by Sylvia Day
“That would take years.” Mitchell ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know that I can bear it.”
“Give yourselves time to mature. Allow her to see what she has missed all of these years. Then, if she will have you anyway, you will know that she is making the decision with a woman’s heart, and not a child’s.”
For a long moment, the young man remained motionless, the weight of his indecision a tangible thing.
“Try it,” Simon urged. “What harm can come from the effort?”
Finally, Mitchell heaved out his breath and sank into the seat opposite the desk. “I’m listening.”
“Excellent!” Simon leaned back in his chair. “Now here are my thoughts…”
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“There’s blood everywhere.”
Kyle Treharne leaned into the passenger side of the overturned car, the driver’s side so badly damaged no one could get through the crumpled metal to extract themselves. Not even the female whose fear he could smell. Her fear and panic…and something else. Something he couldn’t quite name.
“Do you see anybody?” his boss asked. Kyle readjusted the earplug to hear the man better. The Sheriff’s voice was so low, it was often hard to make out exactly what he’d said.
“Nope. I don’t see anyone. No bodies, but…” He sniffed the air and looked down. “Blood trail.”
“Follow it. Let me know what you find. I’ll send out the EMS guys.”
“You got it.” Kyle disconnected and followed the trail of blood heading straight toward the beach. He moved fast, worried the woman might be bleeding to death, but also concerned this human female would see something he’d never be able to explain.
Kyle pushed through the trees until he hit the beach. As he’d hoped, none of the townspeople or resort visitors were hanging around, the beach thankfully deserted in the middle of this hot August day. He followed the blood cutting in a small arc across the sand, the trail leading back into the woods about twenty feet from where he’d entered.
He’d barely gone five feet when a bright flash of light and the missing woman’s scent hit him hard, seconds before she hit him hard. He should have been faster. Normally, he would be. The scent of hers, though, threw him completely off balance and he couldn’t snap out of it quick enough to avoid the woman slamming right into him.
Her body hit his so hard that if he were completely human, she might have killed him.
But Kyle wasn’t human. He’d been born different like nearly everyone else in his small town. They may not all be the same breed, but they were all the same kind.
Still, his less than human nature didn’t mean he didn’t experience pain. At the moment, he felt lots and lots of pain as he landed flat on his back, the woman on top of him.
Yet the pain faded away when the woman moved, her small body brushing against him. She moaned and Kyle reached around to gently grip her shoulders.
“Hey darlin’. You all right?”
She didn’t answer. Instead, she slapped her hand over his face, squashing his nose. Putting all her weight on that hand, she pushed herself up.
Between her fingers, he could see the confusion in her eyes as she looked around. Blood from a deep gash on her forehead matted her dark brown hair and covered part of her face. Bloodshot, slightly almond-shaped brown eyes searched the area. For what, Kyle had no idea. A cut slashed across her top lip and although it no longer bled, it had started to turn the area around it black and blue.
Damn, little girl is cute.
“Uh…” He tapped her arm. “Could you move your hand, sweetheart?” And the question came out like he had the worst cold in the universe. “I can’t really breathe.”
She didn’t even look at him, instead staring off into the forest. “Dammit. It’s gone.” Putting more pressure on his poor nose, the woman levered herself up and off him. “Damn. Damn. Damn.” She stumbled toward the forest and Kyle quickly got to his feet. “This isn’t my fault. It’s not.” Poor thing, completely delirious from all that blood loss and muttering to herself like a mental patient.
Then she stopped walking. Abruptly. Almost as if she’d walked into a wall. “Damn,” she said again.
Knowing he had to get her to the hospital before she died on him, Kyle put his hand on her shoulder, gently turning her so she could see him. “It’s all right, darlin’. Let’s get you out of here, okay?” He slipped one arm behind her back and the other under her knees, scooping her up in his arms.
Hmmm. She feels nice there.
Kyle smiled down at her and, for a moment, she looked at him in complete confusion.
Then the crazy woman started swinging and kicking, trying to get out of his arms. Although she had no skills—she did little more than flail wildly—he couldn’t believe her strength with all the blood she’d lost, but he quickly realized someone else had caught on to her scent, too, and was heading right for them.
Kyle gripped the fighting woman around the waist, dragging her back against him with one arm. Ignoring how much her tiny fists and feet were starting to hurt, he turned his body so she faced in the opposite direction and with his free hand, swung up and back, slamming the back of his fist into the muzzle of the black striped and orange Yankee bastard hellbent on getting his tiger paws on the woman in Kyle’s arms. Tiger males only had to get a whiff of a female and they were on them like white on rice. The fact that this one was fully human and an outsider didn’t seem to matter to some idiots.
A surprised yelp and the Yankee cat flipped back into the woods. Kyle rolled his eyes. He loved his town but, Lord knew, he didn’t like the Yankees who often came to call. All of them rude, pretentious, and damn annoying.
Kyle walked off with the woman still trapped in his arm until she started slapping at him.
