Daughters of Circe 3
Riley
Soren wants Riley. He’s left behind all the power he once wielded in order to be with her. Once he finds her, their union triggers events three thousand years in the making. Hidden beneath a human exterior and eons of forgotten memories, Circe is finally revealed.
Relegated to life as the Shadow Man, Teigh diligently watched over the werewolves, searching for the wolf who carried the soul of one of the men he loved. At long last, he finds Soren and Circe. Though neither of them fully remembers who they are, they both remember their love for him.
For three thousand years, Caiden has watched over his daughters as they cycled through life after life. Now Circe has been awakened. As a spirit being, he can only contact her when she’s asleep.
When Soren’s demons return, the four of them must renew their bond to fight against the evil that tore them apart in the first place.
Genre: Contemporary, Paranormal, Vampires/Werewolves
Length: 49,180 words
RILEY
Daughters of Circe 3
Michele Zurlo
MENAGE AMOUR
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Ménage Amour
RILEY
Copyright © 2011 by Michele Zurlo
E-book ISBN: 1-61034-509-6
First E-book Publication: June 2011
Cover design by Jinger Heaston
All cover art and logo copyright © 2011 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
PUBLISHER
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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DEDICATION
For every woman who has been misunderstood or misrepresented.
RILEY
Daughters of Circe 3
MICHELE ZURLO
Copyright © 2011
Chapter 1
Riley flexed the fingers of her left hand. Tendons created hills and valleys along the smooth top of her hand. Her fingers were strong, far stronger than they’d been ten years ago. Living the life of a massage therapist new to The Middle of Nowhere had toughened up the muscles in her hands, arms, shoulders, and back. Lots of days, she wished she could afford to pay someone to relax her the way she relaxed her clients.
The time had come for a change in professions. Before being exiled from her life as an administrative assistant, she had enjoyed staying with one job. Then a freaking werewolf had kidnapped her and tried to sacrifice her sister, changing everything. She had been forced to flee, to leave her life behind. Since her mother had passed away, and her father had done some heartless things that didn’t endear him to Riley, she didn’t miss anyone except her sister. At least she did get to occasionally visit Torrey.
If she wanted, she could move in with Torrey. Both her sister and her brother-in-law, Shade, would welcome her with arms wide open. However, Torrey lived deep in the forest, her home completely inaccessible by any vehicle. The idea of moving to the real “middle of nowhere” held less appeal for Riley than going home to her father. At least this small suburb of Phoenix had other people. Riley hadn’t given up hope of finding true love and settling down, but that would be impossible if she moved in with Torrey and Shade. Besides the two of them and their three kids, Desiree, a friend of Torrey’s, had moved in with her three husbands and four children.
Riley would most certainly be the odd person out there.
Still, getting a job as an assistant, even entry-level, with absolutely no references had proven difficult. Complicating the job problem, whenever she moved towns, she completely changed her identity to make sure a certain somebody couldn’t track her down. Her brother-in-law was really good about making sure her bank account never lacked for funds, but she hated relying on his guilt money.
He had done nothing for which he needed to feel guilty. His brother had been the one who committed the felonies, not him. Shade was a good man. Being a werewolf, he had a wildness about him, but he had a good heart, and he would never hurt anyone who didn’t have it coming.
She couldn’t say the same thing about Soren, Shade’s brother. The bastard had ruined her life and nearly sacrificed her sister in a bloody, ancient ritual.
Perhaps the time had come to go back to school. She’d blown off two years of college, finally getting kicked out when academic probation failed to have any effect on her behavior. Things were much different now, and not only because the age of thirty-four stared her in the eyes. She wanted a better life than this. Heck, she wanted any life that wasn’t this shadow existence. For starters, she’d take a date. He didn’t have to be particularly attractive or wealthy. Lately, her requirements had diminished to breathing and possessing the ability to speak.
She tossed the bag she’d carried over her shoulder to the trunk and slammed the lid shut. Each client needed a fresh sheet. The chiropractor under whose roof she worked handled appointments and billing. Riley had to see to the laundry. It wasn’t a bad deal, though the doctor did take a cut from her hourly rate.
