Hearts Unleashed: A Limited Edition Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy Collection

by C. D. Gorri

  “One giant cherry slushy,” Abel said, passing the drink to her, “and two peanut butter cups because I want you to see how much of a generous provider I can be, and absolutely not because they got me with some flashy buy one, get one half off signage.”

  “Good to know you can be distracted with some bright colors.”

  “I’m not the only one in this vehicle easily distracted by some nice plumage,” he teased.

  Dakota ignored the heat gathering in her cheeks and fixed him with a flat look. Abel chuckled as he turned the key in the ignition. His wide smile didn’t fade until they were several miles down the interstate.

  She took a pull from her straw. “I didn’t expect an architect to drive this busted-up old thing.”

  From what she’d gleaned, he’d lived a pretty charmed life. Born into power, expected to rule, so easy to turn into a little monster in that sort of environment. Not Abel. No, he was the sort to hold doors for random gas station customers and make sure distressed park rangers found their way back to the station.

  “Was that a question? It’s still your turn.”

  “No question. Just a statement.”

  “Well, to explain your statement, she’s not a busted-up old thing.” He caressed a hand over the dash. “Her name is Gloria, she’s a goddess, and has been since me and my dad fixed her up. Back then, before she was Gloria, she was a busted-up old thing. Now, she gets me out of hauling supplies to construction sites. Don’t see a pickup bed back there, do you?”

  “Of course you named her.”

  “Damn right, I named her! Any noble steed ridden into battle deserves a good name. Sure, maybe it isn’t longswords and war cries, but wrangling plans and crews can be just as challenging.”

  Dakota laughed, but a faint pang beat inside her chest. “Must have been nice to have something to work on together.”

  Abel shifted in his seat as the air changed around him. His wolf was close, she’d come to learn. And that thickening of the air was the dominance of man and beast. Humans could sense it, but not nearly as much as other shifters.

  “It was,” he said, voice heavy with emotion. “We spent an entire summer taking her apart and putting her back together. He told me it’s easy to expect a thing to work, but knowing how it’s put together is the only guarantee to know it’s working right.”

  She crawled her hand across the center console and brushed her knuckles against his thigh. Balls. They’d danced around the subject all day, and she’d thrown them right into the deep end. She honestly didn’t know how he was still standing or keeping his cool with everything that waited for him back home. Hell, she doubted he’d even had time to properly grieve.

  She wanted to punch his uncle in the dick for that. Bad enough to be the prime suspect in a tragic death. No, the asshole had to up the evil by crashing a funeral and being a terror in the aftermath.

  “I’m sorry,” she breathed. “There’s nothing I can say that will ease the pain you’re carrying, but I know how it feels, Abel. I know how it eats at all the color around you and leaves you feeling empty. I wish I could tell you it fades away gently, but you’ll be slapped with reminders at the most inopportune times. Even now, I sometimes want to scream about the unfairness of it all. ‘I’m sorry’ doesn’t begin to cover what has been forced on you. I hate that you had someone stolen from your life.”

  Abel closed his fingers around hers before she had a chance to draw away. “Your mother and grandmother, right?” he asked softly. He shot a glance her way. “The pictures you have up—I didn’t mean to pry.”

  Dakota nodded. Familiar pain welled to the surface. Loss, anger, guilt. So much of it mixed together. “My dad, too.”

  Abel turned his head slightly, eyes bouncing between her and the road ahead.

  Fuck. The words were out in the open, the same as the questions in his eyes.

  “You said you were going home. I just assumed…” he trailed off with a wince.

  “His home. His town.” She shrugged. “I haven’t been back since it happened. The storage company is being bought out, so I need to clean out the unit I moved his things into after.”

  No one else knew. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to say the words.

  Abel flipped his hand around and laced their fingers together. “What happened?”

