Taming Her Beast Read online

  “Let’s make this quick,” I murmur.

  “We can take Lava for a walk afterward?”

  “Yeah, sounds good.”

  We eat and pay up quickly, not giving Maxine time to come over and twist my arm to work an extra shift. A ting of guilt touches me when I think about fleeing the diner, but it’s my freaking day off and I still feel work-weary from yesterday and earlier in the week.

  We leave the car parked up outside the diner and walk Lava down Main Street, toward the harbor. The town is called Stone Harbor because of the rock formation that overlooks the boats, jagged and detailed. Sometimes the townsfolk will make up myths about the rock face, that it holds all the faces of the heroes and villains of the town’s history, silly things like that.

  We walk along, Lava trotting happily in his extendable leash, his fluorescent jacket hugging him like armor.

  “Hey, Lava,” Jackie says when he starts pulling off to the side, heading for a turn. “What is it, boy—”

  His tail wagging like crazy, he pulls on the leash, wheezing in his excitement to get wherever it is he wants to go. Jackie and I exchange a perplexed look. Lava is never like this. He’s a very patient walker, always willing to wait for his humans to catch up.

  We follow him as he pulls and pulls, and then round a corner and end up in the harbor parking lot.

  I gasp when I see the black Chevy Impala, and then curse myself for being so childish, gasping like a little girl just because I see his car.

  But then he steps from it, dressed more appropriately for the weather this time, his jacket a deep blue, and zipped up to his chin. He’s got a light black silver peppered beard, I realize, just a smattering that I didn’t notice before. He glances up and his face tightens when he sees me. His lips do that twitching thing again, that half-smile, smirk, thing.

  “Can you take Lava for a sec, hon?” Jackie says, handing me the leash.

  “Sure,” I murmur, distracted as Markus and I gaze at each other.

  “Thanks,” she says. “Oh, for God’s sake.”

  She’s taken out her phone and is now gaping at it in the most ludicrously exaggerated way possible, her eyebrows piqued theatrically.

  “No rest for the wicked, I guess. Would you mind waiting here? I need to run into the office quickly.”

  “Jackie, don’t you …”

  But she’s already gone, turning to mouth You’re beautiful at me. My chest lightens under the praise even as I realize that Markus is approaching, moving with that animal calm, as though nothing in this world could ever come close to perturbing him.

  “Hey, boy,” he says, kneeling down to let Lava leap up onto his chest, nuzzling him, yapping happily.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Markus

  I try to focus all of my attention on Lava, the dog grinning as he leaps up at me. I run my hand over his coat, freshly washed since yesterday, and tell myself that my need to grab this woman by her curvy hips and take her in the back of my Chevy isn’t roaring loudly in my ears.

  Eventually, Lava calms down and I stand, looking over at Millie. She’s wearing a long jacket today, with gloves, jeans, and boots … All things, basically, which should make it more difficult for my manhood to flood with tension at the sight of her.

  She’s covered up, for fuck’s sake, and yet my eyes track her curves beneath the winter clothing. Her face is gloriously beautiful, her eyes wide and bright, her lips pursed, her cheeks full and red from the cold. Her hair spills out from a winter hat, dark locks of it, begging for me to run my hands through to see how soft it is.

  “He likes you,” Millie says, breaking the silence.

  “I’m glad,” I murmur.

  “Oh, really?” she says.

  I spot the shyness flitting across her features, replaced by sassiness a moment later.

  I get the feeling that if I were to spend a few days with this woman, I’d learn her every tic, her every gesture, fascinated each second by all the ways this woman could surprise me.

  “Why shouldn’t I be?” I ask.

  “Um, well, you don’t seem to care that the rest of the town thinks you’re this big grumpy grouch.”

  I can’t help but smirk, at her teasing tone.

  “Does that include you, Millie?” I growl, unable to stop myself.

  One half of me roars to leave this town, to run before it’s too late, to be the wanderer I’ve always been.

