Page 2 of Monster Mate

She shrugged. “No big deal. You earned it.” Then she pulled out a business card and handed that over. “That’s my husband’s card. Call his office when you’re ready to start looking for another job.”

Viktor Adamovic. Jesus, the beast of Spellman manor and his wife (why she hadn’t put that all together before now was a mystery) were going to help her get a new job? What kind of weird fever dream was she having? “Again…thank you so much. I’m not sure what else to say.”

Especially since she’d started this conversation by evaluating whether she could take Lucy in a fight.

Lucy giggled when a giant hand shot out of the darkness of the nook and dragged her back inside. “Bye, Roxie! It was nice meeting you.”

“Yeah…uh…you, too.”

She was still reeling from the high of meeting nice people who did nice things for her rather than shitting all over her when she made it to the parking lot across the street from the mansion. That’s when someone restored her total lack of faith in humanity. Or monsterdom. Or whatever.

Roxie swallowed a startled shriek when a giant, beefy arm clamped around her throat and yanked her back against a rock-hard chest.

“Hello there, little human,” he whispered in her ear, his hot breath fanning across her cheek. “I think you and I are going to have some fun tonight.”

Clearly, his definition of fun and hers were very different. She slid her hand up and wedged it between his arm and her throat to give herself a little breathing room. “I’m going to give you a chance to walk away, asshole,” she said as calmly as possible. “Trust me, you do not want to fuck with me. Not after the night I’ve had.”

He chuckled. “Oh, trust me, I very much want to fuck with you.”

She would’ve sighed in exasperation if he wasn’t holding her so tight. She’d been so polite to him. Had even offered him a chance to walk away, unharmed. This was why being polite was totally overrated.

It was a lesson she’d learned long, long ago. When she was six, her teacher told her the bullies who picked on her for wearing thrift store clothes and living in a group home would leave her alone if she ignored them. The woman who’d hired her to tend bar at the gentleman’s club when she was twenty told her to smile and indulge the patrons who tried to grab her—even the one who slapped her when she refused to blow him on her break—and that no men of their caliber would ever do anything to really harm her. She’d heard many times that if threatened with a weapon, she should submit.

They were all liars.

Fucking. Liars.

Bullies never stopped. Smiling at a man and politely telling him you weren’t interested didn’t always stop him from following you home and trying to assault you. “Boys will be boys” was a load of complete and utter horseshit.

And she’d be damned if she was ever going to submit to anyone who threatened her.

Roxie Rowe was no one’s victim.

Not anymore, anyway.

She hoped he realized everything that was about to happen was his fault.

Before he could make another move, Roxie let her body go limp. That was something attackers usually weren’t ready for. Jerks like this one were used to overpowering women and dragging them to isolated locations or vehicles. But they were rarely ever prepared to carry dead weight.

Her friendly neighborhood attacker had no choice but to let her go when she dropped to the ground like a stone. While she was there, she scuttled back far enough to shift, twist, and deliver a punch to his balls that held every bit of the frustration she’d kept inside all night.

With a wail, he hit the ground next to her, cradling his bruised balls. “You bitch!”

Roxie leapt up and turned around, just out of his reach, to get her first good look at the guy who’d fucked around and found out she was not to be messed with.

She recognized the guy. He wasn’t at the Monster Match as a dater, but he’d been parking cars for the event.

He was probably 5’10” or 5’11”—not huge, but still taller than her. And he weighed close to 225 if she hadn’t missed her guess.

His skin was a mossy, grayish green color that reminded Roxie of scum on a stagnant pond. The jet-black mullet he sported was impressive. Not in a good way, but rather in a I-can’t-believe-someone-was-brave-enough-to-do-that-outside-an-80s-music-video kind of way.

An orc, she decided, based on the large, boar-like tusks popping up from underneath his bottom lip. She’d seen a few attractive orcs around town. This orc was not one of them.

And he was wearing a name tag that said, “Hi, I’m Guy.”

The idiot hadn’t even bothered to take off his name tag before assaulting someone. See, this was how people ended up on shows about dumb criminals. She shook her head. “Well, Guy, I’m guessing this isn’t your first foray into attacking unsuspecting women, is it?”

“Fuck you,” he snarled, still clutching his balls.

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