by Nikki Winter
Beauty and the Barbarian
Nikki Winter
Copyright © 2015 by Nikki Winter
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or shared in any form, including but not limited to: printing, photocopying, faxing, recording, electronic transmission, or by any information storage or retrieval system without prior written permission from the authors or holders of the copyright.
This book is a work of fiction. References may be made to locations and historical events; however, names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the authors’ imaginations and/or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), businesses, events or locales is either used fictitiously or coincidental. All trademarks, service marks, registered trademarks, and registered service marks are the property of their respective owners and are used herein for identification purposes only.
Published by: Nikki Winter Publishing
Cover Art: Bree Archer
http://breearcher.com/
Copyright Acknowledgment
Chino's
Converse sneakers
Disney
Doritos
Ford
Frozen
Jiffy Pop
MAC
Malibu Beach Barbie
Nissan
Pet Cemetery
R-2 D-2
Snapped
Superman
Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear
Teen Wolf
The Blair Witch Project
Table of Contents
ONE.......................................................................................................................... 5
TWO...................................................................................................................... 13
THREE................................................................................................................... 24
FOUR..................................................................................................................... 34
FIVE....................................................................................................................... 46
SIX......................................................................................................................... 54
SEVEN.................................................................................................................... 64
EIGHT.................................................................................................................... 71
NINE....................................................................................................................... 81
TEN........................................................................................................................ 90
ELEVEN.................................................................................................................. 99
TWELVE.............................................................................................................. 110
THIRTEEN........................................................................................................... 120
FOURTEEN.......................................................................................................... 135
FIFTEEN.............................................................................................................. 146
SIXTEEN.............................................................................................................. 154
EPILOGUE........................................................................................................... 161
MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR............................................................................... 164
NIKKI’S OTHER WORKS.................................................................................... 165
Dedication
Well this turned out to be fairly interesting and actually quite fun. Sadly, it will be my last tale in this series. Wait, wait, wait! Before you set anything on fire, understand that I said this will be my last tale in this series. I never said you wouldn’t see these characters again elsewhere. –Nikki
One
Then…
Tonight had been a goddamn disaster. A shit-fest of massive proportions. There were a few moments in every girl’s life that she spent copious amounts of time fantasizing about how utterly incredible they would be. It wasn’t an exceedingly long list, but the things that starred there mattered. They mattered so greatly. And when each came along, ambling up to the doorway of said girl, she opened with barely suppressed glee, her heart in her throat and hope squeezing that beating muscle like a vice. Junior prom had been third on Mackenzie Rogan’s list after her first kiss and the day she could purchase a real bra. Seeing as how she’d peaked relatively early when it came to her er…developments, just one of those things had taken place upon her twelfth birthday, and there was absolutely nothing special about having someone wrap you in tape measure before staring at the revelation that you’d already crossed over into double digits. No. Absolutely nothing special at all.
However, she’d held onto the steadfast hope that tonight would restore her faith in her little mental list. That for once, for just a few hours, she could get a glimpse of what it meant to be like the other girls. The ones who required little to no effort at all in getting attention that didn’t come with wide-eyed gawking at their height. She’d wanted to feel…special. It burned her to admit that. Her desire to enter a room and have someone gaze as though they’d been waiting on the edge of forever just to see her face? It wouldn’t dissipate. She’d tried stamping down that particular need some time ago but it lingered like a scar. And fuck if she didn’t hate herself just a bit for that. Because it hadn’t gotten her anywhere aside from on the front steps of McKinley High, nausea shaking the very depths of her tummy as she listened to music blast from her post while berating herself for being so, so stupid.
Quentin Munn had asked her—with what seemed to be all the sincerity in the world—to come with him tonight. In some bizarre turn of events, he’d wound up standing in front of her, his gaze darting off as he mumbled about how he liked her, but he didn’t feel they were the right “fit.” Ipso facto, Mackenzie wasn’t the size of a Malibu Beach Barbie Doll.
“It’s not that I don’t think you’re pretty,” he’d told her, still unable to at least hold her stare when he lied to her face. “There’s a height difference and I just…Look, I don’t want to be an asshole. When I asked you to come I meant it, I really did. But then I ran into Jessie from fourth period Lit yesterday and I didn’t know how to tell you…”
Mackenzie didn’t really need him to say much more after that. She’d stopped him and told him to have a good night. He’d stood there for a moment longer, shifting awkwardly like he’d wanted to apologize again, but she’d already vowed to herself that if he did, she’d shove him down the stairs and glare on dispassionately as he sobbed about the pain. Instead he’d said nothing, and Mackenzie had taken a seat after he’d scuttled by and went to join the crowd. That was two hours ago. She couldn’t bring herself to call her sister to come back and take her home. Because if Marissa came back then Marissa would want to talk, and if Marissa wanted to talk then Mackenzie would be forced to tuck and roll out of the fucking car and truck it on foot home. She’d rather wait until the night was over and lie her way through probing questions. So here she was.
