Bad timing and hurt feelings started a heated
animosity between Samara Reynolds and Trake Cunningham in their teenage years.
Now, Trake is back home, investigating the strange disappearance of several
fairies around the lake and he and Sam are clashing once again.
Samara loves to hate her best friend’s gorgeous,
older brother. Every time she is within spitting distance of her long time
crush, her defenses go up and her mouth goes off. It doesn’t help that the man
knows just what buttons to push to send her spiraling into violent fits of
anger.
Trake has a job to do. He doesn’t have time to
obsess over a mean, mouthy, beautiful cat-shifter who will never do anything
but push him to say mean things he always regrets.
When family is threatened, these two will have
to suck it up if they want to find the answers they need to save the people
they love.
Please note that this book is an ADULT paranormal romance novel and does contain violence, adult language and strong sexual content.
Available now at Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, iBookstore and many of your other favorite ebook retailers.
Chapter
One
"What are you doing Samara?"
Sam squeaked, nearly jumping out of her
skin…and the tree she was—oh so ungracefully—standing in. She managed to grab
the branch above her before she completely tumbled out, but not before she ended
up getting poked in the ass by a bastard limb.
The comfort level in such a positition is
absolutely zero.
She didn't look down at Trake. Couldn't look
at him. Of course she would make a fool of herself in front of him. Just like
old times.
"Well," she said dryly, trying to
move away from the rudest limb ever without falling and further making an ass
out of herself. "I'm currently getting goosed in ass by a branch."
"I think you know I meant what are you
doing in the tree? But a diversionary tactic? Thank you for basically telling
me, that whatever it was, you weren't supposed to be doing it. So, to be clear.
What. Are. You. Doing. In that tree?"
She'd
known Trake forever. Their families had been friends since before she could
remember and did nearly everything together. Thanksgiving, Christmas, picking
drunk uncles up off the ground and dragging then back to the house after the
New Year’s Eve Bash...everything. Her uncle had even married his aunt and had
little shifter/fairy babies that were actually related to both of them.
Unfortunately, that meant Trake treated her
like a little sister or cousin, or some other annoying family member you try to
avoid when everyone is under the same roof.
As was evident by the bored, annoyed look he
was giving her when she finally looked down and met his eyes.
The man had a face so freaking gorgeous, she'd
known full-grown women to openly weep at the sight of it. And she found that to
be the root of all their problems. She was convinced that if he wasn't so
perfect to look at, she wouldn't get all stupid when he was around. This
unfortunate, longtime reality was known—at least in Sam’s mind—as the Trake
effect.
And if he didn't know how perfect he was, he
wouldn't act like such a stuck-up prick and she wouldn't have to tell him that
he was a stuck-up prick and therefore, irritate him.
"Well, you suck at being an investigator.
Obviously I'm a Willow-Shifter, so I'm kinda known for hanging out in
trees."
See! This was the thing. He walked around
acting like he was better than her, so she spent her time being a total bitch
to him. She even knew she was being a bitch and just couldn't seem to keep from
saying something flat-out, freaking rude!
"In human form?"
"It doesn't matter what form I'm in when
I protect and draw energy from the willow, Trake."
"You're in a maple, Samara."
Doh! She looked at the leaf currently
fluttering against her forehead. Yep. Definitely a maple.
Trake-effect.
Growling at the injustice of the man
being...alive, Samara decided the branch taking up residence in her crack had
to go, unfortunately...she was an idiot.
"Motherfu..." Her eloquent speech
was cut off by the fact that the ground always wins when put up against lungs.
She wanted to cuss. Wanted to say every dirty word she'd ever heard––like toe-jam
and Sooner fan––but it's really hard to talk when your diaphragm is wrapped
around your spine.
Don't ask her why. She'd totally given up on
the doctor thing at seven when she discovered her extreme dislike for people
whining like little babies. It wasn't like that little girl’s ear wouldn't grow
back. She was a werewolf. If she couldn't handle a friendly wrestling match
then she definitely shouldn't have started it by calling Daneeka tiny.
She'd been completely normal sized...for a
fairy.
"Samara?"
She glared at the beautiful face lack of
oxygen had started to convince her was and angel directing her to the heavenly
gates. "You could have caught me. Protect and serve? Ring any bells?"
Trake shrugged. "You're a cat. I figured
you'd land on your feet."
Trake-effect.
"I wish I would have landed on your
face." Not entirely mature, but as described before, she wasn't at her
best around this man.