Light from the setting sun peeked out from between the office buildings across the street, fingers poking blinding streaks in her direction. Riley lif
ted her hand to shield her eyes. She blinked rapidly, trying to banish the black dots and shadows burned into her retinas. Before she could focus well enough to open her car door, something slammed into her from behind. Her cheek smashed into the edge where the door curved into the roof, and suddenly the sun became the least of her concerns.
A hand held her flat against the door and a body pressed all its weight to keep her still. “One wrong move and I’ll slice your throat.”
The blade in his hand barely made it to her neck before the man was knocked away. Riley whirled to see the man on the ground. A large, snow-white, shaggy-haired canine stood with its paws on the man’s shoulders, its teeth bared as a menacing growl issued from its depths.
Tremors of terror ran rampant up and down Riley’s spine. That was no dog. No dog could be that impossibly large. Whenever she visited her sister, a lone wolf would greet her at the side of the highway and lead her to the house. Usually, Torrey came. Sometimes she sent Shade or Desiree or one of Desiree’s husbands to retrieve Riley. Any fear of wolves had long ago vanished. That didn’t mean she was stupid enough to think wolves in general were harmless.
Riley knew without a doubt that thing pinning her attacker to the ground wasn’t just any werewolf.
“Soren.”
At the sound of her voice, the wolf backed up, moving off the man. He assumed a defensive stance between them.
A thousand emotions roiled through Riley. The brief attack had left her stunned. Adrenaline pumped through her veins, and her heart felt like it beat from her throat. Added to that, seeing the werewolf responsible for ruining her life made her feel strangled from within.
One more growl issued from Soren’s throat and followed the attacker as he ran in the opposite direction. Relief didn’t have time to take hold inside Riley. The doctor had left a half hour ago, and the receptionist had gone with him. This wasn’t the first time Riley locked up alone, but it would definitely be the last.
The wolf turned, lifting his head to meet her gaze. Those silver eyes were rimmed with teal, and Riley shrank against the hard plastic of her car. One hand went to her throat while the other fumbled behind her for the handle of the door. She didn’t fear for her life as much as she feared for her sister and her nieces. She would die before she would give up their location. She hadn’t spent a decade on the run just to have it all blow up in one horrible moment.
He threw his head back and howled, a singular, lonely noise that tore at her heart even as she struggled with fear.
In the distance, a car backfired. Soren’s howl cut short, and he wheeled around, snarling viciously. He bounded off toward the direction her attacker had taken. Riley had a second to wonder whether he planned to kill the man, and then she saw the trail of blood.
That hadn’t been a car backfiring. Someone had shot Soren, and now he was gone. Part of her felt relief that he couldn’t follow her home. A deeper part of her ached at the thought he might be lying somewhere, bleeding to death on the side of the road. Finding the strength and coordination to open her door almost proved too challenging. Her fingertips felt ten sizes larger as she fumbled with the door and fell inside. The familiar scent of leather and stale fries did little to jolt her back to reality, but she managed to close the door and start the car.
* * * *
By the time she arrived home, the events of the night had taken their toll. Her hands shook so badly that she dropped her keys when she tried to open her car door. The safety of her house taunted her from a few feet away. She felt around on the floor between the door and the seat until she found them, hating every second of this evening. As someone who prided herself on being strong when she needed to be strong, this wasn’t how she wanted to react.
She always promised herself that if the time came, she would deal with Soren the way he needed to be dealt with. Maybe Torrey couldn’t bring herself to kill him, and maybe Shade couldn’t either, but that wouldn’t stop Riley. She could deal the death blow if it came to that.
Then why did the idea of him being hurt—shot—bring such pain?
Her door jerked open, which had a ripple effect on her reverie. Riley looked up to find her neighbor standing there. Tall, handsome, with brown hair going grey around his temples, Calvin Atchison was the kind of middle-aged man Riley always pictured when she thought of herself as a similar-aged woman. Maybe in ten or fifteen years. She wasn’t yet forty, so she had time.
He cocked his head to the side. “You okay, kiddo?”
Technically, Cal was her landlord. He lived next door and owned both houses. Usually, he left her alone. Every once in a while, he checked on her. Riley didn’t mind. He treated her like a kid sister, and she missed having an older sibling around.