  Dakota turned to stare out the window. She’d kept the words bottled up for so long. Habit, she supposed. So much easier to shut down, corral all the messy emotions out of sight, and carry on acting like she was perfectly fine on her own. It was what she knew. All she knew, really. But one glance at the worry and compassion written on Abel’s face took a wrecking ball to the flimsy barriers remaining between them.

  “Cancer took my mom,” she started. That faint pang returned, but it was more bittersweet than the pure sorrow of fresh grief. He wasn’t there yet, but she knew he’d learn how digging into all the memories was a way of keeping his father alive. “There were good days and bad days, then the bad overtook the good. Grams came to stay with us to help, then stuck around after. I think she saw how my father wasn’t coping. I will always be thankful for that final year before she had a stroke. After that, it was just me and him.”

  The sweetness faded, leaving just the bitter behind. “Dad’s grief… It consumed entire rooms until there wasn’t space for anyone or anything else. Grams was there for me after Mom passed, but I had no one when she died. I was alone with this other person living right down the hall. He made me feel like a ghost even while I breathed and ate and went to school.”

  Abel didn’t say anything, but he didn’t pull away or retreat from her baggage. He squeezed her hand tighter and began stroking slow, encouraging circles with his thumb.

  The years played out in her mind. The distance, the handful of words exchanged. The identical monthly phone calls when she went away to college and then when she moved into her first apartment. She always hoped things would get better, but no amount of throwing out a line snared more than a momentary interest in her life.

  “Two years ago, I got accepted for a position in Yellowstone. We had a fight because I couldn’t get the time off for Mom’s birthday. We used to get cupcakes and visit the spot where we spread her ashes, you see. First year I missed it, and he couldn’t accept it. He accused me of not loving her and letting her memory fade. It got ugly after that. All those years of feeling ignored and unimportant and worth less than a woman who died decades ago, all of that bubbled to the surface. I hung up when he wouldn’t deny that he wished I had been the one to die instead of her.

  “A week after that, he had a car crash and died at the scene. I boxed up the house, stored everything, and have been avoiding going back ever since.”

  “You shouldn’t have needed to go through that alone. That was your mother. Your grandmother. You were just a kid,” he growled, squeezing her hand tightly.

  Dakota pulled her hand free and rubbed her palms against her thighs. In the side mirror, a frown twisted her mouth. Fitting. The expression matched the twisted, churning anger in her middle.

  It was unfair. And an utterly useless emotion.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to… You just lost your father. Dredging up all shit isn’t what’s needed right now.”

  “Hey.” He tucked a finger under her chin and forced her to meet his eyes. “You don’t ever need to apologize for how you feel. Your hurts are just as valid.”

  A snarky response about the proper time and place died on her tongue. He bounced his attention between her and the road, but those quick looks flayed her wide open and saw straight to her very core. He didn’t offer her fake words or pleasantries. He meant every syllable of acceptance.

  “Thank you,” was all she managed.

  He dropped his hand only to give her thigh a squeeze. His thumb stroked over her jeans, warmth spreading under his palm. “We’re not too far from the next town. What do you say we stop a little early? We can find a good spot for dinner, maybe get some drinks. Or retreat to ou
r separate corners until morning. Whichever you prefer.”

  “Dinner,” she said, voice a little shaky. “Dinner sounds nice.”

  Chapter Nine

  His wolf was obsessed.

  He wasn’t far behind.

  Abel drummed his fingers against the counter and tried not to stare out the lobby window to where Dakota waited in Gloria. Tried, and failed. Which she graciously pointed out by jabbing fingers toward her eyes, then jamming them in his direction in the universal ‘I’m watching you’ signal.

  He made the same gesture back and turned to sign the bill for their rooms.

  She was an even bigger delight than he could have imagined. Under the flat looks and sardonic jokes was someone with a big heart. From the beginning, she’d been tough and brave. Nothing in the time since showed him different. Injured at the bottom of a gully, she’d been prepared to face down one wolf. Able to stand and an unexpected mate dropped into her life, she was ready to challenge countless others.

