by Amira Rain
With my focus on Charlie, I’d truly only half-heard Matt the first time he’d spoken.
“Fine. I promise not to fight you anymore. You happy? Now let me go.”
Matt didn’t, and instead spoke in a low voice near my ear. “That ‘promise’ didn’t sound very convincing.”
“Well, what do you want? A signed and notarized form from me promising that I’m not going to try to fight you anymore?”
Matt didn’t answer right away. “Why do I think you’re going to try to punch me again the second I let you go…and why do I think that the next time you try, you’re going to snap one of your little wrists like a tree branch?”
“Just let me go, you psychopath.”
“No. I’m going to keep you restrained for another minute or two until I can tell by the tone of your voice that you’re really not going to try to punch me again.”
“Whatever. Keep me restrained for another minute or two, then. Just know that the second you let me go, I’m tearing out of this house and hopping in my car and speeding away from here all the way back home.”
“Are you really going to leave? You’re more than free to go if you want to, but I just can’t believe you’re not going to give our Mating Union more of a chance than a twenty-minute trial.”
Unsure of how to respond, I didn’t, and instead just looked at Charlie and Shadow, who were both now contentedly gnawing on their bones. I felt like Shadow would be just fine if I left, but Charlie, I wasn’t so sure about. I felt like he would miss me. I felt like I would miss him.
Which was insane to think, I knew, after only knowing him for such a brief time, but I couldn’t help it. I felt like I was falling in love with my sweet, furry little friend already. He was the sweet, furry, little friend I’d always wanted. I was developing a distinct soft spot for Shadow, too.
Staying with a gruff, complete asshole of a man for the sake of two dogs, I thought, incredulous. At the same time, though, I knew what Matt had insinuated was true. I certainly hadn’t given our Mating Union much of a chance. Maybe he’ll become less gruff over the next few days, I thought. Maybe I should at least stick around to find out.
After several long moments, I finally spoke aloud, talking to Matt with my head slightly turned to more or less talk to him over my shoulder. “If I decide to stay here in Greenwood, which is a pretty big if, I already have a hunch you’re going to make a terrible husband. I’m willing to stay for a few days to find out for sure, though. But like I said…I already have a hunch you’re going to make a terrible husband.”
Still holding my wrists firmly, and holding my back to his chest equally as firmly, he didn’t answer right away. “And how can you be so sure?”
“Well, just for one thing, one thing of many, I’ve already sat down and had iced tea with you, and yet, you still don’t know a single thing about me, your own wife-to-be.”
“Well, I know you have a real heart for mentally challenged dogs.”
I couldn’t even speak at first, and when I finally could, it was in a low near-whisper, the quiet sound not doing justice to the near-rage I felt. “Keep pushing me, Matt. Keep pushing me, and your dogs might have to witness a murder.”
“I specifically told them to pair me up with someone unattractive.”
Confused and almost startled by him so abruptly changing the subject, I didn’t respond right away. “What?”
“The Genetic Testing Commission people. I specifically told them to pair me up with someone unattractive. I said, ‘Please match me up with a woman with a figure like a mesh bag stuffed with potatoes, and make her face almost painful to look at.’ Clearly, they must have thought I was joking, but I wasn’t. Clearly, they must have thought I was being sarcastic and was really trying to make a humorous request for the opposite of what I was saying, but I wasn’t. I truly wanted them to pair me with someone unattractive, or at the very least, plain-to-average. My luck, they thought I was trying to plead for a gorgeous woman in a humorous way, so they paired me with you. Just my damn luck. When I walked in the front door and saw you, I could have banged my fist on the wall.”
I had no idea what to say. I had no idea what Matt meant. So, I said nothing, and he continued.
“I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors…about how shifters can request women with specific features or characteristics if they just go into the Genetic Testing Commission regional office in person.”
I hadn’t.
