by Amanda Milo
WEREWOLF CINDERELLA
By Amanda Milo
Copyright © 2019 Amanda Milo ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by an information and retrieval system without express written permission from the Author/Publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Dedication
To Home Depot: You’ve done it! Valspar paint is manpolish. Finally, men can experience the sweet agony of choosing just ONE.
To R, who knows exactly how to prepare my steaks. “Easy. Just burn them to ash.” XD ♥
And to Amanda at Home Depot’s Garden Center, who had us in stitches with her Chewbacca ringtone XD
Dedication II
There are unsung heroes behind every book. But for R, Tammy, Lyda, Dawn, Ronika, Kitty, Hayley, and Mom: you deserve a wolfsong in your honor. Thank you for reading over my stories when they’re little ugly ducklings. You make some beautiful cygnets, my talented friends!!!
A NOTE ON THEIR AGES:
If you start reading this and you start thinking, “Really? This couple who have been soulmates for forever are told they’re too young to be getting married when they’re turning eighteen?” You see, they were *written* to be a mite younger, but Amazon has these rules where you absolutely cannot—
What’s that? You’ve read Game of Thrones where Daenerys is only 13 during her encounters with her hot husband?
Me too, but that’s Game of Thrones, and R.R. Martin is the ultimate ruler of the seven kingdoms. He gets to write what he wants to write or he’ll send the Hound after them. Small-fish authors haveth no Hound. Or kingdoms, dammit.
But you read __
Right, right, but romance authors cannot. It’s a different world if you start dabbling with underage persons and romance. (Pretty sure we can’t write about underage bunnies getting romantic either, rabid or not no matter what holiday it is.)
But history! you’ll cry, because come on—King Henry VII’s mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort was married at twelve (for like the second time?) and gave birth to him when she was a not-so-strapping fourteen. Child brides (and young grooms, to be fair) were not out of the ordinary in the days of yore. Historically speaking—
I hear you. Believe me, I do. I would have really liked to publish my story the way I wrote it, but there be rules, and they apply to us romance-fanciers, so here we are, with our happy fictional couple at a budding eighteen-and-still-too-young-to-get-married per their parents. Just grab the otter, get in this gondola and go with me, alright?
(...If you don’t want to ride in the gondola we can go together on horseback. Can’t say how we’re gonna keep the otter from escaping out of our saddlebags but I’m not picky about our mode of transportation. And I love horses. You know, really, that should have been my first offer. Let’s try again…)
CHAPTER 1
Our parlor is filled with concerned folk and story-hungry women alike; words flurry out of their ratcheting jaws until my human ears tighten against my scalp, trying to flatten and dull the sound out.
“You’ve kept her like she’s your slave, not your step daughter!”
My eyes follow the sound of the self-important voice to find Winifred Crosby. She’s less scandalized by the idea and more exhilarated than anything, because this is the most exciting news she’s been able to sink her teeth into since the night of my disappearance.
My gaze flicks to Fortune Parnell when she incredulously creaks, “She takes a grievous injury, and your answer to that was to lie and hide her away?”
I shift uncomfortably and try to block out the sounds, but it’s impossible. The women’s voices are beginning to blend together. “Have you kept her hidden downstairs this whole time?”
“You made your stepdaughter stay below the house like an animal?”
In human form, my ears are just as sensitive as they are in my wolf half, so I’m also hearing every undercurrent and whisper. “I heard Winifred say our Ella was dressed in what could barely be described as scraps and rags.”
Our Ella. My fingers with their untrimmed nails dig into my thigh, sinking into the fabric of my simple dress. I haven’t been anyone’s Ella in a very long time.
I feel and hear the fabric tear under my human-nails-turning-to-wolf’s claws when someone shouts, “You’re not fit to be called her stepmother! Not unless you think to call yourself her evil stepmother.”
I raise my head, my eyes tracking which nose-out-of-joint busybody dropped this statement on my stepmother’s lap; my gaze narrows when I see it’s Avis Bardon who is the accusation tosser. Avis needs to look to her own daughters’ treatment in her household and perhaps hold off on casting the first stone.
If I were abused, I would appreciate all these people coming together on my behalf.
But time and again, I’ve insisted that my appearance (yes, yes alright; dressed in rags and smeared in soot) and the fact that I’ve been staying hidden for years—this is my concern, my preference.
Nobody is listening.
“Obviously,” Maude Apilby cuts in, “she’s damaged, but that’s no reason to keep her locked away. And besides, every eligible female must attend the ball by decree of the king.”
Phantom tingling races just above the floor right where the underside of my foot would be, but I ignore it. It’s only my stump playing head games. A formal, royal ball. These fobbing ratsbane-tossing halfwits are in a tizzy because I very nearly didn’t make a show at a dance?
I stare a hole into the side of Maude’s head—or try to—it’s hard to say if anything gets through the padded rolls she affixes to her hair. Mannerless cow.
The next shout comes louder, more heated, from Frideswide Hugeford, whose parents’ unfortunate taste in names may give some credit towards the question of why she’s such a miserable sow. Her tone more than her words seems to whip the others into even more of a frenzy, amping up their aggression. If we can’t quiet this goosey bunch, we’re about to watch them all turn into a petticoat-wearing lynch mob. Anger burns in my throat, making me growl.
