by Selena Kitt
“What do you mean?” She blinked up at him, cocking her head. “What are you talking about?”
“You didn’t tell her?” Jari looked between them both in surprise. “Oh… she wasn’t at your hearing. I guess she wouldn’t know…”
“Know what?” Muriel demanded, impatient. “Stop talking in circles. Both of you. I’m not a child.”
“Jari…” Char shot her a warning look. “Take Muriel home now.”
“No!” Muriel struggled in his hold as Char started propelling her to the door, Jari following close behind. “What didn’t he tell me? What don’t I know?”
“I’m sorry,” Jari apologized as they neared the exit. “I didn’t think—”
“You can say that again,” Char growled.
“I’m not leaving you!” Muriel protested, putting her arms around his neck, clinging to him. “I’m not leaving you again! Ever! Do you hear me?”
“Stop it.” He grabbed her shoulders and shook her, hard. “I don’t want you here. Go home, Muriel.”
“You’re lying,” she whispered, but his words were like arrows, piercing her core.
“I’m not who… what… you loved…” he managed to choke out. “I will never be that again.”
“Because of me.” She looked at Jari, and then at Char, seeing the truth in their eyes. “You sacrificed yourself for me. Jari said The Maker was lenient on me… why? What did you give them?”
Char shook his head, turning his face away. The pain in his eyes broke her completely. How could she have believed that he was still living a celestial life, walking the world as a seraphim, when in fact he’d been turned into something horrible, banished, suffering for eternity.
“Tell me!” Muriel cried. “What did you give them?”
“Take her.” Char shoved Muriel at Jari, hard, and she stumbled, blinking at him in shock. “Leave me.”
“You don’t mean it.” Muriel’s voice shook with emotion. “I know you still love me.”
“It doesn’t matter.” He refused to look at her. “Go.”
“Come on,” Jari said softly, taking Muriel’s arm.
“What did he give them, Jari?” Muriel’s voice failed her. She sounded small, like a child. “What did he give them?”
“His soul!” Jari snapped, her eyes blazing. She’d forgotten how fast Jari went from simmer to boil. “He’s damned, Muriel! He’s damned for all eternity!”
Muriel turned to look at him, her lover, the seraphim she’d fallen for once, and now, forever. She already felt it, even before she said the words, an empty, cold feeling in the center of her being, where she remembered a heart beating for a few brief, fleeting, joyous hours.
“Then I’ll be damned too,” Muriel whispered.
“Muriel!” he cried, wailing. “Nooooooooooooo!”
“I renounce The Maker!” She reached around Jari’s back and grabbed a handful of her arrows. Not just one or two, but an entire handful, screaming the words as loud as she possibly could, hoping that everyone in the universe, human or celestial, heard them. “I will be forsaken!”
He couldn’t reach her in time.
She drove all of them, as deeply as she could, into her center.
And fell, into darkness.
“Is she there?”
Muriel thought she heard him and struggled to reply. Char, I’m here. I’m here. But words failed her. She didn’t have a voice. A hunger clawed up her throat. She tried to swallow it down, but it wouldn’t go.
“Zeph, please!”
“Shhh!”
The memory came from the darkness. It was her only light. He had kissed her, and they had fallen. There was softness, a cloud, warmth. The sweetness of human contact, his flesh pressed to hers.
It was him, but not him. She was herself, but someone else too.
Kiss me.
Kiss me one last time.
Kiss me goodbye.
His lips touched hers, not warm as she expected, but cold.
She opened her eyes, and saw only red.
“Muriel.”
That’s me. That’s my name.
But she wasn’t Muriel anymore. She wasn’t anything or anyone.
All she knew was hunger.
And there was food nearby. She could smell red, thick and pulsing, a heartbeat she would crave until the end of days, with a hunger that knew no limits.
“Muriel, no!”
She went after her meal like a shot, but someone grabbed her and pulled her back, whirling her around, away from the source of food.
And then she saw him.
“Muriel. Oh sweet, Muriel.”
She knew Char’s voice, his touch. She would know it if she was dead. Maybe she was. He cradled and rocked her and for a moment, the hunger ebbed and she remembered. It came back to her in a flood, a tidal wave. This was her choice.
He was her choice.
“What did you kiss her for?” Char snapped as Zeph came back into the room. He had locked away the food and Muriel glared at him, sorely disappointed. “She’s not sleeping fucking beauty!”
“How long has she been in love with you?” Zeph asked. Muriel remembered him, too, but much of that was vague, fuzzy. Had he kissed her?
“Fuck, Zeph, it’s not my damned fault,” Char snapped. He stood, gathering her close. “Why did you kiss her?”
