Authors: Elisa Elliot
ROMANCE: Mason (Bad Boy Alpha Male Stepbrother Romance Boxset) (New Adult Contemporary Stepbrother Romance Collection) (105 page)
I frowned. “I don’t think we’re very compatible,” he said. “I can’t change who I am.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. I knew this would hurt. But rather that than the void he would leave behind.
“I know,” I whispered, walking to him. “But I want you to stay.”
I reached up, wrapping my arms around his neck and burying my face in his shoulder. He was warm and he smelled like smoky wood and something male. It felt safe around him. Safe and scary, all at the same time. But more safe than I’d felt in a while.
I looked up at him. He didn’t say anything, only slowly nodded his head. His arms snaked around my waist.
I smiled and stood on my toes, and then I kissed him.
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1
“Artie! Please tell me you’re packed?” Samantha snapped, frustration lacing her tone as she entered the master bedroom.
The man in question turned his back to her to hide his eye roll. The voice that he had once found so soothing and alluring now only grated on his nerves. He was almost done packing, but he had about ten minutes before his television show finished and he was trying to drag out his packing for as long as possible.
“Are you still watching this garbage?” Samantha asked, nodding to his favorite crime show on the television, “honestly Artie, this stuff will rot your brain.”
“No more than your soap operas do,” Artie muttered under his breath, taking a spoonful of honey and shoving it in his mouth before throwing a handful of socks into his duffle bag.
“At least I watch something with a plot. Every week it’s the same type of murder mystery, the same cheesy cop catchphrases and the same annoyed lawyer trying to make a case despite the cops’ gross misconduct of justice.”
Artie scoffed, shaking his head at her clear inability to understand the nuanced genius of his shows as he took another mouthful of honey. Samantha grimaced, hoping that he wouldn’t spill it on the bed.
“Oh, I’m sorry! I never realized how intricate and sophisticated a show where everyone has an evil twin and every person in the nearest vicinity of the hospital is cheating on one another with their friends in a hot, seething bed of incestuous hookups could be. You’re right, cop shows that teach values and the pursuit of justice are complete garbage in comparison dear; what was I thinking.”
“You’re insufferable!” Samantha screeched, grabbing her hair, “and for the record, there were only two sets of evil twins, if you watched you’d know that!”
This time Artie didn’t even bother turning around to conceal his eye roll. He knew Samantha hated it when he did that, but frankly, he couldn’t bring himself to care. They were on their way to a weeklong marriage couples’ retreat and he knew that, if this week didn’t go well, they were likely on the fast track to a divorce. And, in times like this where Artie was staring blankly at the wall and tuning out Samantha’s yelling, he couldn’t quite remember why that would be a bad thing.
2
“Are you happy now?” Artie asked, exasperation filling his voice as he watched Samantha flip through the pages of some random pop culture magazine. “We’re two hours early and the flight’s delayed. If I had known we’d only get here to spend three hours in an airport I could have slept in and even caught the first half of the new NCIS: Puerto Rico.”
Samantha snorted out a laugh, adjusting herself once again on the hard, uncomfortable plastic chairs in the waiting area. “Oh please, we both know you don’t speak Spanish. You only watch for the hot sergeant.”
“Well excuse me for wanting to see someone that actually looks at me with something other than exaggeration.”
Samantha flipped her page, rolling her eyes at the ridiculousness of the statement. “Oh please, she’s staring at the camera, not you. And I’m sorry that I find it a bit hard to jump in bed and do the naked tango with someone that can’t even be bothered to shave.”
Artie’s face reddened; as a shape shifter, he was a bit sensitive in the shaving department. Seeing as he spent half his time in his bear form, he’d be lying if he said he didn’t enjoy a bit of scruff when in his human form. Bears are naturally hairy, the maintenance of his fur was one of his biggest sources of pride.
“What’s wrong with my hair?” he asked defensively. “I had a beard when we met, I had a beard when you married me, and I’m keeping the beard now.”
