Bad Boys of the Night: Eight Sizzling Paranormal Romances: Paranormal Romance Boxed Set

by Jennifer Ashley

  Oh. God. No.

  The plan became clear, and as she’d suspected it was stupid and horrible and she didn’t want any part of it: The wolf would possess Custo, an angel, and therefore an offer way better than her comparatively frail body. The wolf would take his chances with the guns for this perfected form, while Adam shot his friend in cold blood in an attempt to kill the monster. A gamble on both sides.

  ’Kay. Now she was pissed.

  Annabella whirled back to the wolf and Custo, but it seemed they’d already come to an agreement.

  The wolf spread his fingers toward her, and the marionette strings that had been tugging relentlessly at her limbs and mind released. The Shadow within her fell away like a breath exhaled, leaving her raw and sore, and heavier than ever.

  She pushed away her exhaustion; the show wasn’t over yet.

  “Stop!” Annabella yelled, lurching toward the wolf and Custo to prevent whatever insanity Custo had proposed.

  But it was too late. As she lunged toward them, Custo took a simple step forward, and absorbed the wolf.

  At once the day dimmed, clouds boiling out of the blue and grumbling over the sky. The edges of the world became grittier, its sounds harsher. The air grew sullen and bitter to the tongue.

  Annabella cast her weight forward as Custo whipped around. Black bled through the mossy green of his eyes, obscuring the color. The veins in his neck, forearms, and the backs of his hands darkened, as if his heart now pumped Shadow. His expression took on a mask of barely controlled rage.

  “Stay back,” he said, his voice a low rumble of effort.

  She dodged his outstretched arms and wrapped herself around him anyway, gripping her wrists around his back so she couldn’t be shaken off. If Adam’s men were going to shoot, they’d have to shoot her first. She wasn’t going anywhere.

  “I can’t fight him long,” Custo ground out, his cruel hands prying at her wrists.

  “You should have thought of that before,” Annabella answered, holding on tight to spite him. A sob formed in her throat, but she swallowed it back. She could cry later. “How dare you change places with me? It’s not right. Everyone here knows it’s not right.”

  “Adam!” Custo called. “Take her! Please!”

  In her arms, Custo was changing, his chest broadening. His breath came in labored pants.

  Two Segue soldiers crouch-walked into position at Custo’s back, guns trained on him. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted Luca holding a long blue blade.

  Even the angels were against them.

  “Annabella, I don’t want to hurt you.” Custo sounded like he was speaking through clenched teeth.

  “You won’t,” she answered back. “You love me.”

  “I do, but the wolf wants you”—Custo shuddered—“bad.”

  “Sucks to be him.”

  “This is the only way,” Custo said. His voice had taken on a disturbing bestial roll, but she wasn’t giving up.

  “Listen to me, Custo,” Annabella said. “I don’t want you to die for me. What kind of crappy gesture is that for someone you love?” The worst.

  “Annabella…” Bones cracked in his shoulders.

  “Besides, you already died for someone once,” she continued, “and look how that turned out.”

  He growled in her ear, breath hot on her neck.

  “Try something different.” Her sob broke free anyway, and she spoke through her tears. “Live.”

  ***

  Custo gripped Annabella’s wrists so tightly the bones moved. She squeaked, but she wouldn’t let go. Twining voices filled his head, but they couldn’t agree: Kill her. Love her. Use her. Fuck her. Protect her.

  Where was Adam when he needed him?

  Annabella raised her face, expression stubborn. The blue was back in her irises, her skin clear and perfect. She was normal and whole again.

  She returned his scrutiny. “Not your best look,” she said.

  In the glass storefront across the street, he was unrecognizable. His bones had altered to accommodate more muscle and tough flesh. His cheekbones were prominent, eyes wider, blacker, deeper. Shadow pulsed through his veins and sparked along his nerves. The power surging within him was thrilling, giddy, and slick.

  Custo turned slowly, assessing the street. Soldiers crouched in a wide circle around him, poised to shoot. Luca’s knuckles were white with his grip on the sword. Shadowman’s disinterest had given way to pity.