“Hands off! Hands off! Let me go!” After all that blood loss, she seemed completely lucid and quite insane.
Even worse…he’d recognize that accent anywhere. A Yankee. A damn Yankee.
Kyle dropped her on her cute butt and she slammed hard into the sand.
After a moment of stunned silence, she suddenly glared up at him with those big brown eyes…and just like that, Kyle Treharne knew he was in the biggest trouble of his life.
No, no. That was not a normal-sized human being. Not by a long shot. Her coven had warned her, “They grow ’em big in the south, sweetie,” but she had no idea they grew this big.
Nor this gorgeous. She’d never seen hair that black before. Not brown. Black. But when the sunlight hit it in the right way, she could see other colors under the black. Light shades of red and yellow and brown. Then there were his eyes. Light, light, gold eyes flickered over her face, taking in every detail. His nose, blunt at the tip; his lips full and quite lickable.
“You gonna calm down now, darlin’? Or should I drop you on that pretty ass again?”
Emma Luchessi—worshipper of the Dark Mothers, power elemental of the Coven of the Darkest Night, ninth-level Master of the dream realm, and Long Island accountant for the law offices of Bruce, MacArthur, and Markowitz—didn’t know what to say to that. What to say to him. Mostly because she couldn’t stop staring at the man standing over her.
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No one appreciated tradition, she thought with a spark of mutiny as she stepped backward toward the curb. Her gaze was trained on the hotel, counting floors and picking out the windows of the suite where she had grown up. Everyone wanted everything to change, all the time. Newer, improved, bigger, better. It was absurd. Some things deserved to stay just the way they were. And Callender House was one of them. Her father had entrusted her with it, and she wasn’t going to let him down.
It was a little disconcerting that she couldn’t
pick out the old suite’s windows automatically, however. Once upon a time, she’d been able to do it in her sleep—she’d spent the first eighteen years of her life there, after all. She took another step backward, craning her neck as she counted up each floor, then over five windows—or was it six? The perspective was a little different now that she was taller.
She stepped backward again, squinting now, trying to remember—until a pair of very strong hands thrust her forward and a cab blared its horn.
She was still stumbling for balance when she heard something else hit the pavement with a wet splat, and then an irritable, “Oh, bloody hell.”
Uh-oh.
She grabbed a parking meter to right herself, and turned around to find a cabbie giving her a one-fingered salute as he drove off—and a rock star covered with what looked like a mocha latte, an exploded suitcase, and a dropped backpack at his feet. The sidewalk was littered with jeans and T-shirts.
He looked like a rock star, at least. First there were the faded jeans and what appeared to Olivia like motorcycle boots, black leather that had seen better days and plenty of wear. Then the layered shirts, a long-sleeved gray one under a short-sleeved dark blue one with Mick Jagger’s luscious pout on the front. Finally there was his hair, dark and shaggy around his face—and splattered with creamy white foam, just like his visage. And the white snakes of his iPod, which he pulled from his ears and shook over the sidewalk, spraying foam and coffee.
She swallowed hard. “I’m so sorry. So sorry. You don’t even know…”
“I can imagine well enough,” he said with a dry smile, shaking latte out of his hair like a wet dog. His eyes were gray, she noticed. Deep, stormy gray, and fixed on her face. “You and that cab would have ended in blood and tears, now wouldn’t you?”
“Um…” She knew, vaguely, that her mouth was hanging open, but she couldn’t seem to close it, much less find an intelligent response. She hadn’t expected the British accent. Something inside her melted into a warm puddle.
She’d dreamed about men like him. Well, “fantasized” was probably more accurate. In her sleeping dreams, men tended to be a strange combination of Cary Grant and that guy from the Verizon commercials.
But men like this one, those were the kind in her daydreams. Except this one possibly was better.
And she’d…splattered him.
“You’re all right, yeah?” he asked, wiping his face. “I didn’t mean to shove you quite so hard.”
“You…Well, you saved me from being hit by a cab.” She shrugged as a heated blush spread over her cheeks. “I’m fine. You’re…”
“A bit of a wreck at the moment, I know.” He grinned at her then, a sudden flash of mischief and sunshine. Licking his upper lip, he added with a wink, “Brilliant latte.”
Completely cool. Completely confident.
Completely unlike any man she had ever met.
In her head, there was no problem. She would say something witty, or smart, or maybe even flirty. He would lean in and flirt back, invite her to dinner. She would give him a mysterious little wave when she left, maybe flip her hair a bit. In her imagination, hair-flipping got them every time.
But this wasn’t her imagination. This was real, right here, right now. This was overwhelming.
Especially when he pulled up the hems of his T-shirts and wiped off his face, revealing a lean, muscled abdomen.
So much for offering him a towel from the hotel. So much for any hope of getting her racing pulse under control.
And he wasn’t even going to give her a chance to try. “Bit of trick, walking backward, yeah?” he said, letting his shirts fall and wiping his hands on the back of his jeans.
