by Jade White
As the sun rose the following day, his eyes fluttered open and the first sight he saw was her exhausted face staring down at him.
“Hey, you're up,” she said, trying to sound casual despite the tears welling in her eyes.
“How long have I been out?” he asked as he tried to sit up, failing in his exhaustion to manage an upright position.
“Nearly 24 hours. You slept through two dressing changes on that wound. I was about to start to worry.”
“Where are Dylan and Grace? Are they OK? Where is Luke?” he asked, clearly confused about what had happened since the battle. She wondered if he even remembered her declaration of love. Though she would gladly have told him thousands of times, it hurt that he would not be able to share the memory of the first time with her.
“They are all fine,” she said, amazed that he was awake and safe with her. “They were here to see you earlier but I sent them out. You needed your rest.”
“Did you really tell me you love me or did I hallucinate that?” he asked, looking up at her with hesitation. He seemed so afraid that it was a hallucination that he did not truly want to know the answer. She was so very relieved that he remembered that she threw her arms around him as he lay before her.
“Yes,” she cried, tears streaming down her face, “I love you. Now and forever.”
“That is a very good thing,” he said weakly. She pressed her lips to his and thanked the stars that he was improving. It had been all she could do during the last day to keep herself from facing the fact that she might lose him. They sat there in a sweet silence for quite a while, her stroking his hair and him looking up at her with eyes full of love.
“I'm sorry,” he said eventually, looking at her with a deep sadness in his eyes.
“For what?” she asked, not sure what in the world he could be apologizing for.
“You're probably carrying my child. That's the way it is with our mates. I know you never wanted a family,” he apologized mournfully, resting his hand on her stomach possessively.
“I never thought that I did,” she explained, “but the thought of having your baby brings me such joy. I want us to be a family; you, me, and anyone else who might come along.” She placed her hand over his, relishing in the feeling of knowing that they could already have created a life.
“God, I love you,” he said, pulling her other hand to his lips and kissing it gently.
“That is a very good thing,” she said as she bent to kiss him.
“I've wanted nothing but a family of my own for a very long time. This isn't at all how I pictured
it,” he muttered, seeming amused.
“Are you very disappointed?” she asked, suddenly concerned that he still had reservations about loving her. She sat up straight then and he moaned at the loss of closeness between them.
“Disappointed? I couldn't be happier,” he said, shocked that she could doubt it. “Come close,” he ordered, reaching up toward her.
“No, you're hurt. You need to rest,” she smiled down at him, relieved that he loved her as she loved him.
“How can I rest without you in reach of my arms?” he pouted.
She lay down beside him then and he wrapped his arms around her with a sigh of relief.
“OK, now go back to sleep. You need your strength,” she ordered.
“Deal,” he said, his heart full of peace.
THE END
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BOOK TWO
SPAWN OF
THE VAMPIRE
A PARANORMAL PREGNANCY ROMANCE
SAMANTHA SNOW
Copyright ©2016 by Samantha Snow
All rights reserved.
About This Book
Shawna King had waited all her life for a man to sweep her off her feet but she didn't expect it to happen like this...
Victor Titus was the most handsome man she had ever met and when he seemed determined to seduce her, Shawna found it impossible to say no. An amazing night of passionate sex left Shawna wondering if she had met the man of her dreams.
However, by the next morning. He had vanished.
Now it is 9 months later and the only thing Shawna has to show for that amazing night is a beautiful baby.
Only problem is, she has no idea that the baby's father is a vampire and now the baby has been born he is about to walk back into her life with dramatic consequences....
CHAPTER ONE
Shawna King was the kind of woman that went to bars for one reason when she was alone and that was to find a guy that would take her mind off all of the terrible things that she had experienced and gone through recently. The most recent terrible experience was Tyler, the man who had sex with her and went around telling everyone about all of the things that she definitely did not do to him, but he still made it sound like it was true. Her old life was ruined, up in smoke and there was nothing that she could do about it. Everyone thought that she was a desperate slut and that meant that she was proving them right, but she didn’t care.
She didn’t care that this was dangerous and under the right mindset, she never would have done this. She never would have come out to this bar and looked at all of the men here, douche city and full of bros who thought women were jewelry for them to strut around with.
