“He mentioned that— your mother’s name.” She realized her mistake as soon as she said it. His face twisted in shock.
“You spoke to him? Like had an actual conversation with him?”
Win flushed. “Well, he crept up on me in the office. I didn’t have much choice. I thought it was you at first.” She didn’t dare mention she’d willingly sought him out in his office later.
“Me?”
“You smell the same,” she answered, knowing how weird it sounded. “Not that I’m always sniffing you, it’s just…I know you. Like the way, I’d know Ella.” She didn’t mention he even had the same step as his father, the way his feet landed.
Luke laughed shortly, rubbing his chin. “Well, I’m sure that was pleasant anyway. I haven’t had a conversation with him for…a long time.”
“And Rosene, what’s happening with her?” Win kept her eyes low, feeling the heat of his gaze on her profile.
“What do you mean?” he threw back starkly.
“You’re not still seeing her, are you? It’s finished?” She could smell her on him, a sickly sweet scent that didn’t belong to Ella; he looked away, staring hard into the distance.
Luke let the words hang in the air. Win gritted her teeth and stared miserably at the trees across the yard, the branches bending and swaying in the breeze. “Luke…”
“Win, quit it, will you?” he barked. “I didn’t come here to argue.”
She launched from the step, pacing in front of him. Her pulse fired up rapidly, sweat broke out under her skin. Why did he always have this effect on her? His attitude! That petulant look on his face. God, she could strangle him.
“Luke, you really need to work things out with her.” Win struggled to keep her temper in check; she could feel her fingertips pricking.
He shot to his feet, squaring up to her, snatching his glasses off so he could stare her down with his blue eyes. “Work out what? She and I have been catching up, that’s all. We’ve dated since we were fifteen Win, I’m allowed to speak to her.”
“But you have been sleeping with Ella,” Win reminded him curtly. “Luke, how could you be so naive?”
His nostrils flared in temper. “What the hell was I supposed to do, Win? Her father has offered to help find me a place to stay. I can’t ignore her.”
“You have Ella and me. We can help you.”
Luke snorted angrily. “Oh really, I can see your old grandpa stumping up a spare room…he hates me. Everything we are. I’m a Fraser, remember?”
Win’s anger broke momentarily. “But that’s not true now. You are part of this family. We can help you.”
Luke stormed away in temper, rubbing his eyes. “Win, don’t push me please, this is all too hard!”
Win caught her breath, watching the muscles in his back flex as he raised his hands to rake through his hair. She was livid. She saw Ella’s face in her head, imagined her reaction. She could kill him for this. An obscene question tumbled out of her mouth before she could think it through. “Have you slept with Rosene?”
Luke threw her a snarl over his shoulder. “I do not have to answer that!”
Win stalked across the yard, yanking him around by his shoulder. He stared at her in surprise, taken back by her strength. Her eyes gleamed yellow, and he took a step away. “I’ll be able to tell you know…if you’ve been with her.”
Luke wrinkled his nose. “That,” he said, “is gross. And your talents were way off, by the way! You didn’t catch Ella and me before. Too busy with your masked hunter to notice us.”
Hands-on hips, Win ducked closer, knowing he was right; she hadn’t noticed. “I wasn’t busy with him if that’s what you mean.”
Luke grinned, cackling to himself, glad to have served a stinging blow. “And that’s it, isn’t it? You’re jealous.” He approached, his arms crossed over his chest.
Win spat out laughter. “Jealous? Of you?”
“You are! Admit it!” he teased, opening up his arms, coming close enough for her to push him back by his chest; he staggered but straightened up quickly. He sneered down at her. “I knew you were.”
Win’s face flamed with indignation. “You are so wrong. I was happy for you and Ella. I wanted you to be together. And Grayson is in another league. You couldn’t even compete. It wouldn’t be in the back of a car for a start.”
“Oh, great. I’m happy for you and Robin Hood. I really am.”
“Perhaps it’s you who’s jealous?” Win threw the pathetic blow back at him, to which he cocked his head, his hands balling into fists with anger. Her voice broke. “I only want Ella to be happy. I wanted to know…how you felt about her? This isn’t about me.”
