He was one of the most likable people at work and I had grown fond of him even if there had been that carefully constructed barrier between us. I had recognized his voice immediately, but looked up to confirm it was him all the same.
Luke Kapur had taken the stool next to mine at the bar. Black curls were left just long enough to be tousled attractively, matching the thick, dark fringe framing his eyes. Those eyes of his were some of the strangest I had ever seen. He was of East Indian descent and his coloring all matched that normally enough except for his eyes. In theory, they were brown. The brown was interrupted by narrow rings of orange around his pupils, however. The orange wasn’t obvious at first, but once I had noticed it I hadn’t been able to ever ignore it again.
I sipped off of my whiskey, then set it down again. “Do you really want to know?”
Unlike him, there wasn’t anything even remotely dark in my coloring. The rest of my family was relatively dark Italian American. They had hair that ranged from dark brown to black and olive toned skin. Some trick of recessive genes had spat me out with skin that burned after five minutes in the sun and auburn hair. I’d been convinced I was switched at birth until I was ten, when I saw old photographs of my great-grandmother who had looked quite a bit like me.
Luke shrugged, which was a strangely elegant gesture on him. Muscles bunched and moved fluidly, briefly drawing his shirt a bit tighter across his shoulders as they were drawn up. “Wouldn’t ask if I didn’t.”
“It’s my ex-husband. Just officially ex-husband.” I brushed the fingers of one hand over where my ring should have been.
“Are congratulations in order?” he ventured.
“I guess so, yeah. It’s a good thing.”
Luke smiled. “Good. I couldn’t pretend to be sad you finally got rid of him.”
Keep Reading…
Book Two in the Claimed by an Alpha series…
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Going into heat twice a year is not feline shifter Fatima’s idea of a good time. She isn’t looking to have kittens and she sure as hell isn’t looking for a mate. Hiding out in an isolated cabin during a snow storm seems like the safest way to wait it out. Unfortunately, an alpha werewolf named Dylan has already claimed the area as his territory. He’s come to claim Fatima, too.
***
“Are you sure you want to stay out here? It’s awful dangerous for a woman by herself, with this big storm coming and all.”
I snatched the key out of the old man’s hands and resisted the urge to yell at him. He was fussing and trying to be helpful, but between his good-intentioned sexism and the hormones screaming through my bloodstream, I was fairly certain he wouldn’t survive if he stuck around any longer.
“Yes, I’m sure. Thank you.” I flashed him a tight smile and just about bodily shoved him out the cabin door before I shut and locked it.
Alone at last, I sank down to the floor and just laid on the wood there for a moment, my eyes closed, breathing a bit unsteady. I’d been traveling through Oregon when I’d felt the first stirrings of the season come upon me. Usually, it came closer to February. A Christmas heat was unexpected and annoying. If I got pregnant, I knew I’d have some relief during the pregnancy and while lactating, but all of the male werecats I’d known were assholes and I had no desire to raise their children. Being a solitary species, us cats didn’t have the benefits of a pack structure influencing our breeding like with wolves. Once in winter and then a milder heat in summer had been hitting me year after year since I’d turned eighteen.
A cabin out on Mount Hood during a sudden snow storm was perfect. No one could get to me and I couldn’t get to anyone else. I’d be in agony, but it was safer this way. Both for me and for any stupid human male that crossed my path. Feline shifter females were violent when aroused and it only became worse when we were in heat. To ensure I didn’t go tearing anyone’s throat out when fucking, I’d had to insist on all my past lovers tying me up.
They thought I was submissive. They really had no idea.
The sound of a wolf howling in the distance pulled me back to the world around me. They’d been reintroduced in Idaho from Canada a few years back and their population had been growing as they spread to neighboring states. Unlike the feline or rodent shifters who preferred to live close to humanity, the lycanthropes tended to stick close to their wild relatives. When real wolves were almost wiped out by humans, so were the wolf shifters. It was possible their population was growing alongside their animal counterparts, though.