  She knew loss, too. Not that he reveled in the shared trait, but she understood what it felt like to have someone important ripped from her life. Multiple someones, in fact. But there, again, her big heart made an appearance. She knew the stakes if he failed. Not just for himself, but all the families Rasmus would tear apart given the chance.

  All of it, her bravery in the face of danger, her willingness to throw caution to the wind for strangers because it was the right thing to do, the take-no-shit and question the fuck out of everything, every last trait would serve her well as the alpha’s mate.

  His wolf stirred in his head. Sendings flashed, each one focused on Dakota. Laughing, glaring, hair loose and blowing in the wind. A hand pressed to her swollen belly.

  The upper curve of a mate mark peeking out from her shirt.

  Mate.

  Could he really blame her reluctance over accepting the mate bond? What she’d described after her mother passed wasn’t unheard of in his world. Losing a mate was like losing a limb. Worse, even. A person could learn to work around the physical change. Learning to live without the other half of their soul was the tougher task.

  Still, she was human. Still an outsider in his world.

  He cared less and less with each passing breath, heartbeat, long drag of her gorgeous eyes over his frame. Her smiles and laughs eased the tightness in his chest and stroked a hand down his wolf’s back.

  Mate.

  Well, his kind had been outed to the human world. They’d already been forced to make changes. Accepting a human as his mate was just one more adjustment to add to the pile.

  If he tore Rasmus down.

  Abel pasted a smile on his face before slipping out of the lobby, back into his Jeep, and drove them to the parking spot in front of their doors.

  “There’s only one bed,” Dakota stated flatly the moment she stepped into her room.

  Abel followed her inside and let their bags slide out of his fingers. “I’ve seen documentaries on this scenario.”

  Her elbow caught his side. “It’s not polite to talk about your porn habits, you weirdo.”

  “I was talking about teams traveling for competitions, filming, that sort of thing. Which is good, since,” he rapped his knuckles on the adjoining door, “this one is mine. Interesting your mind goes straight to porn, though. Anything you want to confess, Miss Martin? Road trip got you a little hot and bothered?”

  The flatness of her voice didn’t hold a candle to the flatness of the look she turned on him. But just like when he called her out on staring at his ass at their last stop, her cheeks flushed a bright red.

  Skies above, the sight of that color. He understood why bulls ran straight for it even with the threat of being stuck like a pincushion.

  Abel leaned against the adjoining room door. As much as he wanted to prowl closer and inhale every complicated note of her sweet scent, he couldn’t. Getting into Dakota’s space would just send her backing away. She had to be enticed to open her gates and let him inside.

  “You were wrong earlier,” he admitted. “When you said this grief sucks all the color from the world? There’s still a bright spot.”

  Her eyes softened. “Oh?”

  “You.” He ran a hand through his hair and tried to piece together words that made sense. Whatever mate spell she had on him twisted him up when he looked at her. “Last night, even with you telling me to leave, I couldn’t. My wolf would have stolen my skin even if I’d been able to force myself out the door. Your safety and comfort are among my top priorities.

  “I know this is quick and we haven’t had much time together, but I feel like the entire world has been tipped over and refocused on you. You can tell me to get fucked, steal Gloria, and leave me on the side of the road. I’ll be hurt and pissed, and I’ll keep my distance once I get that old girl back, but the connection between us will always be there. My only regret would be not treating you well enough to give me a chance. And maybe whatever extra miles you put on my ride.”

  She laughed, the sound wrapping around his heart and tying another string between them.

  Abel pushed away from the adjoining door and crossed the handful of feet between them. Her eyes widened, but she didn’t break their look. Breath hitching in her chest, she tipped her head back and stared him down as he plucked up her hand and pressed a kiss to the back.

  A low growl of appreciation rattled in his throat. Oh, yeah. The physical attraction was there. Had been evident from the beginning. But he wanted—needed—more. He wasn’t some virgin waiting for his mating day; he’d had his share of quick fucks and longer attempts at relationships.

