Before you read the excerpt below, please note that this book is an ADULT paranormal romance novel and does containg violence, adult language and strong sexual content.
Chapter One
Okay, this was getting ridiculous! Couldn't Canis make even one trip to the surface without being ambushed? True he could simply use one of the coffee shops that were safely tucked away in his underground kingdom to sit at and do his thinking, but sometimes a man just needed the fresh air that wasn't forced through the city by huge fans.
He didn't miss the gargoyle trying to sneak up on him from behind, blending in with the night as he wrapped himself in shadows. How could he miss him when he could hear the gurgling blood that was pouring out of the creature's nose from when Canis had broken it only moments before with his elbow, when he was doing the very thing he was trying now?
That didn't stop the seven foot beast from trying again.
Persistence, persistence, persistence.
It earned him a spinning kick to his nether, boot-sensitive regions. One gargoyle down, one dragon and one vryko to go.
Three! And not just any three. Three of three different species! How had they managed to get along long enough to actually form a gang?
Two of a different species he had seen before. Usually a male and a female who had mated. Or two of the same species, also male and female, allowing the male dominance. Anything more than that, and the males without a formally appointed leader, fought almost themselves constantly for dominance.
But somehow, these three were managing to attack with some form of organization. The gargoyle doing the sneak from behind in his gargoyle form, the dragon, still in human form, attacking head on and the vryko, also in human form ghosting in and out on both sides of him.
Canis was vryko too, but he had yet to ghost or change into his fearsome wolf form. These three were okay, but they weren't good enough to warrant that kind of change. After all, he hadn't worn his specialized clothing for shifting and he wasn't going home naked again!
He ducked when the vryko solidified beside him and swiped a dagger at his head. Wuss move, when Canis' only weapon was a dagger he never used, but kept with him as a souvenir of his first battle.
He latched on to the wrist holding the dagger while simultaneously kicking a booted foot forward and hyper extending the dragon's right knee. With the palm of his other hand, he thrust it into the vryko's elbow, bending it backwards and swiped the dagger out of his hand before tossing him aside and facing off with the dragon that had recovered and was again coming at him hard.
"I don't want to kill you." He waved the dagger at the dragon. "But I will if necessary."
"You wouldn't stand a chance if I shifted." He sounded so sure of himself. Like it was fact that he was spewing brainlessly.
Canis hated to disappoint him, but, "Actually, my aunt married the dragon king over three hundred years ago. Trust me. I've had centuries of practice dealing with dragons.
Shock, then sadness crossed the face of the dragon in front of him. "You know my king?" He asked hesitantly.
Canis hadn't understood the second emotion he'd seen until then. The dragon had to have been one of the ones banished when the dragon king had started letting other immortal races into Hudan the dragon's city. One of the ones who hadn't been open to the change and had rebelled.
The gargoyle and the other vryko had stopped their sneak attacks now, also listening avidly to the conversation going on in front of them.
The vryko stepped forward slowly. "And you must have known mine as well."
Canis sighed. He really shouldn't have given the information that he had. He didn't need these men knowing he was now the king of Sirus. Or at least he and his twin were. If surface dwellers started finding out the identity of the kings. They'd all be gunning for him and his brother.
"Yes, I'm a Sirus warrior." Technically it was true. Canis fought with his warriors. Even took orders from the leader...sometimes. Of course, the leader was his twin brother Teran, but it counted.
In times of peace, like the one they were now in, Teran kept busy training with his soldiers and using them as scyths. Basically, they were the law enforcement of Sirus.
Canis was more or less in charge of all the Bureaucratic bullshit. Like diplomacy, paperwork and cramp-inducing John-Handcocking. It wasn't his favorite, but it could be worse. Just the thought of Teran being let around flesh and blood that had the slightest inclination to talk to him, let alone expect him to do anything about their problems, made Canis cringe.
Not a patient being, his brother.
Teran had always been more of a warrior than anything, but neither twin had wanted the glorious position of king when their father had been assassinated twenty years ago on their nine hundredth birthday. So the responsibilities had been divvied, and since Canis was the ever-calm one with an exceedingly long fuse, and Teran tended toward the more physical -- he just couldn't be trusted to not maim someone -- the logical choice in all matters political had been...da,da,da...Canis!
But if he didn't have his daily trip to the training room to work off some steam, he would be an absolute disaster. A man could only take so much time on his ass, no matter how comfortable the chair was.
And that was exactly why he wasn't too put out by the type of entertainment these three rogue immortals were providing.
"That would explain the fighting." Said the gargoyle from the shadows behind him. "It's been a while since I've fought one of Sirus' elite.
There was a long drawn out pause as Canis allowed the three to make the decision as to whether or not they died today.
It didn't take as long as he thought.
