Dana Bell - Eye of the Beholder

I think I might actually love this woman. “Remind me to thank you properly somewhere over Edinburgh.”

Rina grinned and blew him a kiss.

Jeff was ready to collapse. It had taken them days to get here. He was tired, filthy and desperately in need of a caramel mocha frappuccino.

If the two lovebirds didn’t stop playing snuggle-bunny in front of him he was going to puke.

But damn it, they were here. In Norway, land of his ancestors, freeing a creature of myth and legend he prayed would kill his grandfather before he could hurt anyone else in Jeff’s family ever again.

According to Travis, Old Man Grimm was right on their tails, no pun intended. The only thing that had saved them from facing him yet had been the necklaces Logan had given them. They’d masked their presence from his insane grandfather. Whatever else Logan had done to delay the Old Man’s progress Jeff didn’t want to know. Let his brother-in-law play around with the woo-woo stuff. Jeff was a lot more straight-forward.

He just wanted to kill the bastard and end this nightmare.

They’d found the cave where the wolf was bound, freed him, and now… now he was practically humping Jeff’s leg. In fact, the only one of the three of them he’d allowed near him was Jeff. Jeff had pulled the sword from the wolf’s jaws, muttering quietly the whole while about snot and drool, but damn if the whimpers the creature had issued at the sound of his voice hadn’t touched his heart.

Jeff watched as the wolf — Fenris, let’s be honest here—growled at Travis. Blood still dripped from its jaws where the sword had been.

Travis, his eyes wide, pushed Jamie behind him. “Could you repeat exactly what you said to him?”

Jeff tried to move around Fenris to get back to Travis and his sister. The wolf responded by backing into him, pushing him further into the cave and away from Travis. “ Jeg er din forlovede , behage spiser ikke meg. Og spiser ikke Tyr , den ville ergre din ny moder .”

Travis coughed back a laugh. “I thought you spoke some Norwegian.”

“Bits and pieces only.” His eyes narrowed. He knew the word for mother, moder , and eat me, spiser meg . What else had he said? “What did my dickhead brother-in-law teach me to say?”

“Roughly? I’m your mate, please don’t eat me. And don’t eat Tyr, it will piss off your new mother.”

Jeff blinked as Fenris rubbed against his thigh, nearly knocking him on his ass. The wolf’s fur was matted with dirt, blood and debris, and he smelled to high heaven. Now, damn it, so did his jeans. Jeff gritted his teeth and prayed his fear and anger didn’t show. “Remind me to thank him when I get home.”

Wait.

“New mother ?” Jeff threw back his head and laughed. Jordan was going to have a field day with that.

“Never mind. I won’t have to do a thing.”

It was great. Right up until the longest, wettest dog tongue he’d ever had the displeasure to see swiped a long wet line up his cheek.

Blech . Why oh why does this shit keep happening to me? He lifted his shirt to wipe away the slime.

“ Meget pen .” A rough hand petted his stomach.

Jeff jerked back and pulled his shirt down. Before him, crouched on his haunches, was a hot, naked, extremely dirty and smelly man. “Travis? What did he just say?”

“That you’re very pretty.”

Oh. Shit. What had Logan gotten him into?

That man stood and grabbed Jeff’s hand. Dark, feral brown eyes bore into him. “Mine.”

Jeff gulped. Goodbye Dysfunction Junction. You will be sorely missed.

Dana Marie Bell wrote her first short story when she was thirteen years old. She attended the High School for Creative and Performing Arts for creative writing, where freedom of expression was the order of the day. When her parents moved out of the city and placed her in a Catholic high school for her senior year, she tried desperately to get away, but the nuns held fast, and she graduated with honors despite herself.

Dana has lived primarily in the Northeast (Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, to be precise), with a brief stint on the US Virgin Island of St. Croix. She lives with her soul mate and husband Dusty, their two maniacal children, an evil, ice-cream stealing cat and a bull terrier that thinks it’s a Pekinese.

You can learn more about Dana at: www.danamariebell.com