Love Story for a Snow Princess (Siren Publishing Classic) by Beth D. Carter Read Free Book Online Page B

entice him.
    Why had he kissed her?
    One minute he had been watching her lips as she griped at him, and the next his had been on hers. And it had been…amazing. For a moment, a very brief moment, he had believed the monster was gone, and he’d let his mind wander to the possibility that maybe, just maybe, he would be able to have normal feelings, that it would be okay to kiss the girl and live happily ever after. He’d never had a kiss that felt so nice, so right.
    And then the monster inside him woke up. Paden punched his leg, hard, to fight it back, and the pain temporarily soothed the demon who wanted more. It was enough, however, to allow him to get back to his home, to put away his snowmobile and trudge from the garage into the warm house. Truthfully, his home was far larger than one man needed in River Ice, Alaska but the monster didn’t like small, confined spaces. Fifteen hundred square feet stood almost empty, with tall, double-paned windows stretching two-stories tall with a non-furnished great room.
    The beast inside roared, and Paden groaned. He fell to his knees, pressing the palms of his hand into his eyes. He wasn’t sure if he was trying to gouge out his eyes or not, but the discomfort felt good.
    He had thought it was over, that the monster…the demon…was gone. He had done everything they had told him to do! The doctors had told him he had to be alone, to deactivate the thoughts that made it come alive. He had isolated himself, and he had created his own empire here in the Alaskan wilderness in order to retrain his brain.
    And all it took was one kiss to erase ten years of work.
    Like a scorpion hidden in the dark, the monster struck with a poison that eroded his soul. It ate its way from the outside in, layer by layer, until the venom reached his heart. He couldn’t run.
    Slowly, little by little, he died.
    Hurt me , it whispered.
    Cut me up.
    Carve out this evil.
    And then be happy.
    The voice danced softly through his mind. It seduced, sounding like heaven. Peace. All it required was blood.
    Paden rose to his feet and stumbled into the kitchen. He banged into the countertop, hitting his hip, and the monster purred. His hand shot out, and he clutched the butcher’s block like it was a lifeline.
    In some far distant corner of his mind, he thought how he’d just bought them six months ago. It had been the first time he had allowed knives in his home, one of the reasons why he always took his evening meal at Miki’s restaurant. He’d thought he had won. He’d thought he was safe.
    The voice taunted him again, and the need grew. He grabbed one of the knives, one of the smaller ones, and he brought the blade to his arm. He slashed at the voice, at the beast that burned though his blood. Pain exploded through his body, along with pleasure. Exquisite pleasure in the most basic form.
    Bliss.
    Because once the monster was appeased, it disappeared again. For a while, the voice quieted.

Chapter Eight
     
    The next morning, Thea still hadn’t figured Paden out. The kiss had wormed its way into her nightmare. The crash still happened, the blood still dripped, but somehow Paden was there kissing her, holding her as if to shield her from the horror of it. For the first time in a year, she hadn’t woken with a strangled scream.
    She had left the hotel with a lingering sense of confusion. The last thing she wanted to do was transfer some sort of attraction she felt toward him as a way to mask her heartache. Nothing spelt psychological problem quite as well as using sex for a Band-Aid.
    She breathed the crisp morning air in deep, the cold biting through her lungs and jerking her senses awake, a lot better than a cup of coffee. The sun blazed warmer than yesterday. Maybe they were gonna get the thaw everyone had been predicting yesterday around the Suinnak fire.
    People waved at her as she made her way carefully through the town. Snowmobiles weaved their way over the snow-covered streets skillfully avoiding