Gathering Darkness: A Paranormal Romance Collection

by Anna Zaires

  “I’m going to come,” I gasped out, seeing stars dancing in front of my vision, and feeling his big balls slap against my pussy. I cried out as I came and then felt him pierce my neck with his teeth. My cry became one of pleasure and pain, but my orgasm increased at those feelings. And then I swear I felt his cock harden further inside of me. He roared out as he came, pumping his seed into my body as if it were a mark of ownership. I don’t know how I knew that, but it was as clear to me as this whole experience. His seed slipped out of my pussy, moved down my inner thighs, and even though that shouldn’t have been arousing, God, it really was.

  He pulled out, removed his canines from my neck, and I fell to the ground. But he had me in his arms seconds later, cradling me, whispering something low in my ear, and I let myself relax against him.

  “Run from me, mate. Run and let me chase you.” The way he spoke told me this was what he wanted, what would arouse him.

  The chase.

  ***

  I ran fast and hard, knowing that I wanted him to chase me, wanted to be the prey to his predator. I saw the entrance of the forest, could even see the house where the Halloween party was still underway, but all of it had me stalling slightly. I heard him breathing close behind, looked over my shoulder, and felt wetness leave my pussy as he came closer. He bared his canines, but the sound that came from him had me turning pliant. I walked closer to the edge of the woods, felt the breeze brush over me, and when I was just an inch from where I would be on perfectly manicured lawn, I faltered.

  “You can’t leave me, mate. I won’t let it happen.”

  He was right behind me now, breathing heavily, his cock hard again despite the fact he had filled me with his cum.

  “You’ll chase me.” I didn’t phrase it like a question.

  “I’ll chase you until you can no longer run.” He moved closer, and I took one step back.

  Here I was, having this conversation with this half man and half beast, one that I had just let fuck me hard and raw.

  “You have nothing out there that is meaningful. In here, in this forest, you have me. I’ll have you wanting for nothing.” He moved closer and lowered his head so his eyes were still trained on me. How did he know anything about me? I wanted to ask, but I kept my mouth shut and closed my eyes, trying to think about what in the hell I was going to do.

  I didn’t know what I should do, because the logical part of my brain told me to leave this wicked, weird experience and go back to the… I stared at the house again, listened to the loud music, the laughter I could hear all the way down here, and I thought about my life. I had graduated last year, but worked at the local bakery. I was doing nothing with my life, had a father that was more interested in his new young girlfriend, and a mother that wanted nothing to do with me anymore because she was too worried about her own life. My friends were more interested in partying, and my life felt like one giant letdown. But then I had come into this forest, been with this man that hadn’t even told me his name, hadn’t even told me what he was, and yet it had felt so perfect and right.

  “You are mine, Red. You can’t leave this forest unless you really want to.” The way he said those words filled me with confusion.

  Surely, he wasn’t implying what I thought he was? I was naked, didn’t have my cell anymore since it was back with my pile of clothes, but I took a step forward anyway. I was going to prove him wrong, prove that I didn’t want to be here, even though in my heart I knew that was a lie. But as soon as my foot touched the soft grass, the world turned upside down, and I was facing the beast man again. He stood there, no smile, no emotion at all on his face. I spun around and saw the house and the party and tried to leave the forest again. But the result was the same: I was still in the woods and facing this male once again. Over and over I did this, feeling fear and confusion at the fact I honestly, truly couldn’t leave this place.

  “I told you, Red. I told you that unless you want to leave, you can’t.”

  “I do want to leave.” I was shouting now, more afraid of this Twilight-like situation. It was like something kept me here, made me unable to leave the thick oaks and evergreens standing around me. I saw a couple moving forward, not close enough that I could hear what they were saying, but close enough that I started yelling, screaming even. But they didn’t even look up, as if they couldn’t hear me.

  I could see them, but they couldn’t see me. And then when I screamed once more the couple stilled, not because they heard me, but as if they had been frozen in time. In fact, I could no longer hear the music from the party, couldn’t even see the twinkling of the lights in the windows of the house.

  I felt his heat behind me, heard him inhale again, and then he growled out.

  “You don’t want to leave, at least not yet.” He pushed hair away from my shoulder, and I shivered. “The world has stopped, and if you decide to leave, then you can leave this place, and everything will be as it was."

  I closed my eyes. “This is crazy. How is this even possible?” The words came out of me softly.

  “Anything is possible.”

  “I don’t know you, don’t even know your name, yet I just had sex with you.” I turned around and faced him. “You’re not even human.” That last part was whispered so low I didn’t even know if he heard me. “Surely you can see how strange all of this is to me?”

  “I can see, but it doesn’t change the reality of it.” He reached out and ran his finger over the bite mark he had given me. The side of my neck ached from his touch, and this pleasure filled me.

  “It doesn’t matter if you know me, or my name. I am here and so are you. You are my mate. I can smell it.” He inhaled deeply and closed his eyes, as if he derived pleasure from the mere act. “And I can’t let you go because you are mine.”