“You just have to go in there under the pretense of wanting to check and see if all paperwork was received or something like that, then put a bug in the ear of one of the ladies working in the office. Mack, for example, requested a woman with ‘beautiful green eyes,’ and from what he said when he called me briefly today, it sounds like he got her. A few other gene-positive women who arrived here in Greenwood last week also seem to have been paired with the requests of their new husbands in mind. One of my men even asked for a woman with ‘any kind of looks, but a beautiful, light, fluttery sort of laugh,’ and I’ll be damned, but he got her. See, when you women went into the regional office for your genetic testing, the women who work there were watching you all, and listening, in some cases, more closely than you all might have thought. The official party line of the commission is something along the lines of ‘We’re not a dating service’ because they supposedly don’t honor specific ‘requests,’ but…they clearly do. At least for shifters. From what I’ve heard from my men, it seems that every man here in the village got exactly the woman he wanted, or pretty close to…every man except me, I guess.” With his breath warm against my neck, Matt paused, lowering his voice a little when he spoke again. “Although holding you like this, Kylie…I’m becoming a bit conflicted because I’m really feeling no urgency at all to ‘send you back.’”
I was feeling no urgency at all to listen to Matt say one more word. Not without expressing the hurt and confusion I was currently feeling, anyway. In what I hoped was a calm voice that assured him that I was thoroughly done punching him, I told him to let me go that second. When he did, I turned to face him and spoke while trying to keep a little tremor of emotion out of my voice.
“I’m sorry I’m not ugly enough for you. I’m sorry I’m not ugly enough to satisfy your ‘ugliness fetish,’ or whatever it is that would cause you to make a request like the one you did. Is that what it is? You have an ‘ugliness fetish’ or something? I thought I’d heard it all.”
With his expression turning into a deep frown, Matt suddenly heaved a sigh, turning away from me and raking a hand through his hair at the same time. “No…I don’t have an ‘ugliness fetish.’ And now I’m just sorry that holding you how I just was made me say everything that I did.”
“So, let me get this straight. You haven’t been ‘restraining me for my own good’ the past few minutes? That was just an excuse so that you could hold me?”
Avoiding my eyes, Matt raked a hand through his thick, dark hair again. “I really was restraining you for your own good…but then it turned into more than a bit of enjoyment just to hold you like that.”
“Well, so, if you don’t have an ‘ugliness fetish’ or anything, and if you actually think I’m the opposite of ugly, and if you just enjoyed holding me, then what--”
“Just know that I don’t want any kind of a ‘love thing’ out of all this. I signed up to participate in the NSMP because I feel a duty to bring forth shifter children in order to secure our nation’s defense in the coming years. But I don’t want to fall in love during all this, and I don’t intend to. That’s why I specifically requested that I be paired with an unattractive mate. I thought it would make things easier.”
“Well, why don’t you want to fall in love? What’s the problem?”
Matt sighed, then opened his mouth to respond. Looking up into his deep gray eyes, I willed him to do so quickly because I suddenly couldn’t wait to hear his answers to my questions.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Before Matt could answer my questions, Shadow and C
harlie suddenly leaped up and began barking at once, both making a beeline for the foyer. A loud knock on the front door a few seconds later made me think that it was probably the movers, ready to bring my things into the house. Having given most of my furniture to various friends and neighbors, the movers really didn’t have a lot to unload; however, I knew they probably had just enough to prevent me from any further discussion with Matt for at least twenty minutes.
Disappointed, I looked at him and told him I definitely wanted to continue our discussion once the movers left. “Okay?”
Already heading out of the kitchen, he didn’t answer me directly, just said he was heading upstairs to take a shower. “You can just have the movers unload your things here on the ground floor for now, and later, I’ll carry whatever you want up to one of the guest rooms.”
Where my things will stay until we’re married and I move my clothes into the master bedroom? Or do you mean my things will stay in one of the guest rooms until we both decide this is an absolute farce and I head back to Moxon? These were the questions that I wanted to ask Matt. However, I didn’t think it would do any good to shout them, as I’d have to do in order to even be heard because he’d already left the kitchen.