"You reek of the underground." The vryko said slowly. "Not all surface dwellers will welcome you. There's talk of an army. Somebody hoping to overthrow the new king."
Canis took a moment to note that they had no idea there were in fact two kings. That didn't mean whomever they were talking about didn't know. It just meant whatever rumors were going around didn't include the fact that the twins shared the role.
"He's not that new." Canis said, thinking that the twenty years that he had served as king had felt more like two-thousand. "Who is this army's leader?"
"Somebody with a grudge." was all the dragon said before he walked away.
The others followed, one in shadow, one a barely visible apparition.
"Wow. You really know how to break up a party."
He heard the melodic voice just before the sweet smell of gardenia wrapped around him. It still took several more moments of him spinning around in circles before he found her.
She was perched, ladylike with legs crossed and hands folded in her lap on the branch of one of the old trees that stood just outside his favorite coffee shop.
The shop was his favorite place to think and at three o'clock in the morning Bethlehem, Pennsylvania was quiet enough that he could get the peace he wouldn't get at his desk down in Sirus.
With no more than a slight movement, she descended the nearly ten foot drop, landing on her feet directly in front of him.
Beautiful, curvy, far too young for him to be ogling and...human?
"Who are you?"
"Daesha Jefferies!" She said brightly.
He started to ask something, anything to find out just how much she had seen, but she continued quickly before he could even draw a breath.
"And you of course are Canis! No last name. Why don't you have a last name? King -- well, one of the kings -- of the beautiful -- though I've yet to see it in person, so I can only go by what is in my mind -- city of Sirus." It all came out in one breath. A lengthy spill of words in a voice and tone that confirmed that she was probably too young for him to be so attracted to.
And he was definitely attracted.
Far younger than his nine-hundred and twenty years, though he looked closer to twenty-four or twenty-five. He was her senior by nearly a millennium and still he couldn't take his eyes off of her expressive face or her...intriguing body as it moved with the motion of her arms as she threw them about during her never-ending sentence.
And then her words sank in.
His eyes snapped buck up to hers and away from her breasts. "What are you talking about?"
Unfortunately the words didn't come out like he was the least bit confused like they should have had he really not known what she was talking about, but more like the accusation they were.
Damn it! Why don't I just admit that everything she just said is true? Hell, I could even invite her to join me.
Fortunately, there was a slight possibility that she hadn't noticed his tone, since she just continued like he hadn't said a thing.
"You know, the bits and pieces I've seen of Sirus so far are rarely of anything other than you office and your bedroom. You really should get a life." She paused to look at the sky thoughtfully. "I guess it could be worse. By mortal standards you would be a granddaddy to the tenth power. You could spend all your time in a rocking chair, staring off into space and peeing in you diaper."
This time his, "What are you talking about?" had all the right tones, because he was completely confused.
She stared at him blankly for a moment with strangely swirling hazel eyes. "You don't know what a granddaddy is?!"
"Of course I...never mind. I mean, what are you talking about other than the granddaddy thing?"
She smiled. "Don't worry. I'm not stalking you...yet. I've just seen you in visions and almost all of them are of you in your office or bedroom. Hence the, "you need a life".
"I'm too busy for a life." He hated that he actually sounded defensive, when up until this point, standing in front of Daesha the far-too-informed mini-human, he'd never much cared about his boring existence. "What are you?"
"I think you know. I'm just curious as to why you haven't tried to read my mind yet. I'll leave it open for you."
Something else she knew, but apparently didn't know as much as she thought. If he wanted to read her mind, it wouldn't matter if she left it open to him or not. He'd just reach in and take the information he wanted, but the fact that she actually had to remind him that he possessed that ability was a clue as to how distracted she was able to make him, just by standing in front of him, looking so beautiful with her golden hair whipping playfully in the breeze.
Like an ethereal pixie.
Not bothering to ask any more questions, Canis opened his mind to reach out and probe hers. There were no barriers, not even the ones humans almost always had in place naturally. Usually the fewer the barriers, the weaker the mind, but as Canis rooted around in her head for the information he needed, he realized her mind was anything but weak.
The power contained within this little woman hit him like a blast of cold wind. She was indeed allowing him in as she said she would. The fact that he hadn’t been able to sense the incredible power that should have lit her up like a kerosene-soaked torch, proved that her mind was strong enough to contain a great deal, which meant she could easily block out his telepathy.
He watched her face as he searched her mind for the information he needed. She was so beautiful. Her eyes slightly slanted like a cats, her nose small and straight, making her lips, which were soft in their own respect, look even poutier.
Suddenly, her pupils began to expand, and then completely engulfed the iris. A barrier slammed in place, kicking him out of her head, as even the whites of her eyes blacked out.
