Beauty Loves the Beast Read online

  “I feel you,” The Reaper said with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “I will make this happen, and I don’t ever want to hear about you or see you again for the rest of my living days. Am I clear?” he snapped, looking straight at Carter and me.

  I sucked in a swift and inaudible breath as I stared hard at The Reaper’s mouth. I could have sworn I saw a flash of a fang, but that wasn’t possible. Was it?

  The man glared at me and raised a brow.

  “Cat got your tongue?” he inquired in an icy tone.

  “Does it have yours?” I shot back.

  His laugh sent shivers up my spine, and Carter glanced at me in confusion. I took his hand and squeezed it. We would talk later.

  “I repeat,” The Reaper ground out. “Am I clear?”

  “I can work with those terms,” Carter replied. “However, I think it’s time for you to leave. You can find our bodies tomorrow.”

  With a curt nod and a last look to Nancy, who didn’t so much as blink in response, The Reaper turned on his heel and walked slowly out of the warehouse.

  We stood in shocked silence for at least ten minutes after he’d left.

  “There is a lot of story there I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know,” I said, glancing at Carter in question.

  “Trust me. You don’t want to know,” he said. “What did you see?”

  “He has fangs,” I whispered.

  “Impossible,” Nancy said, looking at me like I’d finally lost it.

  Maybe I had finally lost it. Maybe I’d imagined it. And maybe I hadn’t…

  “Are you sure?” Caleb asked, glancing over at the door where The Reaper had exited.

  “No,” I admitted. “I’m not positive.”

  Nancy stared at me for a long moment, nodded curtly and turned away. She clearly had a past with the man and would possibly know if he was as fucked up as I was.

  “We’ll discuss this later,” Carter said, pulling me into his arms and holding me close. “I believe you,” he whispered in my ear, and then raised his voice for the benefit of his siblings. “Let’s do what we have to do and then get the fuck out of dodge.”

  Nodding, I began to pull down the cameras and pack them away. We needed to contact Sean and tell him what had gone down, but that would have to wait. Right now we still had work to do.

  “You have enough explosives to blow up this whole structure?” Carter asked Caleb, eyeing the enormous barn.

  “Does the Pope wear a pointy white hat?” Caleb asked with a wide grin.

  “That he does,” Nancy said, pulling her eyes away from the door that The Reaper had left through.

  “Then I guess you have your answer,” Caleb shot back. “Let me do my work. You freaks wait outside and get the cars all warmed up. We’re gonna have to drive like bats out of hell once I detonate this shit.”

  “I want my cake. Tonight,” Carter said, taking my hand and leading me out of the warehouse. “Chocolate.”

  “You can have a cake every day forever,” I told him with a giggle.

  “You all heard that. Right?” he yelled. “I get cake forever.”

  “You gonna share?” Caleb asked as he started wiring the barn with explosives.

  “The cake? Yes. Georgia? No. She’s all mine.”

  And I didn’t want it any other way. Carter Norbert Wylde was the broken piece that made me whole, and I was his.

  Forever.

  And Ever.

  And Ever.

  Maybe fairy tales do come true after all.

  He was my Beauty and I was his Beast.

  Epilogue

  Carter

  I was nervous. I wanted the gift to be perfect. I wanted to make her cry happy tears. I wanted to be her hero. Damn it, I wanted to be her everything, just like she was mine.

  “Carter, can you tell your sister to turn off the land mines? I’m almost ready to leave,” Georgia yelled from the kitchen.

  “On it,” I yelled back as I looked around our new home.

  My brother, sister and I owned over a thousand acres in the deserted mountain area of North Carolina. After the explosion we’d died in, we’d lived with Nancy and Caleb while our own house was built a mile down the road. It wasn’t as large, but it was equally as beautiful. It made Georgia happy and that was all that mattered to me.

