Unbridled Passion: A Unicorn Shifter Reverse Harem Romance (Her Secret Menagerie Book 4) Read online

  Unbridled Passion

  A Part of the Her Secret Menagerie Series

  Katelyn Beckett © 2020

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living, dead, undead, events, places, or names is coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced or transferred in any form or by any means without the written permission of the author. Upload and/or distribution of this book without permission of the author is illegal and punishable by law. If you buy, read, and return, please consider getting a free trial of Kindle Unlimited instead. We love you.

  Cover by Enchanted Ink Studio

  Her Secret Menagerie

  Book 1 Puppy Love

  Book 2 On Wings

  Sadie’s Sanctuary #1 Puppy Problems

  Book 3 Unbridled Passion

  Sadie’s Sanctuary #2 Rescuing Us (Releasing for the Holidays)*

  Book 4 Simply Purrfection (early 2021)*

  *= Upcoming Title

  For DB, who has loved this one since I mentioned it.

  Chapter One

  Nicole

  Our thighs clapped together, slowly creeping toward a standing ovation. I scrolled through my phone, looking at hot guys without a single hair on them. Maybe, if I could convince myself that it was one of them behind me, I could get off.

  "Mmm, God, baby girl, you're the hottest woman I've ever had," crooned Principal Bartlesby.

  I rolled my eyes and kept scrolling. He was a lean, older man with glasses thicker than what was in me. He arched against me and I gave a half-hearted moan. Substitute teaching wasn't going to get me out of my uncle's basement, but turning tricks? It'd saved my ass before, and it was doing it again.

  In another life, I'd been a paleontologist. Not anymore. The principal shuddered against me, thrust twice more, and was finished before the applause reached encore-demanding levels. He patted my ass, pulled away, and I slid my skirt back down over my hips. My phone off, I turned back to him and snapped my fingers. "$350."

  "Worth it," he said, and looked around for his pants.

  There was no reason to hassle him. I fished through my purse for my compact and popped it open. My mascara was smeared, my lipstick done the same shitty way. I licked my pointer finger and tried to put myself together to be presentable-ish. Uncle didn't like it when I came home looking like I'd been fucked five ways to Sunday.

  His words, not mine. The money landed beside me and the door opened. It slapped shut again and I picked up the damp bills, rolling them up and sliding them into my bra. No reason not to keep that money close to my heart, because Bartlesby sure as fuck wasn't.

  I snapped my purse together again, picked it up, and sashed my shay right out of that broom closet like I owned it. Fuck the judgmental world at large. They didn't know me, didn't know what I'd been up against in my life, and they damn sure weren't going to come pick me up when I needed it the most. No one did that, except in the romance novels that had been lining my shelves for two and a half decades.

  When we don't get something, it's what we want most. The poor want money. The sick want a cure. Me? Kind of obvious.

  Well, no one wants someone like me. I'm never home, I'm ten miles of bad emotional baggage, and my puns are the worst. I've been thrown away by every man I've ever been involved with and my best friend got herself carried away by dragons.

  I squirmed behind the wheel of my uncle's spare car, a sedan that was too damn small for a woman with legs as long as mine. My knee smacked the dash and I growled, but no one was going to convince Uncle to give up his rattly old Daihatsu. Besides that, he needed it for storm chasing. And if the dark sky overhead promised anything, it was that he'd have plenty to hunt down soon.

  The sedan turned over easily enough and we drove out of the school's parking lot slowly, trying to avoid the worst of the ice sneaking across the ground. Even though I was as careful as I could be, my wheels still slid the last ten feet to the stop sign. I breathed a sigh of relief as I managed to bump into the curb and stop myself before I ran into the absolutely non-existent on-coming traffic.

  Except, it wasn't as non-existent as I'd have liked. A big, black SUV crept down the road and moved along in front of me. The windows were untinted and, though it was getting darker all the earlier these days, I could still make out the man driving. He was ten years my senior, gruff, and dark skinned. His eyes were focused directly on me and I watched as he skimmed my license plate.

  Undercover cop, maybe? Or was he someone that an ex had hired to watch me?

  I waited until he passed, then began the drive home. As I drove, I kept looking behind me. The SUV was nowhere to be seen, but it felt as though he were inches away from me. Uncle only lived ten miles from town, but it felt as though I'd gone a hundred by the time I pulled up to the security gate, my heart thudding nervously in my ears.

  I was nobody's fool. Olivia and the dragons had been bad enough, but my ejection from the museum? Yeah. That'd been a lot worse.

  The code didn't catch the first time I put it in. I tried again, then a third time before I heard the click and whirr of the motor spinning up. The gate slid away and I drove onto the farm, knowing it would close after a moment or two on its own.

  "HN!!!" screamed the enormously tall and goofy animal in the pen next to the house.