Keep Reading…
Book Four in the Claimed by an Alpha series…
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All her life, Tina Tybault has felt wrong. Troubling dreams, sleepwalking, and adopted parents who locked her up at night didn’t help. Instead of the relaxing summer off from college she expected she instead found herself waking up naked in the woods one morning. A gorgeous stranger stood over her, claiming she was in heat and there to be his mate.
***
There was moss under my cheek. I opened my eyes and all I could see was a carpet of green extending outward. The air was cool, much cooler than my bedroom should have been in summer. Then again, my bedroom shouldn’t have had moss and I didn’t generally make it a habit to sleep on the ground. I pushed myself up on my hands, which was when I realized that I was naked and in the middle of the woods.
“Well shit,” I muttered, rubbing one hand over my face.
Vague memories of the night before came drifting back to me, but they weren’t very helpful. Under normal circumstances, I’d dismiss them as dreams. I’d had dreams like this many times before, after all. I’d be running around on all fours, somehow transformed to a wolf, and I’d hunt and eat my kills with impunity. When I was tired, I’d return to my den—my own bedroom—and then wake up in the morning exhausted, but none the worse for wear. A few times I’d had sleepwalking experiences and woken up outside instead of in my bedroom, but those had become less frequent as I’d grown. My parents putting bars on my windows and locking my bedroom at night probably helped curb it.
But now I was in college and living like an independent adult with other students off campus. And the result of that greater freedom was sleepwalking my way out into the woods, apparently. Which was especially strange since I didn’t live particularly close to any woods.
“Are you all right?” a deep, masculine voice asked. There was a faint drawl to it, making me think of Texas or Oklahoma.
I sprang to my feet in a move so quick it would surprise me later when I could reflect on it. I spun to face the voice and saw a man crouched on an outcropping of stone, watching me with an apparently interested look on his face. He had thick black hair that was somewhat shaggy, deep brown eyes, and olive-toned skin. He wore a pair of well broken in jeans and a white t-shirt with a flannel thrown over it. Despite that nod to the coolness of the morning out here in the hills, he wore no shoes.
I crossed one arm across my breasts and tried to cover the rest of my nakedness with my other arm, which wasn’t very effective. “Who are you? Did you…do anything to me?”
One expressive black eyebrow quirked upward. “You don’t remember?”
He braced a hand against the rock he was perched on, then leapt down nimbly into the mossy hollow where I had been resting. He nodded over to a small pile of fur and bones and blood not far from where I had been sleeping. “You seemed a bit out of it when I saw you last night, so I didn’t approach closely. You hunted, ate, and went to sleep. I’ve just been waiting for you to wake up.”
I stared at the shredded remains of the rabbit, feeling my stomach lurch. How many times had I dreamed about hunting like that? Had I done this before while sleepwalking? The idea was terribly disturbing. How did I even know that it was only rabbits I had ever hurt?
When my eyes raised to the man again, I looked at him more closely. It was easier to see him now that he wasn’t crouched up on the rock and it was difficult not to admire what I could see. He was tall, with broad shoulders w
ell-proportioned to his height. His body narrowed down to slim hips and long, muscular legs that were lovingly hugged by his jeans. My eyes traveled up his body back to his face, where full lips were curved into a faintly puzzled smile as he looked me over. His cheekbones were high and prominent, his nose straight and well built. His eyes were almond-shaped and fringed by dark, silky lashes. There was a light dusting of dark stubble across his cheeks, attesting to his claim that he had been watching me all night. He looked like he was a little older than me, perhaps in his mid-twenties or later, but it was difficult to be sure. He was gorgeous, in any case, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt such knee-shaking lust from just one look at a man. It was likely that I’d never felt anything like this before at all.
There were dozens of questions I was desperate to ask, but the most practical came to my tongue first. “Could I borrow your shirt?”
He looked amused, then pulled off the flannel before tossing it to me. I caught it easily and pulled it on, immediately aware of the spicy male musk of his natural scent on it. I could have bathed in that scent, so rich and beguiling it was. The shirt hit me at around mid-thigh, but it covered my breasts, butt, and genitals, so I wasn’t going to complain too much.
