Dog Eat Dog World: Limited Edition Bundle (Black Dog)

by Hailey Edwards

  “Maybe. I think so?” I reached for his hand, lacing our fingers. “Everything is a little hazy around the edges.” I poked him in the hip. “How did you know I was here?”

  “I went to get a drink and came back to find your room empty.” He leveled a stern look at me. “The nurse told me where to find you.”

  “Oh. You weren’t there when I woke, and I figured asking for you would only get me raised eyebrows.” I tried appearing contrite. “I thought I might have been projecting.”

  “Not this time.” He bent down to brush his lips across my hand, the gesture lingering with his uncertainty. “Are you sure you want to be here for this?”

  “I don’t want you to be alone.” I glanced at Bianca. “Either of you.”

  The preparation was Spartan in its quickness. Bianca tucked her son into his bassinet one last time and pressed a kiss to his forehead, murmuring words of love in his tiny ear before the nurse removed him to the nursery to wait for his grandmother’s arrival. Eyes liquid, Bianca climbed into bed and pulled up the covers.

  “I’m going to ask you one more time.” Carter wheeled me close enough I could clasp hands with her. “Are you sure this is what you want?”

  “Yes.” No hesitation, no fear. “This is what’s right for Colby. He needs his mother whole, and I’m not. I might not ever be, but I want a chance to fight for him, and this is the first step.”

  Sweat dampened Bianca’s palm, and I slid my other hand into Carter’s grip before he removed his glasses. The piercing light of his eyes shone down on her, shadows swirling across her face while he did a horrible thing made beautiful by necessity. I held him hard, my thumb stroking over his skin, so he understood the wonder of the gift he was able to give her.

  Bianca was getting an unconditional second chance, and I had no doubt she would use up every ounce of it.

  The scent of cherry pie fresh from the oven tickled my nose as Carter’s lure rose, ensnaring Bianca in his web. Heat unfurled low in my stomach, the urge to touch more skin a pulse beneath my fingers, but I battled the side effects of standing too close to a gancanagh at work.

  A half hour later, Carter’s shirt drenched with sweat, we exited the room, leaving behind a dozing Bianca.

  “I’ll have to come back in a few weeks.” He rolled me past the nurses’ station. “Her post-pregnancy body must heal enough for the suggestion to take without her getting suspicious. One wrong detail can unravel even the most tightly wound suggestions.”

  The math hurt. “The baby will be a month old before she sees him again.”

  “He will be with his grandmother, spoiled by the pack, the whole time.” His fingers played in my hair. “This was the best choice for her. She’s a strong woman for making it.”

  “That’s my room—” I started. “Where are we going?”

  “It’s a surprise.”

  “Oh really?” I tipped back my head. “Will it get us in trouble?”

  I was discovering I didn’t mind a little trouble now and again, not when it got me stolen kisses and late-night fountain confessionals.

  “No.” He kissed the tip of my nose. “Not if we eat and run.”

  Willing to let him reveal his plans in his own time, I settled in for the ride. He pushed me well past my own room, out of the med ward, toward the chow hall. A swipe of his card allowed us entrance, and he parked me at the end of a table while he disappeared into the back. He returned with two small containers of ice cream, the kind with paper lids and a wooden spoon stuck to the top.

  “In commemoration of your promotion to orderly,” he said by way of explanation. “Vanilla or chocolate?”

  “You have to ask?” I made grabby hands at my chosen flavor. “Chocolate, of course.”

  He claimed the seat beside me, our elbows brushing, and we dug into our treats.

  “Do you ever get tired of being here?” I asked around a cool mouthful.

  “It’s as good as anywhere else.” He gave it some thought. “Here I can be myself, and no one has to pay the price for it.”

  “Have you considered that what you do here you could also do out there?” I laughed at his startled expression, as if leaving had never occurred to him. “Have you ever been to a mall? There’s so much noise and chaos, you can’t tell me there aren’t people there who couldn’t use a little taken off the top.” I stopped with the spoon halfway to my mouth. “It doesn’t hurt them, right?”

