Hearts Aflame Collection IV: 4-Book Bundle (7 page)

“
Mads
?”

“
Oh, I'm sorry, did you think we were done?” he
asked with a sly smile. “We're not.”

She meant to protest, to tell him that he didn't
need to, that it was fine, but then his fingers slid between her legs, and
almost before she knew it, she was spread wide for his touch. He was gentle but
there was a demand to his motions that made
her own
climax something inevitable and perfectly real.

He thumbed her clit harder and harder, and her hips
thrashed. She knew that she was going climax, and some part of her fought it.
It was too much, it was all too much, and she nearly sobbed with it.

“
Let go,” he whispered in her ear. “Let go, and let
me take care of you like this.”

That was all it took. His fingers and his words
drover her over the edge, and her body lit up with fireworks. She clung to him,
knowing that she must have left deep scratches in his arm, and she cried out
her release, the aftershocks rocking her body.

When she came back to herself, he was holding her
naked body closely, as if afraid that she would disappear.

“
Is... do you want me?” she found herself saying,
and cringed. It was needy, it was strange, and she had only known him for a few
hours, but he nodded.

“
More than anything in the world,” he said. “Now it
is best if you sleep. We have a long journey in front of us.”

She did as he said, snuggling her head against his
chest, but she couldn't help but wonder if there was something else there.
Despite everything they had been through together, there was still so much she
did not know about this man, and when she slept, her dreams were troubled.

Do you like this book? Be sure to check other books in
this series

Dreams of a Restless Sleep - Volume 2

The Wolf Released - Volume 3

Hunting Hearts (Trilogy Bundle)

A heavily pregnant Erin
tries to keep a grip on her sanity as the world around her ceases to make
sense. Sean, the father of her unborn baby, is gone. He left amid utterances
that he was a werewolf and cursed. Erin dismissed his words as madness but now
as her due date approaches, she finds her home under siege. At night, she
listens in terror to the sounds of shrill howls that circle her property.

Erin is all alone and
something or someone is lurking outside in the darkness. Is she in danger or
has she been driven to the brink of madness? What if there was some truth to
Sean’s curse?

Erin looked down
forlornly, hoping to catch a glimpse of her toes, but her spherical stomach
impaired her vision. Sighing, she carefully maneuvered herself over to her sofa
and sat down.

She was two days into her
maternity leave and just a week away from her due date and she was restless.
Being alone in the house made her fitful and anxious. Each time she tried to
sleep, a noise or feeling of unease would wake her. Exhausted in her final
stages of pregnancy, Erin felt as though she
were
constantly sleepwalking, losing her connection with reality.

The sound of her phone
ringing startled her, the harsh shrill causing Erin to get a grasp of her
senses and focus. Pushing through the fog of fatigue, she answered the call.

“Hello?” Her voice was
hoarse and questioning when she spoke.

“Erin?”
came
her mother’s familiar voice.

“Hi,
Mom.”
Erin audibly sighed. As much
as she appreciated the daily calls from her mother to check in on her, what she
needed was her physical presence.
Someone to help her move
around now that she had almost doubled in size.

“How are you today?” her
mother asked anxiously.

“Tired,” Erin replied
bluntly.
“The same as every day.”
 

“It will soon pass.”

“And then I will have a
baby to keep me up at night.
A baby screaming and crying in
the night with only me to take care of it.”
Erin held back tears as she
shifted uncomfortably on the sofa. Her tiredness combined with her elevated
hormone levels were making her exceedingly emotional. Sometimes she’d sit and
sob over the most trivial of issues. The fact that she was alone was really
starting to worry her.

Sean had said that he’d
return. Erin had pushed him away, she knew that, but he’d vowed to come back
and he’d seemed resolute in his promise, but that was almost nine long months
ago. She’d heard nothing from him, and it wasn’t as if she could call him up.
Sean existed in the shadows, without a cell phone, without an address.

In her weaker moments,
Erin regretted sending him away, regretted judging him so harshly when he had
told her his delusions about being a werewolf. Sean was clearly crazy, but at
this stage she’d take crazy over nothing at all. She needed help, needed a
second pair of hands, but the father of her unborn child was long gone and
likely not coming back.

“You need to stay strong,”
Erin’s mother instructed through the phone. “You need to stay strong for your
baby.”

