by Thalia Eames
The badder they are, the better they bite.
Seven Brides for Seven Shifters, Book 2
Juliana Perlas has three good reasons to give up dating bad boys:
1. The uber-famous ones tend to be jerks.
2. They’re dangerous.
3. Danger turns her on.
She pulls a trifecta when one of the Seven Sons of Hell crashes through her living room window. Strong, definitely not silent, 1.5-million-Youtube-suscribers Daz Warren.
Dashiell Warren never means to destroy things; chaos just kind of follows him around. His peculiar gift has served him well as a shifter MMA fighter, but it’s left behind a trail of destroyed lives. Miraculously, Jules is the only person in five years he’s been able to touch without suffering searing pain. Which makes him want to get closer.
Jules sternly reminds herself she wants a heroic type who’ll fight for her, slay dragons for her. But Daz has vowed to never raise his fists again—literally or figuratively.
In spite of themselves, his need to touch and her weakness for danger boys collide and go nuclear. All while Fate howls with laughter…
Warning: This book contains a woman whose mind says “run” but whose body says “dance”. And a hero who’s…who’s…well, there’s no nicer way to put it. He’s a smartass. May cause barks of laughter and a yen for taboo sex. Hey, if you can’t run from him, run to him.
The Devil’s A Werewolf
Thalia Eames
Dedication
This new Werewol—verine and its predecessor are dedicated to Sarah. Your salon chair is where I learned readers could fall in love with my stories. And hearing your clients share their favorite parts fueled me to write more. Beyond those wonders, your insights helped make these books happen. I raise my glass to you, Sarah. Thank you!
To “Kitty,” for being you and because that alone is an inspiration.
To the Ice Princess (my Snow Queen), for an assist without which I couldn’t have scored.
…and to my editor, Latoya. Thank you for “getting me”. Being understood and supported is a great gift. Cheers to you too!
Prologue
The Wolverine unsheathed his claws and his audience went wild. They’d been waiting for their champion to lose control. They craved his violence—claws so white they shone silver under the ring of lights—and they wanted the blood that inevitably followed.
A faint flicker of fear brightened his opponent’s eyes, but she blinked it away and allowed her shoulders to bulk. The Kodiak woman, known in the league as Brawlin’ Bae, stood two feet taller than The Wolverine. But height didn’t matter.
Glittering liquid black inked over The Wolverine’s irises. Then he smiled and the fans in the front row shrank back. The expression seemed to be a promise The Wolverine aimed directly at them; if the big brown bear didn’t stop him, they’d be next.
He stalked to the left. Then right. His fangs descended past his lips so slowly the unwise members of the audience found it sexy. But they’d come for the violence and the sensual way the champion of the Shifter Mixed Martial Arts League delivered broken bones.
In the blink of an eye, The Wolverine leapt. Each of his clawed feet dug into Brawlin’ Bae’s muscles as he landed on her shoulders, seven feet above where he’d stood a second before. His glower scanned the audience from this new vantage point. And the fans sucked in a collective gasp as Bae growled, her own claws extended to shred her opponent where he stood.
But The Wolverine leapt again, diving headfirst. On the way down he punched Bae in the base of her spine three times. She howled in pain, falling to her knees.
Equal but opposite pain stabbed daggers into The Wolverine’s fists—as his punishment for touching another living being. But the pain didn’t stop him. It never stopped him. Having caught himself in a handstand, he spun on one palm and kicked his legs out to standup. With a roll of his shoulders he allowed the pain in his fists to consume him.
Then lifting his leg high and holding it for long moments, he suddenly kicked out, his foot catching the bear shifter in the neck. She dropped to her left. No one moved. No one could believe a fighter of Bae’s caliber had been completely dominated within minutes of the starting bell.
She lifted herself up onto one arm. A mistake. The Wolverine descended. His claws sent liquid red arching across the ring. She fought. It didn’t matter. He kept going. The crowd roared in a violence-fueled frenzy, until… until a sickening shredding of flesh sounded. Then The Wolverine stood, the man inside the animal suddenly aware of the carnage his blood-stained claws had caused, and he howled in anguish.
