I’ve been in love with the local blacksmith for as long as I can remember.

With his big, capable hands and acres of shoulders that I can’t help but admire.

Only he’s older and a widower. To him, I am nothing but a too-young, too-bold tavern wench.

He has rejected my every advance.

But his eyes tell a different story.

No matter, I’m cursed to be stubborn.

I’m determined to claim my blacksmith and his heart, whatever it takes.

The Blacksmith in My Tavern is a short story that follows the HEA of Betsy and Heath, whom we first met in The Wolf in My Tavern.

I’m a feeder. My role is to give blood.

A transaction, nothing more.

We’re not supposed to have favorites nor nurture infatuations.

And we’re definitely, under no circumstances, supposed to fall in love.

But I did—twice.

A human alpha who steals my breath and calls me his queen.

An intense, dominant fae warrior who unbridles new desires.

I wonder if they feel the same way.

If they ever talk about me.

As it turns out, the two men are best friends and they both want to claim me.

What they haven’t realized is that they’re both pursuing the same fae… at least, not yet.

They take me, snatching me from my ordinary life and the man I planned to marry and tossing me into chaos.

I am nothing to them, a pawn, a small piece in a bigger game.

Savages?

Not in the conventional sense, they give new meaning to the word.

His kind of savage can be beautiful and deadly, can break me with hard truths, disarm me with a smile, and ignite me with a glance.

He whispers promises of rapture even as he taunts me with what can never be.

So it is that I find myself in the crosshairs of a war.

An asset. One that both sides want.

I don't get to pick a side as with the prick of a needle, one is chosen for me.

My assimilation has begun. I am changing, undergoing a metamorphosis… becoming more… becoming primal.

As I stare into the obsidian eyes of a stranger, I realize that my fiancé, the man I packed up my life to move to the other side of the world with, lied to me.

Alex

He's been my best friend since we were children, and I've admired him all that time.

I've always known we were different, even before he matured and revealed his animalistic side.

I'm a married man with a sweet, beguiling wife who never fails to rouse my ardor while holding my infinite love.

Only now, when I see the two most important people in my life together, I realize something has changed.

In him, her, or me? I wish I could say. I wish I could pull back from the brink; that we could escape this deep, forbidden well into which the three of us sink.

I shouldn't want to see him hold her.

Nor to kiss her lips.

And I definitely shouldn't want to watch my best friend do a whole lot more with my beautiful beta wife.

A father should protect his daughter.

Mine sold me out to predators for coin enough to pay his debts.

Sobbing and broken, I shiver in the cold stone cell, awaiting my desperate fate.

Only I am not alone, and my fellow prisoner is about to change the course of my life.

A poor girl sold out by her father.

A young blacksmith apprentice with secret ties to the rebellion.

A grumpy wolf shifter on a mission.

One tavern where their stories are fated to collide.

The Wolf in My Tavern is a fated mate romance with a golden retriever boy next door and a grumpy wolf shifter getting in knots over a sweet tavern wench.

When the king of a barbarian horde turns out to be unexpectedly hot…

All I wanted to do was stop a war.

A sensible princess would have talked to her father and beseeched him to see sense. Instead, I do what I absolutely should not do: take my horse and leave the safety of my castle to parley with the enemy myself.

Only the barbarian horde waiting to besiege our home turns out to be larger than I expect… and deeply unhappy when I incapacitate half a dozen of their best men.

They take me to the king in charge… which is where my plans come undone.

Instead of declaring my intentions to help free their brethren from my father's dungeon, I throw a challenge at their king's feet.

Why?

Because if there were degrees of alphaness, the seven-foot-tall barbarian with a stern glint in his eyes and an air of deadly grace would be at the top. When he makes an allusion toward taming me, well, it's a challenge I can't possibly resist.

I want him to try.

I might secretly want him to succeed.

Just a little taste of the forbidden. Just one touch. An experience I can take away lest I wonder for the rest of my life what it might have been like.

Only barbarians play by their own rules. I am tossed over his broad shoulder, taken to his tent, and subsequently liberated of all my daggers… even the hidden ones that no one finds.

There are very few occasions in my life when I feel like I might have bitten off more than I can chew, but as I am dropped, weaponless, to his fur bed, I believe this is one.

Tamed for Her Pleasure is a standalone sweet and spicy fantasy barbarian romance set in the coveted prey world! Alpha/beta paring.