Luke puffed and closed his eyes, dangling his glasses in one hand. “Look, I don’t know what you want me to say. I was in a tricky situation, and Rosene’s dad helped me out. It’s not my fault if Rosene never told him we broke up!”
Win raked her hands through her tangled curls, her face hot in the afternoon sun. She trembled with frustration. “But does she know?”
Luke threw his hands in the air. “Rosene or Ella? I can’t keep up.”
Win narrowed her eyes and gritted her teeth, feeling a growl vibrating in her chest. “Rosene,” she seethed. “Does she know you are with Ella?”
Luke paced across the sun-bleached grass, rubbing his hands across his face, wiping away beads of sweat that had gathered on his forehead. “I’m not exactly with Ella, okay? Is that what you wanted to hear?”
Win’s eyes snapped open wide; she blinked rapidly. “What do you mean? You don’t have feelings for her?”
He sighed deeply, a red streak crossing his nose. His neck was covered in an anxiety-produced rash. “Of course, I have feelings for her.”
“Then…” Win shook her head, taking a couple of steps closer. “What do you mean? Is this a game to you?”
Unable to move, Win didn’t protest when he closed the gap between them and took her roughly by the shoulders. Ella idolized him, her feelings were laid bare, carved in every smile, every look she gave him. Win felt her throat tightening. Luke forced her to look up when his voice went up a few octaves.
“Win, this isn’t some romance from one of your books. No, I’m not in love with her. Big news, I’m not in love with anyone, okay? I’ve never been in love. I’m seventeen!”
“But Rosene…you’ve led her on too. Why can’t you make up your mind? You can’t treat Ella like this.”
Luke growled in a fury, releasing her and stalking away. “It was never my intention to lead anyone on.”
“I can’t believe you’d treat her like this. Luke…she is crazy about you. You must know that. I’ve seen you two together. You’re perfect for one another.”
Luke flew at her, his face inches from her own. “I’m an idiot, okay? I shouldn’t have started anything up with her. I like her. I really do…but I’m confused.” Win huffed loudly, she covered her mouth with her hands. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to hurt anyone. Ella was a distraction…we had a good time.”
Win snapped. Something burst in her insides, her vision blurring. “A good time?”
Luke’s frustration came to a boil, his words spilling out before he could take them back. “Yes! Is that what you want me to say? I like Ella, but I’m not about to get down on one knee. I don’t know how I feel about her.”
“But Luke,” Win spluttered, seething. “She adores you.” Win felt a sense of treachery, she shouldn’t be disclosing her best friend’s most private thoughts, but she wanted to make him feel something, to beat up his conscience a little. “She’s liked you since you were little kids!”
Luke groaned. “God, what do you want me to say? It was sex, Win. Just sex!”
Win’s blood burned in her veins. She saw red; an invisible mist descended over her senses. “I’m going to goddamn kill you!”
She ran at him, her muscles yielding to the sudden exertion placed on them. Without warning and
before he could scramble away, she leapt, her knees hitting him squarely in the chest.
Air whooshed through his teeth; he flew backward, head cracking the ground as he fell. He grabbed Win around the waist, with what strength he gained, rolled her sideways. Win tussled him, grabbing him around the throat, pinning his torso between her thighs. Luke tried to bat her away, but her eyes were wild.
“Get off, you crazy bitch!” he snapped. She balled up her fist. She threw a punch, but he struggled out of the way, and her fist smashed into the dirt. Win yelled in agony, pain vibrating up her arm. Luke tried to stagger to his feet, but she grappled him back down around the waist.
“You jerk…you total asshole!” She kicked and screamed as he tried to pin her shoulders to the ground. “I’m going to so kill you for this!”
They wrestled on the ground, each punching and kicking the other. Win snaked away, but he caught her ankle and pulled her back. They were hot, sweating, and covered in dirt. Neither of them expected the ice-cold blast from the hose.
