The Twisted Kiss: Doomsyear, Book 1 (3 page)

The other three psychics were already in the living room, steaming carafe of coffee on the wood-and-glass table in front of them, along with five cups. They’d been expecting her.

Kylie nodded at the other three—an older black man named Tony, a middle-aged brunette woman named Charlotte and a skinny man in his early twenties named Brian. Brian was a second-generation psychic, born of a mother who had been virus-affected during doomsyear.

She sank down onto the edge of an overstuffed floral chair. The three psychics were all watching her with various pleasant expressions on their faces.

Creepy.

Glancing around, she quickly found the source of the tick-tocking in the far corner—a great-grandfather clock with a heavy brass pendulum. The house was small and crammed with various pieces of antique furniture. The floor was polished wood and scattered with thick but worn throw rugs.

Margaret entered the room and poured them all cups of coffee. She even knew that Kylie took hers black. Then, with a grandmotherly smile, she sank onto the couch next to Tony. “We know why you’re here, Kylie, and we don’t need our particular skills to understand why.”

Her coffee cup trembled in her hand. “I’m not a supernatural, Margaret. With all due respect, please leave me out of your proclamations. I have no desire to be matched with Christian or Michael, let alone
both
of them together.”

Tony looked down into his coffee cup, lips pursed. “Desires. They’re a funny thing, you know. Sometimes what we think we want isn’t really what we want…or need.”

“I don’t need psychoanalysis. I need my life back the way it was yesterday.”

“Was your life really all that great yesterday?” Brian asked.

She looked at him in shock. “What a rude question.”

“Remember,” said Charlotte gently, “we see more than most.”

“Well, whatever you see for me, I want to remain the same. I don’t want to be with a man. I just want to run my bar, make my art and be left alone.”

“Alone is what you are and alone is what you’ll always be if you don’t take a risk on these two men,” answered Margaret. She raised her white eyebrows at Kylie as she took a sip of her coffee.

“They are your soul mates,” said Charlotte. “If you pass up this opportunity, it will be a great tragedy for not only you, but for Christian and Michael. Give them a chance, Kylie.”

Soul mates?

Her brain tripped over the term. In the back of her mind, she’d always understood that the council’s proclamations did, indeed, bring soul mates together—or make extremely compatible matches at any rate. Since she’d first learned of the proclamation, Kylie had thought of it as little more than a pain in the ass. The possibility that she might be shunning her best chance at lasting romantic happiness had never really occurred to her.

Still, she wanted to resist it. “I’m…
human,
” she insisted. “Christian is a werewolf and Michael—”

“Is a vampire,” answered Margaret. “Yes, we’re aware it’s an unusual match. I think you’re a little too concerned with it, however. We were all one race before doomsyear. Despite our surface differences, we are
still
one race.” She paused and smiled kindly. “And all of us are worthy of love, Kylie.” She paused and took a sip of her coffee. “Even you.”

All four of the council members watched her carefully as those words seemed to echo in the room. Suddenly Kylie felt naked, like they could see right into the center of her—all her insecurities, all her anxieties.

All her guilt.

She shifted in the chair, placing her barely touched coffee onto the table in front of her. She should have known that coming here would be a mistake. Of course, the council wouldn’t admit to mismatching people. She was stuck with the proclamation.

Kylie stood. “I would say
thank you
, but you’ve turned my life upside down.”

Margaret seemed unperturbed by the tense set of her body and the clipped tone of her voice. “One day, you’ll thank us for turning your life upside down.”

Yeah, right.

Without another word, she turned and left the house.

Deep in thought, her hands white on her steering wheel, she drove back home. Maybe what was so scary about this situation was that she was bad—no, terrible—at forming relationships. She’d had her father and she had Carolyn, but that was pretty much it as far as close relationships went. She guessed it was because she’d experienced so much loss.

And it wasn’t only her father she’d lost.

Grief, a dark, old friend, wended its way up from the depths of her and curled its tendrils around her gut and throat. Not a day went by that she didn’t think about her dad and miss him.