  “The director would never have let me stay at Edelweiss if it did.”

  Content with his answer, I asked him another. “Have you ever seen the ocean?”

  “No.” He licked his spoon, which made me envious of the small paddle. “We lived in a big city where the feeding was easier.”

  “Would you like to?” I extended the invitation without hesitation. “It’s a long way to St. Augustine, and I could use the company.”

  The desire to see him drenched in sunlight, the wind in his hair, consumed me.

  A quirk of his lips turned him charming. “You want to take me home to meet your parents?”

  “Don’t sound so scandalized.” I laughed. “I like you, Carter. I like the way you make me feel. And, okay, so maybe I wouldn’t mind showing the other girls what a catch I’ve landed.”

  “I’m not a prize, Pinks.” He pushed away his ice cream unfinished, playing the spoon through his fingers. “I doubt I’d earn you any points.”

  Aware his opinion of himself wasn’t going to change in a day and yet determined he would see the good in himself if I had to walk in front of him holding a mirror, I pushed. “Promise me you’ll think about it?”

  “I…” His hesitation lasted until I tugged his chilly hands into my equally icy grip. “Okay, fine. I will.”

  Just like that, I imagined him walking the white-sand beach alongside me, dried salt flecking his sunglasses, the sun warming his skin, and the surf nursing our ankles.

  “What are you thinking?” He tapped the end of my nose with the wooden paddle. “I worry when you get quiet.”

  “Will you ever get comfortable enough with me that you ditch the shades when it’s just us?” The silvery glow was a distinctive feature of his race, so I understood why he covered them, but there was so much emotional nuance missed with them shielded. “I understand if the answer is no but—”

  “Most people don’t trust me enough for that,” he admitted, his spoon snapping between his fingers.

  Shifting in my chair, I trailed my fingertips across his cheekbones. “May I?”

  His slight nod gave me the courage to remove his shades, exposing brilliant sterling eyes that drank in the sight of me as if he too wished for fewer filters between us.

  “They’re beautiful.” Silvered moonlight on churning waters.

  “They’re meant to be,” he countered, unable to accept a true compliment.

  Carter had no idea the attraction went deeper than skin, deeper than magic. He compelled me on an elemental level, and it had nothing to do with the compulsions he wielded or the lure rising hot off his skin. “What’s that about?” I breathed him in with a smile. “Your lure smells nice and all, but you don’t need it. Not with me.”

  “Nervous reflex,” he murmured, the high ridges of his cheeks flushed. “I’ve never had a woman look at me the way you do without…”

  “Using your lure first?”

  His nod was slight, uncertain.

  Leaning forward, I invaded his personal space. “I’m going to kiss you now.”

  “Okay.” He swallowed hard, like I was the one love-talking him.

  A static shock rippled through my lips as I pressed them to his, the kiss electricity in my veins. Carter cupped my face between his wide palms and deepened the kiss while cradling me as though I were precious to him. The swipe of my tongue over his coaxed a groan out of him, his rich taste making my head spin. Aware of my hand rucking up his shirt, desperate for more skin, I broke the kiss to catch my breath and found his eyes beacon-bright in his face. I brushed my fingers ov
er his cheek. “Can you handle this?”

  “Handle you?” He smiled against my lips. “I doubt it.” His stomach muscles clenched under my palm before he restrained my wandering hand, lifted it to his mouth and kissed my knuckles. “But I want to try.”

  Warmth spread through my tender chest. “Good.”

  “You were wrong about one thing.” He swallowed a chuckle at my greedy insistence he give me one last kiss. “I’m the one who caught you. It took weeks to get a nibble after I baited my line.” His hot breath warmed my cheek. “I can’t toss you back, Pinks. I’m the one who got hooked.”

  “That sounds painful.” I clicked my tongue. “Guess this means I’ll have to keep you.”

  “For as long as you want me,” he pledged, hot mouth closing over mine. “I’m yours.”