Chapter One
Juliana “Jules” Perlas swung her legs onto Lucifer’s lap and melted from his touch. All right, so Cash Warren wasn’t actually the devil. But he came close. He possessed the beauty of a fallen angel, and a sinful way with his hands. Working those hands up her calves, he massaged her aching muscles in what she could now add as number eight on her list of seven deadly sins.
His skill at rubbing away the effects of a long day’s work at the diner nearly made her miss it when he said, “This isn’t going to work out. Is it, Jules?” Her eyes fluttered open to find his unwavering gaze on her. Her back stiffened. They’d never gotten together as a couple. How the hell could he break up with her when she wasn’t actually his girlfriend? Nah uh.
“What’s not going to work?” she asked, sitting up straight on the couch, eyes narrowed.
“You and me. As much as I want more…” His thick black lashes lowered. “…we never seem to get past our wall of friendship.”
Jules barely croaked her dissent, mostly because she couldn’t disagree. It wasn’t that she didn’t love Cash, she adored him so much he’d become one of the few people in her inner circle. But romantic love? She hadn’t made it there with him and she couldn’t understand why. Maybe because her last relationship melted down on the public stage of celebrity dating. A girl tended to get cautious after going through a breakup that the internet witnessed and many of her ex-boyfriend’s fans instigated.
Jules shuddered. Thoughts of her past always gave her the chills. It’d been six years since her rock star ex-boyfriend blamed her for a series of all-around-insulting-jackhole-stupid-ass blog posts and his fans had gone for her blood by internet bullying her. From then on she’d turned into a giant flashing yellow light. Everything in her life cautioned: Danger, Girl Robinson, danger! And while she had been a thrill seeker once, she didn’t get high on adrenaline anymore. Including the thrill of the fallen angel, Cash “Lucifer” Warren.
Jules didn’t want another doomed romance with a lovable bad boy. But she didn’t want to lose the relationship she and Cash had built over the last year either. They made fun of each other and they supported each other. Their friendship worked.
And what the hell did he mean by a wall? When had friendship ever been a barrier? She’d always considered their teasing a bridge, connecting them to each other.
Cash released her calf as his lips thinned. “We’re close but there’s distance between us.” He reached out and she froze. Damn. For some reason anything beyond friendly hugs and helpful massages felt wrong.
He shook his head, somehow understanding what she couldn’t say, but he still ran the back of his index finger down the bridge of her nose. She smiled. So did he. “It’s like I never quite get to know you, and every time I see you it feels like I’m starting over again. You’re holding something back. You.”
He was right. Totally on point. No wonder defensiveness surged up in her chest. A girl’s closest friends shouldn’t run around being right and exposing her faults. No one liked to b
e laid bare.
“What the fuck does that mean?” She chose harsh words to hide behind.
“Jules?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re cursing again.”
Oh, yeah. She shifted her gaze to the left and tapped her right foot in embarrassment. She had promised her friends she’d stop cursing so much. Her ability to let loose a blue streak of expletives had become her trademark; she even dyed a streak in her hair to match her personality. But lately she’d gone way over the top. Samuel L. Jackson would’ve had a hard time going foul for foul with her, and that man possessed gold-star-worthy cursing skills. Jules needed to dial it in. But she had a lot of anxiety and cussing relieved stress. To defend herself, she shared that fact with Cash and punctuated her words with a finger snap and an exclamation of “Science!” He laughed.
Cursing like a banshee made her feel better, kinda like riding a motorcycle with no helmet and your eyes closed so you can feel the thrill of the risk.
She shook her hair out of her face and grumbled as she watched the blue dyed into the black waves flounce away then slide back across her vision.
“Okay, then…” She fixed Cash with a stare. “…what are you talking about?”
Cash replied without his usual humor. “See that? You’re not disagreeing. You’re buying time to think.”
She shifted her gaze left and started to tell him to go fuc—, um, copulate with himself, but he cut her off.