The doors to the school opened and she flinched. Heavy steps clicked behind her but they didn’t sound like too tall heels or even dress shoes. Mackenzie focused on the ground and prayed that it wasn’t a chaperone be
cause she could only take but so many pitying looks. She’d received enough from Quentin’s small entourage earlier, and she may be tempted to really shove someone down the concrete stairs this time.
Feet twice the size of her own stopped a step down, encased in bright red Converse sneakers that couldn’t have been more than a few hours old and annoyance skittered up her neck, landing at her ears and making them hot. There was only one person she knew that would wear those goddamn sneakers every-goddamn-where.
“Yo, plums,”—Mackenzie grimaced at the involuntary nickname he’d dubbed her with freshman year—“whatcha’ doing out here?”
“I’ve asked you not to call me that,” she retorted softly. “I have a name. It’s actually really easy to say if you sound it out and stretch the syllables.”
There was a snort but she didn’t lift her eyes. Mocking. She didn’t want to endure the mocking.
“I know your name.”
She balled her hands in her lap. “Do you?” Because all he’d ever called her was “plums.” She’d never heard her given name actually leave his mouth; a mouth that she’d spent entirely too much time staring at in ninth grade English and then tenth grade biology. At present time, she couldn’t keep her eyes off of it in pre-calculus and a bevy of other courses she’d been forced to endure with him.
“Mackenzie,” he murmured.
Jerking slightly, she did lift her stare from the ground this time and she watched as that mouth curled at the corners with smug satisfaction when he added, “Mackenzie Annalisa Julie Rogan.”
She swallowed as thickly lashed eyes the color of charred steel glittered down at her. Huge shoulders, which most boys couldn’t boast of, rolled in a shrug. “But I happen to like the name ‘plums’.” Those eyes fanned down from her now warm face to where her chest lay moving slowly. “It’s fitting whether I’m standing in front of you or,”—his grin turned into a leer—“behind you.”
Mackenzie blinked. “You’re an ass.” She snarled a little when he couldn’t seem to tear away from staring at her tits, annoyed that it thrilled her. “A huge ass.”
It wasn’t a shock to her being that he spent most of his time irritating her beyond all logical reason. Give a guy a moniker like “The Barbarian” because of his ruthlessness on the football field, popularity, and looks and you were going to definitely have a sixty percent chance of him being an ass. It was going on three years since she’d run into him in the hallway, only to be knocked down, helped back up and told to be careful. This was all before he’d given her that slow, crooked smile and that goddamn nickname.
Another snort. “Of course I am. I’m a walking doublewide trailer with a woman’s name. I was bound to be an ass, darlin’,” Ashleigh Thyne retorted smoothly, not even acting the least bit offended at her name calling. He smoothed down the stark red tie loosely knotted around his neck and shoved his hands into the pockets of his dark blue slacks. He rocked back on those oversized feet while his barrel chest contracted beneath a slightly wrinkled white dress shirt that he hadn’t even had the decency to tuck in. And yet…yum. Wait no! Not yum! No yum! Stop yumming!
“Figured you’d be inside letting Munn rest his head on your shoulder while you rocked his little ass around on the dance floor.”
She gritted her teeth and found the ground again. He was the second person tonight to remind her of their height differences. “Well you were wrong.” Why wasn’t he inside with his own date instead of harassing her?
“Heh,” he went. “When I spotted him, he was dancing with Jessie.”
Mackenzie held her breath.
“So I walked past and tripped him. He flailed all the way to the floor.”
That same breath sputtered out into a laugh that God must have let her borrow, because a few minutes ago, she’d been on the verge of tears that wouldn’t have stopped until tomorrow morning. “What?!”
“You heard me,” Ashleigh said lowly, catching and holding her gaze again. “I tripped the little, twitchy piece of dick meat.” He suddenly crouched in front of her, blocking out the parking lot and bus curb.
She frowned, torn between amusement and confusion. “Why?”
“I don’t say much when it comes to you,” he started softly. “Mostly because I don’t know what to say, so I just antagonize you until you notice me.”
“Notice. You?” Mackenzie looked about. “These words. I don’t understand them. Why would I need to notice you?” Who didn’t notice Ashleigh, was the better question. He was literally impossible not to notice. “Plenty of people notice you. You spend the majority of your day being noticed.”
His stare turned into something she couldn’t aptly place into words, but it made her fist the fabric of her dress’ skirt in her hands.
“How do you not know?” Ashleigh questioned. “Three years and you still don’t know?”
