Passions Recalled: Forbidden Passions, Book 2 Read Free Page A

But how would her relationship with Derek change?
    He’d been her only friend the last year, the only one who had tried to understand how empty she felt. How abandoned. And he wanted a lot more than friendship. She knew that. He’d asked her to marry him so many times she’d lost count, but he’d never pushed her, never made demands. Just smiled and said he could wait. For a man so insistent on marrying her, and a werewolf to boot, he was very physically distant. Not that she was complaining. She wasn’t sure how she felt about sleeping with someone else, even Derek.
    He didn’t live far from her parents, but she was forced to drive slowly in the heavy rain. She tried calling again, but she’d lost her cell signal. Probably the weather, she groused to herself. She turned off into his driveway and eyed the muddy slope. She doubted the car would make it up, and backed into the turnaround that was halfway up to park. She’d have to run for it in the rain and mud, but it couldn’t be helped. Stuffing her keys in her pocket and leaving everything else, she once again stepped out into the weather and sprinted.
    The driveway was slick and slippery, hard to navigate in the dark. The rain picked up as she approached the house and when she reached the yard, she took a minute under the arbor to catch her breath. Unfortunately, she chose that moment to look at Derek’s front picture window.
    Well, no wonder he hasn’t tried to insist on anything with me.
    He stood in the middle of his living room, his pants hanging around his thighs with an enormous erection jutting out. On the floor in front of him was a buxom blonde—Celeste knew, because she was getting a profile view—busily sucking on said erection. Celeste was so surprised she froze in place, thankful they couldn’t see her out in the gloom. When Derek threw back his head and gripped the woman’s face in his palms, she knew he was coming. His face twisted with the orgasm, as if it hurt, and he looked down at blondie with an evil grin. Celeste only had a moment to wonder why she’d thought it was evil before Derek, whose hands had not left blondie’s face, gave a vicious jerk, snapped her neck, and dropped the woman to the ground.
    Celeste jumped back, completely unbelieving of what she’d seen but unable to deny it. She was grateful for the heavy rain and wind—it hid the noise she made as she ran back to her car. With a human she wouldn’t have had to worry. But a werewolf with superior hearing and reflexes? That could have been a major problem. As it was, she made it safely to her car and, with shaking fingers, twisted the key in the ignition. It was at that moment the wind and rain lulled to a low murmur, and she knew Derek must have heard the car from the house. She jerked it out of park and sped into the night. The question was where was she going?
    She got onto the highway and turned south. She didn’t dare go back to her family. Derek was powerful in his own right, and she didn’t want to put them in danger. She needed time to process what she’d heard and seen tonight. But could she trust Jason? Jason who’d abandoned her when her human frailty came to the forefront? Her analytic journalist’s mind said she was nothing more than a chess piece, than a pawn being used between Michael and Jason. Her gut said to go to Jason, that he would keep her safe, but, wow, had it been wrong about Jason before. Did he really believe she was dead? The idea seemed crazy. But what her family had done, what she’d seen at Derek’s was just as crazy.
    She couldn’t see any other choice. So she drove south.
    Through rain and wind that ebbed and flowed, the remnants of Hurricane Helga raging across the state, she drove. By the time she reached Columbus, Georgia the sky cleared, and she fiddled with the radio, searching for news. She knew another hurricane was coming up the Gulf and was relieved to hear it was forecasted to hit far down the coast near Tampa. One model