Reluctant Mates - 21 Paranormal Romance Stories (Werewolf, Vampire, Minotaur and Monster collection) Read Free

enough. Look, I’m sorry. I really am.”
    “Fine. You people always go on about being sorry until it’s too late. Tell you what. I’ll make sure you don’t have the chance to go on too long. I’m giving you an extra assignment. Due Monday. Turn it in, or I drop you.”
    “Well, okay,” I said with a gulp. “Thanks for the second chance.”
    “You won’t be thanking me when you hear it.” He leaned back on his podium and crossed his arms. “First of all, you’ll have a partner. Rock Davidson, the young man who sits near you. He’s also a truant. A mountain of a truant, but still.”
    I snickered. The professor just glared.
    “You and Mr. Davidson, who I assume you can contact somehow through one of your Face Twit Books, are assigned to go this weekend to the university’s forest preserve, and check each of the trees listed here,” he handed me a packet of three pages, each with the tag numbers of ten trees. “Check those trees for mites, and root rot, and report back on their condition. You’ll have to walk a few miles, but that’ll be good for you anyway.”
    I gulped.
    He sneered over his glasses.
    “Get out of my sight. I want the list in my office on Monday morning. Do you understand?”
    I don’t know if I responded to him, but I most certainly ran out of the building with muscles on my mind. Unbeknownst to Dr. James, I’d never looked Rock up on my Face Twit Book, but a quick check turned him up and five minutes later I had an email from him saying that tonight would be a good night to go out there, and that he looked forward to seeing me.
    Bored in the car on the way home, because the road all looks the same with the yellow lines and black pavement, I pulled up Rock’s Twit Face page, and was excited to see that of the eighty-seven photos he had taken of himself in a bathroom mirror, most of them were shirtless.
    Good God he looks good. Those lines on his chest, veins in his arms. He doesn’t even look real, he looks like something out of a movie. My thoughts turned to Jack, who was very similar, maybe even a little more muscular, and a little fatter. Two big muscle men. Maybe I can convince Jack to come out to the forest. I’ll buy them a case of Buds and I’m sure they’ll be fast friends. And – maybe I can convince one of them to give me that jostling I’ve wanted.
    I blushed at my naughtiness, as though I were trying to fool myself into believing in my own purity.
    A deer darted out in front of the car, I laid on the horn, flipped the deer the bird, and drove around him on the shoulder, then drove another mile before I even realized what happened.
    What can I say? I had two big, hunky, and honestly very sweet, mountains of muscle on the mind. And then I had images of myself pinned between the two of them on my mind.
    There’s a thought...
    “Remember, kids,” the man on the radio said, who I was sure I’d tuned away from earlier, “tonight’s the full moon. Things – both good and bad – always happen on a full moon. Just be safe. Dave Davis, signing off. Good night and stay classy.”
    “Ha!” I said, “good and bad, huh? We’ll just see about that.”
    ***
    “I , uh, I’m a little nervous about going out tonight, Stacy.”
    “Lacy.”
    “Oh yeah, sorry. Look, I’m not feeling too well, but if you want to do it tomorrow, that’s better for me.”
    I sighed. “You said you’d go when we talked earlier. Did you get invited to the TKE party or something?”
    “No,” he chuckled, “nothing like that. I just have a hangover. I think. Yeah, it’s a hangover. Sorry, but-”
    “Can’t do it tomorrow, can’t do it Sunday. Gotta work. If we’re going to get this stupid assignment done and not get thrown out of our major, it has to be tonight. Drink some water; eat a bowl of menudo or a greasy chili dog. Or, stop pretending you’re sick.”
    He didn’t say anything for a couple of seconds, and then grunted something that sounded a little like ‘okay’. “But we