  But another part knows that it’s already too late for that.

  A real man doesn’t abandon the mother of his children … even if she doesn’t know how important she is yet.

  These are the same crazy thoughts that have been spinning around my head all day, a vortex of obsession I can’t quit, which I’m not even sure I want to quit.

  Millie considers my question, biting her bottom lip in a way that sends insistent pressure down my length, the base throbbing, my balls icy stones that are begging for a release.

  “You weren’t exactly friendly yesterday, storming off like that.”

  I stalk closer, glad that Lava is there for an excuse. The pooch lets me pet him, tilting his head regally, allowing me to smooth my hands over his head and ears.

  “Maybe I’m just old fashioned,” I rumble. “Maybe I don’t think a man and a woman ought to be alone unless they intend to do something about it.”

  I look up just in time to see the shock running through her before she wipes it away with another sassy expression, eyebrows raised, her smirk mirroring my own.

  “So I guess that means you don’t want to …”

  She trails off, her shyness winning out.

  But I can finish the sentence in my mind all too easily.

  You don’t want to do anything intimate with me.

  But that’s a damn lie.

  She’s the only woman my seed has ever roared for, my heart has ever hammered for, my world has ever turned upside down for.

  “What are you doing down here, anyway?” she says, quickly changing the subject.

  “I was going to walk the harbor.”

  “Why?”

  I stare at her for a moment, my body thrumming with unspent energy, despite the extra workout I put in this morning, despite the early morning run through the forest, snow and pine leaves crackling beneath my feet.

  To try to get you out of my head, I don’t say, even if it’s the truth.

  All morning the sight of her standing on that porch has returned to me, the sass in her eyes, the shyness warring there.

  Her hips, fucking hell … the way they move out slightly, enough to grab onto, a sturdy beautiful frame that’s made for fucking and childbearing, that’s made for me.

  Again, I wonder what would happen if I saw another man try to lay a hand on this woman.

  Fire flames through me at the thought.

  It wouldn’t be pretty.

  “Just to walk,” I murmur. “Why don’t you come along with me?”

  “Well, Lava does seem to like you.”

  “Exactly,” I agree. “Let’s do it for the dog.”

  She laughs a gorgeous sound.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Are you always this somber?”

  I shrug. “I guess old habits die hard.”

  “What, you’ve got an old habit of being a grump?”

  My smirk grows wider. I try to gather my regular coldness and detachment but around her, it’s like trying to hold onto a melting ice cube. Her heat just burns it up, makes my usual character slippery.

  “Maybe I’ll develop a new habit of putting ladies in their place, eh?”

  She glares, but there’s a note of playfulness in her eyes. “Oh, so you’re a sexist, huh?”

  “Like I said, I’m old fashioned.”

  Without discussing it, we started to walk along the harbor, along the side that’s bordered by the rock face. The sea is a startling deep icy blue today, catching the few spears of sunlight that are brave enough to lance through the clouds.

  “So you don’t b
elieve women are allowed to work?”

  “What?” I chuckle deeply. “Of course they should.”

  “So I guess you’re not that old fashioned, then,” she banters.

  I shrug, thinking about all the primordial things this woman looks fit for doing right now, the savage way I’d bend her over and peel off her winter clothes. Inch by inch, I’d reveal her flesh, savoring the way it’d become prickled with goosebumps for me, the way she’d shift her hips from side to side, eager to feel my precome-slicked length inside of her.

  “Where have you floated off to?” she asks, as we walk up a wooden pier, our shoes making crunching sounds in the snow.

  “Oh, I was just thinking about fairies and angels.”

  “Yeah right,” she giggles.

  Her laugh. Jesus Christ. It’s so intoxicating.

  “I thought you might be thinking about—never mind …”

  “You thought I might be thinking about my military service,” I murmur.

  She nods shortly. “Busted. Yeah.”

