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Category: Romance/Fantasy
Description: The mind forgets, but the body remembers. Everything. Grimm's Circle, Book 4 One look at Jack Wallace and Perci knows he's going to be trouble. Even surrounded by soul stealers, he's a one-man wrecking crew. What does he need Grimm training for? He's already hell on earth, a warrior bent on destruction. And something?more. He's too strong and fast to be a mere mortal. Even covered in blood, he makes her forget she's only here to do a job and get out. It's twisted. Sick. She hasn't felt this alive in three centuries. Born with a natural talent for killing unnatural things, Jack has always known things he shouldn't. The fact that Perci is one of them glows all over her. Giving him an unholy urge to see just how far he can push her before don't touch me melts into touch me there. When they come together, it isn't careful or cautious. It's heaven and hell, exposing all their raw and wounded places to healing heat, resurrecting memories of a destined love from the distant past. But the evil that destroyed them once before has tracked them here, threatening their second and last chance at forever. Demanding a sacrifice no one--Grimm or human--should ever be asked to make? Warning: Dark, sexy, a little bit scary--this fairy tale is only for grownups and is best saved for bedtime.
eBook Publisher: Samhain Publishing, Ltd., 2010 2010
eBookwise Release Date: November 2010

5 Reader Ratings:

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Available eBook Formats: OEBFF Format (IMP) [210 KB]
Words: 47346
Reading time: 135-189 min.

A flash of red-gold caught his eye.

It was a girl, reed-slender, long and lean, her hair cropped close to her scalp. She didn't belong here--that heart-shaped face, those big brown eyes. She didn't belong here and she'd be lucky if she didn't end up dead or worse--and oh, man, was there worse than dead.

The image of worse stained his mind, and the savage pleasure he'd felt as he lost himself in the fight faded.

Swearing, Jack reached inside his jacket and pulled out the Desert Eagle he'd kept tucked inside his coat. It was modified, silenced, deadly as hell.

It would take down the demon-possessed, mostly by putting a hole the size of Kansas through their sternums, and that was why he didn't like using it. It left too noticeable a trail. But if he didn't...do...something...

Holy...

Shit.

He lowered the Eagle to his side and stared dumbly around him.

The girl--no--woman.

As young as she looked, she wasn't a girl.

She wasn't a girl, and she wasn't human either, he realized.

If he'd taken more than a split second to look at her earlier, he would have seen it. It all but glowed...all over her. And for the briefest moment, she looked damned familiar. She stood there, with one hand on a cocked hip, her head tilted to the side and a smirk on her lips.

And three demons at her feet.

Jack had only taken down one of them. And it wasn't even dead yet--or at least, the demon inside it wasn't giving up. Jack could feel it pushing at him. Pushing against him psychically, and as he grimaced and prepared himself for that mental battle, the woman came sauntering up and smirked at him. "Amateur," she said, her voice vaguely accented.

Then she crouched down and used a blade to hurry along the demon's demise.

Abruptly, the pushing and shoving and crowding Jack had felt against his mental shields stopped.

He barely noticed though.

A silver chain had slipped free from her white shirt.

It held a silver disc...wings.

Mesmerized, Jack stared at the pendant.

As she straightened up, she reached inside her pocket and withdrew a snowy white handkerchief and used it to wipe the blood from the knife.

"A word of advice if you're going to play with things like this? When you actually try to kill them, make sure you don't just try. Do it. If that thing had gotten its hooks inside you... Well, by the time you figured it out, it would be too late."

She waggled her knife so that the blade caught the light and reflected it. "Then I'd also be sticking this knife inside you."

With that, she tucked the knife away, turned on her heel and sauntered away.

He might have said something--told himself he needed to. But he couldn't think. At least not just yet. His brain was still trying to process what he had just seen--that silver necklace...a silver disc.

Upswept wings...

He'd seen that before.

On the neck of his mother.

Before she died.

What the hell...

"Just keep walking," I muttered. I kept telling myself that, over and over, and somehow I managed to keep walking.

One foot after the other, and fast, because if I stopped or even slowed, I knew I'd look back, and I wasn't about to let myself get curious over what I'd just seen.

And what did I just see?

Who...man, I wonder what his name is...

"No. Don't think about that. Or him. And it's a what, don't think about him as a who."

Just a what, I told myself. An anomaly, just an anomaly. "You saw some demons. They are dead now. End of. Doesn't matter how they got dead, as long as they are dead."

And throughout that entire mental pep talk, I kept walking.

Fast. Very fast.

Before I could give in to the urge to look back.

And I desperately wanted to look back and see him. Curiosity wasn't something I'd felt much of, not in a good long while. But I wanted to look back, wanted to see him again. Badly.

He wasn't a pretty man...no polished, perfect prince. About as far from Luc as he could be. Broad and rough, that craggy face looked like it had been carved from golden granite or something. His eyes had stared into mine with something that closely resembled the shock I'd felt, although man, I hoped I hid it better.

I probably had. Several hundred years of practice had better prove useful for that much at least.

His eyes...

I swallowed. My knees got a little weak thinking about those eyes. They were the color of the mist in the early morning, almost too soft, too gentle for that hard face, but as he'd stared at me, they'd darkened. Darkened to smoke...

Part of me wondered if maybe that wasn't something I couldn't get lost in. And even as I thought that, I wanted to kick myself. It was wrong to think that.

Luc. I needed to think of Luc. I needed to finish this damn job so I could get back to him.

He was no longer my husband.

No, I'd seen to that well enough. It had broken something inside us both when I forced that issue, and I'd hated myself for knowing I'd broken Luc's heart. We stayed together though, and I told myself that it didn't matter if we were married or not.

I told myself it was enough because he needed me. I needed him.

We were a pair, the two of us, whether we were married or not.

But it didn't matter if I was married--Luc was still there, still a part of my life and thinking about a sexy mortal stranger? We can just place that in a column marked "Things I don't need to do".

Although one thing I did need to do. I needed to figure out just why a mortal had been fighting a couple of orin in an alley.

How in the hell had he managed to hold his own?

Well, other than the obvious--being damn strong. And fast. Shit, he was fast. Almost too fast for me to believe he was human, but there was no way he wasn't human.

He knew how to fight too. Pretty damn obvious he knew he was facing something not exactly normal. And that gun--shit. Most of the Grimm didn't like guns--too messy and mortals tend to get in more trouble with those things.

But I didn't have to like them to be able to admire the serious firepower that thing would possess. It had been a miniature cannon, and if he had needed to use it, it would have destroyed any of the demonic fool enough to get caught in his range.

He'd done too good a job holding his own against them, especially up until I'd distracted him. How had he been able to do that? And who was he?

He was mortal. I could feel it.

But still, there was also something...more.