Bloodwood Academy Shifter: Semester One (Bloodwood Year One Book 1) Read online

  The Bloodwood Academy Shifter

  Semester One

  Rae Foxx

  Text Copyright ©2019 by Rae Foxx

  The Series, characters, names, and related indicia are trademarks and © Rae Foxx.

  All Rights Reserved.

  Published by Market Street Books

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For Information regarding permission, write to:

  Rae Foxx at [email protected]

  Production Management by Market Street Books

  Printed in USA

  This Edition, August 2019

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  The Story Doesn’t End There…

  Semester Two Sneak Peek

  Holiday’s Are Coming!

  Also by Rae Foxx

  Join Me Online!

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  The back of Tommy’s van would always be home to me.

  Not the grungy two bedroom single-wide that Mama liked to pretend was a home. But this smoke-stained converted Econovan, with streaks and rips in the upholstered ceiling, questionable stains on the seats, and a smell that was distinctly Tommy--tacos, cigs, and the grease from the fryer at Rut’s where he was next in line to be manager.

  Oh, and the panty-dropping musk that he always sprayed too much of when he was hoping for some action. The air in his van smelled like that most of all right now. Which was probably why I was lying there, naked, spread eagle on the makeshift bed. He hovered above me, eyes darkening as he pushed into me.

  Deeper, harder.

  I groaned and clutched his shoulders, feeling him inside of me was always a special kind of magic.

  “I love you, baby,” he growled as my chipped nails dug into his back, his voice harsh and deep as it always was when he was nearing climax.

  He swelled inside of me, damp lust pooling between us as everything hardened and he pushed in, his feral ecstasy echoing over the tattered carpet walls of the van.

  He kind of sounded like a defrosting cow when he came—or some kind of thing off one of Mama’s ghost hunter TV shows. I wasn’t about to tell him that.

  With a grunt and a sigh, he rolled onto the hard mattress we had dragged in here when he had been kicked out last summer, leaving me to finish myself off as he always did.

  Maybe next time.

  “You’re so good,” I whispered the partial truth to him, kissing his cheek and grabbing the still-burning cigarette from the old chipped tray next to the bed.

  “I know it.” He sighed, his six-pack heaving as he breathed.

  I gave him a smile before blowing a perfect circle of smoke from the menthol-free cigarettes Mama had taken up buying lately. She claimed they tasted better, but everyone knew they were cheaper.

  I was going to pay dearly for taking a full-sized cig from her precious pack-a-week rations. Normally, I stuck to stealing the half-used butts that were littered in every ashtray round our house. Today was a special occasion and I would risk being caught from Mama’s incessant counting for this.

  I blew another ring toward a spot of what looked like blood on the ceiling and passed the menthol-free monstrosity to Tommy, who took it eagerly.

  “Perfectly round, like some other perfect thing I know.” He trailed his finger over my perked nipple as he took a drag, attempting to send a perfect ring into the air and failing miserably.

  “Closer, baby,” I moaned and rolled toward him, letting him take another pull before I took it back. “One of these days you’ll get a perfect ring.”

  I trailed my hand over his abs, the V of muscle that trailed down, and down to my favorite bit of him. Despite his love of anything fried, he kept up a killer body somehow.

  “Give me a few minutes, babe.” He grasped my wrist, pulling my hand back to his stomach. “Then I’ll pound you again.”

  “Maybe I’ll pound you this time.” I laughed so loud the glass pipe on the tiny shelf beside the bed rattled.

  “What’s up with you today?” Tommy asked, the line on his sweaty forehead deepening as he ripped the cigarette out from between my lips. “Last time you were this giggly was when we had stolen all the whipped cream from the dollar store outside of Winnemucca.”

  I shrugged one shoulder and attempted to make it look sexy. “I’m just excited.”

  “You gonna tell me why?” He smiled, blowing smoke in my face and I scrunched up my nose, but not because of the burn of the tobacco smoke in my eyes.

  I had been avoiding this conversation since I had first sent in the application. Guess there was no turning back now.

  “Today is the day I find out if I got in.” His eyebrow tweaked closer to the blonde waves that were falling over his forehead. My stomach dropped.

  “Into what?”

  I knew I should try to lessen the blow of him leaving, but I could care less about his fragile ego right now.

  “Elko community college.”

  The smoke-filled air that drifted through the silence might as well have been tar it was so thick and heavy against my skin.

  “Why do you wanna go to that dump?” The acid crept into his voice. “Is this more about bettering yourself, or becoming a doctor like that deadbeat that left you and your mom to rot in the middle of Nevada?”

