PARANORMAL ROMANCE: Bear Naked Satisfaction (Fantasy Shapeshifter Alpha Male Romance Book 3) (Contemporary New Adult Billionaire Steamy Romance Short Stories) (62 page)

Chapter 6

              They spent the following hours patching up Victor and packing. Marge made sure to hide from Victor’s family as they did this, and Victor wasn’t forthcoming to them about his injured state or his odd behavior. But luckily, none of his relatives pushed him on these matters much; they just accepted it and let him be. Victor told her they had always been this way—not wanting to deal with conflict of any kind. It made her ache for him, as well as make her ache for her own family.

              It was dark by the time they got the bags in the carriage. Most of the stuff belonged to Victor and his sisters’, but he promised Marge to be her all kinds of new things once they settled in their new home.

              “I don’t care,” she told him as they got settled in the front of the carriage. “So long as I have you, I will be happy.”

              He smiled, leaning over and pressing his lips against her forehead.

              Affection fluttered within her chest. She held his arm for a brief second before releasing it. Memories—a sense of duty—settled heavy on her psyche, and she frowned. “There is one thing I need to do before we leave Manchester though.”

              “What is it?”

              Victor stopped the carriage in front of her father’s mansion. The large estate looked dark and vacant, for the most part, but she could see some flickering flames through the windows. She still had some time.

              She kissed Victor on the cheek before hopping off the carriage and hurrying to the front door. Once there, she knocked on the surface quickly.

              A maid—Mary Anne—opened the door. “Greetings, m—Marge?!” Mary Anne beamed, joy alight in her eyes. “It is good to see you, milady. Is your husband with you?”

              Marge smiled and shook her head. “I’m afraid not. Please tell me: are my parents here?”

              “Yes, yes. They are just reading before the fire with a couple of your sisters.”

              Marge thanked the Lord, and then thanked Mary Anne, before barging into the mansion and hurrying toward the library that she knew they were in. She heard Mary Anne call after her, but Marge didn’t slow. This would have to be done quickly.

              When Marge entered the library, her eyes welled as nostalgia and longing clutched her heart. She had spent so much time in that room, often with her mother and her sisters. She was going to miss them.

              “Marge?” her mother said, abruptly standing up from her seat by the fireplace and dropping her book.

              Her father and her sisters also lowered their books, their faces full of shock and warmth.

              Marge gave them all a watery smile. Before she knew it, she was running further into the room until her arms were encircled around her mother’s.

              Her mother hugged her back. “My, this is a surprise! It is so late. Is the duke with you?”

              Marge shut her eyes tight. She remained quiet and hugged her mother hard. She made mental notes of how her mother felt and smelled—wanting to commit this moment to memory.

              “Margie?” her mother said softly. “What’s wrong, dear?”

              Marge’s lungs constricted, but she tried to take a deep breath anyway. Then, with great reluctance, she pulled out of her mother’s arms and told her family the whole story.

              As expected, her parents were infuriated.

              “You have become a fallen woman?!” her mother snarled, disgust weighted in her expression. She quickly moved away from Marge, as if just being near her daughter was an act of sin. “You?! My Margie? How humiliating!”

              “We married you to the best man in the city,” her father said, his voice quiet but his tone venomous. He was clawing his nails into his book as he glared at Marge. “And this is how you repay us? You shame us?”

              Her sisters were whispering amongst themselves, having huddled together on the couch across from Marge. When Marge glanced at them, she saw that most of them were glaring at her. Her youngest sister though, Beth, was giving her an encouraging smile.

              Grateful and touched, Marge returned it.             

              “Get out,” her mother whispered brokenly, turning to face the fire. “We want nothing to with you. You…you have ruined your life, but you will not ruin ours. Go.”

              When Marge looked at her father, he nodded his approval of her mother’s words.

              “Goodbye then,” Marge said, surprised by how strong her voice sounded. She spared one more smile toward Beth before turning and walking out of the room.

              “How did it go?” Victor asked as Marge sat next to him on the carriage again.

              Marge refused to acknowledge the massive hole that had developed in her chest. Instead, she chose to focus on the memory of her mother hugging her. A bitter smile spread her lips.

              “It had to be done,” she said. “I could not leave them wondering what had happened to me.” She turned to Victor, who was looking at her with understanding. “Let’s go home now.”

              “As you wish, milady,” he said happily, winking at her before urging the horses to move forward.