Shawna felt out of place in her decent dress that showed off her long legs and her ass well enough, but tonight, the bustier girls were getting a lot of the attention. She knew that they were wearing padded bras or push up bras from Victoria’s Secret. Shawna wasn’t ashamed that her breasts were average size and she didn’t need to wear a push up bra, but tonight, she was kind of wishing that she had.
Of course, she quickly realized that she was aiming too low, for shallow trash that she didn’t need in her life. If all they cared about were boobs, then she didn’t need them. Part of her wanted a serious relationship, but she was on cynical autopilot right now. Men were trash, relationships were doomed, blah, blah, blah; it was the same old thing that everyone with fresh wounds in their heart thought about.
She was desperate and so far, things were not going as planned. She was a quiet, soft-spoken woman who usually attracted domineering men who liked to coerce her into doing things she didn’t want to do.
They were the kind of guys who took her to sporting events or camping when all she wanted to do was to curl up on the couch and binge watch a show on Saturday before capping off the day with a session at the gym. She didn’t need adventure in her life and she didn’t want it there in the first place.
She had large, blue eyes and wavy red hair that got her a lot of attention, but usually from the wrong kind of guys. Douches tended to spook off any potential, quieter guys that she might actually have fun with.
Shawna was pretty enough to be intimidating, but she didn’t have the personality or the money to be someone that was fierce and hot. She was good-looking and approachable, but if she really went to work, she would be someone that men would drool over.
Of course, that was the kind of thing that could have been applied to any woman in the world and Shawna didn’t take too much heart from it. Sure, she wasn’t the most beautiful woman in the world, but she knew she was attractive enough to be grateful for her abilities and her personality.
Sitting at the bar, she’d failed to capture the eyes of guys that she’d been checking out and who seemed quiet enough to consider luring in. Eye flirting only got her so far, though, when a bro would come out of the rafters and insist on buying her a
Jaeger Bomb.
She would kindly refuse and they would call her a tease or something. She didn’t really care about it, but when she would look back to the guy she had been working on for the past half an hour at the bar, they would be gone or moved on to someone else.
She felt defeated and as she looked around the bar, she noticed that there wasn’t really anyone there that was sticking out to her. This wasn’t her night. She let out a heavy sigh and knew that she should have worn her middie dress that night. Men were no longer interested in the whole one bare shoulder look that she had mastered.
All around her, people were beginning to pair off and start to get to know each other or they were starting to get lonely with their own defeated members of the same gender. Shawna thought it was about time to call it a night, pack it in and just realize that there was nothing that was going to save her. She had gotten all dressed up and hopeful that she would meet a guy, but the reality was that she was never going to meet a guy out here like this.
She wondered what she was thinking and how stupid she had been to think that this was ever going to work. This wasn’t how the world worked and it wasn’t how anything was going to run down. It was the kind of fantasy living that she thought would make men magically knights in shining armor and the world a just and wonderful place. But that wasn’t the case.
Shawna decided this wasn’t a place where a woman would magically find the one person in her life who was going to make things better. You only found despair and heartache in places like this. Truthfully, bars were where people found other miserable people like themselves, usually too immature to wake up and see what was shooting them in the foot over and over again.
If she woke up the next morning with a strange guy in her bed, all she was going to feel was regret, not excitement about the bright new future they might have together.
This was the kind of place where people came to make mistakes happen. The white, glowing top of the bar was stained with melted ice, spilled drinks, and littered with the items of people who were pairing off and talking to other people who were all there for the same purpose. Everyone was lying through their teeth that they were here for wholesome fun with their friends. That’s what art gallery shows were for and other places like that, not a bar.
Here, amidst the darkness getting pierced by black lights and flashing strobes from the dance floor, people were looking for instant sex. This was the equivalent of the relationship vending machine that people thought was going to magically take all of their problems and burn them all away. They thought that only good things would happen here, but nothing good came with such little work.
Sure, maybe people could mold and shape their relationship into something amazing, but they were certainly going to leave Fatty’s Bar out of the story when they told it to their couples friends. They’d pick it up on the first date.
What was she doing here? She wanted a real relationship. She wanted what Tyler wasn’t willing to give her and there was nothing wrong with that. She wanted a substantial relationship that was going to make her happy inside and give her hope, not depress her to death. She wanted to have a guy that was interested in more than just coming over, turning on Netflix for a half an hour and then having sex.
She wanted to actually go on dates and not do weird kinky things that only he liked. She was fine with the sex. In fact, she really liked the sex. Sex was one of those things that she would never get bored of and that she loved having a lot of, she just needed more than sex.
