Chosen by Sin by Virna Depaul Read Free Book Online

We’ll talk about this later.
I don’t want you worrying. If—if me taking you without achieving my own
release is what’s got you hung up, then we’ll switch things up.” In fact, maybe
it was time to do what he’d always known he should and get that vasectomy.
Lucy’s heat cycles wouldn’t end anytime soon and if he was going to come inside
her…
    “I don’t know. This whole thing, it just doesn’t seem right, Dex.”
    “Let me worry about that. I’m going to talk to Mahone.” He headed for
the door, pausing with his hand on the doorknob when Lucy spoke.
    “Children aren’t a curse, you know…”
    He turned back to her. He thought of the child he’d been. The horrors
he’d seen and experienced in the dilapidated were orphanage his grandfather had
sent him to. He’d certainly felt cursed back then and sometimes, when his guard
was down and the memories sprang upon him, he still did. “Don’t, Lucy. I’m not
going there.”
    “You need to talk about it.”
    She was wrong. Talking about his past, his family, himself, was the
last thing he needed. “We’ll talk more when I get back. Just not about that.”
    ***
    Lucy watched Dex shut the door behind him before screaming with
frustration and flinging herself back on the bed. What a mess.
    She adored Dex, but someone needed to knock some sense into the were.
    Someone needed to knock some sense into her .
    What had she been thinking, accepting his offer of sex?
    Okay, she knew what she’d been thinking. That she was sick of suffering
from the heat and that Dex was hot and she respected him and that she knew he
cared about her so why not let him help her out?
    Well, the “why not” had just walked out the door.
    Sighing, she curled onto her side and stared out her small hotel
window. Through the sheer curtains, she could just make out the cloudless
California sky.
    Bottom line, she’d let her own needs overshadow those of her friend’s.
At least, she’d done so after Dex had met Jesmina. She’d seen for herself how
attracted he was to Jes and the fact that Dex hadn’t been able to hide that
attraction was telling.
    Lucy stood, used the bathroom, then studied herself in the mirror. She
looked the way she should. Like a female who’d just had sex. Her long dark
brown hair was tousled eggbeater style around her face. Dex’s soul patch had
left red marks near her neck and shoulders. She lightly traced the lines with
the pads of her fingers.
    Yes, she looked like someone’s lover even when she’d never really been
one.
    And maybe that was how it was supposed to be.
    Things were changing.
    The team was fracturing.
    And that made her feel more panicked than she’d felt since peace had
been declared.
    What was she going to do?
    When she was with her teammates, she was more than she’d ever been.
More than a mage denying her feline blood. More than a youthful looking female
who no one took seriously. Sure, she was the quietest one, the peacekeeper of
the group, but that just emphasized the fact that she had a place among them.
    Here, now, she was adrift without the others.
    But that was something that was going to have to change.
    Felicia had Knox, and Wraith had Caleb. Dex deserved his own chance at
happiness. To give him that chance, she was going to have to break the fragile
connection that he’d initiated between them. For his own good. And for hers.
    She had to find her place, as well as the ability to stand in it on her
own.
    ***
    Mahone was an excellent FBI agent, Dex thought. He was an even better
leader. Political enough to rise in the ranks, manipulative enough to recognize
and move pawns where they needed to go, and unassuming enough to fly under the
radar when he needed to, which was most of the time. But today something was
different.
    Dex stared at the human who was pacing his temporary space at the
Bureau’s office in Los Angeles.
    Today, Mahone seemed edgier. Tougher. In attitude and in appearance. It
wasn’t like the guy really