Adored By The Rancher: Mail Order Brides Box Set

by Dreams, Brittany

  Calder stroked her cheek, ran her finger through her hair that was now messy and spilling down her back. “I’m going to take my memory from you Sarah. But I’ll leave you something else instead. Something beautiful and romantic.”

  “No Calder.” She shook her head. “It would be a lie.”

  “Oh Sarah.” Calder put his index finger in his mouth and bit down hard. A drop of bright red blood welled up. He reached down between her legs then entered her. She felt raw but his touch wasn’t unwelcome. She felt a twinge, then a throbbing, then nothing. She was just deliciously sore. Sarah stared at Calder in confusion.

  “What did you just do?”

  “I made it so that you won’t have to wonder why you’re not a virgin any longer. I won’t replace your memories of me with a lie because it’s not what you want. This way… it won’t drive you crazy not knowing.”

  “You can… you can do that?!”

  Calder nodded sadly. “Yes. Do you understand now why no one can know about what I truly am? I would be torn limb from limb.”

  “Yes,” Sarah replied sadly. “Calder, could you ever die?”

  “Yes. The sunlight would kill me, slowly. It would be like burning to death. Or a stake driven through my heart.” He nodded, seeing her comical expression. “Not much else is true to the whole vampire mythology, but they got that one right at least.

  Calder rose from the bed. He shrugged back into his pants while Sarah watched. If only he had been human. What a man he would be! To think she could have loved him, or at least always would have held him in her memory as her first…

  Sarah struggled to breathe past the lump of unshed tears in her throat. She stood when Calder held out a hand. She went to him and took it and he walked her, naked, illuminated, across the room back to where her dress lay. She put it on quickly and he did up the zipper. Her hair was a mess. Her makeup was ruined. What was she ever going to tell Michelle?

  “Sarah come here,” Calder said thickly. His voice too, was choked with sadness. He bent down and kissed her one last time. She savored the taste of his mouth, the feel of his lips. She wished, when she reached up and touched his cheek, that she could carry the feel of his skin with her forever. She glanced up, knowing it would be in vein to try and memorize his features.

  “Thank you for this night.” He placed his hands on either side of her head. She stared into the vast depths of his blue eyes. She blinked against the onslaught of tears, and then she was alone.

  The room was dark but a slight light spilled from the hall. Why had she come in here? Oh yes, she had felt sick. Funny, Sarah didn’t feel sick now. She didn’t even feel drunk. She just felt tired. And sore in every bone in her body. She felt strangely… devoid of something. Lonely. God if this is what drinking did to her, she was never going to touch another drop.

  Sarah turned from the room and went back down the long marble hall in the direction she had come. There was a mirror above a table in the hall and she checked her appearance. Her hair and makeup were perfectly in place though she felt oddly sweaty. Her eyes were tired… and something else. A feeling of sadness settled over her, as if she were completely alone. Sarah stared at her reflection for another moment before continuing on down the hall.

  She took the steps of the stone staircase one at a time. The party got louder and louder the further down she went. The music was still blaring, people danced and drank and laughed. She could find Michelle nowhere.

  Oh well. Sarah walked out of the house and sat down on the front step. People walked past her, going in and out of the house but it was much quieter out here. The evening was cool and the breeze dried the cool layer of sweat that had formed on her skin. She laid her head in her arms, watching, waiting.

  Michelle finally came out of the party some hours later. She had her phone in her hand and was trying to call Sarah. Sarah stood and came up behind her friend.

  “Hey,” she said softly. “That was a good party. Thanks for brining me.”

  “Oh my god! I’ve been looking for you forever!”

  “I just… went upstairs to look for a washroom. I haven’t been gone that long.” Michelle was always into high drama. She made ten minutes seem like the entire night. Although Sarah supposed she had come outside hours ago and just sat there, somehow at peace.

  “Come on, I’ll take you home. I knew I was driving so I haven’t had more than two drinks all night.”

  “So you just gave them all to me?”

  “Well I had to make sure you had a good time somehow.”

  Sarah laughed. She followed Michelle down the drive, over to where her car was parked. On the rise of the hill, just before the house went out of sight, Sarah glanced back. The party hadn’t been anything special. She had spent most of her time sitting outside. Why then did she feel such bittersweet happiness when she looked back on the house?

  She spotted the window at the far end of the second floor where she had entered thinking it was a bathroom. The room had a faint glow to it, like a lamp was on inside. A man stood at the window watching. She could only make out his shadow. He lifted his hand in a wave, and she waved back, though she had no idea who he was.

  Chapter 8

  Sarah ran out the door of her new bungalow in a hurry. She was late for her shift at the hospital, having overslept as usual. The shift work was though to get used to, but it was so worth it. She couldn’t believe she was finally a nurse! She had a real job, her own car, and had even rented a house.

  It was old habit to grab her mail on the way out. Sometimes she had a magazine come during the day when she was sleeping that she took to work for her breaks. Sarah didn’t glance down at what was in her hand until she was in the car.

  Strange. Her heart stopped for a second. She started at a gold invitation in her hand with black lettering. An invitation back to the same house Michelle had taken her last year for that crazy party. She hadn’t received an invitation since then. Why now? A year later?

