Dark and Deadly: Eight Bad Boys of Paranormal Romance (57 page)
Read Dark and Deadly: Eight Bad Boys of Paranormal Romance Online
Authors: Jennifer Ashley,Alyssa Day,Felicity Heaton,Erin Kellison,Laurie London,Erin Quinn,Bonnie Vanak,Caris Roane
It was always the same.
He would go in circles, a pattern she had learned by heart over the past few weeks. He would fight, and then rest, and then fight again, and then take a shorter rest as his frustration mounted, and then he would fight harder than ever, and fail to free himself.
The end result was always the same too. Exhaustion, leading to unconsciousness. Sometimes he was out for days. Other times it was only minutes before he began the cycle again.
Snow turned savage, the change between placid and violent swift and startling. The chains rattled and then groaned under the pressure of his harsh movements on the bed. He tugged at them, powerful body bowing off the mattress and his muscles bunching and tightening as he fought the restraints that kept him flat on his back. Helpless.
The cuffs bit into his ankles and wrists, and his flesh seeped droplets of blood that the thick restraints then smeared across his skin, renewing the stains. He snarled and fought, lashing out with his fists and feet, shaking the whole bed. The metal sliced deeper into his wrists, until rivulets spilled down his bloodied arms and soaked into the black sheets. Crimson tainted the overlong strands of his white hair and stained his shoulders and neck too. His eyes rolled open and then back again, a flash of scarlet irises and thin black vertical slits for pupils.
They had been red since the night he had first stirred after the incident on the stage, a sign that his bloodlust still had a strong hold over him.
They were red even when he was unconscious.
His lips parted, revealing enormous fangs.
She pitied him even as she despised him.
Her feelings had never been as muddled as they were now.
He sniffed and suddenly stilled, and a prickle of awareness ran down her spine. He had sensed her. How?
He bellowed in fury and thrashed violently against his restraints, causing the metal post that secured his left ankle to bend slightly. Fresh blood ran over his ankles, coating the steel cuffs. He fought harder and it pained her because she knew that after this time he would fall unconscious.
She should leave.
Her place wasn’t here.
She knew that in her heart, but that same heart had urged her to come to him when she had felt his pain and his distress. Now that she had seen how fiercely the bloodlust gripped him, she couldn’t turn her back on him. She needed to do something to help him.
She could calm him, but if anyone discovered what she had done, she would have damned herself.
She edged closer to him, her heart thumping crazily in her breast, her gaze locked on him and watching for an attack even though she knew he couldn’t break his bonds and reach her. He tried to lunge for her, his blunt claws scratching at the air. His red eyes shot to her, focused and sharp, locked on her like lasers.
Her stomach fluttered but her step didn’t falter.
She swallowed her trembling heart and reached out to him, afraid that he would somehow manage to injure her but strengthened by the knowledge that she might be able to do something to crack the hold his bloodlust had on him and guide him back to his loved ones.
She stopped at his side and dared to lift her cloak so he could see her, hoping it would calm him and he would see she wasn’t a threat to him. She gently lowered her hand, intending to touch his face as the female, Sera, and his brother had.
Snow snapped at her fingers and tried to bite her, his sharp fangs gleaming in the low light from the lamps around the black room.
She changed course and settled her hand on his bare chest instead. His powerful heart thundered hard against her palm. A heavy tribal beat.
It accelerated as she stood over him and then she shifted her eyes to meet his and it began to slow to a more gentle sedate rhythm.
He blinked slowly, long dark lashes shuttering his crimson eyes before lifting again to reveal them to her.
She whispered to him, soft words in a tongue that was probably foreign to him now.
A song to soothe him.
She sung of soaring in a midnight sky, dancing over mountains, and reaching towards the horizon, beyond the snowy valley and the frozen waterfall.
Snow stilled, his expression turning docile, and she bravely moved her hand to his face, stroking his stubbly cheek as she softly sung to him of a prince and his love, his kingdom on earth while hers was in heaven.
Two worlds too far apart.
Two hearts too close to part.
Snow blinked languidly again and then his eyelids drooped and he settled heavily into the bed, his arms lax and hands hanging limply from the cuffs. She focused on his wrists, on the red lines that slashed across them, and willed them to heal.
She brushed her fingertips across his cheek and whispered, “Sleep… dream… remember who you were.”
A powerful vampire lost deep in his bloodlust, Snow is a savage animal, mindless with rage and a thirst for violence, and trapped with no hope of awakening from an endless nightmare… until a song draws him up from the abyss, restoring his sanity but leaving him haunted by the sweet feminine scent of lilies and snow, and fragmented familiar lyrics.
When the mysterious and beautiful songstress reappears in Snow’s room at Vampirerotique, she awakens a fierce protective streak and stirs dark desires that drive him to claim her as his female, even when he knows his touch will destroy her innocence.
A single forbidden taste is all it takes to unleash emotions in Aurora that she shouldn’t possess, tearing her between duty and desire, and luring her into surrendering to her wildfire passion and embracing hungers that burn so hotly they threaten to consume them both.
One act of kindness can lead to one thousand acts of sin though, each a black mark against the bearer’s soul and another grain of sand that slips through an hourglass. The clock is ticking and time is almost up. Can beauty save the beast?
