Heartsblood

HEARTSBLOOD

Dark Hollow Wolf Pack Series, Book 11

Shannon West

Erotic Romance

Secret Cravings Publishing

www.secretcravingspublishing.com

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A Secret Cravings Publishing Book

Erotic Romance

Heartsblood

Copyright © 2014  Shannon West

E-book ISBN: 978-1-63105-282-8

First E-book Publication: August  2014        

Cover design by Dawné Dominique

Edited by Cassandra Pierce

Proofread by Julie Reilly

All cover art and logo copyright © 2014 by Secret Cravings Publishing

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All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

PUBLISHER

Secret Cravings Publishing

www.secretcravingspublishing.com

Dedication

To the J’s

The Cravings Ebook Club

The Cravings Paranormal Ebook Club

Have you heard about the newest idea in ebooks, the ebook club? Secret Cravings Publishing has two ebook clubs, The Cravings Ebook Club or the Cravings Paranormal Ebook Club, and we invite you to become a member.

As a new member, you will receive
Trouble With a Cowboy*
by Sandy Sullivan and
Blood Kisses**
by H.N. Sieverding FREE, just for joining!

You’ll also receive
4 BRAND-NEW EBOOKS
, specially selected by our Editorial Director, every month in a variety of genres for a total price of only $9.99 for all 4. This comes out to barely $2.50 per book,
much less
than the retail price and you’ll be able to enjoy your books
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they are uploaded to the popular sales sites.  One of several privileges of club membership.

*
Trouble With a Cowboy
, a western, erotic romance:

18 wheels had her heart until one hard-up cowboy found her
kickin
' up her heels and propositions her to take his bull to Vegas.

Jacie Hawkins drives big wheelers for a
livin
'. Something not a lot of women do. Littleton Oklahoma is just a dry stopover for a few hours of rest and relaxation at the nearest bar.
Jacie
needs to find a hot cowboy to release some of her pent up frustrations on for the night, but wannabe's aren't her style.

Tucker Marshall needs a big-rig driver to haul his prize bull to National Finals Rodeo and he needs one fast. Who would have thought he'd find one
shootin
' pool at the local bar dressed to kill and takin' numbers?

Can some slashed tires and an ornery bull bring two hard-headed people together for some fun in the sun and a little more?

**
Blood Kisses (Nightwalkers 1)
, paranormal erotic romance:

Ashleigh Brown, the author of the popular Nightwalkers series, lives a quiet life free of the limelight.  She keeps her real identity secret by writing under the pen name, Victoria Allure.  She soon finds herself in a bind when she's kidnapped by a group of handsome vampires seeking Victoria.  She then agrees to meet their Master, who's a huge fan of her books.  But instead of meeting him, she accidentally crosses paths with her rock star crush.  He is the sexy muse behind Nightwalkers and the man she based the hero in the series upon. She would do anything to meet him but little does she know her crush has a secret...

We will try to match your books to your preferences, however, if you’re a major paranormal fan, we suggest you join the Cravings Paranormal Club. Everything is the same except that three of your four books will be paranormal. The remaining book will be of a different genre.

As a club member, you will also receive:

·
      
our monthly newsletter

·
      
sneak previews of new books

·
      
exclusive interviews with your favorite authors

·
      
special offers not available to the general public

To join, visit the Secret Cravings Publishing website. At the bottom of the page you’ll see a button for the club. You can sign up there and share your preferences for genre, format and heat level with us. You will be charged, automatically, through PayPal, only $9.99 every month.  Your books will be shipped within 1 day after PayPal payment has cleared. You may cancel at any time by clicking on the “unsubscribe” button located on the Cravings Club tab at the bottom of our website and keep the FREE BOOKS as our gift.

We hope our Secret Cravings books will delight you each and every month.

Best wishes,

Beth Walker

HEARTSBLOOD

Dark Hollow Wolf Pack Series, Book 11

Shannon West

Copyright © 2014

Chapter One

Nicky read somewhere once that if people didn’t change, they didn’t grow. And if they didn’t grow, then they really weren’t living. He’d done an awful lot of both in the last few months since that awful day on the mountain when his little art class was attacked by the Hunters—changing and growing, that is. The living part remained to be seen.

Standing now in front of the steamed-up mirror in his bathroom, he hardly recognized himself. How was that for change? Drying himself absently, he turned away from the mirror and ran a hand through his shaggy hair. He felt restless, as he did most of the time these days, so he wandered over to the window in his quarters to look out at the scene below.

His friend Logan was outside, leading physical training for the mates and a few of the natural pets who’d expressed an interest in learning some self-defense. It was a class he did about once a week and had proved to be very popular, especially since the Hunters’ attack that had killed one of the mates and injured several more.

Nicky used to think learning self-defense was a good idea too, and he’d even gotten trained himself at one time. That was before he realized all the hand-to-hand combat training in the world was useless against a high powered rifle, or even against someone coming in on you fast and determined and jabbing you in the thigh with a hypodermic needle. He stood by the window and watched Logan going through the motions, though, and wished the two of them could be as close friends again as they once were.

That was pretty much impossible now—Logan was the mate of Ian, who was the beta of the wolf pack and Marco’s best friend, but no matter how much Ian liked and even trusted Nicky, things were different now. These days Nicky was much more wolf than human, and the idea of another wolf around his human mate made Ian uneasy and irritable. Even Casey, whose mate was another wolf, felt nervous over what he sensed was another alpha male around Rory.

Since the attack on the mountain, when Jeremy Tate, the head of the new Hunter group, had injected him with God knew what from that hypodermic, a lot of things had been different. It wasn’t the first time he’d been attacked by Tate, former heart surgeon and chief of surgery at the Brevard County Memorial Hospital. Tate had once fancied himself desperately in love with Nicky and in those awful, lost days when Marco got sick and they had come so close to losing everything between them, Dr. Tate had given Nicky some comfort and badly needed self-esteem. For a time, Nicky had allowed himself to imagine what his life would be like if someone like Jeremy Tate had been his lover. If there had never been a Marco—never been an attack on the streets of Atlanta as Nicky walked home after work one night. The mugging had nearly taken his life and certainly changed the course of it forever.

So later, when Marco turned his back on Nicky, leaving him floundering like a trout rudely hauled up on a riverbank, Jeremy Tate had been there to pick up the pieces. Except the pieces were too fractured, too completely shattered by Marco’s rejection to ever put back together by anyone except for Marco himself. Nicky and Marco eventually found their way back to each other again, but Jeremy Tate had never forgiven either one of them, and he had never forgotten.

The hairs on the back of Nicky’s neck prickled, and he jumped as Marco came up behind him and wrapped his arms around his waist.

“Damn, you’re like a fucking ninja, Marco,” Nicky said, with a little huff. “How can anyone as big as you are move like that?”

“Just lucky, I guess.” Marco bit his earlobe and trailed a path of fire down Nicky’s neck with his tongue. “What are you doing standing here naked in front of the window? Are you trying to make me whip somebody’s ass for ogling you?”

Nicky turned in his arms and brushed his lips against Marco’s. “How can you still be jealous after all this time?”

“Don’t answer a question with another one.” Marco grabbed Nicky around the neck and gave him one of those open-mouthed, hot-as-fuck kisses that made Nicky’s body respond immediately, just as it always did. But this time, as Marco tried to invade his mouth and force him to submit, Nicky countered and tried to claim Marco’s instead. As Marco’s grip tightened around the back of his neck, Nicky’s hands found Marco’s shoulders and he dug his fingers in, holding him back with his own strength.