Chapter 22
BERNADETTE CRENSHAW
I’m in fantasy romance hell. It’s the only explanation for this.
“Stop wriggling, you can’t go anywhere else, and you know it,” Frank snaps, losing his temper once again.
My brows snap together on my forehead, but I can’t blame him, because I’ve been literally wiggling around on him like an eel, or someone very much trying to get warm the whole ride home. Except the closer I try to get, the more space he attempts to put between us, and frankly it's pissing me off.
God, if a literal witch hadn't told me he had a girlfriend, I could never believe it. Supernatural dude or not, his attitude is shit.
“I’m not trying to go anywhere else but warm,” I snap, becoming more irritated with him by the second.
I’ve no qualms about cuddling with my enemy to survive.
And I’ve had more than one fantasy since we left the village about a non-existent light saber and using Frank’s big body as a burrito blanket because of his shenanigans.
Riding around the countryside on a big horse with a hot male sounds like a good time until you add in an icy windstorm from hell and someone who’d rather freeze than share your body warmth.
I’d be offended except for the huge bulge of his cock riding up against my ass every time I manage to wedge myself close enough to feel it.
So, either Frank has no such compunction, or he just isn’t as cold as I am. I’d almost believe it too, with the way he sits up ramrod straight, his arms locked out and away from me, except when I do manage to touch his skin, he’s just as cold as I am.
I pout and lean back once more, only to feel him pull away just as quickly, which should be hard to do on a horse like we are.
“God, stop being such a masochist. It’s so freaking cold out here that I’m not even remotely worried about the hard dick you’re trying to hide,” I growl, unable to go on without saying something about his weird behavior.
Not that I don’t want it later. Much later, when I’m not freezing to death, and when I can process everything I learned today.
I realize now the last bit of my little adventure was totally orchestrated to piss him off, but that’s also not my fault.
The lady who read my palm seemed more interested in asking about where I was from than actually giving me a reading, and then, the other woman showed up seemingly out of thin air, asking what I knew about Frank, not that I had time to answer before he showed up.
She legit poofed. She just snapped her fingers and blipped as if she were never there to begin with, but it doesn’t explain why Frank was so upset at seeing her, or why he called her a bitch.
Every molecule of my being wants to start digging into this place as soon as humanly possible. There’s got to be information on when the village was built somewhere, but now I’ve got a sullen Frankie on my hands, and we can’t have that.
I tilt my head up, peering up at the darkening sky, and then turn to look up at him, wincing at the hard line that makes up his mouth. I’ve never seen it quite this thin, the part of his lips I can see from where I sit in front of him on Brom’s big back.
“Are you okay?” I ask, glancing down at his hands where he fists Brom’s mane tighter with every strike of lightning in the distance. There’s been a lot of it since we left the little village, but so far, the rain has been pretty light.
“I’m fine,” he bites out.
“Sure, you are,” I mutter under my breath, and reach down to rub at Brom’s flank.
Luckily, he doesn’t seem that skittish of the storm rolling in.
His ears flatten with every strike of it, but he doesn’t display aggressiveness like any other animal would when being put through so much, his temperament amazing for a horse carrying two people in shitty weather.
I hope someone leaves some extra oats out for him today.
I know I can’t wait to get back to the mansion and curl up with Edgar, perhaps with a few gallons of super-hot coffee.
I’m definitely going to need internet access ASAP too, because I didn’t miss how the dark-haired lady called him Frankenstein, which isn’t even the best part.
She snapped her fingers, there one minute and gone the next, like a freaking magician.
I’ve watched more paranormal romance television than is even mildly appropriate, and replayed the Buffy reruns with Spike more times than I’d like to admit, but nothing could have prepared me for this. It’s as if all of my Wattpad dreams are coming true.
Magic is fucking real.
It’s the only explanation for what I just saw. Magic is real, vampires are real, werewolves are real, and I’m in a rainstorm riding a flaming horse.
It dawns that every person I noticed back in the village is super pretty, and that’s probably not a coincidence.
But why did that woman call him that when he admitted to me himself that he wasn't? I’d take Frank Stein for a lot of things. Asshole definitely. A kidnapper most assuredly, and a grade-A fuck as well, but I’d never have taken him for a liar. So why?