“I didn’t do it for kicks!” Zeph snapped back. “Listen, in her mind, she thought I was you. It… it was all I could do to bring her fully here.”
“Don’t!” Muriel croaked, speaking for the first time. Her voice was like gravel. “Don’t you dare tell him!”
“Tell me what?” Char asked, looking between the two of them, confused.
“Take her home, Char.” Zeph sighed. “Feed her. Talk to her. Maybe she’ll tell you what happened. She knows. She remembers.”
“Goddamnit, tell me!” Char insisted.
“It’s not for me to tell.” Zeph pointed toward the door. “Go home. Both of you, go home.”
Outside, snow fell. Muriel turned her face up to it, to him.
“Where were you?” Char whispered, stopping to pull her close. “You stabbed yourself with those godforsaken arrows and then…”
She remembered.
Godforsaken, indeed.
I am forsaken.
“I’m here now.” The hand that trembled as she touched his face was no longer pure light, no more gossamer. She was no longer an angel. “I’m yours. Forever, Char. I’m yours.”
“What have you done?” he whispered into her hair, gathering dark handfuls of it, burying his face there. “Oh, my sweet, sweet Muriel, what have you done?”
She had begged Zeph not to tell him, but she remembered it now. She remembered it all. Zeph had somehow seen into her, through her, had watched her kneel before The Maker. Had he felt her pain, when they ripped her wings from her, when they let her fall? It had been moments only, an eternity, a simple choice, and then it was done.
“I chose you.” She cupped his face in her hands and kissed him, her new fangs sinking into flesh for the first time before she drank.
The End
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ABOUT SELENA KITT
Selena Kitt is a NEW YORK TIMES bestselling and award-winning author of erotic and romance fiction. She is one of the highest selling erotic writers in the business with over two million books sold!
Her wr
iting embodies everything from the spicy to the scandalous, but watch out-this kitty also has sharp claws and her stories often include intriguing edges and twists that take readers to new, thought-provoking depths.
When she’s not pawing away at her keyboard, Selena runs an innovative publishing company (excessica.com) and bookstore (excitica.com), as well as two erotica and erotic romance promotion companies (excitesteam.com and excitespice.com).
Her books EcoErotica (2009), The Real Mother Goose (2010) and Heidi and the Kaiser (2011) were all Epic Award Finalists. Her only gay male romance, Second Chance, won the Epic Award in Erotica in 2011. Her story, Connections, was one of the runners-up for the 2006 Rauxa Prize, given annually to an erotic short story of “exceptional literary quality.”
She can be reached on her website at www.selenakitt.com
BONUS EXCERPT
HIGHLAND WOLF PACT
By Selena Kitt
Sibyl Blackthorne isn't afraid of anything--except maybe being sold into marriage to a man she doesn't love. A man she's never even met. A man who, by reputation, is one of Scotland's cruelest lairds in over a century.
But what choice does she have, with her father dead and her uncle now married to his brother's widow, putting him in charge of not only the Blackthorne fortune, but Sibyl's future as well?
Then her betrothed turns out to actually be far worse than his reputation, so headstrong Sibyl decides life as a peasant, or even death, would be preferable to a future with such a despicable man, and makes plans to run away.
On an organized hunt for wolves--or, as the Scots call them, wulvers--Sybil escapes her fiancé's clutches, only to find she's run into something far more untamed and dangerous in the middle of the woods.
When a big, brawny, long-haired man, who only speaks to her in Gaelic and calls himself Raife, simply picks her up and carries her off with him into the Scottish wild, Sibyl knows she's in trouble.
When he takes her to a place no human has ever been, she knows she's gone over the edge.
And when he, at last, marks her as his own, she discovers that only one wild heart can claim another.
EXCERPT:
“What are you doing?” Sibyl protested, but barely had time to get the words out before the big man had divested her of her weapon and had thrown her over his shoulder and began carrying her downstream. “Stop! Let me go!”
Her words were lost in the rush of the water and he didn’t seem to hear her at all as he moved quickly—much faster and more nimbly than she expected of a man of his size—down the shoreline. She beat at his back with her fists, but he didn’t seem to notice that either, and before long, her hands ached. It was like hitting a slab of rock. When he stopped, she lifted her head to look around, noting their position, away from the protection of the tree line now.
And then she heard it. Could he really have detected the sound, so far away? The dogs were barking again. On the hunt. She imagined Alistair telling the story to his men, making up something so he, of course, looked like the wounded hero. Perhaps he would tell them she had been kidnapped by the massive brute who now had her thrown over his shoulder—and really, was that far from the truth? She knew he wouldn’t tell them she had put an arrow through him. That much he would leave out, she was sure. She hoped.