There was something about the rest of it that broke her heart, though. It was depressing and sad. It was the kind of breakup that made her wonder what was wrong with her since she had gone along with all of this in the first place. She was questioning everything and right now, she was trying to see if there was hope for her in the world outside of Tyler. She wanted there to be more out there waiting for her.
She worked in accounting at an engineering company and her life was about as boring and stable as it could get, so relationships were her only real outlet for fun. So far, all of those fun guys had turned out to be massive creeps who loved destroying her self-esteem when they were done with her.
She was tired of all of that. She needed someone in her life who was going to build her up and that would give her the encouragement and the hope that she needed. She needed someone to give her a fire that would burn through her soul and save her mind.
When she was done looking at numbers and spreadsheets all day, she wanted a special sort of guy who was ready to go do something fun, not stick around the house and have sex or drag her out in the wilderness. They lived in the most amazing city in the world and she would rather go to a coffee shop, explore a few holes in the wall, and then go home and have sex. Was that too much to ask? It just felt like they all got lazy.
Here, all she could see was more of the same, more of the exact same depressing bros who just wanted to make her happy enough to get her out of her clothes and into bed with them. She was tired of that game and while most of the bros were herding around the skanks who wore dresses that were shorter and tighter or flashier than Shawna’s, she felt herself ready to get out of here.
She stuck around for a few more minutes, hoping that one of the guys that she had seen earlier might come back. She really liked the guy with the glasses.
She searched the bar for him, hoping that she would find him coming back from the bathroom or the bar after being slightly disappointed by the evening. However, as she looked around, she noticed that the cute guy with the glasses was nowhere to be seen.
In fact, when she finally did see him, he was seated in the corner of the bar, sitting on a couch with some skank with her legs thrown over him, and making out with him with abandon. She felt her stomach lurch at the sight of him with this woman and it hurt inside of her. That was the one opportunity she felt she had going for her, but this was too much. This was the death of all hope that she had.
Inevitably, the only thing that she could think about right now to salvage the disappointment was what kind of ice cream she was going to get on her way home to cope with the reality of this bitter heartache. She didn’t even know the guy, but she couldn’t help but wonder if there could have been something between the two of them, had she been a little more open and aggressive with him.
But she was going to go home and eat raspberry white chocolate ice cream and think about how the only way to get a guy’s attention at places like this was to stick her tongue down his throat.
No, she wasn’t going to do that to herself. She wasn’t going to believe that she had to be something sleazy and something easy to get a man to notice her. She shouldn’t have to lower herself just to get a man to pay attention to her. No, she wanted to be able to be herself and have a man notice her. That was the joy and the pleasure they got and she wanted it, too. She wanted to just be a normal person.
She grabbed her clutch and turned away from the bar, giving up on all of this for the night. Maybe she’d come out with some friends in a few weeks, but it just wasn’t working for her that night. It was a total bust.
“Please tell me you aren’t leaving,” a man said behind her as she spun and practically slammed into him. She stopped and stared at him wide eyed and he chuckled to himself. His voice was deep and smooth, the kind of voice that really dug into her and was resonating with her in every practical way. There was something that immediately burrowed under her skin and started to nest inside of her, something that really liked this man.
“That’s what I get for waiting too long,” he said with a charming smile spreading across the right side of his face in a sort of crooked grin. “Should have been braver,” he said grimly.
Shawna hadn’t even seen this man in the bar and honestly, she thought that she had looked this place over, but he had come out of nowhere, stepping out of the gloom and darkness with his perfect, handsome face and winning her over. There was something about his handsome face that made her really like him and wonder what he was doing was
ting his time with her. There were so many other women out there that would have killed to be with him.
His skin was pale, but his hair was dark; black hair that was so well styled that she immediately wanted to run her fingers through it. His strong jaw and tough looking chin was shaded with the stubble that showed up as a contrast to his pale skin. His eyes were dark and his cheekbones were sharp.
There was something about him that felt powerful and unnatural to her, something alarming. She wanted to touch his face with her fingers, to gently brush her fingers over his features just to see if they were real.
He was dressed in a modern style, but his clothes were unlike anything that she had ever seen before. It was almost impossible to put her fingers on what made him so elegant and yet so positively antiquated in the most handsome way ever.
