Going Wild (The Wild Ones Book 2)

by C. M. Owens

  It’s damn good entertainment, but it’s been a while since I’ve seen one, so I’m assuming there was some concussion research done there. I’ll get back to you on that.

  Another way to prove you were a real man, sometimes you had to wrestle your daughter’s boyfriends who were half your age. My first “real” boyfriend accepted the challenge and even taunted my father when they started the circling thingy people do before a fight. I believe the words “old man” and “slow as molasses” was used. (I didn’t say he was original at insults.)

  It took less than five minutes for my father to effectively pin him. Then my dad pulled the guy’s pants down and literally spanked his ass like he was an errant child from the eighties in front of all of us. Tonya knocked Danielle off the porch when she tried to cover her eyes, because we were ‘sheltered’ children like that, and there was a boy’s naked butt in plain view.

  I can laugh about it now. No worries.

  Anyway, that’s where the fight scene came from. Well, the attitude of it rather. Completely different, I know, but my father was humming Eye of the Tiger when he was spanking said guy’s ass in front of my sisters and I. Meanwhile, my stepmother was laughing so hard she couldn’t breathe.

  I make us sound like terrible people, but you have to remember this was the nineties. Times were different and The Three Stooges were comedy gold even then. At least in our town.

  This series is still my escape, and I really hope it remains an escape for everyone. Kai Wilder’s book is next, which will be the first male Wild One to have a book. Killian Vincent is after him. I think. Don’t quote me on that last one just yet, but as of now, that’s the plan.

  Hope you’re as excited about Kai Wilder’s book as I am.

  Don’t worry, the Nickels will be in a book soon, as long as the series continues to do well. I know it’s different, but that’s sort of the point. So thank you for giving it a chance, and thank you soooooooooo much for reviewing. I can’t even explain how important that is, and I can’t thank you enough for taking the time to do it.

  As always, I love the hell out of you. <3

  xoxo,

  C.M.

  Sneak Peek of Kai Wilder’s book, Wilder:

  Chapter 1

  PIPER

  “You have no idea the hell I had to go through just to get out to this cabin. I’ve faced death three times more than I have in my entire life,” I tell the deer as I throw the rope I found randomly lying outside my late grandmother’s cabin.

  The rope lands right beside the struggling deer, who is trying to climb out of the hole in the ice, water splashing as the deer makes pitiful sounds of distress. I whimper when I realize the deer isn’t smart enough to bite down on the rope and let me pull it out.

  “I’m only doing this because of Bambi. That damn movie broke my heart,” I say on a whimper as I ease out onto the ice, already slipping and dancing around to keep my balance.

  I try to stay away from the softer patches that don’t appear as frozen, as I quickly fashion a noose. I know it’s morbid, but it’s the only rope-tying trick I know that will be of any help. Thank my medieval-obsessed father.

  It takes a few tries, but I finally manage to ring the deer’s neck, and I pull quickly, freeing the small fawn from the water, then sliding to it carefully to undo the noose before I accidentally suffocate it.

  It lies completely still for a second, and my breaths fog in front of my face as I bend over to listen for a heartbeat.

  Just as my hair touches its stomach, then wild thing leaps up with a battle cry that scares the shit out of me, and I yelp as I crash backwards.

  My eyes widen as the deer runs off, just as the ice beneath me gives out.

  Everything happens so terrifyingly fast. My life doesn’t even have time to flash before my eyes this time.

  A bloodcurdling scream is shut off when I’m suddenly sucking icy water into my lungs, and my body feels like it’s on fire and freezing at once, as I scramble to push myself back to the surface. Fortunately, I pop up in the same huge hole I’ve made instead of getting stuck under the ice, a newly realized fear of mine.

  Just as my hands grip the edge of the burning cold ice, something firm grabs my wrist, and I’m completely yanked out of the water.

  My entire body is shaking so hard, and my vision is dimming as something loud chatters. I think it’s my teeth.

  I feel myself moving, but I’m too disoriented to know what’s really going on around me.

  “Wake up!” someone shouts near my ear just as a motor revs to life somewhere around us.

  “Dr. Harvey, got an icicle. How do we warm her up?” I hear someone asking.

  Two male voices are talking around me, but my eyelids are too heavy. I’m not sure how this day went to hell so quickly. No good deed goes unpunished.

  I feel like I’m moving, and I feel like I’m freezing too hard to care about anything else. Everything burns. Everything hurts. I’m almost worried my eyelids are frozen shut because I can’t seem to open my eyes.

  “Fucking wake up, you stupid fucking girl!” someone shouts close to my ear again.

  Three voices. It’s three voices instead of two. The appropriate fear is absent, since I’m positive I’m about to die anyway.

  I open my mouth, trying to form words, unsure what really comes out.

  “Did she just say something about Bambi?” someone asks.

  I feel jostled when we come to an abrupt stop, and my eyelids crack open just barely, seeing blurry, tall men as someone presumably carries me.

  “He said to strip her out of her wet clothes and skin-to-skin heat would be helpful.”

  “Not it,” two guys say real damn fast, but I’m still stuck on the skin-to-skin thing.

  “You can’t strip naked and spoon with her, you fucking idiots,” a girl’s voice cuts in, and I shudder either because I’m still literally freezing to death or because I’m traumatized and terrified.

  “You do it. You’re a girl. She won’t freak out so bad,” the guy carrying me says as we’re suddenly inside a warm house of some sort, but everything is still too blurry to make out.

  I blink for a few seconds too long, and when I come too, a man’s face is hovering over mine as he barks at me to wake the hell up.