Even with that creep factor, she looked hot. In fact, his already semi-aroused body -- which had been that way since that first tendril of gardenia tickled his nose -- hardened further.
As quickly as it came, the blackness left her eyes, leaving them completely normal except for the swirling, mesmerizing green.
Wait! Weren't her eyes hazel before? He could have sworn her eyes had been green with specks of animated brown only moments ago.
And then it didn't matter, because she was stepping closer, crowding him backwards until he met the trunk of the tree. He would suffer self humiliation later when he realized he had allowed a human who was more than a foot shorter than him and one hundred pounds lighter intimidate him enough that he backed into a tree, but at the moment, all he could think was that his body was getting more aroused with every step she took toward him. And by the time he couldn't go any further and she rocked up on her toes to wrap her arms around his neck, he was completely incapable of doing anything beyond praying that he didn't hurt her when he took her right there on the concrete in front of the coffee shop.
He'd never had sex with a human before. He was always too afraid he'd hurt them. But he couldn't keep his hands from moving to cup Daesha's ass and pull her into his screaming cock. So he really didn't see how he was going to manage to walk away from this encounter, which meant he would have to try not to lose control.
Unfortunately, when he got his first taste of her mouth as he lowered his head to hers, control was the last thing on his mind. He pulled her up along his body until she wrapped her legs around his waist.
Even then, he couldn't seem to get close enough to her, which was probably why he squeezed her hard enough to make her gasp. His mind wasn't in the right mode however, so instead of releasing her like he should, he drove his tongue deep into her mouth.
She didn't complain though. Daesha's soft mouth complied, accepting his invasion and then doing the same.
Canis began to move her warm core against the front of his jeans, groaning in ecstasy and in frustration.
Too many clothes.
But when he tore his mouth away from hers so that he could fix the problem, he finally noticed how hard he was squeezing her and therefore released her completely.
She landed on the ground on her butt, and normally he would have helped her up -- it was his fault she was there in the first place -- but he was a little scared to touch her after what had happened.
"What do you want with me?" He asked as she stood, dusting herself off.
She looked at him, confused. “Ah, you must not have dug deep enough.” She said finally, tapping her temple.
All he had really found out was that she was an oracle, which was strange considering what he could tell from her the smell of her blood, she was human, and oracles were an immortal race of their own. And he had never met an oracle with the types of blocks this human had around her mind.
He also learned that, as she claimed, she had indeed known about his kind since she was seven. That still didn't tell him why she had singled him out for this...entertainment. There were plenty of immortals living right here in Bethlehem for her to harass.
Canis didn’t even bother trying to hide his annoyance. “Of course I didn’t dig deep enough, you shut me out.” He growled.
“Touchy, touchy. I was having my first premonition while I was awake, you’ll have to excuse me if I didn’t want you to see the juicy details as they popped into my head. The Lord knows -- well I assume he knows considering I know, and I definitely don’t presume to be more prophetic than the Lord -- that I can’t trust you just yet.”
The way she said it almost made him laugh, which was completely out of character for him. If he hadn’t just been inside her mind and discovered one of the strongest he had ever encountered, he would swear the tiny, amazingly sexy woman standing in front of him, was considerably less than genius. Her airhead mannerisms were completely adorable, and he was having a hard time keeping his scowl in place.
He didn’t want to like her. The simple fact that she could see things that normal humans shouldn’t made him extremely edgy.
What would it take for her to become an informant for his enemies? What if she already was?
Slowly, and with a deviously sexy smile, she stepped back a few paces. “Well, thanks for giving me a world-tilting first kiss, but I really should be on my way. I need some sleep. Those premonitions aren’t going to have themselves.” She said waving her hand erratically in the air. “Plus, we have plenty of great times ahead of us.”
“Don’t count on it Oracle. I have no intention of seeing you ever again.” He started backing away, not because he was a coward, but because he was a smart man who knew when the only reasonable move he had left, was to run.
“You’re funny.” She said, tilting her head to the side and smiling like she was talking to a child. “Of course you’ll see me again. I’ve seen how enjoyable it will be for me when you take my blood, and that's not something I am willing to let go undone.”
The groan was out before he realized he was on the verge of a spontaneous orgasm. His eyes squeezed shut. The very idea of taking Daesha’s blood made his already straining shaft give a demanding twitch in his pants. Swallowing hard, Canis took another step away.
“Sorry.” He tried for the coldest tone he could, and prayed he managed it. And because she already knew what he was and there was no use trying to hide it, he allowed himself to become corporeal and ghosted away as quickly as he could.
Unfortunately it wasn’t near fast enough to keep from hearing her softly spoken. “Next time we meet I expect to get to second.”
Lord help him, but so did he.
No comments:
Post a Comment