Noticing now that she was on the ground and no
longer being sodomized by a maple — freaking maple—that the man was wearing
nothing more than a towel, she remembered with great embarrassment how she'd
managed to get herself in this predicament in the first place.
She'd been minding her own business, jogging
along the path to the lake, when she'd seen him come up out of the water, completely
naked. It wasn't like she'd known he was going to be there. Sure, this was the
spot almost everyone came to swim au
naturel because of the privacy factor, but really, when Vinvianna had
mentioned that he was back in town, she hadn't come here in hopes of seeing
him. It was all accidental. For real!
She would admit however, that when he'd come
out of the water and all she could see was his muscular back and amazing ass,
the cat's natural curiosity took over.
And if it wouldn't have been for that bastard
maple, it wouldn't have taken her so long to climb the mother, so that when she
finally got in a good postition, she'd lost sight of Trake, only to have him
startle her into awkward postions.
She simply could not let him see her
eyeballing his body. She drew the line at letting the man know just how much
she lusted after his arogant ass.
She used the time she spent climbing to her
big clumbsy feet to look the man up and down under her hair and lashes, hoping
he couldn't see her eyes and the way they carressed his flawless form.
"Well, you obviously feel well enough to
start with the childish wit, so why don't you tell me what you were doing in
that tree."
Don't do it! Don't you dare tell him what you
were doing in that tree.
"Watching the lake."
Oh, yeah. The other symptom of the
Trake-effect. Blurting the most ridiculous things at the most ridiculous times.
His eyes narrowed on her, making her squirm.
"Why?"
She squared her shoulders, meeting his eyes so
she could lie with dignity. "It's always so pretty at night when the moon
shines off the water."
A golden brown brow rose and Trake—the smug
prick—crossed his arms over his chest, leaning against the effing maple.
"It's a new moon."
Shit! Was it? She didn't even try to be subtle
as she looked at the sky, trying to find the elusive sphere that could save her
from this potential embarrassment.
Sure enough. No moon.
Crossing her own arms, she glared at the bane
of her existance. "I don't have to explain myself to you Cunningham!
You're just here to find out what is happening to your fellow lake fairies, not
to question me about astronomy."
"Maybe the fact that you’re here, at the
lake, acting weird and clearly lying to me, makes you a suspect."
She rolled her eyes and turned back to the
path. "I'm not."
"What makes you so sure?"
"What would I want with fairies?"
She smiled sarcatically over her shoulder at him as she walked away. "They
don't even taste that good."
***
"Okayokayokay wait! You actually climbed
the tree so you could get a look at his—"
"We'll call it dementions."
"We'll call you an idiot." Vivvianna
shook her head. "What is it about Trake that makes you so...not you?"
"Oh, you mean the Trake-effect? I think
it's the chemical combination of him being a far too sexy asshat and me having
that firey red-headed temperment."
"Sam, you're of egyptian decent. I'm
pretty sure the only way you could get further from being red-headed, is if you
were from Nigeria."
Samara pulled her long black hair forward over
her shoulder, examining it. "There has to be at least one in here, right?
I fly off the handle about everything."
"I think it has more to do with you being
a black cat. Us Tabbys are natoriously sweet tempered."
"Brent Simmons, you biggot!"
Vivvianna gave an exasperated sigh. "You
would bring that up, you bitchy, bad-luck bringer. I had a good reason to break
his arm. Is it my fault his mother doesn't believe in doctors? It's not even
that much of a disfigurement."
"Either way, I know tabbies are evil.
Just look at my mother."
Vivvianna smiled sweetly at the waitress as
she put a huge plate of bacon down in the middle of them. This was their
normal. The equivalent of like sixteen sides of bacon every morning to share.
That and a good four cups of coffee each and they were set to go.
"Are you on call today?" Samara
asked after finishing her half of the bacon. There was never any talk during
the consumption of pig. It was an unspoken rule between them. The first and
only time had resorted in the two of them getting on the table and hissing at
each other. Looking back, the last straw for the owner of the diner had been
when he'd had to squirt them with a water bottle to break them apart when Vivvianna
had gotten Samaras scruff in her teeth and Sam had started stabbing her in the
face with a fork. Blood spatter was frowned upon.
"Yep, all weekend actually. Dr. Obese
went on vacay with his twenty year-old girlfriend. Does the girl have
absolutely no self-respect? How does she not gag everytime she has to ride that
shit? Because you know he doesn't take top. Too much work...and last I checked,
she hasn't been brought into the morgue due to suffocation via fatass."
