LOL #3 Romantic Comedy Anthology Page 8

  The waves broke over her, still blinding her in their intensity. His heavy body pressed her into the softness of the bed while she shook.

  As the swells subsided, she stroked Wulf’s hair, his blond strands slipping through her fingers, and he kissed her shoulder and the side of her neck.

  Just as he was pushing himself away from her, an image of the three princesses rose again in Rae’s mind, any one of them a more appropriate, logical choice than a person such as herself, a needy, insecure commoner.

  Damn. They had gotten under her skin.

  She blurted, “Are you sorry that you didn’t marry a princess?”

  Wulf chuckled, splayed on his back on the bed. His ragged breath still pumped in his burly chest, and he ran one hand through his hair, a sign of exhaustion for him.

  He asked, “Why would I want to marry a princess when I have a Domme?”

  Author’s Note - Blair Babylon

  You’ve just finished reading Skiing in June, a prequel to Billionaires in Disguise: Rae by Blair Babylon. If you’d like to read more about Rae and her handsome prince, Wulf, you can start with Rae Falling: Episode #1.

  The first episode is FREE!

  “Holy Freaking Hotness!… You HAVE to read this Omnibus! Babylon takes you from as pure of a vanilla bean as you can get and introduces her to her emotional and physical needs. Rae is a funny, sassy, sexy as heck, eye opening, enlightening read!”

  ~Pepper at My Secret Book Spot

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  Blair Babylon is the nom de plume of an award-winning author who regularly publishes literary and suspense fiction. Because professional reviews of her other fiction usually included the caveat that there was too much deviant sex, she decided to abandon all literary pretensions, let her freak flag fly, and write hot, sexy, erotic romance.

  Blair Babylon

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  The Snowman

  Sky Corgan

  A young woman trying to escape her secluded lifestyle wishes on a star and gets a surprising outcome.

  DESCRIPTION: Ferne Lynch hates living in Alaska. She wants nothing more than to get away and explore the world. That doesn’t seem possible, though, when her parents seem to be doing whatever it takes to keep her at home.

  When they finally go on vacation and leave Ferne alone to tend to the homestead, she can’t resist the urge to have a little fun. Building a snowman and wishing on a star feels like child’s play until a mysterious man shows up on Ferne’s doorstep in the middle of the night. After listening to his outlandish story, Ferne can’t quite figure out if their meeting was by chance, or if something magical is happening.

  GENRE: New Adult Contemporary Romance, 8,000 words or approximately 25 pages. This is a standalone short story with a happy ending.

  HEAT LEVEL: Sweet

  Turn the page to begin reading The Snowman by Sky Corgan, or click here to return to this anthology’s Table of Contents.

  The Snowman

  Sky Corgan

  The Snowman

  “Mutant carrots!” Martha holds up the bag to me, as if I didn’t see it the second we turned onto the produce aisle. I can’t help but burst out laughing, though it’s more from Martha’s wide-eyed excitement than anything else.

  “Those are strange.” I nod slowly, not knowing what else to say.

  “Look!” She points to the other bags of carrots in the display. They’re all the same brand—how odd that carrots have a brand—but these are at least three inches longer than the rest. It’s like the packaging was specially made just for this specific batch of carrots, and it’s the only one on the shelf.

  “I know. That’s so odd.” I furrow my eyebrows, putting way too much thought into why they’re different from the others.

  “You have to get them.” She practically hops, her boobs bouncing in the low-cut shirt she’s wearing.

  “So I can make mutant carrot stew?” The idea of using the carrots makes me uncomfortable. Even though they’re on sale with the rest, it irks me that they’re different, like it was a mistake on the grocer’s part.

  “They’re the same price as the others,” she points out. “More carrot for your money.” Martha tosses them into my basket. With that out of the way, her attention immediately switches to something else. My cheeks turn beet red as she grabs her breasts and squishes them together, making super muffin-top cleavage. “Want to touch my boobs?” Her eyes light up. “I saw you looking at them.”

  “Oh God, just stop.” I take a few long strides, trying to get away from her. She’s so embarrassing sometimes, but she’s always been like this. You’d think I’d be used to it by now.

  We’ve been friends forever. And by forever, I mean since I tortured my parents into allowing me to go to public school. And by torture, I mean by being the child from hell. When my parents first moved to Alaska, they decided they wanted to do the whole homesteading thing, and that included homeschooling me. I don’t think they ever suspected I’d have other plans.

  When I was small, I had no choice but to follow their way. Life is all about work when you don’t have electricity or other modern comforts. At night though, when the work was done, I’d sit on Father’s lap in front of the fire while he told me stories about how their lives used to be, while Mother would knit or sew. It seemed so much better than how we live now. I was never able to understand why they had moved away from civilization.

  Life was lonely out in the middle of nowhere with no one to play with. We lived three miles away from the nearest village, so it was extremely rare that my parents took me with them. If I saw another child once a year, I was lucky. When I turned eight though, my father began taking me to the village more often, and that was when I realized I could end my loneliness if I started going to public school. That was also when I began rebelling like mad.

