Forbidden by Jacquelyn Frank Read Free Book Online

dashed up against about thirty unforgiving rocks on her travels into the Hudson River.
    The sudden understanding had her feeling self-conscious over what she must look like to this gorgeous hunk of rescuer. She hadn’t exactly led the search for a mirror with a full battle charge. She didn’t need a mirror to feel hanks of hair shaved away and inroads of stitches crisscrossing her scalp. She’d rather suspect she looked like hell than see proof of it.
    She gave the blond god a sour look, as if his extraordinary good looks were proportionately to blame for the wreck she’d made of hers.
    “I’ll go call my brother,” she grumbled at him, takinga step toward her house. He reached out to grab her arm, drawing her to a halt. She squealed … no, wait … she screeched, a shrill, obnoxious sound leaping out of her like that alien thing bursting out of people’s chests in the movies. “You idiot! You’ve gotten blood all over my coat!”
    They both seemed to freeze for a moment, the air hanging between them more than cold enough to do it and the caustic words dangling like ice crystals, frozen for all to see as the outright thankless, bitchy things they were. That
she
was.
    Docia slapped both hands over her mouth, her eyes rounding with horror. Then they burned, liquid rimming and filling them.
    “Hush,” the stranger said to her as he stepped closer, the word not reproachful at all, but soft and gentling. The tack was rather like that of a cowboy to a wild horse, but she was not so upset that she didn’t see him brushing his attentive eyes all around them. She’d seen that before. Hypervigilance. As an adopted sister of the SPD, she’d seen it in cops who suffered from PTSD. It was one of those symptoms that jumped out at you. However, he didn’t wear it as if it were out of control or even out of context. Given what had just happened, it wasn’t out of context for him to be worried about the area. “The Blending takes time. It draws on all the best and worst of what we are and what we have been, whether openly or just in our thoughts. I won’t hold it against you. Not just now, anyway,” he said, taking a moment to tilt half a smile at her. And somehow that half smile was more delightful than most men’s whole smiles. It gave immediate comfort; it flashed a deep dimple and added a ripple of golden light in an almost lightless night to the brushes of gold limning the coronas of his eyes. She barely comprehended what he was saying, who he was, but that one brief expressionsettled more warmth and well-being over her soul than she had felt in all these past days. Not even waking to Jackson’s familiar face or knowing he had seen to it that she was flawlessly protected had made her feel that she had both feet firmly back on the ground instead of tumbling over the side of a bridge.
    “I’m so sorry,” she felt compelled to say to him, in spite of his ready forgiveness.
    “Think no more of it,” he insisted, pulling her back in the direction of her house with sure and knowing steps, with those bright eyes that settled on her home in the distance and none of the others. That detail jumped out at her instantly, and this time she was the one looking all around herself in concern for what next danger would be coming out at her. In the end, he was the only one to settle her attention on, seeing as how they’d left the only obvious threat in a dark heap on the sidewalk behind them.
    “Who are you?” she needed to know. Years of Jackson telling her what to do if she found herself in danger worked up to the surface, and she drew a sharp breath.
    “Ram. I am your guide, my queen. Your protector during this vulnerable transition period.”
    Docia laughed. Actually, she kind of snorted through both nostrils at once. Very attractive.
    “You know, I am having a sudden appreciation for how Alice must have felt after dashing down that rabbit hole.”
    “Alice, however, never appreciated the danger she was in at any