Chapter One
Awareness rushed over Aiden Brooks a moment before he found himself the focus of the petite package of a gorgeous female’s glower that he recognized from her pictures. This was Kelly Riggs, the thirty-two year old, Austin, Texas Medical Examiner, whose office he stood in without invitation, or introduction.
“What exactly do you think you’re doing?” she demanded, swiping at a strand of long, raven hair that fell from the clip holding it haphazardly on top of her head.
“Waiting on you, of course,” he replied nonchalantly, as if he had every right to be standing behind her desk, reading the file he’d been studying upon her arrival.
“While reading my private documents?” she challenged, rounding the desk to snatch the file, before fixing her rich honey colored eyes on him, little flecks of orange fire simmering in their depths. “I need to see identification or I’m calling security.”
He barely contained a smile that he was certain would get him hit, and that very certainty, intrigued him.
She intrigued him. Most humans, males included, instinctively kept a distance from him, wary of his long dark hair and the unnatural shade of his pitch black eyes. He didn’t wear the colored lenses many of his kind chose to wear to blend in with the rest of the population and not because he had some sick desire to scare humans. Because he wanted his enemies to know who and what he was, even before they sensed that he too, was a predator. But this woman didn’t sense that in him, or perhaps, she simply didn’t care.
Not only was the office small, the space limited, but he towered over what he estimated to be her five feet four inches by a good foot and still she challenged him.
“Names Aiden Brooks,” he said, intentionally ignoring her request for identification. “I’m inv
estigating the recent deaths of six University of Texas students. I understand they were all female and all had the same drug in their systems. But your notes also indicate an extreme anemic condition. I don’t see a reference to the wounds that caused that to happen.”
She made a frustrated sound. “You press people really are bold, aren’t you?” Ah. That explained her reaction. It wasn’t everyday a city had themselves a serial killer on the loose. The press had to be piranhas chasing the story. “I’m not with the press.”
“Then show me some ID so I know who I’m talking to and why.”
“I’m on the same team you are,” he assured her. “I’m chasing the bad guys and I’m especially good at catching monsters. And you definitely have a monster on your hands.” The blood thirsty kind of monster that her human law keepers didn’t have a chance of surviving, let alone, catching.
“ID,” she repeated, her demeanor all business.
Stubborn woman. Stubborn, sexy woman. He liked those things in a female. Too bad he didn’t have time to act on just how much. He closed the small distance between them. “Of course,” he said quietly, inhaling the sweet rose scent of her skin, his eyes capturing hers. She blinked up at him, her gaze steady, as defiant as ever, yet her pulse quickened at his nearness. That sweet scent thickened in his nostrils and told him that she wasn’t so unaffected by him, any more than he was by her. In fact, he didn’t remember the last time a female had affected him like this one, certainly not with such an instant jolt of…well, he wasn’t sure what. There was something about her, something that made him wish they had met when he didn’t have an agenda, or his duty, to attend.
Regretfully, he sent her a mental compulsion, knowing she’d hate him if she ever found out, but also knowing there were lives on the line and time was of the essence. “I’m going to need your help, Kelly.
I’m going to need you to tell me everything you know about these murders. I’ve shown you proper identification as an FBI agent, rather than a private hire. You’re confident that you need to give me this information willingly.”
She blinked once, twice, then, “Yes. Yes, of course.”
He let go of her mind, watching her shoulders relax, the tension of seeing him as an intruder fading from her delicate heart shaped face. She wet her lips, her pretty pink tongue, stroking them. Fire shot through him, his precious control that had kept him alive a hundred and thirty-two years now, sliding into the darkness of desire for a woman he barely knew. His cock thickened, his mind going places it had no business going. Aiden silently cursed, turning away from her and quickly putting the desk between them.
What the fuck was wrong with him? He didn’t get distracted by the taste of sin and satisfaction, certainly not the taste of blood – even that of a gorgeous woman. He was a Warden, the law of his kind that tracked down and killed those who turned humans into prey.
“You were right,” she said softly.