“Know what?”
He jumped up abruptly and paced away from her and then back. “We’ve had at least eight classes together in the time that we’ve been at McKinley.”
She nodded, still confounded. There had been Spanish, Home-EC and a few other elective courses. She’d simply assumed that someone was laughing at her from the clouds. “Yeah. So?”
Barking out what sounded like the most exasperated laugh she’d ever heard, he threw up his hands and paced away again. “Jesus!” He turned back to her. “Do you know the average amount of times most people have classes together?”
Mackenzie shook her head slowly.
“Three times in a four year period, Mackenzie! Three!” Stopping, he glanced up at the sky as if praying and muttered, “How does she not know?”
“Know what?!” she finally snapped, at a loss for patience.
“That I’ve been trying to get next to you since the day I almost caused you a spinal injury in the hall!” he shouted back.
She paused. “I’m sorry…what?”
“All this time,” Ashleigh said under his breath. “All this time I thought you were ignoring me because you hated me and now I find out you’re just really fucking oblivious.”
“Hey!”
He held up his hands. “You are! I slipped notes into your locker, begging you to meet me after the fourth period bell behind the stadium bleachers at least twice a week.”
Gaze wide now, she responded, “One, I had no idea it was you and two, I didn’t want to be the potential victim of a rape, so I thought it would be better to ignore the potential rapist who may have been a teacher or custodian who’d spent unsolicited time watching me without my knowledge.”
Ashleigh had been slipping her notes. Ashleigh had been trying to “get next to her.” What was real life? This couldn’t actually be it.
His hands dropped. “And if you had known it was me?”
“One, I would have assumed you wanted me to meet you there to blow you in private so that no one knew you were interested in McKinley’s resident Amazonian warrior and two, I would’ve told you to squarely fuck right the fuck off.”
He nodded and she could see a quick flash of a smile. “Hence the anonymity.” Ashleigh kicked against one of the stairs. “I thought you’d punch me in the balls if I came right out and said it but you have to know,”—he shuffled forward and crouched down in front of her again—“hiding you…that’s not me. That’s twat tanks like Munn but not me, never me.”
“Riiight,” she drew out. “Which is why you wanted to see me in an obscure, inconspicuous place when school was let out and no one was around.”
Ashleigh scowled. “Because people around here don’t like to mind their own. I know what the rumors are about girls that have been seen with me. I didn’t want anyone doing that to you.” His expression softened. “I didn’t want anyone making assumptions about you.”
It all sounded so logical and yet…
“Sure.”
He tucked in his lips and exhaled heavily. “Mackenzie, what color am I wearing?”
“Red.”
“What color is your gown?”
The spaghetti strapped, baby doll gown embellished with a jeweled floral pattern across the sweetheart neckline was red but…
“Yeah,” Ashleigh nodded, interrupting her thoughts. “I went through a gauntlet to find out what color you were wearing tonight. I would have asked you before Munn did, but it was too late. So logically I thought I could come strolling through the doors like a not-so-white knight and sweep you away from him. Then I’d spend the next few hours getting surreptitious squeezes of your ass while we danced closer than what was appropriate. When I saw him inside with Jessie, I did the math—which included one fifteen-inch foot plus a delicate pale ankle. I shit you not. You can ask Noel for confirmation or even Ariel Ramirez in the guidance office who I’ve been using to switch my courses to add up with yours since freshman year.”
“I don’t think Noel is a good reference,” she said. “He’d lie for you with the promise of a meat lover’s pizza and a bag of Doritos.”
“Buuulllshiiit,” he drug out. “When I told that flame haired son of a bitch that I liked you, do you know what he said to me?”
She waited.
“’I’m going to tell her. I’m going to tell her immediately and laugh when she walks away with your nuts dangling from her pointer finger like fuzzy dice,’” Ashleigh intoned, imitating his best friend’s accent perfectly. “He wanted to see you reject and crush my soul.”
Crush his…whaaa?
Mackenzie rubbed her eyes with her palms. “I don’t…what is happening? What is happening right now? Because I keep hearing things come out of your face but I think I’m misunderstanding them.”
He whispered a curse and stood again. Suddenly she was being jerked upwards and into his chest. Ashleigh curved one of those huge hands around the nape of her neck and she was forced to look up at one of the very few people several inches taller than her. At seventeen the man was at least six-six, towering over her almost six-foot frame. Country-bred. The south tended to make them rather large and North Carolina had proved to be no different. Dare she say that she almost felt delicate whenever they were near one another? That wasn’t often considering that she’d spent so much time avoiding him. And now, right here, he was holding her against him and saying something about kissing her that she couldn’t quite focus on because—oh. Oh. That was…nice.
