Woodsman: A Bad Boy Romance

by Abby Brooks

  “You wouldn’t dare,” she replies, her gaze flicking from my eyes, to my mouth, to my dick. I know that look. She’s hot for me and ready to fuck, despite being furious with me. Hell maybe even because she’s furious with me.

  The why doesn’t matter. Not one bit. If my sweet little Skye wants to fuck, I will be happy to oblige her. Right here. Right now.

  Chapter Nine

  I can’t process anything right now. Ali’s betrayal devastated me, but I can’t even get to that yet because I’m so furious with Ethan. Absolutely, over the moon, one hundred percent, madder at him than I’ve ever been with anyone in my entire life. He’s keeping a big fat secret from me and taking recent events into consideration, it’s a damn important chunk of information he’s leaving out. And not only that, but the bastard pushed me.

  And yet, I’m so turned on I don’t know what to do with myself. He’s standing over me, pulling his belt out of his pants like some kind of militant asshole and I just want to spread my legs and tell him to fuck me.

  Now.

  As hard as he wants.

  This man has some kind of power of me I just can’t ignore. A direct line to my heart and body, bypassing my common sense. Even with my head busy telling me to get out of here and never look back, there’s no way I can leave. Not when he makes me feel like this.

  He steps close, the button on his jeans undone, and I reach out to pull down his zipper, freeing his cock. Looking up at him, I slowly draw my tongue along his shaft before sucking the crown of his dick into my mouth. His eyes go hot and predatory and I suck even harder, tightening my lips around him as I bob my head up and down. He fists his hands in my hair and rolls his hips, pressing into me. His tip pushes against my throat and I relax the muscles there so he can slide in even further.

  Lost in pleasure, he thrusts his hips forward, fucking my face while I look up at him, spreading my legs even wider apart on the chair, wishing his hands were down there working their magic. I can’t wait. I need friction and contact and I need it now. I slide my hand between my legs and rub myself while I suck him off.

  Ethan growls his approval. When he finally pulls back, a string of saliva swinging between my mouth and his dick, I take a big breath, only for him to thrust himself right back between my parted lips again. I fucking love it. Love the look on his face as he stares down at me. Love the taste of him. Love the way he’s even in control of the way I blow him, something that for all intents and purposes should be totally and completely in my control.

  “Stand up,” he says, grabbing my arm and pulling me to my feet. He yanks my shirt over my head and drops his face to my breasts, pulling down my bra and biting and sucking my nipples so hard, I know he’ll leave marks. Moaning, I grab his dick and squeeze.

  His hands are at my pants while I kick off my shoes. Rough and needy, pulling them down just enough for me to step out of one side. He cups my ass and backs me up until I bump into the edge of the table. This isn’t just sex. This isn’t just fucking. This is him claiming me as his, proving that he can take me when he wants me.

  And damn if I don’t even want to think about putting up a fight. Because he’s so, so right. Like it or not, I’m falling for Ethan Masters. He can take me when he wants me because I’m already his.

  He lifts my leg and positions himself at my entrance, shoves himself into me and then picks me up, walks us to the wall, and presses my back against it. The pace he sets is frantic. Thrusting and pounding and I grit my teeth and grip his shoulders for dear life. My eyes are on his and his are on mine and there is no other place in the whole wide world I’d rather be.

  “You’re mine, Skye,” he says.

  I don’t answer even though every fiber of my soul urges me to agree with him. Yes. God yes, I’m his. I was made for him. The whole reason I exist in this world is to belong to Ethan Masters. But I won’t give him the pleasure of knowing that. Not now. Not until he can trust me enough to tell me what’s going on. To let me into his life so I know I was right to give myself to him.

  He changes his pace and I lose all ability to think. I am nothing but pleasure and pleasing. I moan as I quiver around him.

