Taming the Beast: Eleven Paranormal Romances Read online

  Ronald continued, “We looked everywhere for you. I spent a lot of money. Money that I worked hard for. And you made me waste it.” He frowned, but there was no sincerity to it. It was as if he’d heard about frowning online and decided to give it a half-hearted try before going back to smirking at everything. “But then you left that message on your mom’s voicemail and she shared it with us.”

  “She what?” Rose gasped. Ronald still held one of her hands.

  “Don’t blame her too much. Emil had a gun to your father’s balls at the time. Which is leverage. That’s real leverage. Not this bullshit sexual harassment recording you claim to have of me. As if I’d ever be sexually interested in someone like you.” He spat on the ground next to her. “You’re a seven, doll. And I only bang tens.”

  Liam had an idea. He couldn’t charge the men across the yard. They’d shoot him or maybe Rose. He needed to lure them away. He slunk off behind the house and squeezed through one of the holes in the walls, emerging into the dining room. Then he went into the kitchen and knocked over a pan with a loud clatter.

  Outside, Ronald ordered his two extra goons to check out the house. “There’s someone else in there,” he barked.

  When they did, Liam was waiting for them. He didn’t kill them, no. But he crushed their gun hands hard enough that they’d need weeks of physical therapy before they tried to shoot anyone else. It was easier than he’d expected. And when the two goons howled in pain and fear, Ronald sent Emil in.

  Before Emil entered the kitchen, Liam let out his best, most pent-up bellow. It was the kind of roar that could be heard for fifty miles. Hikers heard it and would have nightmares for weeks. The ravens over in Rook’s Roost closed all their windows and brought their children indoors. In Bearfield, the Alpha called his brothers and asked them to go out and investigate.

  And there, in the yard outside Liam’s house, Emil wet himself. He tossed his gun away as if it was a cobra, turned and ran for the road.

  Everyone in Poppy Valley knew about Bearfield: it was where the monsters lived. They never drove west, never ate at the amazing bakery or drank crisp cocktails at the Growler. They never saw movies at the two-screen theater downtown or hiked the picturesque trails that looped around the mountain. No matter how many treasures Bearfield offered, no one from Poppy Valley would ever go there. Not ever.

  Because every single person was raised with the idea that monsters were very real and they lived right next door. To be fair, they did.

  Which is to say that Liam didn’t blame Emil for turning tail and running. In fact, it was the sanest response to a furious half-bear shifter that there could possibly be.

  Ronald though was either too stubborn or too angry to leave.

  “You have what you came for,” Rose said, trying to pull her arm out of Ronald’s grasp. “You destroyed my phone and ran me out of town. Now just leave me be.”

  Ronald’s face contorted with rage. “No woman gets to talk to me the way you do. I don’t care what kind of trick you have rigged up in that house. You either show me the respect I deserve, or I put a bullet in you.” There was something sinister and perverse in the way Ronald said respect.

  Liam smelled Rose’s defiance. She’d gone through her fear, past it into the place where pigheaded bravery lived. She was going to tell Ronald off. And then Ronald would kill her.

  Liam couldn’t let that happen. Gun or no gun.

  He backed up in his kitchen and focused on Ronald through the dirty streaked window. There was twenty feet, give or take, between the house and the cottage. He needed to clear that space as quickly as possible to get to Ronald before anyone got hurt. And he had to do it now.

  Rose was counting on him.

  Liam took a breath and found to his surprise that his bear was in agreement with him. They both wanted Ronald punished and Rose kept safe. She’s our mate, his bear said by way of explanation.

  Liam charged forward, leaping and shielding his face with his forearms, he crashed through the kitchen window and raced across the grounds to Ronald.

  His cape came off—ripped away by the jagged window frame—and he showed his true face to the world. Ronald looked and went white as a sheet, lifting up his gun and squeezing the trigger even as Liam leapt at him. Rose’s eyes were wide with shock. Was there horror in them? Or was he imagining it?

