Comes Now the Wicked Woodsman (9 page)

"Thank you," I whispered, dragging my clothes and boots back on while I evaded his outstretched hand. I couldn't forget him saying he shouldn't have brought me out here, couldn't unhear the tone of mistake and regret he had used.

"That was all I needed to be through with you forever."

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

Paisley

I retreated to the house, Braeden calling after me but not giving chase. Clumsy in getting dressed, I clutched at the edges of my coat and blasted through the front room and down the basement stairs.

If Clark or Rooster were on the first floor, I didn't see or hear them. The basement was empty except for Clover. But someone had brought a folding screen down, allowing her privacy where she recuperated on the foldout bed.

I didn't want to see her, at least not until I had scrubbed her brother's scent from my body, but my bag was on the other side of the screen. I whipped past the partition, mumbling something about a shower as I refused to look at her. Seeing my bag, I scooped it up and retreated to the far side of the basement where the brothers had added a bathroom.

As I locked the door behind me, some primitive part of my brain scanned the room for another way out. But I was underground and, unless the shower curtain pulled back to reveal a staircase, I was little better than a caged rat.

I stripped, wishing I could incinerate the clothes. Pulling the sweater up over my head, I caught a whiff of the very reason why I wanted to burn everything. Salt and earth mixed with pine cones so freshly sprouted I could imagine my fingers sticky from touching them.

Damn it, I cursed. Why was I still in love with the bastard? Especially when practically everything I knew about him was a lie?

Pulling back the curtain, I kicked my clothes into a pile and cranked the hot water on. I stepped in, drew the curtain shut and reached for the body wash. I needed to erase him, to scrub and scald his presence from my flesh. My nails raked my skin, the hot water turning me pink.

Shoving a hand between my thighs, I winced. I was sore, the labia still plumped from the punishing thrusts we had made against one another. I tried to wash gently, but the skin was too sensitive, the pain threatening to flash over to pleasure with the smallest change in pressure.

I twisted the hot water off and the cold water on.

Braeden and the memory of his touching me would not rule my body. I didn't care if I turned into an ice cube from my efforts to erase him.

Hair washed and every limb shaking from the cold, I finished the shower and toweled off. I sat on the toilet, still shivering. I didn't need to pee, just needed to prolong my time in the tiled sanctuary away from the shifters on the other side of the door.

I didn't think I could bear to see even Clover, the one person I'd poured my heart out to growing up. There had been no real secrets between us -- at least on my part. Obviously she'd been holding a big one back.

Now I hated her brother -- or was trying hard to make myself feel that way. And I hated that the secret she'd been hiding all these years was putting my life at risk.

But I loved her. That wasn't going to change.

Hands closed in fists, I rapped the back of my fingers hard against my forehead, beating back the threat of another emotional meltdown. Everything was fucked. I was supposed to be mourning my grandmother and selling off her livestock, not wondering if I would be dead in thirty days or married off to someone I didn't love.

No -- that was the one thing I was certain of. I'd rather die than marry someone I didn't love.

Grumbling, I picked through the bag and pulled out a long flannel nightgown and fresh panties. I put everything on slowly and squeezed as much moisture as I could from my hair, stalling my exit from the bathroom as long as possible.

Teeth polished to a pearly shine, I finally opened the door. Only pride kept me from slamming it shut as I saw Braeden sitting in a recliner, his hard stare boring into me. Lifting my chin, I hugged my bag tight against my chest and walked to the other side of the partition without looking at him a second time.

As soon as I rounded the screen, I saw Clover's hands moving in a flurry. With her brother in the room and able to hear every last sound, she was signing. I put my bag down, my gaze averted as I struggled with a fresh pain.

We had been fourteen when she first suggested we learn how to sign. I had spent the night at her house three times before, gran allowing it despite my already obvious crush on Braeden who, at twenty, was the only adult in the Hughes household.

Now I knew why she had suggested we take up signing -- there was no privacy around shifters, not within a football field of them and probably not even then.

Her fist hit the mattress on the sofa bed and she grunted at me. Huffing, I looked at her, turned my palms up and away from my body, my face corkscrewing in a question.

"What?" I signed.

Now that she had my attention, she didn't seem to know what she wanted to say. Her hands retreated to her lap and primly folded around one another. A full minute or more passed, each of us studying the other's face, and then she brought one hand up in a fist, pressed it center of her chest and rubbed a circle twice like a second hand chasing its way around the face of a clock.

"Sorry," she signed.

I shook my head, angry at myself for being angry at her. Moving toward the side of the bed, I signed the query of whether I could sleep next to her. She nodded, her green gaze soulful as she helped me pull back the blankets.

On the other side of screen, Braeden cleared his throat. The sound was distant and I figured he hadn't moved from the recliner. I huffed in response anyway. I didn't care how he felt about what had happened in the barn. That little throat clearing was a direct intrusion I didn't want to deal with.

I wanted to forget him completely.

"Do you know what they want me to do?" I signed.

Dropping her gaze, Clover nodded. Her head tilted slightly toward the screen in reference to her brother. Reaching out, I curled a finger under her chin and drew her gaze back to me. I brought my index and middle finger down to touch my thumb while I shook my head.

Me being with Braeden was never going to happen again.

Frowning, she folded the pinkie and ring finger of her right hand down and tapped her forehead twice with the tip of her thumb.

I repeated the sign. "Rooster?"

"He likes you," she signed back.