  Adam’s gun was loose at his side. He’d taken a step toward Annabella, ostensibly to retrieve her, but stopped himself.

  “Adam!” Custo shouted.

  Adam moved no closer. Made no attempt to rescue Annabella.

  Custo looked at the sky for help, but the heavens were closed. The storm above swallowed the tops of buildings and snapped with electricity, agitating the dark boulders of the clouds to knock hollowly into one another.

  A growl shuddered through his mind, hungry and impatient for the storm to break. For the street to run with red.

  He took Annabella’s arms and forced her grip to break, knowing he’d leave bruises. Her hold on him loosed with sobbing shakes. “Not letting go” ran together in a notlettinggo chant forced through the clench of her teeth. She slid down his body to her knees, her forehead hot against his hip, arms locking again elbow to elbow.

  Insensible to anything but holding on to him, she’d just given Adam and his soldiers a clean shot. Custo’s head and chest were in plain view. There was little danger of hitting her.

  The time was now.

  He glanced down to stroke her hair in a last comfort, but his hands were altered, fingers thick, mottled with gray, and tipped with wicked-sharp, curling black claws. They itched to gouge, crush, and tear, incapable of gentleness.

  Custo fisted them tightly, his heart fisting, too. He would not lay those hands on her head. Would not touch Annabella with violence while a shred of his soul remained intact. His love for her condensed into a bright will not that roped the beast of his rising bloodlust.

  He lifted his arms open to the side in a wide arrest position, his nails cutting into his palms. He’d come full circle, ready again to face death. This time a final, endless, consuming darkness.

  No sniveling allowed.

  Custo sought Adam’s gaze, found it waiting, his brother’s face lined with grief and pain, mouth curling downward as if to spit a bad taste out of his mouth. And yet, it was so much better that death come at his hands, than it had at that piece of shit Spencer’s. A mercy and a gift.

  Custo nodded, quick and short, shoot now, as the wolf snarled within to fight. To use the woman as a shield, and if she still lived when they’d fled this place, to mount her and fu—

  He brought his hands to his head to smother the impulses.

  Hunger clouded his mind, voracious as a killer. His will burned with a lust to kill, hunt, to rut. His sight darkened, the day churning with a spitting and cursing storm, obliterating light and all sense of time. The streetscape was heavy with gray, the wind whipping the dust of the tower into spinning devils, awaiting the break of violence.

  Shoot. End this.

  His vision sharpened, and the darkened world edged with keen outlines of the men, his prey. He could almost scent them individually, their blood and sweat a dark bouquet. He touched his tongue to a sharp canine tooth, elongating in his mouth. How easy it would be…

  Hot tears snaked down his cheeks as small fissures cracked his strength.

  Adam, please! Custo couldn’t voice it. Annabella, whose sobs had gone hoarse, would come to her senses and stand. Protect him with her life while he fantasized about murder.

  Adam worked his lower jaw, coming to a decision.

  Make it quick. No time. Custo waited for the bite of the first bullet. Welcomed its relief as lightning sliced the sky.

  Waited. But nothing happened.

  “Stand down,” Adam said, dropping his weapon and his gaze to the rubble.

  “Sir?” a soldier asked.

>   “I said, stand down.”

  Custo gaped in disbelief. His gaze flew to Luca, who must know the horrors crowding his mind and the weak grasp he had on his will.

  Please! He could hold on until Luca walked ten paces forward and impaled him. He’d have to hold on that much longer.

  But Luca’s eyes went dull and he dropped his blade. A puff of dust-smoke lifted. I can’t. I won’t.

  So much for family. Custo was abandoned, alone, and made a bastard all over again.

  At least Death, callous as stone, would not discriminate. Shadowman?

  Death lifted the hammer Custo had given him from the ruin of the tower. “We’re even now.” With that, he folded himself into Shadow and stalked silently away.

  Custo was alone with the rising beast, Annabella, and an audience. They’d betrayed his trust when he needed them most. Did they want to see a monster?

  So be it.