  Most kids don’t rebel until their teens, but I’d had enough of being stuck at the cabin doing chores from sunup to sundown and not getting a decent education. Of course, I wouldn’t have any idea how far behind I was in my learning until I started school. I wasn’t stupid though.

  Knowing that there were better options for me than being lonely all the time, I put on my brakes. My parents practically had to drag me kicking and screaming to do my chores every day. Brat was an understatement. I told my parents that I wanted to go to public school. They insisted they could educate me just as well as any public school teachers, and that I’d thank them when I was older. That wasn’t the issue though. I was beyond lonely. Heck, my best friend was our dog.

  The misbehaving continued until finally we had the fight that turned everything around. I told my parents that if I wasn’t allowed to go to public school, then they weren’t allowed to go to the village. If I had to be lonely for the rest of my life, so did they. My father never suspected I’d go as far as to put twigs and snow in the gas tank of our snowmobile.

  I swear, I’ve never seen anyone get angrier than when he couldn’t start the snowmobile and figured out what I had done. The veins bulged out of his forehead like they might burst right from his skin and strangle me. The sheer terror in my eyes must have been enough to keep him from hitting me.

  That night, I went to bed without supper and cried myself to sleep. The following day, my father was somber. He pulled himself out of bed and told me not to do any of my chores. This, I didn’t understand. Usually, after a bout of being bad
, my parents would hound me about my chores relentlessly. Not that day though.

  After my father finished his morning chores, he came to fetch me. He knelt in front of me, telling me that I had been so bad that he and Mother had decided he would take me out into the woods and leave me there. I think he expected I would cry and beg him not to, but I was just as fed up with them as they were with me.

  My mother gave me a few slices of bread, and Father and I headed off into the forest. We walked for two hours before he found a spot in a thicket of barren trees where he would leave me.

  “Ferne, this is your last chance,” he told me, giving me his sincerest look. “You do understand that what you did was bad, don’t you?”

  “No worse than what you’ve done to me.” There was an apology in my eyes, but it would never make it to my lips.

  The lines in his face grew deeper as he frowned, realizing I wasn’t going to give. “You’ll stay here all day and think about all the trouble you’ve caused us. Maybe a few hours out here will show you what being alone really means, and you’ll appreciate everything we’ve done for you.” He stood and turned from me, looking stiff for a moment before he took off back towards the house. I was too proud to act upset, and too smart to give him the upper hand.

  He thought I was just some defenseless little girl. That I would sit there and cry and reflect on everything I had done and pray he would come back to get me. That I’d be frightened, jumping at every little sound. But he was wrong.

  I waited there in the cold with my arms wrapped around myself, watching him walk out of view. Then I gave it another five minutes before I followed his tracks in the snow back to the cabin, making sure to stay out of sight. It was still cold and miserable, and I found myself hovering behind the treeline for a good extra hour while Father worked on the snowmobile before he finally went inside and I was able to sneak into the shed away from the elements. Lord knows how long it would have taken him to come back for me, but I certainly wasn’t going to wait. I curled up in a pile of old blankets and fell asleep.

  I woke up several hours later in my own bed. Father had gone inside the shed and found me there.

  I thought he would be angry, furious even, but he was more proud than anything. Amazed that I had been able to track him back to the house, even though I was nine years old and way smarter than either of them gave me credit for. That was the day they decided to relent and send me to public school.

  About a week later, I met Martha. Having almost no social skills, I was the odd kid out. No one wanted to play with me because I acted so strange. I wasn’t the only oddball though. Martha was a force of uncontrollable energy. She played too rough, screamed too loud, and had no filter between her mouth and her brain. We hit it off instantly—the two kids no one else liked. It didn’t matter, because we had each other.

  We were constantly bullied, but that never kept us down for long. Martha was good at ignoring everything but her own interests. I was a bit more socially conscious, which I think only hurt me in the end. Kids are cruel, but we somehow survived high school and still emerged best friends.

  Two years later, we still spend as much time together as we can, though our lives are vastly different. Martha grew up into this gorgeous busty blonde, and I turned into a stick figure, flat-chested and unspectacular. I wanted to go to college, but our high school was so small that they didn’t offer scholarship opportunities, and my parents said that college doesn’t matter when you live where we do. I wanted to get a job in the village after high school, but there were too few jobs and too many people. That left me stuck right back where I started, at home.

  Martha, on the other hand, got married six months out of high school to a much older man, a banker, and became his trophy wife. Then she popped out a kid and just recently found out she’s got another bun in the oven.

  Even with her lack of desire for an education, her life seems better than mine. She has freedom, modern conveniences—since her husband isn’t interested in homesteading—and a family and life of her own. I have… well, this.

  I look at the unusually long carrots in my shopping basket and scowl. In truth, I should be happy. My parents are gone for the next two weeks celebrating the honeymoon they never had when they first got married. This is the freedom I’ve been dreaming of, though I would have much rather experienced it at college far away from this frozen hellhole.

