Enraptured by Brenda K. Davies Read Free Book Online Page A

welcome for that.”
    Her jaw clenched and unclenched. “Thank
you.”
    “Was that so difficult?” he teased in the
hopes of coaxing her into relaxing a little. The smile he gave her
had lured a lot of women into his bed, but she simply stared back
at him. He’d met briars friendlier than this woman. Yet, something
about her had him enraptured, and it had nothing to do with her
pretty face.
    Paige refused to be swayed by the twinkle in
his sky blue eyes or the smile easing his handsome features. She
could almost believe he was human, almost believe he was a good
man, but he survived on blood, and he wasn’t a normal man. “What
are you going to do with me?”
    “We’ll get you back to your family, to where
you belong,” he assured her.
    She stared doubtfully at him. “With my
memory intact?”
    “You know that’s not an option,” Stefan said
from the doorway.
    Paige tilted her chin up as she met the
shark-like eyes of the man in the doorway. There were great whites
that radiated more sympathy than him. “I have a right to keep my
memories,” she replied with more bravado than she felt.
    “We have a right to keep ourselves safe,” he
retorted.
    The ringing of a phone silenced her protest
as Stefan pulled it out from inside of his pocket. The strange
looking phone reminded her of a walkie-talkie. She’d never seen
anything like it before. He looked at the phone and winced at the
caller ID. A smile lit his face though when he lifted it to his
ear. “Hello love,” he greeted and turned on his heel to walk out of
the room.
    Paige frowned at the endearment and the
abrupt softening of his tone. Someone loved that man? And
apparently he loved them too. She supposed even a shark had to kiss
another shark once in a while.
    “I don’t envy him,” Ian said.
    She pursed her mouth as she fought against
asking the question he knew was on the tip of her tongue. Finally,
she broke down and asked it, “Why not?”
    “My sister is a little annoyed with him
right now, and she can be worse than a bear when she’s in a
mood.”
    “He’s in a relationship with your
sister?”
    “It’s far more than a relationship
between them.”
    Paige glanced over at him, her forehead
furrowed as her gaze ran over him. “Were you and your sister turned
at the same time?”
    Ian shook his head. “No.” He debated not
elaborating further, but he didn’t see what damage it could do.
She’d never remember this conversation anyway. “My siblings and I
are all born vampires.”
    “How awful for you,” she muttered.
    “You definitely had a bad experience tonight
with a vampire, and apparently at least one other time in your
life, before tonight.” His gaze flicked pointedly toward the scars
on her neck.
    Paige fought the urge to touch her scars
again. She felt inexplicably exposed before him. Most didn’t know
what the scars were from, and the ones who did recognize them,
rarely mentioned them. They were proof she was a survivor, that she
had seen the darkness within this world, endured it and lived to
see another day. That was all most of the people she dealt with now
wanted, or needed, to know about her. She had no idea what he saw
when he looked at her scars, but he appeared to have sympathy for
her. Something she absolutely did not appreciate from his
kind.
    “But I can assure you,” he continued. “We’re
not all like the vampire who attacked you tonight, or before.” She
wasn’t about to tell him they were one-in-the-same. “My family is
far from awful.”
    “I’ll second that,” Mandy muttered as she
finished storing away her blood pressure cuff and stethoscope. “I
might be dead right now if it wasn’t for them, and Emma most likely
would be too, or she may be something worse.”
    “Who is Emma?” Paige inquired.
    “Emma is my sister-in-law,” Ian answered.
“She’s also here. So is her husband, my brother Ethan, and some of
our friends.”
    Paige really didn’t care to learn anything
more about him, but