  Liam covered the space between him and Ronald in great leaps, but he was too slow. Even as he made the final leap, his jaws open wide and his misshapen hands reaching before him, Ronald squeezed off a round from his gun. The bullet ripped through Liam’s chest moving like a revelation of fire and leaving behind a pain unlike any Liam had ever felt.

  He fell to the ground, inches from Ronald and Rose. Blood spurted from his chest and back. Rose went pale at the sight of it.

  “Hah!” Ronald whooped. “Look at that. The monster of Bearfield is real and I just killed it! I’m going to cut your head off, boy, and hang it in my office.” He turned to Rose. “Is this why you came here, girl? Were you banging this thing? This cuck? Trading your body for protection? You thought this thing was all alpha, but look at what a beta it is!” He’d let go of Rose and was dancing around, grasping for his phone so he could Instagram Liam’s death.

  Rose knelt next to Liam and tried to cover his wound with her hands. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I never should have come here,” she said. “If I never would have come, you’d still be alive.”

  Liam laughed then. “I would have been breathing, yes, but I wasn’t really alive until I met you. I was an animal, going through the motions of being a man.”

  “Hold on. Just hold on. Don’t say such stupid things. We’ll get you help.” Tears brimmed in her eyes. She took his hands in hers for what Liam thought was probably the final time.

  “There’s no help. Just save yourself,” Liam said.

  Ronald had walked a few paces away. He was holding his gun in one hand and his phone in the other, waving it around to try and find a signal.

  “I can’t leave you,” Rose sobbed. Then she leaned over him and, placing one hand on his chest, she kissed him. Her lips were wet with tears and trembling. They were soft and warm and the kiss seemed to last forever.

  For a moment, Liam could see the hitchhiker who had cursed him all those years ago. She was standing above him, ghostly and indistinct, totally invisible to Rose. The hitchhiker looked down at Liam and smiled.

  There was a sound then like glass shattering and also like fabric tearing, and where Liam had been now stood an enormous bear.

  “This is my mate,” it growled at Ronald. “My true mate. And any who threaten her will die.”

  Ronald’s eyes went white with terror. He lifted the gun again and fired shot after shot into Liam.

  But Liam didn’t even feel it.

  The curse had broken. He was a full-blooded shifter again, and no weapon forged by man could hurt him.

  Seeing that the bullets did nothing to Liam, Ronald whipped the barrel up to aim at Rose but before he got halfway there Liam surged forward and bit the gun out of Ronald’s hand, along with two bronze fingers. Ronald shrieked with pain, turned and ran away.

  The beast was gone from Liam’s heart. They had been split and now they were reunited. He was whole again. He felt a clarity that he’d never had before. All of the rage and anger and disgust and regret he’d been carrying around with him had died with the curse.

  He turned to Rose then, who was studying him with a look of wonder on her face. She reached out to touch his big bear head, patting him gently and then scratching behind his ears.

  “Is this what you really look like?” she asked.

  Liam shook his head, stepped back, and shifted.

  Chapter 7

  As a bear, Liam was handsome, with a golden brown fur that glowed in the sun. But as a man, he was heart-wrenchingly gorgeous. His light brown hair fell in his eyes and he smiled at her with a big toothy grin. His hands were normal again. His body was normal—no, better than norma
l—all muscular and thick.

  A laugh of delight bubbled up from her lips.

  “What the hell is going on?” she said.

  “I was cursed,” Liam said. “Now I’m not. I think maybe sacrificing myself for you did it.”

  “A kiss from a prince? Am I in a fairy tale?”

  Liam smiled at her and her heart shattered into a million pieces.

  “Do that again,” she said. “Make me feel this way forever.”

  “I will,” Liam said softly, stepping closer to her. “But we’re not in a fairy tale. If we were, you could hum and have a little army of mice come and clean our house and badgers would rebuild the holes I put in the walls and birds would bring me clean clothes, because I really have none now.”

