Happy Valentine’s Day. Welcome to The Bloody Valentine Horror Hop, where we you will read some very unloving relationship stories. My post is a scene from current paranormal romance, Shifter. In this scene, we see what happens when a shapeshifter scorns a powerful, yet mentally unstable witch.
http://new.inlinkz.com/luwpview.php?id=488175
-------
Unfortunately, that night, Devan was slacking in his duties. He was apparently too caught up in the moment to bother caring about what anyone else was doing. So when she came into the bar looking the way she did, I pounced without a single thought about the consequences. If I had been in control of myself, I would have been able to smell the magic on her, the way I had smelled it last night. No matter how powerful she is, she can never hide her smell, not from us.
She is beautiful, there is no doubt, and even sober I might have pursued her for a little while. She is tall, Amazonian tall, with long, blood-red, curly hair. Her body is lean and curvy, exactly the thing that makes my loins ache. I really hate the women of this generation. They are either skeleton thin or morbidly obese. There seems to be no middle ground anymore. Whoever said that a woman was only beautiful if her bones poked through her skin was insane.
With no one to stop me, I bedded her with promises that she would not be a one-night stand, that I would call her the next morning, that I would do a lot of things that even then I knew I would never do. The sex had been great—what I could remember of it, anyway.
Yet, I barely paid any attention to her the next morning when my brother snuck into my room to wake me. Once I paid my bill at the front desk and was on my way back home, she became no more than a fleeting memory.
Apparently, I had made an impression on her. Last night she had shown up at my doorstep—pissed. How she had known where I lived, is beyond me. I had only moved into the cabin that week. The cabin had been one of the many homes we had inherited when we had bought back the rest of our land. The family that had previously owned the land had built the small log cabin as a vacation home.
My name isn’t even on the deed to the house, my older brother, Darius’, name is. I know I hadn’t given her his name. She had to have used magic to find me. If she did, her powers are greater than mine are. I can find my family and pack mates because of our blood and our bond, but some random woman I had slept with once was lost to me. I can’t even transport myself to a place I’m unfamiliar with, unless someone I am blood or bonded to is there or has been there, and even then, I have to be careful of how and where I land.
“Answer the door you worthless piece of shit,” she had screamed as she pounded on my door.
“Can I help you?” I asked, opening the door and not immediately recognizing her. After all, it had been nearly a month since the buyout.
“What do you mean, can you help me, you son of a bitch,” she screamed at me, her face turning as red as her hair.
“Look lady… I don’t… Oh shit.” The second she stepped to the doorframe, I recognized her.
“You’re damn right, ‘oh shit.’ What the fuck is wrong with you?” She was nearly nose-to-nose with me.
“Please, come in, Mave.” I said her name as a question while opening the door wider and stepping aside to get out of her line of sight and give her full access to my home, thinking that would at least help to calm her down. The look she gave me burned my soul. Literally. I felt my insides flame for a second, right before she walked passed me, and I inhaled her magical aroma. Strawberries and fire. I knew instantly I had really messed up. That smell was the sign of a very powerful witch.
“So,” she said, walking to the middle of the room and turning to face me.
“So what?” I knew I had messed up by sleeping with a witch. Most of them hated our kind. Surely, she had known what I was. I’m positive she hadn’t been drunk or even drinking. Was she going to accuse me of raping her or slipping her some sort of drug or magical concoction that compelled her to sleep with me?
“Well, you’re obviously not dead, which had been my first thought when I didn’t hear from you by the third day.”
“Excuse me?”
“You promised to call. I waited. Some of my friends said that it was customary to wait three days after getting a number to call. I figured since we had slept together you might forgo that rule, but then, when you didn’t call, I waited the three days. When I didn’t hear from you, I got worried. My friends told me to blow you off. They said you were just some asshole who had used me. I couldn’t believe it. You had promised. I went to the bar where we met and the hotel we stayed at that night. They both said you and your brothers were from out of town. That was when I began to fear your death. I searched and searched the internet for automobile accidents and plane crashes…”
That was the moment that I knew she was crazy. I should have known that night because of the things she did and was willing to do in bed. My uncle used to say that the crazy ones were always freaky in bed. I listened to her rant for a few more minutes before I cut her off.
“Look, I am real sorry about that night. My brothers and I were celebrating. Hard. I had a little too much to drink. If I said anything inappropriate, I am sorry. And I probably would have called had I had your number…” I started to lie.
“But you did have my number. I programmed it into your phone.”
“You…what…” I pulled my phone out of my back pocket and scrolled through the numbers. “It’s not in here.”
“What.” She snatched the phone from me and scrolled through the names. “You erased it.”
“No, I didn’t.” My brother must have when he realized what I had done, the bastard. I wasn’t about to tell the crazy woman in front of me this. What if I had gotten her pregnant? Thinking that caused me to blurt out, “Are you pregnant?” My heart raced at the thought of her carrying my child. On one hand, it was a great thing to bring a new member into the pack. On the other hand, for this woman to be its mother was going to cause some serious turmoil.
“No,” she said with a hint of sadness in her voice.
I fell into the seat next to me with obvious relief.
“Asshole,” she spat at my action.
“Look, I’m sorry. It’s just that…”
“Shut up. I don’t care. You had no intentions toward me whatsoever, did you?”
“Honestly, no.”
“Then why do it?”
“Why sleep with you?”
She nods.
I wanted to tell her because she was easy, but that wouldn’t be very modern of me. She was no easier than I was. We had both bedded people we didn’t know. Whereas I had intended mine to be a one-night stand, she obviously had not.
“I was drunk and you were there.” Damn it, I hadn’t meant to say that either.
“You know what, fuck you.”
And that had been the moment I became a cat. One minute I was sitting sprawled out on a chair in obvious relief of not fathering a child with this loopy fucking cunt, the next I was an itty-bitty ball of fur in the middle of the chair cushion.
-----
If you love witches, curses, werewolves, shapeshifters, and angels, then you’ll love this novel. SHIFTER has all of the above along with a few burly alpha males, one timid, overweight heroine, some steamy sex scenes, and a happily ever after ending. Stop by your favorite online retailer and download your copy today. This 374-page, stand-alone eBook is only $3.99. SHIFTER has a 4.57 rating on Goodreads, a 4.6 rating on Amazon, and a 4.75 rating on Smashwords.
#ebook #paranormal #romance #BBW #shapeshifter #kindle #Reynolds
