His thrusts slowed, still jerky and uncontrolled, and Danika collapsed on the bed, eyes closed. Bracken eased down to his side next to her, still half-hard inside her, and tried to think through the fog of lust, his bear’s grumbling thoughts, and the pure surprised ecstasy of a Call answered...
He traced his fingers over the tattoo on her side in long slow strokes as the sweat cooled on them both in the warm room. Her head slowly turned on the pillow until she faced him, a hint of a smile curving her mouth.
“So that’s what it feels like,” she said.
He smiled, surprised at her words. “Yeah— I guess it is.”
“Is it like that every time?”
He shrugged as best he could. “I don’t know. I hope so.”
He wanted to know what it felt like to take her without the barrier between them, but he would let her decide when that would happen.
They lay together in silence as the mutual rhythm of their bodies slowed.
“So... what happens now?” she asked.
“I— I don’t know.”
But Bracken did know what was supposed to happen next. What was supposed to happen next was that he would gather up all of the crap she’d strewn around the motel room and dump it in his loft above the tattoo shop. Then he’d have to take her home to Sitka to meet his mother and his sister, and then she would be presented to the clan leader... And he’d have to look into his father’s eyes for the first time in fifteen years.
It was too much. It was all too much.
His bear clamored for more of her skin. More of her scent... More of everything... But he couldn’t do that. He didn’t even know where to start. He had let instinct guide him to this point, but now he didn’t know where to go.
Danika smiled briefly and leaned forward to kiss him. He could sense that something was wrong and resisted the urge to pull her against him and kiss her the way he wanted. She turned away from him, and Bracken mourned the loss of her heat as she moved away and got up off the bed.
She tugged her pajama top over her head and ran a hand through her dark hair in a nervous motion as she looked at him. “You should... I’m sorry. But I think you should go. I really do have to work early in the morning and—”
Bracken nodded. “You don’t have to make excuses. I understand.”
It was too soon, and he definitely didn’t want to leave, but this wasn’t the time or the place to argue. All he could do was agree, and the relieved smile on her face told him he’d made the right decision.
He just had to hope that she would understand that things would be different with him. It would take time—but there was no way to know how much.
“SO LET ME GET THIS straight— She was mated to a wolf, but now she’s not?”
Bracken leaned his forehead against the wall and sighed heavily.
“Amos, I didn’t call you to get a lecture,” he said stiffly.
“I’m not lecturing you, I’m just trying to get my head around it,” his brother replied.
Bracken rubbed a hand over his beard and gritted his teeth. He should never have called Amos. His brother was the worst at giving advice, especially when it came to anything to do with the Call. He didn’t believe in it, a fact that shocked their mother and made their sister laugh every time.
“Trust you to get a tainted mate,” Amos chuckled.
Rage boiled inside his chest and the bear in his head roared loud enough to make his ears ring. “What the fuck did you just say?” Bracken snapped.
“You heard me fine, little brother,” he replied. “Wolves. You can’t trust wolves. Or anyone who’s been around them. You should know that by now!”
“No. Can’t say that I do,” Bracken said tersely. He didn’t know what kind of company his brother was keeping these days, but it definitely wasn’t the good kind. They hadn’t been raised like that.
“You called me for advice, right?”
“I’m starting to regret it,” Bracken muttered.
“Here’s my advice,” Amos continued. “That ‘mates’ stuff is all bullshit stories made up to keep us in line. There’s more to life than looking for ‘the one,’ and what kind of impossible carrot is that to chase anyway? You’re just blindsided by the fact that you haven’t found anyone worth your attention in Anchorage, and I don’t blame you. But just because she’s the first piece of ass you’ve had in the last five years doesn’t mean—”
Bracken let out a furious breath. “I’m gonna stop you before you say something really fucking stupid,” he barked.
Amos’ laughter crackled through the phone. “Calm down, little brother, this won’t be the last time it happens. Trust me—”
Bracken pulled the phone away from his ear. “I don’t fucking trust you,” he muttered as he stabbed his finger into the screen to end the call.
“Asshole.”
“Do you need me to ask what that was all about?” Cassie called out from the front desk.
“No,” Bracken growled.
Cassie raised her hands and shook her head as she got up from her seat. “Okay, Boss, just checking.”
“Cassie— Sorry, it’s not... it’s just family bullshit.”
She nodded. “I get it. Do you want a coffee? I’m going over to Sal’s.”
“Sure,” he replied absently.
“Are you going to tell me how your date went?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Nope.”
Cassie grimaced. “That bad?”
“Nope.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll just ask Danika when I get to Sal’s.”
Bracken groaned as Cassie laughed at him and walked out the door.
“What the fuck am I going to do now?” he muttered.
To be Continued in Wolf’s Bane, Bear’s Bond - Coming Summer 2020
About the Author
Niobe Marsh is a penname of a prolific author of many genres of romance.
Here you will find monsters, ghosts, paranormal lovers, dark heroes, and adventurous heroines in search of their happily ever after—whatever that means.
