Blood and Destiny (24 page)

“Dance with me?”

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I put my empty glass on a passing tray and turned in his arms. “I’d love to.”

His eyes were very blue above the tuxedo. Staring into them, I wondered if the wedding was making me see rainbows and kittens or if I honestly thought we’d have a chance at our own happily-ever-after.

One dance bled into another until I heard my name being called.

“Destiny. Stop mooning over the man and get over here!”

I blushed as I turned to find Yasmine standing on the raised platform. She held the small bouquet we’d had made for the toss. The hoard of single females jockeyed for position in front of it at the other end of the floor. I’d been too wrapped up in my dance to realize the other couples had fallen away to the sidelines. Rolling my eyes, I let go of my date without saying a single catty thing and took my place at the back of the crowd.

“I’m here. I’m here.”

She gave me an impish grin and turned her back. The band stopped playing and watched with wide smiles as she put herself in position. The drummer began the drumroll. With a delighted laugh, she threw the bouquet over her shoulder and right at me. I took three steps back before turning and running away as fast as my three-inch heels would let me. The crowd burst into laugher, but the only one I was concerned with caught me in my flight and spun me around in his arms.

Marcus laughed with me before dropping his mouth inches above my ear.

“Superstition isn’t what you should be afraid of, darling. It’s destiny.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Let’s not hedge our bets.”

Instead of answering me, he tipped my face up and kissed me hungrily, much to the noisy delight of the onlookers.

I paced the hospital corridor, muttering under my breath. The doors to the maternity ward opened behind me. I whirled to find Marcus strolling in with a stuffed lioness decorated with a yellow ribbon in his arms and a monstrous bouquet of balloons trailing after him.

“What are you doing here?”

It came out surly, but I couldn’t help it. Kale’s call had said to meet them at the hospital as if it was an emergency. That had been four hours ago. Now, without coffee, I was bristling at everything.

“It’s a baby, Destiny. It’s customary for the close kin to gather to celebrate such things. I even brought gifts. You, on the other hand, ran out as if the hounds of hell were chasing you. But that’s okay. I’ve got you covered.”

He patted the head of the lioness with a smile full of excitement. Kale had asked him to stand as

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godfather to the tyke. When both Yasmine and I had been surprised, his answer was perfectly logical. Who better to ensure their children would have a safe haven away from the backbiting within the pack than someone who would still be considered young and hip when they were grown?

The fact Marcus was powerful enough to make even the most ambitious werewolf pause certainly helped the case.

Marcus was thrilled and determined to live up to their faith in him.

“Honey, Iam the gift. Any minute now, Mr. Alpha Werewolf is going to see blood and pass out.

When that happens, the second-string coach comes into play to make sure Yasmine doesn’t resort to murder later. That is me. Ms. Back-Up Coach. Waiting for the mighty to fall over.”

I started pacing again at Marcus’s burst of laughter. It did make me feel better to have him there for moral support.

“I don’t think you’re giving Kale enough credit, Destiny. He’s a man, yes, but he’s been through the classes…”

A crash in the birthing room drowned out whatever he was going to say.

“Destiny!” Yasmine screamed.

“Told you so.”

I left Marcus in the corridor as I bolted into the room and over the fallen werewolf to take her hand and help her bring my niece into the world.

An hour later, I stood with my nose pressed to the nursery glass in awe. Destiny Georgianna Henderson was perfect and had me wrapped around her finger from the very first yell. I felt the man behind me before he wrapped his arms around me and pulled me back from the glass.

“She’s beautiful,” I whispered, even though I knew talking wouldn’t bother the babies in the nursery. Marcus’s voice was equally low and full of awe.

“She’s going to be a hellion like her namesake.”

“Flatterer. Is that a bad thing?”

“Certainly not. I happen to love that about her. She’s going to drive us all to drink before she’s grown.”

“And we’re going to love every minute of it.”

