A Dangerous Hunger: (The Sentinel Demons) by J. S. Scott Read Free Book Online

I mostly took care of her.” Talia sighed softly before continuing, “After she died, I moved to Idaho. I mostly just wanted an isolated place where I could work and be alone. And that’s what I did. Every day, I get up and research. I don’t really know a soul in town. But I was okay with that. It was better than being ridiculed. I get up, I work, I go to bed. That’s me. That’s my life. It isn’t that I don’t know fear, but I guess the fact that if I was gone from the earth tomorrow, not a single person would even notice, and that makes dying insignificant to me. Who would care? Who would ever notice except my cat?”
    Drew’s heart splintered as he listened to her words, spoken in such a matter-of-fact tone that it made it even harder to bear. Talia wasn’t feeling sorry for herself, or being dramatic. This was really how she felt, what she’d experienced in her short life. “I’d care, mo stór ,” Drew answered, slipping unconsciously into his native Gaelic terms of endearment. Talia’s sense of aloneness just amplified his protectiveness, his need to make sure she was never vulnerable again. “ Beidh mé tú a chosaint, ” Drew said adamantly, vowing to protect her.
    Talia looked back at him, her brow furrowing in concentration. “I can’t translate Gaelic,” she murmured, obviously annoyed that she couldn’t.
    “Ah…a language that you actually can’t translate, Dr. Maris?” Drew smiled down at her, waves of fierce possessiveness pounding at him. “It simply means that I’ll protect you. I think it’s way past time that somebody did. And I doubt I could stop myself anyway. I want to be your champion, Talia, the man you look to when you need anything.”
    “I don’t look to anyone,” she admitted softly. “I never really have.”
    “You will,” Drew replied stubbornly. Stroking her brow, he tried to erase the confusion from her face. “Can you honestly say that you don’t feel the connection between us?”
    Bloody hell. Say you do! Drew needed her to feel at least a small amount of the elemental desires he was experiencing.
    “Your eyes are glowing,” she answered, her voice slightly awed.
    “A sign of intense desire for my mate. A demon reaction. Does it frighten you?”
    She shook her head. “No,” she whispered softly. “My eyes do that sometimes when I sense or see something otherworldly. But not like yours, not that beautiful, bright amber color. And I do feel the connection, Drew. I just don’t completely understand it. ”
    She looked vulnerable and he knew she tasted sweeter than anything he’d ever tasted before. Her words pierced his soul and he claimed her mouth with a savage passion that he couldn’t hold back. She’d said the words he wanted to hear…but he lost it anyway, both his human and demon sighing with relief as she wrapped her arms around him and responded to his rough embrace with an innocent desire that completely tipped him right over the edge of human sanity.

T alia had only been intimate with one man in her entire life; a boy, really—an eighteen-year-old immature asshole in college—and having sex with her had been part of his fraternity initiation. Have sex with an ugly virgin and bring us proof. That had been the initiation challenge, and Talia, being young and still aching for acceptance at the time, had fallen right into the seduction. It had been an awkward coupling that her left her wondering why women even had sex. The humiliation that followed when she found out about the boy’s motives and the scorn he showed her afterward completely killed her desire to have sex ever again.
    Now, Talia realized that she’d never really known desire. As she let herself become lost in Drew, his tongue explored her mouth like he had to touch and possess every inch of it. His rough claiming left her moaning against his lips and desperate for more.
    This is longing. This is what it feels like when a man truly wants a woman.
    And definitely how it