Nothing happened. Well, Astrid blacked out and woke up in a strange bed, which is not how she thought her twenty-ninth birthday celebration would go. She does not usually get that drunk. She’s in the bed of an orc professor, who says he slept on the couch and that they didn’t so much as kiss. She kind of wishes they would have. Look at him. Look at his arms—hulking arms encased in tweed, his powerful body barely contained by his tidy exterior. Add to that the awkwardness of the orc’s mother unexpectedly stopping by and making the assumption that Astrid is her son’s new girlfriend, and it’s like something out of a rom com. Not to mention Astrid is not getting any younger, so... A fake relationship? A mortifying meet-cute? It’s a guaranteed happily-ever-after. Right? A filthy-sweet poignant modern monster romance set in a small town and featuring one anxious nymph and one cinnamon-roll, glasses-wearing, bicep-bulging orc professor.

It starts as a joke. Trading various, er, favors with her boss? Neither of them are serious. It’s nothing but verbal sparring, lobbing zingers back and forth across the kitchen, or at the counter when there aren’t any customers. He’s too old for her, for one thing. And he’s a naga, which means he’s sort of doubly endowed, and what would she really do with two… two of those? So how she ends up bent over a counter in the kitchen after the place is closed up, skirt lifted, doubly crammed full of his… those …? She doesn’t know how that happens. It’s definitely not worth the days off she made him give her in return. And it’s definitely not the sort of bargain that she would even make. But, well, now it’s done. And now nothing will ever be the same. This story features sensitivity-heightening venom, retractable fangs, tail play, and two of those. It’s about fear of commitment and about fear of being different. It’s about understanding which parts of ourselves we can’t change and about finding the courage to face ourselves at our worst. It’s not really a love triangle, and it doesn’t follow all of the romance novel rules. It’s spicy angst fluff, with a guaranteed gushy ending.

A cerberus with three heads also has three tongues. And when they are in wolf form, those three tongues are very flexible, as Eloise discovers one night when she’s wandering in the woods in werewolf territory on a full moon. (Don’t ask. It’s her brother’s fault. Chasing her accident-waiting-to-happen brother is responsible for half of the unpleasantness in her life.) One might think three tongues would be enough for a girl to, you know, get there. See the stars burst in her head. Fall apart. Experience the little death. Come. But, well, Eloise doesn’t do that, at least not in front of anyone else, at least she never has. No makes Eloise come but her. Not that she’s really been giving anyone else the chance to try recently, of course. She and her best friend Astrid had a pact to avoid meaningless sex and to wait for the right guy to come along. The cerberus? Not even close to the right guy. But when the three-headed, muscular, deep-voiced, gorgeous triplets propose a mutually beneficial arrangement—just physical, no feelings—she can’t resist those tongues. Or the chance to finally hit the big O with someone other than, you know, her battery-operated-boyfriend. Arrangements like that? They always work out fine, of course. No one ever catches feelings. No one ever gets hurt. No one ever regrets them. The most realistic book you’ll ever read about a three-headed werewolf! Sick of stories where men magically know how to get women off when you’ve met actual men? This story is for you. (Also, contains the knotting, mate bites, and shifted-werewolf-on-human action)