Dark Embrace (Principatus) (40 page)

She turned her mind back to the Australian, remembering the way he looked as he ran from the sea with water streaming over his lean, muscular body, the sun highlighting broad, strong shoulders, snug blue swimming shorts hugging narrow hips. It was a good memory. A potent memory.

The heat between Fred’s thighs pulsed again and, despite the warm breezes blowing across the ocean, her nipples pinched into tight peaks. Something about the lifeguard intrigued her. Not just his fierce battle to deny her, but something else. Something different.

She strode along the sand, a detached, professional part of her mind marking those around her for their time, and thought of Peabody’s failed rescue. Like the lifeguard, something about it had felt…what? Wrong? No, wrong wasn’t the correct word, especially to describe the lifeguard. Yummy. That was a good word to describe the lean Australian with the messy blonde hair. Sexy as sin another one. Well, another three, actually. Unusual however,
was
the word she was looking for to describe his rescue attempt.

But why?

What was it about the sequence of events?

The lifeguard works on the drowning man’s body, pounding against the man’s fleshy chest with his palms, the sun turning his smooth muscular back to a bronzed sheen. The subtle heat of the day kisses her arms and neck and cheeks as she watches him battle the inevitable. The sound of the pedophile’s perverted, weakening heartbeat vibrates through her core, feeding the familiar tingle in her gut as she prepares to sever his life thread… She leans over the lifeguard to touch Peabody and the salty bite of the lifeguard’s sweat threads into her being like mist. She turns her head, for some reason wanting to see his eyes, wanting see if they burn with the same fierce determination she feels radiating from him. She looks at him…and he looks at her, his soft breath fanning her face.

Fred froze, the sounds of the beach—seagulls screeching, swimmers splashing, people laughing—sucked away by stunned shock.

He
looked at
her
.

He could see her.

That’s impossible, Fred. The living can’t see you until the very moment you claim them. Not unless you choose for them to do so and you sure as hell didn’t choose for this guy to see you today.

But he
had
seen her. He’d looked straight at her, and it was only now, with the post- claiming buzz fading to a soft tingle, that she realized it. He’d seen her.

How in all the levels of hell could he see you?

No, he couldn’t. The living
didn’t
see her. She prevented it. The Powers prevented it.

Wishful thinking? Maybe your starved libido is making you see things?

Before she could stop herself, she turned and gave the lifeguard a long, hard inspection from across the sand.

He sat beside Peabody’s inert body, head buried in his hands, broad shoulders slumped. She’d seen this very pose before. The position of a defeated human. But unlike others in this situation, anger radiated from the man. Anger. Not misery, or self-centered contemplation. Anger. Simmering, tangible anger.

Fred cocked an eyebrow, her sex squeezing in base appreciation.
Who
are
you, Mr. Tall, Bronzed and Brooding?

Stare locked on the increasingly intriguing man, she tapped into the List of the Living threaded into her very existence, seeking the answer.

But all that surfaced from the never-ending database was a name and date of birth. Patrick Anthony Watkins. Born February 29
^th
1972.

Fred frowned. “That can’t be right. Where’s his date of death?”

From the moment of conception, the time and cause of death of every living creature with a soul was predetermined. The Order of Actuality demanded it. From the smallest baby to the leader of the free world, their lifespan was locked in a fixed time frame, imprinted on their very genetic fiber.

All, it seemed, except Patrick Watkins. Which made him a…

Fred narrowed her eyes, regarding him across the busy beach. The sun beat down on those around her, drawing moisture from their pores, turning the heavily populated strip of sand to a wavering shimmer of silver light and color, yet Patrick Watkins remained sharp in clarity. Just Patrick. Filling her vision and her core.

She studied him closely and then shook her head. Well, whatever he was he wasn’t a demon. He possessed a soul. She could feel its pure, spiritual presence pouring from him, even from this distance. A blazing white essence of life and humanity so strong it made her blood sing and her skin tingle. Frowning, she tilted her head to the side, looking at him through the darkness of her sunglasses. It didn’t make sense. If he had a soul, he should have a date of death. So why was she drawing a complete blank?

And why, in the name of the Powers, was she so damned turned on? Did the man’s ambiguity have anything to do with it? Or was it just because he was smolderingly sexy?

Fred shook her head again. She needed answers. And another
closer
look.

Because you want answers, or because you want to check him out again?

The unbidden and way-too-close-to-the-bone thought made her sex constrict in a firm, warm pulse of eager anticipation. She couldn’t touch him, but she could look. She could look a lot. She could take her visual fill of him because the living
could not
see her. No matter what her foolish mind insisted it saw.

A tense pressure welled in her chest and, turning away from the sight of Patrick kneeling beside the empty pedophile’s body, she released a long, dragged out sigh.

It was a sad fact of her existence she could no longer ignore. She, Death, the Grim Reaper,
El Muerte
, Cronus, Azreal, the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse, had become a Peeping freakin’ Tom.

Gritting her teeth, Fred stormed along the high-tide line, fighting like hell to ignore the damp tightness between her thighs. “Fantastic.”

She thought she had a life—until being hunted shows her she’s never really lived.

Savage Transformation

© 2010 Lexxie Couper

Savage Australia, Book 2

Jacqueline Huddart has spent her entire adult life on the run. Not from the law, or even a jealous lover. From herself—and what she is. That strategy works for her until a funeral demands she return to home ground, and her best friend disappears. Finding Delainie means Jackie must confront the truth…and accept the help of a mysterious, sexy-as-sin Texan.

