You’re going to get hurt so bad, girl.
“Rosa … hey, Rosa?” Caleb waved his hand in front of my face. I blinked. He must have been waiting for me to say something.
“I was just … concerned about you not sleeping. All creatures, even …” My voice caught on the word. “Werewolves … need to sleep.”
“I can get by on a few hours, until Luke gets here.”
“Who?”
Caleb held up his mobile. “I’ve sent a message to my cousin, informing him of the situation. He’s going to take the first flight back from New York. I just have to survive until he gets here, and then the two of us can take turns protecting you. We may be a small pack, but we look after our own.”
Great, there was going to be two of them in my cabin.
“I’m not one of you, though. And I’ve never met this Luke.”
“You’re in this, babe, which means you’re one of us. You’re part of the pack, as far as I’m concerned.”
Part of the pack. I’d never been a part of anything before, unless I counted the Women’s Society at university, but those girls were way too intense for me. They wanted to protest something new every week, but I didn’t want my face all over the school newspaper. That would’ve made it even less likely I’d find friends. I dropped out of the Women’s Society after one semester.
“And you’ll like Luke,” Caleb was saying. “He reads a lot, mostly science fiction. Just don’t get him started on Heinlein, or you won’t get any sleep, either. Right.” Caleb patted the bag on his shoulder. “Let’s go.”
Back at my place, Caleb dumped his rucksack beside my bed, and arranged his cans of beans and stew on the bench in the kitchen. I watched him move around my tiny cabin, his things making a mark on the space that was supposed to be just mine. For some reason, it didn’t make me nearly as upset as I’d expected it to. In fact, seeing his bag on the floor and his razor on the windowsill beside my toothpaste was kind of … exciting.
Caleb glanced at his watch. “You’d better get to work, if you want to get a few hours of writing in before I’m allowed to talk your ear off again.”
“Like that’s going to happen.”
“I promised, remember?” Caleb held his fingers to his lips. “As quiet as a mouse. Just pretend I’m not here.”
Right, sure. How was I going to pretend an enormous, delicious man wasn’t at this very moment occupying my very tiny cabin?
“Fine.” I sat down at my desk, and flipped open my laptop. Caleb flopped down on the bed, one leg crossed casually over his bent knee. He pulled out his phone, turned it sideways, and opened some loud, shooting game.
I turned back to my computer, taking a few deep breaths and trying to force out all the weird conflicting feelings swirling around in my head. This wasn’t what I imagined when I dreamed about my writing cabin in the woods – that right behind me the world’s hottest man would be playing some obnoxious, beeping game on his phone. But I had come here to write, and if I didn’t get started, that meant the werewolves – and by extension, all of Old Garsmouth – had won.
And that wasn’t an option.
I opened my novel file, and placed my fingers over the keys. I sucked in a deep breath, and closed my eyes, taking myself back to Old Garsmouth, to the night I drove around the corner of my street and saw the sky alight with orange flame as my precious house burned down with my beloved Lennox inside …
“Yeehaw!” Caleb whooped from behind me.
“Could you keep it down, just a little?” I snapped, my fingers frozen over the keys. “Some of us are trying to work.”
Caleb grunted a reply. I gritted my teeth, and forced my fingers to type a sentence, just to prove that I could do it.
As Nellie stared into the orange flames engulfing her house, her heart stopped.
There. It wasn’t exactly Pulitzer material, but I could edit it later. I’d started. I was doing this.
My fingers started to move faster. With just a few sentences I was back there, back in that horrible place where the local paper had run stories about how I was going to hell, where people spat on me in the street, where I’d watched the giant plume of smoke devour the little cottage I’d worked so hard to buy.
A firefighter emerged from the blaze, carrying Nellie’s beloved kitten, Lennox, folded in his arms. His protective jacket had fallen open, and the moonlight glinted from his sculpted and tattooed chest. Nellie couldn’t help but wonder what it would feel like to run her hands over
No, no, no. I deleted the last paragraph. That wasn’t the story I was writing. There wasn’t a sexy kitten-saving firefighter, or a hot best friend waiting to swoop in and rescue the heroine. She had to do all the rescuing herself. That was the whole point. That was the story I was destined to tell.