  I got out of the car and dug around in my purse for a moment before I produced the other half of my peanut butter and jelly sandwich. A dozen llamas crowded around the gate, all of them colorfully marked and as silly as one could imagine. Yet, the one who kept flattening her ears and spitting at the rest was a solid black female, wide with the promise of a new cria, whose registered name was Licorice Whip.

  "Come here, Ellwee," I called, waving the sandwich at her.

  She made her eyes wild, terrifying things that threatened to pop right out of her head. I went to her and offered the sandwich, which she immediately devoured. The others danced around, tiny brains swiveling on gangly ladders, before I threw my hands up. My uncle's female llama herd tore off into the distance, humming their hearts out.

  If it got much colder, as it promised to do, I assumed Uncle would bring them into the barn for the winter. The enormous, classically red barn stood behind Uncle's holler hovel of a house. I couldn't tell you how many times I'd nearly killed myself falling out of the hay loft as a kid, but it'd been solid for longer than I'd been alive. Though the llamas had thick coats to proof themselves against the chill, the newborn babies didn't. And every llama my uncle had was about to pop.

  I made my way inside, feeling like trash. Was a few hundred bucks really worth my dignity? The principal would bury my name if I spoke out against him and I was in enough of a redneck wonderland that everyone knew everyone. I may as well pin a red A to my shirt.

  "And he'd get away with it all. No scandal where he's concerned, just me. The single newcomer with the big tits and the hot ass, who's already turning everybody's head at the grocery store, selling herself to make ends meet," I muttered, opening the fridge a little more savagely than I had to. In turn, a jar of pickles dove off one of the unsteady shelves and crashed to the floor.

  I cussed a blue streak as I stomped off to grab the broom, shucking my sweater and throwing it on the kitchen counter as I went. The pale blue shirt I had on underneath was plenty for indoor temperatures. Uncle always had the wood stove going in weather like this.

  As I cleaned, a warm, southern voice purred at me from across the kitchen. "Ain't no use askin' how school went today then, is the
re?"

  My head hung on my chest as I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. Dressed in black and red flannel, his boots long worn from heavy use, Uncle looked like he'd fallen out of an old wild west movie set. His bandana was tight around his neck, his Stetson was clutched in one hand, and he was as much leather as his favorite old saddle was. But there was a kindness in his eye and his voice, and we resembled each other enough that few people hadn't guessed I was his niece. And I had to answer him. "About as good as you can guess."

  "There's always tomorrow," he said, coming over to help me get the last few shards of glass off the ground. "You're doin' good work, Nicole. That's all anyone can ask for. If you can't come up with the rent, you know I'm not throwin' you out."

  "Doesn't help you pay the bills," I said, tipping the remnants of the pickles into the trash. "Doesn't help you keep everything running around here while I'm sucking electricity and everything else off of your dollar."

  He gave me a smile that made all the clouds in my life fade away. "Doesn't matter none about that. We'll make it work. That's what Penders do, girl."

  The man had been my rock for years, but all rocks fade against the tidal waves of life. Uncle had steel in him, but it was starting to rust and I worried about what I'd be able to do for him. I shook my head but didn't answer him, turning back to the fridge to make another couple of sandwiches. Deli meat was insanely expensive considering that poor folks like us lived on sandwiches. I'd gotten used to boiling a whole chicken and picking it apart.

  You could make so many different things from a boiled chicken, even if you got sick of it after a while. Doesn't matter so much if you're tired of eating it if you still want to eat.

  "I'll be headin' out a little early tonight, if you don't mind taking care of Ellwee and the rest of the herd."

  I swiveled to look at him, swiping butter across the Wonderbread that we had just to give the plain chicken a little flavor. The salt helped, too. "You going to stay out very long?"

  "All night at least. Probably longer than that. Gotta watch this here system for the local weather bureau. They ain't never know what they're doin' right or wrong."

  "They're professionally trained," I said, tucking the sandwich into a square of plastic wrap and twisting the ends for him. A second followed in short order. Uncle was wonderful about disappearing off into the woods with no damn food. He'd take a whole gallon of coffee with him and get sick when he got home. The least I could do was make him something to give him a little energy while he was out.

  He snorted like a horse. "Hell with professionally trained. I'm born and bred to these hills. I know what's goin' on better than they do and the Hollidays need to know what to expect, with them havin' a baby on the way. Damn Farmer's Almanac hasn't been right all year."

  "At least take the radio with you," I said, tucking the sandwiches into a brown paper bag and offering it out to him.

  Uncle took the bag with a nod, smacked his hat on his head, and didn't say a damn word. No goodbye, no other instructions. He went out the door, locked it audibly, then pushed it closed again.

  And I was left in an empty kitchen, feeling that dirty kind of slutty that society imposes on you that doesn't really matter but still gets under your skin. I was left in an empty kitchen remembering that creepy as fuck SUV guy staring daggers through my soul and trying to see what was going on inside me. I was left in an empty kitchen knowing I had a small farm to tend to until my uncle got back.