  Sarah couldn’t say why her breath hitched. Or why her heart pounded in her chest. It had been almost boring last time… she couldn’t say why she wanted to go again. But she did. Michelle was now across the country in New York, designing costumes for a production on Broadway.

  Setting the invitation aside, Sarah put her car into gear. She knew she would go. She would pick out a costume, masquerade, the theme was, and she would go. Ever since that party Sarah had loosened up the strings she held so tightly on her life. She couldn’t say why. Maybe it had been the drinking, or the peaceful setting of the house in which she had sat outside for hours after. She had enjoyed the total silence, the lightness she felt. It was strange, how since that day, the stresses of school, the rigidity in which she lived her life, seemed to take a back seat. Her mind was clearer, more focused, more attuned to the more meaningful things. She laughed more and cried more. She was a much better nurse after she was able to let her guard down.

  One week until the party. The invitation had come late this time. Sarah focused on the road, a smile on her face. Irrational excitement built within her. For some reason, she couldn’t wait.

  Royal Hunger

  A Paranormal Vampire Romance

  Description

  All her life she’d grown up with her eccentric uncle’s crazy vampire stories.

  Having house sat for her uncle for years, Dawn Bently knew he was going to return from his trip to Europe sometime. She never expected him to arrive home with an incredibly handsome friend who looks more like an ancient warrior than a normal man.

  After sleeping for a thousand years, the future is more promising than ever.

  Facing the extinction of their species, Asher and the few remaining vampires choose to spend a century in hibernation in hopes of waking to a world which has forgotten their existence. They hope to rebuild and start a new life.

  Dawn never dreamed her uncle was not all he seemed. Or that she had always been a part of his plan.

  Assuming the human name Shane, the ancient vampire
chose to remain awake to guard the last of his kind and to remain a part of the human world that had forsaken them. It was he who chose the time and set a chain of events into motion that would forever change Asher and Dawn’s lives.

  Dawn is human and Asher is immortal.

  Given the task of modernizing and safeguarding Asher until Shane arrives back to fulfill the rest of his plans, Dawn is shocked and unprepared to find an increasing attraction growing between her and Asher. She is powerless to resist the incredible pull of his body and the desires that burn hot and irresistible in her own.

  Theirs is a union that is doomed from the start.

  Can Dawn and Asher find love or will she be forced to surrender her memories of their time together and live her life without him?

  Chapter 1

  Asher grimaced as he looked out the tiny oval window. There was no ground in sight; at least none of the twinkling lights that shone through the blackness of night indicating ground, were visible. It was something he still believed impossible.

  There was much he didn’t understand of the world he now lived in. The remaining members of their species had been asleep for over a thousand years. It was the only way they could survive a turbulent time which had seen their people hunted to near extinction. In the entire world only a handful of vampires remained. Asher was one of those.

  According to his maker, this was a safer time. He and his guards had been roused from the century long slumber, mere shells of their formers selves. This was their time. There were fewer threats than ever before. The greatest risk he now faced was being caught and studied as what his maker called a ‘lab rat.’

  “Are you well?” Danner, his maker, turned to him with a worried look. He had taken the human name, Shane. Asher hardly remembered all the names that had been his throughout his long life. This latest was just one of many.

  “Indeed.”

  Shane switched to the telepathy vampires shared. We land soon. Remember what I told you. Everything depends on us getting to Dawn’s house safely.

  I know. I haven’t forgotten. How is it that you’ve disguised yourself and blended into the human world so neatly for nearly two thousand years? To have a human family! It’s unthinkable.

  The woman is my goddaughter; her father is a close friend. It’s not hard to manipulate human’s minds so they don’t question the things they do notice. Like how I’ve appeared not to age over the years.

  I understand not how you’ve managed to stay alive all these centuries, nor want to. Perhaps we would have been best off left in those crypts until we withered to nothing. We’ve come awake that we might have a chance to flourish again but for what purpose? The world is so changed I hardly recognize it. What chance to do we stand in a society we don’t understand? A people that are as hate filled and violent as ever.

  Shane sighed. We’ve been through this already. I’ve planned everything carefully for nearly a hundred years. Do you doubt my judgement?

  I will if we don’t get off this thing you call a plane soon and we both burn up in the rising daylight.

  You know as well as I do it wouldn’t kill us at this advanced age. Burn us perhaps but we couldn’t be killed that way. Fein an allergy to sunlight. You would be believed. At any rate it’s not going to happen. We are almost on the ground.

  I should hope so. Only the birds were meant to fly.

  You have much to learn my child.

  Including why you’ve chosen a human woman as the safe guarder of our new home?

  Shane bristled. He let out a little hissing sound that had Asher glancing around in alarm. They were carefully disguised as human passengers. Their blue eyes did not appear otherworldly to the people around them nor their abnormally large size.

  Despite that, the human woman sitting beside them across the aisle sent longing glances in Shane’s direction. Asher didn’t need to read her mind to know that the blonde was imagining being taken by his maker in several choice positions.