Dammit. Caleb was getting inside my head more than I realised.
I forced my way through the rest of the scene, recalling all the details of the fire, and adding in a crowd that stood at the end of the street, jeering and hurling racial abuse. I had to delete a second paragraph where the hot fireman showed up again and threatened to blast them with his hose if they didn’t go away. But apart from that small diversion, my fingers flew over the keys, and the world outside faded away as the words tumbled out.
This was it. This was exactly what I wanted. My rustic writing cabin in the woods, where I could be completely alone with my characters.
“Take that, you filthy space pirates!”
Alone, that is, except for my roguishly handsome werewolf protector.
Sometime later, I emerged from Nellie’s world, brought back by the smell of something hot and delicious happening behind me. A plate clattered on the desk beside me.
“Dinner, ma’am,” Caleb intoned in a posh voice. I peered at my plate. He’d presented me with a perfectly seared steak, a side of crispy-skinned garlic potatoes, and steamed green beans. Beside the plate, he’d placed a glass of red wine.
“It’s dinnertime already?” I rubbed my eyes. Outside the window, it was already dark. No wonder I was having trouble reading the screen.
“Oh yes. You’ve barely lifted your head all day.” He grinned. “I tried to interrupt you to give you a cup of tea, and you grunted at me.”
“I didn’t!” I had no recollection of that.
“You did. A very sexy little grunt it was, too. I’ve been debating whether to interrupt you for the last ten minutes, but I figure even Stephen King himself has to stop for dinner.”
My first instinct was to admonish him for choosing yet another old, white, male writer. But the smell of the food wafted across my nostrils, and my stomach rumbled. “This looks delicious,” I said, turning around to accept the glass of wine he handed me.
As I did, my eyes caught the scene in the kitchen. It was a bomb site. Oil stains splattered across the element. Dirty dishes were stacked on both sides of the sink. There were garlic peelings scattered across the floor, and a giant smear of … something … up the wall and across the ceiling.
“What happened?” I cried out. How had all this chaos ensued and I hadn’t even noticed?
Caleb glanced over his shoulder at the carnage. He shrugged. “I’ll clean up,” he said, as if it was no big deal.
“That’s right.” I bit into a potato. “You will.”
Caleb held out his own glass of wine. “To new roommates, and sexy grunts.”
Oh, for Chrissake. “To new roommates, and not getting my throat torn out by the werewolf mafia.”
We clinked glasses, and I couldn’t help but smile as I watched Caleb eat with gusto, balancing his plate on his enormous thigh and gulping at his wine like he’d just come out of the desert.
I hadn’t smiled this much since … well, since Sam started paying attention to me. Ever since, my life had spiralled into a nightmare worthy of a literary novel, which, funnily enough, was exactly what I was writing.
Nancy hated my novel idea. “I’d rather see you write something that lifted you up,” she said, twirli
ng her pen through the ends of her hair. Nancy’s hair was similar to mine, but somehow she managed to make the ringlets bounce and glisten. Mine was just a giant frizzy mess. I wanted to ask her for tips, but ours wasn’t a relationship where I was allowed to ask questions, not even about hairdressing. “Do you really want to dwell in the horror of what happened? Do you think that fulfilling your revenge fantasies on paper will give you closure? You’re incredibly funny, Rosa. Funny and clever. Why don’t you write a comedy?”
I’d scoffed at the idea, but now the conversation came back to me. Why didn’t I write a comedy?
Because the first rule of writing was ‘Write what you know,’ and there was nothing funny about someone burning down my house because my skin was a different colour. And now I could add “wanted by the werewolf mafia” to that list.
Despite the absurdity and very real danger of my current situation, I was actually enjoying Caleb’s company, especially all our flirting. The flirting had been the fun part about being with Sam, too – him stopping by the office under some pretence, leaning over my desk, his bright green eyes dancing as he complimented my dress or casually discussed what he’d like to do to me when we next had the chance to share a hotel room.