CURRENT SERIES:
"Heart & Souls" - Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance
Book 1 ~ Lost Soul (Coming April 2020)
Book 2 ~ Ghost of a Chance (Coming 2020)
Book 3 ~ Free Spirit (Coming 2020)
Black Garden Penitentiary - Paranormal Prison Series
Book 1 ~ The Darkest Rose (Coming May 2020)
North Star Bears
Book 1 ~ Wolf’s Bane, Bear’s Bond
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LAST DRAGONS
Embers of Dragonkind, Book 1
Kyrii Rayne
Prologue: Searchers
From the dark rooftop of a dirty aging tenement building, butter yellow slitted eyes gazed up into the sky, where, for a second, something was silhouetted against the moon. A drawn-out sibilant hiss filled the air, and a forked tongue flicked out, seeking any trace of a long sought scent.
“Yessss! Finally! There is hope for my children. The rumors are based in truth – all I need to do now is find where they are hidden, or where that one has its lair.”
For some time, those eyes continued to study the sky, but the shape was gone, the moon remained obstinately blank and ordinary. Eventually, with a hiss of frustration, he turned away, and moved to leave the roof.
In the alley below, a drunk lay back against the tenement wall, a bottle gripped in his hand. A bottle which smashed to the dirty concrete of the pavement as the drunk watched a giant snake slither down the rusting fi
re escape. Perhaps the smashed bottle was for the better – he had never hallucinated something that terrifying before.
He turned aside and retched, even as something slid past him, and away into the night.
THE NIGHT AIR WAS REFRESHINGLY cool as it slipped over his wings, and for a moment, he allowed himself to simply enjoy the sensation – but only for a moment. The press of loneliness filled him, the sense of despair.
What if he truly was the last? What if he never found them? What if all hope was lost?
He spiraled on the updraft from the heat of the city, then swung away into the darkness, keening softly for all that might never be. In all his years of searching, he had found no trace of another living dragon, only the hints that old Antonio had given him, about things long past, and now disappeared.
He needed, somehow, to restore his hope for the future.
Tomorrow, he would visit his friend – the only one who had ever seemed able to make him forget his despair for a while - and then go back to his search.
He side-slipped, turning, and folded gracefully to land on top of his building, the shadow concealing him, and what he was.
Chapter 1: Out of the Frying Pan
“See, now, this is why I didn't want to let you out of my sight, Laurel baby.” Billy DeLucca paced slowly back and forth in front of her as she sat mutely in the straight-backed chair and followed him with her eyes. She could feel bruises developing all over her belly, head and arms. She couldn't move her hands to rub them; they were cuffed behind her back, forcing her upper arms against the hard wood and leaving them tingling and aching. Billy didn't seem to notice her obvious discomfort, talking on in that perfectly reasonable tone he always used right after he had done something terrible. “You get out of my hands, you get into trouble. Now look at you. I hate seeing you like this, baby. You really should have listened to me, and been a good girl. Now I uh... well, I don't want to, cause I love you. But I'm gonna have to punish you.”
He was a giant Jersey-accented gorilla of a man, hairy everywhere, bearded, brown hair curling messily down across his shoulders and his dark eyes completely empty. His habitual dark suit strained to contain both his massive muscles and his equally massive gut.
Now and again he would come to stand over her, leaning down into her face and speaking softly to her as he stared into her eyes. Every time that happened, all she could do was resist the warring urges to flinch away, or to smash him in the nose with her forehead until his smirk died and he had to back away from her.
“I know you can't talk like that,” he said mildly, gesturing vaguely at his face to illustrate the duct tape wrapped brutally around the lower half of her own. Her strawberry blonde hair was caught in it, her cheeks, jaw and rosebud lips chafed under the heavy strapping, and the edge dug into the underside of her small nose. Her soft blue eyes, which kept tearing up no matter how hard she tried to play it tough, tracked his every move, but she no longer tried to make eye contact. He somehow didn't seem capable of it anymore - even when he was right in her face, he seemed to look past her, or through her. “But that's all right, you can just listen. See, me and the boys, we've been talking about what to do with you. Make you pay for running away from me, so you'll know not to do it again.”
Laurel Kendrick had felt fear before, but not like this. She knew the happy fear of water slides and roller coasters, the gut-churning nervousness of first dates and first driving lessons, and the guilty fear of sneaking back in through her bedroom window before dawn from a concert her parents had forbidden her to go to. She knew the startled fear of car accidents and purse snatchings, and the gut-wrenching, betrayed terror of cowering at a loved one's feet while he raised the fists that had left her head ringing and her skin torn. But before tonight, she had never understood the fear that she felt now, tied to a chair in the middle of a bare room with fresh fist marks all over her body and a half dozen armed thugs downstairs.
“Now, my cousins, they figure I should just give you another good beating, maybe do what I want with you in bed.”
He chuckled as she squinted in horror, knowing she knew the things he had kept pushing for sexually, and what she had refused in fear of both his brutal strength and aversion to foreplay. Now, he was thinking of forcing it. It wasn't even a surprise at this point. He would just use her trying to escape him as an excuse to do what he had wanted to do anyway. That was how guys like him operated.