Dr. Obeso was the head of the Cardiology department
at Vivvianna's hospital, which held a great amount of irony considering Vivvianna's
nick-name for the man wasn't off base in the least.
In fact on more than one occasion, she'd
changed the o to e on the duty board...and once on his name tag, but Samara was
taking that to the grave.
"Some women just don't understand what we
do, darling. No matter how rich, handsome or dementionally inclined a man is,
you still gots to bash their skull with a toilet seat if you want them to remember
to put it down after they completely miss it and piss in the floor."
"Explains why you're single."
Trake's voice. "But sweet little Vivvianna here would never do that."
"Oh, you don't remember Brent Simmons
either?" Samara said dryly, trying desperately not to sound as jealous as
she actually was.
He cringed, sliding into the seat next to Vivvianna.
"Oh yeah. But he shouldn't have grabbed her ass."
"Exactly!" Vivvianna exclaimed.
"It's not like I waited for him to shift, stick a collar around his neck
so he couldn't shift back and then tape his feet up."
Samara laughed so hard she had to wipe the
tears away, remembering how Vivvianna's paws had been bare every time she'd
shifted for the next week.
"But I guarantee you won't trick me into
wearing a bunny suit with nothing under it to a party where nobody else is
dressed up." She grumbled, still a little miffed when she thought about
the rash that had caused.
"You would have been a hit at a furry's
convention."
Trake's arm was stretched out behind Vivvianna
with a comfortable familiarity. It was something she secretly craved from him.
He was like that with almost everyone. Easy going...even fun loving sometimes.
But with her? Open hostility.
The worst part was that she had always had a
bit of a crush on him. Something only Vivvianna had ever guessed. Guessed, but
had never had confirmed, because Samara didn't like weaknesses. And having a
thing for the one man who would never return those feelings was definitely a
weakness.
She watched as Trake smiled down at Vivvianna
when she said something sweet—and she thought that word with as much mockery as
one could put into a thought—and even bumped her playfully on the arm with his
side, before making eye contact with Samara.
His expression quickly turned into a frown and
she felt like somebody was carving her insides out with a very unpleasant
knife.
Why did he hate her?
Time to go. No way she was going to
continuously put herself in the path of heartache. "See ya suckas,"
she said, quickly sliding out of her side of the booth and standing.
She tossed some cash on the table, trying to
ignore how Trake's eyes followed everything she did. If she was given to
daydreams, she'd have even said he'd looked down her shirt when she bent to
grab her phone off the seat, but that would mean he cared what was under her
shirt. And he for sure didn't care about that.
"Where are you going?" he asked dryly.
It was like he didn't really care about the answer, but was trying to be
polite. Something she'd thought they were past. Hadn't they spent five minutes
the night before insulting each other?
Trake-effect.
Temper rising.
"Anywhere I don't have to watch—"
She waved her hand in their general direction. "—whatever you call
this."
"Normal people call it 'being polite'.
Why is it so hard for you?"
She growled at him. Like a real one. "I'm
perfectly capable of being polite to people who don't sit around on their high
horse treating me like an idiot."
"I calls it like I sees it, baby."
He'd already leaned back into the booth, looking down at her somehow from his
seated position with that smug effing smile.
There was only one thing that passed for
sensible in a situation like this, but she did the other thing. The non-sensible
thing.
She punched that smug bastard in his perfect
face and then walked out. She didn't look back as she stomped out the doors and
across the parking lot.
Who the hell did he think he was? What right
did he have to sit there and act like he was superior to her. She was amazing.
Everybody loved her. And reguardless of what he acused her of, she was actually
pretty smart. And he wasn't the only one around here with a pretty face.
Her exotic features, deeply bronzed skin and
bright green cat eyes with her black hair, drew plenty of attention. Male and
female.
She didn't need Trake coming back into town
and making her feel bad about herself.
As soon as she felt the vise tighten on her
arm, she knew it was him, so she just swung blindly, not caring if he killed
her after this.
He ducked her fist, but let go of her arm, so
she swung with the other one.
"What the fuck is wrong with you
Samara?"
He ducked again.
"You Trake! Leave me alone!" Obviously
she couldn't just keep swinging at him. She'd gotten lucky with that first
punch, but she wouldn't again.
So, she kicked him in the front of the knee.
She pulled back at the last second, deciding that shattering his knee cap
wasn't all that necessary to prove her point.
Or maybe she should have after all, because it
probably would have stopped him from tackling her into the snow.
She bucked and kicked and swung and bit and
finally clawed, but he was stronger than her by a long shot.
"Sam! Stop!"
