Claimed

by Eicher, Cammie

  “So he could still be alive? We’ve got some great trauma hospitals.”

  Creed shook his head. “Trust me. I called. He’s gone.”

  He caught a glimmer of tears before Chiana turned her head to stare out the window. Losing a partner sucked, especially when that partner had been a friend.

  “I want my car,” Chiana finally said.

  “We’ll call Doc. He may have had it towed to his place. Or yours.”

  “I want ribs from that little place down along the river.”

  “Call in and order; we’ll pick them up on the way through.”

  “And I want you. Like you promised.”

  There was definite challenge in her last words. His body remembered what he needed to forget—the softness of her skin against his, the tiny sighs she made when she slept tight against him, the unbridled need he’d felt in her during those moments in the cave.

  He wanted her, too. More than wanted, was obsessed by the thought of being in bed with her. He’d been lying to himself; it wasn’t a woman he wanted, it was Chiana.

  “After all you’ve learned about me, you still want me?” He forced the words out, expecting her to laugh and say she’d been kidding.

  “Stop the car,” she ordered. He hit the brake and pulled across two lanes onto the wide shoulder, ignoring the honk of angry horns. He turned to face her.

  “You’re wounded,” she said. “I know; so am I. We’re different, you and I, than any other agents out there. Unlike some of the guys I’ve worked with, you have a conscience. You feel the pain when others are hurt.

  “Me, I’m just plain different with my mother’s blood urging me to be a warrior and my father’s blood keeping me human.”

  “Chiana…” he began, before she shushed him with a finger on his lips.

  “I’m not asking for forever. Hell, I’m not even looking further than tomorrow morning. Tell me, what’s so wrong about the two of us finding our own kind of peace?”

  “Nothing.” He reached out and drew her next to him. “If you’re sure this is what you want.”

  “Positive.” Chiana’s hand stroked his face. “Although I’m pretty sure I don’t want it along I-64 in rush hour traffic. My place is only two exits from here.”

  Creed slammed the transmission into drive and pulled the truck back into traffic. She was right. There was nothing wrong with them grabbing any piece of happiness they could find.

  He felt something inside him loosen, as if whatever had anchored him in misery all these months had broken free. Maybe she was right and all they’d have together would be a few hours until duty took them their separate ways.

  But maybe, came the cautious thought, they might have tomorrow and the tomorrow after that. And he could live with that.

  About the Author

  Cammie Eicher is a native Buckeye, transplanted from northwestern Ohio to northeastern Kentucky theoretically because of a job change but actually because she couldn’t take one more Lake Erie winter. A graduate of Ohio’s Bowling Green State University, she edits a weekly newspaper and is a columnist for its sister daily. Raised in a household with a teacher grandmother, poet father and teacher/historian mother, Cammie grew up on tales of local and family lore, including learning her ancestors had once been serfs in Transylvania, and that a tombstone in the town cemetery was a drop-off point for local booze during prohibition. Cammie now lives with a large Sheltie who herds everything and a tabby/Siamese cat who doesn’t take orders from anyone (especially not a dog). She also frequently visits her two grown children in order to leave the lights on and the refrigerator door open, all the time sighing, “Ah, revenge.”

  She can be contacted at cammieeicher@windstream.net or by writing her at P.O. Box 63, Greenup, KY 41144.

  Want to read more from Cammie Eicher?

  Also Available from Resplendence Publishing:

  Out of the Shadows by Cammie Eicher

  There’s a new Ancient in town … and he’s out for blood.

  Thirteen years ago, Ahnya Fahre fought for her own life on the mean streets of Chicago. Tonight, she’s on the run again, this time with a newborn vampire who may be the child of prophecy, destined to destroy the entire Ancient civilization.

  Desperate to save the child from vengeful enforcers sent by the Ancient’s high elder, Ahnya forms an uneasy alliance with the vampires’ deadly enemy, a bounty hunter intent on killing every elder of every clan.

  When her only Ancient ally is imprisoned by the high elder, when the council’s enforcer discovers she has the child, when the psychic link between child and father brings evil to their door, Ahnya is forced to choose between the man she’s come to love and the child she’s promised to protect. The choices she makes can save the Ancients’ civilization and her own, or serve as the catalyst for the destruction of both worlds.

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  Belle DuPont has one hard and fast rule—take the money and run. It’s worked perfectly for the first century of her life, and she sees no reason to change anything.

  Until she meets the vampire Misha Tsarentza, a clan elder of the Ancients. When he hires her for a simple protection job and winds up both under the spell of silver and of Belle herself.

  His duty by blood and her obligation by salary put them on the road, protecting the Ancients’ highest authority from a band of rogue Ancients intent on destruction of the old ways and the old leaders.

  Belle soon discovers that swearing off love is hard to do when faced with the intensity of Misha’s company and her increasing attraction to him. Uniting to fight a bunch of big, bad Ancients is one thing…uniting her heart with his is quite another.

  Especially when falling in love may lead to both her execution, and his.

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  He didn’t expect that help to come in the form of Leykin Reneau. After all, they weren’t formally introduced until after she’d shoved him to the floor and covered him with ice. And once they are, he wonders if her youth and inexperience will make her more hindrance than help.

  The last thing Leykin expected when she left Minnesota was to work with the famed Giorgio Montrosa, whose reputation as a big, bad enforcer is all she knows about him. But as they work together to find the killer, solve a kidnapping and unravel a plot to dethrone the entire ruling council, she discovers the sexy man beneath the tough exterior. The attraction, she soon learns, is mutual.

  But can they live long enough to find their happy ending?

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  The Prophetess, seer of the Ancients, is dying.

  A cabal of Ancients determined to maintain the status quo is willing to kidnap and kill to do so.

  The high elder orders vampires to gather together in their homelands and hide. And for the first time in his four hundred years, Giorgio Montrosa is in love. Yet there’s nothing he can do to protect his beloved Leykin, an enforcer-in-training, when an assignment puts her in the hands of madmen.

  Because sometimes even being the biggest, baddest enforcer of them all isn’t enough.

  Dead Man Stalking by Cammie Eicher

  Life is good for Tessa McDonald, news reporter for WFRT in the tiny southern Ohio town of Fortuna, until she inherits an aged, three-legged, flatulent dog named Precious—which brings the ghost of her first lover along—and a dismembered body is discovered in an old warehouse.

  When his assignment sends Agent Carson Hayes of the Ohio Bureau of Investigation to Fortuna, he expects to solve the crime and go home. When he joins forces with Tessa to find the murderer, his orderly life rapidly becomes one of semi-org
anized chaos.

  As their instant attraction flames into something more, they find themselves confronted by an angry ex-boyfriend, shot at in the dark, and facing a pistol-wielding serial killer in a sleazy motel, which leads them to one big question—will they survive long enough to decide whether what they feel is love or simply a wonderful case of lust?

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  www.resplendencepublishing.com