  I found I didn’t mind being reeled in, not when it netted me more of those drugging kisses and molten looks cast from sterling eyes that gleamed with the same bright happiness etched across my heart.

  Out for Blood

  A Gemini Short Story

  Out for Blood Blurb

  White sand beaches, fresh tropical drinks…and three exsanguinated bodies. So much for Marshal Ayer’s transfer to the island of St. Kitts being a vacation.

  Chapter 1

  The white sand beaches and gentle surf hadn’t done much for our corpse. It was bloated, baked and pungent. I almost lost my dinner, which would be a damn shame considering how hard it was to come by bagged blood in the Caribbean. Not that I would mind sampling the local flavor—I was half vampire after all, a dhampir if you want to get technical—but considering the case… Yeah. Nibbles would have to wait.

  “Marshal Ayer. Eileen Ayer?” A tall man dressed to the nines in a navy suit crossed the dunes to reach me. A grin tugged at the edge of my lips when I noticed he wore matching Converse sneakers to make trekking across the sand easier. Black hair curled around his ears, his eyes a shade lighter than his ensemble. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, ma’am.” He stuck out his hand, and I shook. “Your service record speaks for itself.”

  It sure did. Mostly it blabbed out how I had been the victim of a serial killer and survived. But that wasn’t the cause of the stigma that had landed me on a shore thousands of miles from home. No. That was thanks to my short stint as a patient in Edelweiss Mental Institution. I had recovered. For the most part. Sadly, my coworkers acted like crazy was catching, and my supervisor had banished me to paradise as a means of acknowledging my service record while also not having to deal with a still slightly broken marshal.

  “And you are?” I studied him, awarding bonus points for the depth of his dimples.

  “Oh.” He chuckled in a self-deprecating way that would have put me at ease had I met him six months earlier. “Sorry. Taye Jones. Marshal Jones. On loan from the Northwestern Conclave. Oregon. I’m from Oregon.”

  Flustered was a good look on him, embarrassment rushing blood into his cheeks.

  “Well, Marshal Jones…” I wiggled my fingers in his grip until he took the hint and released me, “…it’s nice to meet you.”

  “I did my dissertation on you while I was in the academy,” he blurted.

  The pleasant warmth in my middle, a tingle not unlike the slow burn of blood hunger, evaporated. The academy? He was that fresh? That made him a baby. Ugh. Damn him and his dimples for distracting me from the shininess of the badge he wore like a shield on his lean hip. “Marshal Jones, what can you tell me about the victim?”

  The hero worship in his eyes flickered, a flame too strong to snuff with one good blow. I would have to try harder next time, hit lower, if I wanted to nip this in the bud. He flipped open a notebook and read the pertinent details. “Tourist. Visiting from Wyoming. Thirty-five. Single. Her daughter booked her on a singles cruise. A snorkeling excursion package kept her on the island overnight. The ship reported her missing when she failed to board this morning. Local cop with a fae wife was first to respond and called in reinforcements from the conclave outpost next island over.”

  The next island over was Nevis. I had been reassigned there after my release from Edelweiss, which begged the question, “You’re stationed there too?” I crossed my arms over my chest in a protective gesture. Guess he wasn’t the only one with a thing for shields. “I haven’t seen you around.”

  Taking a page from my book, he ignored the semi-personal question and continued. “This is the second incident involving exsanguination this week. Locals are, understandably, concerned. When news of these murders leak, and tourists start booking elsewhere, the islands are going to take a hit in the wallet.”

  “God forbid a case be about loss of life and not their bottom line,” I grumbled.

  Jones quirked his lips like he wanted to be amused but his pride still stung from me shutting him down earlier.

  I tapped my fingertips against my elbows. “What do we know about the first victim?”

  “She was a local girl. Early twenties.” He pointed toward the lush, tropical forest at our backs. “She was found about a half mile in by a group of tourists out for a hike up Mount Liamuiga.”

  I mulled over the details as I knew them. “So, no obvious link between the two other than gender.”

  “I see why they pay you the big bucks,” he quipped. “Anything else?”