              Marge leaned over and kissed Victor’s shoulder. With everything that had happened—with all of the wrongs she had done—a knowing kind of peace came over her then. This…this was good. This was pure and true, and no one would be able to convince her otherwise.

Epilogue

1866, Scotland

              After cleaning the kitchen, Marge walked out to the front porch of her little cabin in the woods. She crossed her arms and allowed the chilly air seep into her flesh, refreshing her. As she inhaled deeply, the scent of the lush wilderness entered her lungs.

              She loved this place. Its seclusion made her feel safe; better yet, it made her feel free. She could be anything and anyone out here, with no one there to pressure her one way or the other.

              Marge smiled when she heard Victor follow her outside. His arms wrapped around her waist, his face coming to rest on her shoulder. He kissed her neck, making her shiver.

              “Are you checking the traps today?” she asked lazily, her gaze wandering over the wilderness before her.

              “Yes. I have a good feeling about them, too.” He kissed his way up to her jaw, then her cheek. “We’ll be eating good tonight.”

              She hummed with delight, leaning into him. “Good. The garden is coming along. If nothing else, we can have a meatless stew.”

              Victor balked, making her laugh. “That’s blasphemy, woman.”

              “Perhaps,” she said, turning until she was face-to-face with him, “but I’m rebellious like that. And you love it.”

              “That I do,” he whispered, his eyelids lowering. He leaned forward, capturing her mouth with his.

              She wrapped her arms around his neck and returned the kiss. As it continued, their heads tilting and their lips parting, she felt him press his leg in between hers.

              Marge smirked, passion flaring within her belly. Pulling away, she breathed, “You don’t have to leave soon, right? You can stay here and keep me company for a while longer?”

              “Of course,” he breathed back, winking at her before pecking her lips. “Anything for my woman.”

              “Anything, hmm?” she said, nipping at his bottom lip. When she felt him shudder against her, she swayed, starting to feel drunk lust. “Take me to the bedroom and devour me.”

              Victor immediately swooped her up in his arms—a feat only a strong man like him could accomplish in one easy motion. Startled, Marge laughed as he carried her back to the bedroom.

              They weren’t married—never could get married if Merriweather never consented to a divorce—but Marge didn’t care. She was fully Victor’s, and he was fully hers. It didn’t matter that they didn’t live properly because they lived happily. And, as it turned out, that was all Marge had ever wanted in this life.

THE END

Dangerous Love

Chapter 1

              Rachel Pierce didn’t know what to think. She turned her head in an attempt to give herself another perspective, but still, she was unsure.

              She was staring at the painting she’d just completed. It was a self-portrait, one drawn more from memory than from the floor mirror leaning against the wall to her right. It had been good to sketch, good to mix the paints for and create, but now she wasn’t so sure that the finished painting itself was good.

              Rachel sighed to herself and stood up from her stool, pushing with her hands to spring off of it and propel herself towards the kitchen. As she walked through her bland house, shuffling in the darkness with her shoulders slouched between the white walls, she thanked god she had decided on an apartment with only one floor—she really didn’t think she could deal with stairs.

              Stepping around her small breakfast bar, she yanked open the fridge black door and reached her other hand in blindly. She found the bottle easily enough, curling her fingers around the neck of it to pull it out and let the fridge door fall closed on its own again. She glanced at the bottle of Muscadine red wine in her hand, a little surprised to see that she had less than half of it left. Grabbing a mason jar from the dishwasher, she trudged back to her studio room.

              The clock on the wall was just turning midnight when she sat back down on her stool. Rachel upturned the bottle and let the alcohol fill her cup, watching the dark liquid swirl inside the glass. Taking a big sip, she eyed her painting again.

              It was a nude self-portrait, one that depicted her hugging her knees to her chest while her face, turned under her arm, was left in shadow. She stared at her calves. When she’d painted them, she hadn’t thought about beauty or long lines—she’d just painted, brushing stretch mark after bunched fat, bringing all of her imperfections to light.

              Rachel could remember taking Life Drawing 101 in college. She’d been thin, back then—a naïve girl just out of high school who hadn’t taken the Freshman Fifteen seriously. Within the first week her professor had introduced a model to the class, a regular who posed for extra cash. 

              Rachel had never seen another female naked before.

              Not to mention, the woman was fat; borderline obese, actually. The professor didn’t say anything about it, and she didn’t want to be the one to ask, so when he called for sketching Rachel simply broke out her graphite pencils and got to it. It was only after a few more classes and the same size of model in every one of them that made her realize it had to be a trend, only for a professor to admit that fat women made for more interesting sketches than simple, stick-thin girls.

