Dark Flame
Authors: Caris Roane
Tags: #Romance, #Paranormal, #Vampires, #Teen & Young Adult, #Fantasy, #Ghosts, #Psychics, #Werewolves & Shifters, #Witches & Wizards, #Paranormal Romance
DARK FLAME
THE FLAME SERIES: BOOK 3
CARIS ROANE
Dark Flame - The Flame Series: Book 3
By Caris Roane
Copyright © 2015 Twin Bridges Creations LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this eBook may be reproduced in whole or in part, scanned, photocopied, recorded, distributed in any printed or electronic form, or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without express written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Dear Reader,
Welcome to the third installment of the Flame Series called DARK FLAME!
Committed to the rule of law, Border Patrol Officer Robert Brannick falls hard for a beautiful fae woman who illegally seduces him in his dreams…
Brannick works with Juliet Tunney to help several human women escape the nightmare of Five Bridges. But something isn’t right. Juliet acts as though she knows him really well, yet he’s only met her once. Unless…the dreams he’s been having about her aren’t dreams at all. When a sensual dream surfaces in vivid images and sounds, he knows something’s up with the beautiful fae woman from Revel Territory. And if what he suspects is true, Juliet has a lot to answer for.
Juliet fell hard for Brannick the night she first signed on to help out with his rescue operation. She even violated a serious Revel Territory law by invading his dreams. What she hadn’t expected was how readily he took her up on her illegal dreamgliding offer. With her special fae abilities, she’s been his secret lover for five months. Sworn to withhold the nature of their dream-relationship from Brannick’s conscious mind, she faces the hard truth that she’s in danger of losing him forever because she broke the law. Once the truth surfaces, will Brannick ever be able to forgive her?
I hope you’re enjoying the Flame Series. I’ve had a wonderful time developing a world inspired by my love for bridges and of course, hunky warrior vampire types!
Enjoy!
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CHAPTER ONE
Robert Brannick stared at Juliet, every suspicion lit on fire. She’d been the star of a recent dream and the hot-as-hell images kept streaming through his head like a porn movie he couldn’t shut off.
Yet something about the dream wasn’t right.
He just didn’t know why.
He was in the garage of a private homeowner, moving boxes away from a secret tunnel entrance he’d built to smuggle abused human females out of Five Bridges. Tonight, Juliet had driven the van containing four of them, each rescued from Revel Territory sex clubs. With the vehicle in the garage and the door shut, the neighbors wouldn’t be able to see what they were up to.
He steadily shifted boxes and plastic tubs out of the way.
Another image flashed.
Juliet’s long curly hair splayed out on his red sheets.
Lips parted.
His body moving over hers, connected.
Her cries filled his bedroom.
He could see each freckle on her creamy skin and her hair smelled like strawberries.
So real,
like more than a dream
.
Doubt nagged at him about what had actually happened between them, as in something very fae and highly illegal.
He glanced at Juliet again, the star of his cockfest and a beautiful
alter
fae woman. He couldn’t seem to move as he watched her.
She stood next to the van and wore a loose, light green dress, a gauzy thing that draped her curves. He’d seen those curves in his dream, beautiful, lush, full. His hands and mouth had been all over her. Would she look the same as what he’d pictured beneath the dress?
She glanced at him and turned her hand in question, probably because he was staring at her. She had large, dark blue eyes, even delicate features and all those faint freckles that in the dream he’d kissed over and over.
She was about to open the door, but when he remained silent and staring, she let go of the latch and turned in his direction.
“Everything okay?” Her voice had a soft, melodious sound. She was a feminine kind of woman, not like the vampire females he banged noisily in Crescent Territory. But then Juliet was an
alter
fae who lived in Revel, not vampire at all. In many ways, she was his opposite.
He tore his gaze away from her, resisting the urge to clear his throat, then put his feet in motion. He called out, “Everything’s fine.”
But he knew in his gut it wasn’t. As soon as they got the women to safety, he’d have to confront her about what he suspected was going on.
He heard the van door slide open, then Juliet as she spoke quietly to the women inside. “I need all of you to refrain from talking. We’re on a residential street and don’t want to alert anyone in the area of our presence here. But please don’t worry. You’re in good hands and you’ll be back in the human part of Phoenix within the hour.
“We work with excellent people as dedicated as we are to ending this nightmare in Revel Territory. And that man over there? Moving the boxes? That’s Officer Brannick of the Crescent Territory Border Patrol. He’s the one who’s set up this whole operation.”
