Be Terrible: a Holiday Monster Romance by Molly Likovich

Author:Molly Likovich [Likovich, Molly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-12-21T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Three

“Are you telling me my grandmother was centuries old?”

“Come, meine Schöne,” he says as he takes my hand and leads me over to the large bed in the far corner of the room. He pulls back the red blanket and gestures for me to lay down.

I should probably protest one more time that he should let me go, but I know that’s not going to happen, and even if it did, what would I be going back to? A lonely Christmas alone. Blair gone, having left behind nothing but bruises inside and out. A family that was too self-absorbed to notice how much pain I was in. An empty beach house full of haunted memories. How sad must I be to find more comfort here with a beastly being from my bedtime stories?

I climb under the covers and despite the brutal winter winds outside that move through the cave walls, the satin blanket warms my skin and feels like heaven to touch. Krampus, still fully nude from having bathed with me, gets in the bed on the other side.

He reaches out and takes my right hand, fingering the ring once more.

“Josephine Brandt has existed for a long time. That’s why I was so surprised to hear you say that she passed.”

“Grandma Jo was nearly a hundred years old,” I say. “She was old but not centuries old. You’re…” he looks at me expectantly, practically daring me to say it. But unlike when the night began, I feel bolder now. Perhaps when a beast touches you, you come out a bit more beastly yourself. “You’re Krampus. You’re a thing of myth.”

“And yet here I am before you.”

I reach out and tentatively place my hand against his cheek. I see another flicker of surprise in his eyes.

“You feel real.”

He places a hand on top of mine. “I am, meine Schöne.”

“Why do you call me that?”

He weaves his long fingers with mine and moves my hand down to his chest again to rest over his heart.

“You did not want to be called ‘little one.’”

“But meine Schöne? That means my lovely in German.”

He laughs softly. “I am German. And, clearly, so are you.”

“Grandma Jo was an immigrant,” I say, moving my thumb across the back of his hand.

“She was, but from a much longer time ago than she let you ever know. Long ago, when she was your age, she lived in a village near here.”

“Where is here?” I ask. “You walked us here from the outskirts of Ocean City Maryland. I was never great at geography in elementary school, but I know that’s nowhere near Germany.”

He chuckles again in amusement and for the first time all night, the sound makes me smile.

“It is not. We are not in Germany, meine Schöne, we’re in between the worlds. Josephine’s childhood home lay near the border between your world and the one beyond. My world.”

“But does that mean Ocean City is near too?”

“Yes,” he says. He taps my ring with one finger. “The border between this world and mine shifts and changes as the years pass.

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