Thursday, November 17, 2005

Strange things are happening....Eve's sister is being seduced by a man who claims he will steel the pain of her recently deceased husband. But he is also a Vampire. To save her Sister, Eve must go to the Ranch on the outskirts of Mexico, to the only man they say can face such a creature. For he is one of them. But the might just be... ETERNAL PASSION.






In the Heat of the Night
Book one: The Sun Warriors Series
By Lisa Renee Jones Chapter One:






Prologue

Eternal darkness.
For two-hundred years Cole Price had endured a type of hell no normal man would ever understand. But then, he wasn’t normal. Nor had he been for many lifetimes.
The memory of how he came to this perpetual state of torture burned inside him like acid on an open wound. He’d heard that ‘time cures all’. Not for him. Time had done nothing but fester resentment for those who’d taken his life and killed his beloved wife.
Vampires.
Deep in the night, they had emerged upon the peaceful New England village, killing as if it were a mere sport. Women. Children. It didn’t matter. They drained the blood from the victims and left them for dead. Like many others, Cole had fought with passion, determined to save his village.
But he had failed.
Not just his people, but his very own wife. While trying to free a small child, Cole was forced to leave Caroline armed but unguarded. He faced these new enemies with courage, distracting them and allowing the little boy to escape. But Caroline stood alone, prey to yet another vampire.
With desperation, Cole battled the evil creatures, enduring a bite from one of the vampires in the process. He remembered the pain even today and the way it had seared him to the bone, ripping through his nervous system like a hot flame. Even so, he had pushed aside his agony in order to fight, urgent to get to Caroline. Somehow, he’d freed himself…But it had been too late.
Caroline was already dead.
The vision of her lifeless body would forever haunt him. Cole had pulled her into his arms, holding his love, pained by the coldness of her blood-drained limbs. Losing Caroline had destroyed his heart. Even taken his will to live. Darkness had closed down around him, demanding his consciousness, but offering much needed peace.
Cole welcomed death.
But he didn’t die. He woke in the care of a stranger.
A witch. At least that was what he called her. She called herself a ‘sun goddess’. A woman who claimed roots to the Toltec people, worshipping the sun and had lost many loved ones to the vampires.
This ‘witch’ called Cole’s new life a gift. To this day, centuries later, Cole called it torture.
He had become something not quite man, not quite vampire. In body, he possessed the qualities of a vampire…only different. Unlike vampires, Cole could walk in the sun. And he had his soul.
It offered Cole a choice…good or evil.
The witch wanted to create an army of ‘Sun Warriors’. Hunters to destroy the evil vampires.
Cole saw himself as a token in a game. One he resented being drawn into without consent. He didn’t trust the witch. Nor did he trust himself. The hunger for blood lived inside, dark and demanding. He fed off animals, and lived in caves. Control became everything to him. He held onto it with every second of everyday. He would never become like the monsters who’d taken his Caroline.
Over time his anger changed. Festered. Though he didn’t like the ways of the Shaman, he shared a common desire with him. Cole also wanted the vampires destroyed. So he returned to the witch and trained. For a year, he studied magical powers and learned to control his thirst. Amongst the witches followers were great warriors. Men who trained him to fight with more than his vampire strength. Cole learned how to use every weapon known to man and beast. And he discovered the secrets to fighting with his mind, not just his body. He became a silent predator that took vengeance on his enemy as he protected the innocent.
But no matter how many vampires he killed, his anger never eased. Nor did the pain of his loss. Caroline was dead. And he was forever a ‘Sun Warrior’. A destroyer of evil. But deep in his core, he knew a vampire existed.
A fact that made him doomed to eternal loneliness. He found a place to put his yearning for a more human connection, withdrawing into a cold place where no one could reach him.
It allowed him to survive.
And though Cole was the first vampire to be given a soul, the eldest of his kind, others were created. Soon, there were men who followed Cole. Younger souls called to him for help and guidance. Cole stood up to the challenge, offering the strength of age. The power of knowledge.
But, deep inside, he needed. He didn’t even know what. Something. Anything. It tore at him like a knife. Yet, the answer stayed out of reach.
Cole was so very…alone.

