  “I’m yours,” I murmur, spilling my truth in one of my most honest moments. Whoever this man used to be, whatever he did in the past, I know who he is now. He’s the man that slow dances with me on my Nana’s porch. The man who knows me well enough to have a pack of cigarettes in his pocket before we’d even had our first conversation. He’s the man who makes me feel like the most real version of myself.

  He looks deep into my eyes, thrusting into me. “Say it again.” His breath whispers past my face, moving in my hair.

  “I’m yours.”

  “Promise?” For the briefest of moments, I see past the thunderstorm in his eyes and see the worry and the fear inside.

  “Yes,” I say and he slams into me, forcing me to close my eyes and moan. His breath quickens and he cums, spurting into me as I give into yet another orgasm so intense I see stars.

  “Look at me, Skye,” he says. “Let me see you.”

  I meet his eyes and see past the worry and the fear all the way to the man he is at his core. I see him for who he is and somehow, despite everything I think I know about him, I know he’s a good man. He kisses me, his lips soft and warm, and then he puts me down. Runs a hand through my hair and a thumb across my cheek.

  As Ethan disappears into the bathroom to clean up, I get myself put back to rights and decide just how to handle things when he comes back. I don’t really want to leave and I most definitely don’t want to walk home. It’s way too far and I’d never get there before darkness falls. What I want is for him to sit me down and be honest with me. I need him to talk to me. Try as I might to ignore it, I’m falling for this man and the hot ass sex doesn’t make it any easier to ignore. I’m supposed to be mad as all hell right now and I’m just not.

  By the time he comes back, I’m dressed and sitting at his little dinner table, playing with the pink tissue paper he has sticking out of the gift he bought for me.

  “Open it,” he says with a little jut of his chin.

  “You sure?”

  “Of course. I bought it for you.” He runs a hand up into his hair and jams the other one in his pocket.

  Carefully, I pull out the tissue paper and peek inside, confused by what I see. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t this.

  “It’s a faucet for your kitchen sink,” he explains as I pull out the bulky package. “Which I’ll install, of course.” His eyes search mine, waiting for my response, trying to gauge my mood.

  “That’s super thoughtful,” I say, because it is. There’s this awkward silence while I study the gift and then let it rest on my thighs while I wait for him to say something.

  Ethan pulls out the chair beside me and sits, takes the faucet out of my hands and puts it on the table. He leans forward, digging his elbows into his knees and staring down at the floor. After a long breath, he looks me in the eyes.

  “Skye,” he begins and then trails off. I wait silently for him, breathless with anticipation because I feel like everything hangs in the balance of what he has to say next.

  He closes his eyes. Takes a breath. And then meets my gaze.

  “I’m a hitman.” He blinks slowly and cocks his head to the side. “Or I was.”

  My eyes go wide but I stay silent.

  “I’m not proud of it and it sure as hell wasn’t the way I saw my life going when I moved to LA. I just started down a path and didn’t realize how bad it was until things had gone too far.”

  “Did you work for the mob or something?” The news doesn’t feel real yet. Like what he said is nothing more than some silly words in a jumbled up sentence. I can’t imagine this sweet and caring man as the kind of guy who would kill people for money. And yet, it all makes such perfect sense.

  He shakes his head. “No, I didn’t work for the mob. Not that it makes things any better.” Ethan licks his lips and th
en finally meets my eyes. “Some guy got some dirt on my dad. Bad shit. The kind of shit that would have ended up with my dad in a whole lot of trouble. This guy came to me and said that he’d go public with it unless I did some things for him.” He raises an eyebrow. “And one of those things he wanted me to do happened to be killing the guy who raped his twelve-year-old daughter. It was that easy. Take my misguided loyalty to my father, add a dose of blackmail and a good reason to kill a bad man, and boom. I’m a hired gun.”

  Emotion twists around on his face, his eyes far away, trapped in the nightmare of his memories.

