Shadow Shifters: Damaged Hearts, The Complete Series: Mine to Claim, Part of Me, and Hunger for You

by A. C. Arthur

  “What are you doing here? I thought you had left a while ago.” Maybe I could have been nicer, but why? He was creeping me out, standing here in the dark parking lot like he was Batman or something. I half expected him to speak in a raspy voice and to say something obscure instead of superhero-like. And the way he made me feel inside, despite the creepiness was beginning to piss me off.

  “I wanted to be sure you were okay,” was his response.

  His voice seemed deeper out here in the cool night air than it had in the bar. However, his body was just as broad, just as muscled as I’d noticed on many nights before. And he smelled … I tried not to inhale too deeply, because I already knew how he smelled, especially after our collision earlier. It was an extremely fresh smell, like a rainy day. It made me want to run my fingers through his hair, the unruly, too-long locks that tended to fall over his forehead just as it furrowed and his eyes narrowed. I would only admit that to myself since I’d die if he knew I’d been paying as much attention to him as it appeared he had to me.

  “I’m fine and I don’t think you should be checking up on me,” I told him, no matter how sweet I thought it actually was. “If you’ll excuse me, I’d like to get home. It’s late.”

  I tried to move around him. That was pointless. He stood between the side of my car and Roy’s car, which was parked right beside mine. And he filled the space completely. He was built like those guys at the gym, the ones that I figure must have lived there with all the intricate cuts and chiseled muscles they readily displayed. Sure, I’d never seen this guy in shorts and a tight tank, but I was positive he was as mouthwatering as the gym buffs.

  “Did he hurt you?”

  His next question startled me and I stopped my attempt to get past him. I looked up at him questioningly. “Nobody hurt me and nobody is going to hurt me ever again.” My lips clamped shut as soon as I’d said those words. It was too much information and I knew it the second the words tumbled free. His head tilted slightly, that thick lock of hair falling close to his left eye. My fingers itched to brush it away, even as my heart began a steady pounding. It wasn’t fear that had tripped my heart rate this time, not that bone-chilling fear that had seeped into my body when Dex had grabbed me earlier. This was different, it was … anticipation, and that had me gasping.

  “I saw him grab you and yell at you. If he hurt you I can take care of it,” he proclaimed seriously.

  Licking my now-dry lips, swallowing to be sure my voice didn’t crack when I spoke, I shook my head. “I don’t need you to take care of anything. I don’t even know you,” I replied.

  He opened his mouth to speak, then pressed his lips together. He took a deep breath and then exhaled. For those seconds I watched that movement as if being mesmerized. His lips, the rise and fall of his chest, everything about him made me want to … to what?

  I had no idea what this guy was about to do and I didn’t want to wait to figure it out. So I pushed past him to get to my car door. His body was so hard and the heat that emanated from it made me want to lean in farther, to wrap myself in the warmth and possibly feel the safety I’d always longed for. That didn’t make any sense. How could someone I didn’t even know make me feel safe? How could I know how warm being wrapped in his arms would be?

  I didn’t anticipate his next move and it startled me so badly I dropped my Mace and gasped. He turned with my movement and flattened me against the door, his hands going to both sides of the car to trap me there.

  “I’m Caleb and if I see him grab you like that again, I’m going to break his arms.”

  His words were spoken with such vehemence, such absolute rage I knew they were true. He would break Dex’s arms. I don’t know why and I knew that wasn’t what I wanted to happen, still, I didn’t doubt his … Caleb’s words one bit.

  “He’s my boyfriend,” I said defiantly. “He’s allowed to touch me. You,” I said, gathering my strength and lifting my hand to poke him in his chest, “you are not.”

  He frowned down at me, sparks of brightness streaking through his otherwise dark eyes. I thought he was going to hit me then or at the very least shake me until I felt like my eyeballs would roll right out of my head—that would have been all too familiar.

  “You are foolish,” he said through clenched teeth. “He will hurt you if you let him.”