  The man was entirely, gorgeously, magnificently naked. Rose glanced down and then glanced away. Her breath had gone all shallow and funny at the sight of him. She tried to focus her attention on a higher up part of his body.

  Rose reached out and touched his chest. It was hot and firm and inviting. “Where’s the gunshot wound?”

  “All healed up.”

  “That’s a nice trick,” Rose whistled.

  “I can show you more.”

  Tenderly he pulled her close. He smelled amazing, just like that honey he’d shared with her, with a hint of spice.

  “Show me,” Rose said.

  And he did.

  Later that day they ate the last of the honey and worked together to clean the house. Sheriff Pete showed up and interrupted them with a change of clothes and tow truck for her car. He was an older man with a bristly mustache who seemed genuinely happy that Liam had recovered and genuinely dismayed that he walked in on Liam’s nakedness.

  You’d think being sheriff of a town full of shifters would inure him to stuff like that but it didn’t.

  It took months to get the house livable, but the work passed in the blink of an eye and their nights spent together in the cottage, on the little twin bed, lasted a blissful eternity.

  Liam was a patient and generous lover who didn’t rush Rose at all and when she finally decided to take the plunge, it was all she could have hoped for and more.

  The Alpha of Bearfield, a stern mountain of a man named Marcus, arrived nearly a month after Rose first smashed her car. He introduced himself and shook her hand before wrapping Liam in a great big hug. Next to Marcus, Liam looked small.

  Hot on his heels came a crew of contractors—carpenters and plumbers and electricians—who stepped in to finish the work Liam and Rose had started.

  “We’re honored to have you amongst us,” the big Alpha rumbled as if that explained everything.

  They took a trip to visit Rose’s parents. They’d been scathingly skeptical on the phone, at first doubting Liam even existed before dismissing him as some ignorant backwoods trash. To people from Poppy Valley, the idea that a good man could come from Bearfield was preposterous.

  But then they met him.

  Being cursed all those years hadn’t broken him, though Rose knew he worried it had. No, they’d shaped him. Forged him into the good person he was today. Liam charmed her mother and argued amiably with her father, which was his favorite pastime. By the time their visit was over, their heads were spinning with delight.

  Her father pulled out a map and decided that Liam lived outside the actual border of Bearfield, which made him okay. And further proved his point about how terrible the people were. Her mother straight up asked when they were getting married, sending a chill into Rose’s heart.

  “Mother!” she hissed. “You can’t ask that. We’ve only been together for a few weeks.”

  “Of course I can,” her mother replied, sipping a vodka martini and regarding Liam over the top of her glasses. “I can see how he looks at you. A mother knows these things.”

  Rose turned to Liam, who was standing in the door way to the house as if his broad shoulders had gotten stuck. “You don’t have to answer that. Just ignore her. She’s probably drunk.”

  Liam bowed his head to her mother. “We are fated for each other,” he said with a half-smile. “In my heart, we’re already married. Your daughter is the most perfect woman in the world, for me. And I can only hope to become the perfect man for her.”

  Rose’s father immediately left the room. Emotion made him break out in hives.

  Her mother reflexively grasped at her pearls.

  “It’s a tradition amongst my people,” Liam said, “to wait a year and a day after meeting someone before wedding them.”

  Rose couldn’t feel her feet. Her fingers were numb. There was a sort of shriek of ultimate happiness bubbling up inside her.

  Liam dropped to one knee. The floorboards creaked under him. “Rose, one year and a day from the day you broke into my cottage, would you marry me?”

  Her mother dropped her martini to the floor but the sound of the glass smashing was lost, overpowered by the shriek of pure happiness that sounded from somewhere deep inside Rose.

  “Yes,” she yelled. “Yes. Yes. Yes.”

  Part II

  Booty and the Beast

  Kim Fox

  Chapter 1

  Ew. Worms.