  “It just snowballed from there. I was young and out of control and way out of my depth until, suddenly, it was just what I did to make a living. I consoled myself by only accepting hits on assholes that deserved to die. Thought of myself like some badass vigilante, fighting on the side of justice. Like somehow, that made me one of the good guys.” He stares down at his hands. “My dad was a SEAL and raised me to be one before he lost his mind and took us all off grid. Most of my childhood was spent preparing me so I could join the Navy and follow in my dad’s footsteps. But then he started seeing conspiracy theories everywhere and forbade me to join. I had all the training and nothing to do with it. I went from having a direction and purpose to having nothing at all.” He lets a puff of air out through his nose. “Then the bastard went and killed himself, so it was all for nothing anyway.”

  I wait for him to look at me, trying desperately to process everything he’s saying. I feel like I have a hundred questions running right under the surface of my thoughts. I just can’t see them clearly enough to ask them. There’s so much to digest.

  “So, you were Batman,” I say. This sure as hell isn’t a laughing matter, but it’s the only thing that comes to my mind that isn’t a question and I really feel like I should say something.

  The corner of his lips quirk up in what might be a smile. “You’re weird, Skye.”

  “I know,” I shrug. “I’m also in shock, so I think you can cut me some slack right now, you know?” Except I’m not really in shock. Part of me knew this truth from the first moment I saw him. “So, what happened? Why are you here in the mountains with me instead of out in LA?”

  Ethan runs a hand through his hair and rubs the back of his neck. “Instead of taking a contract from a good guy looking for vengeance on a bad guy, I took a contract from a bad man. A very bad man. He wanted me to take out an innocent man who just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. A man with a wife and kids. Just a regular guy who did his best for his family and saw some shit he couldn’t unsee. It was one of those moments, you know? The ones where you pause and take a look at yourself and the choices you’ve made and realize you caught the wrong train and it’s time to get off.”

  “That man in the alley. Running away from you that night. That was the guy?” I bite my bottom lip. “You were supposed to kill him but you didn’t.” I’m caught for a moment, wondering about what I would have seen if Ethan had made another choice.

  Ethan nods. “I was. But I told him to get his ass out of LA and disappear as best he possibly could, knowing I was going to have to take my own advice before the night was over. Each minute I spent in that city was another chance for the man who hired me to find me and kill me. I know his face. I know where to find him. Pretty much a death sentence.”

  “No wonder you never forgot me. I was part of one of the biggest nights in your life.”

  Ethan’s entire demeanor softens. “Oh, sweet stuff, I wouldn’t have forgotten you if we just passed on the street on a random Monday morning. This thing between you and me. It was inevitable.”

  A thrill runs up my spine. There’s no doubt in my mind that I belong to him. That I was made for him and he was made for me. But I can’t help but wonder if I’m a fool for getting caught up with him when he’s had such a shady past. What would Nana say if she were still around? Would she tell me to listen to my heart or my head? Would she tell me that he’s a good man who got caught in a bad situation? Or would she tell me he’s a bad man trying to justify his awful decisions?

  And in the end, does it matter what my Nana would say? Because I’m a grown woman with a good mind. I can trust myself to make the right decision. I’ll ask my questions and get my answers and make up my own mind as to who Ethan Masters really is.

  “So this guy,” I say. “This Joe Sylvio. He’s from LA?”

  Ethan nods, the tiny muscle in his jaw pulsing as he clenches his teeth together. “He’s an absolute asshole. The sleaziest douchebag in a pile of sleazy douchebags. He’s wanted to work for the guy who hired me to kill that man in the alley for years now.” Miles rolls his neck and shoulders. “I just don’t know how he connected me to you and then you to Ali. We’re missing some pretty serious chunks of the puzzle."

  “Yeah, like, what the fuck happened that made Ali more loyal to him than she is to me.” And just like that, everything crashes down around me. Ali Culpepper betrayed me. The girl I’ve known since elementary school. The one person I have left in my life who has known all my secrets, all the things that make me who I am. My wishes and dreams. My successes and failures. She told my secrets to a stranger and then lied to my face about it.