  That was exactly why I had dreaded this conversation. I loved Tommy, and Tommy loved me in his way. Before I met him, I had come from a different world. Sometimes he couldn’t let my past life go, but would still get mad that I clung to the hope I was raised with.

  “Nah,” I lied, waving my hand to the side and stealing what was left of the cigarette. The thing had maybe one last pull on it. I looked outside the small back windows that Tommy had half-ass covered up to see that day was dipping into a candy-coated evening. “They have a good electrician’s program. I have a good shot, I think.”

  “What if you don’t have a shot, Ivy?” He interrupted, pushing himself up to hover over me again. His green eyes always made me melt when he gave me a superior look. Right now, however, they were pissing me the hell off. “What if you don’t get in? You’ve got to stop all this fucking nonsense. That life was a hundred years and a deadbeat dad ago. He took all those chances away when he left you and your mom. You were only what? In the fifth grade?”

  The words stabbed deep, burning. We weren’t forty years old. Where was that person everyone seemed to have in their life that reminded me, I was young and the whole wide world was open to me? That anything I wanted was there for the taking. Fuck, I’d been looking at too many positive message memes.

  “The only way those chances die is if I stop believing them.” I looked to the ceiling again, trying to figure out that damned stain.

  Tommy scoffed and some spittle came out of hi
s mouth. “Whatever Ivy. I know you can’t do better than this. Your mom knows you can’t do better than this. Why don’t you come and work with me? We can get you on the quick track management program like I am. Then we could get our own place, maybe even a double-wide. If we had two managers salaries coming our way, we could make a good life, and we wouldn’t have to pretend we are something we aren’t. We could have it all.”

  I couldn’t even look at him, I was that close to losing it. By losing it I mean punching him on that already mangled jaw of his.

  I was sure it had been square once upon a time. He had been in too many fights for it to be anything but mangled now. I doubt I could give it any more than a dent.

  “I don’t want to flip burgers and come home smelling like bacon grease, Tommy.” I tried hard to keep the snarl out of my voice, but it came out like last week’s septic flush. Vile and full of floating malice. I could already see the danger brewing in Tommy’s eyes. Guess this conversation was shot to shit. Might as well go all in.

  “Manager at Ruth’s Diner is a good job.” It was, even though it wasn’t for me. “I want to build something better. Something with a bit of hope for a future that doesn’t have grease stains and a broken water line. Don’t you want that? Don’t you hope for better?”

  “Ivy. Baby.” The back of his hand ran over my exposed side, tickling at my ribs and the tattoo I had given myself last summer. The infinity sign had faded somewhat now. “I don’t care about all that. I just want you. We can live in the van for all I care. There is still enough space to make it rock every night.”

  I gagged. Maybe because of the smoke, but more likely because of the shit spewing from Tommy’s short-sighted mouth.

  “You know I love you, Tommy. But you can’t live in the van forever.” I didn’t even look at him as I pulled my panties on, sitting up to throw my yellow sundress over my head. The old thing had a hole in the side no matter how many times I’d patched it up. It couldn’t be fixed. No matter how much I loved it.

  “Did you miss the double-wide, Ivy? We could have one of those! With both of us making twenty-k a year we could afford a place of our own,” Tommy said, the sound growing dark as he scooted up behind me, his hand wrapping around my hip. Holding me in place. “Or are you thinking of something else. Of something that your duck-thumping father stole from you? I keep telling you that life is gone. When are you gonna listen? Always dreamin’ big when our world is so small.”

  I froze halfway through pulling my long sandy curls into a side braid. My skin felt like it was boiling off my bones, my head spinning with some kind of feral growl the same way it always did. My dad had always said that I had the temper of a wild animal and I should learn to control it and not let it explode out of me.

  “I don’t want his life, Tommy. I don’t want this life.”

  He tugged me against his groin, ready for the next round that wouldn’t happen. “Ivy…”

  “I’ll see you tonight, Tommy, my mama is expecting me.”

  I was out of the double doors in the back of the van before he could call me out on my lie. He knew my Mama wasn’t waiting for me as much as I did. That woman was so high and drunk I wasn’t even sure she remembered that she had a daughter.

  It wasn’t her I was heading home for. It was the letter I had placed on the table that morning. I had wanted to wait for mama to be home when I opened it. That way she would be the first to know the good news and I could show her that everything wasn’t completely hopeless.

  Even though it was.

  Water shut off. Not a scrap of food in the pantry except two packs of Ramen. Two months behind on our lot rental.

  Maybe this was the last good thing.

  The last good thing my dad had left with me--some kind of hope for more.

  It didn’t take long for me to cut across the brush fields between the abandoned restaurant that Tommy liked to park his van in, and the old “Brush Country Estates” lot that we called home. Although the only thing that they got right was the brush.