They both shrieked, scrambling apart, their torn clothing hanging in wet rags. Ben was holding the hose, blasting jets of freezing water on the two of them. Gasping for air, Win scrambled to her feet. John appeared as if the fight had attracted him from the woods, the smell of sweat and pheromones calling him out. He hauled Luke up by the back of his shirt, holding him in mid-air like he weighed nothing.
“Jesus fucking Christ!” John snarled. “What the hell is this?”
Ben turned off the hose. To Win’s horror, they had an audience. Rowan and Evan stood on the porch steps, both gaping, their mouths wide open. Panting Win met Luke’s eyes in shame. He wiped his nose; blood splattered underneath. John put him down softly on his feet, but he tumbled to his backside. He couldn’t look up; his cheeks burned with humiliation.
“That was one hell of an argument!” Ben wound up the hose.
Evan smiled grimly, giving Win a withering look. “I’ll get some ice.”
She disappeared inside the house while Rowan stalked toward them, her face ashen and cold. “You two are unreal. You have some serious explaining to do.”
Luke faltered, getting slowly, painfully to his feet. He turned in John’s direction, eyes on the ground in shame. “Mr. Hickory…I don’t know what happened. I’ve never even had a fight on the basketball court…and never with…” he let the words trail away. “I’m so sorry.”
Win licked her swollen lip, fat under her tongue from where he’d caught it. Her body vibrated and ached in places she didn’t know existed. But strangely, the tension was gone. She felt loose and free, as though she’d been coiled tight like a spring allowed to burst free of its confines. She could beat him up all day. She wished he’d say something to piss her off so she could fight him again.
John eyed her with a frown, his thick brows drawing closer as he stared down at Luke. “Maybe there is a bit of Hickory in you after all,” he drawled, as a smile lifted to his eyes. “Welcome to the family, Mr. Fraser.”
Sixteen
“AS LONG AS there have been Hickorys, there have been Rileys to keep them where they belong.”
His grandfather’s words. Grayson recalled the day the old man had taken him out to hunt. He’d only been seven years old, holding a crossbow for the first time. The old man had taken him to the edge of the woods, where the light touched Hickory land. They had stood there and watched the house, bathed in the morning sunlight.
“We watch, and we wait,” he told him. “If the wolf gets out of control, we know what to do. What we’ve always done. We end them, keep them in line. We make sure innocent people don’t get hurt.”
Grayson blinked away the memory, pulled back to the present.
Blood dripped off his fingers, thick and red; it swirled into the drain at his feet. Grayson watched it flow away, the coppery smell dispersing into the air. Holding his breath against the stench of dead animal, he lifted it across his shoulder, dumping it onto the cold hard surface of the butchery table. Grayson started to carve, pushing away those early childhood memories. Some childhood.
He shrugged off his sweater, the lock-up humidity causing him to perspire. On the table, his knives were laid out precisely. She always cleaned the knives. He knew his mother took time caring for the knives, sharpening them, shining them up after every catch. She would take the time to lay them all out on the table, sanitized and sparkling, their blades gleaming under the fluorescent lighting.
The dead fawn’s eyes were black and empty. Grayson tried not to look as he seized a handful of its skin at the neck, taking the long, curved boning knife and slicing through its plump belly. Fat and innards tumbled out onto the mirrored surface. He wrinkled his nose. It stank. When he was done, he placed the meat into a plastic tray, wrapping it tightly with the saran wrap before putting it in the freezer. The beast would do them for a good few meals. He went to the sink, rinsing the blood off his hands, scrubbing his skin violently with Lysol so the blood wouldn’t seep into the cracks of his palms.
He breathed, pulling the mask away and stepping outside. He stood in his yard, trying to suck in fresh, clean air, breathing out the putrid stench of dead animal and rotten insides. The cabin was nestled in a quiet stretch of tall pines, concealed from prying eyes. The last ebbs of the Lincoln river rushed past their home, cutting a jagged, treacherous path. A relentless torrent had washed away many secrets over the years. There had been a Riley on this plot for as far back as he could trace. They were a wildling, hunting family, preferring to live off the land rather than conform to normal society. Grayson had never gone to school; he’d never been to a ball game or a drive-in cinema. From the moment he could form memory, he had known this life—hardship, humiliation, and cruelty.
