Blood & Bones: Ozzy by Jeanne St. James

Chapter Two

The buzzer wentoff in his apartment, indicating someone had entered the office downstairs. He only turned that annoying alert on when no one was working the desk. Or when he was supposed to be working the desk and didn’t want to sit in the office, which was never.

With a grumble, he yanked on a pair of shorts, checking to make sure it didn’t have any holes where it shouldn’t, and threw a what-might-be-clean T-shirt over his head. He hoped to fuck Ry had put on a pot of coffee before he left this morning after the night shift.

Apparently, the motel was the perfect place for the Fury college kids to work for the summer. But at least he had help and wasn’t chained to the office himself. Except for times like these when he got stuck working the front desk because Liz was no longer…

Fuck.

It had been two months. Why the fuck was she still haunting him?

Because she and that asshole were constantly in his fucking face. Hard to put something behind him when it was always in front of him.

On the weekends, he’d taken to texting someone at The Barn before heading over to make sure the happy couple wasn’t already there. Or texting Dodge first before going to Crazy Pete’s to drink and possibly find someone to fuck if he wasn’t in the mood for one of the sweet butts.

A couple of times he’d had Angel and Brandy over for a threesome. But it wasn’t the same. He was disappointed in the way they both ate pussy. Like they could barely tolerate it.

That was the good thing about…

Christ.He swallowed his curse and finished jogging down the steps that took him from his apartment upstairs to the office below.

His bare feet stopped on the bottom step as he saw the woman standing at the counter waiting.

Holy fuck.

Her dark eyes turned his way and for a second, he feared he might have released those two words out into the wild. He did his best not to curse in front of the guests. Sometimes he achieved it, most times he failed.

The current guest standing in his office had long, loose very dark brown hair that was kind of a mess, almost as if she’d been out in the wind or she’d kept dragging her hand through it. After a second, she shot him a smile that hit him directly in the dick.

It was genuine. Not an I-need-to-be-nice-to-the-help type of smile.

But as fast as it was there, it was gone. As if she caught herself doing something she shouldn’t.

Strange, but whatever. Smiling or not, she was still hot as fuck. And his day suddenly got more interesting and made it more tolerable after being forced out of bed before he was ready.

He took the final step and moved behind the counter, instead of just standing there gawking like a forty-year-old virgin.

Something he wasn’t. The virgin part, anyway.

“Hey.” He cleared his throat and dropped his voice an octave to repeat his “hey” greeting again—a lot more smoothly this time—but still wanting to kick himself in the nuts for his voice cracking the first time like a fourteen-year-old hitting puberty.

“Hi. I’m really sorry for checking in way too early, but I was hoping you had a room ready so I could catch up on some sleep. I had a long drive.”

Her voice wasn’t super chipper, thank fuck, because it was way too early for that, but more like the warm honey he’d licked off…

Fuck.

He jerked on his beard. He needed to evict Liz from his head. The woman standing on the other side of the counter could be the person to do that. If not in reality, then at least in his fantasies.

“Ain’t a thing. Got a room that wasn’t booked last night. Can stick you in that one.” He frowned as everything else she mentioned finally sunk into his not-quite-one-hundred-percent-awake brain. “Drove overnight?”

She nodded. “Less traffic.”

“More deer,” he mumbled as he studied her face. He saw it now, the dark half-moons under her brown eyes. Most likely from exhaustion. He also noticed a couple of fine lines spidering out from the corners. From the bottom of the steps, she looked, at most, in her early thirties. Closer up, he guessed she might be pushing late thirties.

But he had to look really fucking close to see it. And right now, only about three feet and the front desk counter stood between them.

Her lips curled up just slightly at the ends. “Yes, less car traffic, but more wildlife. Especially in northern Pennsylvania. I forgot how much dodging and weaving I’d have to do to avoid squishing critters.”

“Easier to dodge and weave when you’re on a sled.”

A crease marred her forehead when she asked, “A what?”

He shook his head and watched that crease quickly disappear. “Got a reservation?”

