Twisted Desire Read online

  TWISTED DESIRE

  Sharon Kay

  This is a work of fiction. Any actual places are used in a fictional context. Other names of places and people are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual places or people is purely coincidental.

  TWISTED DESIRE

  Cover art by Kim Killion at The Killion Group, Inc.

  Editing and interior design by

  Cheryl Murphy at Ink Slinger Editorial Services

  TWISTED DESIRE © 2017 Sharon Kay

  BOOKS BY SHARON KAY

  The Solsti Prophecy series

  WICKED WIND

  WICKED WAVES

  WICKED FLAMES

  ON WICKED GROUND

  Companion to the Solsti Prophecy series

  KISSED BY A DEMON SPY: A NOVELLA

  The Watcher’s Kiss series

  TAINTED KISS

  ASSASSIN’S KISS

  CAPTIVE’S KISS

  AWAKENING KISS

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  First, a huge, sincere THANK YOU to my readers. I hope you enjoy this Titan World story as my demons team up with humans for the first time (that I have committed to paper, anyway)! Your support, comments, and messages motivate me and mean more to me than I can possibly express.

  Thank you to my amazing husband and son, and to my parents and siblings, my in-laws, and my extended family for your love and encouragement of my creativity.

  Thank you Claudia, Cristin, and Jamie for beta reading this project. Your advice and help is invaluable!

  Thank you to Kim Killion–you’ve created another stellar cover! And to Cheryl Murphy, for editing and formatting this story into a polished little novella. And thank you to my proofreader Toshia–you always catch stuff that the rest of us missed!

  And a big hug and kiss to the many bloggers I have had the joy to work with. The support you give to indie authors is amazing. Many of you have jobs and families and still make time to read and review dozens (if not hundreds) of books each year, providing exposure for us through insightful and witty reviews, blog tours, cover reveals, and contests. THANK YOU!

  Dear Readers,

  Welcome to the Titan World books with stories ranging from military romance to paranormal to contemporary romance. There’s something for everyone—action-packed romance, swoon-worthy moments, and happily ever after!

  When I started the Titan series, I wanted to combine my love of steamy romance and action-packed suspense. I wrote strong men and women who I hoped readers would fall in love with. I can’t think of anything more exciting than opening my world up to very talented authors to extend that experience so that you, the reader, can have a deeper connection to more than one book series at a time.

  You will meet new characters and see them interact with familiar ones; you will also see the interpretation of the Titan universe through another author’s eyes. I hope that you take the time to experience each book in the Titan World series!

  I’m excited for you to read Sharon Kay’s Twisted Desire, a sexy paranormal romance where the supernatural collides with the Titan Group in the hunt for a killer on the streets of Chicago. If you’re a fan of Titan’s Parker or Locke, then get ready for a smoking hot story with a new twist. I give you my word, this is one Titan story that you will love!

  Thank you to my good friend Sharon and all the authors who took time out of their busy writing schedules to participate in this project. I think result is something truly special for Titan readers.

  Titan hugs and happy reading,

  Cristin Harber

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Please Leave a Review

  Awakening Kiss

  Black Dawn

  A Note from Sharon

  About Sharon Kay

  More Titan World Books

  CHAPTER

  1

  WHEELS RUMBLED, AND STEEL SCREECHED as a train rolled along Chicago’s hundred-year-old elevated transit tracks. Twenty-five stories above, each clickety-clack and metallic shudder reached Rhys’s enhanced hearing as if he were standing on the platform. A crisp fall wind pushed insistently at his back as he and his fellow fighter, Jude, stood atop one of the city’s boxy office towers.

  Rhys rubbed one shoulder and inhaled the scents of oil, diesel fuel, and exhaust fumes. No hint of supernatural creatures. “Smells like everyone’s gone home for the night.”

  “Agreed.” Jude rested his hands on his hips. “Bet all those nymphs are in bed with some very happy men right now.”