              Rachel wondered what her professors would think of her now, painting her own bulbous body in the dark with the same detachment as she had when drawing a stranger. She looked at the painting indifferently and simply let the lines lead her, following the legs to see the fat arms wrapped around them, glancing up to the small shoulders and the arching neck dwarfed by her round chin that disappeared under the arm again. The middle of the painting—the focal point—was one eye, gleaming green in the otherwise dark painting. It was the only thing of her face that she’d allowed to show. It had been a risk, but looking at the finished product made her confident that no one would be able to recognize her.

              Rachel glanced at the clock again, her eyes catching on the one piece of furniture she’d actually taken the time to bang a nail into the drywall for and hang up: her diploma. The sharp black font read, “Bachelor of Liberal Arts: Museum Studies.” She sipped her wine, reading the word ‘museum’ over and over again.

              Rachel had grown up going to museums, thanks to her parents. Her mother was still a leading historian in Paleolithic archaeology to this day, and her father had been a classical history professor for as long as she could remember. She’d dreamed of growing up and running her own museum, one like her mom worked for, but when she had finally landed that paid internship at the Smithsonian and started working in her field, she had only felt disappointment.

              Maybe it was the art college she’d gone to, or the expectation vs. reality—or, hell, maybe it was just part of growing up. Whatever the reason, she’d hated working at a museum. She didn’t like the idea of reorganizing a timeline just to make it flow better as a walkthrough for tourists, or having to scrap an exhibit because “the numbers weren’t there” to keep it open.

              She’d quit within the year, and landed flat on her ass, back in the peach state’s most haunted city with her best friend for a roommate.

              “I’m so glad you’re moving in!” Cynthia had excitedly welcomed her into the apartment, attacking her with questions the moment she’d stepped through the doorway. It had been great to see her again after almost a year since they’d last hugged at graduation, and seeing her happy face after being made to answer to a family of disappointed ones had been a relief.

              Rachel blinked at her degree, thinking.

              If it hadn’t been for Cynthia, she wouldn’t have met Kyle—a sequential art major who’d been through one too many storyboarding critiques to think that his comics were still any good. A shame, as he had some of the best work she’d ever seen come out of their college, but at least he hadn’t let the low self-esteem win and merely transformed his passion to host local art shows for young classmates.

              Rachel had gotten involved, helping transform Kyle’s simple shows into grand galleries and gain attention not just from the college, but also from the city itself.

              Now here she was, four years later at twenty-seven years of age, drinking alone in her apartment with a morbid self-portrait staring at her in the dark and a new exhibit deadline for tomorrow night looming over her head. She sipped her wine, and closed her eyes.

              Should she enter her painting in the show?

              It certainly fit in with the dark theme, and she knew it’d blend right in with the brooding artwork already hanging up on the gallery’s walls—even Kyle had said so, when she shared the sketch work with him. She just wasn’t sure if she felt right about it. Too often she’d seen rich patrons take advantage of a museum’s need to force a gallery to be arranged a certain way or, in some cases, to never be set up at all. Rachel didn’t want to taint their exhibit, Dark and Dangerous, by throwing a painting in there done by the gallery’s curator herself.

              Rachel sighed, and slid off her stool to go back into the kitchen, reaching to take the bottle of wine with her. She placed the glass in the sink, already annoyed with it, and lounged against her kitchen counter, holding the bottle to her lips as she took a few big gulps.

              She stopped when she leaned back and hit her elbow against something. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw a piece of paper—the artist statement form. It was something she’d brought up to Kyle ages ago, back before they’d become partners and she had simply annoyed him with suggestion after suggestion for his tiny gallery. Now he had three—none of which were small—and was a private owner of a fourth one that Rachel ran, with every one of them requiring an artist statement for every piece of art displayed.

              Including Rachel’s. If she chose to enter it.

              She’d already decided on a pseudonym. As most of her art was rough and harsh, no clean lines or smoothed out colors, she’d chosen Atalanta Arcadia after the masculine huntress from Greek mythology. It was obviously a fake name, but the point wasn’t to trick but rather to hide. So long as no one knew the alias was hers, she didn’t care if the public thought it was bogus.

              Rachel looked at the “Atalanta Arcadia” she’d scribbled on the top of the page and picked up a pen, touching the inked tip to the empty lines provided in the middle.

              She didn’t think, she just wrote.