by Megan Hart
Contents
Also by Megan Hart
Title
License Notes
Author's Note
One
1
2
3
Two
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
Three
12
13
14
15
16
17
Four
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
Five
27
Six
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
Seven
35
36
37
38
39
40
Eight
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
Nine
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
Ten
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
About the Author
Also by Megan Hart
Tear You Apart
The Favor
The Darkest Embrace
Precious and Fragile Things
Exit Light
Ride With the Devil
Beneath the Veil
Reawakened Passions
Hot and Haunted
Collide
Dirty
Broken
Tempted
Stranger
Deeper
Naked
The Space Between Us
Pleasure and Purpose
Switch
Stranger
New York Times Bestselling Author
Megan Hart
The Resurrected
Compendium
Parts 1-10
Chaos Publishing
August 2013
The Resurrected — Compendium
Megan Hart
Chaos Publishing
**
Copyright 2013 Megan Hart
Chaos Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This edition of The Resurrected, Compendium, includes parts 1-10, originally published from October 2011 through August 2013. This final content has been revised and may differ slightly from the original content.
ONE
1
That man walked like he’d never been afraid of anything.
That’s what Abbie Monroe thought when she looked at her own reflection in the mirror behind the bar at the Hole in the Wall and saw him passing behind her without so much as a second glance. That man walked like he’d never been afraid of anything and would never have to be. She turned to look at him in the real world, not in the mirror, thinking maybe it was the shadows or flashing lights from the tiny dance floor, or maybe simply the backwards, through-the-looking-glass reversal of everything that had made him stand out to her so clearly.
Nope.
It was still all him.
Her grandfather had been a sailor in the Navy during World War II and for most of his life, and he’d never lost that sort of rolling lope of a man for whom the ground beneath him was never still. The man heading toward the pool table at the back of the bar didn’t walk quite that way, but there was something familiar in the stride, in the shift of his hips. In the way he looked neither to right nor left unless he was focusing his gaze on someone reaching out to shake his hand, and even then, he shifted his entire body so briefly, so intently, that it was clear very little could ever take him by surprise.
And, Abbie reasoned as she signaled the bartender for another beer, she was probably full of seven different kinds of shit.
Maybe she just wanted him to not be afraid of anything, she thought as she sipped cold, foamy beer and twisted in her stool to watch the man nod at the couple playing pool. Was he going to play? She watched him tip his cap with some sort of letter logo on it, a big OU. It looked like a giant Kosher symbol to her, which was so unlikely it had to be wrong. Out here in the middle-of-nowhere, Oklahoma, it was all boots and hats and worn denim jeans with big belt buckles, shirts with the mother-of-pearl snap-front buttons and sleeves rolled up to elbows. Even on the women. She looked down at her skinny jeans and ballet flats, her fitted t-shirt and cardigan sweater. Maybe if she wore a hat like his, a pair of shit-kicking boots, she’d never be afraid either.
The bartender slid a basket of onion rings toward her along with a small plastic cup of some kind of spicy dip. It smelled so strongly of horseradish she had to blink and turn her head to hold back a sneeze, but her mouth watered in anticipation of the burn. She dipped a ring, thick with batter and grease and the size of her fist, into the sauce and took a bite.
Damn, she thought with a sigh of ecstasy. That is some good dip.
“You like it?” The bartender laughed and rapped the top of the bar with his knuckles. “It’ll grow hair on your chest.”
“It just about seared my sinuses, that’s for sure.” Abbie gulped some beer and wiped her lips with a napkin. She gave the bartender a grin that felt a little too big, a little too bright. She was a little out of practice, but was nevertheless genuine and didn’t seem to scare him too much. She must be getting better at it. “Not sure if I need any hair on my chest, though.”
“Can I get you anything else?”
She shook her head. “I’m good for now.”
Behind him, above the mirror, a flat-screen TV flickered and danced with pictures of products and services she’d never used or bought but could easily be convinced she needed. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d watched television — cable had been one of the first things to go when she moved into her own place, and though she’d taken her share of the DVD collection, she’d never gotten around to getting a DVD player. Even in hotels she rarely turned on the television, having grown out of the habit of needing mindless background noise. When she’d still been paying for her smart phone, Twitter had provided her news, and if her tweet stream filled up too much with chatter about some subjects that had become incomprehensible to her because she wasn’t up on pop culture she simply tuned out for a few days. It had been months since she’d had a smart phone.