  “And if I decided I wanted to leave?” The truth was right here and now I didn’t want to be anywhere else. I wanted to be with this male that declared me as a mate, as if we were these wild animals needing to breed or something.

  “Then I’ll follow you. This is my home, these trees, mountains, and wilderness what I know. But you’re mine, and I won’t let you go. My inner wolf won’t let you go, and I meant what I said… I’ll chase you until there isn’t anywhere else for you to run.”

  Right now I wanted this moment with him, wanted to be with him as I had never been with another person. The world was frozen, waiting for me to leave this forest, and then it would start back up as if nothing happened. I could be in here forever and nothing would change. My mother would still be a basket case, my father still absent in my life, and I’d still be working at my shitty little job.

  I inhaled deeply. He smelled wild, fierce… and mine. Yes, he was mine as much as I was his, and although this was the craziest fucking thing that had ever happened, I wasn’t ready to leave just yet. I stepped closer, paced my palms flat on his chest, and knew that whatever happened, this was my choice, my decision, and I was making it now.

  Neither of us said anything, but he lifted me in his arms and carried me back into the forest. Whatever happened in the future didn’t matter because I was living in the here and now, and that was all that I cared about right now. This man was half wolf, had just admitted that to me, and I was willingly choosing to stay with him. It was crazy, but I wanted to experience it.

  THE END

  About the Author

  Jenika Snow a USA Today bestselling author, a mother, wife, and nurse. She lives in northeast with her husband and their two daughters. She writes Erotic Romance, and loves creating heroes that will do anything to have their HEA with their heroine.

  Learn more at www.JenikaSnow.com

  Find her on Facebook

  Walking Dead Girl

  by Lili Saint Germain

  Vampireland, Book 1

  I was seventeen years old the first time I died. I didn't expect to wake up afterwards.

  This is not a story about love. There is no happy ending. There is only darkness, and the struggle to avo
id being consumed by it.

  This is a story about survival.

  I was seventeen years old the first time I died. When I was first taken, I thought that my ending had arrived, a smirk on his mouth and bloodlust alight in his beautiful eyes. I waited to die, to be torn apart by sharp teeth and vicious hands.

  And I did die.

  I just didn’t expect to wake up afterwards.

  ONE

  Drink.

  That was the first thing he said to me.

  I opened my eyes. Naked save for a bloodied white sheet, my tender skin covered in sticky red blood. My broken body somehow, impossibly, repairing itself.

  I felt something warm at my lips. Blood.

  “Drink,” he repeated.

  I did.

  “Be grateful,” he said later. “I saved you.”

  I hated him for it.

  ***

  This is not a story about love. There is no happy ending. There is only darkness, and the struggle to avoid being consumed by it.

  This is a story about survival.

  I don’t really know where to start, but there must be a place. A place before the world went dark, before I learned of the horror that existed on this earth. Back when I was just a girl – though that seems so long ago, I sometimes wonder if it was just a dream.

  I could start at the beginning, but where is the beginning? Was it the night I was taken? Or the balmy summer I spent falling in love, the last summer that I walked under the sun without it burning my flesh?

  Maybe I should start with the night innocence came to a crashing halt. The night I was taken. Yes, I will begin my story there, in a frozen parking lot with a silent scream.

  I was seventeen years old the first time I died. When I was first taken, I thought that that was it for me. I waited to die, to be torn apart by sharp teeth and vicious hands.

  And I did die.

  I just didn’t expect to wake up afterwards.

  But here, now, lying in a pool of my own drying blood, naked and alone, the only comfort when he brings me that thick, syrupy liquid that burns and cools my throat all at once?

  I wish I could go back and tell myself that death was the very least of the things that I should fear.

  THEN

  It was the final week of first semester in our senior year. I had just finished a mammoth session filling out college applications with my best friend, Evie. I remember little details – the way the last few falling blossoms from the Northern Red Oaks on campus looked like drops of fire on the early December snow; the way my fragile human heart hummed with excitement that school was almost over; the way everything looked clean and new blanketed in snow. Most of all, I remember the stab of worry I had felt at taking the shortcut through the deserted football field to get home.

  Blair Academy was smack in the middle of Blairstown, New Jersey. A hundred and fifty–something–year–old institution that sprawled luxuriously over four hundred manicured acres. It was preppy and expensive, and I was there because my father had attended school there, and his father before him. My father was dead. My mother was a high–powered corporate attorney who spent most of her time in her New York loft apartment with my stepfather, Warren. She had never really wanted children, and thought she couldn’t have any. She had lucked out with me – although she probably didn’t see it that way – and so I had never really had much to do with her. My father was everything to me. My mom moved to New York a few months after he died. She was meant to come home every weekend after her long week at work. She never did. I didn’t really mind. I didn’t resent her for not being my mother – I had never known or expected anything more from her, and I knew she loved me despite her maternal shortcomings. After Dad died I usually split my time between living on campus during the school week and spending weekends at our house, a few miles from school.

  What I loved to do more than anything else was run. I was on the track team and when I was in the middle of a run, it was like I could fly. The college scouts had been at our annual running meet, and I had just filled out my application to a handful of elite track programs.

