Page 42 of Bride of Choice

In favor of concentrating on dodging an angry behemoth, I chose to ignore those intrusive thoughts.

Round and round we went, circling his hut, thick arms swiping towards me as I dipped, dived, dodged as best as I could, pinched in shrieks leaving me as I ignored the pain in my hip and rear and forced myself to move faster, despite it. I’d be lucky if I didn’t crack a back tooth at this point, biting back shocked shouts.

One thick hand came swooping down, another following, a snarl to rival all snarls renting the air as I dove out of the way. My downfall was a fat mitt clipping my hip. A sharp cry left me as I flew forward, shooting off into a fat pile of snow, face first.

I blacked out for a second, it hurt that damned bad, coming to on my back with piercing eyes glaring down at me, blurry as they were through the tears filling my eyes.

Thinking for a moment this wasn’t Snow Patrol cupping my face, I panicked and started to struggle. “Stop!”

The hand cupping my face lifted.

Those weren’t his eyes, I realized. They were- He didn’t look-

But then thick fingers began to prod my hip, a loud gasp left me, the world spun, and then the next thing I knew a thick body was crowding over me- No, they were hugging me to them.

“What- What happened?” My hand lifted and I gave the fat head of the beast cuddling me close, rumbling something out unintelligibly to me a there-there pat.

It hurt. It all hurt so damn bad. I felt broken. The cold seeping in, threatening to freeze me to death, wasn’t helping things any.

The nuzzling action was nice, giving me that warm and tingly feeling, but then his snuffling sniffs grew louder and louder, and then he quickly stiffened. “Bum, what the fuck are you doing?” I’d started to ask, to find my shirt yanked, tearing in the process, and a big old fat Lo denaii head burying in my nape.

I must have really knocked my head to be imagining this, I thought, but that cold hitting me didn’t lie.

The noises he let loose at whatever he smelled that he absolutely didn’t like rattled my brain, it vibrated so hard, he was that damn close, my head felt numb with it.

“Not a hairspray fan, eh?” I’d started to joke, to shut it at the look on his blurred-to-me face as he pulled back to scowl down at me.

Worriedly wondering what he might have smelled, my hand came up to cup over the spot self-consciously and I hunched my shoulders. Shit, he’d smelled- “It’s none of your business,” I snapped at him, to a shocked noise and a nose to nose snarl in my face. “It’s not,” I replied boldly to whatever he was snarling at me, glaring right back.

“Mine.” He startled the stuffing out me, growling it in my face.

“I most certainly am not!” I burst out right back. Believe me, I belonged, briefly, to far too many assholes already, but he had yet to ever be one of them.

“Hey!” a deep voice barked, coming up on us. I heard him before I could spot him, it had started snowing so heavily and I was that blurry eyed. How fucking hard had I hit my damn head? The headache was settling in, making me wonder if I should be worried I still wasn’t seeing straight.

Grabbing me up, stifling the snarl starting to ripple its way up his thick chest, Bum-bum shoved a hand over my mouth, an action I was getting fucking tired of, and tore off with me, disappearing from the male that had come upon us’ view.

Not about to take the bait and bite down, not fucking again, not with all of this Mine nonsense spewing from him— nonsense I was convinced must be seasonal horndoggedness and nothing more— I licked his palm, relishing the shocked squeak the massive male let out in reaction.

Being too forward, bordering on the outrageous, had always worked before.

What I was not expecting, was the sudden soft, needy rumble that followed, the quick press of his mass up against me as he crowded me up against the wall of his hut and his head dipped, rooting around my shoulder for something.

Whatever he found, he didn’t like it. Tough potatoes! You don’t own me!

Going to the other shoulder, he licked a spot that shouldn’t make me feel like I was going to shoot off if he did it just one more time. He did, of course, causing me to cry out into his palm and try to reach for him. I squirmed, moaned, and whimpered, pressing back against him like the needy little Yeti ho bag I’ve decided to accept that I am.

My left hand grabbed at his thigh, urging him to press back against me, while my right hand shot up, coming into contact with something fat and thick on his head that hadn’t been present and accounted for moments before. What the heck was happening?

As if my sharp cry as I came from him licking my damn shoulder, and or the touching of his person was enough to snap him out of it, he released me immediately, practically tossing me away from him in his haste. Stumbling, I tumbled right into a fat wad of snow as he threw himself off of me and took off with a horrible noise. Cursing a blue streak, I shot up, sputtering, brushing snow from my face, just in time to see a peek of a horn as he shot off across the river and straight into the woods. I sat there and gaped, dumbfounded, as his huge body easily blended in with the snow.

“What. The. Fuck!” I shouted, though I wasn’t the least bit surprised by this bullshit, not anymore. It would take a helluva a lot more than that to shake me after the last few weeks here.

When a male that looked like one of Dorothy’s older sons or husbands, it was fucking hard to tell with everything Picasso-ed out, came crouch-walking over to me where I sat, flapping my hands wildly in the snow, I asked him as my eyes teared up, “What the hell are you looking at?!”

He sat there for a minute as I tried and failed to collect myself. “Aunt Judy is coming,” I told him, like he’d fucking have a single clue what that meant. “I can cry if I want to!” I wasn’t so much crying as making weird noises as I struggled in vain to wipe snow from my person.

“‘Kay?” he asked softly.

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