Tales of the Golden Judge: 3-Book Bundle - Books 1-3

by Hart, Melissa F.

  He pressed his lips to hers, and despite the passion she could feel in his body, there was something gentle about it, too, something soft and claiming and longing. Violet put aside her sadness and her fears of abandonment to give herself up to it completely.

  “I wanted to show you my people and my home,” he said softly, nuzzling her lips with his own. “I wanted to show you my world, and I... I thought perhaps you might stay.”

  She started to reply, but it was apparent that Carson didn't trust it. He kissed her again and more deeply this time, and she hooked her fingers into the belt loop of his jeans to draw him close. She didn't know where her instant attraction to this man came from, or why it so quickly consumed her, but she didn't want to fight it.

  “I left you unfulfilled last night,” she murmured, and he made a soft questioning sound.

  “I didn't want to,” she confessed. “I thought about it later. I think I dreamed about it.”

  Her words made his entire body shudder, and her hands drifted up and down his chest. She could feel him so clearly and so sweetly through the fabric of his T-shirt, and then she slipped her hands underneath it. His skin was burning hot, and she couldn't prevent herself from purring.

  “You took such good care of my last night, now you need to let me take care of you too...”

  Carson made a questioning sound, and then she was pushing him to the tree where she had stood, urging him to lean back against it. When he was exactly where she wanted him, she dropped to the knees amidst the litter of last year's leaves, and reached for him.

  He groaned when she pulled his cock from his pants, and when her small hands curled around it, his eyes drifted closed.

  “You... you don't have to,” he said, and she admired his restraint even as she was amused by his desperate stab as chivalry.

  “I want to,” she murmured softly. “You should always give me what I want.”

  He nodded mutely, and she took that as permission to start stroking him. He was large in her hands, and it took him less than a minute to gain his full hardness. His cock, like the rest of his skin, was burning hot, and she couldn't get enough of it.

  His hands landed on her shoulders, grasping her tightly but not painfully, and she leaned forward to take the tip of his cock in her mouth. The sound he made ripped straight through her body, and she opened her mouth wider, wanting to take more and more.

  Violet felt his hands in her hair, a gentle intoxicating pressure, but he never pushed, never shoved. He only stayed still to receive the pleasure that she was giving him, and the thought made her want him more and more.

  She could feel his hips start to move, and his hands tightened in her hair, but suddenly he drew away, making her yelp in surprise.

  “No,” he said, shaking his head and coming down to kneel beside her. “Not like this, please, I want you.”

  The intensity of his need should have frightened her, but instead it drove her higher and higher. She pressed her thighs together tightly, biting her lip, but then she nodded. The fact was that she wanted him as well, and nothing else would do.

  Silently, he helped her out of her jeans and her underwear, and he lay back on the still-cold ground. Violet straddled his hips, aware that her spit was still wet on his cock, and she hesitated for a moment.

  “I never want to do anything that you don't want,” he whispered. “Never. Give me what you wish, and with that I will be content.”

  His earnest words made her heart flutter, and she positioned herself over the blunt tip of his cock. His large hands wrapped around her hips, steadying her, and she slowly started to lower herself onto his body.

  He was large, she remembered that from the night before, and she was still tight. Her eyes squeezed shut with pain, and he held himself brutally still as she slid down on him.

  “Sh, take your time, love, it's fine...”

  The pain was sharp, but it added to her pleasure as well. Biting her lip, she rocked on him, taking more and more of him, but oh so slowly.

  When she finally drew close to him, when he was entirely inside her, she opened her eyes and caught his gaze.

  “So beautiful,” he moaned, and he rolled his hips up gently to meet her.

  There was that same pain, but then there was pleasure, too, and her thighs tightened as he pressed up to her again.

  “More?” he asked.

  “More, more, more,” she whispered, and he gave it to her. His hands on her hips, he pushed up into her, his movements smooth and controlled. She reached down between them to press her fingers to her clit. This sharpened her pleasure, and she cried out, pressing down even harder.

  Carson growled at this and pushed up toward her.

  The fullness and perfection of having him inside her made her wail, and her orgasm broke over her like a lightning flash. One moment she was reaching for it and straining for it, and the next she was arched with white-hot sensation. She bore down on his body hard, wringing every last bit of sensation from it that she could.

  She was still panting in the throes of her release when Carson brought her down hard on his cock. He roared when he came, echoes ringing through the woods. She felt him spill inside her, intensifying her pleasure even further, and she raked her nails across his chest.

  After a long still moment, he brought her down to cuddle him against his chest, gently disengaging their bodies.

  “This is perfect,” he said solemnly, and though she remained silent, she agreed.

  It was all too perfect, and that bothered her. There was still a murderer at large. She was still the same person she had been. There had been no magic transformation, but now a sense of wellness and safety came over her.

  Carson was still speaking, but even he was drifting off, and Violet yawned, resting her head against his chest.

  It was so dark and she was so sleepy, it surely couldn't hurt to doze off for a bit.

