Shifters in the Shadows: Seventeen Paranormal Romances of Sexy Shifters, Dangerous Vamps, & Things That Go Bump in the Night

by J. K Harper

  She held out her hands and made grabby motions with her fingers that Rhett was powerless to resist. He took her cool hands in his hot ones and gently helped her to her feet.

  She smoothed her dress down, running her hands across her hips and thighs, and an involuntary growl escaped from Rhett’s throat. If she did that again, he’d need to leave and find a nice cold lake to soak in.

  Chapter 7

  It was a lie. But when you don’t care what other people think, lying is easy.

  But then this horrified expression exploded on Sarah’s face and Simone immediately regretted it. She just wanted an excuse to get into the vaults, she didn’t want to cause anyone any pain.

  The muscled shifter held on to her hands a moment too long as he helped her up off the floor. He was so much bigger than her, it was incredible. She’d never really been so close to a bear shifter before. In her mind, they’d been dopey and ridiculous, like Yogi Bear and Homer Simpson smushed together. But this guy was anything but. He was impressive. And it wasn’t just his body—which was really, really nice from what she could see of it. No, it was his presence. There was an intelligence in his eyes that belied his bruiser exterior. He looked at her and he saw her, not just some chubby girl in line at the cafe, wearing a bit too much black.

  The power that swelled inside him was fascinating, too.

  She’d dated a werewolf for like an hour in college and this guy in front of her couldn’t have been more different. The wolf had an annoying neediness to him. He wanted a pack and an alpha and a mother and children all at the same time, and Simone couldn’t be all those things to him. She’d written shifters off after that as being too much work, but this guy. This guy radiated strength and confidence like the sun gives off heat. It was fascinating and she wanted to know more, to see more.

  Simone had to remind herself that any spell would surely trigger the Queen’s alarms, so any proper magical investigation of the bear would have to wait until later.

  “Danny!” Sarah yelled, as if he’d even know his name. “I’m coming for you!” And then she bolted past Simone, down the stairs, into the vaults and dungeons and who-knows-what that the Queen had below.

  “Damn it,” growled the bear as he barreled past Simone. As he passed, she caught the scent of cinnamon and wood smoke and something musky and masculine that made her melt inside. She closed her eyes and rocked back on her heels, as if she’d been drugged. What was happening to her? It must be her heart. Being so near was giving her out-sized reactions to everything, but surely once it was safely back in her chest she’d feel normal again and would stop swooning like some silly little girl.

  Simone took the stairs carefully, which was the only way she could walk in her dress and heels. She could have ditched the shoes, but she’d seen that movie and knew that the Queen would have no trouble tracking her down if she left anything personal behind. So no, the shoes stayed on.

  The steps were old damp stone, worn smooth and uneven from use. How many feet had padded down this way? How many decades of use did it take to wear out stone? She always thought of flesh as being weak, at least compared to rock. But this was evidence that sometimes the weak and the soft won. Weak and soft feet had trod upon hard stone and with every footfall they’d worked away a few grains of the stone. Feet could heal. Rocks never would. Score one for Team Fleshy Soft Things.

  Dim torches lined the wall at irregular intervals, leaving deep blackened marks on the walls behind them. The light didn’t seem to reach far down here, as if the shadows themselves were thicker and stronger and better able to fight back.

  Sarah’s voice echoed from below, but it sounded too far, like she was fifty floors below. But that was impossible, right?

  Simone halted on a landing where the bear shifter stood. She was huffing for breath. Her lips tingled from exertion and her head felt all fuzzy. It was like she couldn’t quite get enough air, despite gulping for it. If only she could sit down somewhere and rest a bit.

  But her air wasn’t coming. Her gulps grew more desperate, her vision began to gray out at the edges. She was hyperventilating, she knew, and she should try to calm down, but knowing that she was hyperventilating only made her panic more.

  “What is it?” the bear asked, his clear eyes searching hers.

  “Can’t,” she gasped, “breathe!”

