Her Sexy Skunk

By Virginia Nelson

Christine Jarrods wants to be a writer of paranormal young adult fiction, so she’s pursuing a degree in English. By day she tackles Chaucer and by night she stalks the streets looking for something magical to inspire her muse. Finding a thread that suggests one of her profs might be some flavor of shifter—and getting cyberbullied for asking the wrong questions—she decides to dig, even though she’s been warned to let it go.

Oliver Standish has a secret. Like a lot of guys his age, he’s scraping by, delivering pizzas, trying to pay off loans from a failed attempt at school, and crushing on Chrissy, the one that got away in high school. Only his family knows he’s also trying to deal with being a shifter, and he sure can’t tell Chrissy. She has a fascination with magic, and he knows she’d want to know more about it. But how do you tell a girl who wants to find a monster that you change into a skunk?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Evernight
• Release date: Sep 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781772330298

Virginia Nelson

Virginia Nelson likes knights in rusted and dinged up armor, heroes that snarl instead of croon, and heroines who can't remember to say the right thing even with an author writing their dialogue. Her books are full of snark, sex, and random acts of ineptitude--not always in that order.

Book preview

Published by Evernight Publishing ® at Smashwords

www.evernightpublishing.com

Copyright© 2014 Virginia Nelson

ISBN: 978-1-77233-029-8

Cover Artist: Sour Cherry Designs

Editor: Lisa Petrocelli

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

DEDICATION

For Henchie

HER SEXY SKUNK

Virginia Nelson

Copyright © 2014

Chapter One

For some reason, werewolves smelled like rotten cabbages. He’d never really figured out why, to his nose, dogs translated to rotten vegetation, but without fail…rotten cabbage equaled mutts. Yanking off his glasses, Ollie rubbed the bridge of his nose, hoping maybe they wouldn’t notice him. Based on the strength of the funk, ‘they,’ since it took more than one of the creatures to smell that damned bad.

Freak. The single slur followed by a push shoved him out of the delusion that he might escape notice and threw him right into the glass door protecting the milk section in refrigerated chill. For them to be this open in their aggression meant pack because lone wolves would have avoided him. Arguably, lone wolves were smarter in general—they didn’t drink the Pack Kool-Aid, so to speak.

And they’d broken his glasses. Fuckers.

Spinning, he couldn’t see for shit. That was the flaw of his animal. Vision wasn’t his strong suit. Luckily, it didn’t have to be. His nose painted a picture clearer than most could see with their eyes, so even without the glasses he easily figured out where his two attackers were. He snagged one by the neck, slamming him into the bread shelves. Look, you don’t want to fight with me, he added, knowing the words were futile even as he said them.

Nails pierced his arm as the wolf tried to pry his fingers free. Apparently, this dumb dog never tangled with his kind before because he was close enough to see the dog’s expression. Shocked.

Bass music thumped from the phone the pinned wolf’s friend held, and Ollie dropped the guy he’d held to cover his ears. Like throbbing pain, the noise penetrated the barrier of his palms and he cringed further away. While the one he’d grabbed might not expect him to attack, his buddy had likely tangled with his kind before. How else would he know to use music against him?

Deciding that sometimes retreat was the better part of valor, he jogged out of the store, hearing the clerk yell at him, but he didn’t care. The pack was encroaching daily on his territory and he’d eventually need to deal with it.

But not tonight.

****

Social suggested interaction or even friendly companionship, and yet from what Chrissy experienced on the interwebs, nothing social happened on any form of social media. More often than not, it was a place to leave quotes about how wonderful guys were, or should be, and post selfies. Female selfies involved more boob than she chose to promote on the net, and male selfies seemed to be attempts to prove they were all irresistible to women—like the digital mating ritual of morons.

Still, she scrolled through her social media feed, procrastinating instead of facing down the monster of writer’s block. Marsha Deedlebopper’s smiling face made her pause—something about the girl always struck Chrissy as different, even if she’d never quite categorized what about her pinged the weird-dar.

You’re a fucking monster and everyone knows, Snipper. If they don’t, I’ll tell them.

Vague-posting at its worst. Snipper was an upper division English prof, but the post seemed more violently angry than school merited. Did he fail Marsha, hence her use of the word monster?

The answering comments just got weirder.

One kid posted, No pack, no one has your back. Don’t fuck with what you can’t control, bitch.

Seemed harsh. Maybe that kid really liked Snipper, even if the prof wasn’t the nicest of teachers—or, to be honest, cleanest. He had so much facial hair, Chrissy spent most of his lectures trying to determine if it was food or vegetation growing on his chin hair. But no pack? What in the hell did that mean? Some sort of gang slang, maybe?

You don’t need pack, Marsbars, we’re here for you. Meet us at the tracks. We’ll plan a dispute, another poster answered.

Who in the hell planned a dispute? The same guy who called Marsha a bitch commented

Reviews for Her Sexy Skunk

[The Romance Evangelist · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Not a bad start, but then it just...ends.