I shook my head. It was crazy. I'd hung around the brothers in the past, mostly because Clover and I were attached at the hip the last two years before I went to college.

She received the invitations, I didn't.

That was the problem with Taron's plan that no one but me seemed to understand. There wasn't a single male in Night Falls that had ever so much as hinted that he liked me. I'd gone off to college thinking I had to be the ugliest of ugly ducklings. It had taken the first two years to get past the idea that any boy that complimented me wasn't just looking to add another notch to his dorm room bedpost no matter how ugly the chick he had to bang to earn it.

Sinking into the pillow, I changed the topic.

"Did your parents really die in a car crash?" I signed.

Clover took so long to answer I thought I had messed up signing. The language was as much context as signs and not every English word had a sign. Plus we were no longer face to face.

She sighed then signed her answer. "No."

My nose stung instantly at her response. The snarky follow-up of whether her parents were even dead came to mind, but I didn't doubt they were gone or that she had lost them traumatically. I'd heard her sobs, seen her tears and the way the memories made her body shake.

The way they died, though, was still a lie and we had bonded, in part, over that lie, the supposed manner of her parents death a mirror to my own loss.

On the other side of the room, the recliner squeaked as Braeden got up, his boots falling softly on the carpeted floor. Seconds later, his shadow fell across the screen and he cleared his throat like we didn't know he was there.

"You need to stop signing and get some sleep," he said, still hiding behind the partition.

"How do you know what I'm doing?" Clover asked.

I could only see the side of her face, but the one cheek had turned a guilty pink.

He popped his head around the screen, his gaze bouncing off mine just as I twisted so I wouldn't have to see him.

"I can hear your fingers moving," Braeden growled. "Now get to sleep. We're going home tomorrow."

"We?" she asked.

Blood rushed to my ears as my pulse sped up. I didn't know why my body reacted as it did, couldn't name what I was afraid of or possibly excited by. Would I be going to Braeden's house or left with the brothers? Maybe I would be shuttled off someplace else.

"The three of us," he answered, his voice growing rougher with each word. "Taron wants everyone to pull in closer to the clubhouse. He's even coming down from his mountain with Onyx."

Nausea washed over me. If the president of the club was circling the wagons, then the danger from the shooter wasn't over.

I had two very different guns aimed at my head.

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

Braeden

We left before dawn, Clover protesting the early wakeup call, Paisley keeping her complaints to herself and looking anywhere but in my direction.

While the girls dressed and Paisley gathered their things for Clark to haul out to his truck, I talked with Taron. The search teams at Holly Ulster's spread had reported back to him.

Beyond the slugs we'd already recovered, we had nothing.

Nada.

Jack shit.

The shooter had used kerosene to erase his scent at the spot where he waited for the girls to emerge from the house. Brass had been policed as well as any other disposables. Shoe prints and the stink of the fuel led to a creek.

The teams covered miles up and down the creek searching for the trail to pick up again but had come up empty.

"You said there was a video?" Clover asked from the far side of the truck's bench seat as I drove the girls into town.

Paisley was stuck between us so she couldn't do something stupid -- like jump out of Clark's truck while it was moving. The brothers and two other Woodsmen escorted us on their bikes, one pair ahead, one behind.

I answered with a grunt. I didn't want to discuss the video, didn't want to think about it. Paisley hitting the dirt had replayed at least a hundred times in my mind since I watched the video at the clubhouse. That and Rooster's scent on her had made me reckless, ruined any chance of her selecting me as a mate.

"I'll need to inspect it," Clover chirped from her side of the truck.

She was about to go into boss mode, I could tell by her tone. Sometimes it was cute, even helpful, but not at that moment, not with Paisley holding herself so tight she was probably leaving bruises on her fair skin.

"Garland's looking at it."

"Garland is a kid," she sniffed. "Not to mention he's all about the hardware."

I almost laughed at her calling him a kid. Granted, she was a little over five years older and he wasn't quite eighteen, but the boy was every bit as mature as my little sister -- which wasn't saying much.

"Text him," I suggested.

She wiggled around, found her phone and launched what I jokingly thought of as her
furious fingers of doom
.

Glancing in the rear view mirror, I caught Paisley staring at my reflection. Her gaze darted away, her body managing to become even stiffer. If she didn't loosen up a little before we got home, her legs would be Jell-O and I'd have to carry her inside.

Over the threshold...

The irony of having to carry her into my house as if we'd just been married didn't amuse me.

Fingers strumming against the steering wheel, I cursed the lead pair of Woodsmen for driving too damn slow. I needed to get home, slap some plywood up on Clover's bedroom window so no one could crawl in -- or out -- and set a guard on the house then get the hell away for a few hours while Paisley settled in.

"Get this," Clover said, interrupting my thoughts as they turned to wondering which one of the Woodsmen would be the first to knock on my door to court Paisley.

"What?" I asked, my voice coming out too damn old and tired.

"Mallory claims he got a text with a link and that when he clicked on the link, the video downloaded."

"Yeah?" I knew that already. Mallory had said as much at the meeting.

"There's no text on his phone -- it magically disappeared. There's just the video."

"The dumb ass deleted the text?" I asked.

"He's accusing Garland of deleting it," Clover answered, her fingers still speeding across her screen as she texted the boy. "And he's saying if Garland didn't do it, then the sender must have."

For the first time since crawling into the cab, Paisley spoke. "Don't both people have to be using some kind of app to do that?"