Free The Look: Alpha Male, Feisty Female Romance by Blair Aaron

various perches throughout her walk. They became more numerous the closer the girl got to her home, and soon enough, thousands of owls swarmed the poor girl from all sides. She tried making a run for the house, but the owls pecked her eyes out before she made it inside.
    Elsa grew out of those silly little superstitions faster than her peers did, but even she was not immune to the petty torments most children are prone to. On the dark days in October, Elsa played with Priscilla and the others, throwing rocks through the poor woman's window, breaking the glass, and sending dirty drafts through her house. Freja never retaliated to the girls, and looking back, Elsa's heart broke for the damage she helped inflict on the woman's home. A few days later, she hobbled out of her home early in the morning to tape some cloth over the holes the rocks made. Beyond that, the children never saw much of Freja, and the adults gave her the space she obviously wanted. She never made it to church, or weddings of young couples, or the birth of children. Although, at an elderly man's funeral, she did make an appearance, several years ago, her hair disheveled and her face ragged in the way people stricken with sudden grief often look. The girls speculated that Freja wanted to make sure the man was dead as a doornail, so that she could know her black magic worked its course.
    Elsa herself had an altogether different theory, that the man, who was married at the time of his death, secretly fell in love with Freja and pursued a relationship with her, meeting her sugar cookies in her cottage at night, when no one was watching. It was possible that Elsa's romantic personality concocted this fantasy from no actual evidence in real life, but even the possibility it was true made Elsa feel somewhat better about how she had treated Freja as a child. That Freja might have had a true friend, let alone a romantic partner, lifted her spirits in response to Freja's otherwise lonely existence. But since that funeral several years ago, not a single person heard from Freja Stein. She crawled back into her sad, broken down cottage, ready to pass into another plane existence, where she might be wanted.
    Elsa's thoughts circled back to the blond man again, and how she would approach him. She wondered about his reasons for staying away from the other members of the community for so long. Did he not want to get to know the townspeople? She feared he would reject her, but ultimately decided she couldn't wait any longer for him to make his way out into the wide world. It was time she took her fate into her own hands and resolved to knock his door the next morning.
     

CHAPTER 9
     
    When she stepped on his porch, she was wearing the same dress as the day before and the night Chloe and Sarah revealed their vicious little present to her. Elsa looked down at the red stain on her dress, the moment after she knocked on his door, anxious that his eyes would go straight to the area. She became severely self-conscious in that moment.
    “Hello,” a voice said, Elsa still looking down at her shameful red stain. Her face blushed as she realized the man had already opened the door and was standing there, waiting for her response. She braced herself before looking up. She bravely locked eyes with him, falling deeply into his blue orbs. He smiled at her, knowing she would arrive sooner or later, it seemed. “My name is Theo,” he said, extending a paw in salutation.
    “Hi, Theo,” she said, placing her small dainty hand in his. He shook her hand gently, and Elsa's knees seemed to weaken. Theo had grown a ruddy mane around his neck in the time since the accident, and for all his sculpted beauty, he struck Elsa with a dose of masculinity hidden underneath that angelic prettiness.
    “Please, come in. You just happen to be the second visitor to pay me a visit today,” he said, turning back into his house. As Elsa followed him in, her face flushed hot with the possibility that