  I hadn’t had a place to call home in years—never wanted one until my crazy cat woman came into my life and turned it upside down. Of course, it wasn’t all sunshine and roses. I was a pain in the ass and working on forms of communication that didn’t include holes in the plaster. But Georgia said I was a work in progress. I could live with that.

  “Can I wear tennis shoes? Or are we dressing up?” she yelled again from the kitchen.

  “You can go barefoot, babe,” I shot back with a chuckle. “It’s my brother and sister—no formality required.”

  We were never going to be a white-picket-fence kind of couple, but what we had was perfect for us. Every day we somehow became a little less broken. Waking up with her in my arms calmed my raging soul and brought light into my dark world.

  Georgia’s blood had lost most of the poison, but her enhanced senses were probably always going to be part of her. The destruction to her DNA was indeed permanent. She was slowly coming to terms with that fact. To me, she was perfect. Gazing into her golden eyes when she was aroused was one of my favorite things. Her claws, on the other hand, had ruined a few couches and numerous sets of bed sheets, but I didn’t give a damn. Shit was replaceable. Georgia was not.

  “Carter. I’m not going barefoot,” she said with a giggle, poking her head out the door of the kitchen. “I might not be a girly girl, but I have a few manners.”

  Georgia had talked about having plastic surgery on her scarring but decided against it. I loved her scars as much as I loved her. They were her battle wounds and I worshiped them on a regular basis. My battle scars were more internal, but with time and talk, I was beginning to heal as well.

  As for whether or not Georgia had imagined The Reaper’s fangs—that was an ongoing debate with my siblings. Nancy was in adamant denial. Caleb was unsure. Me? I believed my girl. Unfortunately, The Reaper was a mystery that would have to be solved. The promise to stay away would eventually be broken. If there were more like Georgia, we needed to know.

  “Your sister wanted a vanilla cake with chocolate icing,” she said with a bright smile and frosting on the tip of her nose. “I think this is a good one.”

  “All of them are good ones,” I replied, wondering if the time was right. “I’d like to give something to you.”

  “I have something for you, too,” she said in a rush of excitement. “Let me get it.”

  She tore off to the bedroom, her wild blonde hair flying behind her. Her beauty still stunned me. I had more than half a mind to blow off my siblings and chase her to our bedroom. I couldn’t get enough of her—would never be able to get enough of her.

  “Here,” she said shyly, handing me a large envelope.

  Taking it in my hands, I handed her my gift that looked alarmingly like the gift she’d just handed me. The confusion on both of our faces would have made me laugh if I wasn’t so edgy about giving her this particular present.

  “Should we open them at the same time?” she asked with eyes shining.

  “Yep,” I said. “On mi.”

  Her laughter filled the room and every dark corner of my heart.

  “Do, re, mi,” Georgia said and tore into her gift.

  She was faster than I was, and she froze when she discovered what I’d done.

  “Oh my God,” she whispered, grinning like a loon. “Finish opening yours. Now.”

  I did.

  I shook my head and started to laugh.

  “No fucking way,” I said.

  “Way,” she shot back, as her eyes filled with tears—happy tears. “Can we go twice?”

  “We can do whatever the hell we want, Georgia from Georgia.”

  I held airline tickets
to Austria in my hands, along with chalet reservations and tickets to The Sound of Music tour. And Georgia held the exact same packet—different dates—in hers. What were the odds? But then again, I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me. She was my soul mate—my other half—the light to my dark. The Maria to my Captain.

  Sucking in a huge breath, she squared her delicate shoulders and gazed right into my eyes. “Wanna get married?”

  “Are you asking me to marry you?” I inquired with a grin. “I’m the man. I’m supposed to do that.”

  “Whatever,” she said with an eye roll and a giggle. “I beat you to it. So?”

  “So?”

  “You gonna marry me?”

  “Hmm, can I think about it?” I teased.

  Her second eye roll was enormous. It was fucking delightful and hot.