Television, the great hypnotist. When her children had been smaller, Abbie had often needed to physically stand between them and the set in order to break the hold it had on their attention. Ryan had been the same way, gaze ensnared by infomercials and cartoons with the same sticky strength. Now Abbie found herself understanding, sort of, the allure. Watching the TV meant she didn’t have to think much about anything but the steady stream of images, the sound turned down so it be
came a game for her to match the Closed-Captioning with the action on the screen.
“Can you believe that?” Beside her, the man she’d noticed earlier had sidled up to the bar, unnoticed while she’d allowed herself to be numbed by the TV. He tipped a glass rattling with ice cubes but otherwise empty, toward the screen. “Fella’s been on the news all day long.”
She gave her stool a half-turn, feeling rather than hearing the squeak of metal on metal. “What for?”
“Bud, turn it up, will you?” With a nod for the bartender, the man turned to her. “Says he’s had a sign from God the world’s gonna end.”
“Oh.” Abbie’s mouth twisted. She looked at the screen, noticing the captions were a couple seconds behind the actual words, which was disorienting. Especially when they were misspelled. “Ice cream suit.”
The man laughed. “Huh?”
She pointed. The guy on the screen wore a white suit, white shirt, white tie. She’d bet he wore white shoes, too, but she hadn’t yet caught sight of his feet even though he was walking up and down on a small stage, shouting his proclamations to a rapt audience of a couple hundred moon-eyed faces.
“Ice cream suit,” she said. “Um, it was a story by Ray Bradbury. The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit. Whenever I see a suit like that, that’s what I think of. Also, it makes me suspect the guy wearing it is full of shit.”
The man laughed again, louder this time, and turned to rest his elbow on the bar while he looked at her. “Is that so?”
Abbie smiled, just a little. “Well. What do you think?”
The man kept his body angled toward her but tilted his head to look up at the TV. He watched for a second or two, smiling though his eyes were narrowed. Assessing. He noticed things, she thought, and her throat gave a small, dry click when she swallowed. He noticed everything.
He looked at her. “I think you’re right. Overflowing with shit.”
Her smile hadn’t faded while he studied the d-bag in the ice cream suit. Now it slanted just a little wider — not as freakishly broad as the one she’d given the bartender earlier, and this one sat more naturally on her face. “A veritable river of it.”
“An ocean,” the man agreed and gestured at her drink. “Buy you another?”
She hadn’t planned on drinking another beer, but then…when did she ever plan to drink another one? They usually just followed one after the other like stepping stones set into a stream, and she hopped along them one at a time until she lost her balance and fell into the drink. She nodded and pushed her empty glass toward the bartender. “Sure. Thanks.”
“Cal,” the man told her, and held out a hand for her to shake.
“Abbie.”
His palm was callused, his fingers strong and warm. He held her hand for a second or two longer than was absolutely necessary, and that’s how she knew she’d be taking him back to her place.
But not right away.
First, they drank. He was sipping at something strong, Jack Daniel’s on the rocks, no water. Abbie stuck to beer, because it meant she could drink more before she got sloppy. Also, she liked the taste, which never failed to make her think of summers at the lake, floating on a raft. Getting sunburned. Flirting with boys.
He was a law man, she could tell that by the way his hand fell naturally to the bare spot on his belt as though his fingers sought the comfort of a badge or a gun that weren’t there. She really ought to have stopped letting him buy her drinks when she figured it out, but hell. Some women had a thing for doctors or lawyers, some liked men with brown hair, others liked beards. Abbie liked cops and always had even if they were arresting her. When she asked him what he did for a living though, his gaze shifted from hers and he buried himself in his drink long enough for her to guess he didn’t mean to tell her the truth.
“Not much,” came his answer finally.
Abbie laughed. “Aside from seducing women in bars?”
“Is that what I’m doing?”
She leaned closer, tongue loose, face flushed. Not caring. He smiled when she did. Her lips brushed the edge of his ear when she said, “like it’s your damn job.”
He didn’t move away, and though he could’ve turned his face to kiss her, he didn’t do that either. They stayed like that for a few seconds, and the smell of him — clean skin, smoke, liquor — made her dizzy. Or maybe it was the beer. Or lack of sleep. It didn’t matter, because when she blinked, sitting back a little, he was still smiling, and he took her hand as the bartender announced last call.
“Can I walk you home?”
He surely could, there was no question about that.
“How did you know I was staying here?” She pointed across the road to the low-slung Sentinel Motel offering “free breakfast” that was half a lie, since it meant coffee and stale doughnuts, as she’d already learned.
Cal laughed, dipping his head so his hat brim obscured everything but his mouth. “Where else would you be staying?”