“Oh, no, it’s not the beard I hate” Samantha said, closing her magazine and turning to face Artie directly. “I love beards. Beards are sexy; Leo DiCaprio has a beard, Ryan Gosling has a beard, and Will Smith has a beard. All sexy guys. Your beard, I’ll admit, I do find sexy when it’s not stained by Cheetos. But it’s the back hair, the chest hair, and the armpit hair so long you could braid it, that I have a bit of a hard time finding sexy. Sometimes baby, and since we’re going to this retreat I feel like I can be honest, sometimes I feel like I’m having sex with a Furby instead of my husband.”
Artie blinked, stunned into silence by the insult.
“Oh God,” Samantha sighed, throwing her hands up, “now you’re going to be all sensitive about this. I was just trying to be honest, explain why our intimacy has slowly declined and instead of listening you’re getting upset. How am I supposed to deal with that? How can I talk to you about my feelings?”
“It’s always about your feelings isn’t it?” Artie scoffed, “No matter how hurtful they may be.”
“Well what do you want me to say?!”
“Oh I don’t know. In fact, I’m more curious to know what you expected. You married a bear for goodness sake!”
“Oh no!” Samantha said, jumping up and leaning over Artie. “You are not pulling this ‘you married a bear’ crap on me. I married a man, a very well-groomed man in fact, and only about a month after I married that man, I found him running around naked in the woods behind our house before he turned into a bear. So no, I did not expect it and you cannot hold it over my head! In fact, I should be commended for how much I’ve put up with!”
“Oh well, bravo!” Artie said, standing up and clapping in a show of sarcasm, going toe-to-toe with his wife. “Thank you for not leaving your husband at the first chance you got. You should be commended! I mean no one really expected newlyweds to follow that whole ‘for better or worse’ vow. In fact, I’m impressed you didn’t divorce me the first week when I forgot to take out the trash!”
“Sir, Ma’am, I’m afraid you’re creating a scene. I’m going to have to ask you to quiet down please.”
Artie and Samantha froze, blinking at the ticket-desk woman that had a strained and falsely pleasant smile on her face.
“Sure.”
“No problem,” Artie nodded, offering her an equally false smile as she walked away.
“Oh my gosh; what a snob,” Samantha whispered.
“I know right, she needs to mind her own business,” Artie said. “Don’t worry babe, she’s probably just single and jealous.”
Samantha smiled, bumping Artie’s shoulder gently with a small smile. “So lucky not to have to deal with that anymore.”
3
Artie was regretting this already. Between the woman in front of him leaning back in her chair and taking up his leg space, and the restless child behind him kicking his chair relentlessly, and Samantha’s somewhat endearing but loud snoring on his shoulder, he was wishing more and more that he had stayed home.
He turned his head to look out the window so that he could at least spare his eyes from the image of the man across the aisle ‘covertly’ digging for buried treasure in his nose.
He honestly loved Samantha. Truly. When they had met it was electric. He could feel every hair on his back stand up, and that was when he was in his bear form. When he was human, it was even better, because he knew she could feel it too.
They had stayed up talking for hours, night after night they would talk and when they eventually ran out of things to say, they would just stay together, staring at one another, holding one another and listening to the other’s heartbeat.
When he had finally worked up the courage to propose, he was sure that their marriage would be the start of nothing but happy times together. But the honeymoon period was short lived. Their luscious grapes had soon turned sour and the arguing had begun.
She had been accepting of all of his . . . quirks, but he realized they weren’t as perfectly matched as he had originally thought. Artie was spontaneous and while Samantha definitely had a fun side, she was a bit more rigid and always insisted on having a plan before doing anything. If Artie wanted to pick up and venture out on a camp-out one night, Samantha would insist that they would postpone for a day so they could inform the ‘relevant people’ and then pack a week’s worth of provisions for a two day journey ‘just in case’.
If Artie wanted to adopt a puppy, she would insist on doing all of the necessary research and moving to a house instead of an apartment before she would even entertain the idea. He wouldn’t call her a buzz kill per se, but, if he had had a tiny bit to drink, she would insist on him drinking a pot of coffee to sober up.
She claimed that it wasn’t just her causing the friction in the relationship, but honestly, he just couldn’t see what all her complaints were about. He wouldn’t use the word perfect to describe himself as a husband, but as far as husbands went, he would say that he’s pretty damn close.