Anguished tears were
streaming down Erin’s cheeks. She felt so unbearably alone, even though another
life was growing within her. It had been two short days since she’d left the
comfort and familiarity of the office, yet she felt like she was sinking. Sleep
continued to elude her.

Erin didn’t feel safe
alone. She’d taken to leaving lights on at night, to bolting her front door
shut and checking it repeatedly before she slowly heaved herself up the
staircase, the staircase where it was likely her child had been conceived.

Everything felt so long
ago, as if it had occurred in another life. Erin struggled to remember how it
felt to be in Sean’s arms, to feel the power of him inside her. Now all she
knew was discomfort and exhaustion.

“I’m so tired,” Erin
admitted desperately to her mother.

“You still can’t sleep?”

“No,” Erin sighed deeply.

“Why
not?”

Erin didn’t want to admit
the real reason she was being kept awake at night, as she feared it would make
her as crazy as Sean if she was to say the words out loud.

“The baby keeps kicking,”
Erin lied.

“It will all get easier, I
promise.”

“Can’t you just come and
stay with me, until the baby comes?” Erin pleaded as she entered into her daily
dance with her mother, when she begged her for assistance and the older woman
refused to come over, always offering the same pitiful excuses.

“I’m in no state to
travel,” Erin’s mother answered softly.

There was some truth in
this. Erin’s mother had been extremely fragile when she had last seen her, her
skin thin and stretched too tightly over brittle bones. Her hair had grayed and
thinned away, becoming wispy and ethereal around her head, making her dark eyes
appear even darker, like bottomless pools surrounded by a glacial pallor.

“But I need you.”

Erin sensed that while her
mother was fragile, she could be more than capable of traveling if she decided
to. The older woman was weak and feeble but not completely incapacitated. Erin
knew that there was another reason for her absence, something she wouldn’t
discuss with her. Erin had an uneasy sense that it was all connected to Sean
and his werewolf fantasies.

As Erin became
increasingly tired and her body ached unbearably, she found herself wondering
if perhaps there was some truth to his claims. The sounds she heard at night
certainly made her to believe so. But she knew it was all impossible. There was
no darkness, and it was impossible for a man to become a wolf. She just needed
sleep to help her gain some
clarity, that
was all.

“I’m sorry I just…I can’t
be there.” Erin’s mother always sounded pained when she relayed this.

“I could come and stay
with you?” Erin suggested, hope rising in her voice as she did so.

“No, no,” her mother
replied a little too quickly. “You wouldn’t be safe here.”

“Why
not?”

The elephant in the room
dared to step forward, trying to jostle its way in to the conversation. Sean.
The werewolves.
Her mother.
Somehow
it was all connected. But for some reason, Erin was only being fed half of a
story.

“Mom,
why can’t I come and stay with you?
Why won’t it be safe?” Erin demanded
,
wincing
as, within her stomach, her unborn baby kicked out at her.

“Has the father returned
yet?” Her mother tactfully changed the subject.

“No.” Erin cast her eyes
down sadly at the floor. For months she had expected Sean’s return, but he
never came. She found herself wasting countless hours wondering what had become
of him. Wherever he was, whatever he was doing, she had no way of knowing.
Dwelling on it all was pointless.

“I’m sure he will soon.”

“I doubt it!” Erin
declared coldly. “He’s been absent for the better part of nine months now. I’ve
not seen or heard a word from him! If he thinks he can be a part of his child’s
life after not being around for the pregnancy, he’s mistaken!”

Her baby kicked, as if in
protest to the words, and Erin leaned forward in pain, rubbing a hand over her
stomach.

“Are you so sure you’ve
heard nothing?” Erin’s mother asked. The question caught Erin by surprise.

She’d definitely not heard
anything from Sean in the conventional sense. There had been no letters, no
calls, no emails or texts sent by him. A shiver ran down Erin’s spine as she
thought about the noises that kept her up at night. How could her mother even
know about them? And more worryingly, how could she possibly attribute them to
Sean? Once more, Erin felt like she was being shut out, denied all the facts,
making it impossible for her to piece together the puzzle of her life.

“I’ve heard nothing,” Erin
replied, her voice level and menacing. “The father has not been in touch, not
at all.”

“I’m sure he will return.”

“How can you say that?”
Erin almost screamed in to the phone. “You don’t know him; you don’t know what
sort of person he is! He’s a vagrant, a drifter with grave mental delusions. My
child would be better off never knowing their father, just like I was!”

