Bite Me

Bite Me

Mandy Rosko

The Woodland Creek Series

Bite Me

Woodland Creek

By Mandy Rosko

Copyright Mandy Rosko 2015

Cover Art by Jennifer Munswami

For JM Rising Horse Creations

For More Books by Mandy Rosko Please Visit Mandyrosko.com

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book please return to Smashwords.com to discover other works by this author.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this story are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Thank you for your support.

She always did have a sassy mouth...just his type...

Alice Grey thought life was easier when she was still a thief. As a flying squirrel shifter, it had always been as easy as gliding through some rich guy's open window and sailing away before the hounds could get a sniff of her. That was ten years ago, and she's still trying to escape her past, and the memories of the man who told her to run...

Alice is reformed now. She doesn't live that life anymore. She hadn't wanted it to begin with. Forced into it to pay her father's debts to some very bad people, she still can't lice peacefully because the dog shifters, on in particular, don't know when to quit. They catch up with her in Woodland Creek, hoping to clamp their teeth down on her neck and shake her until she's dead like a real squirrel.

Jake Redfield, former undercover cop, fell in love with Alice when he met her on the job. He'd been trying to bring down her bosses at the time, and for the most part, he succeeded, but one man is out of prison, and he wants revenge as much as Jake wants to see her again. Wants to touch her and kiss her. Keep her safe.

As a diamondback rattlesnake shifter, his venom can be deadly, and anyone who tries to hurt his Alice is just begging to be bitten...

Table of Contents

Map

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Epilogue

Woodland Creek Series

About the Author

For maps and information, please visit the

Woodland Creek Website

http://woodlandcreekseries.com/

Chapter One

Things were so much easier back when she’d made her living being a thief. It had honestly been like living the all-American dream. Alice Grey had spent her time traveling, meeting new people, attending a couple of fancy parties, wearing nice clothes, that sort of thing. When she’d been just nineteen years old, everyone seemed to want to shower her with expensive gifts. Okay, so it was only older men who wanted to do that, but she didn’t mind. They were all good-looking in one way or another, and nice enough to her.

And, if Alice happened to think the whole being nice thing wasn’t just part of an act in order to try and get under her skirt later on, she would even reconsider pilfering some of their finer items.

The average person has no clue that shifters exist in the world, and those who do know about them are usually just as shocked to find out that a cute, adorable flying squirrel, the kind with the fuzzy white belly and big eyes that belonged on a greeting card or an Internet meme, could sneak onto someone’s well-guarded property, climb a couple of trees, and glide her way into an open window.

Too easy. It had always been too easy.

And now Alice was staring at the slightly cracked ceiling of the tiny little inn she’d come to stay in at Woodland Creek. It wasn’t a dumpy place; it was actually well kept. No dead spiders had been found in the tub, no dust on the dressers, and the TV was new enough to be a thin flat screen instead of something she might see in a Psycho movie. But she couldn’t stop staring at the single crack in the ceiling, thinking about how the hell this had happened.

She wasn’t even supposed to be here. She’d stayed too long, and now the Rottweilers had found her.

She’d known they would. This place was a haven for shifters, after all, and as much as she was drawn here, they clearly had been, too.

Alice had thought she had some time, though. It wasn’t like she had been stealing anything for the last nine years, so there were no reports for them to look up, no cases of small rings, or coins, or stamps from collectors going missing.

She didn’t think there were any major collectors in a town like this anyway.

It wasn’t like taking any of that stuff had helped her the last time, but turning a new leaf was hard as hell. She was almost out of cash, and the only way she’d managed to stay in her room in this inn was by picking up a couple of waitressing shifts at The Pond and Duck Restaurant.

Not very fun, but the tip money meant she could buy herself some time.

Clearly, that had been a mistake, because right now, the Rotties were in the inn. She had yet to physically see them, so she didn’t know how many there were, but there had been one voice in particular that she’d recognized.

That would be Bobby’s. She hadn’t seen him since he took that snake venom to the face. She was shocked he was even alive. The light slur to his voice meant he hadn’t walked away completely unscathed, however. She wondered if his face was melted like Two-Face from her dad’s old Batman comics.

She’d been here almost three weeks. Her bags had been packed for four days. Well, her bags had always been packed, but this time everything was really put away. All her toiletries and makeup were put away instead of sitting on the counter. She just had to go downstairs and tell the lady in charge that she was going to pay up for the day and not come back. That was all.

But she couldn’t do that, because then Bobby would see her. She was still waiting for them to leave the motel, but it sounded like they were having a nice chat with the people in charge, or the other customers.

Probably showing off pictures of her.

Bobby might sound like the name of a guy who was a big doughboy pushover, but the guy downstairs was rough. She knew this because she’d seen what he’d done to some of the people who had disappointed him. He was big, and he was strong. Stupidly strong. It was no wonder a guy his size had survived the bite of a diamondback rattlesnake.

But he was supposed to be the guy in charge. He was supposed to send other people out to do his dirty work, not do it himself.

Somehow, Alice thought she might be able to handle all this a lot easier if it hadn’t been him downstairs looking for her. Had it just been another one of his goons, someone who didn’t have such an agenda for her, then it would’ve been easier to slip by and get away.

People didn’t recognize other people all the time. Pictures or not. Alice was really starting to wish she hadn’t let her blonde hair come out again. She should’ve dyed it when her roots started to show, but she hadn’t been able to help herself.

It had been so long since anything had happened that she’d gotten careless, and her vanity had taken over. She’d wanted her blonde hair back. It wasn’t as light as it used to be, but light enough that it would’ve drawn Bobby’s attention. Especially if he was hunting down the blonde who’d stolen forty thousand dollars from him.

He probably had an eagle eye to watch out for anyone with blonde hair at this point.

She was so screwed.

There was no way she was exiting this room. Her door was locked in every way she could think of locking it. The deadbolt was in place, the chain in its proper home, and she’d even pushed one of the reading chairs against the door.

She was going to have to leave behind her bag. She didn’t want to. She really didn’t want to. Everything she owned was in that bag. How was she supposed to start over with absolutely nothing?

Whenever Alice shifted, her clothes shifted with her, so that meant she could take what she was wearing with her, but virtually nothing else. The more layers she wore, the harder it was to keep her form, too, so that would be a problem.

The clothes would definitely leave behind her scent, and the only reason why Bobby probably hadn’t picked up that she was in this inn with him was probably because of the ammonia spray she carried with her.

There was no way he couldn’t smell her at least a little bit, however. He had to think that she’d been here at some point. That was probably why he wasn’t leaving.