Raging Passions Read Free Page A

length of her fingers, she sampled the hardness of his flak jacket.
    But that wasn’t him. Rage could feel the metal plate in the lining. She needed to touch him. Half expecting Caden to dodge her, Rage tentatively stretched her trembling hand up to caress his face. The rough stubble scraped her palm as she cupped his cheek. Heat seeped into her cold, inhuman flesh. Her thumb drifted across his lush lower lip, and the remembered sensation of his mouth on hers flooded over her. Caden’s lips parted ever so slightly. His searing exhale spilled over her hand. The painful familiarity of his gaze skinned her, leaving her raw and weak before him. After six years haunted by the memory of him, just a few seconds in his presence destroyed her anew. In this moment, faced with Caden’s devastating nearness, Rage understood why she hated him so. It was because, even after all this time and distance and changes in them both, she still loved him. And he’d abandoned her.
    Rage could tell he wanted to stare at her with equal disbelief, but right now, reckless though he was to hunt vampires at all, he seemed well aware of just how precarious his position was. Wisely, he kept his mouth shut and remained alert for threatening movement from any of the vampires.
    “Told you she wouldn’t do it.” Dean stifled a laugh. Ripper seemed far less amused, his fangs showing as he gritted his teeth and Dean covered his smile and distanced himself from his master. Risking life and limb, Dean muttered to Shade, “You owe me five dollars.”
    “Shut up,” Shade hissed, cutting his black eyes like a death threat at him, “It’s not over.”
    “Was this a joke?” Rage glowered at them.
    Ripper moved closer with the smooth gait of a panther. When she held up a palm for him to stop, he actually complied. That was more shocking than Caden’s sudden reappearance in her life. On instinct Rage shifted, blocking Caden from Ripper.
    Ripper’s frown deepened, making him no less handsome, only ten times more frightening. Under his heavy brows, his eyes darkened. His fists clenched spastically at his sides as if he wasn’t sure what act of violence he wanted to commit first. Tendrils of his blond hair dipped wildly across his forehead, a metaphor for the fraying of his emotional control. When he snarled back his lips so his fangs glistened at her, she knew he was barely containing himself. For one second she thought he meant to kill Caden, but he ignored him even as the human eased backward a few feet and got his feet under him. No. Ripper’s fury was squarely focused on her. Growling inhumanly deep in his throat, he asked in a quiet voice that practically sizzled, “Will you accept no gift from me?”
    “Gift?”
    “I am sick of hearing you bitch about him,” Ripper snapped. His solid silver eyes threatened her with their metallic fury. “What happened between you doesn’t justify you killing everyone with a pulse and a Y chromosome who can’t defend himself from you, and making those of us you can’t kill miserable.”
    Dean barked a laugh then broke into a coughing fit when Ripper glared daggers at him. Holding his side, Dean walked off, still chuckling and waving as if the situation was just entirely too funny and he might shoo them away before they killed him with laughter. God, Rage hated that jackass.
    Peripherally, Rage was aware of Caden slipping slowly farther and farther away from them. If she wasn’t facing off with Ripper, she might have done something about it. What, she didn’t know, but something. Shade stalked Caden, moving just as slowly, so he neither gained nor lost ground. The Offspring’s fingers twitched loosely at his side, like the tail of a cat that could barely contain the urge to pounce while it sought the perfect angle to attack its prey.
    With one long stride, Ripper closed the distance between himself and Rage and snatched her by her arms so hard they would bruise, and shook her until she couldn’t focus on