  Custo threw back his head and howled to the sky. The sound was a mix of wrath and soul, a curse to God and a prayer for deliverance. Lightning flashed in answer and black Shadow lifted like mist from the pavement, dark trees growing in the midst of the city, his hunting ground, prey packed into buildings like cages. Their myriad thoughts would both betray their locations and their intentions. So easy. Too easy. A glut.

  The air filled with layered fae voices: Anna. Bella. Anna. Bella. Anna. Bella.

  Annabella stood, eyes blazing with her formidable temper. She assumed a position, arms outstretched, to create a circle around them into which she allowed no curling dark tendril of magic to pass. Shadow seethed behind her, cold and silky, but she wouldn’t let Custo have it.

  The beast in him roared.

  “No,” she said. Her magic kept Shadow from feeding Shadow. She’d found the shift of mind that permitted her to draw from or deny the Otherworld. He’d helped her learn that trick himself, and she raised the sun.

  How dare she?

  “Custo or…or Wolf…” she shook her head in irritation. “…or whoever you are. You want Shadow? You deal with me first.”

  ***

  Custo almost laughed. What did the puny woman hope to do?

  Her hair whipped in the rising foul wind. She was graceful and strong, but tactically ignorant. With one swipe, he could drag his claws across her belly and end this.

  But that would be too easy. He went for her neck.

  Annabella flinched as his large hand closed around the pale, slender column. Her stubborn chin dimpled as she glared at him, unafraid. Angry. Willful. A tight bundle of passion daring him to do his worst.

  If it hurt, she didn’t signify. But then, endurance was second nature to her.

  Teeth bared, he snarled in her face. She was a pain. In the ass. She’d been this way from day one. Obstinate. Irritating. Intractable.

  Before he did anything else, he would break her, body and spirit.

  Hand around her neck, he forced her backward toward the ground. She had to know, had to learn, who was master once and for all. And then he could be finished with her. If she cracked her thick head on the pavement when her legs gave and she fell, so much the better.

  But her legs didn’t give. Her body bent like a willowy bow, the epitome of supple strength. The kind that weathered hurricanes. And she made it look easy. The arch of her spine into the brace of her legs was the antithesis of submission. The satisfied smirk on her lips told him what he knew already. That her soul was made of the same stuff.

  Her face was getting red. He could kill her, easily and with pleasure. The storm thundered its approval, echoing the primeval growl in his head.

  —Anna. Bella. Anna. Bella. Bella. Bella. Bella.—

  He could squeeze and squeeze and squeeze the breath out of her, until she collapsed from suffocation. The action required only the slightest contraction of his hand.

  But that wouldn’t satisfy him. Not remotely.

  Why wouldn’t she break?

  Custo’s animal mind sought an answer, the means of her undoing. There had to be another way, and with it the secret to human will, the power of mortality.

  Lightning flashed, illuminating the area. The bolt was caught in an eternal moment, the scene laid bare to Custo’s hungry eyes: On one side of the wreckage stood Adam, his dark, brooding eyes watching in expectation. On the other was Luca, his expression equal parts worry and faith. They were beacons of purpose—one from his life, and one from his death—their thoughts willing the man to overcome the beast.

  In Custo’s grip was Annabella, the axis of his existence, his name in her mind while her throat was silenced.

  The three of them created a strange geometry, an Order beyond his complete comprehension. But without doubt or reservation, he knew it was an equation calculated to save his soul.

  Like a searing bolt from the sky, love fractured him.

  Custo and the wolf were two again, inhabiting the same cursed body, but this time Custo was ascendant. A second chance. His life had been ruled by bitterness and regret, by clear paths scorned for darkness; now he could make a different choice.

  The beast in his head roared denial and frustration as Custo forced his joints to open and release Annabella; the storm above cracked in protest, but he was in charge now. For the moment at least.

  The air took on the uncompromising solidity that resisted a change of course. Annabella was right: He’d died before; now he wanted to learn something new. He wanted to live.

  She straightened slowly, her gaze wary, guarded, as she gulped the thick air. “Custo?”

  Her chest heaved and her skin shone with a determined light, offset by the pressing darkness at her back. Though she trembled with weakness, she again put her hands against the throbbing wall of Shadow to keep it from touching him, from nurturing the wolf.

