Beautiful Villain

by Sophie Stern

  Contents

  Beautiful Villain

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Epilogue

  Author

  Readers!

  More shifters!

  The Wolf’s Darling

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Beautiful Villain

  Sophie Stern

  Copyright © 2018 by Sophie Stern

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Neil Coleman is the most confident, arrogant, over-the-top cocky jerk I've ever met.

  Word on the street is that he just got out of prison for murder. Murder! In a town like Kurlin, that sort of thing just doesn't happen, but it did. I know what happened that night. Most people don't, but I do. It was a brutal murder and even now, five years later, it kind of feels like it just happened. I've always thought there was more to the story than what Neil let on, but no one could ever prove he was innocent, and Neil wasn't exactly talking.

  Only now he's back, and something tells me he's going to be out for revenge.

  When he walks back into Kurlin, he holds his arrogant head high. It would be wrong for me to get involved with a guy like Neil. He's got a lot on his plate. He's been through hell and back again and honestly, I don't have time for drama.

  But he's a beautiful villain, and I just can't stay away.

  Prologue

  Finley

  Five years ago

  The scream that fills the air chills me to my core.

  Who is it? Who’s crying out? Who’s in trouble?

  Someone sounds like they’re hurt.

  Or worse.

  This isn’t the innocent scream of surprise when your friend jumps out and scares you on Halloween. This isn’t the kind of scream that happens because you’re shocked.

  No, this scream is something different.

  Something much more horrible.

  This is the scream of someone who is in pain.

  The entire town seems to fall completely silent except for the scream. I’m standing next to my car in the high school parking lot. The football game ended an hour ago, but I’m still here talking to Susie and James.

  “What the fuck was that?” James asks. He tenses, and I know that I must look just as scared as he does right now.

  “It came from the woods,” Susie whispers.

  We all look in that direction and the scream comes again.

  “We should call the cops,” I say. I’m not going over there to find out what’s going on. No way. No how. That’s so not my thing.

  Just as the words leave my mouth, though, we hear sirens. A lot of them. They rush past us: three different cop cars. They all have their lights on and every single one of the cars is speeding.

  “Where the fuck are they going?” Susie asks.

  “More importantly, who the hell are they after?” James asks.

  We stand in silence for a long time, but something has changed in the air. I don’t know what’s going on or what’s going to happen next, but one thing is for sure: nothing is ever going to be the same after this.

  Chapter One

  Finley

  Present Day

  Kurlin isn’t exactly a town that’s known for its incredible night life. In fact, the most interesting thing that’s happened this year is that Mrs. Walker’s prized petunia plants were eaten by a feral cat. She’s out for blood and has started a petition to clean up the town of cats.

  All of the cat lovers have been taking in all of the strays they can find for fear that Mrs. Walker will go after them or drive them to animal shelters and drop them off. Nobody thinks she’ll do anything crazy like shoot them, but I saw her talking to someone about getting some cat traps for her yard, so I don’t think I’d put it past her.

  Kurlin is, generally speaking, a very quiet town. There’s not a lot to do and not a lot to see. With a small population, it’s a pretty gossipy sort of town. Everyone knows everyone, and their mom, and their grandmother. It’s not the type of place where anyone really ever forgets anything, either, and I think that’s why I was so totally surprised when everyone stopped talking about Neil Coleman.

  He was the bad boy at my high school and even back then, he was like a delicious truffle I just couldn’t turn down. No, he never really looked twice at me, but I couldn’t stop looking at him. Even then, with my head in a book, I was always thinking about him.

  Now the world seems to have moved on. Everyone’s stopped whispering about the night of the murder. Nobody really wants to know what happened. Everyone stopped asking questions, and to be honest, it’s really kind of strange to me.

  Kurlin isn’t the type of place that ever really forgets about anything, so why this?

  Why has everyone seemingly forgotten about Sammy’s death?

  Only, they haven’t forgotten about Neil and what people think he did. The death part is what people don’t talk about. They don’t feel sorry for Sammy’s daddy and they don’t feel upset that he passed away. What they hate is the idea that Neil Coleman did it, and they hate the idea that he’s still alive.

  I shouldn’t be worried, though. As I sit at the front desk of the library flipping through some of the new books we just got in, I find myself daydreaming. That happens far too much. The truth is that it’s been five years since Neil was carted away. Five years and I still find my thoughts wandering to him.

  I shouldn’t worry about him or think about him.

  I definitely shouldn’t be writing him letters.

  But I do.

  Nobody knows – not even the postal carriers. I don’t put my return address on the letters and I never drop them in the mailbox when anyone else is around. There are no security cameras at our local post office, so I don’t have to worry about anyone finding them.

  I need to start letting go of the past. It’s true, but I don’t know how to start.