  “You don’t know me and you don’t know Dex. And if you don’t get away from me right now I’m going to—”

  My words were cut off at the sound of a horn and then we were caught in the intense glare of headlights on high beam. The brightness fell over his face and my breath caught. He looked so fierce, so angry and yet he was the most attractive guy I’d ever seen in person—magazine and online pics of man candy did not count. There was a sudden urge to wrap my arms around his neck and hold on for dear life, but I dismissed that as being over-the-top romantic and definitely falling for the bad-boy hero, which I swore I’d never do.

  “Hey, Zoe, you okay?” Hanna called from her car. “You need me to dial nine-one-one?”

  “I’m not the bad guy here,” he whispered, looking down at me. “But you already know that, don’t you?”

  I nodded and then swallowed, searching for my words—even if they were only primal ones—because standing here mute wasn’t my best look. I believed what he’d said. I don’t know why, but I did. I just didn’t know how to react to them.

  “I’m okay, Hanna,” I lied, but used the opportunity to push Caleb off of me and turned to hurriedly unlock my car door. “I’ll be right behind you,” I told her.

  “Good, because I’d hate to have such a good customer arrested for harassment!” Hanna yelled. “But I will so don’t you forget it, buddy!”

  Caleb had backed away from the car by the time I pulled the door open and slipped inside. I refused to look out the window to see what he was doing now, just put the key in the ignition and prayed it would actually start this time. It did, after some spit and sputtering action that was beyond embarrassing. On my nod, Hanna pulled her car up slowly and I moved my vehicle out of the parking spot. We both left the parking lot without looking back. Or, okay, maybe Hanna didn’t look back, but I did.

  Caleb was still standing there, his hands in his pockets once more, his intense gaze still on me and my car, even though I was coming up on the intersection almost half a block away. Of course it was dark and I couldn’t really tell that he was looking at me, but I knew it, I could feel it almost as if his presence was right in the passenger seat beside me. It was an eerie feeling, an unfamiliar one, a warm and slightly satisfying one that I considered myself all kinds of a romantic fool for entertaining. But as I turned the corner, officially ending the visual contact between us, I smiled. Just a small one but one that warmed me all over as I imagined Caleb’s intense gaze, his warm body, and those intriguing eyes. In one of my romance novels he would be a hero, the brooding, sulking, dark hero that scared the heroine at first then kissed her until she melted.

  Or he was the serial killer that stalked the spineless heroine who was naïve enough to fall for his brooding good looks. A nervous chuckle erupted in my chest and I shook my head, continuing my drive home while politely informing my inner romantic that Caleb and his creepy threats were not a good thing. Definitely not a good thing at all.

  CHAPTER 3

  Caleb

  If he touched her again I was not only going to break his arm, I was going to break both arms, then his legs, then I was just going to kill the SOB. That’s how I was feeling the moment I turned into the bar parking lot, three nights later. I’d purposely stayed away because her words, “he’s my boyfriend and you’re not” still rang in my ears. Even though that probably wasn’t an exact quote, it had the same punch-in-my-gut result.

  She was right, I wasn’t her boyfriend, so I really didn’t have a right to act possessive and protective of her. Hell, I’d only learned her name because her available-anytime-you-want friend—whose name I also now knew was Hanna—had yelled it across the park
ing lot. So from a factual standpoint, I probably should have minded my own business, but from a Shadow Shifter standpoint, that was impossible.

  When that asshole—who had been identified by Zoe as Dex—had grabbed her by the arm she’d been afraid. The tangy, citrus scent of fear had wafted fresh and potent all the way across the bar, dangling in front of me like the red cape in front of a bull. I’d been able to restrain my reaction at that particular moment, but that had only been temporary. I wanted to let her know she was safe and that I would protect her. The realization that she didn’t give a rat’s ass about my shifter instincts, possibly because she thought I was simply another human, was both startling and annoying as hell.