  This whole time, she was only here in Wistful so she could keep an eye on me in case Ethan showed up. How fucked up is that? How can I even consider her my best friend anymore if she’s willing to do something like this? I want to call her and demand she tell me what the hell is going on. Because something serious has to be happening in order for her to do something like this to me. This whole week, she’s been pretending to be surprised about Ethan, like she doesn’t know anything about him. Now I’m wondering if she knows more about him than I do. Her betrayal twists in my gut and bile rises in my throat.

  “Don’t hate your friend too much,” says Ethan as if he can read my thoughts. “Whatever she did to get herself messed up with Joe, if she says he was threatening her life, then she didn’t have much of a choice other than to do what she did. Joe Sylvio is a crazy bastard with a temper and an itchy trigger finger.”

  “She could have told me. And I could have told you. You could have protected her…”

  “Right. And I would have protected her, just like I’m gonna protect you. But how was she to know that? Besides, the moment Joe smelled something fishy about how she was acting, he would have been out here to check it out anyway.”

  “Doesn’t make it hurt any less.”

  “No, I suppose it doesn’t. But my suggestion is that you wait until you find out why she did what she did before you write her off completely. LA does hard things to good people.”

  “And sometimes good people do hard things.” Nana always said that when she had a task to do that didn’t sit right with her. When an animal needed put down or one of the men she hired needed let go. She’d mutter it to herself like an affirmation. A reminder that life isn’t always black and white. Good and bad. A reminder that sometimes the right answer is a shade of gray.

  “Exactly.” Ethan takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly before standing and heading to the door. He opens it and whistles and waits only a few seconds before Bay comes barreling out of the woods. Tongue lolling out of his mouth, face happy, tail wagging. Ethan runs a hand over his massive back as the dog comes into the cabin. With the two of them in here, both of them larger than life, the small space seems almost miniscule. It also feels decidedly safe. No one can get to us. Not here. Not with Bay and Ethan standing guard.

  “What are we going to do?” I ask as Bay puts his head in my lap. “If Joe knows you’re here, won’t he call the people who are looking for you and then they’ll know you’re here? Do you have to leave?” My heart cracks at the thought. Just a little fissure of worry running across the surface.

  “Well sweet thing, for one, Joe’s not that smart. He’s gonna want to strut around and make an ass of himself trying to scare us before he remembers that he should probably let someone know he found me.�
�� Ethan grabs the chair next to me by the back and spins it around. Straddles it and sits down.

  “And for two?”

  “We’re safe here. This cabin couldn’t be further off the grid if I wanted it to be. He’ll never find us. We’ll hole up here while I think about what to do about your friend.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean Ali’s going to need my help. Whatever she’s gotten herself into, she’s not going to be able to get out of it.” Ethan runs a hand over his mouth. “Besides. However she met Joe Sylvio, I can just about guarantee things got to where they are because she told your story and Joe put the pieces together. She’s in this trouble because of me. Because of my decisions. I won’t have her blood on my hands.”

  Relief floods through me. “Thank you,” I say even though I’m still so mad at Ali it makes me nauseous. The thing is, even though I haven’t fully forgiven her yet, I will. In time. It’s inevitable. I know she wouldn’t betray me unless she was backed in a corner and I’m already more worried about her than I am hurt by what she did.

  Ethan’s studying me and I lose my train of thought under the intensity of his gaze. His eyes flick and flitter across my face, taking it all in, like he’s memorizing me.

  “What?” I ask, tilting my head to the side.

  “I want you to stay here, Skye. With me.”

  I’m already shaking my head before Ethan can finish his sentence. “I can’t. I’ve got the animals to feed back at the homestead. I can’t just leave them there.” But even as I say it, fear surges in my belly. I don’t want to leave.

  Ethan narrows his eyes. “You’re staying here.”

  I flare my hands in exasperation. “But what about the animals? I won’t let them starve.”

  “How many animals do you actually have?” Bay turns his attention to him, wagging his tail as he lifts his head out of my lap and stands beside Ethan.