it, to see if the taste matched the smell.
“It was nice of Brick and House to bring you last night.” To anyone who didn’t know him, Dad never sounded anything but relaxed and calm in most circumstances. It took years of living with the man to catch the nuance, and today’s was curiosity. In Dad speak, he was wondering about the wolves and where they fit in the overall picture. The timing of this talk was a bit weird considering her own headspace, but Dad has been eyeing Brick and House with his thinking look the last few times he’d been around the wolves, so it wasn’t unexpected.
“They were in the bar.”
“No surprise. They always seem to be in the bar when you’re working.” Yeah, when had the last time been when she’d been working til closing and they hadn’t been there? Not just one, but
both
of them, sitting together though rarely talking, and always right in front of her usual bar corner.
Dad wasn’t as involved with the wolves as she was. After she had been attacked back in seventh grade, she told him what had happened, because it never occurred to her not to share with her father. He’d then gone to talk to Iron’s father, and when he came back, he told her she could still be friends with Iron and Steel. That had been the extent of it. He treated Steel and Iron as he always had and hadn’t batted an eyelash when she told him she was going to work for Iron at the bar.
Not as involved didn’t mean not involved though. Iron and Steel jumped to attention when he made his occasional visit, not surprising since they grew up with him disciplining them just as their own parents did, and Dad would watch the games or grab a drink some weekends with a few of the older pack members. Werewolf or human, they all grew up working class, watching as the mills were shut down and the area’s economy collapsed, and only now was starting to pull itself free from the past. They were a unique generation, and those bonds were as strong as pack bonds.
Which meant Dad knew enough to have the same questions she had about Brick and House and how the two were acting around her.
Their behavior couldn’t be classified as friends helping friends. They’d only been part of the pack for less than two years, coming in under not-talked-about circumstances, so she hadn’t grown up with them. And though she worked for them and talked to them, she wouldn’t quite call the three of them
friends
. She would never call them up and chat on the phone for no reason. She wouldn’t show up at their house for fun. Never texted them because she was bored. There was a division that friends didn’t have with each other.
Then there was the face they didn’t seem to like each other that much, getting into fights other pack members had to get in the middle of to keep it from getting bloody. Yet they couldn’t seem to get away from each other, either.
They had this weird push-pull vibe that confused the hell out of her. It was unlike anything she’d ever seen from wolf or human. Right after they joined Steel’s pack, first thing they did was buy Old Man Tyler’s garage. As much as they fought, they still went into business together, not allowing anyone else to help them. It wasn’t until they got it up and running that they hired people, but those first months was the two of them together, alternately fighting and working on the cars, and damned if they didn’t make the garage a huge success, big enough that a couple months ago one of those cable stations called, wanting to make a series following them doing the car restorations.
That was nixed, for obvious reasons. Still, it spoke in some way to how in sync they were, that they could create that level of success and they could be such masters at what they did. While cars never interested her, the way Iron, Steel, Razor, and the other guys damn near swooned like maidens over each car restoration told her everything she needed to know about how good they were.
They even lived together in a huge, sprawling ranch-style that she’d been to once. From what she could tell, it looked almost like they divided it down the middle, with Brick taking one side and House taking the other. She’d asked Iron if they were gay and denying it or something, but while he never answered, the way he laughed so hard he fell off the stool indicated the answer was probably
no
.
So – back to her question. They weren’t her friends, and while the pack put up with her in varying amounts because she was friends with Iron and Steel, no other members tried to take care of her the way Brick and House did. They damn near blackmailed her into taking the bookkeeping job – which they paid her too much for but wouldn’t hear of giving her less money – and the first word about her needing something in their hearing meant it somehow got done….whether she wanted it or not. It was to the point she never mentioned a damn thing in that bar. Accepting the ride last night had been a one-off, and if she hadn’t wanted to get to Danny, she’d never have accepted, because now they were going to try twice as hard to get her to accept that new car they wanted her to have in the worst way. She was always relieved to go out of the bar and find her car hadn’t been bulldozed or blown up or something. But who in the hell wanted to give away cars when it didn’t involve family?
Why? It revolved around why. Nothing made sense in how they treated her. If she didn’t know better, she’d think she was a true mate to one of them. But it was both of them that acted like this, so it made no sense.