  The big man cocked his head and looked her up and down. Something golden and miraculous shone in his eyes. It was a glimpse of the magic that lived within him, of the bear spirit and the limitless power it possessed. He stepped forward and seized the edge of her bodice. His rough fingers plunged down into her dress, rubbing hard against her nipples and before Simone could yell or moan or do anything at all, he ripped the bodice right off her, tearing it in half.

  A flood of relief and cool air greeted her and suddenly she could breathe again. It was the corset, the damn corset. She’d tightened it too much and it must have shifted in just the wrong way when she fell on her ass upstairs. It was a stupid mistake, but without the bear’s help, she would’ve been caught down in the dungeons, unconscious from asphyxiation.

  “Thank you,” she panted. Then added, “What’s your name?”

  “Rhett,” he said. He held her ripped corset in his hands and brought it up to his face, inhaling deeply. “But I probably shouldn’t have told you that, seeing as how you’re a witch, and don’t try and deny it. I can smell it all over your clothes.”

  “A name given freely is a fine gift, Rhett Bearheart. And a gift demands an exchange.” The words were an old witch tradition, a way of sealing a friendship. “And so, as light follows dark, I give you my name as Simone.”

  “Simone,” he said with a satisfied rumble and a hint of a smile on his lips.

  She loved the way her name sounded coming from his mouth.

  “We should catch up to Sarah,” she said.

  Rhett nodded, sniffed the air and descended farther down the steps. Simone followed, taking each step carefully. She could breathe now, but there was a lingering dizziness that could prove troublesome at any moment.

  “You’re going too slow,” Rhett growled. “She’s already far ahead of us.”

  “This is as fast as I can walk down stairs in heels. Why don’t you go on without me?”

  He gave her an appraising look. “No, I don’t think I can let you out of my sight.” He stepped towards her, looming huge in the shadowy light, and before she knew what was happening he’d scooped her up in his deliciously firm arms and was running down the stairs, taking them three at a time.

  Had she ever been picked up before? The men she went for tended to be smaller, skinny, almost wispy both in body and mind. She’d probably outweighed all of them. But this guy, this bear shifter, he held her like she weighed nothing at all. He was running down the stairs with her in his arms and he wasn’t even sweating.

  Her skin tingled where it touched his. His masculine scent swirled around in a dizzying fog. It was hugely distracting and she really hoped the big man couldn’t smell how wet she was getting—otherwise he might get the wrong idea. Clearly it was being so close to her heart that was making every inch of her freak out in his presence. As soon as she had it back, she’d be normal again and could leave all thoughts of him behind. But for now she wanted to smash her face into his. She wanted him to rip her clothes off and just break her in half with his cock.

  Rhett sniffed the air. “This way,” he said.

  At the next landing, several stories below the party, a wooden door creaked quietly on its hinges. It was ajar and Sarah’s trail led inside.

  Chapter 8

  Why had he picked her up? What had he been thinking?

  Being near her was making his bear crazy. He’d never known the bear had such a problem with thieves, or witches. It’d taken him a few moments to realize she was a willworker. They can be hard to spot, seeing as how they’re essentially mortals and don’t have the same tells as other supernaturals. But they can never hide the lingering purple-ti
nged scent of magic that clings to their possessions. They could mask themselves, but everything leaves its mark in the world—magic especially. It wasn’t until he’d sniffed her bodice that he’d realized what she was—he couldn’t even begin to think about the smooth softness of her breasts as he’d torn it from her body.

  What would it feel like to plunge into that softness? To feel all that silky soft skin envelop him? Rhett bit hard on the inside of his cheek, tasted blood, and found his focus again.

  It was getting harder to think around her. Was it magic? Was it something the Queen had done? He wouldn’t put it past her to lace the aromatic candles with something. In fact, it was exactly her style from what he could tell.

  Picking Simone up had been pure instinct. He wanted to protect her, to save her. That had never been his m.o. before. No, he was the guy who broke things. He was the guy that tore defenders down. This protective feeling—it was unfamiliar. It was not unlike how he felt when his pack was together, that sense of belonging, of finding a place that was home. Well, not a place exactly. Home didn’t need to be a physical location. You learned that quick with a pack—home was where your heart was. And his heart had always been with his friends.