  “Excuse me, miss?” A tiny, squeaky voice draws me from my daydreams and I look up to see a girl standing in front of the librarian’s desk. There’s only one desk in the one-room library, and it’s mine. It’s not exactly an information desk and I can’t really call it the check-out desk even though that’s what it essentially is. It’s just labeled “LIBRARIAN.”

  “How can I help you?” I ask. She’s got blonde pigtails and they’re bouncing as she jumps up and down in front of the desk.

  “Can I use a computer?” She asks me. I look over at the row of five computers. Eleanor, our head librarian, purchased them last year, and they’ve been the most popular part of the library ever since. There’s an empty computer, right on the end, so I nod.

  “Of course,” I say. I generate a password for her and hand it over. “It’s a one-hour time limit,” I tell her. “But if you need more time, just let me know.” I wink, letting her know she’s welcome to stay longer if she needs to. In a town like Kurlin, sometimes kids need a little extra time. I try not to judge the parents who live here. Most of them are very poor and many of them are unemployed. Sometimes going to the library is the safest activity for the kids here. If they weren’t here, they might be sitting at home alone or wandering around town on their own.

  “Thank you,” the girl squeaks out, and she he
ads to one of the desks.

  My daydreaming time has effectively come to an end, so I shove the letter I was working on in the bottom of my backpack and zip up the bag. Nobody needs to know what I do in my free time and nobody needs to know that I was working on a letter while on the job. I have a lot of down time at the library, and I spend way too much time thinking.

  That’s always been one of my biggest problems.

  Time passes, and soon it’s time to close up the library.

  “Five minutes,” I tell the last remaining patrons, and I start turning off the lights. I make sure the backdoor is locked, pack up my stuff, and wait for everyone to file out of the library. The kids run ahead, anxious to hurry home for dinner, but one of the older guys who comes in, Charles, takes his time leaving.

  “Busy day,” he tells me as we walk out together.

  “Did you get a lot of good reading done?” I ask him. Charles loves to come work on genealogy at the library. Sometimes he just reads the news, though.

  “A lot,” he says. “Lots of strange things happening today.”

  “Anything worth mentioning?”

  “The old Oak Creek Lumber Yard is opening back up,” he tells me. “At least, I think it is. Somebody just bought it.”

  “That old place?”

  “Yup.”

  “I’m surprised. It’s been empty forever.” We reach the front door and I set the alarm. Then the two of us head outside and I lock the exterior doors. “Who bought it?”

  “No clue,” he said. “Oh, and word on the street is that Coleman is back in town,” he lowers his voice conspiratorially. “And you know what that means.”

  My blood runs cold.

  Neil?

  Back in town?

  I had no idea.

  All of these years I’ve been writing to him and he’s never written back. How could he? I never gave him my damn address. I’ve written to him every week for five years, though, and used him as a sort of sounding board for my own thoughts. If I’m honest, me talking to him has been therapeutic: kind of like keeping a diary.

  Only, it’s a diary that someone – maybe – has read.

  I’ve told him all of my secrets and all of my failures and sometimes, I’ve even told him my hopes, but I never really thought he’d come back, and now I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do.

  “What’s he doing in town?” I ask. I try to keep my tone casual. There’s no chance this guy knows that I used to know Neil. This guy definitely doesn’t know I’ve been writing to him.

  “Who knows?” The old man says. “But it can’t be anything good, now can it?”

  He shakes his head, waves goodbye, and takes off down the street. Now it’s just me versus the world. I carefully make my way to my dark blue Nissan Versa Note. It’s a beautiful car, but tiny and compact. It works for my needs, though. It gets me where I need to go and nowhere else.

  That’s fine.

  Right now, though, I have a million questions running through my head. I had no idea Neil was getting out of prison. I seriously had no idea. Was it for good behavior? Is that actually a thing? I don’t know. I start driving home, but instead of turning down Brookside Lane and heading to my house, I find myself over on East Perry Avenue. My car slows to a crawl all on its own as I pass by Neil’s old house.

  It’s shuttered over and the pain is peeling. Nobody ever moved in after he was taken away. He rented the house with another guy. They were freshmen in college when it happened. The landlord tried to sell the house several times, but everyone started calling it The Murder House, and well, nobody wants to move into a murder house.

  I peer at the house.

  Is he in there?

  Would he have gone back?

  I don’t know.

  I don’t think so, but…

  Neil’s a murderer. A villain. A bad guy. Bad guys are weird and they don’t exactly make the best choices. Maybe he thought crawling back into that hidey hole of a house would be a good idea, but maybe not. It looks pretty empty to me: totally abandoned. Slowly, I pull my eyes back to the road and drive the rest of the way home.

  I park in my little driveway and head up to my front door. My two-story house is pretty damn small: only two bedrooms. Still, it’s enough for me. I don’t make much as a librarian, but I make enough to afford a cute little house in Kurlin, and that’s what I care about. Fidgeting for my keys, I start shaking as I try to open the door. I don’t know why the news about Neil has me all shaken up.