She nodded and placed a thick wallet on the counter. “Yes. Do you need the confirmation number?”

He shook his head again. He wasn’t typing that long-ass number into the computer. He typed with only two damn fingers. It would take him half the day to search for it that way. “Just your name. Credit card.”

“Driver’s license?”

“Yeah,” he grunted as he stared at her long, slender fingers digging through her wallet. The nails weren’t super long and were no crazy-assed color like some of the sweet butts, either. Like Billie’s black painted nails. Or Crystal’s neon-colored ones. Sometimes every finger was a different color. It made Crys jerking him off seem like taking a trip on LSD while fucking a rainbow.

She slid her license and credit card across the counter toward him.

He ignored her credit card and picked up her license. The woman staring back at him in the picture on the plastic ID card looked exactly the same as the one standing before him even though the photo was two years old according to the date of issue.

Goddamn sexy as fuck, then and now.

He read her info. Shaylyn Diggs. Her address was in Boston. He did a quick figuring of her birthdate in his head. She was only two years younger than him.

An age where she was ripe but not rotten yet.

“Shaylyn,” he murmured.

“That’s me. But most people call me Shay.”

He never heard that name before but it kind of fit her now that he heard it. “That what you prefer?”

She jerked one slender shoulder up. “Either is fine.”

Fuck if he was falling into that trap again. “What d’you prefer?”

She blinked and the confusion that crossed her face was there and gone in a flash. “Shay. Since my mom called me Shaylyn whenever I was in trouble.”

He rolled his gaze from the top of her head down to her mid-section, the only part of her he could now see since the counter blocked the rest. Her tits were a bit smaller than what he preferred but he could live with the size. “Were you in trouble a lot?”

She tipped her face down and released a soft laugh. “No. But she preferred I go outside and play when all I wanted to do was stay inside to read a book instead. So, she was always on me about that.”

“How ‘bout now? You like to get in trouble now?”

Her expression sobered. “No, she passed a couple of years ago, but I wished she was still around to call me by my full first name. What I would do to hear it one more time.” She sighed.

She’d misunderstood him. Whether that was on purpose, he didn’t know, but he let it drop. Because hers was a childhood memory, while he was trying to build a future fantasy and if she figured that out, she might check-out before he even finished checking her in.

And he wasn’t done talking to Shaylyn Diggs yet.

He jiggled the computer mouse and woke up the sleeping screen. “Boston, huh? You born there?” She didn’t have the typical Boston accent. To his ears, she had no accent at all.

“I’ve only lived there for the last few years.”

“What made you move there?”

“A mistake.”

He glanced up and met her eyes. Her smile was still missing, her face unreadable and her body had stiffened somewhat.

“I appreciate you getting me in early. I’ll pay extra…” She raised her eyebrows and stared at him like she was waiting for something. Her eyes, almost as dark as her hair, dipped to his chest.

He wondered if he’d picked a shirt with a hole and his nipple was showing. He glanced down to check and it suddenly hit him that she was looking for a name tag. A normal fucking thing in a normal fucking motel. The Grove Inn certainly wasn’t normal.

But, Christ, sometimes he was as clueless as the fucking sweet butts. “Ozzy.”

“Ozzy,” she repeated. Her closed-lipped smile returned. “Like Ozzy Osbourne.”

“Yeah, but I’m much cooler.”

She dropped her head and laughed. Like she was trying to hide it.

“Don’t,” he said without meaning to.

She lifted her head. “Don’t what?”

“Hide your face when you laugh.”

Her smile flattened out. Christ, he was batting a thousand here. Every time she smiled or laughed, he destroyed it.

“I didn’t realize I did,” she said in a way he knew she was lying. She knew she did it but didn’t want to admit it. Or at least, talk about it.

But now he wanted to know why she hid when she was happy. Maybe she wasn’t hiding the fact she was happy, but was hiding something else.

He needed to keep his thoughts to himself or she was going to turn around and leave, thinking he was Norman Bates and The Grove Inn was the Bates Motel.