“Tell me something different,” Cash said. “Argue with me.” Leaning in, he kissed her cheek in a soft brush of lips. His voice dipped to a whisper. “But you won’t, because deep down you agree.” The words wisped across the curve of her ear.
Her shoulders slumped as she tried to think of something to say, anything to discount the truth she knew as well as he did. They were friends. They’d always be friends. And nothing more.
A loud mechanical rumbling killed the moment. The noise reminded her of the way old cars sounded when you took the mufflers off, all rumble and growl. Cash paused, surprise crossing his gorgeous face. “There’s no way,” he said, rising off the couch and rushing to the window.
“This idiot,” Cash said, but he sounded excited. Jules had started to cross the room when Cash spoke again, concern lacing his words. “What’s he doing? He’s going too fast to make that turn.”
Cash froze, turned and looked at her in dread. “Run!” he yelled, before he dive-tackled her and they fell backward into the kitchen.
That’s when the front window and the wall around it exploded. Glass, bricks and wood siding blasted overhead, some of the smaller pieces raining down on them. Through the thundercloud of debris, a big metal monster with one inky black eye burst into the living room, roaring like a hellhound out for blood.
“Oh shiz, oh shiz, oh shit shit shit,” Jules chanted as she and Cash scrambled backward. “It’s the end of the world and we’re gonna die.”
Chapter Two
When the dust settled, cliché but true, Jules lay on her back, unable to breathe. Not because Cash’s big body was sprawled on top of her. Not because she had enough dust in her throat to spit mud pies. Not even because Lennox, her sister-friend, was going to murder whoever just blew a hole through the front of Averdeen Manor. None of the above. Jules couldn’t breathe because what just happened was, well, it was fucking awesome!
Every inch of her body tingled, including her brain. If she didn’t know she’d been alive for twenty-eight years, and making a mess out of her life, she’d swear she’d been dead until the moment something exploded through her friend’s house.
The rumbling roar of the hellhound suddenly stopped. Cash rolled off Jules and helped her stand up. He touched her cheek and gave her a long look, silently asking “you okay?” She nodded but didn’t say anything. How could she when the first words out her mouth would be, can we do that again?
A weird crossbreed between a dune buggy and a motorcycle sat on top of the fabric and stuffing that used to be a couch. The coffee table had broken down into a pile of splinters. In the middle of all this, sat the hellhound vehicle. Chrome and black pearl fiberglass encased an exposed engine and wrapped around to house three wheels, two up front, one in the back. The man inside the hellhound reached up with very human arms and tugged off the helmet she’d mistaken for an eye earlier.
Jules had seen a few similar Slingshot Roadsters on the highway but the hellhound kicked those in the ass. The vehicle was a monstrously beautiful work of art. At least she would’ve called it monstrously beautiful if the man behind the wheel hadn’t stolen her attention. Dark hair, which blended to a honey color at the tips, brushed broad shoulders. He smiled in her direction with perfect teeth, set behind gorgeously lickable lips and framed by a short dark beard. Have mercy.
He got out of his vehicle. Pausing beside the passenger door he used his thumb and first two fingers of his left hand to push his wild nearly onyx hair out of his face. Lifting his helmet back to eye level he shook his head with a rueful smile and said something she couldn’t hear. Then he clicked a button on the front of the helmet and set it down on his driver’s seat.
At full height, the man stood around six feet and had a wide chest with muscular forearms that rippled beneath a black long-sleeve T-shirt. As he moved toward them he ruched the sleeves a third of the way up his arm. Jules grabbed Cash to steady herself.
All her senses went haywire. She told herself she must’ve died in the crash. She was dead right now. And since she was probably on hell’s guest list, this sexy devil with gunmetal gray eyes had come to drag her down to the underworld…
Look at those arms.
Devil or not, she’d let him drag her anywhere. His were the kind of arms a girl curled up in every night, feeling safe and secure in the knowledge that nothing and no one could touch her. No one but him.