Billy had started beating her a month ago. She had had a good twelve weeks with him before things went to Hell: restaurants and nice bars, museum visits and opera viewings, all of it on the arm of a big, tough, protective guy who liked her, and made her laugh, and never talked about his job. Laurel had adored him, the rosy fog of first love veiling all those flapping red flags from view. Yes, he was perfunctory, rough, and selfish in bed, but he was nice and attentive out of it, calling her several times a day out of sheer interest. Yes, he had a bad temper and was secretive about his weird job hours and sketchy-seeming relatives, but he was devoted, always had money, and had a sort of rough-edged charm that she used to like. Yes, he demanded all her free time, causing her friendships to start to wither up from neglect, and she had started to suspect, after a while, that he was monitoring her phone calls and movements somehow. But he had more real interest in her than any guy she had ever met, and she never had to fear walking anywhere with him, even down the darkest alley.
But honeymoons end, and so it was with their relationship: three months in, he had ended it, in a storm of smashed plates and swinging fists.
“But then, you know, the Boss, he took a look at you while you were still knocked out, and he said he'd like to tear off a piece. Now, that's not even my call. He's the Boss, after all. You don't tell the guy who runs most of San Francisco that he can't fuck your girl. So, that's definitely on the menu for you tonight. Now he's a smaller guy than me, but don't think you're in for an easy time. I know you like bein' a whore with different men, but uh, he's a biter. So here's hoping he won't leave you with any scars, right?”
He offered a brief, mirthless grin.
She remembered the first time Billy had lashed out at her with perfect clarity, like a film that played in her head sometimes when she lay down at night, scaring sleep away. They had been arguing — not even arguing, but more like hotly negotiating — some simple, stupid thing that hadn't even been worth arguing about. Shopping, that was it: she had wanted to go grocery shopping alone. It should have been a simple run down for apple pie fixings — and a chance to collect herself, as he had been starting to leave her feeling smothered, and she needed a few minutes alone somewhere. Instead, it had exploded all over the kitchen of her tiny studio apartment.
He had exploded, to be more specific: storming around the small, tiled room, smashing her plates, her bowls, the glass pane fronts of the cabinets. She remembered all of it exploding in fragments on the white tile floor and then crunching under his stomping feet, while she had cowered behind the corner of the fridge and wondered what demon had taken hold of Billy. His transformation had come Jekyll and Hyde fast, his face darkening to purple and his eyes going wide and blank. He had roared at the top of his lungs, demanding to know why she wanted to go out by herself, what was she being so secretive about, who was she seeing. She had opened her mouth to answer — and suddenly there had gone his fists, bam-bam, both digging brief, hard pain into the softness of her belly where he had laid his head not hours before.
“But you know, since you like other men so very much, I figure renting you out to my cousins like a two-dollar whore is pretty appropriate too.”
His smile had widened as he paced past, hands behind his back and his steps deliberately slow. Ice water had rushed through her veins, and she’d looked away from him in disgust and horror.
The betrayal had hurt worse than the blows: his ferocity turned inward, not against the world in protection of her, but a direct attack on her, as if she had suddenly somehow become his enemy. She had cried out in shock and fear,
tried to reason with him, pleaded, wept... and finally conceded, giving up the idea of going out alone. Only then, with her submission, had his gigantic, terrifying toddler tantrum ended as fast as it had come, and he had set down the last unbroken plate on the counter with eerie gentleness. Then he’d spoken, as if nothing had happened.
‘Sorry, Baby, just lost control. You should have known better than to test me. Now why don't you get this cleaned up, and then I'll take you shopping for new plates and the pie fixings.’
So reasonable, arm around her trembling shoulders, face back to normal, voice so terribly kind and a little smile on his face. But the fear had stayed inside of her, like a vein of ice that would not melt, and her stomach had curdled at his touch ever since. And after the second time that he had left her in a ball of terror and bruises, she had realized: he's not losing control. He's not some poor man with a mental illness. He's using his rage to control me.
And that very night, while Billy had gone out with the boys, she had packed up everything he hadn't yet broken, stuffed it all into the van she used to transport her paintings, and just started driving, calling friends' numbers at every intersection in search of a place to land.
Her gay friend Dennis had offered his garage for her stuff and an open couch for her, until she could get back on her feet. She had quit her job to keep Billy from being able to find her there, explaining to her managers what was going on the same day she had put in her report with the police. She had sold the van for deposit money on a new place. For two weeks after that, she had blocked Billy's number, avoided all calls from phone numbers she didn't know, and called and e-mailed all the friends she had let slide under Billy's influence, apologizing and explaining. Some had dismissed her; some had supported her. As time had gone on, things had started looking up. She had gotten a job in a small city across the Bay from San Francisco, and had started preparing to move there. She had started being able to sleep through the night. She had felt her crushed spirits start to rise once again inside of her, letting her dare to hope for a better future where that terror could not find her.
Bound to Change: A Limited Edition Spring Shifter Romance Collection Page 60