Warrior Enchanted: The Sons of the Zodiac Read Free Page A

running for the hills.
    The ringtone continued to peal in the silence of the air between them and he fought the urge to turn it off.
    Why hadn’t he changed the damn song?
    The sugary-sweet notes of the music couldn’t diminish the power of the instructions that would be conveyed from the other end, but at least he wouldn’t have the immediate reminder of what he was.
    Of what he’d chosen.
    While he lived with his choice and was grateful for it more often than not, the all-consuming nature of his service to Themis came with a price.
    Drake picked up the phone and offered up a terse hello as he watched Emerson sashay out the door. Listening abstractly to his latest orders—something about overthrowing a warlord causing trouble off the coast somewhere in southeast Asia—Drake couldn’t help but wonder how he’d gotten himself into this position.
    Traipsing through third-world countries with nothing but a gun and a backpack for days on end, a slave to the constant demands of human depravity as he fought in service to Themis.
    No-strings-attached sex with the only woman he’d ever wanted to tie himself to.
    And then he remembered.
    Oh yeah, he’d agreed to all of it.
    Emerson snuck down the dark hallway, throwing a long shadow on the wall as she moved. The spikes of her hair waved back at her from her silhouette as she hotfooted it down the stairs, desperately hoping to avoid detection. Unfortunately, the small table lamp in the middle of the foyer threw a surprising amount of light.
    Just enough to ensure she’d be easier to see…
    “Emerson?”
    She had nearly made it to the front door—and freedom—when Callie’s voice stopped her.
    “Oh. Hey.”
    “Visiting again?”
    Emerson couldn’t resist giving the raised-eyebrow treatment as she sized Callie up. The woman knew why she was there. She’d probably also known the moment Emerson had walked in the house, had entered Drake’s room and had even had her first orgasm—the first of three, damn that asshole—that she’d had that evening.
    “Just hanging out with Drake.”
He showed me his tattoos. Every luscious inch of them
.
    “Where is he?”
    Since “I left him behind” sounded bad even for her,she grasped at the straw offered by his late-night phone call. “I think he just got called on a mission.”
    “Which he’ll no doubt come home from bloody, bruised and mean as a wild rhino. Ah well, there’s nothing to be done for it.” Callie let out a soft sigh. “Do you want a glass of wine?”
    Emerson nearly said no. The reply was on the tip of her tongue, but something held her back.
    Maybe it was embarrassment at the way she snuck in and out of this house like a thief. Or maybe it was a sudden desperate need for the sisterhood the other woman offered.
    A sisterhood she missed desperately.
    She kept other women at a distance, the nature of who and what she was difficult to share. Add in the shoddy relationship with her own sister and there wasn’t really a female sounding board in her life save her grandmother.
    And, Emerson acknowledged, one didn’t exactly regale one’s grandmother with tales of the hot next-door neighbor who banged your brains out on a regular basis.
    A hot,
sexy
next-door neighbor who increasingly twisted her thoughts in unexpected directions.
    Dragging herself from an endless loop of questions she never seemed to be able to answer, Emerson opted for one she could. “Sure. I’d like that.”
    Five minutes later, she was swirling a dark red Cabernet at the heavy butcher-block counter in Callie’s kitchen. She hadn’t spent that much time in here; she avoided the room most often reserved for family gatherings and dinners like the plague.
    Even if Drake had extended an invite.
    Repeatedly.
    “You’re up late.”
    Callie swirled her own glass. “I could say the same for you.”
    “I can’t sleep.”
    “I know your grandmother is far more expert than I am, but I could make you some teas. Something to help take the edge