  My fingers touch a beard when I try to swat him away, but my hand falls to my side, too weak to really do much.

  A girl’s face pokes in right beside him, her eyes wide and her hair blonde.

  “I took off your clothes,” she tells me very loudly, annunciating each word like I’m an idiot.

  Then panic hits, and I glance around, seeing a lit fireplace beside me.

  “Her lips are blue. Maybe someone does need to strip down.”

  “You do it,” the guy snaps at her.

  “You do it,” she argues. “You’re like a furnace.”

  He curses and stands, and I panic even more as he starts stripping. Sure, he has a nice body, but that’s really not the point right now.

  I’m in a cabin with a lot of antlers sticking out of plaques, guns hanging on walls, and animals stuffed. And a guy is stripping down as he and I think his sister argue about who puts off more body heat.

  My gaze flicks toward the fireplace that I’m lying on front of…on top of what appears to be a fur rug of some sort. I swallow thickly when I realize there’s a fur blanket over me.

  I came to Tomahawk without realizing it’s actually the setting for the Hills with eyes or whatever, minus the incestuous and radioactive deformities.

  “Just so you know, I’m not going to touch you. Just take my heat if you want it,” the guy says sourly, which admittedly puts me at ease a little.

  I start scooting away from him when he climbs under the blanket with me, but when his warm foot brushes mine, it’s like my survival instinct takes over.

  I’m suddenly hugging him without even realizing how it happened, because he’s sooooo warm. I think I whimper when the coldness starts to sting, my body trying to regai
n more heat.

  He curses and tenses all over, but puts his arms around me. “It’s like hugging a fucking popsicle,” he gripes.

  I don’t even care about anything but stealing every ounce of warmth he has to offer right now, pressing as tightly as I can against him. It takes me a second to realize he still has on boxers, but I’m completely naked.

  My breasts are pressed flat against his chest, and the warmer I get, the more awkward this entire situation becomes. It’s like my brain is thawing and finally appreciating the gravity of this entire encounter.

  He keeps my head tucked under his, likely to avoid the awkward eye contact thing.

  I say nothing, since I still want more warmth right now. I’ll freak out in a minute.

  At least there’s nothing sexual about the way he’s touching me. I think this is clearly just what it looks like—a stranger grudgingly sharing body heat with a stupid girl who tried to save a deer, when she knows nothing about ice or wildlife.

  Day one in Tomahawk, and I almost died for a fourth time. Guess I know I’m selling that cabin now.

  “What the hell is going on?” another woman’s voice snaps.

  I peer over the blanket just enough to see a woman with a wild bun on her head and an axe in her hand. I barely stop myself from fainting, because this is just getting more insane by the second, and I currently hate every horror movie I’ve ever seen that had a wilderness setting.

  “Kai stole her from her home and is forcing her to have his babies,” the blonde girl says from the other side of me, perched by the fireplace as she eats an apple.

  I swallow thickly.

  “Fucking really, Nila?” the guy holding me growls. “Why would you tell her that. Now she’s going to—”

  The bun lady is already squealing. “Where’s that damn emergency phone?” she asks, pulling open drawers and shutting them.

  I’m being really still and really quiet, praying for this nightmare to end abruptly.

  “Ah ha! Found it! I laughed at that Liam kid when he dropped this off, but now I want to kiss him for it,” she goes on, then dials someone.

  They don’t even have phones out here? If my tear ducts weren’t still frozen, I think I’d cry right now.

  “Penny, guess who’s getting babies before you?” the woman says, and I pale.

  “You’re not actually having his babies,” the girl beside me says, patting my shoulder as the guy continues to give me warmth and no babies.

  Where the hell am I?

  “Yeah, my Kai clubbed some girl over the head and brought her home,” the other woman, who I presume is their mother or their resident mental patient, says as she nods vehemently, not glancing at us.

  “Doesn’t really matter how he got a girl. It just matters that he’s got one now, and I’m going to have babies before you. So ha!”

  “Really not having babies,” the guy growls next to my ear as I start to squirm.

  “Who are you?” I finally hiss.

  “Kai Wilder,” he says as if that needs no further explanation.

  “I’m Nila. His sister,” the girl with blonde hair tells me before pointing to the graying blonde on the phone. “That’s our mother. You’ve made her the happiest woman in the world.”

  “For fuck’s sake, Nila, fix it,” Kai snaps at her.

  “You’re the barbarian who is bringing home frozen corpses to reanimate. You fix it,” she deadpans.

  “Oh, she’s adorable. I think. I can only see her forehead from here, so she could be unsightly, if I’m being honest. Hopefully she’s adorable. I want my babies to be prettier than your babies, if you ever get any, that is. Your Lilah is still on birth control,” the mother drones on, glancing in my direction.

  “Are you on birth control?” Nila asks me seriously.

  “Are you trying to fucking freak her out right now?” Kai growls. “Wait until my balls aren’t so close to her knees.”

  I’m not sure if it’s the day from hell, the matter of me still being a bit hypothermic, or if it’s the fact I’ve possibly been abducted by crazed wilderness people for a breeding experiment, but I feel a little dizzy before it all fades to black.

  Wilder will be coming in 2018. <3

  About the Author

  C.M. Owens is a USA Today Bestselling author of over 30 novels. She always loves a good laugh, and lives and breathes the emotions of the characters she becomes attached to. Though she came from a family of musicians, she has zero abilities with instruments, sounds like a strangled cat when she sings, and her dancing is downright embarrassing. Just ask anyone who knows her. Her creativity rests solely in the written word. Her family is grateful that she gave up her quest to become a famous singer.

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