  “No,” I mutter, fighting the urge to reach out and take her hand. Maybe there’s some deluded part of me that believes I can still fight this, that the spell this woman has cast on me hasn’t already made it too late. “I don’t tend to get stuck in the past like that. I try not to, anyway.”

  We pause as Lava flops around in the snow, swishing here and there, having the time of his life.

  Millie glances up at me, biting her lip. “Yeah, I get that,” she says. “I’ve been trying to work on that as well, not getting trapped in the past. Not that anything as dramatic as military service has ever happened to me. I’m not saying that.”

  “What happened, then?” I ask, unable to mask my genuine interest.

  She flinches and for a moment, I see darkness creep into her eyes. But then she laughs it off, waving a hand.

  “Oh, nothing much. I auditioned for a play in high school and this other girl got it.”

  “Hmm,” I murmur.

  “What?” she demands, back to sassy now. “What’s hmm about that?”

  “Nothing,” I say. “Just hard to turn off my SEAL instincts sometimes.”

  “And what are they telling you right now?”

  That something terrible happened to you and you’re ashamed to talk about it.

  “That I’m hungry,” I say. “Have you eaten yet?”

  “Yes,” she says. “Pancakes. Absolutely sublime, if you’re wondering, though I would’ve liked them to be just a tad thicker, and the texture, well, there’s an art to that, isn’t there?”

  “Is there?” I ask, moving closer to her, and closer. I can scent her in the air, a scent so much stronger and prepossessing than gun smoke. “I don’t know. I’m not much of a chef. You sound like you know what you’re talking about, though.”

  She shrugs, causing those juicy breasts to jostle up and down.

  I can’t fucking stop.

  “Maybe a little. I’m going to be a chef one day, hopefully. I’m a waitress at the moment.”

  “I’m sure you’ll be an incredible chef,” I say.

  “How could you possibly know that?” she fires.

  Because I have a feeling you’d be amazing at anything you tried to do.

  “Because anybody who can get that passionate over pancakes must have a bright future,” I joke.

  She laughs and I wonder what it’d be like to spend the rest of my life prompting that laughter, that gorgeous goddamn noise.

  Without discussing it, we start walking back up toward the parking lot, toward my Chevy. It feels good to walk alongside her, Lava sniffing the path ahead, and I can’t help but think about walking like this with a couple of toddlers and a dog of our own, a family unit, warm and safe against the cold of winter.

  Hell, against the cold of the world.

  “What the fuck?” I growl when my Chevy comes into view.

  “What?” Millie asks.

  “Look,” I say, striding across the lot and gesturing down to the tires, all of which are punctured, big slits in the sides, completely flat. “Some bastard slashed my tires.”

  I turn to find Millie staring open mouthed down at the tires, as though it’s her car that’s been vandalized.

  I look around the lot, searching for any sign of a disturbance. Whoever did it, went to some effort to cover their tracks. The snow around the car has been wiped over so that it’s impossible to see any footsteps.

  “Why would anyone do that?” she says, with an undertone to her voice that tells me she’s not as surprised as she’s making out.

  “Do you have any idea?” I ask, the paranoid thought striking me that she led me out to the harbor as a distraction so that somebody could do this.

  But no.

  I don’t believe that Millie would pull a stunt like that.

  After knowing her for less than a day?

  Fuck yes.

  I don’t know how, but the certainty that she wouldn’t do that hammers into me.

  Maybe it’s because I know the future mother of my children wouldn’t do a thing like that.

  “Me? No, of course not,” she says hurriedly. “How would I?”

  Hmm.

  “I don’t know,” I say, my eyes searching hers.

  But it’s impossible to look at her suspiciously, without my lust rising to the surface singing a chorus of desire in my mind.

  I look around the parking lot, searching for any security cameras, but I can’t spot any. Most of the cars are snowed or iced over, too, meaning any dash cams wouldn’t have caught the vandalism.

