Read Shadow Borne for Free Online

settled for using my hands to shove him
away. And I started to, only to find that when I exerted light
pressure against him, nothing happened. He didn't take the hint and
move away from me, as expected. And why the hell should he, I
scowled, it would have been the polite thing to do and when the
hell had Mike Roberts ever been polite?
    My head snapped up then and my eyes flashed
up at him. He must have misunderstood my intention because he was
gazing down at me, and very pointedly at the space where my palms
rested on the space just below his shoulders, his expression filled
with such longing that for a split second I froze. Worse, in that
instant I forgot I needed to put distance between us, that it was
safer not to touch him. My wide-eyed stare mingled with his and I
memorized the tiny flecks of gold in his green eyes.
    The fabric of his T-shirt warmed beneath my
fingertips and absently I noticed that it was soft and white and
stretchy. My hands seemed to develop a mind of their own and flexed
against his body, at the solid warmth hidden beneath the cloth. He
hugged me even closer.
    Every stupid youthful hope-filled dream I'd
ever had was wrapped up in that hooded gaze. His lips curved into a
smile and, as if in slow motion, he shifted so that he was holding
me with one arm around my shoulders and the other around my waist.
I gripped handfuls of his shirt as he lowered his lips to mine.
Blood pulsed through my veins at warp speed and I heard a rushing
sound in my ears and then he was kissing me like we had never been
apart. No, my mind dimly registered, not like there had been no
absence, this was more like homecoming. His mouth was hard and
urgent, his tongue darted against my closed lips and it truly was
like a dream come true–a nightmare. Because every girlish fantasy
that I'd entertained as a child, and later every dream I'd shared
with him, had turned out to be wrong, wrong, wrong.
    I went absolutely stiff and still in his
embrace. What did it matter if he was warm and smelled good? He'd
left me over a year and a half ago. He hadn't cared enough to stay
then and he didn't care now, I harshly reminded myself. Even now,
nothing had changed. He wasn't here out of any sense of loyalty to
me, not because he'd promised to come back for me.
    He was here out of necessity, to save his
own skin. He'd been forced to make the journey back to Terlain
because hit men were trying to pick off him and his family and he
had finally run out of places to hide. Mike Roberts looked out for
his own interests and to hell with anyone who got trampled along
the way.
    Besides, I admitted with a grim sense of
finality, it was much too late for us. If he knew that I was
damaged now, he wouldn't bother to hold on to me and kiss me and
otherwise act like he gave a damn. He wouldn't look at me like
that. The truth was sharp edged and painful.
    I twisted my head away from his mouth and
shoved him as hard as I could manage with my hands practically
wedged between our midsections. He pulled back with a puzzled
frown. Behind us, a man stepped out the front door and onto the
porch and the next thing I knew, several things seemed to happen at
once.

Chapter Three
    Never Again
     
     
    Claire whirled toward the tall blonde
stranger who stood only a few inches shorter than Mike. His eyes
were brown, I noticed. It should have been difficult to pick out
such a minute detail so quickly; the fact that the man was
wide-eyed in the face of what we all around here typically referred
to as 'the wrath of Claire', helped a great deal.
    Yes a nice deep, dark chocolate brown, I
reflected with mild curiosity. Beside me, Claire was now rigid and
reaching for her knife, but I was calm–other than surprise and
concern for whatever it was that had her freaking out. I wasn't
afraid of the stranger. No hint of danger swirled in the air around
us and neither Mark nor Mike seemed to be the least bit fazed by
the blonde man's presence.
    No, clearly he had been invited into