Sassy Ever After: Wise Sass Mates (Kindle Worlds Novella)

W
hat happens
when you grow up and move on, but your crush on your teacher doesn’t?

Bianca Silver is back in her hometown, researching shifter culture with her two best friends. An unexpected encounter in the woods with the teacher she’s dreamed about since she was a teenager sends her quiet new life into a tailspin, putting Bianca in grave danger and offering her a depth of longing and pleasure she never imagined was possible.

Ian Anderson has spent the last ten years trying to repress the violent lust and protectiveness he feels toward honor student, Bianca Silver. When he reunites with grown-up Bianca in the woods the night of a Scenting Ceremony his control over his instincts is lost. But loving Bianca isn’t as easy as he thought it would be. Between her stubborn streak and the efforts of the person who seems to want her out of the picture, it’s going to take their combined wisdom for these fated mates to begin their new life.

Wise Sass Mates is a very steamy standalone story in the world of Milly Taiden’s Sassy Mates.

F
or the Teacher
who owns my heart.

And for the Black List, you ravenous little vixens!

S
ee
how she leans her cheek upon her hand.

O, that I were a glove upon that hand,

That I might touch that cheek.

-
W
illiam Shakespeare
,
Romeo & Juliet

B
ianca Silver tiptoed
through the darkened woods, the flashlight on her phone trained on the path, trying not to make too much noise or disrupt any creepy critters.

Bianca was decidedly the indoorsy type. So far this evening she had managed to break every stick in the forest, ruin her suede sheepskin lined boots, and work herself to a fever pitch remembering the plots of every scary movie she and her college roommates had terrified themselves with over the long nights of learning how to be a teacher.

And she’d been in the woods for less than ten minutes.

If she turned back, and squinted into the distance, she could still see the outline of Blue Creek High school silhouetted against the moonlit sky.

“Why are you doing this, Bianca?” she muttered to herself. “You could be home watching a nice movie where no one gets attacked by anything.”

But Bianca was curious, always had been.

When she’d seen the note in the mail earlier today, a little shiver of delight had run through her. It was handwritten on cream colored stationary.

Y
our presence is requested
for this evening’s Scenting Ceremony. Meet by the waterfall behind Blue Creek High School this evening at 9pm. No RSVP required.

T
he only events
Bianca had been invited to since coming back to Blue Creek were the endless string of parties where the hostess had someone there selling things like upscale brownie mixes or overpriced costume jewelry. Bianca figured from the name that this one must be for candles and perfume.

But she loved the real life invitation and the idea of it happening in the woods at night. It made her think of witches and fairies and all things Shakespeare.

Way to go, mysterious saleswoman, Bianca is
in.

She’d even brought a check book so she could make a purchase in support of whoever was hosting. They should be rewarded for putting in this kind of effort.

Sometimes it hurt to see that practically everyone she’d known since childhood seemed to be married with a little one in their lap or on the way. Two by two they’d all paired up and Bianca was still alone, same as always.

Alone - except for her new college friends, of course. Thank God for the Sociology masters program upstate. It was a relief to have a cheering squad of other unmarried women in their late twenties.

Bianca had been a kind of a nerd in school, before being a nerd had suddenly become cool. Her nose was always in a book, her head in the clouds - she was the opposite of popular. It almost went without saying that she was a late bloomer when it came to guys. She’d had an awkward experience or two in college, but never a serious boyfriend.

It probably hadn’t helped that she was planning on coming home once she had her degree. In a lot of ways, that knowledge made it feel like she never really left. She was already back in Blue Creek now with her friends to work on a research project. The little apartment she had rented would be her home for good after graduation in the spring.

She could have at least gone to a big city where she had a chance to meet someone more like herself.

But Blue Creek was
home
. Mom and Dad were still living in the little blue cedar shake house with the screened porch. The cost of living was low enough that she could afford her own apartment nearby, and the library had a fantastic collection and a view over the pond. If Mister Right were out there somewhere, he would just have to come find her.

Bianca had been making enough noise trying to navigate the trees that she hadn’t heard any other sounds. But when she stopped to try and remember which way the waterfall was, she heard it.

Something
thrashed through the trees.

Something big.

And it was headed right for her.

Panicked, and knowing she was not a fast runner, Bianca threw herself to the ground and crouched behind a tree, fumbling to kill the light from her phone and saying a silent prayer that whatever it was would be open to negotiation.

It stopped short just in front of the tree and inhaled deeply.

She clung to the scratchy bark and begged herself not to peek.

Bianca Marie Silver, you do NOT need to know what is on the other side of this tree.

But it was no use, because she was already peeking.

A massive, silvery wolf stood proudly, bathed in moonlight. His paws - she knew inherently the creature was masculine - were the size of dinner plates.

He lifted his slender muzzle to the moon above and howled a song of aching loneliness.

Every hair on Bianca’s body lifted at the haunting beauty of it.

Unable to tear her eyes away, Bianca was still looking when the wolf lowered his muzzle and spotted her.