Stepmother covers my hand with hers, gently squeezing my fingers.
That’s my stepmother. Grace above all; even under fire… or the threat of a noose. She’s a better woman than I.
What? You thought the rumors were true? That she’s my wicked stepmother, who’s kept me as her indentured servant under the stairs?
Oh my friend, you don’t know the half of this story.
To tell it, I’d best begin at the beginning.
THE REAL CHAPTER 1
“What the hell are you doing?” I squeak in disbelief, my knee knocking into Gareth’s chin.
Gareth sits up a little, my skirts making soft swishing noises under his elbows. “Licking you.” His eyes have turned to a molten yellow. And really, yellow in anyone’s eye should make them look half-jaundiced, but Gareth is somehow made only more handsome.
“You can’t lick me!” I protest, gasping as he catches me by the ankle and leans in to draw his nose along my curls.
Against the lips of my sex, he disagree
s. “I’m the prince. I can do whatever I like.”
Seeing only half of his face, knowing his mouth is a literal breath away from touching… me—I feel myself turning shades of fire, from the tops of my reddening breasts to my burnt-feeling ears. “I think I’m more scandalized than that time your stallion mounted Persephone,” I tell him.
Since I’d been riding Persephone at the time, it was unexpected. It was even more unexpected because Gareth had been riding his stallion beside me. It was all very sudden and anyone who’s had a stallion lunge over a mare’s back while they were on the mare’s back will tell you that it’s damned dangerous. People caught between the flying hooves and crushing weight can die.
That’s why stallions who have more libido than manners don’t get to run with mares.
To be fair, Gareth’s stallion, Quirinus—a fire-red Fresian gifted to him by the king of an allied kingdom—is the picture of well-mannered. It’s only Persephone, a reverse dapple roan of questionable parentage, who tests his good behavior. It’s really not unlike the prince’s goodly conduct getting tossed out the nearest window whenever he gets a moment alone with me. We’ve perfected the art of dodging tutors, siblings—even parents, even our king and our queen. (For Gareth; one and the same.)
“You know what stallions do to their ladies?” Gareth says patiently, his hungry gaze moving from my wide eyes to what he’s exploring with his lips.
Breathily, I gasp, “I… can’t—think! What?” I pant, not wanting to look away for a moment, but my neck muscles are melting. The back of my head hits hay. We’re perched on a quickly-flattening haystack. Not the most comfortable place to hide in the world, but we care less and less as hormones fire up and try to burn us alive.
“I’ll show you,” Gareth purrs with the gleeful anticipation of a man slurping ice-cold sweetcream. He parts me with his fingers and draws his tongue up my slick-feeling, heated folds.
“AHH!” I shriek, nerves misfiring all over my body, my toes twitching, my leg jerking, my back arching.
Gareth throws one arm over my hips, pinning me down with a chuckle.
I suck in a breath, my eyes seeing only white. “Whatever you just did, do it ag—”
In this, Gareth obeys me with enthusiasm. He does it again, slower this time—and his tongue catches something that makes me screech and almost unseat his arm.
“Would you shush?” Gareth whispers, voice rough, laughing as he reaches his other arm up and puts his big hand over my mouth. “You’re going to have everybody running in here to see if a pitchfork fell tines-down on a cat’s tail.”
“Yoo doe-nt haff too sownd sow smuhg,” I inform him primly. Or as primly as I can manage with his sweat-dampened palm squishing my lips.
“What is this?” Gareth asks in delighted wonder, and he lets up on where he’s pinning my pelvis down in favor of sticking his fingers into my curls and separating my cuntlips. “Ell? Are you a hermaphrodite?”
“WHOT!” I shove his hand off of my face. “I’m not!” I try to kick his shoulder.
With the hand no longer pinning my mouth, he easily catches my foot before I can connect. “You don’t have to get all testy.” He stares down between my legs in consternation. “But you either have the tiniest cock I’ve ever seen, or you’ve got a finger growing in the wrong place.”
I stop struggling to give him raised brows. “Just how many tiny cocks have you seen?”
Gareth slaps my bare upper thigh. (Bared, thanks to him stealing my drawers straightaway today.) “Behave, or I’ll turn you over.”
As if that’s a threat. Months ago, Gareth and I found out quite by accident that if I’m bent over something—say, a barrel of convenient height, a fence-rail, a thick tree branch, a saddle cantle (no, we didn’t find this out while we were on a horse—we’re horny, not stupid)—anyway, if he’s got me caught around the middle, and he grinds his steel against my arse, his weight shoves my front-half down so good, I damn near faint. There’s something about him rubbing my cunt against a hard surface that makes me breathless and wild, and I beg Gareth to turn me over anything commodious every chance we get.
