Dark and Damaged: Eight Tortured Heroes of Paranormal Romance: Paranormal Romance Boxed Set (18 page)
Authors: Colleen Gleason
Tears beaded on her eyelashes, and Bree closed her mouth, as though fearing to say too much.
Seamus put his hands on her shoulders and drew her to him again.
Not enough
. He put his arms all the way around her, sinking into her warmth, kissing the curve of her neck.
“I know what freedom is now.” Seamus kissed Bree’s throat and then lifted his head to look into her eyes. “True freedom is being with the one you love, no matter what. It’s not a place or a time, or running through fields looking for somewhere to hide.” He brushed a kiss to her mouth. “It’s loving who you need to love.”
Bree’s lips parted. “Are you saying you love me, Seamus McGuire? After knowing me two days? Most of those on the run?”
Seamus gave her a shrug. “It can happen fast. When it’s right, it shouts to you. I’m an empath; you know I’m right.”
Bree put her hands on her hips. “Is that going to make you full of yourself? Because we’ll have to work on that.”
“Maybe. None of that matters, though, until
you
answer. Do you want to be with me, love?”
Bree lost her cocky smile. She rose on tiptoes and held him, her tears wetting his cheek. “Crap on a crutch, Seamus. Of course I want to be with you. Always. To hell with us only knowing each other two days—who gets to set the time-limit rule? I love
you
. I know this better than anything.”
“Good.” Seamus let out the breath he’d been holding, the dizziness of it smacking him. He started to fall and swung them both around so they landed on the bed, Seamus on top of Bree. He pressed her wrists into the mattress, and she smiled up at him. “Because I’ve decided to stay in Shiftertown. I don’t want to leave Katie, and Sean’s right. I can help them.”
Sean had told him today about a few things they were working on with the Collars, trying to get them removed from all Shifters. Going feral was a danger, and Seamus’s ability to survive without one could make a difference.
“But I’m only staying if you’ll come visit me,” Seamus said. “And do this ...”
He kissed her. Bree wrapped herself around him, opening to him, deepening the kiss. The fabric of her pants brushed his skin and lit every fire inside him.
“I’ll do more than visit,” Bree said when the kiss ended. “I’ll shack up with you. I’m a Shifter groupie, remember? Or at least, I used to be. That’s what we groupies dream of doing, you know, moving in with a Shifter. Now that I’ve got a Shifter of my own, though, I won’t need to dress up and hang out anymore.”
“I don’t know.” Seamus traced around her eyes where the cat makeup had been. “Maybe you can wear the makeup and costume sometimes. The cat’s ears are damn sexy.”
“Ooh, kinky, are you? This sounds like fun.”
Seamus drew his fingers down her white blouse, aching for her. “You’re wearing too many clothes right now.”
“They’re Carly’s. Cute, aren’t they? She has good taste.”
“You’ll have to buy her more,” Seamus growled.
Shifters could rip into clothes swiftly and precisely. In the work of a few moments, the shirt and pants and her underwear lay in shreds around them, Bree squealing in delighted surprise.
Her cries softened to those of pleasure, and then a groan as Seamus slid inside her.
The bed creaked as Bree drew her hands down his back. Seamus forgot about pain, sorrow, grief, hurt, emptiness, and filled himself with Bree. Her generous love, her smiles, her beauty, her sensual little growl as he started to move.
Seamus was one with his mate, feeling her joy, her love surrounding him and making him whole. Everything he needed.
The End
Thank you for reading
Lion Eyes
and I hope you enjoyed it.
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Dark and Damaged
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New York Times
bestselling and award-winning author Jennifer Ashley has written more than 85 published novels and novellas in romance, urban fantasy, and mystery under the names Jennifer Ashley, Allyson James, and Ashley Gardner. More about Jennifer’s books and the Shifters Unbound series can be found at
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Shifters Unbound Series
Pride Mates
Primal Bonds
Bodyguard
Wild Cat
Hard Mated
Mate Claimed
Perfect Mate (novella)
Lone Wolf
Tiger Magic
Feral Heat
Wild Wolf
Bear Attraction
Mate Bond
Lion Eyes
Bad Wolf
White Tiger
by Caris Roane
Vampire Officer Connor of the Crescent Border Patrol tries to suppress his desire for the powerful witch, Iris Meldeere. Because the woman possesses the ability to kill him with the tips of her fingers, how can he possibly fall in love with her? When a double homicide throws them together, he soon finds his deepest fantasies fulfilled as Iris succumbs to his seductions. But as they battle together to stay alive, and love begins to consume them both, will the witch be able to forgive the dark secrets of his past…
CHAPTER 1
Connor held his spotting scope pressed to his eye. His adrenaline flowed as he levitated high in the air. He was forty feet above the witch, his heart pounding in his chest. He’d tried about a dozen times to leave, but couldn’t since his craving for the Tribunal Public Safety officer had finally tipped the needle into the red zone. He wanted her bad.
As a Border Patrol officer for Crescent Territory, he often spent time surveilling suspects. The problem was Iris Meldeere hadn’t broken the law. She wasn’t part of a Five Bridges drug cartel, she didn’t traffic innocent humans into their sick world, and she definitely kept her hands off the lucrative business of running flame drugs.
