Page 12 of Rochelle's Manster


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CHAPTER 5

ROCHELLE

I’m still not sure about Alaric. Is he the man I wished for, the monster—I mean manster—I made when I first dreamed of my ideal match?

He meets so many of the specifications. Nice job, good height, attractive, nice hands, respectful of women…to be honest, I gained a lot of respect for him as a person when he agreed to leave me alone. And then for him to have such a wildly imaginative name and like cats and fantasy books?

That’s eight out of nine. I have no idea about the good in bed part, but to be further honest, I cannot imagine him having the experience it would take to have sexual skills. He seems like such an innocent in that way.

All the same, I’m intrigued. How about it, Goddess? Is he the one?

And do I have to sleep with him to find out?

It occurs to me that it’s okay to take it slow. He won’t push.

So we walk to work together in the mornings. He brings me coffee in my very own travel mug, that he bought for me to use. We have dinner together. Sometimes out, sometimes I cook ingredients that he buys. We talk about anything and everything.

We spend a Sunday afternoon together, reading separate books. Dido and Bing love him. He loves them right back. He went to the SPCA and looked at their cats, but came home empty-handed, saying that none of them were quite right, and anyway my cats might hate another cat.

I’m more attracted to him every day.

Plum invites me to her Halloween party. She lives over in the southeast part of town, which can get a little rough (by Rivertown standards, anyway). Over a dinner of mustard-maple salmon—grilled, not smoked!—I ask Alaric to go with me.

He sets his fork down, dark eyes wide. “With you?”

“No pressure, okay? Just as a friend. You don’t even have to dress up if you don’t want to.”

“If you want me to go, I will.”

We agree to meet at my apartment and drive over to Plum’s from there.

On Halloween night, I’m dressed and ready in my Rosie-the-Riveter outfit: blue shirt with sleeves rolled up, hair in a red bandana, wide-leg pants. I wonder whether Alaric will dress up at all.

When he comes to my door, he’s wearing a t-shirt that says “404 Error: Costume Not Found,” which makes me laugh, and very well-fitting jeans, which make his ass look completely grabbable.

I don’t grab. Instead, I let him make a fuss over the cats until our rideshare arrives, and then we travel to Plum’s. I have plans for the evening which don’t involve candy and bobbing for apples.

I want to find out about that ninth attribute.

I keep looking at those sexy hands of his. The dark eyes. The goofy smile. The open, honest, sweetness of him, that I would never have seen if I hadn’t given him a chance.

He only drinks one hard cider, and then goes back to Dr. Pepper, which he says is his favorite. I have two glasses of Plum’s delicious Fireball Sangria, and then I stop too. There are games. There’s dancing. There’s a wheel that gets spun every half-hour, with small prizes. There’s cornhole. Someone pretending to be a psychic does “readings” with predictions like “You will bang a stranger and do the walk of shame the next day” and “Your eventual mother-in-law will be a witch.”

Plum looks great as an Edwardian Goth vampire, and I get some compliments on my costume too. After we’ve been there two hours, I find Alaric in Plum’s office, sitting on the floor and reading “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” on his phone. “You want to go, don’t you?”

He won’t meet my eyes. “It’s okay, I’ll stay until you’re ready.”

“I’m ready.” In more ways than one.

But while we’re waiting for our ride to come, one of Plum’s other guests—a neighbor, I think, and one who’s definitely had too much Fireball—accidentally knocks me flat on my ass when he pretends to shoot a pumpkin like a basketball into the trashcan.

“Hey!” Alaric gets right up in his face. “Back off, asshole!”

“Fuck you, asshole!” the drunk guy snarls.

“Apologize to my friend,” Alaric says, voice deep and resonating in his chest. “You hurt her.”

“Fuck her, asshole!” Drunk Guy snaps back.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com
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