“Yeah—I—yeah,” she stammered, uncertain what to say. She still didn’t know whether being attacked in the parking lot at work or saved by a wolf that had caused her so much heartache was worse. She pasted on her best smile and hoped with all her might for him to accept her assurance without question. It usually worked. Shade had said more than once that Riley had some magic, though neither she nor Torrey could sense anything extraordinary.
He smiled and backed away. “Okay. I’m home all weekend. You call if you need anything.”
She nodded and fled into her house. She locked and checked every single door and window. The single-story ranch didn’t stand a chance against Soren if he wanted to get inside, but it was all the protection she had right then.
The rational part of her brain urged her to call the police to make a report. After all, she’d nearly been mugged. Or raped. She wasn’t sure what the bad man had wanted. Nothing he pressed against her body had been hard in a sexually-excited kind of way.
Three hours later, an exhausted Riley let two police officers out of her home. They’d wanted her to go down to the station to file her report, but she was too afraid to leave the house. In the back of her mind, she kept thinking that the inside of the house represented the only safe space. Even the parking lot at work, which wasn’t in a bad area, no longer seemed like someplace she could go by herself.
She hated this fearful, cautious person she’d become.
And she hated even more that she had repeated and erotic dreams about the man responsible. What sane person imagined the feel of her captor’s lips and the way his muscles moved beneath her questing fingers moments before he’d set her away from him and tell her he wasn’t ready to take the relationship to that level?
His eyes and the bulge in his pants had said differently, but she hadn’t argued. She hadn’t been allowed to argue. The charm he’d placed on her to make her think she was in love with him also kept her agreeable. The real Riley would have had him naked and writhing on the bed in no time.
Thank goodness for Soren’s warped sense of morality.
Riley snuggled on the sofa under a light blanket. This was, strategically, the best place for her to both sit and sleep as she watched for attackers. Also, the coolness of the handgun nestled in her palm provided a reassurance she desperately needed. The safety remained on, and the gun hid under the blanket, but she was ready to use it. She’d spent a lot of time at the firing range over the past ten years, and she could hit any target, moving or not, from a variety of positions.
A thudding sound woke her from a dead sleep. Riley popped up, her nerves on high alert before her brain was quite awake. She pointed the gun toward the bathroom, the source of the noise. Creeping quietly, she crossed the room and entered the hall.
A light glowed softly under the door. For some reason, the light switch in there had a dimmer. A wave of cold fear chilled Riley to the bone, but sympathy wasn’t far behind. He’d been shot after saving her from a mugger. Though she’d locked the doors and windows, she knew he had enough magic to allow him to overcome those safety measures.
Too bad he wasn’t a vampire who needed to be invited inside.
Riley pushed open the door and nearly dropped her gun. Soren stood at her sink, his naked ass pointed toward
the mirror as he tried to maneuver a pair of tweezers over a small, bleeding wound.
The rest of him lacked clothing as well. Broad shoulders topped a chest corded with solid muscle. Just below his navel, a trail of blond hair curled downward, thickening to swirl around his incredibly large cock. Riley gasped at the size of the thing at rest. She couldn’t imagine how big it would be once aroused.
When he had kidnapped her, he had cast a charm to make her think she loved him. Though she had offered him many opportunities to take advantage of the circumstances, he hadn’t done more than let her kiss him every now and again. While she remembered the handsome features of his face in vivid detail, she hadn’t seen him without clothes, and so her fantasies were highly speculative.
He grinned at her, and her face flamed. After the events of the night, she should be a little more terrified at finding a large, formidable predator in her bathroom. She shouldn’t gawk at him and try to imagine fitting his hard cock inside her wet pussy.
And it was wet.
No doubt he could smell her arousal. Fucking wolf.
“If you’re not going to shoot me with that thing, can you put it down and help me? I can’t quite reach where the bullet went in and I don’t want to heal around it. I’d only have to cut it out later.”
His rich baritone reverberated through her senses. Shade had told her several times that Soren’s charm wouldn’t have worked if she hadn’t already found him attractive. Time didn’t seem to have dimmed her body’s response to his animal magnetism.
Zurlo, Michele - Riley [Daughters of Circe 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Page 1