  ***

  As Carson and Violet slept, a dark figure materialized from the dark forest around them. It gazed at the two of them for a moment, and then, without a pause, it bent down to pick up the small woman. She whimpered in her sleep, but then she quieted again, and the figure walked off, leaving the werewolf judge sleeping soundly.

  TO BE CONTINUED IN BOOK THREE: To See the Dawn - Volume 3

  ***

  To See the Dawn

  ***

  Synopsis

  The murderer is revealed, and Violet must battle first her own demons and then the evil given human form that has haunted her life. Separated from the werewolf judge Carson Keynes, she finds her own strength and comes to learn even more about the werewolf who has captured her heart.

  ***

  She was cold.

  It was all that Violet knew, and in that moment, it was all that she had always known. She was ten years old again, and she was wandering through the freezing rain and snow dressed in her favorite blue snowsuit and the pink hat with the bobble her mother had knitted for her. Her mother said it was too small for her, but Violet refused to give it up.

  Daddy had teased her, saying that a Violet should wear violet hats, but she shook her head, holding the hat with both hands and a mutinous scowl.

  “No, Mama made it for me, and I want to keep it,” she declared.

  It had been a good choice. The hat kept her warm as she toiled through the wintry landscape, and when she finally found her way to a small and cozy cave, she removed it only to see that it was crusted with snow and ice.

  The cave was just large enough for her ten-year-old body, and it quickly warmed with her heat. In just a few minutes, she was feeling warm and human again, and she sat up straighter.

  She knew Daddy and Mama were coming back for her. There was some reason they had had to go away, but if she was a good girl, if she was smart, and brave and quiet, they would come back for her. Then they would go back to their house on Mockingbird Lane, or maybe they would go to Paris or Seattle or Colossal City, one of those places where Mama had lived before she found Daddy
and decided she wanted something more.

  Violet remembered the soft look on Mama's face when she asked her why she had decided to settle down.

  “What's something more?” Violet had demanded, resting her head against her mother's lap.

  “Something more, well, I suppose that's you and your father,” her mother said softly, stroking her daughter's face. She had been a model, a tall and lithe woman with fierce green eyes, but when she looked down at Violet's soft baby face, she was something soft and kind.

  Violet had frowned. She hadn't understood what her mother meant, not until... until...

  Violet, ten years old and curled up in her tiny cave, knew there was something else she couldn't remember. Images swirled around her head and voices as well. There was... an investigative agency, friends, a man with white hair. Was he old? He didn't look old, and the way he smiled made her heart beat faster.

  She tried to think about the man, but just when she tried to focus on him, she heard another voice instead.

  “Violet? Violet, honey? Come out, honey, we're looking for you.”

  For a brief moment, she thought it was Mama and Daddy, coming to look for her, but then she realized it was Aunt Sal and Uncle Will. She liked them, but they weren't Mama and Daddy. She drew deeper into her cave, though their voices grew more worried and more upset.

  Soon enough, after a while, their voices faded out and were replaced by the howl of winter.

  Who needs them anyway, Violet thought scornfully, even as she wondered, wounded, why they had not tried harder.

  There was briefly a moment of silence, but then another voice started to call.

  “Vi! Vi, where are you? Come on out, it's time to go home!”

  It was Vicky, her older, glamorous cousin Vicky from Colossal City, who taunted her, teased her and pulled her hair, but who also defended her from the other girls, taught her about makeup and bras and more...

  This was more tempting, but Violet put her hands over her ears. She was waiting for Mama and Daddy.

  There was nothing but the wind for a while, and then there was a howl, a long and low dirge. It chilled her blood in her veins, and she drew back even further. There were monsters out there, she knew it, but all she had to do was to wait for Mama and Daddy. They would come for her, and then everything would be fine.

  Eventually, the howl died away, the wind died away, and there was nothing left.

  Violet, who was, after all, quite small and tired, felt her eyes drift closed. Surely there would be no problem with falling asleep. Her parents would wake her up when they came for her. Of course they would come for her. Parents didn't abandon their children, they simply didn't...

  “Violet?”

  The voice was soft and deep, and at first she thought that it had simply come out of a dream. Then it repeated itself, louder and clearer, and she jerked awake. She knew that voice, didn't she? She knew that person who called her name, and she stretched a little, straining to hear it.

  “Violet, love? Please, come out. Come out, I need you here…”

  The voice was so familiar, so sweet and gentle, and it awoke more memories than that. She wasn't a child. She wasn't ten years old, was she? No, she was more than twice that, and suddenly the cave seemed even more cramped then before as she realized how big she really was.

  “Violet, please, come out, I can't find you, I can't see you.”

  Mama and Daddy... they weren't coming. The pain that came from that thought was less than she thought it would be. If someone had told her a few minutes ago that her parents were not returning for her, she thought she would have sobbed, but now she realized this pain was very old. She didn't feel it like a knife in her chest, but instead as an old scar.

  When she realized her parents were never coming for her, that they were in fact dead, there was a stronger pain, but even that was dull. No, something was happening here. She wasn't a child, her parents were never coming for her, and there was no reason for her to be hiding in a cave.