So, he put on a smile and dealt with her ‘pointing out his flaws’ as she put it, although he called it nagging, and even agreed to go to this marriage retreat, but he wasn’t quite sure how much of a good idea it was.
It wasn’t as though he wasn’t invested in their marriage, he just was wondering more and more why he had proposed in the first place. If he were honest with himself, he hoped that he would be reminded at the retreat. If not, well, he wasn’t so sure he could make good on his promise to his mom to give her grand cubs.
4
If Samantha had to pick only two words to describe the retreat hosts, she’d most likely go with obnoxious and perky. The hosts all seemed to be cut with the same cookie-cutter from the same dough. All the women were slender and blonde with botox-ed smiles and a shade of orange tan. All the men were buff, Fabio types with uncomfortably large arms and blond hair that constantly had to be shaken out of their faces. And of course, they all wore their khakis paired with obnoxiously loud yellow shirts that had ‘Marriage Mender’ printed in large black letters across the back.
Out of habit she had taken Artie’s hand to steady herself when one of the Menders had run up to them upon arrival and began rattling off a stream of questions ranging from how their flight went to how their sex life was fairing.
“So you’re still sure about this babe?” Artie whispered, looking at the grinning woman whose name card read ‘Jen’ in front of them.
“I’m starting to have my doubts, but its nonrefundable and we need this.” Samantha said out the side of her mouth.
“We could learn more from a marathon of Dr. Phil and Oprah.” Artie said, rolling his eyes.
Both adults jumped at the sound of a shrill whistle blown in their face.
“Naughty, naughty.” Jill said, wagging a pristinely-painted pink finger in their face. “Eye rolling will earn you two points.”
“Points?” Artie asked.
“Oh, I’m sorry; you both arrived a little late. You must be the Oswalds. We had a brief meeting with all the other couples to go over the ground rules before we sent everyone to their rooms. But don’t worry, I’ll give you a crash course. Tomorrow we begin all the activities, designed to strengthen the bonds of your marriage. In order to not contradict these newly-forged bonds, we need to diminish the negative impacts to your bonds such as eye rolling, cutting each other off, yelling and criticizing. Each time you do one of these negative actions, you will receive anywhere from 1-10 points. The number of points directly correlates to the number of additional activities you will have to perform. You will be assigned these positive punishing activities at your daily therapy sessions. Your session will be at eight in the morning, here is your schedule and here is a map of the premises. Feel free to ask me or any of my fellow Marriage Menders if you have any questions.”
Samantha nodded, taking the two pieces of paper Jill handed them and looking them over with Artie.
“Alright, yeah, thank you?” Artie said, smiling at Jill placating.
“Look at this, Samantha said, leaning back into Artie’s chest. “Some of the ‘positive punishments’ involve being handcuffed together for a day-”
“Ohh kinky.”
“Being locked in a room for no longer than one hour” she continued, “cleaning the dining hall together, serving the other couples together and extended hugging.”
“Extended hugging?” Artie asked, taking the pamphlet from her and raising an eyebrow.
“Its hugging, but for a longer portion of time than usual.”
“Yeah I get the concept” Artie scoffed, “it’s just different.”
“This place is different.”
“Well remember tomorrow when we receive our punishment that you asked for this.”
Samantha’s eyes narrowed. “I asked for this for us, so start acting like it. We’re in this together.”
“Whatever you say honey.” Artie said, giving her a falsely sweet kiss on the forehead and taking a step back. “Let’s just go find our room.”
5
“Not exactly the room I had in mind.” Samantha sighed, setting her jacket down on the bed.
The room was nice, about the size of a hotel room but with a few minor alterations. The walls were painted a soft yellow color, much easier on the eyes than the staff uniforms, and had an adjoining bathroom with a claw-foot tub. Instead of the standard queen or full size bed though, there was a twin. Samantha cringed, brought vividly back to her college days where she would constantly struggle to not fall out of the bed if she turned over. If she could barely sleep comfortably in it alone, she balked at the idea of having to share it with someone, even if it was her husband. Also unlike a hotel room, there was no television, no refrigerator, no microwave and no coffee pot.