  His mate? He needed it all. Her laughs, her smiles. Every beat of her heart and inch of her body. With Dakota, it was all or nothing.

  “I just—” He dragged down a deep breath and released it, then slashed his eyes away. “I just thought you should know. You’re my mate. You’re the bright spot in my world. And I hope I can be that for you, too.”

  He stepped toward the main door, vowing to go into his room and give her space until she knocked or morning arrived. His wolf whined and growled, not wanting to leave her alone, but he shoved the beast to the back of his head. She wasn’t a wolf. She didn’t understand their connection. He had to let her come to him on her own terms.

  “How are—”

  Abel turned at the choked start of a sentence.

  Dakota’s cheeks were still red as she wet her lips and tried again. “How are mates claimed?”

  His wolf howled in his head. Abel shoved the beast to the very back of his mind as he tried to keep control.

  A good sign. That question had to be a good fucking sign.

  “Most choose to place the mark here,” he said thickly, sweeping a hungry look down her body before brushing his knuckles over her collarbone. “A bite is made. Done at the height of pleasure, you won’t feel any pain.”

  “The height of… Oh.” Realization colored her cheeks. Her eyes dropped, thick lashes not hiding the heat in the dark depths. A moment, that was all, before she lifted them again. “Would that make me a shifter like you?”

  “I was born, not made. But no, a claiming bite would only solidify our bond.” His inner animal rolled through him, fur brushing against his mind. The beast wanted to taste her and run with her on four legs. “A bite from my wolf would change you. If that’s what you want.”

  “If it’s not?”

  “Then you’ll stay as human as you are now. My wolf might be a whiny little bastard about it, but he’ll accept your choice.”

  A small smile lifted the corners of her lips. “Just your wolf?”

  “Well,” Abel hedged with a shrug, “maybe I would be, too.” He met her eyes again. “Can you blame me? I’d love to share that half of myself with you. Streaking through the trees, moon high above our heads, the pack howling and chasing each other in the distance? It’s a big decision, but there’s a bigger one to make before that.”

  She was quiet for a long, loaded moment before slowl
y, carefully, stepping closer and pressing a hand over his heart. “You never did say what I smell like.”

  Warmth spread through his body, radiating outward from her palm. Underneath, his heart pounded like a drum for her.

  Abel slid his eyes closed. He inhaled deeply and let her scent wash over him. “You smell like the wind blowing through the leaves and out over open grass. Sage and citrus. Moonlight. I could waste the rest of my life looking for something as complicated and delicious because yours is the best scent I’ve ever had the pleasure of inhaling.”

  A second hand joined the first. He braced against the slight pressure and nearly stumbled back stunned when soft lips brushed against his.

  His eyes snapped open, concern rolling through him. “How is your—”

  “It’s a foot, Abel. The other parts of me work just fine.”

  He slanted his mouth over hers with a growl.

  *.*.*.*

  There was nothing Dakota could do. As soon as his lips met hers, there was nothing she could do but wrap her arms around his neck and hold on for dear life.

  Heat flooded through her with every expert stroke and twist of his tongue. One hand latched around the back of her neck, the other closing on her hip, both holding her still and steady as he plundered her mouth.

  He sent her world spinning. Heat blasted off his chest and set her ablaze at every point their bodies bumped and touched.

  Mate. Mate. The word still sounded so alien when applied to her, to Abel, to whatever was supposed to exist between them. What did exist, because holy hell and sweet fuck, did he make her need so thoroughly.

  Which was insane.

  And she was crazy for him.

  Bright spot? He called her his bright spot, but he’d snuck in and claimed that title for himself.

  She didn’t know what waited at the end of the road. She couldn’t predict how the next day would go. Even the next minute was shrouded in mystery. Right then, that moment, touching and being touched was her entire focus.