About the Author

To learn more about Kaye Chambers, please visitwww.kayechambers.com . Send an email to Kaye [email protected] or join her Yahoo! group to join in the fun with other readers as well as Kaye
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/paranormalsociety .

Kaye lives with her husband and three children wherever the seas of the United States Navy take them. A Boxer and a cat grudgingly share her. She loves to hear feedback from readers.

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Look for these titles by Kaye Chambers

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He’s the last man she should ever want. She’s the last woman he can ever have.

Crossroads

© 2010 Moira Rogers

Southern Arcana, Book 2

Coming from a family with psychic gifts, Derek Gabriel was aware of but separate from the dangers of the supernatural world, until a rogue wolf shifter stripped away his humanity. The change he barely survived didn’t drive him insane, but the cultural bias against him as an inferior transformed wolf might. And it doesn’t help that he’s fallen for the daughter of the most powerful wolf in the country.

Almost from the moment she was born, Nicole Peyton started planning her escape from the strict confines of elite shapeshifter society, an old-fashioned world where women are valued only for their bloodlines and bank accounts. In New Orleans she has a bar she loves, friends in decidedly low places, and a smoldering sensual tension with an incredibly attractive and deliciously unsuitable man.

Their forbidden longing erupts into unbridled need—until Nick’s sister burns into town with a strike team hard on her heels. Saving her means Nick has to play by the Conclave’s rules…and give up the man she is growing to love.

Unless Derek does something completely crazy—issue a challenge that could shake the foundations of their world.

Warning: This book contains forbidden lust, strip poker, instinct-driven sex in odd places, devious shapeshifters, and love and loss in a world of paranormal politics and supernatural schemes.

Enjoy the following excerpt forCrossroads:

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Color flamed high in her cheeks as she growled and covered the space between them with quick steps. “I’m angry. I’m angry because it’s easier.”

He reached out and caught her shoulders in a gentle grip. “Easier than what?”

She looked up at him and laughed almost hysterically. “Easier than completely and utterly losing my shit.”

“Oh, Nicky.” She felt so tiny as he slid his arms around her, delicate and fragile. Even knowing that seeming weakness was deceptive, every urge in his body clamored to find someplace safe to hide her away from the world and the misery in it.

But it was her world. He didn’t know the first damn thing about protecting her from it.

Her teeth scraped his arm through his sleeve, and she stumbled out of the circle of his arms. “I’m sorry. I just—I’m losing it.” Her eyes had gone wild, and she dragged her shirt over her head as she kicked off her sandals.

Too late he realized what the power gathering around her meant. “Are you going to run?”

“I have to, Derek.” Her skirt billowed to the ground, and she tore at her underwear. “Come with me. Please.”

“Of course.” His instincts wouldn’t let him stay there while she ran off by herself. Derek tugged his T-shirt over his head, anticipation prickling along his skin. The heat that preceded a change stole through him, something hot and heavy and tinged with a lust fueled by Nick’s naked body.

Her wolf must have been close the surface, because she’d barely hit the ground when the air around her shimmered and then pulsed with energy that washed over him in a hot wave. She stood before him, a small gray wolf who shook and pawed impatiently at the grass under them. Derek yanked at his belt and kicked off his boots, itching with the need to join her.

The change was usually easy, but he’d never done it in front of Nick before. He was far too aware of his body’s reaction, of the fact that he was hard and aroused and shaking under the force of the magic. Closing his eyes, he sucked in a breath and reached for that flickering bit of power inside him, the animal waiting just below the surface.

It felt like magic because it was. Pleasure pounded through him and his skin tingled, and he crouched down and gave in to it. The most natural feeling in the world, because now he wasfree …

Instinct lifted his face, and the wolf howled pleasure at being let loose. When his exultant howl faded, he found Nick watching him. After a moment, she yipped and took off toward the woods.

Her scent enflamed him. Her challenge entranced him. Human concerns bled away as he launched himself after her, wanting nothing more in the world than to run at her side.

