AllFreeNovel
Share Us
COYOTE’S MATE
MERCURY’S WAR
DAWN’S AWAKENING
TANNER’S SCHEME
HARMONY’S WAY
MEGAN’S MARK
NAUTI DECEPTIONS
NAUTI INTENTIONS
NAUTI DREAMS
NAUTI NIGHTS
NAUTI BOY
Anthologies
THE MAGICAL CHRISTMAS CAT
(with Erin McCarthy, Nalini Singh, and Linda Winstead Jones) SHIFTER
(with Angela Knight, Alyssa Day, and Virginia Kantra)
BEYOND THE DARK
(with Angela Knight, Emma Holly, and Diane Whiteside)
HOT SPELL
(with Emma Holly, Shiloh Walker, and Meljean Brook)
TWENTY-ONE
Zeke could feel the anger brewing inside him. Itwas a dark, eternal core that had begun years ago, when he first realized how diseased his father had become. When, as a fourteen-year-old kid, Zeke had made his first kill.
Disgust stirred, thick and oily, in the pit of his stomach, its acrid taste burning his tongue at the memories he rarely allowed himself to revisit. His nervousness, the complete fear that had washed over him when he’d picked up the handgun lying on a small table. The shock and surprise in his victim’s face when he’d turned, aimed, and pulled the trigger.
Because his father had told him the man they were meeting would try to kill them and would then kill Zeke’s mother. That they had no choice but to be waiting on him, and the only way to surprise him was if Zeke took the shot.
Fourteen fucking years old. So damned dumb loyal to his father that he hadn’t known his ass from a hole in the ground. All he knew was that his father said he was in trouble, that someone was going to try to kill all of them. As men, it was their place to protect his mother. They were the head of the house, the protectors, the defenders. And Zeke had bought into it until the second he fired that gun and saw the other man’s eyes, heard his last gasping breath as he whispered, “Why?”
It played out in his nightmares sometimes, it lurked in the back of his mind when he was awake, and a part of Zeke had never forgotten that second of insight, as death glazed another man’s eyes, that he would never be the same again.
Because of his father. Because he had idolized the man who had raised him, because he had trusted him, believed in him. Because he had been a stupid, dumb kid that the father he loved had manipulated.
Zeke remembered a time when Thad Mayes had been a good man. When his father’s brown eyes had been clear with laughter and good humor. Until he had taken a devil’s bargain. A bargain that had destroyed his marriage, his relationship with his son, and, Zeke suspected, had eventually taken his life.
Opening the door into the house, he stood aside as Rogue moved toward him slowly, her violet gaze dark with worry, her expression pensive.
The need to touch her was almost overwhelming. The need to sink inside her and forget the horrors of the past was a hunger he could barely deny himself. The need to hold her in his arms, to feel her warmth. It went beyond hunger, it was a compulsion now, an addiction. He needed her touch until he could barely function for it at times.
But under that fierce need was too much rage. It was dark and boiling inside him, demanding action. It was like a demon nipping at his soul, destroying his control.