It had been so much fun to feel adored, until it all went horrifically wrong. Until I found out who he was – the town mayor, a man with a wife and two young girls at home.
But Caleb’s not the mayor. He doesn’t seem to have any family apart from this cousin. So far, everything he’s told you has turned out to be true.
Caleb was exactly the kind of guy I would fall for … if only he wasn’t white. I couldn’t go through that again. It didn’t matter that he was different from Sam. It mattered that I couldn’t deal with anything like that right now, and probably never again.
While Caleb bustled around, dumping dishes in the sink and wiping furiously at the walls, I leaned back in the uncomfortable chair with a book. I was just settling into the latest Colson Whitehead novel, when my phone beeped.
I picked it up, expecting to see my mother’s name flash across the screen. I didn’t get many messages these days.
Instead, the SMS had come from an unknown number. I opened it up.
I know who you are, you black bitch. He won’t protect you forever.
My phone clattered from my hand. Blood rushed to my head, and my dry tongue froze to the roof of my mouth. How had the werewolves got my phone number?
“What happened?” Caleb was at my side in an instant. “Rosa, answer me!”
I know who you are, you black bitch … black bitch …
“It’s nothing.” I passed him the phone. “Your werewolf friends sent me this text.”
Caleb’s face changed, his expression darkening as his eyes flicked over the message. “Those fucking bastards,” he hissed.
“It’s fine, Caleb. I’ll just ignore it. I’m used to it—” This was the third phone I’d had since the fire. The Old Garsmouth lynching mob were pretty adamant that they would force me to leave however they could, and Susan never had any problem passing out my personal details.
But Caleb was already calling the number. “It just clicked straight to voicemail,” he said. He snarled into the phone. “Listen, Angus, you son of a bitch. I already said I wasn’t going to be part of your stupid fucking turf war any longer. If you lay a finger on Rosa, neither you, nor Douglas, nor the entire fuckin’ Maclean clan will be safe. Don’t fucking contact this number again.”
He hung up, and dropped the phone on the table. “There. That should stop them.”
I reached out and grabbed his arm. When my skin met his, the strange zinging pulse darted through my veins. “Thank you,” I said, my voice cracking. Tears sprung in the corners of my eyes. I looked away, blinking rapidly. I wasn’t going to cry. That was stupid. All Caleb had done was leave a screaming message on someone’s phone. That’s all. If anything, he was overreacting. The message wasn’t even that offensive, when compared with some of the insults others had thrown at me.
It was just him, sticking up for me, trying to protect me. I’d always had to look out for myself, and I’d never known until I’d met him how good it felt to have someone I could count on, someone who believed I was worth fighting for.
“Hey, don’t mention it.” Caleb’s voice was hoarse, gravelly. He leaned forward, his face only inches from mine. His cheekbones stood out in high relief, sharp enough to cut glass. “Rosa, you okay in there?”
The urge to kiss him overtook me. I forgot everything, who he really was, what he was doing here, my promise to never go for a white guy again. Be bold, Nancy’s voice echoed in my head.
I leaned forward, pressing my lips against his.
He responded immediately, pressing himself against me. He took control, teasing my lips apart, slipping his tongue inside mine. Fire leapt through my veins as the electricity that had been dragging us together for the last two days shot a fully-fledged jolt right through my system.
Caleb’s hands reached up, his fingers tangling in my hair. I ran my own hands across his cheeks, deepening the kiss as I explored the beautiful structure of his face. His skin seemed to sizzle under my touch, as though the strange energy had wrapped itself tight around us, binding us together.
Caleb’s hands moved down my shoulders, over my arms, his fingers brushing the edges of my breasts. I moaned against his tongue as my body flared with heat, leaning forward so he could—
“Yoohoo.” Someone rapped on the door. “Anyone inside?”