Chapter One

Angel or demon?
She sat astride him, long red hair flowing around her creamy white shoulders in a veil of silky perfection. Like the devil in the disguise of a beautiful woman, she lured him to temptation.
To a place sure to damn his soul.
With a seductive rhythm, her hips arched into his, body swaying with delicious invitation. Everything about her made him burn. Her smell. Her full bottom lip. Her full breasts as they bounced, nipples peaked with arousal. Begging for his hands. For his eyes.
With each stroke of her wet heat along his body, he yearned to be deeper. To take more of her. A need, relentless in its demands, threatened his control. A desire to claim her very essence. To go to a place he’d never gone.
He wanted things he had no right to take. Darkness beyond human comprehension claimed a part of his existence, pressing him to act on primal instincts. Long ago, he’d learned to control that part of his being, yet, now, he felt on the edge of snapping. With each passing moment, the wildness grew. Consumed. Challenged his ability to maintain control. He struggled against his urges…fighting his inner beast. Knowing he couldn’t let go. Yet, with his every attempt to hold back, this woman, this temptress, seemed to draw him out more.
As a serpent might its prey, she seemed to play on his weaknesses.
When he told himself to shove her away, she seemed to react. Bending forward, she pressed those lush, full breasts against his chest. Her lips brushed his jaw. His neck. His ear. Teeth scraped his lobe. A rush of heat surged through his veins, and a low growl escaped his lips. His mind clouded. He could only feel. To need. And what he needed was…to taste her.
The thought screamed with warning. He had to end this now, before it was too late. Before he did something he’d regret. But even as he willed himself to end this craziness, his hand slid around the curve of her perfect, round ass. With a hard thrust, he lifted his hips, and pulled her against his cock. At the same time his mouth found hers, and he drank her in, desperate to sate this ravenous hunger only this woman created.
This hunger beyond the pleasure of shared intimacy between a man and woman.
“Take me,” she whispered, and leaned back to stare into his eyes. “I know what you want and I give it freely. Take all of me.”
The site of her elegant, white neck as she shoved aside her hair made her intent clear. She couldn’t know what he was, yet, her actions, her invitation, said otherwise. And Lord help him, he wanted to take what she offered. To drink of the sweet liquid that ran through her veins.
“Take me,” she said, sitting there on top of him, looking like a goddess. All that creamy white skin against his darker coloring appealed in some abstract way.
“You have no idea what you suggest,” he murmured, fighting a moan as she slid along his length.
A slow smile slid onto her full lips. “Oh, but, I do. I know exactly what I suggest.” She leaned over him and brought her lips just inches from his. The warm trickle of her breath caressed his skin. “And I give to you freely.”
“You don’t or you would know how dangerous-”
Taking the role of aggressor, she kissed him, cutting off his words as her tongue slid past his teeth. Her body rocked atop his, demanded he move with her. His head spun with the impact of her words. With the soft pressure of her mouth upon his. Reality seemed a distant place. What happened here and now became fantasy.
Her cheek rested against his. “I am yours.” There was a soft, angelic promise to her words. “Take me.” Hands pressed into the mattress, on either side of his head, she leaned back enough to once again bare her exposed neck. “Drink.”
His cuspids extended as if answering her demand. An unconscious action. What was happening to him? He squeezed his eyes shut. No! The word screamed in his mind. Some part of his mind recognized the haze around him. The strange otherworld feeling to the present. Was he hallucinating. His lashes lifted, fixing on the beauty atop him.
No. She looked and felt real. And the thirst she induced did as well.
Determined to reclaim his control, to put this yearning for the forbidden in a safe place, he rolled her to her back. He’d never taken from a human and he wouldn’t. He would never become the kind of monster that destroyed. The kind he hunted.
Driving hard into her body, he thrust. Once. Twice. Over and over, fists in the mattress, cock pounding against her core. With each stroke, he focused on the immediate pleasure rather than the temptation to taste her. Yet, it burned inside him. Begged to be fed. Forced him to take more of her physically.