At the door, the lock fought the key even when she did her best to keep her fingers still. Cal’s hand covered hers, and he guided it carefully until the key slid smoothly inside. He turned it too, and the door swung open to reveal the shitty little motel room Abbie’d been calling home for the past week and a half.
That’s when he kissed her.
Long and slow and sweet and hard, up against the doorframe, his hands anchoring her hips so all she had to do was let him hold her up. His crotch pressed her belly, that big belt buckle cool on the sliver of her skin exposed where the edge of her shirt had ridden up. His tongue stroked hers. Her fingers linked behind his neck.
The kiss didn’t break so much as their mouths slipped apart, still close enough to touch when he spoke. “Are you going to invite me inside?”
Abbie licked her lips, tasting him on her skin. “Are you a vampire?”
Cal laughed and shook his head.
“Just a gentleman, then.”
His laughter faded into a smile, and he looked at her with bright eyes. He swallowed, and she wanted to press her lips to his throat as it worked. “Sometimes.”
“Does that mean you’ll take your hat off when you fuck me?” Abbie tweaked the brim.
Had she surprised him? Surely he wasn’t…blushing? Not that she could see any sort of flush of color on his cheeks in this dim light, but the way he cut his gaze from hers and ducked his head, he looked like a man who’d been taken aback. Totally charming. Utterly hot.
Then he pulled her close again. “I could leave it on if you want,” Cal said into her ear. “If that’s how you like it.”
His voice made her shiver-shuddery so that she pushed onto her tiptoes to get her mouth close to his ear too. She laughed as she clung to him. It felt good, that laughter. Free and easy and sexy too. “Let’s take it one step at a time, see how it goes.”
“Fair enough.” He stepped back to let her go through the door first.
Inside, the room boasted two sagging double beds, a wobbly desk and an equally shabby chair. She had a small fridge and a coffee pot. A bathroom with a surprisingly decent shower, plenty of hot water and a fancy shower head with a bunch of different settings. It was far from the best room she’d ever stayed in, but it was also not the worst.
“I’m going to drink some water. You want some?” She bent to the tiny fridge and pulled out two bottles.
Cal shook his head. “Nah, I’m good for now. Thanks.”
“I’d offer you something stronger,” Abbie said as she cracked open the cap, “but I’m afraid I’m all out.”
She didn’t say it was because she never bought booze anyplace other than a bar. She could buy a case of beer or a bottle of liquor for way less than she’d spend in a bar, but then…it would always be there. At least until she drank it, which would be right away. If she had to go to a bar, there was always the possibility she’d be able to limit herself, even if it was only because she’d made a rule with herself to pay only with cash, and only ever allowed herself to take two twenty dollar bills.
>
The water slipped down the back of her throat and gave her something to do with her mouth while Cal took a slow walk around her room. She’d cleaned up after herself; at least she’d done that much. Living out of a suitcase had atrophied her domestic skills a little bit, and with it just being herself…well. Sometimes she simply didn’t feel like bothering. She was glad now that she’d tucked away the bras and panties she’d washed in the sink and hung to dry on the shower in lieu of finding a laundromat. It would’ve been better if she’d had the maid come in to replace the towels and make the beds, both of them, since she’d slept in each of them before deciding she liked the one closest to the bathroom the best.
Did he notice the contents of her purse, scattered on the other bed? Her lipstick, compact, keys, sunglasses. She thought he did. Abbie thought Cal noticed her wallet, flipped open to show her New York State driver’s license. He wouldn’t be able to tell by looking at it that it was invalid, that if she ever got pulled over it would take only a minute or two for any cop to figure out she was driving illegally. But he could see her face, smiling, several years younger than she was now. Her face without a scar.
He turned with a half a smile tilting his lips. “Just passing through.”
He didn’t make it a question. That’s why she didn’t feel bad about not giving him an answer. When she put herself back in his arms, pressed up tight against that buckle again, all Abbie gave him was her mouth.
Two, three steps and the backs of her knees pressed against the bed. Instead of pushing her down on it, Cal slipped his big hands under her ass and lifted her as he turned to sit. She ended up on his lap, straddling him, her hands gripping his shoulders and his shirt twisted in her fingers. She’d let out a little gasp when he picked her up, and it slid into a groan when he settled her against his crotch.
He laughed into her mouth. She looked at him. He had nice eyes. A hard gaze that noticed everything, true, but nice eyes just the same. Light brown. Lines in the corners. The hat shadowed them, so she tipped it back with her finger. Without another word, Cal took the hat off and tossed it onto the next bed. He was already kissing her again before she could make a joke about him leaving it on…and she decided it was much, much better with it off.