  “I still can’t believe they spent that money on their honeymoon instead of my education,” I grumble in the checkout line.

  “Oh, Ferne. I’m sorry.” Martha gives me a sympathetic look. “Just think though, you’re already rebelling, spending your emergency money on food from the store instead of cooking what you have at the house.” Her face is so bright that I can’t tell if she’s being sarcastic.

  “Such a rebel,” I huff, thinking about how my desire for something other than potatoes and cabbage had spurred me to go to the store for some carrots for my stew. Not to mention I just wanted to see Martha. Staying at the cabin by myself gives loneliness an entirely new meaning, and while Martha offered to let me sleep at her place while my parents are gone, I want some space. It’s stifling being cramped up with people all the time.

  I pay for what few groceries are in my basket, and then we load up on our snowmobiles and head back out to my house. The weather is fairly calm right now, but tonight a snowstorm will be blowing in. To the east, ominous clouds bunch up in the distance. Thankfully, my father spent an entire day chopping firewood before they left for their vacation, so I should be all right.

  When we get back to my house, I put a log on the fire in the wood-burning stove, and we sit next to it and warm up for a while. I glance down at Martha’s stomach. “Do you think you’re ready for another one?”

  “Do I have a choice?” She looks up at me, though she doesn’t sound like she particularly minds being pregnant.

  “I can’t believe you’re on baby number two, and I haven’t even found a man yet.”

  “I know.” Her eyes go wide. “You’d think that with the ratio of men to women here, you’d be married and knocked up too.”

  I can’t help but laugh. “It’s not that I can’t find a man. It’s just that I don’t want any of the men around here.”

  “Ah, yes. You’re waiting for Prince Charming to come charging in on his white steed and rescue you from the evil clutches of your wicked parents,” she teases. “Sorry to tell you, Ferne, but anyone that fancy would probably freeze to death and eat his horse.”

  “That’s backward,” I point out. How can one freeze to death before he eats his horse?

  “I’m just telling it like it is.” She shrugs, standing to put her gloves back on, which must mean she’s about to leave.

  “I’ll never get out of here,” I sigh.

  “Come on. Let’s go build a snowman.” She motions towards the door.

  “Like I have time for that.”

  “If you have time to sulk, then you have time to have fun.” She grabs my hands and pulls me up and towards the door. I can’t help but follow. It’s like her touch has passed off some of her energy into me. Suddenly, the idea of being childish and silly is a lot more appealing than getting ready for the long night ahead.

  By the time I get my gloves on, Martha is already packing snow in her hands for the base of the snowman. “I’ll work on the bottom layer. You work on the middle layer,” she tells me. Soon we’re side by side, rolling our snowballs across the ground to make them even bigger. It expends far more energy than I should be wasting, but it’s fun, laughing and pelting each other with handfuls of snow. It’s a feat that we ever get the thing finished, but we do. “Do you have any coal?” Martha asks when we’re done.

  “No.” I shake my head.

  Remembering our snowman building from the past, Martha starts searching the ground for stones, and I join in, collecting enough for the eyes, nose, mouth, and buttons. When it’s done, we admire our work. Two hours of wasted time to build the monstrosity that s
tands before us with a sinister grin, its back to the east as if its little stick hands are ushering in the storm.

  “It’s missing something,” Martha says thoughtfully.

  “Your banker husband is making you fancy.” I quirk an eyebrow at her. “I can’t put a scarf or hat on it. It would get lost in the snowstorm, and then my parents would be pissed.”

  “Aren’t they going to be pissed when they find out you took the snowmobile to get carrots? It’s not like they won’t count the money when they get back.” She rolls her eyes at me, then she jumps and points at the snowman, which about scares me to death. “That’s it!”

  “What’s it?” I touch my palm to my chest, calming my racing heart.

  “Bring me a carrot.” Martha holds her hand out to me.

  “I’m not wasting a carrot on the snowman.” I scowl at her.

  “Oh, come on. Stop being such a tightwad. Live a little.”

  “Fine.” I relent with a sigh, going back inside to fetch one of the freakishly long carrots. To my surprise, she takes the carrot and jams it, fat side first, right where the snowman’s crotch would be. “Martha!” My mouth falls agape, and she guffaws.

  “Don’t be such a prude.”

  “My parents would be livid if they saw that.” I burst out into laughter of my own. My God, she’s something else. Her husband really must have his hands full, and I don’t just mean with her ginormous boobs.

  “I guess it’s a good thing your parents aren’t here then.” She smirks at me.

  Just then, a shooting star streaks across the sky. It’s a reminder of how late it’s getting. The fun is almost over, and I’m about to be alone again.

  “Pretty.” Martha stares up into the sky with the wonder of a child. When the moment passes, she turns back to me. “Did you make a wish?”

  “Yeah,” I huff, though in truth I hadn’t. It’s easy to come up with a wish though now that I’m thinking about it. More than anything, I wish a hot guy would come whisk me away from this frozen wasteland, that I could move somewhere warmer where there are actually people, that I can see more of the world than expanses of snow and forest.