Caleb and I sprung apart. His knee banged the desk, and my wineglass toppled over the side, crashing to the floor. Red wine sloshed across the wood.
“I’ll clean this up,” Caleb mumbled, grabbing for a sponge. I nodded, my heart pounding against my chest. “You get the door.”
“Yoooooowhoooo, Rosa?” Ruth tapped her nails against the window.
“Hi, Ruth.” I flung open the door, my cheeks burning with heat. How much had she seen through the window? “Wh-wh-what brings you out here at this time of the night?”
“I hope it’s not too late in the evening, but I like to walk in the forest when the nights are warm like this. I was going to drop your mail in the box, but then I saw your light on and thought I’d just deliver it in person and see how you were getting on.” She held up a couple of letters and a book catalogue.
“Oh, I’m great. Thanks.” I took the mail from her, noticing my lawyer’s letterhead on one of the envelopes. It could be about the investigation.
“You’re welcome, dear. Hello, Caleb.” She gave him a wave.
“Hey, Margaret.” Caleb smiled back. “It will be a couple of days before I can get to the wood-cutting, I’m sorry. I’ve had some other work come up.”
“That’s fine, dear.” Margaret grabbed the doorframe. “I’ll be on my way then.”
“No!” I dropped the letters on my laptop, slamming down the lid. If Margaret went, I’d have to face Caleb, and that kiss … and since I was clearly out of mind to even consider it, I needed time to work up the fortitude to refuse him. “I mean, why don’t you stay for a glass of wine? Caleb and I were just talking about Crookshollow’s history. Some of the legends about this place are just crazy. I’m sure you know a few.”
Caleb looked at me, his blue eyes blazing. I didn’t blame him – his kiss still burned on my lips, and I wanted nothing more than to pick up where we’d left off, when it was about to become something more … but Margaret’s arrival had shocked me out of my stupor. I had to resist, before we took things too far. I couldn’t believe I was inviting a chaperone to keep us off each other, but I needed the distraction. The energy still hummed through my veins. I couldn’t trust myself to be alone with him right now.
“Oh, alright then.” Margaret settled herself into the chair by the fire. “How about I’ll tell you about my fourth husband, god rest him, who used to be the caretaker for a vampire.”
“Sounds perfect,” I said, handing Margaret a glass of wine. I thought for a
moment, then poured myself another glass, and raised it to my lips. Across the room, Caleb’s eyes burned into mine, his mouth a silent question. Why?
I’m sorry, Caleb, but this is for your own good. I know you can sense some werewolf pheromone on me, and it’s making you think with your dick instead of your head. But you and I, we’re too different. We’re never going to work, and the sooner you realise it, the better off we’ll both be.
I believed that, truly. But as Margaret chattered on and Caleb’s eyes bore into me from across the room, an incredible sadness washed over me. Why was it that the things I wanted most were always things that could never be?
6
Caleb
It was 11 p.m., an empty bottle of wine, six pots of tea, and thirty-five rambling stories about Margaret’s various late husbands before we finally had the place to ourselves again. The moment Rosa and I shared earlier had well and truly passed.
I didn’t want it to pass. I’d had one taste of her, and I wanted more. All evening, I’d had to keep a magazine open in my lap so Margaret wouldn’t notice just how much I wanted more of Rosa. Those ruby lips slid so forcefully over mine. Her skin against me made my whole body surge with energy. I’d never felt like that about any woman before, ever.
You kissed me, I tried to send my questions to her. Why did you change your mind? It can’t have been the kiss. That was one damn impressive kiss. Was it because of whatever happened back in your old village?
The door clattered shut. Rosa was back from brushing her teeth in the bathroom. She rearranged her toiletries on the windowsill to make more room for mine. I decided to just come out and ask her. “Rosa—”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” She kept her face down, deliberately not looking at me. A lock of her hair flopped over her face, and my fingers itched to brush it away and feel the electricity of her skin once more.
Writing the Wolf: A wolf shifter paranormal romance (Wolves of Crookshollow Book 2) Page 6
