Rhyannon Byrd - Primal Instinct 04 by Touch of Seduction Read Free Book Online Page B

could tell from his tone
that there was something more. Something he either didn’t want her to know or
that he couldn’t say in front of Jamie. Her body ached as the worry settled
deeper into her bones, the past few weeks making her feel as though she’d aged
ten years.
    They pulled into the gas station a few moments later,
and she parked in the back of the lot. While they waited for his friends to
arrive on foot, Olivia made a quick call to Georgia, who thankfully was fine.
The elderly woman claimed that Aiden had been the only person to come asking
about her and Jamie, which meant that the Casus had likely followed her scent
to Connie’s house, just as Aiden had suggested. Unnerved by the chilling
thought, Olivia fought to put a smile on her face as she twisted back around in
her seat and chatted with Jamie some more. The little girl still seemed
remarkably calm, considering what they’d just been through, and she couldn’t
help but wonder what was going on in her clever little mind.
    Though Jamie was like a human child in so many ways,
Olivia knew that her niece was far from what the world would consider normal.
Her Merrick blood might have been dormant, but she was still a Mallory. Once a
powerful, diverse clan of witches, the clan’s magical powers had been bound by
a curse—and it was because of this centuries-old curse that the Mallory now
magnified the emotions of all those around them. All of which meant that Jamie
would carry a tremendous amount of power trapped inside her body as she grew
older. She would also eventually suffer from the curse, the same as her mother
and her aunt Chloe. But Olivia didn’t care that Jamie wasn’t normal. The fact
that she wasn’t human certainly didn’t make her love the little girl any less,
as Aiden had suspected.
    And yet she couldn’t help but worry, not only about
the dangers that lay ahead but whether she understood enough about the world of
the clans to be a good protector for Jamie.
    You’ll learn what you need to know, because you love
her. Because you love her enough to do whatever it takes.
    Silently praying that she wouldn’t fail, Olivia tucked
a fuzzy pink blanket around Jamie’s small body as the child cuddled up with her
teddy bear to watch a Disney movie on Olivia’s iPod. She’d just turned around
and settled back into her seat when Aiden said, “That’s Kellan and Noah over
there.” He nodded toward two dark, muscular men who were making their way
across the empty parking lot, and she shook her head, wondering what it was
about these guys. Did all the Watchmen look like this? The one named Kellan was
tall, and nearly as gorgeous as Aiden, though he looked as if he’d just taken
part in a vicious fight, his face scraped down one side, his black T-shirt
ripped at the shoulder. He had auburn hair a few shades darker than her own, so
that it appeared almost black in the moonlight, and piercing blue-green eyes
that were still glowing unusually bright, attesting to the fact that he was
something more than a mere man.
    While Kellan’s heavily muscled physique reminded her
of a professional football player, the guy walking beside him could have stepped
right out of a rock video. He was attractive in a dark, sinister kind of way,
his long body wrapped entirely in black, the corner of his sensual mouth
bloodied from their run-in with the Casus. His thick black hair was spiky from
the wind, and despite being human, his eyes burned a pale, unusual shade of
blue, almost like that of the creatures that had just attacked them. Trying not
to stare, Olivia wondered if Aiden had been completely honest with her about
Noah’s species, but couldn’t imagine why he would have lied.
    “I need a few minutes to talk to them,” Aiden said in
a low voice, the gruff edge to his words making Olivia wonder if he didn’t care
for the way she’d been looking over the other two men. Not that that made any
sense either, but then, it truly seemed a night for the bizarre.