Never Rub a Werewolf the Wrong Way

By M. Levesque

Jasmine Reach was barely making it, running a spa out of her home in the tiny town of True Massachusetts—until her amazing talent is discovered. Having been raised as a human, only to find out that she has a special healing touch, Jasmine now adjusts to offering massage therapy to paranormal beings suffering from extreme emotional trauma.

Things were just starting to make sense to her in this new world when a gorgeous exiled Alpha werewolf shows up, and suddenly Jasmine’s massages are feeling a lot less professional than before, but no less satisfying.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Evernight Publishing
• Release date: Sep 12, 2016
• ISBN: 9781772338515

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Published by EVERNIGHT PUBLISHING ® at Smashwords

www.evernightpublishing.com

Copyright© 2016 M. Levesque

ISBN: 978-1-77233-851-5

Cover Artist: Jay Aheer

Editor: Stephanie Balistreri

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.

NEVER RUB A WEREWOLF

THE WRONG WAY

M. Levesque

Copyright © 2016

Chapter One

I finished replacing the dead flowers in the beds in front of the spa and wiped a smear of dirt from my forehead. As thunder rolled in the distance, I turned my face into the warm, humid wind and simply enjoyed that single moment of magic just before a storm hits.

Before all this, before learning of real magic, I didn’t allow myself the luxury of believing in such things. I was a fact-based kind of girl that didn’t trust in anything that I couldn’t see for myself. I’d had what some would call a hard life, and that can grind a person down over time. Maybe that’s what made me lose my belief in things like magic, love and hope. Maybe that’s what makes everyone lose their belief as they become adults.

At the time, things were not good for me, but I thought I hid it well. In truth, the only time I felt happiness or believed in magic anymore, was that one brief, beautiful moment before an early summer storm, when the sky is filled with dark clouds and the air is so heavy, fog rolls off the earth like barely visible waves and the air crackles with unseen energy.

I know better now. Magic and happiness are real, but every yin must have a yang and hopelessness, I have learned, is not the same as darkness or evil.

My name is Jasmine Reach and up until about a year ago my small business was a failing venture. Who in their right mind would set up a Healing Touch Spa and Massage Parlor in the middle of a country community of five hundred people? I live in a town where the local population of hunting dogs outnumbered its children.

I was well aware of this before going into it, so I tried to keep my overhead down. I converted a section of my great, great aunt’s enormous and possibly haunted farmhouse into my spa. I did this all while living in the rest of the quickly dilapidating house. This way all I had to do was pay the utilities and frequent repair bills. Still, the town of True, Massachusetts was not ready for Jasmine Reach or Reiki, or pedicures, or autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) therapy sessions. They really weren’t ready for that last one. Try telling a redneck that watching a video of a woman petting her cat and whispering random words into a microphone was going to cure their insomnia. I could almost understand their hesitation to even try it.

So, why didn’t I move? Well, the town of True, Mass might not have been ready for me when I moved here at the age of ten, but here I was, and I was here to stay.

When I came to True, I was somewhat parentless and found myself moving in with my Great, Great Aunt Agnes. She managed to make it to her hundredth birthday and my high school graduation, but she only did so out of sheer stubbornness. She was all I had in this world, and I loved her dearly. She taught me the ways of True, Mass, but better yet she taught me how to piss them off. Great, Great Aunt Agnes didn’t exactly fit in either, but it took me a long time to decide that was okay. Well, it was okay, until you started looking for a husband. It was even less okay when you opened a small business in said town and suddenly needed their support for survival. I’ve learned customer support goes hand in hand with popularity, and it seemed that they needed me a lot less than I needed them.

The day Lilith stumbled upon me and my little spa was a lot like this one. There was still about three inches of soggy, dirty spring snow on the ground and it was thundering outside with a fog too thick to even see through, rolling off the still frozen earth. Thunder snow. I’ve only seen it a handful of times in my life so I should have known trouble was on the wind.

Until Lilith found Healing Touch Spa, the only thing keeping me from succumbing to the mayor’s constant requests for a happy ending to his weekly massage, was the occasional forty-year-old man coming in with back problems and the stubborn insistence that they didn’t need to go to the doctor. Thank god for aging backs and masculine pride.

So there I was, barely able to pay the bills and my roof was leaking in the main house, when finally Lilith walked into my shop. She did so wearing a tailored black silk pantsuit, carrying an Armani bag and a British accent that would have made the Queen proud.

If I didn’t think I belonged in True, Mass, Lilith didn’t even belong in the county. She looked around the main room of the spa, painted a pale robin’s egg blue with cream trim, pickled wood cupboards and shining marble counters, then she met my eyes and smiled warmly. She, like myself, had somehow found herself stranded in the fog of True, Mass, and she’d finally found a place she could call home.

Lilith came to my shop twice a week for the next four months before she tested me. You see Lilith couldn’t believe I was one hundred percent human. She, unbeknownst to me, was a vampire with trust issues. I may not have picked up on the vampire thing, but I’d picked up on those trust issues immediately. I’ve always been good at reading people’s emotions, and I was always careful with her because, beyond the designer clothes, friendly warm smiles and tips big enough to buy groceries on a regular basis, instinct told me that Lilith was dangerous. I didn’t walk on eggshells or anything, but I knew to watch the subtle changes in her posture, telling me when it was time for me to take a break.

My keen intuitiveness translated to her that I too was some kind of supernatural being. Apparently, she really wasn’t so far off. Witches tended to go into the natural healing arts all the time, but then again, very few of them ever agreed to work on vampires either. The supernatural culture is thick with prejudice all their own and long memories of the wars of yesteryear. Their precarious truce amongst one another, hung by a silken thread that the Council protected, and nobody messed with the Council. Sometimes the only way to avoid trouble was to avoid one another.

And so, at the end of one of her massages, curiosity killed the cat. She sat upright, Frankenstein Monster style and sank her fangs into my throat. She took one sip, spat my blood out onto the ceramic tile floor and narrowed her eyes at me in suspicious wonder. I, on the other hand, belted her over the head with a clay bowl filled with soothingly warm massage oil and screamed bloody murder. She was between me and the door, so screaming was my only defense.

She patiently waited for me to run out of air before rolling her eyes. Please stop being so dramatic.

Dramatic? Was she calling me dramatic after biting me? I just blinked at her while holding a hand to my throat, imagining if I removed it, I would spurt arterial blood like something out of a Quinton Tarantino movie.

She crossed her arms over her toweled chest and took on a look of consideration. Well, you aren’t a witch, but you’re certainly not a human either.

First, you bit me, and then you start calling me names? I screeched at her.

She rolled her eyes again and climbed down off the table, slipped in the puddle of oil and nearly went down, on her ass.

My first reaction was to wonder if this was how it was going to end. I