Phases of Passions (Trilogy Bundle) (Werewolf Romance - Paranormal Romance)

by Hart, Melissa F.

  Arriving at work, Erin vowed to push her desires to the back of her mind and focus on the day ahead.

  ***

  “Well, you are positively glowing!” Coleen greeted Erin as she came in and took off her jacket at her desk.

  “I am?” Erin blushed, feeling self-conscious, wondering if she was suddenly wearing a badge that declared to the world that she’d climaxed that morning.

  “Whatever you’re doing, it’s working,” Coleen complimented.

  “I guess I just slept well,” Erin shrugged casually.

  “No more nightmares?” Coleen enquired.

  “No,” Erin shook her head. She had been plagued by her nightmares for so long that it felt strange to have gone a night without them.

  “Looks like a good night’s rest was all you needed,” Coleen smiled. Then her gaze shifted to behind Erin and a cheeky grin settled across her face.

  “Well, my view just improved,” she winked.

  “Sean?” Erin asked, knowing full well that she didn’t need to. She could sense his arrival in the office from the rows of female heads which were now tentatively glancing up from their desks to have a glimpse at the new office Adonis.

  “The one and only,” Coleen confirmed.

  “I don’t know about him,” Erin admitted. “I tried speaking to him yesterday and I found him to be a little…rude.”

  “Maureen in finance said exactly the same thing,” Coleen replied without hesitation, as though she’d been eager to impart this latest morsel of gossip.

  “She said she tried to talk to him, you know, get to know him a bit, ask where he’s from, that sort of thing, and she couldn’t get a word out of him. Such a shame that the handsome ones are always too arrogant to be kind.” Coleen shook her head and made a cluck of disapproval.

  “Yeah he was pretty standoffish,” Erin said, turning to glance briefly at Sean. As she did so, his eyes automatically locked onto her eyes, causing her skin to break out in goose bumps. Turning back quickly, she could feel her heart racing in her chest.

  The images from the dream the night before began to resurface. She remembered his face next to hers, how he’d smelled, how he’d felt. How he had kissed her with deep, passionate kisses where he searched her mouth with his tongue and it had all felt so good. Too good.

  Running a hand through her dark hair, Erin tried to focus her thoughts.

  “You okay? You look flushed,” Coleen frowned with concern.

  “I’m fine,” Erin panted heavily. “Just had a hot spell.” She got up and headed toward the bathroom, needing a moment to regain her senses.

  Inside, she stared hard at herself in the mirror, where the false overhead lighting gave an unflattering reflection. She held herself against a sink and tried to get a control of her thoughts. She was at work; it was no place to entertain idle sexual fantasies.

  Groaning with frustration, Erin turned on a tap and splashed cold water on her cheeks. This wasn’t like her. She was always so cool and collected; she was normally the last person who would let a man get under her skin. Yet here she was, unable to even make eye contact with Sean without being taken over by some erotic animal desire to have sex with him.

  “Dammit,” Erin moaned to herself as she wandered in to a stall for some tissue paper to dry her face.

  She’d fancied men before, but never like this. It was as if it was almost beyond her control, which scared her a little.

  Leaving the bathroom, Erin felt refreshed and determined to stop letting her ridiculous crush get in the way of her work. It wasn’t as if Sean even liked her, so the chances of them ever even having sex were slim to none. The last they’d spoken, he’d been so rude that it was almost off-putting. Yet the dream and then the shower that morning…

  Erin stopped walking when she felt a pair of eyes intensely drilling in to her. She stopped suddenly in her tracks and looked up and saw Sean looking directly at her from the doorway to the copy room. Lifting her chin, Erin forced herself to meet his gaze and not turn in to a quivering mess.

  He stared at her for too long, possibly ten seconds—far past the realms of politeness, then turned and went in to the copy room. Frowning, Erin followed him in. She was tired of his mind games.

