She sighed as his lips moved over hers, desperate for him to soothe the ache she had suffered for the past couple of days. The combination of his kisses, his words, his embrace, managed to assuage some of the lingering pain of longing for her childhood crush.
“And what if you fall back into your old ways?”
“I won’t.”
She pulled back and looked him in the eye. One should always look someone in the eye when making a deal. She may not be as smooth as Trevor in these matters, but she had a few tools of her own. “Mmmmmm, I don’t know. I think this calls for a probationary period.”
“Three months?” he said, raising a brow.
“God, no. I’m not that easy,” she said on a laugh. “A year.”
“A year? No way. Six months.”
“Nine,” she said.
“Deal.” He cupped her head and pulled her in for a heated kiss. He nibbled her lips, teasing and coaxing until she opened for him.
One taste of him and she had to resist the urge to devour. Desperate to show him how crazy in love with the boy she had always been, how stupidly in love with the womanizer she fell, and how completely in love with the man he’d become she’d become, she put every last piece of heartache into the way her lips moved with his. The cracks inside her throbbed as the balm to her soul smoothed away the ache they’d created in her.
Lightheaded, she pulled back and pressed her cheek to his as they swayed. “I would have settled for six months,” she whispered.
He laughed, making his breath tickle the shell of her ear. “I would have agreed to forever,” he whispered back.
She locked eyes with him, a lifetime of feelings bubbled over inside her. “I love you, Trevor. I’ve loved you for so damn long. I don’t want to be without you again.” She pressed her cheek against his and played with the hair at the nape of his neck.
“You’ll never have to be. Now that I’ve got you, I’m never letting you go.”
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THE END
ABOUT CASEY HAGEN
Casey Hagen pens her snarky, passionate stories from the salty air of Kennebunk, Maine. She’s a born and raised Vermont native, a New England girl to the core, with Ben & Jerry’s in her heart and real Vermont maple syrup pumping through her veins.
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You can find all things Casey at:
BEAUTY, THE BEAST AND THE LIBRARY
Jane Blythe
Copyright © 2019 Jane Blythe
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, distributed, reverse engineered or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, including photocopying and recording, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented without permission in writing from the publisher.
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Bear Spots Publications
Melbourne Australia
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Cover designed by Tina Glasneck
Beauty, the Beast, and the Library
He kills with the veracity of a beast
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Sydney Carriere lost her husband in a fire five years ago and is finally in a place where she is ready to move on. Only so far she hasn’t found anyone she can see herself sharing her life with. Then a monster from her past comes crashing into her present, and although she finds herself in a fight for survival she just might also find her second soul mate.
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Detective Dante Delamarre has also lost a lot; it’s made him cold, hard, and obsessed with hunting serial killers. His whole life revolves around his job, and while searching for a killer who seems to think he’s a beast, he meets a woman who shines a tiny ray of light into the darkness inside of him. When the killer throws the two of them together, they’ll have to rely on one another if they want a chance to see if they could fall in love.
1
April 15th
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11:29 P.M.
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He glided through the woods like the beast that he was.
Not a literal beast. He was all man, but life had turned him into a monster, and he had embraced it. Now he relished the beast that he’d become; he relished his power and his strength; he relished being the one in control.
He relished getting what he wanted.
It really was a nice change of pace to be the one in control. Ever since he was a boy, he had hated when things didn’t go his way. Anything from not winning a board game on family game nights, to the football team he played on losing a game, to losing girls that he liked, was enough to fling him into a rage.
Losing was failure.
And failure—as far as he was concerned—was as bad as death.
But death wasn’t anything he had to worry about right now.
He was getting what he wanted, and he didn’t care who he had to hurt to get it.
Not hurt; kill.
No matter who he had to kill to get it.
Like the creature of the night that he was, he moved silently through the shadows, blending into the dark. If it was possible for him to physically transform himself into a beast, he would do it in a heartbeat.
He could imagine himself swinging through the trees, gliding from branch to branch like he was flying. He could imagine his fingers curling into claws, ripping through flesh like it was paper, his teeth growing bigger so he could tear flesh to shreds.
While that wasn’t possible—human beings did not suddenly morph into beasts just because they wished it could happen—that didn’t mean that he couldn’t improvise.
With a glance all around, when he didn’t see anything else moving in the woods, he stepped out of the tree line to make the short walk across the clearing to the caves. He might be only a human and not the beast he longed to be, but so much time spent outside in the night, his eyes seemed to have learned to adjust to the dark, giving him a sort of night vision.
Just as he reached the caves, he heard the hoot of an owl and turned in time to see the majestic creature of the night fly across the sky. Its silhouette crossed the moon and he couldn’t take his eyes off it; he followed its trek across the sky until it disappeared off into the dark horizon.
He loved birds of the air and owls were one of his favorites. He loved any nocturnal animals, but there was just something about those huge owl eyes and those sharp beaks that called out to his soul.
As much as he would love to stay out here, he couldn’t. He had things to do. It wasn’t too much of a hardship. Yes, he felt at home outside. Yes, if he could, he would live in these caves, spending his days asleep and his nights roaming the woods, hunting for food just like the animals he admired and longed to be, but what he had planned for tonight was a different kind of hunt.