Mister Monster: A Hero Club Novel Read online

  Mister Monster

  Desiree Lafawn

  Copyright © 2020 by Desiree Lafawn and Cocky Hero Club, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations, and incidents are products of the authors’ imaginations. Any resemblance to actual persons, things, living or dead, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.

  Editor: Tammy Farrell

  Proofreading by: Darlene Tallman

  Cover Design: Tracie Douglas, Dark Water Covers

  Contents

  Introduction

  1. Caroline

  2. Ash

  3. Caroline

  4. Ash

  5. Caroline

  6. Ash

  7. Caroline

  8. Ash

  9. Caroline

  10. Ash

  11. Caroline

  12. Ash

  13. Caroline

  14. Caroline

  15. Ash

  16. Caroline

  17. Ash

  18. Caroline

  19. Ash

  20. Caroline

  21. Ash

  Afterword

  About the Author

  Mister Monster is a standalone story inspired by Vi Keeland and Penelope Ward’s Mister Moneybags. It's published as part of the Cocky Hero Club world, a series of original works, written by various authors, and inspired by Keeland and Ward's New York Times bestselling series.

  1

  Caroline

  Dexter Truitt is a dick. I hated running but I loved what it did to my body, so when I got into that third mile and my legs started screaming in agony, I liked to punctuate each step with a word. A cadence. Or mantra.

  Dexter. Truitt. Is. A. Dick. Right foot down, then left, the soles of my No Bulls barely making a noise on the uneven sidewalk of the art district of downtown Toledo. The sun was barely creeping down on the horizon, night would be a way off yet. I could take care of myself, but I knew better than to run the streets after dark in a place I’d just moved to. So I ran while the sun was high but the temperature wasn’t trying to set my clothes on fire. August in Ohio still got plenty hot but running after 5 p.m. was tolerable. A trickle of sweat ran from the back of my neck, meandering between my shoulder blades to disappear under the tight spandex of my sports bra. Ah, there it was. I didn’t like to be hot. I didn’t like being sweaty in general, like summer in New York when the sun ricocheted off the steaming sidewalks and reflected off the money clips and cell phones of the masses. But the good sweat of pushing my body in a good workout? I could dig that. I pushed a little harder, the muscles of my legs quivering in my compression leggings.

  Up. Yours. Dexter. Okay, maybe I was being a little unfair, but the unceremonious dumping I’d just gone through had been the catalyst for my moving several states away with barely a word to anyone in my entourage, and the subsequent changing of jobs. Okay, so he didn’t dump me. We weren’t even dating, not really. More of a friends with benefits kind of thing, except we weren’t even really friends, more like colleagues with benefits? It sounded stupid, even as I tried to rationalize it in my mind. The honest answer was we used each other as dates to social obligations and occasionally had sex.

  Mind blowing sex. Christ, he had a devil dick. And a smart woman knows, once you get a taste of a man that knows what he’s doing in bed, anything less than that is just unacceptable.

  But we weren’t having sex anymore, so Dexter Truitt could fuck right off. He couldn’t even break it off in person. I had to find out through text message. Jesus fucking texting Christ.

  Ladies don’t swear. I heard the voice of my father ringing through my head, and even as a grown woman I flinched. That’s right. Ladies don’t swear. They also didn’t ditch the family money to move to Podunk, Ohio, and take a job beneath their degree just to get out of running into their ex sex friend and his new lady love at social gatherings.

  But I did, and I also said, fuck, a lot, so maybe I just wasn’t cut out to be a lady no matter how hard I tried.

  I don’t know if it was the running, the swearing in my head, or the sing-song way I was telling Dex to fuck off in my run, but for a split second I did something a woman born and raised in New York City should never ever do. Ever. I let my guard down. I was out running, alone, in an unknown place, and I spaced out, not paying attention to my surroundings.

  The hand that snaked around from the side pressed tight over my mouth, yanking me backwards from my momentum and spun me in a circle. Before I could move, I was clamped tightly to a bony male chest, cushioned only by a scratchy sweatshirt that was much too warm to be wearing in the August heat.

  “Don’t move, lady, I don’t want to hurt you.” The voice sounded like it was whistling around a mouth full of missing teeth, and possibly a good cough or two was needed to clear his throat. I struggled to get out of his grasp but his wiry arms held me like a vice. In order for me to get out of his hold I had to obey. Stop struggling, Caroline. You are better than this. You can outsmart him.

  I remained still, even fighting the urge to keep my chest from rising and falling. Not because I thought he would think I was still struggling, but I was desperate to keep the sharp smell of him out of my nose. You idiot. It’s been two weeks and you already ticked one thing off the family's list of things you can’t do right.

  You can’t protect yourself without the family money and name. Those pearls of wisdom were from my mother. A woman who’d never gone without the protection of a man’s name, or money, a single day in her life. A debutante through and through. Just like me.

  Just like I was.

  I was strong enough to break his hold, definitely. But I couldn’t see if he had a weapon, and until I could see what I was up against, I had to be still.