  There wasn’t anything country or estate about this place. Most of the lots were either empty or occupied by abandoned single-wides in various states of disarray. Ours wasn’t abandoned, but it sure fit in.

  Vinyl siding had been torn off, fake shutters broken, and enough holes in the roof that I was glad we lived in rural Nevada where we got hardly any rain.

  The bent metal screen creaked loudly as I pulled it open, slamming my hip into the wooden door to get it past the uneven frame. The heavy thing smashed open the same as it always did, sending a cloud of what smelled like socks and burnt toast out after me.

  Great. Who knew how alert she would be for this?

  Well, I had to try.

  “Mama!” I called through the dimly lit room, the single word sending the heavy smoke of whatever she was inhaling curling through the dark.

  “Mama!” I tried again, this time answered by a groan by what served as both the living room and her bedroom. My voice reverberated against the warped wooden paneling that, when she was sober, she swore she intended to paint.

  I had no idea if she was high or drunk, or a little of both. She was laid out on the faded couch, still in her maid’s outfit, my letter crumpled up in her hand.

  Opened.

  Read.

  My heart fell.

  “Mama?” She jumped, pulling herself to sitting and turned toward me, her bloodshot eyes practically glowing in the dark. Every time I saw her like that, I pictured myself checking her neck for a pulse. I supposed that one day I wouldn’t find one when I pressed my fingers below her chins.

  She was beyond stoned. I would have held this moment off until morning, but she had already stolen my thunder and my lightning and everything in between.

  “Ivy,” My name was so slurred together that if I hadn’t heard it so many times, I might not have been able to make it out. “What are you thinking, baby?”

  She waved the ripped envelope toward me, the letter flapping out in the movement and fluttering to the ground like a feather.

  A broken, dead, feather, that had been soaked in gin.

  “I don’t under--”

  She made a move to tap her temple, her finger didn’t quite make contact. “You keep getting these ideas in your head… stupid. Stupid like you…They saw right through you. They knew you were stupid. They don’t want stupid.” She went from snarling, to mumbling, to sagged back on the couch so fast that hours could have passed. I was still standing there, staring at the crumpled piece of paper on the ground.

  Everything shook as I stepped to it, the same heat radiating over my skin as I grabbed the paper, the Elko Community College logo winking at me from the corner and “We regret to inform you” screaming at me from the first line.

  I didn’t need to see more, I didn’t care. I didn’t let go of the paper either. Wadding the gin-soaked sheet in my hand I took it out the back door and headed back to the only place I knew.

  The only place that was home.

  The only place that would ever be home.

  Tommy was sitting on the bumper of his van, finishing the last of a cigarette butt when I ran up to him, tears streaking down my face, shoulders set in the ‘don’t you dare fuck with me’ stance that I had given him a few times. Which is probably why he didn’t say anything, even though it was clear by his smug grin that he wanted to give me more than a few ‘I told you so’s’.

  “I don’t want to hear it,” I snapped; not like he was trying to talk over me. “I don’t want to live in a double-wide neither. If you can get me into the program, promise me we can at least try for one of those little bungalows the old miners left behind.”

  He gave me one nod and flicked the now dead cigarette butt into the weeds growing out of the asphalt. The butt sat between us, glowing in the electric sunset until everything was shadowed and red and gold. Tommy pulled himself to standing, his arms winding around me and lifting my tiny five-foot-three frame against his massive six-foot-two one. My face laid
between his pecs.

  “Promise me you won’t get any more ideas in that head of yours. This is our life baby. We are going to make it the best we can.” He smiled before smashing his lips against mine, his tongue instantly searching for more. I pulled away before he found it.

  “No more ideas. Can we get out of here for the weekend? Leave my stupid mother to her own devices and ignore the world?”

  “Of course. I know just the place. Trees, water, and no one for miles. Perfect for a forget everything but my cock weekend.”

  Chapter 2

  I tied an old ribbon around my slouching half-rolled sleeping bag and dropped it next to my school backpack. I didn’t own a hiking backpack so that would have to do. Tommy said he had a tent, but hinted that we would be not sleeping at all, which was how these things usually went. I grabbed a few extra condoms just in case. I wasn’t dumb enough to bring a kid into this shit show.

  On my knees, I dug through the bottom of my slim closet and after knocking my head on the mirrored door, found what I had been searching for--my old hiking pants. I’d bought them second hand at a thrift store when I’d pretended to be an avid hiker and joined the hiking club which was a front for me and some other kids at school to disappear into the wilderness for days at a time and smoke weed.

  I held them out and assessed the damage. There was a hole in the knees from where I’d fallen over a rock when I had smoked too much. Other than that, they would do.