Deep down, maybe she thought Christian and Michael could never possibly want her. After all, look at what she’d done to the other men in her life. Maybe she was preempting things before someone got hurt.

Wow, it would be awesome if she had a shrink. Unfortunately, the nearest psychologist was at least five hundred miles away. In Sweet Rock, sadly, it was Alec, the bartender at the Twisted Kiss, who usually played that role, and he wasn’t very qualified.

She would have to deal with this on her own, as she dealt with everything on her own.

Christian watched Kylie and Carolyn as they talked over the bar, heads together—one light and one dark. His gaze skated over Kylie’s
slender
body as she leaned in, whispering furiously. He could imagine what the topic of conversation was.

She wore her thick, dark-brown hair loose over her shoulders tonight. Usually, she kept it in a ponytail when she worked at the Twisted Kiss and he wondered why she’d done it differently tonight. Perhaps because she’d agreed to go out to dinner with him? He could hope. Whatever the reason, it tempted him. He wanted to tangle his fingers through it and use it to tug her face close to his for a kiss. He’d been waiting long before the proclamation to do that.

Maybe soon he’d get his chance.

It was almost eight and he shifted at his place at the bar, conscious of the vamp eyes on him. Weres didn’t usually frequent the Twisted Kiss. They had their own establishment on the other end of town—the werewolf end of town—called the Beautiful Bite. Vampires and werewolves in Sweet Rock tolerated each other, but there was a tension in their relations that came from being two highly alpha races forced to live alongside one another.

Kylie stepped away from Carolyn and looked up, laughing, her dark eyes crinkling at the edges and her wide mouth open. His heart arrested in his chest for a moment and he took a long drink of his beer to calm the sudden hunger the sight of her ignited in him. He’d wanted her for so long, and now that she was close to being his, it was killing him.

He knew Michael felt the same way and that killed him too.

He and Michael had grown up in Sweet Rock and knew each other as well as any two people from opposite ends of town could. Christian wasn’t into the whole vampire-hating thing, and luckily Michael wasn’t an extreme were-hater either. Still, having to share Kylie with him rankled.

Every man knew there was a high chance of having to share his mate once one was proclaimed by the council. It wasn’t any easy thing for alphas to do under any circumstance, even though it was a fact of post-doomsyear life that they’d had to come to terms with. The tri-pairings served a very important purpose. History had shown that in cultures with too few females, the males became overly aggressive and warlike. Two men matched with one woman in mutual compatibility was a very good thing

Proclamations weren’t made every day, but they were always perfect. The council was never wrong. All three of them—even if Kylie didn’t know it yet—were lucky to have found their family.

Christian would do his best to remember that the next time he saw Michael. Maybe it would keep him from punching him.

He glanced at his watch—eight o’clock. Kylie was his.

She glanced at him, then at the clock above the bar. A look of resignation came over her face, and Christian vowed to turn it to lust the first moment she let him. She said her good-byes to Carolyn and picked her way through the thronged bar to his side.

“Glad to see you’re so excited about having dinner with me.” He kept his tone dry.

“As I told you before—”

“You’re not interested in a relationship right now. Yes, all of Sweet Rock knows that by now.” He accompanied that small bit of criticism with a cocky smile.

Glaring, she pushed past him and bolted for the door of the bar.

He exited into the night air, breathing in the late Minnesota autumn. There was a chill bite to the air, a hint of winter on its way. Like most weres, he relished the colder temperatures—all the better for running in fur.

She hugged herself against the chill and gazed down Oak Street. This end of town was just starting to come alive, the nocturnal shops and restaurants opening at twilight. They needed to walk two blocks down, to Hessian’s, a restaurant located between vamp and were territory, but mostly frequented by weres.

Kylie tipped her face up to the sky, where the moon was ripening toward full and stars shimmered all around the silver almost-orb. His gaze traced her jawline and the slender column of her throat, his body tightening and his cock twitching in his jeans. He gritted his teeth, clamping down on the impulse to draw her into his arms and slide his mouth over hers, then follow the line of her throat with his tongue. The closer to the full moon, the harder it was to control his desires.