For some reason, her nick-name coming out of
his mouth was enough to shock her into stillness. She blinked up at him,
completely confused. He hadn't called her Sam since they were young. That was
about the last time they'd managed to have a conversation without it turning
into a fight too.
"What is wrong with you?"
"You've already asked me that," she
said dangerously. "The answer still stands."
He was staring at her intently. His expression
serious, but surprisingly not angry.
She was embarrassingly aware that he was lying
across her, his chest pinning hers to the ground. At least his lower body wasn't
touching her.
"You're smashing my boobs, asshole."
His eyes widened momentarily, and then he said
the one thing guaranteed to bring her anger back. "What boobs?"
"See!" She started wiggling again,
at one point trying to head-butt him and nearly succeeding. "For your
information Cunningham, I have great boobs! Beautiful, perfect boobs with
lovely brown nipples."
As soon as it was out of her mouth, she knew
they were no longer alone in the parking lot. Half the diner had emptied out to
watch their wrestling match after her little episode inside.
She gave up trying to get him off of her. At
this point she actually considered burying her face in his chest. "Trake-effect
strikes again," she mumbled, closing her eyes. "Will you just do the
honorable thing and bury me in the snow. Consider it the only act of kindness
you ever show me."
He smiled that
I'm-the-asshole-that-ate-your-cake smile and finally got his big ass off of
her. "Come on Sam. You actually expect me to show you kindness?"
He reached out a hand once he was standing,
but she smacked it away, preferring to struggle ungracefully to her feet than
let him help her.
"Did you really just yell what I think you
yelled?" Vivvianna asked through the hand she had over her obviously
smiling mouth. "Because I was really hoping my frozen ears were playing
tricks on me."
She pointed an accusing finger at Vivvianna.
"We are supposed to be friends."
"I don't know. You've never let me see
your amazing breasts. We can't be all that close."
"I did too! Last year at the New Year's
Eve extravaganza. You just don't remember because it was right before you
passed out with your face in Inchworm's lap."
"They must not be that remarkable then,
otherwise I would have passed out in your lap."
Samara flipped her hair over her shoulder.
"I turned you down. Your breath was kickin'. Speaking of...Trake, don't
come near me again. Don't talk to me. Don't even look at me. In fact, if you so
much as dream about me, I'll be kicking your ass there too."
She left with as much dignity as she could
muster, considering she kept slipping in the snow and all the creepy old dudes
were staring at her chest like they were hoping her shirt and jacket would
miraculously become see-through.
***
"Well, at least she didn't
kill you."Vivvianna said positively.
He rubbed the split in his lip,
sighing. "I think she made her displeasure pretty clear though." Did
he sound as miserable as he felt? Because if he did, he might just go bury
himself in the snow for being so fucking pathetic.
"You think that was
clear?" Vivvianna looked confused as she watched him poke at his lip.
"She did worse to me last week when I hid her piece of cheesecake. She
said some really hurtful things about my ass too."
"I just don't know what it is
Vivvianna. He shook his head and nearly groaned when the movement brought the
scent that was now sticking to his clothes, wafting up to him. Her scent. Warm
sweet-rolls right out of the oven. "I know she's mean. Anybody who is
friends with her knows she can be spirited—“
"She's convinced she has a
red hair...somewhere."
"––but something about me
just sets her off."
"Trust me when I say I'm not
taking her side, because I know she nuts, but you do kinda talk down to
her."
He hung his head in shame, because
he knew exactly how he talked to her. "It's purely defensive. She's just
so mean. It's like my pride won't let me be nice to her knowing she's just
going to say something awful. I can't be the one who offers the olive branch.
I'm just not that big of a person."
"Yeah, see, here's the thing. Not to be
crude, but the front of your pants would
disagree."
He groaned, knowing without looking that he
was showing rod. Masochistically, he'd been hard since the mean little beauty
had punched him in the face. His extensive pride, and its not wanting her to know what she did to him, had been the only
thing that had kept him from doing something truly embarrassing right there in
the middle of the parking lot. Worst of all, he had been so focused on her, he
probably would have done it in front of all those people who'd come out to
watch the show, because the whole time he'd had her pinned to the ground, he'd
completely forgotten that they were in public and therefore subject to public
scrutiny.
"If it make's you feel any better," Vivvianna
said brightly beside him. "She's just a fried as you."
He blinked at her. "I don't know what
that means."
Vivvianna shrugged and walked off, leaving him
to the patrons of the diner. Who all smiled at him like he was some kind of
lost puppy.