“They’re coming!” she hissed, beating at the human rock’s back again. She hit him in the side, eliciting a satisfying grunt from the man, and did it again, pleased when she heard his sharp intake of breath. “Let me go! They’re coming for me!”
“Bidh modhail!” he snapped, his hand coming down hard on her behind. Sibyl hadn’t been spanked since she was a child and, while it really didn’t hurt, given how much padding she had on under her skirts, the humiliation of it reddened her cheeks and made her instantly quiet.
And then they were flying.
It wasn’t really flying, but it felt that way. He was so agile, so quick and light on his feet, it felt as if he had simply taken flight as they crossed the stream. Behind them, the dogs grew closer. They were onto a scent—likely her own and she cursed herself for not grabbing her hat, which would allow the dogs to pick up her trail—and pursued it with fervor. Sibyl bounced on the big man’s shoulder, squealing at one point, thinking surely he would fall and she would go tumbling head-first to her death onto the slippery, moss-covered rocks, but then they were across, heading into the cover of the woods on the other side.
Once they were a sight distance from the tree line, the man upended her with a grunt, putting her back onto her feet. Sibyl pushed an already tangled mass of auburn hair away from her face and glared up at him. He didn’t smile, but his eyes danced, clearly amused at her stance—hands on her hips, face upturned—and the words that came tumbling out of her mouth.
“You bumbling idiot! You could have killed us both!” she snapped. “I didn’t ask for your help. Do you understand me? I don’t want your help! No! Go! Away with you!”
She shooed him away like an annoying fly but the man didn’t move. He just looked down at her with those devilish blue eyes.
“Goodbye! Mar sin leibh!” She didn’t know many phrases in Scottish Gaelic, but she had learned a few from Moira. Hello, goodbye, please and thank you. So she said the words, hoping he would understand, and from the look on his face, it was clear he got her meaning. “I’m going! Mar sin leibh! Goodbye!”
She turned and stalked off, getting as far as the nearest tree before he grabbed her again.
“Will you stop that?” she cried, pushing at his arms as they encircled her and turned her to him. “No! Chan eil! Chan eil!”
She repeated the Gaelic word for no, seeing the frown on his face at her protest.
“Shh.” He touched a finger to her lips, shaking his head.
“Chan eil,” she objected again, but this time, the word came out in a mere whisper. “No… please…”
“Tha.” His thumb traced her jawline as he looked down at her, the sunlight dappled across his face and chest. She knew the word—tha. Yes. It meant “yes.” Sibyl felt her breath quicken as the stranger traced her lips with one finger, his gaze falling to her mouth, then to her throat, then further down still, to the way her breasts nearly overflowed the top of her disheveled dress.
“Tha,” he said again, lifting his gaze to meet her eyes. So blue. His eyes were so blue. “Yes.”
“You… you speak English?” she whispered, cocking her head at him in wonder. “Who… who are you?”
SELENA KITT’S OTHER WORKS
NOVELS
A Baumgartner Reunion
Babysitting the Baumgartners
Baumgartner Generations: Henry
Baumgartner Generations: Janie
Baumgartners Empty Nest
Bluebeard’s Wife
Forbidden Fruit
Hussy
Highland Wolf Pact
Highland Wolf Pact: Compromising Positions
Highland Wolf Pact: Blood Reign
Heidi and the Kaiser
Hussy
Letters to the Baumgartners
Naughty Bits (Revised)
Step Beast
The Baumgartners Plus One
The Blood of Angels
The Kiss of Angels
The Real Mother Goose
The Song of Orpheus
The Surrender of Persephone
The Sybian Club
Under Mr. Nolan’s Bed (Revised)
Unfolding
Yank
SELENA KITT BOX SETS
Baumgartner Box Set 1
Baumgartner Box Set 2
First Time with My Stepbrother – Volume 1
Nolan Trilogy Box Set
Little Brats: Taboo A-Z – Volume 1
Little Brats: Taboo A-Z - Volume 2
Little Brats; Taboo A-Z – Volume 3
Little Brats; Taboo A-Z – Volume 4
Myths Behaving Badly Box Set
Menage Box Set
Modern Wicked Fairy Tales: Complete #1
; Stepbrother Studs: Taboo A-Z - Volume 1
Stepbrother Studs: Taboo A-Z – Volume 2
Taboo: The Collection Box Set
UNDER MR. NOLAN’S BED TRILOGY
Temptation
Confession
Grace
SHORT NOVELS
Blind Date
Taken (FREEBIE)
ANTHOLOGIES
Back to the Garden (Revised)
Baumgartner Hot Shorts
Confessions
EcoErotica
Quickies
Tickled Pink
STORIES
A Baumgartner Christmas