“I’m sorry. You must think I’m crazy,” I said.
He cocked his head to the side to regard me curiously. “Must I?”
I stared at him for a moment, then gestured down to the remains of the rabbit. “I wasn’t exactly acting normal last night, was I?”
“No, but I’ve never met a solitary female in heat before.” He shrugged, the soft cotton of his t-shirt drawing tight against the tightly corded muscles of his chest. “I imagine being a little out of it is to be expected.”
I stared at him for a moment, thinking over the bizarre wording he had just used. The only people I’d known to ever use “female” as a noun for identifying women in a sentence like that had been ragingly sexist. Coupling that with him saying I was in heat and the whole thing seemed unspeakably creepy. I hugged the shirt around myself, as if I could will it to cover more.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but could you let me borrow your phone or something? I’m in kind of desperate need for pants,” I said.
“Who are you calling?” he asked as he took a few steps closer to me.
I automatically backed up. The hot stranger hadn’t done a thing to make me feel threatened beyond saying some weird stuff, but I just instinctively knew I didn’t want to get too close to him yet. There was some undercurrent going on through all of this that I couldn’t yet make sense of.
“My roommates. One of them should be able to find me and bring me clothes.” I glanced away from the stranger for a moment, noting just how deep the woods looked here. “Where are we exactly?”
“Redwood Regional Park.”
That made me stare at him again, shocked by how much distance I had covered in my sleep. The little house we were renting wasn’t that far from the university, but now I was at least ten miles from there. And naked.
“Did you drive me here? How did that happen?” I demanded.
His brows drew together and he looked as if he was trying to figure something out. Something absurd, by the expression on his face. After a moment he closed the distance between us in three quick strides and grabbed hold of my arms, making me yip in shock and fear. Rather than attack me, he buried his face in the side of my neck and inhaled deeply, then followed around to the other side and back into my hair.
There shouldn’t have been anything erotic in something so strange as sniffing me, yet my body felt differently. A rush of arousal that made me light-headed struck me and I wavered a bit on my legs, feeling overwhelmed by his nearness. Even through the flannel I could feel the heat of his hands on my arms. The scent of him on the shirt had been appealing before, but it was nothing in comparison to his presence so close.
When he pulled back from taking my scent, I could see his pupils were dilated and his tan skin was slightly flushed. I wondered if glancing down would find his jeans drawn tight. He released me as if I had burned him and took a few steps backwards to put space between us once again.
“You’re a wolf and you haven’t a clue,” he said at last. “I thought you were just solitary like me, but…you’re not, are you?”
Keep Reading…
Book Five in the Claimed by an Alpha series…
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A pregnant librarian isn’t the sort of person who should have to worry about an alpha male werewolf, but luck isn’t on Fatima Malik’s side. After a week of ecstasy in a secluded cabin with Dylan Collinee, she ran, carrying his child. Now Dylan has hunted her down and isn’t about to take no for an answer. Yet things are more complicated than a bit of panic over commitment. Fatima is a feline shifter herself and neither the wolves nor the cats are ready to accept such a forbidden mating.
***
Though there were several young people in the children’s library, they were all dutifully quiet save one. Paper rustled as little fingers turned the pages in their books. A little boy over by the easy reader section was clunking the pieces of a chunky wooden puzzle into place. The pieces made muffled thuds and clicks as they were pushed into place, lightly scraping at the edges of the puzzle. Whooshes of arms swooping through the air came from a girl wordlessly flailing her way through a video game in the multimedia center. Lights and elderly monitors hummed as computer fans spun to keep themselves cool, so low and quiet human ears would have to concentrate to pick out the omnipresent background noise. To my left, tiny claws and a furry body were scrambling around.
Two hamsters were kept as library pets. They were named Zig and Zag and were in separate cages on either side of my desk. From the silence to my right, I assumed Zag—the female—was asleep. Zig could be heard climbing in the recycled newspaper bedding in the bottom of his cage.