  My best friend Evie was as poor as I was wealthy. She was on a full scholarship right through high school, and she was smart. She whipped my ass in most things academic. I had always been bright, but next to her I – and the rest of the general high school population – looked like a bunch of dumbasses. Needless to say, having a best friend who was a genius made study much easier. The girl had a natural talent for teaching and mentoring. Her parents weren’t dirt poor, but they struggled, and to have Evie at a school like Blair Academy made them so happy. Really, they were like my adopted family. People always asked if we were sisters, I don’t know why. We were both short and sarcastic but she was strawberry blonde to my brunette, curly to my straight and had green eyes that were nothing like my blue ones. I had skin that turned brown after a day in the sun, where she had pale alabaster skin that practically glowed.

  “You okay to get back to your room?” Evie asked, jerking me out of my idle thoughts.

  I stopped as I realized we were standing at Evie’s car. She shook her set of keys and looking at me expectantly.

  “I’m not going to my room,” I replied.

  “Going to suck face with Jared?”

  “You make it sound so endearing, Evangeline,” I said petulantly. “And yes, I am going to see Jared. I will most likely suck his face at some point tonight.”

  “Gross,” Evie said. “He’s like my brother. I’ve known him forever.”

  “So have I,” I reminded her. “And I sure am glad he’s not my brother.” I raised my eyebrows suggestively and laughed.

  Evie made a face. “Get out of here before I throw up on you.”

  I exchanged goodbyes with Evie and made a beeline for my own car. Teachers and day students got to park right at the entrance of Blair but most live–in students had to trek almost a mile to the regular boarding school parking slots. Sighing, I hoisted my bag higher on my shoulder and walked past a Crown Victoria, a Bentley and a Fiat before reaching the average–looking old clunkers in the student parking lot.

  As soon as my feet touched the snow–covered oval, all thoughts of trigonometry and English lit dissolved. A jolt of adrenaline hit my stomach as I thought about finals, about Jared, about my eighteenth birthday in a few months. Everything was going so well.

  Trudging through the silence, I began mentally making lists for an end–of–finals party at my perpetually parent–free house. Keg. Food. Decorations. New clothes. So, naturally, I wasn’t even looking where I was walking when the hot guy stepped out from behind a shiny black truck. He was so close I almost tripped over him. I jerked back to reality, cursing myself for being so inattentive.

  He was wearing jeans and a black sweater, and looked kind of like a thirty–something Calvin Klein underwear model with dark blue eyes, a hint of European heritage in his olive skin – Italian, maybe? – and black hair cut close to his skull. He was the furthest thing from threatening I’d ever seen – during the day in a crowd I’d let my eyes linger on that handsome face – but at midnight in New Jersey, anything was possible. I averted my eyes and veered to the left, quickening my pace. My thoughts instantly shifted from beer and clothes shopping to serial killers and the can of bear spray in my handbag.

  Pulse quickening, I passed hot dude and kept walking towards my car. It’s cool, he’s probably just a new teacher in the wrong lot. And then he spoke.

  “Mia!” He called after me. I froze for a moment, then began to walk again. Faster, pushing my strides longer. Just get to the car.

  He laughed, a deep, throaty chuckle that sounded like caramel and in any other situation would make me melt. Instead, it made me shudder inwardly, adrenaline spiking into my muscles.

  “Sorry, gotta run!” I mumbled awkwardly, almost at my car.

  “Mia Blake, don’t you remember me?” He padded casually after me, while I scurried like a timid mouse. I was almost embarrassed by how uncool I was be
ing. “I’m Ryan. We were in Bailey's drama class together last semester.”

  Bailey was a washed–up ballerina who liked to yell at her students. Of course I knew her, but I definitely didn’t know this Ryan. He looked kind of old to be a student – not to mention, way too hot for me to forget. I might have had a boyfriend, but girlfriend had eyes, too.

  I turned to face him, but kept walking backwards towards my car. The Honda Element sat less than twenty feet away.

  “Oh, sure,” I lied. “How’s things? Sorry, I can’t stop.” If he’s a student, then I am so freaking rude right now.

  Ten feet to my driver’s door. I’m probably just being stupid, I thought, an unfortunate side effect of growing up two hours from New York. We might have been in a nice suburb, but even so – nice people generally didn’t loiter in parking lots and teenage girls rarely walked to their cars alone. Blairstown was a place where everyone was still on alert after 9/11, even me, and I'd only been a child when the towers had fallen. Three girls had already gone missing from high school parking lots in New Jersey that year.

  I am such an idiot. I should have gotten a ride with Evie.

  Five feet. Walking backwards was harder than it looked, and my silver ballet flats were getting ruined in the damp snow. Not that I cared about my stupid shoes. My mother always berated me for not wearing boots in the snow, which is why I wore the flimsiest shoes possible. Can you tell I didn’t really get on with my mother?

  “Well, gotta go.” I slid my key into the door of my car and unlocked it with a satisfying thunk.