Page 32 of Just a Little Wicked (Wicked Sisters #2)
Missy
Holly and Connor are all googly-eyed planning for the wedding, and I’m happy for them but TBH, I’m also jealous. Tell me some good news to distract me from the fact that I’m not even in a relationship. You get laid by that big Viking yet?
Missy
Winter?
Missy
WINTER?
Missy
Why do I always spill all my secrets, while you stay closed as a clam?
W inter was still in a daze when they pulled up to the motel room.
She had kissed Erikson Grimm.
She had kissed him to prove a point: that despite any potential past life association, they were as incompatible as two people could be.
She had meant to make it brief and sisterly, to show him that this life was different, that they could only be friends.
Their personalities were far too dissimilar for them to ever make sense as a unit.
He aggravated her to no end, and she preferred men who were agreeable.
He challenged her to accept help, and she liked being alone.
They’d seen glimpses of how their affairs ended in the past, and hooking up was a terrible idea.
Even if he smelled amazing, like soap and spice and expensive cologne, and even if her stomach dipped every time he put his hand on her thigh or leaned a little too close.
But God, that kiss . Winter had never, ever been kissed like that.
It had been an all-consuming, breath-stealing, heart-pounding kiss that had made her feel like her very soul was seeping into the cracks of his.
He’d kissed like a pro athlete in his element.
Like exploring her mouth was his manifest destiny.
Like he’d been born to pleasure a woman.
She felt her pulse between her thighs as she slammed the motel door behind them.
She’d set out to prove a point and build a wall between them, and all she’d done was complicate things.
She couldn’t deny the truth: she was attracted to Erikson Grimm despite all the reasons she shouldn’t be, and she didn’t know what to do about it.
He wasn’t some random guy she’d never see again.
Their siblings were getting married, and they’d be in each other’s lives whether they liked it or not.
Was a quick, two-day sex-fest worth that level of awkwardness?
Then again, if she never saw her family again, she supposed it wouldn’t be a problem.
That thought was even more depressing, and with her heart and mind heavy with worry, she sank onto the bed and dropped her forehead into her hands.
A moment later the bed depressed beside her, and Erikson’s warm palm cupped the back of her neck.
She was about to snap at him, but then his thumb dug into the muscle on the side of her neck and she practically mewled.
“You’re strung tighter than a bow,” he said in that deep, vibrating voice.
He released her neck long enough to position her so that her back was to him, and then both his hands were smoothing up her shoulder blades and pressing into every sore and stiff muscle.
Winter groaned, and she didn’t even care when he gave a low laugh, his big, calloused hands working a small miracle on her body.
He massaged her until she was so lax and loose that she might as well have been an unstrung puppet.
Her head lolled and she sagged slightly against him in a rare show of vulnerability.
His hands slid to her hair and he gently stroked her scalp, his fingertips rubbing through the loosened locks.
He tugged her hairband out and began gently detangling her curls. “Your hair is like silk,” he murmured.
“That can’t be true. I use dollar store shampoo.”
He chuckled as he continued to work through the strands.
Winter’s eyes fluttered closed. Why did she let down her guard so often with him?
She loved her sisters and aunts with all her heart, but even with them she never felt this stripped bare.
Maybe it was because Erikson knew all the worst parts of her, every single piece, and still seemed to like her.
Did he like her? Not many people did. Winter couldn’t recall having a friend who wasn’t related to her.
During her school years, she and her sisters had been made fun of relentlessly.
They hadn’t had a lot of money, so while other kids were spending thirty dollars on GAP shirts, their aunts had been ironing patches over the holes in their clothes.
Holly had been teased horribly, and there hadn’t been a lot Winter could do about it.
But when it came to Missy, who was in the same grade as her, she hadn’t held back.
By third grade, Winter had decided that if no one liked her, they’d at least be afraid of her.
A few fist fights later and she and Missy hadn’t been made fun of anymore—at least to their faces—but they’d been scorned behind their backs, and having people fear you wasn’t the same as having people like you enough to be your friend.
She’d rarely been invited to birthday parties—only when a particularly open-minded parent made their child invite the entire class.
Because there were open-minded people in their town, people who loved and supported the Celeste family.
But there were just as many people who hated and feared them.
People who could sense that they didn’t quite belong.
That something unnatural lurked beneath their skin.
Erikson had proven that the paranormal didn’t scare him off and that he found her attractive, but that didn’t mean he liked her as a person.
She told herself it didn’t matter. Sex was sex, and she’d never once cared if one of her hook-ups liked her as a person or not. This was no different. She just needed to make sure Erikson was on the same page.
“So, sex only,” she said. “That’s what you want, right?”
His fingers stilled for a moment before he slowly worked behind her ear, gently raking through her red curls. “Have I told you how much I enjoy how blunt you are?”
“Most people think they want a blunt friend, but they don’t really.”
He made a noise. “I can see that. In answer to your question, yes and no. Yes, I want to have sex. No, that’s not all I want. I keep telling you I want to be friends.”
She was quiet for a moment. “Erikson, let’s be real. You don’t actually want to be friends. Do you even like me? Most people don’t.”
“Impossible.” He dropped his hands to her waist and twisted her, forcing her to face him on the bed.
Even sitting, he towered over her, the light from the windows warming the brown strands among the gold in his hair and reflecting in the depths of his sea-blue eyes, which were currently crinkled with confusion.
He hadn’t shaved that morning, and scruff covered his jaw.
His broad shoulders blocked out her view of the other bed, and not for the first time, she was keenly aware of the foot of height difference between them, except instead of thinking of it as her disadvantage, this time she was wondering just how it would look to have her knees spread wide by the expanse of his shoulders.
Erikson eyed the flush on her cheeks, but surprisingly didn’t take the opportunity to make a dirty joke.
Instead, his gaze returned to hers. “It’s impossible that people don’t like you, and if they don’t, it’s because you don’t allow anyone close enough to get to know you.
But I do know you. I know you’re addicted to coffee to an unhealthy degree, you secretly wear bright panties under your black clothes, and when you drive you get a little line between your brows, like you’re mapping out what path you want to take.
I know you’ve spent a lifetime building walls around yourself, not to keep everyone out, but to keep all your horrors in, even if it’s had the same end result.
” He rested his palm on her thigh, his thumb caressing the inside seam of her jeans.
“I know music is in your soul, and that Rachminoff’s Vocalise is your favorite song.
” Before she could ask him how he knew—she really should have guessed it wasn’t a coincidence when he played it in the truck—he added, “I was walking the apple orchard last spring a few days after I arrived. I was scouting good camera angles, when I heard the most haunting music coming from a grove of birch trees. I followed the notes like I was compelled to, like a foolish mortal trailing a pied piper. I had to know where it was coming from.”
He took a deep breath, and her stomach flipped over.
She remembered that day. She rarely played the song that had been her mother’s favorite, but she’d felt so out-of-sorts with the arrival of the Grimms, so unsure of her own future even as she’d seen Holly’s so clearly, that she’d taken to the birch patch.
Winter hadn’t lacked for female companionship growing up, but there were still times when she missed her mother and no other advice would do, so she’d played the song for her long-dead mother, and she’d ached for what she’d lost and what she’d never have again.
“I saw you playing, and I’m not ashamed to say I leaned against one of the trees and listened to the entire thing.
You were mourning, and I’d never felt anything so potent, so sorrowful in my life.
I looked up the name of the song as soon as I had a chance.
And occasionally, in the months after,” he hesitated for a moment, “I listened to it and I thought of you surrounded by peeling birches, the sun streaming through the leaves and dancing across your face, your soul aching.”