Shameless Desire (The Outlawed Realm) by Tina Donahue Read Free Book Online Page B

much needed loving. He simply held out his hand to her, palm up. His fingers were long, the tips blunt.
    Snatches of tonight returned, his hands tracing her body’s contours, his fingers tugging at her nipples, dipping between her legs, demanding yet pleasuring.
    An intolerable urge to press her face to his palm and kiss it gripped Gwen, until she saw what couldn’t be possible.
    Leaning back, she turned on her ceramic lamp, then took his hand in both of hers, studying it in the pale light.
    “What is it?” Staci asked.
    Gwen couldn’t speak. He had no lines on his palms. His fingerprints, if you could call them that, were a single round circle at the tip of each digit. He hadn’t been kidding. He wasn’t from anywhere near what he’d called this realm…dimension…plane.
    He must have sensed her fear, because he curled his fingers over hers, a decidedly tender gesture given his raw masculinity and size.
    Gwen lifted her face to his and whispered, “Who are you?”

Chapter Five
    A dog’s bark awakened Regina.
    It was an ordinary sound she was used to, yet there was an odd quality in the animal’s yapping…a hint of fear behind its menace.
    Propping herself on one elbow, Regina regarded Nikoli. He’d draped his arm over his forehead. His fingers were slack, lips parted, his chest rising and falling steadily, proving how deeply he slept.
    The dog’s barking turned to whimpers, which soon quieted.
    Regina’s pulse continued to thump even as she ordered herself to relax. Even if the animals were disturbed, it couldn’t be by anything that didn’t belong in this neighborhood. No vampires, certainly. She and Nikoli had seen Andris, Sazaar and the others trapped in the void between the dimensions, their fangs bared, their ungodly shrieks muted by the vacuum. The creatures had perished seconds later, never to return.
    Regina wished she could have expected the same from Detectives Sheehan and Goddard. More than once, she’d sensed them tailing her around town, waiting to see if she’d lead them to evidence that she had murdered Donald Bakshi.
    When the detectives had first questioned her about the man, Regina told them she had no idea who Bakshi was, because she didn’t.
    “Then why did we find your fingerprints at his home on Bainbridge Island?” Sheehan had asked.
    She’d danced around that awful question and the others they’d posed, her mind reeling. It wasn’t that she and Nikoli hadn’t been careful. They had, with Regina insisting they clean up after themselves, leaving no trace of them having been in the inventor’s house. Unfortunately, that had the detectives commenting on how immaculate the place was.
    “It was as though everything had been wiped down,” Sheehan had said.
    “Except for the doorknob in the bathroom,” Goddard cut in.
    They’d found her prints there, the one spot she’d missed.
    A new dog began to bark, this one closer to Regina’s house. The sounds it made were just as frantic as the first animal’s were, then mournful, betraying its alarm. Surely not because two detectives approached her house.
    For a moment, Regina almost hoped for that. With Sheehan and Goddard, she at least had constitutional protections. They wouldn’t dare storm her home to harm her or Nikoli. However, with those who lived on his plane and the other dimensions, all bets were off.
    She slipped off the bed as gracefully as she could, glancing over to see if she’d awakened Nikoli.
    He remained on his back, his features relaxed, untroubled. Past him, on the nightstand, was his handheld device. A small metal box that appeared unremarkable. To the casual observer, it might have been a trendy TV remote or a space-age smart phone. Nikoli had built it months ago, using the instrument to open a portal between the dimensions so Lukan and Arez could escape the Pleasure Palace on E4 and come to this realm. Since the day of their liberation, the device had never left Nikoli’s side, always ready should he and