  Rhys laughed. Earlier in the evening they’d encountered a dozen nymphs posing as a bachelorette party. Giggly, friendly, and focused on sex, the nymphs’ intent was clear. Human men stood no chance against their wiles. Rhys and Jude had politely deterred them. Nymphs were always in the mood, and the men were on the job. Not to mention Rhys was happily and thoroughly mated.

  But the rest of the night’s patrol had only yielded a witch struggling to cast a love spell. Now, an hour before dawn, Rhys’s mind was already on the curvy woman in his bed at home. Enza woke insanely early to bake pastries for her coffee shop, but if Rhys and Jude wrapped up early, he may get home in time to catch her in the shower—

  The wail of a siren on the street below pierced his wandering thoughts, echoing off the metal and concrete buildings in rhythmic reverberations.

  Jude cracked his neck as a second siren joined in, then a third. The two Watchers prowled to the edge of the flat roof. Red and blue flashes punctuated the darkness below as emergency vehicles zoomed by and continued west.

  Rhys watched the multicolored streaks create a path through the night. No otherworldly scents or energy signatures drifted on the wind. Only human. And Watchers left those problems to human authorities. Not that they didn’t care, but their job was to monitor supernatural activities and keep them far from human eyes.

  But when a second trio of emergency vehicles raced after the first, Rhys’s curiosity was piqued. He shot Jude a sidelong glance. “Could be interesting.”

  “Nothing else going on. Let’s check it out.” Jude backed up, then ran forward in a blur of motion, vaulting off the edge of the roof. Legs churning, he landed in a crouch on the neighboring structure.

  Rhys followed, cutting a swift path through the night air. The place next door was a few floors shorter, so gravity worked in his favor as he somersaulted in the void five hundred feet above the ground to land next to Jude.

  “Dude, Enza’d kick your ass for that shit.”

  “She’s seen me do worse.” Rhys ran across the roof to the opposite edge, repeating his jump, but this time without the acrobatics. He and Jude continued, racing and jumping across the building tops unseen. Moving at ground level would only slow them down.

  They trailed the police cars and fire trucks for a mile until the first responders converged in a haphazardly parked cluster of metal and flashing lights. On a nearby sidewalk, three cops huddled around a figure on the ground.

  Rhys stopped on top of a building across the street. Ambulances pulled up, followed by a fire chief truck and several more squad cars. Even from twenty floors up, the odor of death below was as clear as if the Watchers were at street level.

  A man lay on his back. His open jacket revealed a once-white dress shirt, now darkened with a foreboding blot of crimson.

  “Human,” Jude murmured.

  Rhys nodded in agreement, but frowned as EMTs scurried to the man’s side. The cops moved to let them through, and in that blink of space, the damage Rhys saw made his hunting i
nstincts flare. His fists clenched. “What the fuck did that?”

  Another policeman moved then, giving the Watchers a temporarily unobstructed view. And the gaping wound in the man’s chest screamed all kinds of wrong.

  The carnage was a mess of uneven edges, mangled flesh, and torn muscle. White tips of splintered ribs were visible even from Rhys’s vantage point.

  “Shit.” Jude growled low in his throat. “Either a very sick and twisted human, or one of our unfriendlies.”

  Rhys inhaled deeply. The wind at his back didn’t help, but as it swirled around him in a taunting eddy, it brought a new and very familiar scent.

  He glanced at Jude, who was doing the same thing and scowling. “You smell that?”

  “Yeah. Goddamn it.”

  Pepper and cloves permeated the predawn air, mixing with the scent of blood and death.

  “A Deserati female.” A powerful predatory species of demon, Deserati were usually on the good side of things, though the Watchers had encountered their share of rogues. Their most lethal trait—and in this case, the likely murder weapon—were their leathery whip-like tails. Rhys glared at the bright yellow letters CPD emblazoned on the backs of so many vests below. They would never know what they were up against.