I could smell both rodents, but didn’t find them to be particularly tempting prey. Animals kept in cages weren’t food. It was the chase that made prey worthwhile. My shifted form wasn’t much bigger than any standard house cat, but I preferred challenging prey when I hunted. Rabbits were a good start.
The hamsters weren’t the only thing I could smell. The wood pulp scent of several hundred books filled the air, a scent I had always associated with comfort. A hint of warm plastics and wires from the various electronics laid over the fragrance of paper. And then there was the sickly sweet bubble gum currently wafting up to me from the mouth of the sole child in the entire library who could not stay quiet.
“And then it ate the rabbit,” Abbie said, widening her eyes dramatically as she came to the climax of her story. Done with her tale, her mouth snapped shut to busily chomp on that gum. Her little jaws worked in almost the exact same way as one of the hamsters on a treat.
Black corkscrews pulled up in pigtails bobbed on either side of her head in time to her gum chewing. The hair ties holding her hair in place had little balls, which the elastic of the tie was then wrapped around. My mother had never had much interest in her children and my hair had been kept boyishly short all through my childhood so she wouldn’t have to bother with it. I liked the way the hair ties looked, but had no idea what they were called. I wondered if I would style my daughter’s hair like that. If I had a daughter.
Abbie’s skin was a similar golden bronze to mine, though our ancestry came from different parts of the world. Her father’s family was Filipino and Puerto Rican. He and I had chatted on occasion when he dropped her off or picked her up for story time. Her mother was one of those random white American mixes, with similar curls to Abbie’s except in light brown. My mother had come to America from Egypt and I had no real idea who my father was beyond the fact that he was white. I honestly wasn’t entirely sure if my mother knew either.
The onyx black mirrors of Abbie’s eyes anxiously watched my own gray ones, awaiting some response. I took a deep breath, trying to remember the details of her outlandish story.
; “That’s very imaginative. I don’t think I ever heard of a tiger monster hunting rabbits before. Did you read that in a book?”
She pursed her lips into a frown as she shook her head, dark curls bouncing against either cheek with the motion. “It wasn’t in a book. I saw the tiger monster.”
I frowned slightly as I took Abbie’s book from her to check it out. She didn’t have a history of lying at the library or having trouble separating fantasy from reality. I wondered if she was doing the same thing at home and made a mental note to make sure everything was all right when her father came back from the main library to get her.
“You told me you hate kids, Fatima. Why surround yourself with them?”
That familiar voice chilled my blood. I looked up from the book, though my eyes weren’t necessary to confirm what I already knew. Dylan was standing behind the little girl. He had a mild smile on his face, one thumb casually hooked on his belt buckle. His jeans hugged muscular thighs, his soft gray t-shirt doing more to highlight the definition of his chest and upper arms than provide cover. He was missing the ten gallon hat and an oiled up chest, but otherwise he looked like he’d just stepped out of a sexy cowboy calendar.
The Oklahoma drawl to his voice added to the good ol’ boy illusion, but I knew he was more than that. I’d kept a tight lid on myself, but he hadn’t. He had told me about how he worked private security for the wealthy. He was faster and stronger and far more lethal than any mere bodyguard, but most of his work was focused on surveillance rather than diving in front of bullets, he’d said. He knew his way around all sorts of gadgets for turning a mansion into a fortress and what cameras might miss, his nose never did. It had been silly of me to think I could get away from him. If he wanted to find me, he would. He did.
His eyes were a soft green at the moment. Not the amber of his wolf form. That was good, but I’d heard enough stories of just how dangerous an angry alpha werewolf could be to distrust those eyes. Among the werewolves, it took attaining a special level of power—being alpha—to be able to partially shift. Cats didn’t have that limitation, as each of us was our own alpha. Almost all of us could partially shift upon reaching adulthood. We weren’t anywhere near as dangerous as the wolves, though. He could give control over to his wolf side at any moment and slaughter everyone in the library.
Once Bitten, Twice Claimed (Claimed by an Alpha Paranormal Romance Book 3) Page 14
