Beauty and the Mountain Man Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Epilogue 1: One Year Later

  Epilogue 2: Five Years Later

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Beauty and the Mountain Man

  A True Mountain Man

  Frankie Love

  Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Epilogue 1: One Year Later

  Epilogue 2: Five Years Later

  LET’S “MERRY CHRISTMAS”

  13. Chapter 1

  14. Chapter 2

  15. Chapter 3

  16. Chapter 4

  17. Chapter 5

  18. Chapter 6

  19. Chapter 7

  20. Chapter 8

  PREVIEW

  Also by Frankie Love

  About the Author

  Copyright

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  Edited by

  Teresa Banschbach

  ICanEdit4U

  Copyright © and 2017 by Frankie Love

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  For you … because every beauty needs a beast.

  Chapter 1

  Ronan

  It’s going to be another cold, lonely night in this mountainside mansion.

  Running a hand through my hair, I look out the bedroom window at the ground blanketed in white. The snow falls hard, and the sky grows dark and all I can think about is, what comes next? My future seems as blank as the landscape before me.

  It’s certainly not this town that keeps me on this mountain. Calling it a town at all is a stretch. Not that I’ve spent much time there.

  No, it’s my mother’s dying wish that has me here. She loved this place here in the mountains of Washington. She built it in her last year of life, while I was living in the Swiss Alps as the general contractor for my stepfather’s company instead of being by her side. He never let on how ill she was, but why did I listen to that man instead of following my heart?

  I’ll never make that mistake again.

  But now she’s gone and I’m living in her memories; I’m looking for a purpose though, some real meaning in my life.

  God knows it’s time I start living for more.

  I knew my mother was sick, but I thought she had more time. That we all had more time with her.

  But time is a trick. And it played me for a fool.

  When I finally came to see her, it was too late. She was already gone.

  And I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.

  She needed me, and I wasn’t here for her.

  So, living in her home and keeping this place up, is the least I can do to keep her memory alive.

  Even though I don’t deserve anything good. I didn’t even hold my mother’s hand as she lay dying.

  What kind of man am I?

  I shake my head at my reflection in the window. I’m not a man at all.

  I’m a beast.

  What kind of man would have done such a thing?

  I move around the manor, making sure windows are locked against the storm, I curse the fact that I’m so damn stuck, just like the window in the library. I use my elbow to push it down into place, locking it securely, cursing under my breath. Why the hell did I fire all the people who worked here? The upkeep of an estate is a massive undertaking, and I’d rather be in the woods than here, closing curtains and lighting candles.

  I love the rocky terrain and the fresh air and earth under my feet, but this winter in the mountains of Washington State has turned me even colder than I once was. I feel my body growing frigid. My face is turning to a permanent scowl as the snow piles on. And my body longs for a woman to keep me warm the winter through.

  The moon shines over the expanse of white and I walk to the bar in the library and reach for a bottle of red wine, pouring the Malbec in a glass—my mom had a wine cellar, unfortunately, not casks of whiskey like I’d prefer. The decor here is pretty damn ornate. Mom always liked the finer things in life. I can imagine her picking out the grand piano, the marble entryway, and the candelabra. It’s fussier than I’d choose, but I know she loved it.

  The power’s out and the fire blazes, but inside I feel stone cold.

  I take a swig of wine, unable to take my eyes off the window, as if I were waiting for something... or someone.

  And deep inside I suppose I am. I’m angry about my mother’s death, about being here in an empty house with no family left to call my own. I’m a man without purpose and it’s eating me up inside. It forces me to push away the people I’ve known my entire life, including the staff of the estate that I let go. So, now I’m alone.

  Dammit, I wish I weren’t this way. But it would take a special kind of woman to crack open my heart. I’ve never been a people person and now it’s only getting worse.

  Then I see something move out of the corner of my eye.

  Someone.

  Alone.

  A woman runs across the field, stumbling as the snow barrels into her face.

  She wears the glow of the moon on her face. It illuminates her fine features into something precious. Something beautiful.

  Something that should be mine.

  With one look, something primal stirs inside me.

  I’m hungry for a woman... and not just any woman, but a special woman.

  This woman.

  As I watch her, the wind whips harder around the mountain. Everything is dark, but thankfully my mother’s multitude of candelabras are lit.

  I strike a match and light a flame just as the woman pushes open the iron gate, her eyes taking in the gargoyles on the eaves, and she climbs the front steps of the mansion with a bewildered, but determined look in her eye.

