Read Raging Passions for Free Online

buried deep inside her. Rage imagined it took a little assimilation for him to catch up with all that she’d just done to and with him. His lips parted as if to say something, but he’d not quite figured out what yet.
    Suddenly Rage didn’t want to hear whatever he might say. She’d meant to hurt him, punish him. She’d not anticipated falling for Caden all over again. All her years of honed fury failed her when she needed it the most. Beneath him now she felt more vulnerable than she ever had since becoming a vampire. One sharp word from him now would destroy her. The glorious union was all her creation, but it was as fragile as gossamer daydreams. Rage couldn’t bear for him to crush it all to silvery dust.
    She wedged a forearm between them and shoved Caden off her. He flipped over onto the mattress hard enough to have a gust of air escape him. Rage scrambled to her feet, feeling unstable on her heels. In three long strides she hurried to the open cell door.
    “I love you!” Caden called after her.
    Rage froze.
    She swayed. Too many emotions buffeted against her. She felt as if she rode a storm surge in the deep ocean. She felt unbalanced. Confused. Afraid.
    She closed the cell door without looking back. The lock latched automatically. She dropped the keys on the steps as she ran up them. The guard at the cellar entrance didn’t say a word as she jogged past him. Frustrated tears burned her cheeks and blurred her vision. Rage didn’t slow as she burst out the back door into the moonlit backyard.
    Morgana had opened the door from her greenhouse and Rage could see Dean resting with his eyes closed on the lounger. It was not a conscious decision that led her to slump down under the sapling planted near the greenhouse.
    Rage covered her eyes with her fists, remembering standing in her wedding dress at the back of a church. Five hundred people, all but twenty complete strangers to Regina, waited restlessly for the ceremony to begin. She’d felt so beautiful dressed in the off-the-shoulder princess gown that was so long a young cousin of Caden’s was supposed to help carry the train. She’d sat through two hours of primping and curling and pinning and spraying to get all her hair curled and coifed on top of her head with the baby’s breath tiara woven into the complicated construction.
    An hour after the ceremony was supposed to have begun, Regina had begun calling hospitals to see if Caden had been in an accident. The guests began to filter out slowly after that, avoiding eye contact with her as they murmured apologies.
    Five hours later she’d been waiting alone, sitting in a pew in the back of the church, squeezing her cell phone in her hand, praying it would ring, when it finally obliged. Terrified, she just knew it would be someone calling to say something awful had happened to Caden. She loved him so much. She would die without him.
    It had been Caden.
    “Regina?” he asked, surprised. “I was hoping to get your voicemail.”
    “Caden? Where are you? Are you hurt?” She tried to make out the sounds in the background. It sounded like a party, with music and laughter.
    “Listen, hon. I just can’t.”
    Regina blinked, a sudden stab in her chest stopping her heart. “Can’t what?”
    “Can’t do this. Can’t be who you want. Can’t be with you.” He took a big breath and blew it out. “I just can’t.”
    Regina held the phone out from her face and stared unbelievingly at it. She couldn’t have heard what she thought she’d heard. Slowly, as if she thought the phone might bite, she brought it back to her ear. “Caden. Getting married was your idea.”
    “My mother’s actually,” he sighed. “She wanted me to settle down with some quiet girl and stop embarrassing the family.”
    Some quiet girl? That was all she was? Some peace offering to the purse-holding old snob who made Regina aware with every word she uttered how beneath her she thought Regina was? She couldn’t breathe. She