With Shadow dozing beneath an oak writing desk in one corner of the vast kitchen, and Charlie enthusiastically “helping” by following me all around, I spent the next little while directing the movers in bringing all my boxes in. There really wasn’t much. A few boxes of things for the kitchen; several large boxes of clothes; several boxes of odds-and-ends; a big box of makeup and toiletries; live ferns and plants packed in special boxes lined with bubble wrap; a few small furniture items like plant stands and chairs; and that was about it.
That was all of my earthly possessions. Compared to all Amy had moved with her to Greenwood, it all added up to about nothing. As much as she’d always been a packrat, I’d always been closer to the minimalism side of the spectrum. I’d never liked keeping clothes that I hadn’t worn in over a year, and I’d never been able to stand clutter beyond a certain point.
A few items left on a kitchen table or something was fine. Piles of laundry beside piles of dishes beside piles of magazines was not. It was the latter state that I usually found Amy’s kitchen table in whenever I came over, so I was in the habit of cleaning and decluttering for her. She’d told me a thousand times that I didn’t have to, and I’d told her a thousand times that I couldn’t not.
Once the movers had left, I began unpacking my kitchen things, wondering if I should really even bother. After all, I had no idea how long I’d be staying in Greenwood. For all I knew, I could be heading out of the village that evening. However, something told me that I wouldn’t be able to say goodbye to Charlie and Shadow quite so soon, so I figured I may as well unpack my things anyway.
After putting all my kitchen things away, I began taking plants and their stands out to the living room, with Charlie still “helping” me by trotting along right at my heels, excitedly jumping up to stand on his hind legs with his paws on my hip, tail wagging furiously, whenever I paused for longer than a second. Each time he did this, I told him he was such a smart boy for knowing how to jump up on someone’s hip and balance on his hind legs how he was. My new mission in life was to give him all the praise, encouragement, and love that Matt clearly hadn’t been giving him in life.
Remarkably, for having witnessed what had probably seemed like a horrendous display of violence perpetrated by me back in the kitchen, Charlie didn’t seem traumatized at all or any worse for the wear in any way. Shadow, still enjoying his snooze beneath the desk, didn’t, either.
When Matt and I had been having our little tiff in the kitchen, I’d briefly lost sight of the fact that the dogs were still present. Now, in hindsight, I was a little embarrassed that the dogs had had to witness such a display and had seen me throwing punches at their owner. I was particularly embarrassed that they both had had to see Matt essentially laughing in my face when I’d first started punching him. Frankly, I would have still been a little embarrassed about that even if the dogs hadn’t been present.
Only now did it seem curious to me that neither of the dogs had tried to stop me from punching Matt, although I figured that maybe his laughter had something to do with that. Or, I reasoned, maybe Charlie really was smart enough to understand language, at least well enough for him to have understood that I was only flipping out because I was defending him against Matt, who, at the time, was continually describing him as mentally challenged.
“I’ll never let him describe you that way again,” I now told Charlie, crouching to pet his face, head, and silky-soft ears in the living room. “I know you’re a smart, smart boy.”
Seeming to experience some sort of a shiver of joy at my words, Charlie did a brief full-body shake, tail wagging about twice as fast as windshield wipers on full high. The result of this joy, whether from his shaking hindquarters or wagging tail, was that he accidentally overturned a plant stand behind him. The stand hit a rug with a thud, dumping its contents, which was an ivy plant in a plastic pot that I’d just placed on the stand not a minute earlier.
Startled, Charlie whipped his head around with a quiet woof to see what had happened. After surveying the stand and the overturned plant for a moment or two, making another quiet woof, he turned his face back to me, wide-eyed and panting, as if unsure how the plant accident had happened but fearing that he might have had something to do with it. Maybe Matt yells at him when he does something wrong, I thought. Maybe he even calls him a dummy, or worse. I certainly wasn’t going to. Instead, I just began petting Charlie’s head again, smiling at him.
“Now, you just did a very smart thing, Charlie. Good boy. See, that old ivy was dying anyway, but I just haven’t been able to let it go. Now I can because I think having its last few leaves crushed on the floor finally did it in. Good boy, Charlie. Smart boy.”