  She began to get fired up, ready to tell him that while he might think he’s God gift to women, he wasn’t!

  “Sean,” Erin said his name as she entered the room, putting on her most assertive voice.

  “Hey,” he barely glanced up from the copy machine as he nonchalantly greeted her. Full of nervous energy, Erin clenched her fists, trying to remain composed and relaxed.

  “I was wondering how you were settling in to the job,” she said, aware how lame she sounded but needing a way to start a conversation between them.

  “It’s okay,” Sean shrugged casually, not looking up from the copier. Erin ground her teeth in frustration. His behavior made no sense. In the office, he was giving her long, lingering looks, but in close proximity, he was basically flat-out ignoring her. What was his problem?

  Then, as if reading her thoughts, he turned and looked at her. His eyes were so intensely dark, like the dead of night. He regarded her with mild amusement, watching her squirm beneath his gaze.

  “Do you like it here?” he asked her, his voice so deep and guttural.

  Erin was caught off-guard by the question and felt herself blush. When he looked at her, her mind had once more been flooded with images of them in bed together. Her legs had wrapped around him as they sat on the edge of the bed and he went deeper inside her than any man had ever done before.

  “Erin?” Sean’s voice broke the power of the spell and she returned to reality with a start, a hot damp sweat having formed on the back of her neck.

  “I like it here fine,” Erin answered a little too breathlessly.

  “You seem…out of sorts,” Sean mused, a wry smile pulling at his lips. Erin stared at lips, remembering how they had caressed her own lips and her skin.

  “I’m fine,” Erin clarified, shaking her head and casting away the remnants of the dream. She realized it was the second time she’d said fine, which by women’s standards, meant she was anything but.

  “Okay.” Sean nodded at her and then turned back to the copier.

  “You know, for the new guy around here, you’re awfully quiet,” Erin suddenly blurted, her anger about his indifference getting the better of her. She placed her hands on her hips and stared him down, waiting for a response.

  Sean turned to look at her, smiling to himself as though humored by some personal joke.

  “I find talk to be cheap, don’t you?” he asked, once again holding her in his intense gaze. Erin shivered beneath the scrutiny of his stare. She felt like he was able to see right through her, to the very core of her soul. Even though she was fully dressed in her usual work attire of shirt dress and stockings, she felt completely naked and exposed when Sean looked at her. It was a sensation she had never felt before with anyone.

  “It wouldn’t hurt you to make try and make some friends around here,” Erin stammered, feeling less sure of herself, her anger dissipating as she hovered uneasily near the door.

  Shrugging, Sean once more turned away from her.

  “I don’t plan on sticking around for too long,” he explained ominously. Erin tried to hide the fact that this disappointed her. Instead she put on her sternest face and walked back out of the door, feeling his eyes upon her as she left.

  ***

  “I hate month end,” Coleen sighed from her desk as she shuffled through a growing pile of paperwork.

  “Tell me about it,” Erin agreed, raising a hand to her temple. She’d been so busy with work all day that she’d not had time to revisit her encounter with Sean that morning. The dream and the subsequent shower felt like they occurred in another lifetime. Now, her mind was clogged full of fiscal details and spreadsheets. Numbers danced through her mind where before there was only naked flesh and desire.

  Sighing, Coleen rearranged
some papers and looked forlornly out of the office windows at the far side of the vast open room.

  “If I don’t get all this done, I won’t finish on time to take Jake to soccer practice,” she said woefully.

  Erin looked over at the stack of papers on Coleen’s desk which was considerably higher than her own set of papers.

  “Send some of them this way,” Erin offered kindly.

  “You sure?”

  “Happy to help,” Erin smiled sweetly.

  “Thanks, hon, I owe you,” Coleen smiled as she came over with a small pile of papers which she placed beneath Erin’s current pile of work.

  “At least the murders seem to have stopped,” Erin said lightly, trying to raise their spirits. There had been no media report of a latest killing to add to the list of victims.