  A look I know all too well.

  She is lost and wanting to be found.

  I’ve been in this manor for a month after inheriting it, pacing its grand halls and empty rooms waiting for something I couldn’t name.

  But now I know.

  I want her.

  Chapter 2

  Bella

  There are a million places I’d like to be right now. My college apartment back in Spokane, celebrating the end of winter term with my best friend Lacey. My dad’s house in front of the fire, with my Kindle in my lap and a mug of tea in my hand. Or, even at the campus library where I work, checking in books, five shifts a week.

  So, to be stuck ten miles from my dad’s place, when I was coming home three days early as a Christmas surprise, totally blows. But the snow started dumping buckets a few miles back and I knew I w
as screwed.

  Thankfully, there’s a house up on the mountain ridge. While the single glow of light in an upstairs room chills me to some degree, it’s nowhere near as freezing as I’d be stuck in my car overnight.

  I mean, I’d be more than frozen. I’d be dead. Which isn’t exactly how I want to ring in the new year.

  Not that it will be rung in in some special way. I’ve never had a man to kiss as the clock strikes midnight and I have no reason this think this year will be any different.

  Right now, so far as I can tell, I’m just lucky to be alive.

  I pull my duffel bag over my shoulder before I don my gloves and zip up my winter parka. I lock the car and put the keys in my pocket. However, it is unlikely that anyone would come to steal the piece of crap.

  What in the heck was I thinking? My spontaneity usually gets in the way of rational thought and this decision, to come here in the spur of the moment, is no exception.

  My dad won’t be worried, since he didn’t even know I was coming in early. Although he’d be a basket case if he knew what I was up to. He knows the mountain like the back of his hand. He grew up in this tiny, barely-able-to-survive town of Hollow’s End, and so did I.

  Most of the town struggled to find work now that the plans for the ski resort came to a grinding halt. The owner just decided it wasn’t going to be as profitable as he thought and left.

  My dad felt the pain of that business mogul’s decision especially hard. He had bought new excavating equipment for his forest clearing company when the resort was going to be built. He had gotten loans to purchase the machines which he planned on paying off once the contracts were up and running.

  But then the plans fell through, and my father’s now buried in debt. It breaks my heart that he can hardly pay his bills, so I want to make this Christmas especially good for him.

  He loves Hollow’s End. He’s memorized the pass up and down. He’d know the snow conditions... and being the spontaneous woman I am, I didn’t pause long enough to consider them myself.

  And now I’m here. Knocking on the biggest door I’ve ever seen. Everything about this place is foreboding and mysterious. It’s like the romance novel I read last semester for my literature class; a story set in a gothic castle, with a monster living inside and a princess locked inside a tower. That is until he takes her from prisoner to lover.

  The story stirred something deep inside me. I remember lying in my bed, slipping my fingers beneath my panties, touching myself until I came, moaning as I imagined a monster taking me. Moving harder against my hand as I replayed the scenes from the book in my mind.

  He pinned her against the wall, pushing up her dress and pulling her breasts into his mouth, gripping her bare ass as he took her hand and wrapped her fingers around his massive cock. She stroked him, and she tasted him. She moaned as he filled her so completely.

  He was more than a man. He was a beast.

  And I wanted him to capture me.

  It felt wrong to be so turned on by such a threatening male, but maybe the fact that I’ve never been with a man at all has turned my innocence into something desperate.

  My stomach is in knots as I wait for someone to answer.

  The window on the massive door is inlaid with stained glass. The pattern is of red rose blossoms with thorns on the stem. It’s beautiful and so delicate, and for a moment my fear fades and I imagine a little old woman living in this grand home.

  I tuck a loose hair behind my ear, fantasizing that instead of an unexpected rendezvous, that I will be welcomed with a kind smile. It’s probably more practical to dream of being granted a place to warm up until the storm passes. Which at the rate the snow is falling, might be a few days.

  I was so foolish to drive here like I did.

  But then the door swings open.

  And it’s not a gentle caretaker here to welcome me.

  No. It is a man, towering over me with broad shoulders and dark eyes, hair hanging loosely around his face, and a thick beard. He holds a three-pronged candelabra, and I know the power must be out here too.

  He growls in lieu of a greeting and the timber of his voice tells me that this man is untamed, feral, and hungry.

  The fact that my body stirs at the sight of him scares me more than the man himself.