At just shy of nineteen summers (Gareth), and a full eighteen summers (me), it’s not easy to manage alone-time. Our parents; the king, the queen, the Baron Ker of Wakefield, and his Baroness, my stepmother—they have it out for us. They want us to die of this fever. If they had it their way all of the time, there would be no quenching our lusty thirst in haylofts, in carriages, in the baker’s shop during a parade the entire kingdom attended (except for us), and in the gardens. (And one time in the woods, but I said to hell with doing that again unless Gareth was going to help me hide from my stepmother for half the day because I couldn’t let her see me picking thorns and briars out of my nice dress or she’d know. She’d just know—somehow, she always does.)
My face screws up. “Wait a moment. I’ve never seen a stallion lick a mare like you say. Her side maybe, but he only sniffs her.”
Gareth shrugs, and spreads my knees wider to accommodate his excessively large shoulders. “Dogs after a bitch then.”
We both pause.
Gareth’s face gets a little color, and he clears his throat. “I did not mean the implication like it might have sounded.”
“I hope not,” I say cheerfully—not put out at all, because in fact I’m quite enjoying his discomfort. “Because if your mother ever heard you refer to a woman as a bitch—”
“I don’t even know why she’s so against that word,” Gareth squawks, perplexed. “She lets us say whatever we want, just as long as it’s only the family about. Or your family,” he adds, his eyes meeting mine, his gaze full of confusion.
I sigh and cross my arms under my head. “I don’t know, Duck,” I say, using my pet name for him. One of Gareth’s middle names is Drake, and when we were children, I called him duck instead, and it stuck. “But if you want to spill sometime today, you’d best get about it. They’ll be searching for us soon if they’re not already.”
Gareth’s eyes grow heated once more, and they rove up and down my body, his expression growing more and more forlorn. “I want to spill, and I want to play with this—” his fingers gently pinch between my legs, and I howl and nearly hit the rafters—“whatever it is,” he says with an explorer’s excitement, kicking off his peregrinations by diving down to inspect whatever it is with his tongue again.
I don’t know how long he plays with me, but Gareth decides to lick, nuzzle, nip, and suck on the thing that lies hidden between my legs. Thanks to him, I go deaf and blind and boneless, so when he finally removes his hand from where he was covering my mouth and raises his head, twisting his neck so that he can drag his soaked chin over his shoulder—he shouldn’t be surprised when I don’t move a muscle. “Did I suffocate you?” he asks, sounding awfully self-congratulatory.
And fair enough. I’d congratulate him plenty, if I could regain the ability to speak.
“Gah,” I pant, my mouth wide open like a fish that’s been tossed on a rock at the river’s edge—I’m that stunned.
Gareth is suffering no such effect. Quite the opposite actually, since he hasn’t gotten to spill yet. “When you’re done playing dead there, Ell, I’d appreciate your assistance.”
“Starrr witho’ meh,” I slur, but I’m only teasing.
“I could finish without you,” Gareth admits, face sincere, “but Ella, my love, I don’t want to.”
I stare up at him, starry-eyed with the deepest, most intense adoration for him—and for what he likes to do to my body. “Ahh,” I sigh happily, and shakily attempt to raise my leg over his head, preparing to twist at the hips enough that I can roll over for him to dry-mount. Only, I can’t move, because my dress is caught underneath his heavy body. “Gareth, get off!”
“That is the general plan,” the oaf agrees, moving more of himself over me, pushing his face into mine, a wicked smile playing at his lips—and a wickeder light dancing in his laughing, golden eyes.
Against my be
tter judgement, I snort—something Gareth takes to mean that I find him humorous. He pulls back, let’s me struggle under him a bit more, his gaze fastened to my chest, where thanks to him, my breasts are nearly spilling out of the top of my loosened corset. They jiggle as I fight to get my dress free, trying to yank it out from where he’s sprawled on top of it. He was happy to claim its real estate when it offered his elbows a barrier from the spiky hay while he laid between my legs.
I grunt and huff, “You weigh more than your father’s destrier!”
Gareth makes a face. “Please don’t mention my father when I’m about to play-swive you.”
“All right,” I concede. I wave an understanding hand. “I wouldn’t want you to mention my parents at culmination-time either.”
“Speaking of, let’s get to that part for me, shall we?” Gareth says, grinning as he rises over me on all fours.
But… he’s still not lifting his knees off of my dress so that I can turn over. I place my hands on the thick muscles on either side of his chest. I do pause a moment to admire them—and who could blame me? Just last year, my Gareth was stringy, but almost overnight, he sprouted—in height, in weight, and in sheer breadth. Whenever I grab his shoulders, the feel of how thick and muscular they are under my hands always renders me stupid. I grab them now, just to revel in the feeling a little more. Why not? “What are you doing?” I murmur against his lips.
“Let’s do it this way,” he answers, his heavy-lidded eyes fixed on mine as his mouth takes my own. His hips are big and hot and hard as iron as he splits my legs open further, and because the front of my skirts are bunched at my waist, there’s nothing between us now save for his breeches, which he’d loosed one-handed at the same time he’d been plucking my corset laces like I was his mandolin.
To my shock, I feel something prod me, something rigid, and fat, and wet. It nudges me in a spot that makes me cry out. “Gareth—good,” oh, so, so gooood… “WAIT—no!”