  Putting the truck in park and yanking the key out of the ignition, I thought of all the reasons why I shouldn’t be here, why I should have simply gone back to my apartment and continued to stay far away from this bar and this female. I don’t do connections—that was the first reason as clearly stated by the pattern of my life. I had gone from an orphan to the adopted son of Gil and Marta Sanchez, traveling the world with them and their two sons and daughter, to finally wandering around the human world on my own. Alone, which is how I always figured I’d end up.

  Second, she was a human and I was a Shadow Shifter. No bigger taboo existed, at least not in the shifter world—the world in which I lived with one foot in and the other out, thanks to my mixed heritage. My mother had been a Shadow Shifter, while my father—the rotten bastard that had abused and raped my mother—had been a human. That should probably have made me hate the entire species but my mother had told me stories of other humans that lived outside of our village in the Gungi rainforest. They had been generous and compassionate to her, helping to clean her up after my father had brutally attacked her, and bringing her back to the Gungi. There had even been an old shaman that had come to our home to warn my mother about returning to the human village in search of my father. Apparently the old man with all his medicinal remedies and spiritual contacts had foreseen my mother’s fate. She hadn’t listened, led by the love for a man who had no use for her, and died for her efforts.

  Again, I should hate humans, but I don’t. In fact, the human named Zoe was even more intriguing to me. I couldn’t get her out of my mind, not the soft sway of her hair along her shoulders, or the vibrant color of her eyes, or the soft, yet firm tone of her voice. Each time I closed my eyes I could see her, when I tried to drift off into sleep I imagined her, and when I woke up with a hard-on each morning, I wanted her.

  With much futility I slammed my palms against the steering wheel, staring at the front door of the bar. It was closed but the lighted sign in the window right beside it stated the bar was OPEN. In another fifteen minutes that sign would switch to CLOSED and a half hour to forty-five minutes afterward, Zoe would come out. I knew her schedule now, knew the days she worked her seven or eight hours and got off at ten and the days she stayed until close of business. Tonight she was closing so I was waiting. What I was going to say or do when she came out I had no idea.

  The screech of tires on asphalt ripped me from my thoughts and I immediately shifted my attention to the front of the parking lot. A black Hummer came into the lot pumping the piercing lyrics of Maroon 5 into the air and at a speed that just about promised a collision with the front wall of the building. Before I could think better of it I was out of my truck, stopping at the bumper as the other truck also came to a halt. The passenger-side front and back doors opened quickly and out jumped two guys. They laughed, the first guy turning to bump his fist against the other guy’s before both of them headed toward the front door. The driver came out last, switching off the ignition but keeping the music playing loudly.

  It was Dex, I knew it the moment he came around the front of the vehicle and leaned against it. I stood at the front of my vehicle, not leaning, but staring pointedly at him. When I was out here three nights ago with Zoe there had only been floodlights at the back of the building. Tonight, when I pulled up I noticed that new lights had been added to the front as well. They’d stayed lit for about ten minutes after I’d parked my truck, probably enough time for someone to park their vehicle, get out, and walk into the bar. It was a good safety measure, one that they’d probably needed to have installed a long time ago. I wondered if Zoe had gone into work the day after our encounter and complained that she didn’t feel safe.

  With a frown, I dismissed that thought and kept my eyes on Dex as the light fell over his vehicle and his leather-clad shoulders. He wore those big boots again, fitted black jeans, and a blue T-shirt with faded writing on the front. He reached into his front pants pocket and pulled out a lighter. In seconds the cigarette was lit and at his lips, the strong and undeniable scent of marijuana floating on the air.

  After the first few puffs I wondered what the hell I was doing standing in a parking lot staring at some guy like I was going to rip his throat out—which by the way I totally wanted to do. I was about to turn away when I caught another scent, sifting slowly through the thick streams of marijuana odor and every muscle in my body tensed.

  Dex looked up at that second, catching my gaze and staring at me with the cigarette between his lips, his fingers poised to take it out so he could blow more smoke from his mouth. It was a complete stare down, like men did just before a duel, except I had no weapon and I was guessing neither did Dex. The stench intensified and I was struggling to identify it while still keeping my eye on Dex when the front door of the bar opened and out came Dex’s laughing cohorts, followed by Zoe.