  Asher glanced out the window again. He could see the glow of lights in the distance. He wondered what Shane’s human woman was like? The woman Shane trusted with his home? Of course she didn’t know anything. Yet. She assumed that Shane, the man she called uncle, her father’s rich, eccentric friend, really was in Europe for a couple years and she really was fortunate enough to be gifted with his house for her own use during that time. She knew nothing of the tunnels and rooms underground, the steel fortifications, the plans that were shortly to be set into place.

  Pulling out his fake passport, Asher stared at the photo and his name. Asher Ridge. Age thirty. More like age nineteen hundred and thirty. Give or take a few hundred odd years.

  Your name again? Asher asked just to bother Shane.

  Shane Thatcher. Don’t deviate from the plan. And don’t alarm the human woman. She thinks I’m bringing back a friend tonight to stay at the house for a couple weeks. She will know everything soon enough but it needs to be me who tells her.

  If I didn’t know better I would think you are in love with her. Your scent when you speak of her… what would Aylona think?

  Shane’s fangs punched out an inch and Asher’s eyes widened. He glanced around the plane but not one seemed to be paying any attention.

  He backed off after that. There was no need to cause a rift with his maker, especially over one insignificant human they were going to do nothing but use to attain their aims.

  Chapter 2

  Dawn Bently arrived at the airport, jittery with excitement about seeing her uncle again. Shane Thatcher was a long-time friend of her father and her favorite uncle who wasn’t really her uncle at all.

  He’d always been kind to her, ever since she was a baby. She was enthralled by him; by the stories he could weave and make up at will. Stories of vampires and witches. Even now, at twenty-three, with a life of her own and a thriving business, she still loved his stories.

  She checked her watch for the millionth time. It was still half an hour before the plane was due to land. She knew that she was going to arrive early if she left her house early, but she couldn’t force herself to sit around and wait any longer. She wondered what Shane’s friend would be like. This man who was to share her house, or rather, Shane’s house, with her for a matter of weeks. Shane had been very cryptic in his call and had given her few details.

  Twenty minutes later Dawn saw a flash go past the window. Their plane was landing. She watched the red and white lights flow down the runway then spin and come back towards the airport. As people started to pour out of the gate she glanced nervously at her watch, then back at the little doorway. Her mind whirled, trying to imagine what her new roommate would be like.

  “Dawn!” Dawn’s head whipped around at the sound of Shane’s familiar voice. He strode towards her and beside him was a handsome, blonde, stunning, well-built man. Wow. Dawn wouldn’t have thought it possible that a man could be as tall or as broad as Shane was. Shane seemed to have been carved from the side of a rock face. His friend was equally as tall, likely almost seven feet, and broad shouldered. His chest was so massive it would take three of her to make up one of him.

  Dawn sucked in her breath, trying not to stare. He was huge! His long blonde hair was plaited into a neat braid. His pale skin only accentuated the deep ice blue of his eyes. His face was powerful, his brow strong, his nose straight, his cheekbones surprisingly high and his jaw square. He was devastatingly handsome. Taking in that incredible figure, those broad shoulders and barrel chest clad in a black t-shirt and a leather jacket, his thick legs in a pair of faded jeans, Dawn’s own body heated painfully with excitement.

  She was annoyed and embarrassed at her reaction. This man was going to be her roommate and as such her mind shouldn’t already be whirling, calculating the odds of seducing him.

  Even if she could, she wouldn’t. He was Shane’s friend and it would be completely inappropriate. Dawn knew she didn’t stand a chance. Some people told her she was pretty. She’d inherited her darker, olive skin, black ha
ir and deep brown eyes from her father. She was tall and thin but her hips sloped gently, her bottom was deliciously rounded and her breasts, while on the small side, were still enough that on her thin frame, they looked enticing.

  Even so, Dawn knew she didn’t stand a chance with a man like Shane’s friend. He had the looks of someone who women fell all over. And why not? He was like a statue come to life. If he looked that amazing in his clothes, he was apt to completely slay when he was naked.

  The man realized she was studying him and he gave her an all knowing look, his blue eyes flashing with amusement. Dawn flushed and quickly looked away. Shane moved off towards the baggage claim. For the first time in her life, Dawn noticed Shane was equally as good looking as his friend. His blonde hair and ragged beard he sported made him look far younger than her own father did though the men were similar in age.

  Something hard came up in her mind, derailing her train of thought. Dawn felt a fuzziness in her brain and she blinked once before following Shane to collect the men’s luggage. Shane’s friend had hardly said a word. What had Shane said the man’s name was? Dawn tried to remember then suddenly the name popped into her head. Asher. That was it.

  When the two men had their bags she led them out to her car. It was an old sedan, more rusty than not, but it always started and in the heart of Boston’s winter, as they were in now, it was a good thing.

  She noticed that both men shivered, waiting for her to unlock the doors, which she had to do manually. And no wonder. They were both clad in leather jackets which provided zero warmth against the chilly November air.

  After a long struggle, Dawn managed to get the trunk open. The men deposited their bags. Shane took the front seat while Asher got in the back. Dawn thought it was strange the way he looked at his seatbelt for a long moment before slipping it on. It was as though he had never seen one before.