CallingCaralisa by Virginia Nelson Read Free Book Online

Chapter One
     
    The feverish passion on the page translated itself into heat
that raced up Caralisa’s cheeks and down her neck. Fanning herself with the top
of her shirt, she followed along with the words as if she could embed the
sensations captured on yellowed parchment into her own life as she read.
    The kind of desire the ancients whispered about in their old
books couldn’t be real—or, she acknowledged, wasn’t likely for a woman like
herself. Caralisa came to the end of the passage and strode to the window to
peer into the night. If she got lost in the words, in the promise of
fantastical sex and bonding recorded on the page, her reflection in the glass
offered concrete reasons to prove she deluded herself. In a people prized for
their lush curves, their fiery natures, she was the freak, the strange one.
Small, sparrow brown, plain and built like a boy. Sex kitten waiting to roar?
Hardly.
    Nothing to drive a man to race after or seek her hand for
the rest of his time on Earth. She’d read the story and the prophecy about her
distant cousin, Tabitha. Not only one brave warrior Hunter, but two men to
share their glow and their needs with one woman. How must it feel to be the
kind of woman to inspire not one, but two to desire her, lust for her, want
nothing more than her satisfaction? Stupid to waste energy longing for
something like that, but Caralisa could imagine—mostly because of her
books—exactly what it might mean to be at the center of that storm of raging
ecstasy.
    If she had a man, what would it feel like to have his rough
hands on her? To revel in sensation as his attention became solely devoted to
her pleasure? To experience firsthand what a man hell-bent on release and
eroticism would be like rather than reading about it on a flat page? Sometimes
it seemed like more than she could handle—even if she weren’t the least likely
person ever to be gifted with that occurrence.
    Brushing her arm hard against her breasts, which were aching
because her time for mating had come and passed, only exacerbated her problem.
She recorded the lives of her people, kept the old books and made sure that
history wasn’t forgotten and that prophecy got recorded.
    The kind of woman who recorded life didn’t need to have one.
So long satisfied with her books and her writing, she’d given up yearning to be
the one starring in the story. Or so she’d convinced herself, only to regret
her choice not to race for a mate late in the night. A creak on the stair had
her spinning, schooling her features into the calm mask she wore to hide the
bubbling discontent her body insisted on.
    The door opened in well-oiled silence, revealing a man with
the predatory grace of a big cat. His dark eyes seemed to peel away the layers
of her practiced mask and awaken the edgy need she forced back with sheer will.
“Jackson! You’re up late.”
    The feline amber of his eyes skated over her, taking in every
dull brown bit of her, before returning to her face. “Can’t sleep. You’re still
working?”
    Living in the City, a hidden alcove and center for their
people, used to be considered a privilege only granted to those of high rank.
Now only a skeleton crew of dedicated Seers and Hunters remained, since most of
their people roamed the earth and fed on the emotions of the increased mortal
population. Jackson wasn’t a Recorder, like her. He worked for the queen
herself, guarding her and the throne. “A Recorder’s work is never done,
especially not in times such as these.”
    Mentioning the darkness that threatened them only seemed to
weigh down Jackson’s shoulders, drooping them as he leaned on the wall. “No, in
times such as these, unusual power must arise to face challenges. Our kind is
forced into choices we might otherwise not make…”
    She shrugged, although his presence, stony eyed and arms
crossed, made her body throb with a need she must ignore, Caralisa moved back
to the text she’d been studying. “Perhaps we’ve