Something Secret This Way Comes: Secret McQueen, Book 1 (29 page)

Once they were out of the elevator and standing in the marble foyer, the mental paralysis lost its hold, and rage seized her.

Before she could utter a word, he held up a hand. “I am sorry. I promise I will not use such a cheap trick again.”

“Trick?” She turned to the elevator, pressed the button furiously. “That wasn’t a trick! That was a violation! People don’t just do that, they don’t just get to—”

“You are right,” he said, loud enough to break through her angry tirade. Then, softer, “
People
do not do that.”

The cold shock was like ice water pumping through her veins. She turned to face him. She’d never seen eyes so sad, an expression so despondent.

Yes, she had.

She turned to her reflection in the polished black marble wall. The image was distorted, twisting her face into a pale skull with sunken eyes. She saw it again, in the floor.

And in the black marble world at her feet, her reflection was alone.

She walked to him, looking at the walls, the floor, the gleaming brushed-metal of the elevator doors. No hint that he stood there except his actual, physical presence. She came close enough to touch him, and did, pressing her palm to the side of his cold face. “You don’t have a reflection.”

“It makes it easier to stalk prey.” He gave her a grim smile. “I have lost too much humanity to have retained something so unnecessary as my reflection.”

Though his statement thoroughly creeped her out, she couldn’t move her hand from him. Maybe there really was some kind of connection between them, like he said. She couldn’t stop staring into his eyes, despite the limitless well of pain she saw there. “You really are…what you say you are.”

He leaned into her touch, took a breath that sounded like a sob. When he spoke, though, his words were controlled, almost polite. “Yes. A vampire.”

His hand captured hers and pulled it to his lips. For a weird, frightening moment she thought he would bite her. Instead, he kissed her palm on the fleshy pad below her thumb. Before she could react, his other arm snaked around her waist, pulled her tight to him, and he covered her mouth with his. He was hungry, desperate, his hands sliding to her shoulders, then down, capturing her arms to her sides, releasing her the next moment.

It had been years since Cassie had been kissed like this, like a woman and not an employee. The carefully drawn lines she’d put down for herself in black and white faded to gray and disappeared altogether. It was dangerous, angering, even, that he could do such a thing.

But this was not another of his hypnotic tricks. Maddening though it was, she could not resist. She opened her mouth under his, found herself just as wild and desperate as him.

Something Secret This Way Comes

Sierra Dean

Some secrets are dangerous. This Secret is deadly.

Secret McQueen, Book 1

For Secret McQueen, her life feels like the punch line for a terrible joke. Abandoned at birth by her werewolf mother, hired as a teen by the vampire council of New York City to kill rogues, Secret is a part of both worlds, but belongs to neither. At twenty-two, she has carved out as close to a normal life as a bounty hunter can.

When an enemy from her past returns with her death on his mind, she is forced to call on every ounce of her mixed heritage to save herself—and everyone else in the city she calls home. As if the fate of the world wasn’t enough to deal with, there’s Lucas Rain, King of the East Coast werewolves, who seems to believe he and Secret are fated to be together. Too bad Secret also feels a connection with Desmond, Lucas’s second-in-command…

Warning: This book contains a sarcastic, kick-ass bounty hunter; a metaphysical love triangle with two sexy werewolves; a demanding vampire council; and a spicy seasoning of sex and violence.

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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

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Something Secret This Way Comes

Copyright © 2011 by Sierra Dean

ISBN: 978-1-60928-453-4

Edited by Sasha Knight

Cover by Kanaxa

All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
electronic publication: May 2011

www.samhainpublishing.com