Nick’s muscles burned. She had to focus on breathing, on drawing in one gulp of muggy night air after another. That was exactly what she wanted, to occupy her mind with something other than the fact that, one way or another, her sister might die.

Even if she hadn’t heard him, she would have sensed Derek behind her, a warm zing of magic that dovetailed perfectly with her own. He felt solid,right , with his trampling steps echoing hers.

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She knew he’d follow her until exhaustion claimed him, if it didn’t take her first. But it was too hot to run for long, and Nick stumbled over a fallen log and tumbled to the ground under an ancient oak tree.

Letting go of the wolf was easier with fatigue quelling her nervousness. Twigs snapped under hands and feet instead of paws, and she collapsed onto a bed of moss, her chest heaving.

Fire.If it had only been the pull of exertion, she could have ignored it. But the change burned through her and scraped her nerve endings into a vicious flurry of arousal. “Derek,” she rasped.

It took him longer to regain human form, but soon enough he crouched at her feet, his muscular chest straining under his panting breaths. He looked massive in the moonlight filtering through the trees, a hulking giant of tanned skin stretched over hard muscles. When he lifted his head, she caught a glimpse of eyes still glinting yellow.

His gaze caught hers and drifted down her body, the stare so blatantly sexual it stole her breath.

One hand dropped to her ankle, and his large fingers encircled it easily. “Tell me to stop.”

She couldn’t. Shewouldn’t . “No.”

Derek dragged her ankles apart and dropped to his knees between her legs. He tickled his fingers up her calves as he jerked his gaze to hers again. “Put your hands over your head.”

Sheer primal instinct drove her to obey. She licked her lips and exhaled a shuddering breath. “I need you.”

“Not as much as I need you.” His thumb traced along the inside of her knee, a small teasing caress that vanished when he moved his hands to the ground on either side of her hips. He loomed over her, his wide shoulders blocking out the light filtering through the trees.

His expression was wild. Feral. His gaze locked with hers, and he shuddered. “Do you trust me?”

“Yes.” The answer would have been the same even if she hadn’t been aching to feel his skin against hers, even if they hadn’t spent the last few days learning about each other. “With my life.”

A rumbling noise of approval started deep in his chest and escaped his lips as he lowered them to her breast. His tongue circled the tip in a teasing flick, and he drew her nipple into his mouth with another low noise.

Nick tried to stifle the cry that accompanied the sharp rush of pleasure, but it rolled out of her between clenched teeth. Her back arched off the ground, toward his mouth, and she barely remembered not to move her hands.

She felt the scrape of teeth, then the heat of his mouth disappeared. A low, masculine laugh rose as he nuzzled her stomach and dropped tiny kisses on her damp skin. “I can smell how hot you are for me.”

Something witty should have popped to mind, the perfect rejoinder to his soft, sexy words. “I want you so bad it hurts. I always have.”

He dragged his tongue up the center of her chest before veering off to nip at her shoulder. “And now you have me.”

Do I?The words hung in her throat as the throbbing need in her body grew worse. Her skin flamed

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wherever he touched her, but it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough. “Derek, please.” Her fingers curled into the mossy earth above her head. “Let me have you.”

His teeth closed on her neck, hard and possessive, and he groaned against her skin and shifted his weight above her. One hand skated over her hip and slipped between her legs, and his fingers stroked through slick folds. He lifted his head and watched her, his face tight. “I want to see you come,” he growled a moment before his fingers centered on her clit.

She thrust her hips up with a whimper. He touched her as if he’d been doing it forever, as if he knew every inch of her already. Desire took over, and she felt him watching as she bit her lip and arched her head back. “Don’t stop.”

Hedid , but only long enough for his thumb to replace his fingers. Then his fingers shifted lower, easing into her as he groaned. “God damn it, Nicky.Come. Come so I can be inside you.”