  “Lady I just need a couple of dollars. You’ve got a couple dollars, right?”

  I most certainly did not have a couple of dollars. I didn’t even have my phone. What I had was a teeny tiny pocket in the waistband of my leggings where I could stash my apartment key. I didn’t own a car, something that would have to be remedied shortly considering I didn’t have a driver anymore. Not here anyway. And I wouldn’t live to need a driver again if I didn’t figure out a way to get out of the current situation.

  He must have figured out I couldn’t answer him with his hand slapped over my mouth.

  “I’m gonna move my hand but you can’t scream, okay? I don’t want to hurt you.”

  If I would have seen him coming, he wouldn’t have had a chance to, but I couldn’t say that so I nodded silently, a tiny little movement, just enough to make him think I was frightened and complying. As soon as he let me go I would beat the piss smell right off his clothes, but until I could get my arms free and see my assailant, meek and afraid it would have to be.

  I nodded slowly, and the hand moved from my mouth, but instead of turning me around to face him, my attacker used his arms to pin mine at my sides. At least this way I could tell he wasn’t holding a weapon. Getting out of this would be easy—just a well-timed crack of the back of my head to the front of his nose. From the way his chest pressed against my shoulder blades, I gauged him to be taller than me.

  Maybe if I can bend my knees a little, I can get some momentum and come up under his chin…

  I had it under control, I really did. But I nev
er got a chance to put my self-defense training into action because one moment I was contemplating the best angle to break my attacker’s nose, and the next moment there was no attacker behind me to even hit. Just the whooshing sound of air filling the space he used to occupy, and the rapidly disappearing scent of body odor as he was flung several feet away.

  “Lady, get back!”

  I didn’t even get to turn around and see what had happened before I was shoved out of the way, my feet stumbling over each other until I came down hard on my ass at the bottom set of stairs leading into a large church.

  Numbly, I wondered at the irony of getting jacked in front of God’s house, but I didn’t have time to wax poetic on the thought, because from my vantage on the ground, I finally got a good look at my “savior.”

  Dear God, he was huge.

  Not fat huge. Not just tall. But thick, like a Norse oak tree of a man wearing dark gray sweatpants and a white t-shirt. I could only see him from behind because he shoved me out of the way and immediately faced the attacker, but the dark blond hair, cut cleanly at the base of his neck, and the thickness of his shoulders had modern day Viking written all over it.

  I broke my gaze on the new guy and got a glimpse of my actual attacker, and honestly, I almost felt sorry for him. He was definitely in rough shape and had been roaming the streets for quite some time. His raggedy red sweatshirt had holes in the sleeves and the bottom was torn to shreds. The garment was so old and tattered I could barely make out the college football logo on the front. His hair was greasy and matted around his ears and down the back of his neck. It was the same color and texture as his ridiculously long goatee.

  Tattoos covered his hands. There were also strange marks creeping out the torn neck hole of his shirt—but once I blinked a couple of times, I saw them for what they really were. Track marks. Angry, scabby red lines of infection that sprung out from between the fingers of his hands.

  He was so far gone it was heartbreaking. I’d heard heroin was the drug of choice around here, but I thought it was kept mostly to the suburbs. From what I’d read before I moved, the city drug of choice was meth.

  Whatever would happen in the next few minutes, I knew for sure it would not go well for the poor guy who’d been tossed through the air like a blow-up doll. As it was, he was so shaken he could barely stand on his feet. Just crouched in a misshapen boxer’s guard, hands clenched in front of him, ready to swing…and most likely miss. He also had his thumb tucked into the palm of his hand with his fingers curled around it. Even I knew that was a good way to break your thumbs. Assuming he would hit whatever he swung at, which was doubtful.

  “I saw her first, asshole. Don’t poach.” Guy number one, as I’d affectionately named him, spit the words as he raged at the blond Viking. He was clearly high and unstable.

  “I’m not robbing her, you imbecile.” The voice of the new guy definitely went with the body. Deep. Deeper than I’d heard up close in a while and…irritated. “I’m not robbing her and neither are you. So get the hell out of here before I snap your arms and make you sit on them longways.”

  Well, that was creative.

  Guy number one wasn’t just strung out. Apparently, he was also heavy as a bag of hammers because he swore, and with arms wildly flailing, charged the Viking. I scuttled back a little on the sidewalk to get out of the way but the wall of man in front of me made no move to act like he heard me, and I was just getting to my feet and wiping sidewalk dirt off my butt when the wall in front of me moved.

  And, God, a man that big shouldn’t be able to move that fast.

  The sound of a bone breaking is something you never forget, even if you hear it once; so, when my rescuer’s meaty fist smashed into that junkie’s nose, I knew he was fucked. Even without the crimson spray that immediately bubbled out from both nostrils and the shrill, girlish scream that followed. A scream cut off by another blow to the abdomen, the solid thud of body part against body part, and then the surprising silence of my assailant hitting the ground.

  I didn’t know either of these men. And if I was hard pressed, I couldn’t say who scared me more. But only one of them was conscious at the moment, so that’s where I focused the entirety of my frustration.