“Sweetheart, I’m just
trying to make you feel better,” her mother replied simply, and Erin felt her
anger immediately thaw at the logical basis of the comment.

“Sorry, Mom, I’m just on
edge.”

“I know.”

“All these thoughts about
darkness that you used to talk about, it
worries
me. I
can’t sleep…” Erin’s voice trailed off as she noticed that outside the sun had
set while they had been talking and the street beyond her window was now
covered with shadows.

“Try not to worry, it
doesn’t help the baby.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.” Erin
cleared her throat and straightened up as best she could. “But all those things
you used to say to me, about my being drawn to darkness?”

Erin couldn’t help but
inquire some more. The sounds that haunted her nights and kept her awake made her
fearful that there had been some truth to her mother’s laments and that
something dark and sinister now stalked both her home and her unborn baby.

“You cannot think of those
things now,” her mother said, her tone becoming overly stern. “You must be strong
for your baby. You need to be positive.”

“You’re right.” Erin ran a
hand over her stomach and smiled sleepily to herself. Her baby had ceased
kicking, probably falling in to a perfect, restful sleep. Sometimes, she
imagined how safe babies must feel, locked away from the outside world without
any knowledge of darkness or evil. To her baby, the world must seem a pure and
perfect place. How cruel life can be to steal that from the youth.

“Are you going to bed
soon?” her mother asked. “You need to rest. The baby will soon be here.”

“I guess so.” Erin warily
eyed the street beyond. She didn’t trust the darkness. With some effort, she
stood up and waddled over to her window, pulling the curtains closed. Flicking
on a light, the living room was immediately bathed in an artificial glow that
offered her some comfort.

“Is it weird that I sleep
with the lights on now?” Erin asked absently.

“Not at all, it’s whatever
makes you feel safe.”

“I’d feel a whole lot
safer if you were here,” Erin admitted sadly.

“But you wouldn’t be,” her
mother replied ambiguously.

Erin was too tired to pick
up on the comment. Her body was aching, sending deep throbs down her back. Her
eyelids had grown heavy and she suddenly longed for the release of sleep, even
though she knew it wouldn’t come. It never did.

“I’m so tired,” Erin
declared, feeling that the statement had become her catchphrase of late.

“Then go rest,” her mother
urged from her home miles away, the phone line the only connection between
them.

Erin shuffled out of her
chair and, keeping the phone to her ear, began to climb up her staircase with
slow, methodical steps.

“I’m heading up to bed,”
Erin explained as her breathing deepened.

“Good.”

“I just…don’t feel safe
here.” Erin reached the top of the stairs and took a moment to catch her
breath.

“You can’t think like
that, everything will be fine.”

“How can you be so sure?”
Erin asked skeptically.

“I just can be. Now go get
in bed. I’ll stay on the line until you fall asleep if that will help?”

“Thanks.” Erin smiled
slightly at the kind gesture. During her pregnancy, she’d become closer to her
mother than she ever thought was possible. Finally they had a joint purpose;
the baby who would soon be born. It unified them in a way neither thought would
ever happen.

Before she climbed into
bed, Erin peered out at the street from behind her curtains. Everything
appeared normal. Cars were neatly lined up on driveways; the street was dotted
with various pools of light dropped down from the streetlights above. The world
seemed quiet and at peace.

Satisfied, Erin turned
away from the window and climbed into bed, leaving her bedside light on as she
did so.

“I appreciate you calling
me,” she said sleepily into the phone, which she placed on the pillow beside
her.

“I just want to be there
for you,” her mother answered.

Rolling over, Erin dared
to close her eyes, her body begging for the release of sleep. She hoped that
this night she could be left to rest and dream.

“Goodnight,” she called
out dreamily to her mother as the world fell away.

***

Erin jolted awake, as she
did every night. Her eyes squinted painfully into the room, which was
illuminated by her bedside lamp. Erin could no longer sleep in complete
darkness. Within her chest, her heart raced madly. Something had woken her
abruptly, and she already sensed that she knew what it was.

Reaching across the bed,
Erin retrieved the handset on which she had been speaking to her mother.
Raising it to her ear, she could hear that the line was now disconnected. Her
mother had listened until her daughter was sleeping soundly and then ended the
call. But that was a couple of hours ago. Erin was now awake and alone and
fearful that her home was once more under siege.