  Bella scrunched her nose up as she bent over to look at them slithering through the soil. What kind of store sells worms? A redneck store, that’s what kind. And that’s exactly where she was. In the deep backwoods of Dark Creek Swamp. It was as appealing as it sounded.

  This was the last stop to get supplies before she went on her two-week long excursion into the forest. It was a little mom and pop general store, although there didn’t seem to be a mom in sight. Only perverted old men who kept checking out her ass.

  “Going fishing?” the old man behind the counter asked, eying her funny.

  Bella didn’t take it personally. She did look totally out of place with her brand new two hundred dollar hiking boots and sparkling clean Wilderness Face jacket. These guys weren’t used to seeing girls like her all the way out here.

  “No,” she said, shaking her head and laughing. She wouldn’t be caught dead fishing. She laughed, picturing herself sitting there feeling bad for the poor fish who got the sharp hooks caught in their lips and worse for the worms who got speared, drowned and then eaten alive.

  She was here for school. Four weeks of living in the wilderness to study the endangered sleepy owl. It was for her dissertation paper and she had been excited about it for months.

  “Just doing some camping,” she said, looking at the dusty boxes of crackers with the faded labels on the shelves. She picked one up and looked at the expiration date. August 2004. At least it had the price to match at only thirty-nine cents.

  “Do you have anything organic?” she asked.

  The old man lifted his frayed trucker hat and scratched his thin hair as he scrunched his face up. “We don’t sell drugs. Is that what you kids are smoking these days?”

  “Huh?” Bella said, looking around. The two older men behind her were still staring at her ass. They didn’t even try to pretend like they weren’t looking. They just blatantly gawked.

  Bella just rolled her eyes and turned away, shaking her head. She’d always had a really curvy behind that looked odd with her slim body so she was used to it. It never stopped being really annoying, but she was used to it nonetheless.

  “Anything gluten free?” she asked.

  The man lifted up his pipe and lit it as he stared at her with a furrowed brow.

  She waved the smoke out of her face and huffed out a breath. “Are you allowed to smoke in here?”

  “Are you going to buy the worms or not?” he asked impatiently.

  “I’m looking for food,” she said, sliding the old box of crackers back on the shelf. “I was told by a local that you would have some.”

  The old man pointed to the aquarium full of worms. “You buy worms, you catch food. If you don’t, you eat the worms. What is the problem?”

  “Fine,” Bella said, grabbing a bunch of boxes of cookies. They sti
ll looked old but they didn’t look too bad. She had a few cases of beans and soup in the trunk, so hopefully that would be enough.

  “Be careful of them woods at night,” one of the men behind her said. She turned and frowned at him. He was wearing a tight Spice Girls t-shirt with a Coors Light trucker hat with his ugly mullet hanging out the back.

  “Thanks,” she said with a roll of her eyes. He was just some redneck trying to scare her. Bella had never been camping before but she had read all about it online. Her food was going to be hung from a tree several feet from her tent and she even washed all of her clothes and blankets with an aromatic fabric softener. She had read that the fabric softeners act as animal repellent and were great for keeping animals away from campsites.

  She was definitely prepared and she didn’t need any advice from these creepers.

  “Don’t go down too far south,” the other man said. She exhaled hard as she turned to him with a blank look on her face. He was rubbing the gray stubble on his saggy jaw as he stared at her. He had clearly left his dentures at home. “There’s a monster living down in the woods down there.”

  “A monster?” she said with a chuckle. “Really? Does he eat little city girls?”

  “Probably,” the man answered, his face serious. “Legend has it that he can turn into a bear.”

  That was rich. Bella threw her head back and laughed. “Like a bear shifter?”

  “No,” he said, as all three of the men shook their heads. “Shifters can blend in with people. This guy can’t. The beast has taken over.”

  “Okay,” she said, walking over to the cash. “Thanks for the tip guys. How much do I owe you?”