  I took a step forward, to do what I wasn’t quite sure, but the sight of her now standing at the front of the vehicle with Dex and his goons right behind her, didn’t sit well with me. Dex grinned in my direction as he reached out and pulled Zoe by her waist up to him. Her hands went to his chest and she followed his gaze.

  It felt like she’d reached across the parking lot right into my chest to squeeze my heart. I opened my mouth to air that wanted release, clenching my fists at my sides when she shook her head at me. Dex continued to laugh, his hands on her ass now while behind Zoe’s back his two friends gyrated and clapped. I wanted to run across that street, to grab her and pull her away from them. She didn’t belong with Dex, didn’t belong in that big-assed truck that looked more like an army tank. She belonged with …

  Shaking my head, I broke all eye contact. Zoe did not belong with me. I belonged with myself, now and forever. It was safer for all concerned that way. The shaman back in Brazil had told me that. People that I felt like saving rarely wanted to be saved, he’d also said as he’d reflected on my mother. The parallel here was with Zoe. Like my mother, she had chosen who she wanted to be with, chosen the path she wanted her life to take. And no matter how much begging and pleading—or in this case, arguing and possibly fighting—I did, Zoe’s choice would still be her own.

  So I turned away. I climbed into my truck and I took myself home, trying my damnedest to ignore the raw scrape of emotions that burned my chest as I looked through my rearview mirror to see Zoe climbing up into Dex’s truck. I turned out of the parking lot, this time my wheels screeching over asphalt, and I drove away.

  Unable to breathe while anger and some unnamed sentiment clogged my senses, I rolled down my window to get some air and the stench that had searched for my attention back in the parking lot was there again, almost as if it were following me. It was slightly familiar, officious and raw and my eyes opened wider when I pinpointed exactly what it meant.

  Dex and his merry men were rogues.

  CHAPTER 4

  Zoe

  He hadn’t come into the bar again last night. This made a whole week since I’d spoken to Caleb. I’d seen him, three days after the night he’d blocked my car door, sitting in his truck in front of the bar. I’d walked out with Dex’s friends right behind me. Caleb looked at me and then pulled off.

  And I was one lame-ass goofball for keeping such meticulous track of these events. Pushing my cart through the dairy section of th
e supermarket, I tried valiantly to recall what I’d wanted this week. I’d been cooking since I was eight and had to pull the chair over to the stove to put on six eggs. Two for me and two each for my younger brother and sister. I waited patiently that day, sitting in the chair and watching the clock on the microwave until it was exactly fifteen minutes later. I’d seen on a cooking show that it took that long to boil eggs. From that day on, when my mother was too badly beaten to get up out of bed, I went into the kitchen and fixed something for me and my siblings to eat. After a while I became pretty good at it.

  That thought refreshed my memory and I picked up a container of sour cream for the new sauce I wanted to try with my pork chops tonight. Today was my day off so I had a lot of errands to run. Daydreaming in the supermarket was going to throw me off schedule, so I picked up the pace. I’d just cut the corner from the dairy section, going down the snack aisle when my cart collided with another one.

  The rattling noise scared me much more than it should have and I let go of my cart handle, both hands going to my chest in an effort to still my thumping heart. Then I looked up and swallowed the last couple of thumps.

  “Hope you don’t drive your car as recklessly as you’re driving this cart,” he said, his voice smooth like honey. The sound rippled through me in warm rivulets.

  “I’m sorry,” I replied. “I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going.”

  He nodded, his gaze darkening and going lower. “And are you paying attention to what you’re doing now?”

  I didn’t know what he meant so I looked down and goddammit! The fingers that were supposed to suppress the thumping of my heart were now cupping my boobs, which only added to the effect of his voice and now had my nipples hard. And as if I could not be any more embarrassed, I wasn’t wearing a bra. Again, goddammit!