He gazed back at her with golden eyes that seemed somehow… familiar.

Her jaw dropped open.

There were wolf shifters in Blue Creek. It was common knowledge. But if you weren’t part of the shifter community it wasn’t a big deal and didn’t affect your day to day life. Bianca had probably met plenty of them in their human forms.

But this was something else entirely.

“Live and let live,” Bianca’s dad used to say about the wolves, as he painstakingly cleaned his great-grandfather’s old-fashioned musket out on the screened porch and told Bianca stories about the town and its residents.

Bianca had nodded in agreement back then.

Right now though, she felt as if she had been living in the shadow of the most interesting thing ever to happen to human kind, and had never until just this moment taken in how amazing it was.

The wolf began to shift back into his human form.

But he didn’t need to for Bianca to know
exactly
who he was.

A part of her had always been with him.

I
t had been
an overcast day - a younger Bianca sat in the high school library, lost in a book, when the snickering of a group of boys announced the approach of their leader, Zach Greenfield, the quarterback of the football team.

“Hey, Bianca, do you have plans for prom?” he asked, hopping onto the soapstone table where she was studying.

It just wasn’t fair. She knew he was only messing with her, she was too smart to fall for his prank, but he was so damned handsome. His dark hair slid across one blue eye before he pushed it back with a practiced motion, showing off the muscles of his upper arm.

“Yeah, I’m washing my hair. Every night. For the rest of my life,” she shot back.

Zach obviously wasn’t used to having girls talk to him that way. The guys behind him laughed, while his face grew ugly with resentment.

“Fat cow like you better get used to staying in,” he said, hopping off the table and leaving the library, the others trailing along behind him like toilet paper sticking to the bottom of his shoe.

Bianca found herself bemoaning the unfairness of life for the second time in less than a minute. Why were attractive guys such asshats? And why was the cheap shot about her weight such an easy out?

Anger turned to hurt and she bit her lip hard, determined not to cry.

Then there was a hand on her shoulder.

She turned to see who it was, readying another comeback, just in case.

But her words, all of her words, right down to her own name, were forgotten when she spotted him.

Bianca had suffered a soul-shattering crush on Mr. Anderson since he’d arrived at the school to teach tenth grade English during her junior year. She’d missed having him as a teacher by a year, but just seeing him in the halls and school functions had been enough.

Bianca had read about crushes. They were supposed to make you feel giggly and happy.

But this was something different, something darker.

She remembered the exact moment she’d first seen him, the way some folks recall their first kiss, or where they were when One Direction broke up.

In a down to earth school where even the teachers seemed dressed up in a polo shirt, Bianca had noticed the young man in the tweed coat with suede elbow patches the moment he walked in the door. She’d been heading to the library, of course, having finished her end-of-year testing early.

He was silhouetted by afternoon sun, which gleamed in the blond highlights of his hair. He was looking around as if unsure of where he was headed.

“Do you need help?” Bianca asked, polite and curious as ever.

His unusual golden hazel eyes had locked on hers and something had passed between them.

Instantly, Bianca felt every cell in her seventeen-year-old body come to life, as if it were roll call time and this guy had the clipboard.

This, this was what all the poems and the fuss were about - the movies and the romance novels, the gossip and the drama and the danger of it all.
This
was the reason to be alive.

“Mr. Anderson,” a woman’s voice cried from behind her.

Bianca turned, breaking eye contact with the young man.

“Bianca, what are you doing here?” Dr. McDonnell asked kindly.

“Oh, I-I was on my way to the library,” she stammered.

“One of our brightest students,” Dr. McDonnell smiled, gesturing at Bianca.

Mr. Anderson blinked at Bianca and then wrenched his gaze from her.

“Off you go, Bianca,” Dr. McDonnell said firmly.

Bianca had headed to the library, a different young woman than she’d been just moments before.

And though she would meet many attractive men in her life, there would never be another moment like the one when she’d first seen Mr. Anderson.

She’d kept a sharp eye out for him the rest of the year and most of the next. Sometimes she caught a glimpse of him in the hall between classes, but he seemed to studiously avoid her gaze.

By the time senior year was almost over, she had finally stopped obsessing about him long enough to get interested in college and life after Blue Creek.

Until stupid Zach stupid Greenfield had almost made her cry.

And then there he was, out of nowhere, one hand on her shoulder, leaning in close enough for her to feel the warmth radiating from him.

“You are perfection, Bianca Silver,” Mr. Anderson had whispered into her hair. “Exactly. As. You. Are.”

Then the weight of his hand was gone and he disappeared into the stacks.

Bianca had stayed at the table for another twenty minutes - memorizing the feel of his breath in her hair, the warmth where his hand had touched her, and the faint, woodsy scent of him still clinging to her thin t-shirt.

The next day, a long-term sub had come to take his place, and he hadn’t come back for the rest of the year.

Bianca had finished high school in a stupor, and gone off to college wondering if she had actually gone crazy. He was just a teacher, comforting a bullied kid. She was being ridiculous. She had to get over her silly crush.