  The scent’s owner was gone, but she’d deliberately left a macabre calling card. Maybe it wasn’t meant for Rhys and Jude, but that didn’t matter. It had just become their op.

  “She may have blood on her tail,” Jude said. “I’ll drop down to get a stronger scent and then follow it.”

  Rhys nodded grimly. It was a long shot but one they had to try. “I’ll get close, see what I can pick up.”

  Rhys paced to the side of the building. Peering over the edge, only a dark alley with a dumpster showed below. Perfect. He jumped to the concrete.

  Jude ducked out first, passing as close to the caution tape and jumble of first responders as he could without raising suspicion. He turned north, and Rhys waited a minute until his friend was out of sight. Rhys stalked around the building, emerging on the other side. Acting nonchalant, like anyone who would be out for an early morning walk, he crossed the street toward the buzz of activity.

  No point in trying to talk to the officers or medics. They would be zip-lipped on any of the details they knew, and would hold tightly knit speculations on what they didn’t. He neared, nostrils open to any nuance of scent and ears open to all the frenzied chatter.

  The static of police radios crackled from cars and handheld devices. Red and blue beams danced across stony facades and reflected off immense windows. Short, choppy sentences carried to Rhys’s ears…

  “Who would do this?”

  “You mean what would do this?”

  “That’s fucked up, man.”

  “You ever seen anything like it?”

  Rhys held his phone, studying the screen as if it were fascinating. A plain beige sedan screeched to a halt behind the last row of police cars, and a human man emerged, displaying a badge to the officers who had initially moved to block him

  “Cook County State’s Attorney. What the hell happened?” His long trench coat flapped behind him as he ducked under the yellow tape.

  Rhys’s ears perked as a cop gave a run down. “Male, age forty-nine, found dead with a chest wound.”

  “Gun shot?”

  The cop cleared his throat. “Not certain what the weapon was. You better come and see.”

  “Name?” the attorney asked as they neared the body.

  “Driver’s license states a Scott Dayton. ID badge matches—looks like he worked right here.” The officer pointed to the building in front of them. “Dayton Diagnostics.”

  The cop and the attorney kept up their talk of what they didn’t know. Rhys continued, stalking two blocks away before vaulting to a rooftop. He had a name, an age, a place of employment—time to search out every possible scrap of information that the web held on Scott Dayton. Any data, whether public, password protected, or encrypted, would help Rhys pull together the how-and-why that brought this human to the wrong side of a Deserati demon’s tail.

  CHAPTER 2

  A COUPLE HOURS LATER, ENZA sat next to Rhys in the passenger seat of his Escalade, listing the day’s menu. “Pumpkin muffins, maple brown sugar frosted croissants, pound cake—I haven’t decided if I should make a pumpkin or maple icing for that yet…”

  “It all sounds damn good.” Rhys steered the vehicle to the trendy city neighborhood where her coffee shop occupied prime real estate on one of the main thoroughfares. “Bring some home?”

  She smirked. “If there’s any left. People go nuts for these fall flavors.”

  He parked in front of the store and rounded the front of the car, grabbing the door handle before his sexy mate could open it herself. “Save one. I’ll make you glad you did.” Leaning in, he pressed a swift, heated kiss to her lips, then extended a hand to help her out.

  Enza slid off the seat with a wicked grin. “Such a gentleman,” she teased.

  On the near-empty sidewalk, he pulled her close as the sun struggled to gain traction against the gray autumn clouds. “Nope.”

  Lips pressed to his neck, she nipped his skin. “Not an hour ago you weren’t, that’s for sure.”

  He palmed her ass. “You loved it.”

  “Always.” She nuzzled her cheek against his pec, placing a kiss on the long-sleeved T-shirt he wore. Tracing one slender finger above his heart, she raised big brown eyes to him. “That was awful, what happened to that man.”

  “Yeah.” As a warrior, Rhys was used to scenes of blood and death. But a demon’s blatant disregard for human life raised his hackles. “We have a big problem on our hands.”