  She remembered from when she had gone on outdoor hiking excursions with Vicky that when you were lost, you had to make yourself visible. If you hid yourself away, you could die.

  “Violet?”

  This time, she could parse the words, and she knew who was calling her. The moment she remembered his name, a smile came to her face, and the next time he called, she levered herself out of the cave, standing tall and proud in the blowing snow.

  “Carson! Carson, I'm here!”

  An enormous white wolf came bounding out of the storm, it's yellow eyes alive with joy. She reached for it, burying her fingers into its luxurious pelt. It covered her face with enthusiastic licks, and she knelt down next to it. She knew that it would never leave her, never abandon her, and she knew that this frightening snowscape was nothing but an illusion.

  As soon as the thoughts crossed her mind, the wind whipped up high enough and hard enough that her bare skin stung, and in a rush like a tornado, it tore the wolf away from her arms.

  “No!”

  She was spun, up and out and farther and farther, and finally she opened her eyes.

  Violet lay on a cold stone surface, and when she tried to sit up, she realized that rope lashed her securely in place. She fought the urge to shout and scream, but it didn't matter, because her awakening had been detected.

  “You fought yourself free,” said a creaking voice. “You won free of your mind.”

  She twisted her head to one side, where she saw a wreck of a man sitting by her head. His face was covered by a straggling wreck of a beard, and he sat hunched over, his eyes maddened and red in the light of an old-fashioned lamp.

  With a start, Violet realized that she was being held in a local cemetery, one of the oldest in the state. Behind his shoulder, she could see an unforgiving stone angel, and beyond that, nothing by the black branches of the trees. The macabre setting gave her a shiver that she couldn't hide, and it made the man in front of her laugh.

  “If you are not afraid of your own mind, girl, then the dead should have no fear for you.”

  “I'm not afraid of the dead,” Violet said, her voice only quivering a little bit. “I'm afraid of what is going to happen.”

  “Not much,” the man said, shrugging as if she had asked him what he thought of an interesting television show. “You are going to die, however. That is simply your fate, to die on this table tonight.”

  “You're the murderer,” Violet said, dread and realization dawning on her. “You're... you're the one who's been killing people.”

  “I am a murderer,” he corrected, his voice as calm as a schoolteacher’s. “Do you not understand how many killers there are out there, girl? I am one among a vast company.”

  Violet wasn't listening. Instead, she was shaking her head, trying to make sense of what had happened to her.

  “You killed my parents,” she said, and there was not a hint of tears in her eyes. Instead, she stared at him with a rage that, if the world were fair, would have set him on fire. To her continuing fury, he only shrugged.

  “I believe I did,” he said. “There's a smell of something familiar on you anyway, and that brings this to a neat circle as well.”

  “Neat circle... is this just a game to you?” she demanded.

  He stared at her coldly. “An old game,” he agreed, drawing himself erect.

  There was something ancient and diseased about him, and despite the shamble he was, she could sense the threat that rolled off of him like icy air.

  “There is an old and mighty feud between myself and the Icefang clan,” he said. “They have offended me, and so I hunt beneath their noses. However, tonight, that game is going to end, and I will kill their last son before the dawn.”

  Icefang, that's what they call Carson...

  “What have they done to you?” she asked. He was strong, but there was something quite mad about him, and if she could keep him talking, she thought she might be able to worry free the rope that held her right hand down. It was
looser than the other, and she watched the man carefully as he hunched close.

  “They tried to rid the world of my kind,” the man hissed. “They started a crusade that was designed to drive all into the sunlight, to force us to burn for a world that they liked better. They were the hunters and we were the prey, but now that means nothing as our numbers dwindle.”

  “Are... are you the last?” she asked, her voice catching in her throat, and that made the man throw back his head and begin to laugh. The sound went on and on, and the hair at the back of her neck stood up on end. If there had ever once been a sane mind inside this wreck, it was long gone.

  “Yes, yes, girl, I am the last, and so is he. When he comes, I shall kill him, and I will be alone, the last, and the victor.”

  Violet started to make a reply to that, but then the man clamped a fiendishly strong hand around her throat. She expected to be gagged by the stench of him, but there was curiously no scent to him at all. There was a hint of autumn leaves, but otherwise, there was a complete absence that made her truly realize that she was dealing with something terrible and wrong.

  “And... you, beautiful little girl, you are the key to that.”

  She choked, and when he lifted his hand, she stared at him. “What do you mean?”

  “You're the last Icefang's lover. His precious, his beloved. When he comes here, he will see you, he will see you dead, and then we shall fight. That is what I want. It matters not whether he slays me or I slay him. Most importantly, he will see you, and he will see you dead.”

  Her captor ran a tender hand down her face, making Violet shudder, but that still couldn't stop her from smiling up at him. Her mirth obviously upset him, and he frowned, giving his face cartoonishly dark and deep lines.

  “What is this foolish smile for, girl?”

  “You're ridiculous,” she said, her voice low and spiteful. “Do you think you have anything? If you want to wait to kill me until he comes to mourn, I am going to grow old on this slab.”