Felicity Heaton is a USA Today best-selling author who writes passionate paranormal romance books. In her books she creates detailed worlds, twisting plots, mind-blowing action, intense emotion and heart-stopping romances with leading men that vary from dark deadly vampires to sexy shape-shifters and wicked werewolves, to sinful angels and hot demons!
If you're a fan of paranormal romance authors Lara Adrian, J R Ward, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Gena Showalter and Christine Feehan then you will enjoy her books too.
If you love your angels a little dark and wicked, Felicity Heaton’s best selling Her Angel series is for you. If you like strong, powerful, and dark vampires then try the Vampires Realm series or any of her stand alone vampire romance books. If you’re looking for vampire romances that are sinful, passionate and erotic then try the best-selling Vampire Erotic Theatre series. Or if you prefer huge detailed worlds filled with hot-blooded alpha males in every species, from elves to demons to dragons to shifters and angels, then take a look at the new Eternal Mates series.
In 2011, five of her six paranormal romance books received Top Pick awards from Night Owl Reviews and Forbidden Blood was nominated as Best PNR Vampire Romance 2011 at The Romance Reviews. In 2012, she was awarded the GraveTells Author of the Year Award, and Heart of Darkness was announced as a 2013 Epic Ebook Awards finalist in the Paranormal Romance category. Many of her books receive five star reviews from readers and review sites alike.
To see her other novels, visit:
http://www.felicityheaton.co.uk
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Find out more about Felicity at:
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http://www.felicityheaton.co.uk/newsletter.php
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Kissed by a Dark Prince
Claimed by a Demon King
Tempted by a Rogue Prince - Coming in 2014
Covet
Crave
Seduce
Enslave
Bewitch
Unleash
Her Dark Angel
Her Fallen Angel
Her Warrior Angel
Her Guardian Angel
Her Demonic Angel
Her Wicked Angel
Her Avenging Angel - Coming in 2014
Prophecy: Child of Light
Prophecy: Caelestis & Aurorea
Prophecy: Dark Moon Rising
Eternity: The Beginning (free short story available at the VR website: www.vampiresrealm.com)
Spellbound
Reunion
Seventh Circle
Winter's Kiss
Hunter's Moon
Masquerade
Hunger - Coming in 2014
Blood and Snow
Love Immortal
Ascension
Forbidden Blood
Heart of Darkness
by Erin Kellison
Agent Malcolm Rook is hunting for people with the rarest of talents—the ability to master dreams. He finds the undeniably gifted Jordan Lane, but she’s wary of mysterious Rook and resists his pursuit as long as she can. Yet the dreamwaters they enter are too exhilarating to resist, and attraction soon ignites electric passions. Delving too deep stirs a nightmare, one they must defeat, or be forever lost to darkness.
CHAPTER 1
“It’s not my first time, man.” Interview over, Rook shrugged into his trim black wool coat. “I know what to do if I spot a likely target.” It’d been a few years, but what to look for hadn’t changed.
Innocent, unsuspecting fools.
Yeah, he knew how to find them. And once down the rabbit hole, there was no coming back again. Just a screaming fall into a darkness as infinite and clutching as a nightmare. No waking up, either.
God, why couldn’t he just wake up?
“Only, it’s been a while since you went hunting,” Coll observed, that level gaze assessing, always measuring, but giving away nothing. “Why the sudden change?”
Rook kept his reasons for going to himself; he didn’t owe Coll explanations. Not anymore. What did he know, anyway? Coll had an easy life working behind a desk, occasionally flying out somewhere, and getting himself a swank room from which to monitor at a distance. It was hard not to stare at the wall-to-wall view of the San Diego Bay—and the ocean beyond, vast and calm, restful. Rook wasn’t one to give in to envy, but a little peace would go a long way right now.
“It’s a big step backward from the work you’ve been doing,” Coll pressed.
Rook exchanged his wallet for the one waiting on the tray that Coll had provided—time to become, let’s see, Michael Reese; at least they’d kept his initials—and slid it in the back pocket of his jeans.
Of course, he could’ve explained to Coll that he’d been on the inside too long. That he had to get a taste of the virgin experience again to keep his edge. Any Chimera could relate.
But he was too far gone for easy lies.
Darkness lurked at the edges of his vision, crackling and dense with reproach—not that he could make out anything right now, or ever—but when he turned to confront it, the blind spot shifted, too. It was as if he had a fringe space in the back of his mind, one in which an intruder could hide, its presence hounding him like a constant uncertainty.
Rook had to go out or he’d lose his mind. He had to go out or Coll would have to put him down like a mad dog.
The alternate phone on the tray was a sleek little silver thing, the latest to hit the market, whereas his personal mobile was at least a year behind. Both were unnecessary. He had other ways of keeping current—other, more intimate ways to track his marks.
“You could shave, at least. Make yourself pretty.” Coll’s idea of a joke.
Since he’d decided to back off, Rook offered a dry one of his own. “Girls like me rough. Guys, too, actually.”
***
“Okay, but what if I show up to the party completely naked?” Jordan Lane hissed ahead to Maisie as they navigated down the dock to the water taxi that would take them out to the
Envoi
, their destination for the evening.
The naked thing had been a nightmare since childhood, most recently the night before her big sales pitch to get the Medea account. Account secured. Promotion pending. But the fear was alive and well. Thriving.