“Oh. Right.” Her cheeks were on fire. She wouldn’t have been surprised to see an actual flame lick the tip of her nose. “That was…dumb.”
“Not in an empty meadow, maybe.” His grin was as lopsided as the hotel’s nameplate, and a lot more appealing. “On a Manhattan street now…”
“I know. I am sorry.” She gestured helplessly at his ruined shirts, at the empty cup on the pavement.
“No worries, love. Pleasure to meet you…”
“Olivia.” She put her hand in his when he offered it, and an actual thrill of excitement raced through her. Which was silly, because he was simply being nice. It was probably a British thing. Nothing to do with her at all.
“Rhys,” he said, and she realized he was still holding her hand. His was nice, firm and warm and stronger than she would have imagined for a man with such long, lean fingers.
But she couldn’t stand here all day holding hands, pining after him like some teenager, even if she wanted to. It was time to step away. Get back to work. Take her tattered dignity back to her office and mend it with a big fat muffin.
Right. She was stepping away now. Yes, now.
Except for the fact that it wouldn’t be polite to leave him to the scattered contents of his suitcase all by himself, would it?
She untangled her fingers from his and knelt down to pick up a pair of jeans—and found a jumbled pile of boxer briefs beneath them. She dropped the jeans with a little gasp of embarrassment, and looked up to see Rhys grinning at her.
“I’ll take the unmentionables, love.”
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Reaching for her beer, Elizabeth took a sip, and for the first time that night felt a little normal. The atmosphere of the bar seemed to envelope her, like she was meant to be there. A much needed sense of contentment filled her. The talking, the laughter, the smell of drinks and salty roasted peanuts. It made her feel oddly better. This was a good idea—a good distraction. Tomorrow she’d return to her research in a more relaxed and focused state.
Elizabeth smiled as Jill Lewis finally took the stage. The reluctant woman shook her head, glaring good-naturedly at her friends.
“All right!” Jolee cheered from over her microphone, and much of the bar exploded into applause. Elizabeth clapped along with them.
Jolee started the music and the woman’s voice filled the room almost from the first note, asking the listeners to go on and leave her breathless. Elizabeth recognized the tune as a song from the radio with a happy, contagious beat. And the woman sang it well—better than well. It was little wonder that her pals had been urging her to get up there. She was great.
Elizabeth looked back to the woman’s table of friends to see their reaction to the woman’s fantastic singing. Two of them, a man and a woman, beamed and clapped. While the other at the table, a male, just watched, somehow distant from the other two. The clapping male leaned over to say something to him; and the one who only watched turned toward his friend, giving Elizabeth her first full view of his face.
Elizabeth’s smile disappeared. Desire, so strong that it almost made her cry out, ripped through her, shredding any impression of calm she’d found. Every muscle in her body tensed, every sense sharpening until her whole being was centered on the man before her.
Without saying a word to Christian, she rose. Carefully, purposefully, she zigzagged through the tables, her eyes never leaving the man. Just tables away, she stopped herself, fragments of her reasonable mind taking control. She glanced back at the bar. Christian watched her, but when he saw her looking, he busied himself by taking an order from one of the patrons.
Her brother could sense her desire now. Of course he could. Vampires could sense emotions—and she knew hers ran very strong. Shame filled her, but still her gaze returned to the male at the table.
The man was beautiful: dark hair, sculpted features, perfectly shaped lips that any woman would have killed for—yet on him they were sinfully masculine. He was beyond handsome.
But while Elizabeth had seen many handsome men in her life, never had her body reacted like this.
She swallowed. Control yourself! What was she doing?
But instead of walking back to her barstool as her brain ordered
her to, she took another step toward the table of friends. Then another. She sauntered slowly past the man’s chair, not getting too close, not drawing attention to herself—not just yet. She had to assess, she had to watch. Stalk her prey.
She lifted her head to breathe in his scent. The hint of woodsy cologne, the freshness of soap and shampoo, the minty traces of toothpaste. And a warm, rich aroma—a scent that made her want to tip back her head and howl.
She continued around the table until he was directly in her line of sight, and she sat down at an empty table. Eyes trained on him, she studied. Oh yeah, she wanted him.
For just a moment, she closed her eyes as her rational mind took tenuous control. Why was this happening? It was as if the wolf was in control. But that didn’t happen. She didn’t stay in human form and think like a wolf. She didn’t allow that. Some werewolves did. Brody did. He was more wolf than man at all times. She didn’t allow that. She didn’t.
Her eyes snapped open. The man was looking at her. She’d felt his gaze before she’d actually seen it. Their gazes met; but even in the dim light, she could see his eyes were a mixture of brown and green.
Again her body told her this was what she needed. This was what she’d been wanting. He was what she wanted. She continued to stare, meeting his gaze, until he looked away. Still she watched him. Unable to do otherwise. The need was in control now.
She was acting like a bitch in heat. And she didn’t care.
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Copyright © 2007 by Sylvia Day
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