Brannick scowled as he shifted a dusty, rolled up carpet out of the way. He didn’t like to hear that kind of praise, though he understood Juliet’s motivation. The women had been badly used by men for a long time. They would need to know he was someone they could trust.
He forced himself to focus on the task at hand and set the box on the growing pile off to the side. The owners of the house had agreed to let him run a tunnel up to their garage so that he could get abducted women out of Five Bridges. It was a dangerous set-up for everyone involved.
Brannick took great care to keep his operation on the down low. For that reason, he hadn’t used this particular tunnel in two months, a policy that helped keep suspicious neighbors from reporting unusual activity.
The three cartels that ruled Five Bridges paid a lot of money for tips leading to the discovery of exactly this kind of covert operation.
The upper part of the door leading down to the underground tunnel was half visible now. He needed to let the sex dream go and pick up the pace. He shifted a couple more dusty bags and plastic tubs.
Juliet wasn’t even supposed to be driving the van tonight. That was Mary’s job. Juliet coordinated with a team of Revel Border Patrol officers who worked their off-hours to rescue abducted humans, mostly female. The women were used in the sex trade in Revel Territory while pumped full of the dark flame drug. Each bore the teal flame markings on their hands, necks and faces. Drug addiction was hard to disguise in Five Bridges.
So where was Mary? For as long as he’d worked with her, she’d never missed a run.
As Juliet continued to talk to the women, answering their hushed questions, he glanced at her again. She wore her long, curly hair pinned up but with a lot of curls hanging free. She looked messy in an artsy way, but then she didn’t. She looked fresh and alive. Beautiful.
He’d played with those curls in his dream.
Shit, that dream again and how the woman would make, intense cries of passion…
Once more, he forced himself to look away and to keep shifting the boxes. He pulled a heavy one, but set it off to the side. It should be closer to the bottom. He didn’t want the stack to fall over after they were gone. The door needed to be kept hidden at all costs.
He’d met Juliet five months ago, having arranged to look her over at the White Flame club in Elegance, to see if she might be a good fit for his operation. She’d come highly recommended by one of his extraction team, a hard-core Revel Border Patrol officer by the name of Keelen.
Maybe it was the vampire in him, or maybe the human part that had always been able to read people, but he’d trusted Juliet right away. He’d liked the way she held his gaze, spoke in a clear direct if soft manner, and set her chin when he asked about her commitment.
He’d liked her so much in fact that apparently he’d made her the star of his dreams.
The truth was, he hadn’t seen Juliet since his meeting with her at the club. He’d spoken with her several times on the phone and he’d checked her out on the net. She was an up-and-coming civic leader in Revel Territory as an apprentice to Agnes Munroe, who served on the Revel Board of Sages.
Mary was the one who drove the van to the exit-point houses each week. But she hadn’t shown up and when questioned, Juliet had said she didn’t know why.
Brannick had been shocked as hell when Juliet had pulled into the garage. He was profoundly attracted to the fae woman, something that didn’t make him happy at all. The moment he’d realized she was in the van and not Mary, his jaw had dropped and that dream had started playing over and over in his head.
The weird part, however, was that when she’d crossed the garage floor to greet him and shake his hand, he’d felt as though he was looking at a really good friend. If he believed in past lives, he’d say they’d known each other in one.
Or maybe, as he suspected, something else had been going on, something a powerful fae could have done with him.
Or to him.
Despite his drive toward the woman, he kept moving boxes. But that didn’t keep him from looking in her direction about every third trip.
Right now, one of the women wept. She sat in the seat closest to the open door and Juliet was comforting her. The human woman had bruises on her face and up and down her bare arms. She was missing a couple of teeth and of course had the teal colored flames on her cheeks.
Juliet went to the front seat of the van and returned with a small box of tissues. She handed the woman one, who in turn blew her nose. Blood came out.
He watched Juliet rubbing the woman’s shoulder as she spoke to her in a low voice. She kept handing her tissues and taking away the bloody ones. The woman leaned her head back and closed her eyes, her fingers pinched over the bridge.
There were only four women in the van, against the hundreds, maybe even thousands, who needed his help. He felt grim about the whole thing, about how impossible the odds were against any kind of success, long-term or not. As many humans as he rescued, more were abducted from the Southwest to fill the void.