Charlie tipped his head back, reveling in my petting, and the action made him almost look like he was smiling.
Just then, dressed in jeans that hung low on his slim hips and a plain gray, long-sleeved t-shirt fitted just well enough to lightly cling to his biceps and abs, Matt came down the stairs, which ended between the open dining area and living room. “Charlie doing brilliant things down here?”
Preparing for some kind of an argument, I gave Matt a curt nod. “Yes, as a matter of fact.”
Not looking convinced at all, Matt walked over, his heavy black boots thudding on the hardwood, and surveyed Charlie, me, and the overturned plant and stand before speaking again. “Is he ‘brilliantly’ overturning plants?”
Ready to defend Charlie for the second time that day, I gave him one final head rub, then stood, facing Matt. “Yes. He overturned my dying ivy, which, after the fact, I basically told him to do. And he obeyed me completely.”
Matt snorted. “You ‘basically told him to’ overturn your ivy ‘after the fact?’ So, he did it before you even told him to? Is he psychic as well as brilliant now, too?”
Realizing now that I’d messed up my words a bit in my defense of Charlie, I heaved a sigh, folding my arms across my chest. “Do you have anything positive or uplifting to say to either me or Charlie, Matt?”
Raking a hand through his hair, which appeared to still be a bit damp from his shower, Matt said that he probably didn’t. “I just wanted to tell you that I need to go out for a while to meet with my some of my lieutenants and advisors. I’ll be back by seven. If you want, there’s some leftover pizza and wings in the fridge that you can put in the oven for dinner. There’s enough for both of us, but…you can either eat by yourself, or wait for me to get home. Doesn’t matter to me.”
A little stung by his final comment, I tightened my arms across my chest, trying not to glare at him. “Leftover pizza, and you don’t even care if I eat it with you. My goodness, are you always this unbelievably romantic? I’m not sure I’ll be able to stand it on a daily basis.”
With a low grunt, he moved past Cha
rlie and me and began making his way down the short hallway that led to the kitchen and the front door. “Suit yourself. Eat alone, then. Fine by me.”
“Fine by me, too. Have fun at your meeting. I’ll just eat by myself while you’re gone.”
Matt paused in his walking and turned, and I suddenly realized that I was hoping that he was going to say something like, “Why don’t you just wait for me? We’ll eat together at seven.” But then, he spoke, and he didn’t say that or anything even remotely similar.
“I’ll give Charlie and Shadow their dinner when I get home, but could you please do me a favor and let them out once before then? And when you do, you’re going to have to take Charlie by the collar and almost forcibly drag him in after five minutes or so. If you don’t, he’ll stay out chasing snowflakes until he gets frostbite on his toes because he’s so--”
“Don’t you dare say it, Matt. Don’t you dare say, ‘because he’s so mentally challenged.’”
Matt scoffed quietly. “I wasn’t going to. I was going to say, ‘because he’s so enthralled by snow.’”
Having not expected this response, I didn’t know what to say in return, so I said nothing. Matt turned and soon disappeared down the hallway.
A half-hour or so later, I’d just finished unpacking the rest of my ground-floor things when I received a text from Amy.
How’s it going with you? Me: I’m falling in love already, Ky. I think Mack is, too. He’s out in the kitchen finishing up cooking dinner for me now -- some dish he calls “deluxe cheddar-crusted chicken,” which, from the ingredients I saw on the counter, is just chicken tenderloins coated with Miracle Whip and dredged through crushed cheddar goldfish crackers before baking. Mack seems SO happy/proud to be cooking for me, though, to the point that he’s absolutely melting my heart.
I’m sitting at the dining room table right now, where he parked me with a glass of wine. He lit candles for us, too, and put on some soft piano music. Oh, and he presented me with a dozen red roses when we first got here to the house. He’s making me feel more spoiled and special than I think any man ever has, though not just by the things he’s doing. It’s just the way he looks at me and talks to me. It’s just everything. I just feel like I’ve been waiting my whole life to meet him.