A blue-black tattoo curved its way from his left wrist and disappeared beneath his shirt. Not one of those tribal things she’d read about in her romance novels, his tatt had been painted across the copper-bronze glow of his skin in intricate intersecting lines that seemed to map out a distant constellation. Jules suddenly wanted to take a ride with this Rocket Man.
Sunglasses covered his eyes but the frames didn’t hide the sculptor’s delight of his bone structure or the danger vibrating just below the surface of his skin.
A shiver of excitement washed over her and the tingles upped to another level. Which was kind of weird because Rocket Man moved in slow motion. Who did that outside of movies? He had to be a shifter. He had the same grace and swagger as both Cash and Cash’s closest buddy, Garrett.
Danger, Girl Robinson. Danger!
Jules knew she should run for her life. That was obvious. But since Rocket Man’s slow-motion stalk gave her extra time, she decided to get some information from Cash. Her friend seemed to know the guy and if she was going to scream and dive through the massive hole in the front of Averdeen Manor she needed to know how fast and how far to run from Rocket Man.
“Who in the hell is that? And why did he just destroy Lennox’s house?” she gasped and gripped Cash’s arm. Cash looked down at her, sparing a glance at the death grip she had on his bicep. He probably thought this whole scenario scared her. Ha. If he only knew, she couldn’t be more thrilled.
“You know how you call me Lucifer?” Cash asked.
Jules nodded her answer, barely able to take her eyes off Rocket Man. Cash exhaled through his nose to punctuate his next words. “If we go with your analogy of calling me Lucifer, let’s say there are seven princes of hell. Garrett you already know.”
Jules could barely concentrate on Cash’s words. Excitement pounded in her ears and in her veins. Still she faked composure so she could get the information she needed to make a decision about running away.
“Uh huh, Garrett is clearly Satan,” she said. Probably with a bit more sincerity than Cash expected, jud
ging by his double take.
He inclined his head. “I can see that.”
Jules sighed in agreement. Cash’s good buddy, who’d also become her closest friend’s husband, had a major Dark Lord vibe going. She adored him for it and Garrett kept Lennox happy, which made Jules love him more.
Cash cleared his throat. “In the legends, alongside Satan and Lucifer there are five other dark princes. I’m not sure who the other four are, but this one is my older brother: Dashiell Warren. You can call him Asmodeus.”
Asmodeus. Seriously? Jules shook her hair out of her face so she could locate the fastest exit. Dust still hung in the air and she coughed for a moment before continuing her plans. She’d lived most of her life in LuPines, North Carolina, but time meant change. And in the time it took her to decide to move to Monaco, where any shifters she met would likely be cultured and refined and therefore not dangerous, the Rocket Man/Asmodeus/Man of her Dreamy Nightmares stopped to stand directly in front of her.
Damn. Just damn. Cash wasn’t wrong about his brother. Dashiell Warren stood there, in her best friend’s broken living room, as fierce as the headless horseman’s stallion and just as beautiful: the mutha fuckin’ Devil himself.
Shit.
Dashiell “Daz” Warren clicked his car alarm on. Then he paused. He’d crashed into someone’s living room. Again. Despite the fact the Hellion had remained intact with only a few dings (because he’d built her that way) he probably didn’t need the alarm. Eh well, better be safe. Plus he had no idea how mad Garrett or his wife might be at him for ventilating their home. Not that he blamed them, but he didn’t want the lady who owned this huge place to flick off and take a baseball bat to his ride. It had happened before. Daz paused again. Hell, both the crashing into someone’s living room and the bashing of his vehicle had happened more than once. He led a fun fucking life.
No matter where he went, the Hellion, the three-wheel roadster he’d built from the ground up, always drew attention. Not that Daz didn’t understand the fascination. He’d engineered his ride to be as gorgeous as something out of those 1950s-influenced “films of the future”, and efficient too. The Hellion ran on electricity and/or any kind of oil he chose to pour into her tank. The various diners and dives along the highways from Oregon to North Carolina had supplied Daz with enough cooking oil to get to LuPines without buying an ounce of gas.