  “Other than the obvious?” I lowered my voice. “Are there any vampires on the island?”

  “Other than you?” He made it a pointed question.

  “I’m a dhampir, as you must know if your report earned you a passing grade.” My fangs were blunt, tiny. Barely more than human. I couldn’t pierce skin unless aroused, which was humiliating when you consider I basically had to get a dental erection before proceeding as nature intended. Hence the blood bags. It saved me from giving donors an It’s not you, it’s me speech every time my stomach rumbled and I couldn’t get them up. Or down. Whatever. “I’ve spotted a couple of transients.” Vamps clearly on vacation. “But no covey that indicates a stable local population.”

  Since vamps tended toward immortality, and that included reinventing their identities every fifty years or so, it made tracking rogues hell on law enforcement. We were in deep trouble if a transient was to blame. Islands were harder to lock down than you might think with easy access to planes and boats.

  “There is no covey registered to St. Kitts or Nevis. Too much sun, or so they claim.”

  Or there was a bigger bad here that shared the same food source. Not a comforting thought.

  Thanks to my fae mom, I didn’t go whoosh when exposed to sunlight. Though, thanks to my vamp dad, no application of sunscreen, no matter how judicious, could save me from blistering. Still, the lure of a steady and varied fresh-food supply was sweet temptation compared to the risk of sun exposure, a danger present regardless of location. There had to be another reason for the absence of vamps than fear of incineration.

  Jones was still looking at me, waiting for brilliance to tumble out of my mouth, so I stated the obvious. “Odds are good we’re looking at a transient vamp or a species of blood-dependent fae.”

  “Looks that way,” he agreed with a few swipes of his pen on paper.

  “Do we have a list of suspects?” I prodded, wishing I could snatch that notebook out of his hands.

  “We do.” His gaze flicked up to me. “But, just so you know, the locals believe it’s a chupacabra.”

  “Do y’all have those here?” I wondered. “I thought they originated in Puerto Rico. Though the illegal pet trade is booming in port cities, so there is that.”

  “They aren’t native, and there have been no verified sightings. I checked before you got here.”

  Lips twisting as I considered all the information, I squatted beside the body and performed a quick examination. The bite marks, two perfect, circular punctures, were textbook vampire. The woman hadn’t otherwise been harmed. There were no signs of sexual assault, as often happened with forced feedings, or bruising. Meaning whatever had done this had used a lure
and lulled her into complacency. I found myself feeling relieved that she had, most likely, died peacefully. Still, it was a brutal way to go.

  “Ma’am?” Jones asked after a while.

  I ignored him at first because the ma’am was distancing and annoying, but also because I had almost grasped a nascent understanding before his polite query derailed my thought train.

  “I need to see the other body.” I rose and cast my gaze across the beach at the techs gathering evidence, snapping pictures and otherwise laying the groundwork required to snag a conviction. “Who can make that happen?”

  Jones pocketed his notebook and withdrew a set of keys. “That would be me.”

  “Great.” I kept my tone neutral. “I’ll need a hotel while I’m here. Nothing touristy. Got any suggestions?”

  “Already handled.” A sparkle touched his eyes, and his cheek dented. “I took the liberty of reserving you a room across from mine. It will make late-night powwows easier on us both.”

  I just bet it would.

  Chapter 2

  First things first, we hit the morgue operated by the Earthen Conclave, the supernatural equivalent of Homeland Security, an organization tasked with maintaining order between the fae and the humans unaware of our existence.

  The attendant, a young woman with cornflower-blue eyes that drank in the sight of Jones with appreciation and curly blond hair she twirled around a finger, didn’t remove her earbuds when she noted our approach, when we signed in, or when we asked to be shown the victim’s body. So, I was surprised when she managed to pull out the correct drawer. I was equally surprised when she didn’t trip in the puddle of drool stringing from the corner of her mouth.

  Once she returned to her desk, I hooked a thumb in her direction. “You have a fan club, I see.”

  Though, fae being fae, she might have thought he looked delicious in an altogether different way than I—