He wanted to be lost in the pleasure of the flesh. To forget temptation.
Soft moans and words of praise slid from her lips like a sensual song. And no matter how much he took she kept wanting. “More,” she begged, fueling his fire. “More.” Again and again he drove deep into the wet heat of her depths. Her legs wrapped his calves, her hips lifting to meet him stroke for stroke.
He claimed her mouth, and with long caresses of his tongue he tasted her. Praying it would sate the building flame inside that wanted to explode. But kissing her only made his body yearn at new levels. He couldn’t get enough of her. He molded his body to hers, skin to skin. She clung to him with something just shy of desperation. Wildly, they bucked, rocked, and moved as one. Trying to get closer. Yes. He had to…get closer.
Burying his face in her neck, he acted on instinct. Never before had sex pushed him to this level of absolute lust. He couldn’t think. With fire in his blood, he thrust with a force build of primal passion. Her body squeezed him, short hard spasms milking his cock.
“Take me,” she whimpered. Then, louder, almost a demand, “Do it!”
He had no comprehension of what made him act. No moment of decision. No reason why he understood what she wanted him to do. He simply slipped into the moment. The very thing he valued the most in this eternal life of hell, perhaps the only thing he still valued, simply failed him. He could hear her blood rushing through her veins…Calling to him.
With raw hunger, he turned his mouth to her throat and sunk his teeth deep. She stiffened and made a low sound as he began drinking. Taking her in. His mind reached for hers, helping her calm, feeling her muscles ease.
The sweet taste of her blood touched his tongue like a perfect drug. He felt a rush of power beyond anything he’d felt in all of his two centuries of life. Still hard, buried deep in her body, he felt a primitive need to thrust. To slide his cock along her slick folds and sink deep to her core. His body shook with the ecstasy of the moment, swallowing a moan as he drank in her rich flavor.
Their heartbeats found a common rhythm much as their bodies had only moments before. As his body slid into a relaxed mode, he felt the slow return of reality. And then came a rush of confusion and guilt. Even self-hatred.
He forced his mouth from her neck. “No!” he yelled into the room, arching his back with the roar of the word.
But he knew it was too late. What was done was done. She would die if he didn’t convert her. Which was the worst hell? He wasn’t sure. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered.
She looked up at him, and for the first time he realized how amazing her eyes were. Sky blue with a hint of green. How had he missed them before? Why did he notice them now?
Her fingers lightly touched his cheek. “You only did what had to be done.”
He didn’t even know what to say. She made no sense. Or maybe he was going crazy. Maybe he heard what he wanted to hear not what was really spoken. He buried his face in her neck, desperate to hide from the trust in her eyes.
***
With a gasp, Cole Thomas came awake. He shoved away the cool, white sheets and sat up in his bed. The instant he realized he was alone, he reached for them again, wildly looking for the bright crimson tint of blood. But there was nothing. Memories and expectancy made his gaze dart around the room, to the left and then the right.
Like all the times before, it had been just a dream. She wasn’t real.
Cole’s hand ran over the dark stubble of his jaw. In two centuries, he’d never dreamed. Not until three weeks ago when his sleep had become haunted by a red-headed beauty who took him to bliss and back. Night after night, she teased him with the physical and drew him into some emotional climax he didn’t pretend to understand.
But tonight she’d offered more than mere pleasure. He bit his bottom lip, certain he could still taste her. What had been a dream felt far too real. He’d stolen her blood to feed his own needs.
He’d become the very thing he hunted…vampire.
He felt the word like a hard punch in the gut. No…Never. The dream meant nothing. Or maybe it did. Something. He pushed off the bed and walked towards the shower. Long ago he’d learned never to take surface answers. The obvious would be to assume it was simply about his own battles with who and what he was. But it felt like more. Like a warning.
He needed answers and there was only one place he knew to get them.
Posted by Lisa Renee Jones :: 3:01 PM :: 1 comments

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