Stay away. You’ve got to stay away. The thought popped into his head, giving him a mental affirmation of his pledge. He had to stay away from the woods. But her face haunted him at night, her smile, her body. Grayson flinched, remembering how she’d felt against him, the pleading look in her eyes. He could have taken anything he wanted from her; right there, she would have let him. But his heart twisted, his throat closing. The thought of hurting her destroyed him.
And yet, you lied right to her face. Grayson winced inwardly at the memory, recalling her eyes, wide and innocent as she’d asked the very thing he’d been dreading all summer.
“Tell me there’s no reason…not to trust you.”
It ate at his gut. He could hardly believe she’d not asked him before. All summer they’d flirted, danced around their feelings and a part of her knew he was dangerous. She had known what he was, for the most part and yet she’d come back time, and time again. And he couldn’t stop her, he didn’t want to. Grayson gritted his teeth, he was falling for her hard.
You’re doing this for Henry, a voice said in his head. Doing all this for a boy who’d tortured him, ridiculed him. A boy who, if he’d still been alive, might have already murdered him. Grayson closed his eyes, wincing as the scars on his face stung in memory, still so fresh he could feel the skin peeling away from his jaw.
The wolf was out of control that day.
He remembered staggering back to the cabin, screaming, his throat raw, and he’d led his mother back. Locating his brother’s crumpled body bleeding out into the brook, a river of red trickling over the rocks. Grayson recalled her face. The way she had internally broken, her body caving inward like all the air had been sucked out of her.
She’d looked at him and said. “This was your doing.” His sketches of the wolf were halfway down the brook, wet and disintegrating. Grayson had screamed when she beat him, but eventually, he learned to bite down hard, to squeeze his eyes shut. It was funny, the beatings he could muster, even though they hurt and left him laid up for days after. But it was being locked in the room that terrified him. And she knew. If Grayson was bad, if he talked back, if he tried to assert himself, she would find a way to trick him in there. And he’d be alone, with the dead eyes, watching him
in the dark.
That was worse than anything. Sometimes he tried to sketch them to make himself feel like he wasn’t alone. But they always got to him. They saw into his heart. His soul open for their eyes. And by the time a few days would tick by, he’d be dehydrated, half-starved, and begging to be let out from under their watchful gaze. His nails bloody from where he’d clawed at the heavy metal door. He begged and begged, but she never relented.
Grayson knew he could crush her. He could have left years ago. But it was always the look she cast him, the pathetic, feeble voice, so fragile but so very vicious. It was the guilt that kept him there, a prisoner. And the fact he was stripped bare, he had nothing. His mother had seen to it. He didn’t own a car or a phone. He had no money. Where would he go?
Grayson’s thoughts returned to Win and of the night in her bedroom. She had pleaded with him to take her away. He’d been close to breaking. So close to scooping her up and carrying her off somewhere. But he had nothing to offer. Where would they have gone? He balled his fists, shrugging off the tension before entering the cabin. He stripped his clothes off onto a heap on the floor and ran the shower until it was hot enough to scorch his skin. He climbed into the tub, mist rising from the humidity. He held himself under the spray for as long as he could stand until his eyes watered and his skin went pink. Gasping, he turned the tap to full cold, gritting his teeth against the onslaught against his senses. Win appeared behind his closed eyes.
He wanted her. He wanted to bury himself in her, disappear inside her until they were one being. He didn’t know if he was capable of being tender or soft. His throat closed, pushing away images of his mother’s empty cases meant for her.
Grayson stepped out of the shower, dressing quickly, hearing the crunch of gravel as his mother’s truck rolled into the drive. He watched from the window as she got out of the car, her skirts floating behind her, clinging around her stick-thin legs as she hurried into the house. Grayson met her in the hall, where she dropped her fabric bag. She was trembling.
“What is it?” He stared at her, bewildered. She was bone thin, her legs and arms fragile like snappable twigs. Her skin was yellow-tinged and unwashed like she’d been sweating out in the sun.
Wild Spirit: Huntress Page 17