He propped her driver’s license on the keyboard and began to peck at the keys using his two index fingers, trying to type in her last name to search for her reservation.

Every time he tried to hit the D, his fat finger hit the F instead. By the third time, he released a searing, “Fuck!” then grimaced at letting that fly. “Fuck!” Christ. “Sorry.”

“Why? Is the computer system down?”

He shook his head and glared at the screen. With another curse grumbled under his breath, he reached under the counter, dragged out his reading glasses and slid them onto his face.

He could get away without wearing them most of the time, he just ended up squinting more. But when it came to the computer or trying to read instructions on the side of a frozen meal, he couldn’t go without them. The words always ended up being too blurry. When it came to typing, he always hit the wrong fucking keys.

Luckily, none of his brothers had ever seen him in his old fart readers. And he’d threatened Reilly—back when she used to live in the motel and help him out—and, more recently, Ry and Josie, that he’d bury them alive out in the woods if they said anything to anyone.

“It ain’t down. Just ain’t good with this shit…” He tried again, this time making some progress now that he could see a little more clearly. Luckily, she had a short last name, but he still managed to misspell it and another curse exploded from him before he could stop it.

“Do you mind if I come around and help? I’m really good with computers.”

He shrugged. “Yeah.”

She rounded the counter and paused since he only shifted enough to give her access to the keyboard, but still stood as close as possible. She probably wanted him to give her more space, but that wasn’t happening.

“I’m a fast typer, too,” she mentioned as she stepped closer and turned the keyboard toward her so she had better access.

“Also kinda cocky about it,” he teased, leaving his glasses on so he could read the screens of the reservation system and instruct her on what to do next.

Again, when she laughed, she dropped her head just enough so her hair covered her face.

That move tightened his jaw and he was tempted to move her hair out of the way. But since he was a stranger and a male, it would probably freak her the fuck out. He also didn’t want to risk her calling the pigs on him for touching her without consent.

But the real crime was not seeing her fucking face when she laughed. Or seeing her smile openly like Liz always did.

Fuck! Concentrate on the woman in front of you, stupid fuck, not the woman behind you.

While he didn’t touch Shay, he remained close enough to discover she smelled really fucking good. He leaned in a little closer, flared his nostrils and breathed deeply once more.

When she glanced at him, he snapped his head up and pretended he’d been staring at the screen as she typed.

“What are you doing?”

Busted.Lying would make it seem creepier than it was. “Tryin’ to figure out what you smell like.”

Her eyebrows rose and she laughed awkwardly, this time not hiding it. Maybe she forgot to because his idiocy caught her off-guard.

“Oh. It’s… um… wild honeysuckle. One of my favorite scents. It’s a body spray I get at…” She shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. I’m sure you don’t care where I get it.”

It was now one of his favorite scents, too. Right after what an aroused woman smelled like. Nothing smelled better than that.

His morning wood started to reawaken when he wondered what the woman just inches from him smelled and tasted like when she was all hot and bothered.

To keep from going off into some fantasyland and getting full-blown wood, he pulled his attention from her and back to the screen as she typed away, putting in her own info and credit card number and blowing through the process like she did this job every fucking day.

She did in thirty seconds what it normally took him five minutes to do.

Okay, ten.

Sometimes the guests got a little impatient with him when he was stuck doing the computer shit. Other times, he just scribbled their shit down on a scratch pad and let whoever was working next plug it into the computer. If the customers wanted a receipt, they had to stop back for it when someone who gave a fuck was in the office.

Her slender fingers stopped flying across the keyboard and hovered over the keys. When he looked up at her and met her eyes, she said, “I’m at the step where I need to assign a room number. Do you know which room I’m taking?”

Yeah, the one right up the steps behind them. The one that had a mattress that was great for playing adult Romper Room.

The motel was booked solid this weekend and offering to share his room would make a lot of sense. Wouldn’t it?

She might not think so.