“She called you Frankenstein,” I blurt, letting go of all the tension I’ve been holding for what feels like hours and huddling back in his arms, uncaring that he’s just as damp as I am. My muscles ease as I get the words off my chest. “I heard her say it.”
“My name is Frank Nathanial Stein,” he says, his tone colder than the wind picking up around us.
“I know that too. I’m not saying you’re the doctor, I’m just asking why she would call you that?”
A streak of lightning flashes, and I can’t help but jump at how close it is, way too close for comfort with the way my wet hair raises all over my body at once. I scramble back into Frank’s chest seeking shelter under his big body.
“Never mind,” I mumble, when a rather dark and gloomy cloud moves closer and the rain thickens.
“This would’ve never happened if you’d just done as I asked and stayed inside the house,” he grumbles and nudges me away.
“True, but here we are. And if it weren’t so cold, I’d almost be able to mark our adventure off my bucket list,” I tell him.
“Bucket list?”
“Yeah. I’ve got a bucket list of items to do before I die, one item being rode around on horseback by a gentleman like something out of Jane Austen. You’re not that gentle, but you’ll do.”
He doesn’t respond, not that I expected him to.
A big, dark rain cloud suddenly goes overhead, taking with it what little overcast light we’ve been using to make our way back to the house, and I shiver with the cold. “That doesn’t look good,” I say, just as the wind picks up.
“It looks fine,” he bites out.
The rain picks up in intensity and starts pelting down in larger droplets, icy cold on my already freezing skin, and starts coming down in sheets.
“This is not fine!”
Another crack of lightning and the thunder booms, deafening with its intensity.
“Where are we?” I rub at my glasses knowing it won’t make a difference and sit up as tall as I can on Brom’s back in front of Frank, unable to even make out the mansion’s silhouette in this downpour.
I turn to glare up at the big bastard behind me, but he doesn’t so much as twitch under my death glare.
A strike of lightning shatters the dark cloud and comes down in a blinding display nearby, and I scream, my body shaking like the bolt shed ten years from my life.
Through the heavy downpour, I make out a building in the distance. “What’s that over there?” I ask, pointing in the direction of the brick and wood-beamed house several yards away.
“That’s the hunting lodge. We must have gotten turned around,” he shouts from behind me.
I glance down and my brows come together.
He’s shaking.
I reach out to touch him, but he rears back, and I feel him tighten his thighs on Brom’s sides as he urges him toward the lodge.
The building comes into view, a small house in comparison to the size of the mansion.
He turns back to me and pulls me from Brom, his hands tensing ever so slightly as he yells over the storm. “Go get inside!”
I’m immediately mired in mud as soon as he sets me to my feet, my shoes sinking from the downpour. Gingerly moving through the mud, I make my way for the door, feeling like a half-drowned cat and shivering.
The moment I reach it, Brom lets out an ear-piercing shriek that has my heart galloping half as fast as he can.
I turn and see Frank just as shocked as I am, staring up at the horse beside him who decides to choose the moment to burst into flame, smoke sifting from his nostrils before he runs off, hopefully toward his stables.
“He’ll find his way back, right?” I ask when Frank joins me under the eaves of the house. I wrap my drenched sweater tighter around me, even though I know there’s no warmth to be had in it as I try the door.
“It won’t open,” I say, feeling sluggish, confusion mounting because I know why it won’t open, its locked. I hold my hands in front of me as I tremble and realize I’m shaking too hard for me to pick it, if I had a good hairpin to even try.
“Move.”
Frank tightens his hand and the door gives way. My gaze widens at the mutilated metal knob I touched only moments ago, as he practically shoves me inside before slamming the door close behind us.
I look up at the high cream-colored ceilings and wooden beams that crisscross overhead and a frown crease between my brows at how decorated the place is, with big floor to ceiling hunting portraits on the wood walls in between the large glass windows, the opposite of the mansion.
Glancing down at the parquet wooden pattern beneath my shoes I wince, not liking how I’m dripping wet all over what I’m sure is original flooring, but unable to move. “So cold,” I mutter and huddle in place, my extremities refusing to function.
“Foolish woman,” Frank says, suddenly standing before me, and bends to scoop me into his arms easily.
I wrap my arms around his neck and just go with it, liking how I don’t have to wonder if he can hold my weight, the man is ginormous.