Marshall Rourke isn’t the only one flying under the radar. He’s on an off-the-grid quest to track down a rogue ex-partner who hunts paranormal beings for the joy of the kill. Convincing the unexpectedly feisty Jackie to trust him isn’t easy, but there’s no better way to lure the hunter into the open than to dangle as unique a target as Jackie—the last Tasmanian Tiger shifter in existence.

Trouble is, Marshall hadn’t counted on Jackie’s brutal right cross. Or the fact that her simmering sexuality calls to his inner wolf on every imaginable level. And that the killer is about to use their desire to add them both to his trophy case…

Warning: This title contains the following: explicit sex out in the bush, wild shifter sex in an abandoned shack, passionate sex in a hotel shower. Plus a Texan hero with a very big secret, an Australian heroine with an even bigger one, a significant amount of violence and as always, Australian sarcasm.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Savage Transformation:

Her thylacine growled, surging though her being with rapid ease. Snatching back control had been hard. She’d shoved the need to transform down into the pit of her existence and half-walked, half-ran down the hotel’s stairs into the car park, scanning the area for any sign of Delanie.

And now here she was, walking around her best friend’s car, breathing shallow for fear of losing herself to her inner animal when she knew she should be breathing deep to detect any hint of Delanie’s location.

Then stop being a chicken shit and do it.

Coming to a standstill, wishing—again—she had her gun, Jackie closed her eyes and pulled in a long, slow breath.

There! Delanie.

Faint, almost dispersed to nothing, but there. To her right. Delanie’s scent tinged with…

She turned, lifting her head slightly and pulling in another breath.

Her heart clenched. Fear. Delanie’s scent was tinged with fear. The acrid kind of a sudden fright.

God, what is going on?

Following the scent, the thylacine inside her itching for release, she moved through the car park. Clapped-out combi-vans stood beside shiny hybrids. Dented station wagons shared the asphalt with lovingly looked-after sedans. Each waited for their owners to return, the setting sun casting their paintwork in a fiery orange glow.

Jackie pulled in another breath, tasting the air. Del had been here.

She narrowed her eyes, approaching a low red convertible. Heat rolled from it in unpleasant waves, the stench of burning motor oil almost choking her. Reaching out, she placed her right palm on the car’s hood. Hot. Hot enough to tell her the engine had only recently been running.

She took another breath, separating the car’s fumes from the delicate scent of her best friend. Delanie’s scent grew stronger here. More concentrated.

Jackie’s chest squeezed tight. It wasn’t just Del’s scent that was more potent here. Her fear tainted the air like a thick mist.

Damnit, Del. What’s going on?

She took another breath. There was more on the air than Delanie’s fear-laced scent. There was something else, something she couldn’t put her finger on. A scent that wasn’t a scent.

That doesn’t make sense, Huddart.

No, it didn’t, but she didn’t know how else to explain it. There was a void to the air, as if something had erased the particles of which it was comprised. Removed them from existence.

Her pulse quickened. Removing something from a crime scene—and worryingly, this is exactly what this seemed to be—meant Delanie wasn’t just missing. She was…

“Taken,” she whispered.

Her stomach rolled and she ran her stare over the red convertible. She could do one of two things. She could call the local police force and report Delanie as missing, and aid them in finding her by following standard police procedure. Or she could track Del herself. Alone.

She straightened, removing her hand from the car and turning into the gentle breeze at her back.

It blew against her face, barely strong enough to move the strands of her hair. Closing her eyes, she drew in another breath, through her mouth as well this time, tasting Delanie on the air. No, it wasn’t just on the air. It was on the ground as well. Whoever had taken Del had left a scent trail on the road.

On purpose?

The question slipped through Jackie’s mind, making her already fast pulse thump faster. Who would do that? Who would take her best friend and leave a scent trail?

She ground her teeth. No one. She was being dramatic. Ridiculous. She had to stop standing here wasting time with stupid notions of malevolent intentions and find Delanie. Find her and then teach the bastard who took her what happens to those who mess with a cop’s best friend.

Heart racing, she began running, nose into the breeze, Del’s scent flowing into her body.

Four blocks passed. Five. Six. The houses flanking her became light industrial buildings and warehouses. And still, Delanie’s scent pulled her forward. Faster. Her inner animal ached for release. Hungered to track, to run…

She ran, her blood roaring in her ears, and skidded to a halt, heels digging into the now gravel road when a man stepped toward her from behind a big black van. A tall man with impossibly broad shoulders and narrow lean hips.

The very man she’d caught looking at her inside the airport terminal yesterday. The same man who’d driven away from the airport car park in a black Audi an hour later.

The same man she’d seen standing under a snow gum at Pyengana’s cemetery.

Cold fury ripped through her. “You’ve been following me.” She bunched her fists by her side and took a step closer to him, fixing him with an unwavering glare. “What the hell have you done with Delanie?”

A tiny dimple creased his left cheek beside lips curled into a small grin, giving Jackie the impression he knew a secret he found entirely humourous. Dark honey-blonde hair fell over his forehead in a tousled mess, brushing straight eyebrows a shade darker. “I have, Detective Huddart. But I’m afraid I haven’t taken your friend.”

He studied her from behind impenetrable black sunglasses, the intensity of his unseen but wholly felt inspection making Jackie want to shiver.

And smash her fist against his far too square jaw.

“I’ve seen you three times in the last twenty four hours and now my best friend is missing.” Her heart thumped hard in her throat. “That’s not coincidence. Who are you and how the hell do you know who I am?”

She could hear her control cracking, hear the violence of her animal’s soul cutting each word she said, but she didn’t care. He—whoever he was—had the advantage over her. She didn’t like that. Not as a cop. Not as an animal. She didn’t like it at all.