  I don’t know why I suddenly care so much.

  Shit.

  It’s not like we were ever an item. My obsession with him isn’t healthy, I know. I can’t want him to come talk to me and be like, “Hey, thanks for all the mail!” I mean, if I really wanted to talk to him, I probably should have just told him who I was, right?

  Instead, I flaked out. I lost my nerve. I signed every letter with a pseudonym: cupcake.

  It’s a name I was given in high school after winning our yearly baking competition. It was a silly event we did to raise money for our town’s nursing home, but every single year I’d make a different kind of cupcake.

  And every single year, I’d win.

  He couldn’t possibly know which girl from his high school was writing. As far as I know, he never so much as looked at a carb in his life. Not Mr. Coleman. Not him.

  I finally manage to get my door open and move inside the house. I slam the door shut a little too hard and the walls shake.

  “Shit,” I mutter, and I turn around to lock the door. Then I kick my shoes off. I’ll never be one of those women who can wear shoes in the house. I don’t know why, but it’s just not something I’ve ever been able to get comfortable with.

  It feels good to be barefoot again, though, and I smile to myself as I wiggle my toes against the carpet.

  “Echo!” I call out for my little black kitten. “It’s dinnertime.” I have a can of wet cat food in my bag that Echo is going to go absolutely nuts for. One of my patrons brought it to me today as a gift because she knows just how much Echo loves to eat.

  I turn back around to face my living room and that’s when I see Echo.

  Only, Echo isn’t running toward me, excited and ready to eat.

  Nope.

  Echo is sitting in the lap of one very tall, very dark, and very handsome man.

  Neil Coleman is in my living room.

  Okay, I guess he figured out it was me.

  “Hello, Cupcake,” he says.

  Shit.

  Chapter Two

  Neil

  “H-H-How did you know where to find me?” She whispers.

  Finley Peterson is perhaps the cutest, dumbest girl on the face of the planet. How did I know where to find her? Well, she wrote me a letter almost every damn day for five years. It wasn’t as hard to track her down as I think she was expecting.

  All I had to do was look up the name of our high school with the word “cupcake” to find out exactly who she was.

  Four-time Kurlin High School baking champion.

  Yeah.

  That’s Finley.

  “Trade secret,” I say, and I continue petting the kitten in my lap as I look at her. Finley looks less scared than I thought she would. She looks more…well, she looks a little aroused, to be honest. Does my sweet cupcake have a dark side? Does she have a kidnapping fantasy? Is she into kink? I wouldn’t have thought so, but judging by the way she’s licking her lips, well, I think it’s safe to say we’ll both be having dessert tonight.

  I set the kitten down. Echo, she called him. The kitten immediately takes off: probably scampering for the kitchen. Finley stands perfectly still and just looks at me.

  “What are you doing here?” She whispers.

  “I think you know the answer to that,” I say.

  Finley Peterson is the most interesting woman in the damn world. She’s written me letter after letter. I have no idea why she started writing to me, but I’m not about to complain about that. Her words kept
me sane for five long years. For five years, I sat in a fucking box and rotted away for something I didn’t do, and Finley…

  Well, Finley is my salvation.

  I don’t know if she has a boyfriend or a girlfriend or someone she’s been looking twice at, but she’s mine now. I’m here, and I’m not about to let the best thing that ever happened to me go. I don’t really care if I have to take her by force or not, but damn, if I don’t think she’s going to melt in my hands like butter.

  I decide to push my luck.

  I take a step closer to her, and she doesn’t move. She doesn’t flinch or run away. She just looks at me. When she stares at me, I get the distinct impression that she’s looking at the old me: the me from before. That’s not a feeling I ever get.

  When most people stare at a convict, they look at them like they’re utter trash. That’s the type of look I’m used to. Even when I took the bus here, I was gawked at and stared at like I’d killed some poor old woman’s dog.

  I didn’t.

  I didn’t do any of that.

  But Finley looks at me like she fucking believes in me, like she believes me, and I don’t know whether I should love that or hate it.

  Before I can do anything else, she throws herself at me, and my body instantly reacts. She wraps her arms around me and pulls me close to her.

  “I’m so glad you’re okay,” she whispers.

  She doesn’t know why I was locked up. Nobody knows. That’s because some powerful men paid to make sure that nobody would ever find out exactly what happened all those years ago. She doesn’t know whether I’m guilty or innocent or somewhere in-between, but Finley also doesn’t seem to care. She just hugs me, holding me like I matter to her, and that breaks my damn heart because I know beyond a doubt that I’m never going to be good enough for her.

  “Stop,” I whisper, choking out the word, and I pull back from her.

  “What is it?” Finley whispers, looking up at me. Then she looks down at my cock and whispers, “Oh.”