Read Online Freeing the Beast: Taming the Beast, Book 1 by Tina Donahue - Free Book Online Page A

a male. Moments when the way you’d been born was good enough. You were alive, healthy, ready for anything.
    Then puberty kicked in and screwed everything up, replacing inexhaustible wonder and confidence with endless uncertainty.
    He’d said he was great. The potion had worked. He’d been so eager to get out of here and test it, he’d fallen off the table.
    She arched one eyebrow. Maybe he’d want another potion to make him a little less klutzy. If he did, she was going to let Zoe give it to him. In more ways than one.
    Becca leaned against the window and fingered the safety pin holding her torn ties together. Proof of how idiotically she’d behaved. The blouse was ruined. She’d have to pitch the damn thing.
    No way would she keep it as a memento of anything she wanted to remember. Becca had stopped being sentimental during her sophomore year in high school when she’d intended to save the football program as a keepsake…to commemorate the one game she’d gone to with a guy, a fix-up from another school. She’d tried to dazzle him with her knowledge of the sport. Becca’s dad had drilled her for weeks about each play. Like a trained seal, she’d performed beautifully that afternoon.
    Her date rewarded her with a pat on her shoulder, the kind reserved for a buddy or faithful dog—no kiss—then took off never to be seen again.
    Becca was through with that shit. She pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead. Behind her, the door flew open, smacking into one of her potted plants. Dropping her hand, Becca turned.
    Eric closed the door and righted the plant, trying to fluff its bent fronds.
    “That’s okay, I’ll get it,” she said before he made it any worse.
    He dropped the frond that had fallen off. Shoulders bunched, he faced her. “We need to talk.”
    She went to her desk, her finger poised above the intercom button. “I’ll have Zoe in here in a minute.”
    He stalked to her desk, his fingers fisted around his contract. “Won’t do you any good. I’m not leaving until we talk, even if she goes a couple rounds with me. She can fry the hair off my balls if she wants, but I don’t hurt women. They do that to me.”
    Becca brought back her hand. “I just thought she could quote you a price for our potions and spells if you wanted something else now.”
    “Like what?” His eyes shot up as they had when he’d been strapped to the table. He patted the top of his head. “Is my hair falling out again?”
    “It’s fine.” Tousled and perfect. Damn.
    “Then why would I need another potion?”
    Her cheeks got hot. “You fell off the table in the treatment room. You messed up my plant. We can give you something to make you…” She searched for the right words that wouldn’t piss him off further.
    “Less clumsy?” he said.
    “More graceful.”
    “Just what I want,” he muttered, “to move like a ballet dancer. That ought to make me a real babe magnet.”
    Was that all he ever thought of, his freaking conquests? Becca clenched her jaw. “Just trying to help.”
    He dropped his contract on her desk, then pulled his AmEx from his wallet and tossed the card to her. It hit Becca’s boob. “Sorry for being so clumsy,” he said.
    Didn’t sound like it to her.
    He gestured to the card. “Fill that up for all I care. Just don’t call her in here. I don’t want to be bent, folded or mutilated any longer. I’m tired of getting hurt.”
    Second time he’d said that. Becca finally recognized the unhappiness beneath his new nasty attitude and irritation. “Is the potion wearing off?”
    It was supposed to be permanent, unless her mom had diluted the ingredients, afraid they’d cause some other weird reaction.
    “I don’t know,” he said. “Do you?”
    He sounded so uncertain and in need of reassurance, Becca wanted to go around her desk to him but didn’t. She wasn’t that brave or controlled. If he ordered her to undress again, she’d do so gladly, then lay on her desk, inviting him