Brick House: Blue Collar Wolves #2 (Mating Season Collection)
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Brick House
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
To know when the next Ronin Winters book is released, please sign-up for her MAILING LIST.
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.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Books by Ronin Winters
Mating Season – Books Released so Far
What is The Mating Season?
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Note from Ronin Winters
About The Mating Season
About the Author
Social Media Links:
• Like Ronin Winters on Facebook
• Join the Mating Season Fan Group on Facebook
Books by Ronin Winters
The Mating Season
The mating moon is rising…
Blue Collar Wolves
Iron
Brick House
Steel (coming soon)
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RONIN WINTERS NEWSLETTER LIST!
Want to join fellow fans?
FACEBOOK FAN GROUP FOR THE MATING SEASON!
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)
What is The Mating Season Collection?
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
Chapter One
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“YEAH 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.
And the bitch of it was, it was getting to her. They were breaking her down, making her vulnerable in ways she’d sworn she never would be again.
She breathed easier when she entered the bar and saw them there. The highlight of her week was when she was at the garage doing the books, and she could look up from the numbers on the page to see Brick elbows deep in an engine, the biceps bunching as he pulled at stubborn parts, or admire the long lines of House’s backside as he was bent over and welding metal parts together.
And when one of them would glance at her, catching her eye, House giving her a small smile that lit his eyes or Brick’s face losing the eternal frown it seemed to carry, only when he was watching her? Every fucking time, her breath caught in her chest, expanding it past capacity to almost the point of hurt.
Her relationship with Brick and House was complete and total confusion, and she’d rather walk over glass than explain any of it to Dad. While trying to get things past him had always been useless, she was going to give it her best shot. “The bar is the place for the pack after dark. Of course they’ll be there.”
Dad’s voice took on the exasperated tone it only seemed to get with her, proving her thoughts on how well fooling him was going to go correct. “What do those boys want with you?”
Only her Dad would call two men who looked like Brick and House boys. Still, jig was up, and it would be nice to talk to someone. Bella was really the only other person she could talk to about this, but since hopefully Bella was getting her brains screwed out at this minute, Mel wasn’t going to call her oldest friend. “I’m stumped. Probably they are trying to help me out since they’re friends of Iron and Steel and know we all go back a long ways.”
Dad’s snort was shorthand Are you that naïve, or do you think I am? “They aren’t mated, but they’re always hanging around you – even during the mating season – because they’re friendly guys?”
“You know about the mating season?” Knowing about the wolves in general was one thing. Knowing about this, which was a private, intimate matter to the wolves, was on another level. Dad knew a lot more about the wolves than she thought.
“My baby was hanging out with werewolves and had been attacked by one. Did you think I was going to take Bill’s word at a single conversation? Believe me, I know everything.”
It was weird hearing Iron’s dad being called by his first name. “You never told me.”
The breathy sound that came through the speaker wasn’t quite a sigh. It was quieter, a bit harder to place, more indirect in its emotions. “It was your life and your friends. I didn’t want to intervene unless I had no other choice. And besides, it’s not like you were very receptive to my thoughts on friends or boyfriends while you were growing up.”
A flush rose on her cheeks, and Mel sipped at the coffee to give herself a moment to compose. No, she hadn’t been good at listening to her Dad’s warnings, which resulted in many things, up-to-and-including getting expelled from high school and giving birth before she could legally drink.
“Don’t think about it,” her Dad said, with his usual ability to read her. “Anyway, Brick and House are what I’m interested in.”
“Dad-” she paused, stumped how to continue when she didn’t even have a clue herself, but was saved by a knock. “There’s someone at the back door. I’ll call you back in a bit.”
What she was not expecting was Brick and House standing on her stoop. “Brick? House?”
House took lead, as he usually did. “We wanted to make sure you and Danny were okay. Can we come in?”
She stepped back and the two men entered the kitchen, making the cozy kitchen’s small space downright miniature. They were both wolves, which, since she’d never seen a werewolf of less than six-foot or having any physique other than your standard football player, translated to big and broad. Even for wolves, though, they were on the big side. Scratch that. House was
on the bigger side. Brick was the largest wolf of the pack and was six-seven of tree-trunk thighs, growly disposition, and anvil-sized hands. If one of their mechanics ever told her that Brick didn’t use sledgehammers, he ripped cars apart with only those hands, she’d believe it without hesitation.
Mel wiped her damp palms over her denim covered thighs, looking around the small kitchen for something to divert attention, vaguely uncomfortable with the two wolves in her home for the first time.
Vulnerable. That was it. No Danny around to distract, no bar or garage and the chaos inherent in both. Just her in front of the two wolves who had become the center of all her sexual fantasies and – even worse – her non-sexual ones, looking powerful and strong and warm while she was fighting the coldness of life’s realities. She hadn’t had time to close off, to throw her usual layers around herself before she met up with them. No, they came in the middle of the storm of her emotions, and everything was still swirling inside her head.
She could smell them, that hint of sweat and grease and forest and something more, something that wrapped itself around her senses and sunk claws in deep, refusing to let her step away and break free. Here, now, it was stronger than she’d ever experienced, tantalizing and taunting her, beckoning her to come close and taste.
Muscle in Brick’s forearm bunched and flexed, the strong thick lines of sinew begging her to sink her teeth into them.
The strength there brought forth primitive instincts, to desire to attack and force them to show her that they could make her submit. To prove they deserved her on her knees, deserved to be called her alphas.
Twin growls and the slight glow in their eyes broke the spell woven around her.
Shit. Shit shit shit. She knew better, was never so careless around them. Growing up around the pack, she had some knowledge about the differences between werewolves and humans, and the most important fact?
Werewolves smelled everything.
Working in the bar, she’d seen enough of those wolfish grins from pack members flirting to know when a woman wasn’t interested, and when she was faking not being interested. Every damn time, after spying that grin, the woman ended up leaving with him.