  “Maybe I’ve made more enemies in this town than I realize,” I sigh. “I better get down to the garage and see if they can send somebody out. Goddamn, if I caught the bastard while he was doing this to my Chevy…”

  I trail off, anger moving through me, clenching my fists.

  “It’ll be okay,” Millie says, placing her hand on my arm.

  I pause, electricity sparking at the touch despite our layers of winter clothing. My manhood gives an insistent throb as I imagine pulling her glove off and guiding her hand down to my manhood, savoring the feeling of her stroking over the outside of my pants, and then sliding down and grabbing my engorged trunk.

  Stroking, slickly, quickly, faster and faster until I’m ready to bend her over and slide deep inside her soaked core.

  “Sorry,” she mutters, withdrawing her hand.

  “No,” I growl. “You don’t need to apologize.”

  We stare at each other for a moment and I almost blurt it all out right there, this crazy conviction inside of me to claim her, make her mine, make it so no other man is lucky enough to get to touch her.

  I turn, meaning to walk to the garage.

  If they can’t send somebody to this sort out, I’ll just get a couple of tires and handle it myself. I’ve got two spares anyway, so it’s just a matter of getting two more.

  “Markus?” Millie says when I’m at the edge of the lot.

  I turn, heart thumping, every instinct roaring in me to charge across the lot and palm those bulbous breasts, to listen to the way she moans, to watch the lust-filled shivers move through her.

  “Yes?” I say huskily.

  “Um, I don’t want to be incredibly forward …”

  She trails off.

  “Actually, don’t worry.”

  I smirk, swaggering back over to her.

  We’re in deep now.

  “My answer is yes,” I say.

  “Yes?” she repeats, voice pitched high, but nowhere near as high as it’d be if I was plunging balls deep inside of her, pounding harder each second, watching her body reverberate with each savage thrust.

  “You can cook me a meal,” I smirk.

  She flinches. “How the heck did you know that’s what I was going to ask?”

  “Instinct,” I say.

  And I feel like I know you already, Millie, even if it makes no damn sense.

  “Well, okay then,” she says, smiling shakily, as thou
gh she thinks I’m playing some sort of joke on her. “How about tonight at Jackie’s place? She’s got a date in the next town over, so … Shall we say six o’clock?”

  All the blood in my body rushes directly to my manhood, a solid rod of tension threatening to explode.

  “Sounds perfect,” I just about manage to say, somehow not growling it like a beast.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Millie

  “I still can’t believe you did that,” I say, guiding the car back down the road that leads to Jackie’s forest-side house.

  “I still can’t believe he asked you on a date.”

  I feel my cheeks flush and the redness spread across my chest, my body tingling all over when I remember the way he looked at me, as though for a second he was just about to grab me and kiss me right there at the harbor.

  “I think he just wants a home cooked meal,” I murmur, unwilling to get my hopes up about this.

  What if they come shattering down to earth?

  Or what if he saw the way you freaked out when you saw his tires had been slashed? What if he suspects you know more than you’re letting on?

  I turn away from that paranoid thought, though it’s still there, whispering beneath the surface, impossible to exile entirely.

  “Come on, Millie,” Jackie says, gesticulating passionately. “You really think a hot-blooded American male is just coming by for a meal? Well, actually, maybe he is … Maybe he’s looking to eat something that’s not a dish you cook if you know what I mean.”

  “Jeez, Jackie, it’s not exactly hard to decipher, is it?” I murmur, my body tingling all over when I imagine his strong hands on me, his firm giant’s body pressed against mine. “But I can’t think like that, okay?”

  “Why the heck not?”

  “Because …”

  Because if I’m wrong, I’ll feel like an idiot.

  “Just because. Anyway, you’re the mega-dater this month.”

  Jackie sighs. “When I made the pledge to put myself out there more, maybe I should’ve steered clear from online dating. It’s hell out there, Millie. You should be glad you found your forever man by chance.”