Hunger for You (Shadow Shifters: Damaged Hearts) by A.C. Arthur Read Free Book Online Page A

down, taking a couple of physical and mental steps back.
    “We’ll meet again,” I said, pointing past Zoe to where a smiling Dex still stood.
    “Fuck off, half-breed!” he said.
    I moved forward again only to feel the instant sting of heat as Zoe put her palms on my chest. Now I was the one she wasattempting to push away. The cat inside me bared its teeth, rearing back at her touch as heat spread throughout my chest. My entire body shook with the two feuding entities. To save us both possibly, I pushed her arms away. “Fine, if you don’t want my help, let him beat you to death. I don’t care!”
    I was walking away without looking back, refusing to answer the burning desire to protect her, to keep her safe. It just wasn’t possible to save somebody that didn’t want to be saved, my mind screamed to no avail. I kept right on walking, every step heavier than the last until I was safe in my truck, slamming my palms onto the steering wheel repeatedly.
    She wasn’t my concern, she wasn’t my girlfriend. I didn’t have a girlfriend and damn sure didn’t want one. I’d never even been interested enough in another female to go so far as to protect her, especially not from her own boyfriend. That’s just not what I did, it wasn’t how I was made. I was sure my brothers were protective as hell over their mates, but Zoe wasn’t my mate, she wasn’t anybody. Or she shouldn’t have been.
    I jammed my key into the ignition and started my truck thinking this would be the last damned time I’d be at this bar. There was nothing for me here, nothing and nobody. There never had been.

CHAPTER 6
Zoe
    It was a horrible flashback. As I stood, still reeling from Caleb’s appearance and his subsequent departure at my request, Dex struck.
    In the past weeks that I’d known him he’d been very nice, kind of subdued in a lone biker type of way, but definitely a leader among his friends. He’d taken me on simple dates, nothing that I’d find in a romance novel, but fun things all the same. I didn’t feel this out-of-this-world attraction to him, but I continued to go out with him believing that the spark would eventually appear. I’d read enough books to know that it wouldn’t, especially not now.
    Dex’s hand fisted in my hair, pulling me back to him all the while yelling something about shadows and minding their own business, and more incoherent words I would later try to decipher. Right now the pain was excruciating, shooting throughmy skull like a million knives were being pierced into my skin. I didn’t scream though, didn’t have any intention of giving him that sadistic pleasure. For a few seconds my arms just flailed as I tripped over my feet trying to keep from falling to the ground as he pulled me. We were going deeper behind the bar to where there was a gate and then an incline leading into a dark copse of trees that faced the highway on its other side. I knew if he got me down there it would be over.
    I reached back then, grabbing his hands to try and still some of the force he was exerting. He was still mumbling something about shifts and revenge and whatever, I stopped listening. All I could hear now was the pounding of my heart as my brain went into overdrive trying to figure out what to do, how to save my life.
    The scene was all too familiar to me. How many times had my stepfather dragged my mom up the stairs and back down again? How many times had he used his grip on her hair to bang her head into the side of the bathtub or the corner of the dresser? It was a wonder she still lived and sometimes when I used to stand and stare at her, I got the impression that she really didn’t. That maybe, she thought death would be better. But then he’d take that out on us and she didn’t want that, she’d never wanted that.
    The rage I felt for what my mother had gone through and what she might still be going through boiled inside me like piping hot lava and somehow, I twisted in his grasp so that I was now