She drew a deep breath. Apparently he was doing a good job of masking his thoughts, since she smiled at him. “The council pointed out to me this morning that if I reject you and Michael, I could be rejecting my soul mates. The timing of this is bad for me, yet passing up my one true chance at love would be a pity.” She studied him closely. “Do you think you’re really my soul mate?”

“I know you’re mine, Kylie. Known that for years.” He managed to mostly disguise the growl in his voice. “That’s all I know.”

Her eyes widened a little and her lips parted. The slight shiver he imagined he saw may have been wishful thinking.

Before he could do something to scare her off, he turned and started walking down the street. “I’m hungry, aren’t you?” He was hungry, but not for food. His body hummed with awareness of her and he wasn’t sure they’d even make it to the restaurant.

Be civilized, Christian. Don’t scare her off. She’s human.

She fell into step beside him, the heat of her body radiating out and warming his side. The faint scent of her perfume teased his nose and made his balls tighten. There weren’t many free women in his pack, but he’d slept with almost all the ones who were free. Still, he’d never had any woman affect him the way Kylie did. That’s how he knew the council was right the moment they’d made the proclamation.

They walked in silence, Kylie looking up into the night sky and admiring the stars, Christian warring with his impulse to pull her into the dark and kiss her senseless. His hands fisted at his sides. He was losing that fight.

Darkness closed around them as they entered a quiet stretch. Huge oak trees stood sentinel at equal intervals on either side of the sidewalk, streetlamps glowing above them and casting dappled shadows on the concrete walkway.

Kylie glanced at him. “So, how—”

He turned, took her by the waist and dragged her up against his chest, his other hand finding her nape. In the dim light, he saw her surprised expression and cursed his inability to resist her…then he kissed her.

Her body stiffened against his, then relaxed. She kissed him back with surprising intensity, her lips sliding over his. His tongue found the seam of her mouth and pushed inside. A slight growl issued from the back of his throat as the sweet taste of her spread through him, made him want more. His cock went hard, pressing painfully against the zipper of his jeans. The wolf inside him throbbed with savage need for its mate. He couldn’t wait any longer for her; he couldn’t be civilized—not now, not where Kylie was concerned.

He dropped his hand from the nape of her neck to her waist and pushed his hand under her shirt, finding the smooth skin of her lower back. She felt so nice—like silk. He wanted to know what the rest of her felt like, wanted to experience her nude body rubbing up against him.

She broke the kiss and he worried for a moment she’d pull away. If she pulled away, he would have to let her—but it would be hard. “You affect me in a dangerous way, Christian.” Her voice was shaking, a little uncontrolled. “I shouldn’t want this. I should run away from you right now…but I can’t.”

The wolf inside him howled in triumph. His mouth curved in a feral smile. She was his.
His
. “Then let’s forget dinner. Come home with me.”

Her eyes seemed wide and extraluminous, part of her face in shadow. He held his breath waiting for her answer, hoping with everything he was that she would listen to her body and not her head, listen to the faint whisper in her heart that was telling her the truth—she loved him, she just didn’t know it yet.

Then she nodded and he didn’t hesitate. Taking her by the hand, he hightailed it to his car before she could change her mind.

Chapter Four

What was she doing?

She’d completely convinced herself that she was going to resist these men, then Christian had kissed her and all her hard-assed sentiment had flown out the window on the wings of her goddamned undersexed libido.

She could tell herself she was just doing this because she was a woman with certain…
needs
and Christian was an incredibly attractive man, but she wasn’t heartless. Christian and Michael both actually seemed to care for her—amazing as that was. She wasn’t the type to use a man for sex and then walk out the door.

Therefore, every inch of her was aware of the commitment she was making by going home with Christian right now. By doing this, she was agreeing to explore the bond the council said she had with these two men.

The darkened streets of Sweet Rock flew by the passenger’s side window of the car at an alarmingly fast rate. Christian was pretty impatient to get her home and into his bed and she was impatient to be there—consequences be damned.