  I swallow hard, stepping back, despite the fact I have nowhere else to go. He must see the fear blooming in my belly as I wrap my arms around my chest, bracing myself against the chill.

  “What do you want?” he asks abruptly. His eyes pierce me, and I can’t look away.

  Not understanding the feelings seizing me, I realize with a gasp, that I don’t want to look away.

  In fact, I want him to drag me inside and ravish me; shoving my panties to my ankles, binding my wrists with a rope, and taking all I have to give.

  I blink. What in the world am I thinking? This is not some scene from a gothic romance. This is my actual life.

  “My car got stuck in the snow and it’s freezing out.” I look around, biting my bottom lip, not wanting to stare at him. When I look at him again, I picture him stripped of his clothes with his bare chest against mine and his large hands holding my hips where they belong.

  “And?” he snarls.

  My eyebrows furrow. Is he dense? Or just leery of strangers?

  “And my phone doesn’t get reception out here.”

  He doesn’t say anything. I notice though, his jaw tenses and his eyes look me over, as if he is also unable to look away.

  I should fear this stranger. He looks a decade older than me, but oh so much wiser.

  However, I’m not scared. Not in the least.

  “And if I stay outside,” I tell him. “I’ll freeze, so... I thought...”

  “You want to come inside? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Yes,” I say. “Are you trying to make this difficult? I can’t feel my toes. It’s practically a blizzard out here.”

  “I see that,” he says coolly. “Why are you alone? A woman like you shouldn’t be out in this weather by herself. Where’s your man?”

  I scoff. “What? Is this some eighteenth-century vortex? My man? I don’t need a man to drive home.”

  “You clearly need someone to tell you that driving in a snow storm is foolish.”

  “Well, I don’t have a man, thank you very much. And maybe if I did, he would be driving with me. But that’s irrelevant.”

  “Is it?” He raises an eyebrow, and that one look turns my knees to jelly and my core clenches in... desire?

  No. I’m not letting this arrogant man get my panties all twisted.

  But then pulls back his shoulders, and his entire height is revealed. He is more than a man— he’s a mountain man. And my panties are not twisted.

  They are downright soaked.

  And as he looks at me, I think he probably knows it.

  Which is annoying, to say the least. “Ugh,” I groan. “What’s your deal? I’m clearly not a threat to you. You have a house. And I don’t want to freeze to death on your front steps.”

  He stares down at me, our eyes lock, and I can’t see what he’s thinking at all. It’s like he has the power to cloak his feelings and it infuriates me. I wear my heart on my sleeve and my desire on my lips—the ones I can’t help but lick.

  It’s like I’m dying of thirst and only he can quench my need.

  “Are you actually considering letting me stay out in the cold?” I ask. “Is there someone else here I could talk to instead?”

  He scoffs. “No. I’m all alone out here.” He runs a hand over his thick beard. “And what I’m wondering about is where I’ll put you up once you’ve come inside.”

  I lift an eyebrow, though it isn’t fear that is covering me. It’s my curiosity that he has piqued.

  “What are the options?” I ask, feeling a need pulsing between my legs... knowing just where I’d like him to put me.

  It’s like he can sense my desire because, like the arrogant man he is, he smirks. Then
shrugs, in the most infuriating way possible. Like he knows something I don’t.

  And the truth is, I bet he does.

  With a body like that, I can only imagine how many women he’s taken to bed.

  When he pushes the door open wider, allowing me entrance, I exhale, knowing I won’t die out in the elements tonight.

  He surprises me even more with what he says next, “Let’s start by getting you out of those wet clothes, then we can decide where you’ll sleep tonight.”

  Chapter 3

  Ronan

  Everything about this woman makes me want to take her, now, without any warning.

  And the crazy thing is, I know she wants it too. It’s as if her pheromones are sending messages to mine, messages that say she craves what only I can offer.

  My cock is awake as I stare at her in the doorway. Her long brown hair is covered in snowflakes, her frame petite and small enough for me to hold up with one hand. I can picture rolling on top of her in my four-poster bed, her narrow body covered by mine, and filling her with my rock-hard length while her body opens to me like a flower in bloom.

  When she tells me she doesn’t have a man, I think I’ll fucking come right here and now.

  I’m the one for her.

  And when she curls her lips, with her eyes blazing, announcing she doesn’t need a man, I know I will both cave to her every whim and at the same time whip this woman into shape.

  She thinks she doesn’t need a man, but that’s only because she hasn’t had me.