  “For now,” Coleen stated a little too darkly, causing Erin to shrink into her seat at the thought that they weren’t out of the woods just yet. Danger could still be lurking within their town, just biding its time and waiting to pounce.

  ***

  Erin watched the day darken through the vast office windows as around colleagues slipped away one by one, eager to return to their homes for the night.

  “I appreciate you working late,” Diane commented as she herself prepared to leave, wrapped in a designer coat.

  “I don’t mind,” Erin shrugged. All she had waiting for her was an empty house and her stored-up television shows on TiVo. Both could wait.

  “Just don’t stay too late, mind you. Don’t want you going home in the dark,” Diane said sternly. Then she turned and left, Erin hearing the click of her heels grow more and more distant.

  Eventually, Erin was completely alone in the office and working on her final report. As she pressed the send button, she sighed with relief. Coleen had been right to state how brutal month end could be. Checking her watch, Erin was surprised to see that it was half-past nine. Outside, the world was now swamped in dense darkness.

  A chill ran up Erin’s spine at the prospect of going home alone in the dark. Resigned to her fate, she got up, turned off her computer and pulled on her coat. As she left the office, she made sure to switch off the central lights, plunging the area in to its own dense night.

  ***

  The parking lot was almost completely empty. There were a few cars dotted around belonging to cleaning staff and a few late stragglers, but Erin’s was alone in a far corner of the lot, surrounded by some shrubbery.

  As Erin walked over to her car she quickened her pace as her mind suddenly thought about the murders, about the women who alone at night were being targeted, picked off and gutted like an animal. She was basically running when she finally reached her car and opened the door, but as she did so, she heard something rustle in the nearby shrubbery which made her blood turn to ice.

  Immediately, she imaged the headlines the following day; young office worker savaged in parking lot. She could see Coleen weeping, saying how guilty she felt for leaving early. Then she imaged her mother getting the call to say that her daughter, the one she barely saw these days, had been ripped apart and killed.

  Closing her eyes, Erin tried to calm her thoughts, telling herself that she was being childish, that there was nothing there. The shrubbery moved again and Erin stood rooted to the spot, feeling terrified.

  “It’s just a coyote,” she told herself, though she didn’t believe her own logical explanation. Slowly, she opened her car door and began to ease herself inside when she spotted the unmistakable outline of a man within the shrubbery, illuminated by a nearby streetlight. Erin screamed in shock and was about to shut herself safely in her car when she noticed that the figure looked oddly familiar.

  Bravely, she remained outside of her car for a moment to assess what she was seeing as the figure stepped out of the shrubbery toward her.

  “Sean?” she breathed his name in disbelief. Sean emerged from the shrubs, still wearing his shirt and trousers but they were muddied and he had scratches on his face. He appeared dazed and confused, as though he didn’t know where he was.

  “Sean, oh my God, are you okay?” Erin rushed to him, fearing he’d been attacked. Sean looked up at her as though she were a stranger, his eyes dim and unresponsive. Then he shook his head, like a dog shakes off water, and his eyes suddenly brightened and became more alert.

  “Erin, hey,” he smiled at her, revealing a row of perfect white teeth.

  “Sean, what are you doing out here?” Erin gasped, attempting to dust off some of the dirt on his shirt. As she touched him, she couldn’t help but notice how taut his muscles felt beneath the thin material of the shirt.

  “I…” Sean glanced around as if trying to remember. “I went out for some drinks with the guys from work and things must have…gotten out of hand.”

  “And you ended up in the bushes!” Erin exclaimed, drawing closer to Sean to inspect him. He didn’t smell of alcohol, he smelled of something else that she couldn’t define; something coppery.

  “I must have overdone it and dozed off there,” Sean shrugged, smiling cheekily at her.

  “Where were you guys drinking?” Erin queried, unsure where there was close to the office to enable him to get in such a state.

  “Oh, in old town, but I guess they dumped me back here after, sort of an initiate the new guy thing.”