So, he kept those thoughts to himself and pulled a blank keycard from the box, handing it to her. “Just click ‘next available.’ Only got one room this early, it’ll automatically plug the number into your reservation. For some reason, we’re full this weekend.”

Shay chewed on her bottom lip for a second, then said, “Must be because of the reunion.”

“What reunion?”

“High school. Twentieth.”

He stared at her. “That why you here?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“The local high school?”

“Yes. Manning Grove High.”

“You grew up around here?”

She turned back to the computer. “What do I need to do to program this card?”

“Insert it in the slot there. Then hit that green—” Before he could even finish telling her how to do it, it was done. “You work the front desk before?”

“No. But this program is really simple.”

Sure, for someone who was good with computers, like Ry and Josie. And, apparently, Shay.

“You need a second card?” He might have held his breath while waiting for her answer.

“No.”

“Didn’t bring a girlfriend along or nothin’?”

“No. I came alone.”

He hid his grin by rubbing his hand over his mouth.

“Is there anything else I need to do? I’m exhausted and would love to go rest.”

Yeah, you need to sit on my face.

Thank fuck that wasn’t what he said. He glanced at the screen to check to make sure everything was saved, then slipped his glasses off, hiding them back under the counter. “Nah, you’re good. Room’s to the right of the office. Maybe later once everyone else checks out, and before everyone else checks in, I can move you to a quieter room. Not sure how much sleep you’re gonna get in there durin’ the day once the office gets busy.”

“Right now I could sleep through a fire alarm.”

She tucked her credit card and license back into her wallet, took her keycard and slowly moved around to the customer side of the counter, glancing around as she did so. She was looking anywhere but at him.

He had no idea what she was checking out because the office wasn’t much to look at. It was pretty damn basic, unlike the lobby of the hotel on the town’s square that had all the fucking bells and whistles for their guests.

The Grove Inn offered them a clean room, hot water, and a comfortable bed. That was it. If someone was around to make it, they sometimes had coffee available in the office for the guests. If they wanted something fancy, they could pay twice as much at the hotel.

When Shay finally turned back to him, she wore a soft smile. “I remember this motel, but it’s a lot nicer than I remember.”

“Did a lot of work to it. How long since you’ve been back?”

She glanced around again, her gaze pausing at the big picture window next to the door. “Twenty years. I left right after I graduated and never came back.”

“Why?”

She hesitated and just when he thought she wasn’t going to answer, she said, “My mom was waiting for me to finish high school since by then my dad was gone. I was heading off to college and she wanted a smaller place in a warmer locale. She wasn’t a fan of the snow or frigid temps.”

“Where’d you end up?”

“She ended up in South Carolina. Near North Myrtle Beach.”

She not we. “And you?”

“Bloomsburg University.”

He pursed his lips. “Smart, huh?”

She seemed to be a wiz on the computer, but then, everyone was more of an expert with computers than him. As a kid he was more interested in video arcade games, not learning computer programming and typing and all that shit the other kids wanted to learn to become a functioning adult with a decent job. If his life hadn’t gone to shit, he might’ve traveled around and participated in video game tournaments. Maybe even would’ve become some sort of champion. Won trophies and shit.

Her “I do all right,” mentally dragged him back into the office.

He grinned. “Bet you do. And now what?”

“Now what what?”

He snorted softly. “What d’you do with that piece of paper you paid a fortune to get?”

She turned back to him and studied him for a long moment. Maybe he shouldn’t be asking her all these damn personal questions. She might think he was a psycho. Just like Norman Bates.

“Promise I ain’t gonna come stab you while you’re showerin’. Just curious is all.”

Her lips twitched. “I never watched that movie.”

“Probably best you don’t ’til after your stay here.”

Again, she hid her face as she laughed.

That shit pissed him the fuck off. Why the fuck did she feel the need to hide like that?

“Don’t gotta tell me. Just bein’ nosy is all. You’re a guest, shouldn’t be pryin’.”

“Would it get you fired?”

He snorted. “Fuck no.” He grimaced again at his cursing. But, thank fuck, she didn’t seem to take offense by it. He hated dealing with guests who were easily offended. They could fuck right off. “Owners ain’t gonna fire me.”