  But Simone smelled like home to him and it was driving him crazy.

  It must be a spell. But he didn’t sense a spell, and control spells rarely worked well on bears, but maybe she was just that good. She was stealing from the Raven Queen, after all. And that took serious skills.

  He tried to keep his mind busy and his senses focused away from her. She was a vortex of infinite depths that his senses wanted to dive into. But he couldn’t do that, not yet.

  Somewhere in the dungeon of the Raven Queen, his Alpha’s mate was lost.

  Rhett pushed Simone as far away from his thoughts as he could, which wasn’t far, and instead seized on Sarah’s scent. She smelled like avocadoes and tea tree oil and soap. He followed the scent down several floors until it led off into a darkened hallway. Her scent was heavy on the doorknob. She’d come this way.

  Simone slapped his chest with her cool hands. “Let me down, big guy. I can walk from here.”

  Rhett’s bear growled inside him, making clear he thought letting her go was a terrible idea, and maybe it was. Maybe she’d blast him with magic, steal something and run away. But he didn’t think so. So he gently lowered her to her feet. As she slid out of his arms, all softness and silk, Rhett closed his eyes and clenched his jaw to hold himself back. He was close to growling for her, to slamming her against the nearest wall and kissing her until he bruised her lips. But she would run away after that.

  A girl like her? No way she’d be into a big thug like him. She needed somebody smart and wizardly, like a Gandalf or whatever. Someone she could go to museums with and talk arcane theory with. The only experience Rhett had with museums was robbing them.

  “What’s that?” Simone said, pulling away from him and walking into the darkness with a swaying stride that swung her ass back and forth and damn near killed him. She yanked a torch off the wall and held it out before her as she walked.

  Ahead of her, in the middle of the hallway, was a crystal statue. It was sapphire blue, shot through with tiny bursts of ruby red, and it looked just like a person frozen in surprise.

  “That’s a weird place for a statue,” Rhett said. “This must be one of her treasure vaults.” He glanced around but couldn’t see anything. Even the walls seemed to have receded. It was just the two of them and the statue, in a tiny circle of light.

  Simone’s heart was pounding. Her skin gave off the unmistakable tang of adrenaline and fear.

  “What’s wrong?” Rhett asked.

  “That isn’t a statue. I mean, it is. It clearly is, but more accurately it’s a person.”

  Rhett examined the statue. She was right.

  “What did this? Does she have a medusa down here?”

  “Medusas are extinct. Super extinct. No, I think this was a trap.”

  From down the hall, Sarah’s voice yelled for Danny and then squawked in alarm. Rhett’s ears picked up a fizzling echo.

  “This way,” he said. On an impulse, he took her hand in his and led her down deeper into the darkness. She passed him the torch and as he held it aloft he saw more crystalline figures. Men and women, young and old—all had been caught in some spell and transformed forever.

  Rhett had to keep his senses trained forwards, because if he thought at all about the panic he could sense in Simone he’d need to stop and comfort her. And comforting her would lead to other things, he knew it. They didn’t have time for that right now. As much as it pained him to not acknowledge her fear, he pressed on.

  “There are so many of them,” Simone hissed.

  The hallway they were in split and branched and curved, but Rhett followed his nose and soon they found Sarah. Or rather, a blue crystal statue that was exactly her shape.

  “No,” Rhett said. “No. This can’t happen. She was too good for this kind of death.” She and Danny, they wanted kids. They were so happy together. And now she was gone. What the hell would he tell Danny? And what would Danny do when he found out? If his Alpha went to war with the ravens, Rhett would back him. So would every other bear on the west coast. There hadn’t been a shifter war since before Rhett was born. Maybe they were overdue? Maybe this—a woman taking a wrong step—was all it would take to light a spark and set old feuds ablaze.