  Sean held Erin with his deep dark eyes and she felt herself beginning to melt.

  “Well, I can’t just leave you here,” Erin said nervously, fluttering her eyelashes at him. “Need a ride home?” she gestured toward her car.

  Sean glanced at the vehicle and then looked back at her, smiling seductively.

  “A lift would be great, thanks.”

  Erin got in the driver’s seat as Sean settled in beside her. She felt intoxicated to have him so close to her and struggled to keep her mind from straying to more sexual thoughts. As he put on his seatbelt, she imagined pulling him into the back of the car, ripping off his shirt and kissing his perfectly toned chest as he kissed her neck and undid her blouse.

  “I live near central,” Sean explained, breaking the sexual scenario playing out in her mind.

  “Okay, great,” Erin turned the key in the ignition and the car came to life. She made her way out of the parking lot and turned on to the street.

  All the while as she drove, she kept glancing at Sean. He was so tantalizingly close to her. She could so easily reach out and touch him; stroke his leg, brush his cheek, grab his dick. She was suddenly overwhelmed with her desire to grab his dick. To hold it until it was hard and then unleash it from its trousered prison, place it deep within her mouth and then suck and tease until he came hard in to her mouth, so that she could taste him, swallow him.

  Shaking her head, Erin pushed the thoughts away. She was starting to sicken herself the way she was unable to control her sexual desires. She’d been attracted to men before but never like this. It was as if each time she was around Sean, she was hypnotized into wanting to have sex with him so that she was unable to think about anything else at all. Desperate for a distraction from her thoughts, she flicked on the radio.

  A rock song by the band Bon Jovi came on, about an outlaw who was wanted dead or alive. Erin remembered loving the song when she was growing up almost as much as she’d loved the handsome lead singer of the band.

  “I used to love this song when I was younger,” she turned and smiled at Sean, trying to make conversation.

  “It’s a good song,” Sean nodded in approval, his eyes glittering in the dark with hidden menace.

  “Did you like the song or just want to fuck the guy who sung it?” Sean asked, delivering the question casually as though he were discussing the weather.

  Erin coughed, almost choking on the bluntness of the question. She looked at Sean out of the corner of her eye, trying to discern if he was joking or not.

  He watched her reaction and smiled to himself.

  “Too blunt?” he asked.

  “Just a bit!” Erin declar
ed, still blushing.

  “Sorry, I tend to be a bit…direct about that kind of stuff.” Sean apologized.

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “Sex, desires, that sort of thing,” Sean shrugged. “I think too many people deny their sexual urges and it’s wrong. Our sexual impulses are one of our last primitive urges and we should embrace them rather than try and quash them.”

  “That sounds like an eloquent way of saying you sleep around,” Erin noted, arching an eyebrow. She realized, growing excited, that this was the most she’d ever spoken with Sean before; it felt like he was finally opening up to her.

  “I don’t sleep around, I have fun,” Sean answered teasingly, looking Erin up and down with hungry, voracious eyes.

  “I bet you have a lot of fun,” Erin laughed.

  “Perhaps,” Sean accepted, still watching her.

  Erin was desperate to change the subject. All the talk of sex and desires was making her want to pull in to the nearest parking lot, pull down her panties and beg Sean to enter her there and then; else she would go crazy with yearning.

  The song on the radio ended and a serious broadcaster came on.

  “This is the news at ten and our lead story is that another body has been found, seemingly linked to the spate of other murders occurring around town,” the voice said, stern and formal in tone.

  “The female victim was found by a dog walker at nine this evening.”

  Nine, that was just before Erin left the office. She felt sick with fear. Her horny thoughts were gone, replaced by cold, terrified ones.

  Had she left the office earlier, the latest victim could have been her. It could be her body being pored over by forensic detectives, her face looking forlorn out from televisions as a cautionary tale for all young women who dare to walk alone at night.