The only way he’d be “fired” would be if his colors were stripped. Or he walked away from the Fury and hit the road again for the second time in his life.

But he was in no rush to go anywhere right now when a woman like Shay stepped into his office. She just guaranteed he’d be sticking around for a couple more days.

He wondered what she’d think if she knew that.

Norman fucking Bates.

Christ.

“You must be a really loyal employee then,” she murmured.

He barked out a laugh. “Yeah.”

She tapped a finger against her lip. Her lips were a neutral color just like her fingernails. “While searching for a place to stay, I noticed this motel doesn’t have an online presence. Most motels—actually, most businesses—have a website at the minimum, even if they don’t have any other social media. The Grove Inn doesn’t even have that. I had to do a Google search to even find the phone number so I could call to make reservations.”

He grunted, not sure what she was getting at.

“Maybe while I’m in town, I can have a word with one of the owners.”

“‘Bout?”

“Well, you asked what I use my degree for. I received my B.A. in Graphic Web Design. My minor was in Web Development.”

“What’s that?”

“The short answer is, I build websites for my clients. I do a little graphic design on the side, too. So, I can make their website and design graphics for the site, as well. Or even design logos for company branding and promotional items, et cetera. The owners really need to consider it. I could even hook up the site to an online reservation system, so when someone like me checks in, their information is already loaded into your system and all you have to do is verify their payment and after a couple clicks, it’s done. It would be so much easier than trying to type all that information yourself into that computer, since your typing skills are a little,” she rolled her lips under and her eyes crinkled at the corners, “lacking.”

He swallowed down the urge to tell her where he wasn’t lacking, in both skills and elsewhere.

He eyed her up and down again. “Don’t look like no computer nerd to me.”

“What does a computer nerd look like?”

He wanted to smooth away the wrinkles from her frown. “Not you.”

Her eyebrows rose. “Do you know many?”

“Just one.”

“Does he or she look like a nerd?” Shay asked.

He tilted his head and smiled. “Just said you don’t.”

He guessed she wasn’t impressed with his flirting when she dug into her wallet again and pulled out a business card, ignoring his response. She approached the counter where he hadn’t moved from since he now sported a semi and figured it was best to hide it. She handed the card to him and he took it but didn’t read it. He couldn’t without his glasses, anyway.

“That’s my contact info. If you could pass that on, I’d appreciate it.”

Even though he hated to take his eyes off her, he finally glanced down at it and managed to make out her name. “You work for yourself?”

“Yes. I’ve built quite a bit of a client base over the years and I also get a lot of referrals from word-of-mouth.”

“Must be good then.”

“If the owners want to see examples of the work I’ve done, they can check out my website.” She leaned forward and tapped the business card he was holding. “The URL is right there.”

He didn’t give a fuck about any URL, whatever that was. “It got pictures of you on there?”

“What?”

Fuck.Now his dick was talking.

He grimaced and lifted the card. “Gonna give this to them.”

She nodded. “Thanks.”

She yawned, covering it with her hand. Obviously, fake as fuck. She might be tired but she hadn’t yawned once until now.

She asked, “To the right of the office?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll stop back in after I wake up to see if a quieter room opened up. I’m sure I’ll need one tonight.”

“You do that,” he murmured as she pushed opened the door and he watched her ass as she slipped out.

She was a bit slimmer than what he normally went for since he liked to be close to suffocating when he ate pussy. Her tits were a bit smaller than what he normally liked, too, because again, he liked to be smothered. But…

Damn, she could be his exception.

He came around the counter and stood where he could watch her out of the window. At least he wasn’t so damn desperate he was pressing his face to the glass.

But, fuck… He wasn’t planning on being in the office all day.

He wanted to take his Iron 883 out for a long run to blow off the dust. Both from him and his sled.

Now, his plans had changed.

Because when she woke up, he’d be waiting.

Just like Norman fucking Bates.

But without the knife.