  She pulled back. “Sorry you couldn’t get into the websites you needed. That’s rare.”

  His lips tilted in a mirthless half smile. “I’ll take the compliment baby, but I’m not at the top of the hacking food chain.”

  “You are to me.” A sharp gust of wind swirled around them, and she tightened the red scarf looped around her jacket collar. “My number one hottie demon hacker struck out—are you sure it wasn’t my fault?”

  Enza’s innate ability to manipulate lightning had the unfortunate side effect of giving her trouble with electricity and computers. But this had nothing to do with her. “No, bella. Scott Dayton’s office has better cyber security than I’ve ever seen.” He rubbed the back of his neck. His skills got him into a lot of places, but this required a phone call to the best of the best.

  She gazed up at him, searching his face and detecting his emotion in the way mates could. “You have a plan.” It wasn’t a question.

  “I do. It’s time to call a friend.”

  “Who?”

  “An old buddy I worked with in Washington, DC. Guy’s crazy smart.”

  Her brows knit. “What is he?”

  Rhys knew exactly what she meant, though the question would sound odd to any random passer-by. Enza was still learning the many species in his world—their world—which she had only recently realized existed alongside the human one. He held in a smile as he spoke the word in her mind. Human.

  Her eyes widened. Human? How…what…Did you… She tilted her head. Does he know you’re a demon?

  No, and that’s how it will stay.

  Her jaw dropped. “Oh my gosh, How are you going to manage that? I have so many questions for you. And I have to go into work.” She smacked his chest. “You’re bad.” But she couldn’t keep the stunned expression off her face. How do you have a human friend?

  You thought I was human when you met me. He grinned.

  “Yeah, but that changed real fast.” A purr crept into her voice as she dragged a finger down his chest. “You worked with this guy?”

  “Yup. He’s the tech expert of his group. Bunch of human dudes, mostly ex-military. They do shit the government won’t own up to or has too much red tape in the way to get done fast enough.”

  “Oh my god. That sounds exciting. Wait. That sounds like wh
at you do.” She frowned. “Well, if you had a government.”

  He snorted. “I’ll fill you in on all the details later. Gonna call him now. And you need to feed the caffeinated masses.”

  “True. The ever growing yoga mom crowd loves my mini almond cakes.” She gathered her long dark hair into a bunch at one shoulder, then let it go. “It’ll be busy.”

  He hooked an arm around her neck, pulling her close for a taste of her pouty lips. “See you this afternoon.”

  “Good luck. I can’t wait to hear about it.” She walked to the door of her shop and unlocked it. Turning, she blew him a kiss and slipped inside.

  A few lonely leaves skittered down the sidewalk as Rhys leaned against the SUV. It’d been years since he’d talked to Parker Black. They may’ve exchanged a random email now and then, and he’d heard the guy was married, but that was it. Not much time for gossip when supernatural enemies roamed the city. Rhys guessed Parker was just as busy working for his grumptastic boss.

  Jared Westin. He could give Rhys’s leader, Arawn, a run for the money in the pissed-off-alpha-in-charge role. Putting those two together in a room would be epic—but good or bad, Rhys wasn’t sure. They’d either kill each other, or walk out of there running every aspect of planet Earth.

  Rhys blew out a breath. Enough memory lane shit. He had a crime on his hands. A human had been killed by a demon on a city street. Last night Jude lost the faint trace of scent he was following when he reached the Chicago River, so they came up empty on all fronts. The police were keeping it as quiet and sanitized as they could. Lucky for them, it had happened at a lonely hour on an empty boulevard.

  The listing he had in his contacts for Parker came back with a no longer in service recording. Rhys dialed the main number of Titan Group, the small but powerful network of humans who did more in secret to keep the world safe than millions would ever know. Maybe Enza was right about the similarities of their work. The men and women of Titan would fight to the death to take down enemies, as would the Watchers.