Taming the Beast

“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