  “No. You can’t think about it. You will answer me now or I’ll never ask again. Unless you say no, and then I’ll ask again. Probably every Tuesday.”

  I had no clue what I had done to deserve this second chance at life, but I was going to grab it for all I was worth and hang on. “Yes. I will marry you. I will marry you a thousand times if that’s what you want,” I told her with a laugh. “But how about this?”

  “What?” she asked as she threw her arms around me and kissed me until I was definitely sure we wouldn’t be seeing my brother and sister tonight.

  “Let’s get married in Austria,” I suggested.

  “Yessssssss,” she squealed and kissed me again. Pulling back, she scrunched her nose in thought. “Do you think Nancy and Caleb would be upset if we didn’t go over there tonight?”

  “I was just thinking the same thing.”

  Wrapping her legs around my waist, I moved us to our bedroom in record time. My dick—or thingie, as Georgia was still fond of calling it—was so hard I was in pain. All she had to do was look at me and I was hard.

  “You want to climb every mountain tonight?” I whispered as she giggled at my ridiculousness.

  “Until we find our dream,” she said in a voice so sexy I was sure we were going to be busy all night long.

  And that was fine by me.

  In fact, it was more than fine. Georgia was everything I was missing in my life that I didn’t think I’d find and then some. There would be no so long, farewells for us. There would only ever be something good.

  The End… for now

  Note From The Author

  If you enjoyed reading Beauty Loves the Beast, please consider leaving a positive review or rating on the site where you purchased it. Reader reviews help my books continue to be valued by resellers and help new readers make decisions about reading them.

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  You are the reason I write these stories and I sincerely appreciate each of you!

  Many thanks for your support,

  ~ Robyn Peterman

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  Robyn’s Book List

  (in correct reading order)

  HOT DAMNED SERIES

  Fashionably Dead

  Fashionably Dead Down Under

  Hell on Heels

  Fashionably Dead in Diapers

  A Fashionably Dead Christmas

  Fashionably Hotter Than Hell

  Fashionably Dead and Wed

  Fashionably Fanged

  Fashionably Flawed

  A Fashionably Dead Diary

  Fashionably Forever After

  Fashionably Fabulous

  More coming soon…

  * * *

  SEA SHENANIGANS SERIES

  Tallulah’s Temptation

  Ariel’s Antics

  Misty’s Mayhem

  Madison’s Mess

  * * *

  SHIFT HAPPENS SERIES

  Ready to Were

  Some Were in Time

  No Were To Run

  Were Me Out

  Where We Belong

  * * *

  MAGIC AND MAYHEM SERIES

  Switching Hour

  Witch Glitch

  A Witch in Time

  Magically Delicious

  A Tale of Two Witches

  Three’s A Charm

  Switching Witches

  * * *

  HANDCUFFS AND HAPPILY EVER AFTERS SERIES

  How Hard Can it Be?

  Size Matters

  Cop a Feel

  * * *

  If after reading all the above you are still wanting more adventure and zany fun, read Pirate Dave and His Randy Adventures, the romance novel budding novelist Rena was helping wicked Evangeline write in How Hard Can It Be?

  * * *

  Warning: Pirate Dave Contains Romance Satire, Spoofing, and Pirates with Two Pork Swords.

  About Robyn Peterman

  Robyn Peterman writes because the people inside her head won’t leave her alone until she gives them life on paper. Her addictions include laughing really hard with friends, shoes (the expensive kind), Target, Coke (the drink LOL) with extra ice in a Yeti cup, bejeweled reading glasses, her kids, her super-hot hubby and collecting stray animals.

  * * *

  A former professional actress with Broadway, film and T.V. credits, she now lives in the South with her family and too many animals to count.

  * * *

  Writing gives her peace and makes her whole, plus having a job where you can work in only your underpants works really well for her. You can leave Robyn a message via the Contact Page and she’ll get back to you as soon as her bizarre life permits! She loves to hear from her fans!