For a witch, she was a model citizen.
It was after midnight, but he was still in the middle of his shift. And he had no damn reason to be at Iris’s house, except he couldn’t help himself. Not that he had plans for the future since he could never actually be with the woman. As a witch, and a powerful one at that, she had the power to kill him with a touch of her fingers.
She moved around her overgrown garden, her voice reaching his ears almost incessantly. At first, he thought she wore a Blue Tooth because both hands were constantly busy, pruning, digging, cutting, planting. He’d rolled his eyes when he realized she was communicating with her plants. Very witch or very Iris, maybe both.
Apart from his bizarre need to spy on the woman, he hated witches with a passion.
A witch had started this whole shitfest with a brew pot. Result? Seventy thousand humans, in Phoenix alone, lived in a pit of hell, having gone through the
alter
and become something not human anymore. At least the original witch had changed as well. Witches were now one of the five
alter
species living in Five Bridges. Being an
alter
witch or a vampire wasn’t a choice; it was a genetic mutation.
His own story wasn’t unusual. Devastated by his wife’s death, he’d stupidly tried to numb-out with a hit of blood flame. But it had been laced with the
alter
serum that created a set of fangs and an annoying craving for blood. The flame drugs by themselves weren’t the culprit, only when enhanced with an
alter
serum.
He’d gained physical strength and long-life. Beyond that, he was living a nightmare, one that had started thirty years ago, not long after the flame drug craze had hit the human population.
Now he was here, watching a witch who had gotten hit with an
alter
serum herself ten years ago. Only her flame drug had carried the witch serum. He knew this because he’d Googled her. A lot.
She wore a purple smock over her jeans and a pair of flats that looked like ballet shoes, typical brew-faring clothes for one of her kind.
And he liked her in jeans. She wore them snug and that was part of the problem. He’d seen her dozens of times at the Tribunal building in her casual investigative uniform of short-sleeved t-shirt, also worn tight, along with the form-fitting jeans. He’d mentally stripped her clothes off about a thousand times. He swore he knew what she looked like naked.
Yeah. Obsessed.
And guilty as hell. His kind didn’t go with her kind.
His kind
killed
witches, wizards and anything else that dared to smash up herbs and throw them in a cauldron, or cast spells, or worse, kill with the tips of their fingers. Witches, like Iris, were a danger to vampires and shifters. She should be offed, like all her murdering, enthralling kind.
Yet, here he was, floating above her garden, so quiet he’d never be heard not even by another vampire. He’d gotten good at stalking the woman.
***
Iris had that feeling again across the top of her shoulders that a vampire was watching her. She had excellent instincts, but every time she either hunted through her garden or checked the night sky, nothing.
She also had an instinct about who the vampire was. James Connor, also known as Officer Connor, of the Crescent Territory Border Patrol.
Yep, Connor was here again, which caused her heart to beat hard in her chest. Vampires killed witches as often as they could, but in this case an attack wasn’t what she feared.
No, the dull thuds of her pulse meant something far worse. Against all reason, small tendrils of pure desire moved over her breasts, down the insides of her thighs and curled around her sex.
A year ago, she’d seen Connor at a crime scene, one that involved a couple of human children. Until that moment, she would never have believed a vampire capable of any kind of compassion. She honestly thought that the
alter
had removed all tender emotions from those humans who had become vampire.
That night, she’d been called to the same scene to make a full report on behalf of the Five Bridges Tribunal, the central governing organization for which she worked. She served as a Tribunal Public Safety officer and as such could move freely among all five territories without too much fear of getting assassinated in the process. Murder among the five
alter
species was rampant.
At the crime scene, with so many vampires present, she’d remained in the shadows, content to merely observe and gather data.
Because of the bloodsuckers, her own killing instinct had risen to the surface, vibrating like a motorcycle engine on overdrive. Her fingers had ached to touch some pressure-points that night and rid her world of a few sets of fangs.
She hated this aspect of being a witch, the driving need to strike another species down. But every one of her kind, once having gone through the
alter,
felt an intense pressure to self-protect. She’d come to accept that what she experienced was a basic survival mechanism. Vampires and shifters killed witches, her kind returned the favor, though for her she’d only done so when attacked. However, that didn’t change how much she detested her new nature.
The crime scene that night had torn her own heart into a thousand pieces. Two children were found at the Phoenix entrance to Sentinel Bridge, a boy and a girl, about nine or ten. They’d accidentally gotten hold of one of the flame drugs that carried the
alter
serum, and had begun the process of change. But children couldn’t handle the sudden physical trauma involved. Death always followed.
They’d held hands as they’d died, facing each other. It had broken Iris’s heart, seeing their twisted bodies, fingers entwined. She’d wept quietly, and that’s when Connor had arrived.
She’d seen him many times at various crime scenes, but never like this. He’d taken one look at the pair then dropped to his knees, covered his chest with both arms and rocked. She’d had no idea what had gone through his head at that moment, but she’d felt his compassion in waves hitting her over and over, wrecking her heart and somehow causing her to become fixated on a damn vampire.