  I didn't mind the last part, though it interfered with my sandwich intentions. There was no time after dark to feed the animals, half the time they couldn't see anything and they'd just knock over a feed bin and disappear all that expensive grain into the snow. I grabbed my sweater once more, yanked it on over my head, and unlocked the door just in time to see Uncle heading out the gate.

  The dog did, too.

  Rover was a grumpy old basset hound mix that Uncle had found in a ditch one day during a tornado. Whether he'd been someone else's dog or maybe some stray with a good sense for suckers, no one really knew. He bayed at the top of his lungs and scuttled for the front door, his ears flapping in the breeze as he went between my legs. I caught him around the middle and picked him up, scratching his belly.

  "I don't think so," I told him, grunting as I carried him off to the living room.

  The old television set was still on, the news chattering on. "-but we do believe the blizzard will miss the Yarborough area. In local news, Edwin Noll is set to receive an honor rarely bestowed upon-"

  A blitz of interference made me miss the rest of it. I pulled the baby gate closed as the dog bayed again, poddling around in a circle. I sighed down at him. "That's a very sad song. Good boy. Stay."

  And out into the cold I went, the sun vanishing faster and faster. I hurried through the evening chores: the llamas had their feed spread in a half-cut barrel mounted on a couple of crossbars of wood. Their hay was intact, their water uniced. The chickens were already taken care of and I was thankful for that. I wasn't a fan of birds.

  Next came the three horses that Uncle kept around for farm work. The Haflinger hated me, but the thoroughbreds were kind enough. The barn cat smashed herself against me and, once I had the horses sorted out, I checked on her food and water as well. She needed a quick top-off for the gravity-fed waterer, but it took me all of a second to do it.

  Farm work had come naturally to me. I was comfortable with it. But I missed getting knee-deep in mud, finding fossils and guessing what they were. I missed the science that came with all of it.

  I didn't miss my former lover and former boss, Willem Sonnet. The man was an asshole and I'd broken things off before I'd been arrested. The cops were still pretty sure that I was involved with whatever the hell had happened to my best friend and her dragon thing, but had given up when they hadn't been able to prove it. Still, their eyes were on me whenever I went back to the Fontaine Feeds dig site for whatever reason. It'd only happened twice since I'd left, but Willem had followed me both times.

  I shuddered.

  I didn't want Willem following me. I didn't want him contacting me. The thought of him wiped away any trace of imposed discomfort and replaced it with a toxic fear that spread across me like spiderwebs. I tried to wipe them off but they never really come off, you know?

  At least I didn't have to worry about that with the gate. Willem was too old to jump the fence and I trusted Uncle's engineering more than I trusted my own. Still, as I went inside, I sneaked a peek at the driveway just to be certain it had closed and latched itself. There it stood, solid as it ever was. I let out a quiet, soft breath and headed back inside to uproarious baying from Rover, half protest and half excitement that I'd come back in.

  "You're last, I guess," I told him, digging through the fridge one more time. This time, I kept my sweater on. Some cold penetrates deeper than others.

  I came out of the fridge with a loaf of specially made dog food, the wet stuff that kind of looks like salami. I sliced it up for him and plopped the plate over the baby gate. What came next was a slaughter, a murder, and the sort of thing that decent people don't talk about in public. The slorping, the snuffling, the way his lips smacked together over and over again made all of my hunger evaporate.

  In my mind's eye, the black SUV crept up the driveway. The man was followed by Willem and somehow, they'd gotten the code to the gate. They entered the house. They... they...

  They hurt me.

  A lot.

  I chewed my lower lip for a second then looked out the door one more time. No headlights. No car. Just the vast, rolling acreage that Uncle owned all over the area, because he'd inherited it from Grandma and Grandpa a long, long time ago.

  "Settle down, Nicole," I told myself. "Get some ice cream. Settle down and watch 50 Shades or Titanic. Just some silly fluff that you can... you can... think about something else with."

  The television had clicked over to some wrestling show by the time I managed to load down a bowl with Rocky Road. I thr
ew myself down in a heap, pulling an old crochet blanket over most of my lower body. Rover stomped over and demanded to be let up, so I dragged the dog onto my lap. He curled up and started snoring immediately.

  Luck was on my side; Twilight was on. I flipped through the channels until I reached the right one, then turned the volume down util it was merely a whisper in my ear. I could recite the entire series from front to back with little effort. I didn't need to hear it to enjoy it. Besides, I was all alone. And I really didn't know if I could deal with listening to two lovers coo all over each other like that.

  The lull of the television, the warmth of the dog. I tipped my head back against the arm rest and never felt the ice cream hit the floor.

  Chapter Two

  Jeremiah

  With a blizzard headed our way, we made damn sure that everyone got home safe and sound. That meant walking every lady to their car, seeing every gentleman to theirs, too, and setting up a call tree to check up on every tarot flipper and call line psychic we had with our little company.