  And good thing, too, because the beast had started to prowl in his mind, wildly hungry, primitive, immortally strong, searching for a human weakness to exploit. Custo knew there were a lot of them: anger, violence, sex…

  A wolfish growl rumbled in his chest—Found one!—and Custo’s tainted, pounding blood raced toward his groin.

  Skin so smooth. Body so tight.

  Custo clenched his teeth. He blinked hard and dropped his gaze from sweet, brave Annabella to the hot pavement. No. Not going to happen.

  Strip her. Lick her. Take her in the trees.

  Custo’s vision burned, the concrete rippling with dark mist.

  “Custo?” Annabella repeated.

  Every time he’d tried to resist her before, he’d failed miserably. Every single time her best interests would be served by not touching her, his wants had overruled judgment. How long could he resist? He wasn’t stupid, not long at all.

  Custo had to be fast. Had to be prepared for even greater personal darkness.

  His mind’s eye turned inward; he could sense the hulk of the wolf within him, in the most obscure, twisted corner of his mind, slavering with hunger. There was no way to kill the beast and Custo knew he could not sustain this dual existence much longer. Eventually the wolf would control him as it had Abigail.

  There could be only one mind, one will, that ruled this body.

  And the beast was so damn hungry. Custo grasped on to that singular lust, stoked it higher, denying the rest.

  He let the hunger of the wolf inundate him, felt the appetite commingle with his gathering intent. The wolf responded, crouching as if to spring and overtake his consciousness again. When the wolf leaped, Custo braced and with a great, inner gulp…consumed him.

  Custo swallowed, the burn a fierce roar of agony that overwhelmed his senses, sharpening them to brutal clarity. He took in the wolf, forced him thrashing into his blood and bones and the sizzling snap of his nerves. He absorbed and digested the raw, animal power, the dark identity. Made it his own, while obliterating the wolf’s personality in his head.

  The burn intensified, beyond pain to shock and wonder. Custo arched with the agony of it. His body was changing again, always changing. This secon
d life would not let him rest. What he would become this time, he didn’t know. How much of himself would he lose? Would there be enough left to protect Annabella?

  He threw back his head, reaching up with his Shadow-touched hands to part the threatening storm, and found the stars spinning in the black above. The sounds of the city blended with the whisper of voices, the chatter of faery voyeurs to his transformation. The scent of sweat and blood filled his nose, but what direction it came from he didn’t know.

  He reeled, his sense of direction confused. This way Earth, that way Shadow, over there Heaven, and down this dark path, Hell. Which way to go? Who was he: wolf, man, angel, or all three? Where did he belong?

  A thought reached him. It sounded like a prayer. Please be okay.

  With a snap, the erratic swinging of his internal compass found north and the needle stilled, telling him true in this place of utter uncertainty. Annabella.

  And then it didn’t matter what he was.

  “Custo?” Annabella said. Her chin was up, shoulders square, hands fisted to fight.

  Not if she could love him.

  He put out a hand to calm her. She didn’t have a timid bone in her body, but he was different and ugly. He startled to find the claws had reverted to human fingernails, which was a good sign. His skin was slightly pale, still tinged by his mother’s olive, but his veins were a deep gray. Not so good.

  “I won’t hurt you,” he said, trying to keep emotion from his voice. He pulled his hand back; suddenly he wasn’t so sure what the rest of himself looked like. “At least, I don’t think I will.”

  There was only his own voice now in his head, but if the physical change signified anything, the power of the wolf was in him, was his, thrumming in his blood. The air snapped with static crispness, singing along his skin. So strange. Maybe Adam should lock him up for a time, just in case. He didn’t dare trust himself, especially with Annabella. Yes, much better to wait and see what—

  With a flash of movement, Annabella’s arms went around his neck. She held herself in midair, her hot, soft lips pressed hard to his. Custo gasped, surprise bringing him to his knees while he clutched her from falling. She exhaled a hoarse laugh against his mouth at the jarring pavement, and…damn it, he had to kiss her back.