  “I didn’t need your help.” The words just flew out of my mouth and I knew how ridiculous they must have sounded. But it was true. I think.

  Well…maybe it came out as more of a squeak than a confident statement, but whatever, my words still registered as the blond giant in front of me widened his eyes and frowned. A plain white t-shirt, now speckled across the front with a few red drops of blood, stretched tight across his shoulders and arms. Judging from the triangle sweat mark spread down from the neck, he’d probably been out for a run, and the dark gray sweatpants and athletic shoes cemented that hypothesis.

  The Viking stared at me silently for a moment, arms crossed over his chest and lips pressed together in a straight line. Then he smiled. A slow smile that stretched across the bottom of his face but didn’t meet his eyes. “My fault. It looked like you were about to get mugged by a junkie on the steps of this church. I apologize, but considering he had both your arms pinned while he slobbered down the side of your neck, you can maybe forgive me for my mistake.”

  His voice was low. Why wouldn’t it be? Why wouldn’t I be standing in front of some huge old church in a town I’d just moved to a couple of weeks ago, talking to a guy who looked like he just walked off the cover of a fitness magazine, and standing next to the crumpled body of an idiot who was trying to shake me down for cash?

  Actually…the more I thought about it, who was the real idiot?

  “I don’t have any money on me to steal.”

  “That’s obvious.” The low rumbling voice lay across my body like an electric charge, starting with a tingle at my hairline and zipping down my spine. Irritated at myself for having that reaction to him, and forgetting he was standing there at all, I snapped.

  “What does that mean? Do I look poor?”

  “No, lady. And what does being poor have to do with it?” He uncrossed his arms and waved his hands at me from top to bottom. “You’re out here half naked in the tightest outfit possible. There isn’t a place on you to hide a dollar. I can see your nipples for Christ’s sake.”

  “These are exercise clothes.” He was an idiot. That was the only explanation. “What kind of misogynist victim blamer shit is that? And if my nipples are bothering you, then don’t look at them.”

  “I didn’t say they were bothering me, sweetheart.” The corners of his mouth twitched, and I could tell he was suppressing a smile. A real one this time, because his eyes weren’t angrily narrowed at me anymore. Even his posture was more relaxed. Although he was still huge. Too huge.

  “And another thing,” I raged on, oblivious to his previous statement. “I don’t want to get fashion advice from someone dressed like you.”

  Surprise registered on his face again, and he looked down at himself with a questioning gaze. “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing? At least you can’t see my nipples.”

  “You’re wearing a white t-shirt and gray sweatpants. That’s the universal outfit for ovarian combustion. And who cares about your nipples? Your dick print is clear as day. You probably impregnated every woman you jogged by tonight.” I clapped a hand over my mouth. I can’t believe I just said that. I must be in shock.

  “Why, lady, I am appalled. I’ve never been so harassed.”

  “I doubt that,” I mumbled. I could tell by the silhouette of his running gear he was working with a full arsenal. Harassment? Hell, I bet women threw themselves at him. Not me, obviously, but women. Other women. And even if he felt harassed, he didn’t hate it. Not from the grin that swept from one side of his face to the other, turning the hard angles and sharp lines of his jaw into something almost boyish. Not quite, but maybe a little.

  He squinted at me. “Like what you see?”

  Oh shit, I’d been staring. I wasn’t used to being under such scr
utiny from others. I was an alpha female. I looked down at the common folk, so to speak. I didn’t look up at people as if they had authority over me, at any rate. Standing in front of this mountain of a man, however, I found myself unable to work up an argument.

  “If you’re going to undress me with your eyes, you should at least tell me your name.” One eyebrow, pale as corn silk, arched up in a perfect triangle, daring me to argue. Was that a dimple? Unacceptable.

  “I think I’d better keep that to myself. You’re a stranger.” Speaking of stranger, I glanced down at my attacker, motionless at the Viking’s feet. He wasn’t going anywhere soon.

  “Suit yourself, Church, I’ll probably never see you again anyway so I’ll just call you what I want to.” He looked me up and down slowly. At first I thought he was flirting with me, but then I realized he was sizing me up for injuries. Satisfied nothing was broken, neither bones nor my virtue—but maybe a little of my pride, he sighed and shook his head. “I don’t suppose you’d let me take you home.”

  “You going to run me there?” It didn’t look like he was toting car keys on his person either, and to be honest, I wasn’t comfortable with the entire situation. I didn’t want this humongous stranger knowing where I lived, even if he had a ghost dimple and just beat the hell out of a guy on the steps of a church for me. I mean, I could have taken the guy…but still.

  “Man, you have a mouth on you, woman. Don’t worry, Church, you aren’t my type. I like my women a little more compliant. I just want to make sure you get home okay.” He was baiting me, I could tell, but it didn’t put me at ease. Instead an aggravated itchy feeling started in between my shoulder blades. Kind of like the sweat line from earlier, but not something I could wipe away. I squirmed a little where I stood.