  He’d heard some of the old timers in the Lodge talk about the old shifter wars. They had cute names for them, like The War of Beak and Bone, or The August Bloodening. But it didn’t change the fact that it was war and a lot of people got hurt.

  If he told Danny about this, people would die.

  If he didn’t tell Danny, he’d be betraying his Alpha.

  “Hey,” Simone said, yanking on Rhett’s hand. “Hey, tall dark and broody. She’s not gone yet. I know it looks bad, but I can fix this. I really can. I just need a little more help from you to do it.”

  She smiled as she said it, like there was some private joke that only she knew about. His friend had been turned into blue glass, and she was smiling.

  “What do you need?” he growled.

  “I need to find my heart.”

  Chapter 9

  For as rough and tough as the big bear shifter seemed to be, he wore his heart on his sleeve. When he saw Sarah caught up in the Queen’s petrification trap, frozen like Han Solo in carbonite, Simone could see every one of his emotions and thoughts on his face. She could read him like a book. And that was different. Usually people were a mystery to her. Was it because she was very near her heart, or was there another reason?

  “What do you mean, find your heart?” the bear growled, and the rumble of his growl rolled across her skin like hot water, making her gasp and sway on her feet.

  It wasn’t her heart making her feel these things, it was him. His scent, his growl, and even the hot hardness of his body were all conspiring against her. They were a spell, she realized. A trap. Every facet of his being had been designed to ensnare her. It started slowly, before she knew what was going on, like every good spell. But a few touches later, and a really solid arm-carry down some stairs, and she could feel it working on her.

  It may not have literally been magic, but attraction and desire were just as mysterious and just as capable of changing the world.

  Good thing she realized what was going on. If she hadn’t, she could have blindly fallen under his sway, but now that she realized that every bit of her body was desperate to melt for him, she could take precautions.

  But what fun would that be?

  “Yes, my heart,” she said. “I need my heart. See, I sort of traded it to the Raven Queen when I was only a teenager in exchange for magical abilities, but I want it back now.”

  Rhett watched her with searching eyes. “That’s what you’re here to steal? Your heart?”

  Simone nodded. She could sense hesitation in him, so she stepped closer and placed a hand on his ches
t. “And you’ve promised to stop me, haven’t you? Somehow the Queen knew I was coming and she cannot bear to let anything go, even a sadly shriveled underused thing like my heart.”

  “Why’d you trade it? Seems to me like a heart is a pretty useful thing.”

  “I always thought they got in the way.” Had he stepped closer to her or had she moved closer to him?

  The torch in his hand popped and sizzled, throwing sparks up into the air.

  “I can’t help you. I promised the Queen I’d catch whoever tried to steal from her tonight, and you know how she is with contracts. If I steal the heart, she’ll lock me up in here and there won’t be a damn thing I can do to stop her.”

  Simone bit her lip. There had to be a way to get her heart back and not lose Rhett, too. She’d just met him, after all, and hadn’t even had a chance to ruin everything yet.

  “Let’s just find my heart. You can help with that, right?”

  Rhett glanced back at Sarah.

  “She’ll be okay,” Simone soothed. “Once I have my heart, I can save her.”

  The big shifter sighed and nodded. “Let me go first,” he growled. “Step where I step.”

  “You could carry me again,” Simone said. Right to my bedroom.

  Rhett shook his head. “If some trap goes off, behind me would be the safest place to be.” And then with quick steps he set off down the hall. Simone followed behind, being careful to walk in his footsteps. Dimly she could see runes floating above the stone floor. But not until she’d nearly brushed her ankles across one. Rhett stomped through most of them, his natural strength smashing the wards to pieces as if they were eggshells. Any one of them would have been enough to knock Simone on her ass. She saw runes that made you blind, that hurled you into the ceiling, that teleported you into a dungeon. The Queen had seriously gone overboard in her trapping.

  A few runes did trigger—Rhett was assaulted by a flying sword that he seized with a shockingly quick movement and shattered into pieces, and then he was briefly set on fire, but in seconds the flames subsided.