บททั้งหมดของ Compilation Of Short Stories : บทที่ 11 - บทที่ 20

The air within the antique store did not smell merely of old paper and dust; it smelled of centuries, and tonight it pulsed with a promise that caused Elara's skin to shiver not from fear, but from a dull, thrumming excitement. She had come in from the rain, wanting to get away from the rattle of thunder and the sudden summer storm, but she had discovered something far more fascinating waiting behind the register: two men who were far more than they seemed.The first, Kaelen, was a twisted knot of black power, dark, obsidian eyes that drilled into her clothes, through her skin, to the thrumming beat of her heart. The second, Lorian, was his opposite, gold hair and a smile with soft, evil possibilities, his very presence a golden warmth in the chill, crowded air. They approached with unblinked coordinated motion, eyes that arrested and held, and they had been gazing at her since she'd crossed over with a unified, ravenous purpose."You can feel it, can't you?" Kaelen's voice was the lo

Lyra’s initial feeling was not terror, but surprise at the overwhelming scent of pine and age-old stone and the heat of another body.Her lids opened to a vast moonlit room, its stone walls pierced by quartz embedded in it, and to the man-the beast-the creature hunkered down beside the fur-banked pallet she lay on. He was an enormous, clenched knot of muscle and putrid strength, his amber eyes holding a world of loneliness and uncontained, wild strength. A white scabbed line marred from his temple to the hard set of his jaw, the topography of some previous fury. This was Kael, the cursed lord of the deserted mountain, and she was his special key.“You’re awake.” His voice was a low rumble, like stones grinding deep within the earth, but there was no threat in it. Only a profound, aching weariness.Lyra propped herself on her elbows, the robe of satin silken rustling against flesh. The memory surfaced, a sack over her head, masked men, the ride. But the fear that should have enveloped

Thalia's first sensation was not the marble's cold, but the heat in his eyes.It was a foolish thought, of course, induced by too many hours straight spent working in the museum restoration lab, isolated by the soft swishing of the brushes and whir of the air control for company. The statuette was exactly that, a hunk of black, volcanic rock, roughly shaped, its edges smoothed down by centuries on some forgotten Aegean shipwreck. It had turned up in a box of ordinary pieces of pottery, an afterthought. But when her gloved fingers stripped away the final flourishes of dry packing straw, the laboratory air thickened. It grew heavy, heavy, with the smell of ozone and rich, oxidized soil.She knew it was Hades. Not Pluto, not Dis Pater. This was the older, more austere god, the one who governed through silence rather than a bellow, but through an unbreakable oath. The statue was simple, gigantic. It presented him not as a frightening commander but as a man in the prime of his power, sitti

The first feral principle of how to handle shifters was never let them smell your fear; the second, and far more deadly, was never let them taste your lust.Isolde's private incantation echoed one time in her mind, a desperate one to chase away the heavy, copper glow of the holding cell. The air was thick with the scent of musk, ferocious iron, and crude, beast electricity of hunt coming back to life. And her hunger was an electric wire in the room, flaring and unavoidable. She had broken the second rule.Soren, a massive northern black-furred Lupine, knelt in the center of the darkened room, the chains on his thick wrists finally loose. His human body was a map of his struggle, cabled muscle contained within pale skin, marked with the raised silver welts of scars already healed and the new, red ones from tonight's session. His chest rose and fell, not from the incontinent panic of the beast, but from the forced, controlled respiration of a man struggling against a primal drive of a d

The memory of paying his own money to purchase a human would be an eternal stain upon his conscience, but the sight of her now, bathed in the golden light of his conservatory was the sole salve which could soothe it.He found her there each morning, tucked in the cushions of a velvet chaise longue, a book often forgotten in her lap as she watched hummingbirds flutter over jasmine flowers. There, in the light and in being, was where he wanted to illuminate every shadow of the darkness that he had left behind for her. His name was Alistair, hers was Petra. He hadn't chosen the name for her; she'd breathed it into his ear that second night, a hesitant act of trust he'd treasured above all his wealth.The air was thick with the scent of rain soaked earth and orange blossoms, a storm having just swept through. Petra wore a sunset-colored silk robe, the fastenings undone to be parted in a way that it offered a tantalizing glimpse of her smooth, sun-kissed skin underneath. Alistair stood at