Seared [Pain & Love 1] (BookStrand Publishing Romance) Read online

  Pain & Love 1

  Seared

  He comes to our world to free the soul of his eternal mate from her human existence but she doesn't want his help…or his love.

  Disillusioned by a marriage that ended tragically, suspicious and antisocial Reyna Sommer is not pleased to find herself stuck in a strange situation with a man who died and mystically revived in her woods. Worse, because of her association with him, she is now being hunted by a group that targets unnatural beings for destruction.

  Tyler Rhodes knows the best chance he and Reyna have to survive the Hunters depends on them being together, but he must first convince her to trust him. Can a man who traversed a galaxy for the woman he's loved for centuries finish his journey the way he hopes: with his mate safe and finally able to be with him forever?

  Genre: Contemporary, Fantasy, Science Fiction

  Length: 37,652 words

  SEARED

  Pain & Love 1

  Ashlei D. Hawley

  ROMANCE

  www.BookStrand.com

  ABOUT THE E-BOOK YOU HAVE PURCHASED: Your non-refundable purchase of this e-book allows you to only ONE LEGAL copy for your own personal reading on your own personal computer or device. You do not have resell or distribution rights without the prior written permission of both the publisher and the copyright owner of this book. This book cannot be copied in any format, sold, or otherwise transferred from your computer to another through upload to a file sharing peer to peer program, for free or for a fee, or as a prize in any contest. Such action is illegal and in violation of the U.S. Copyright Law. Distribution of this e-book, in whole or in part, online, offline, in print or in any way or any other method currently known or yet to be invented, is forbidden. If you do not want this book anymore, you must delete it from your computer.

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  A SIREN-BOOKSTRAND TITLE

  IMPRINT: Romance

  SEARED

  Copyright © 2014 by Ashlei D. Hawley

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-62741-785-3

  First E-book Publication: June 2014

  Cover design by Harris Channing

  All art and logo copyright © 2014 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  PUBLISHER

  www.BookStrand.com

  DEDICATION

  For my readers. For those who greet each word, passage, and project with the same passion and excitement that I do—thank you.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  SEARED

  Pain & Love 1

  ASHLEI D. HAWLEY

  Copyright © 2014

  Chapter One

  He said “hello,” and then he died.

  He died with his hand still cupped around Reyna’s rain-damp cheek, while she fumbled for her phone to call for help.

  This was what she got, Reyna told herself, for being out in the woods behind her property for a night run in the rain. Like there wasn’t risk enough for catching a cold or slipping and spraining an ankle, a strange man had died in her arms for reasons unknown. It was very bad luck.

  Reyna’s hand stilled on her phone. She didn’t feel the driving urge to call 911 now, though she’d been frantic to as soon as she’d stumbled over the dying man.

  He looked so incredibly odd.

  His hand had fallen away from her face, and the electrical charge she’d felt at his touch had begun to dissipate. That hand—it had an extra digit. Instead of a normal five fingers, it sported a sixth between what were commonly referred to as the middle and ring fingers. They were abnormally long and slender, fairly luminescent though the skin was dark, like tarnished gold. The hand in all of its strangeness was absurdly beautiful. Reyna cautiously ran a finger along the extra digit, and then the back of the hand itself. His skin was different than hers. Rough and ridged, it seemed to be thicker and possessing greater complexity than her own.

  Reyna was leery of him, but she chided herself that a dead man could do little damage to her.

  Unless he was contagious with whatever made him appear so odd-looking. What if it was a deadly illness? What if she contacted a communicable disease that had killed him?

  With whatever killed him.

  She snatched her hand back quickly but concluded in short order that if he was contagious, that first contact of his skin against hers had surely damned her.

  The rain continued to fall, trickling down her skin even as it seemed to absorb into his. It seemed funny to her, but wherever she touched on him was dry.

  More curious than cautious, Reyna gingerly turned the dead man over to his side so that she could see his other hand, which he’d been laying on. It was a difficult task, as the man had to be over seven feet tall and had large, tightly packed muscles proudly on display. He wore no shirt or shoes. The only article of clothing he did have on were pants that clung to his obviously strong legs. The pants were as tight as Reyna’s running pants and showed him to be a fitness aficionado more so than she was. Legs didn’t come like that naturally, she knew. It required a firm dedication and many hours of gym work to get a physique like this man had.

  She sought the other hand, picked it up, and studied it. Her clinical observation did not come from training—she was a copyright editor—but more from what she considered a now permanently detached personality. This man was dead and it was sad, but she didn’t care. She was merely curious about him.

  The extra digit was the same—not a singular deformity on the one limb. How interesting, she thought.

  Kneeling in the dampened grass, which felt scratchy against her knees, Reyna pondered the man’s incredibly unique form. Lying on his side as he was, she couldn’t see his eyes. They were now closed but they’d been enormous and almost too big for his face. When he’d locked them on her mossy green ones, she’d seen that they were brilliant indigo—a shade she’d never seen duplicated in anyone else—with long, lush lashes darker than the night around them. Contacts, she considered of the amazing color, but the shape of them had been particular as well.

  A flash of color on the man’s hip right above his pant line caught Reyna’s attention. It was darker than his skin, obviously a pattern, and she used the light from her phone to see it better. It seemed to Reyna that the mark was a tattoo depicting a tree, fully cloaked in a coat of healthy leaves. A simple tree.

  When she moved around his body, leaving him propped on the one side, Reyna saw other marks. At first she thought several, bu
t then she saw there were probably a hundred at least. They intercepted his pant line, so she was sure there were more under the fabric. They marched up along his spine in neat lines, each relatively small and each seeming to correlate to a different time period in history. Here at the curving base of his spine, she saw the Egyptian Eye of Osiris. A pyramid sat above it. A crescent moon sat beside a gallows and both made her shiver for different reasons. As she continued her exploration of his varied and strange markings, she found swords and ships, names and numbers. She was confused at what they all meant.

  She reached his exceptionally broad shoulders and her blood grew colder than the rain that still fell around them.

  The last tattoo was more than familiar to her. Reyna had designed that tattoo. She wore the exact same one on the exact same spot on her own body and had for coming up on two years. It was the symbol of the astrological sign Libra—like the outline of a sunrise over water, mated to the Egyptian ankh. Between ribbons that interlaced the two symbols, Reyna had woven the most precious name she knew in beautiful, scrawling text, Judith, the name of her daughter. The tattoo was identical on the man, down to the name of her little girl.

  Jerking back from the man, Reyna felt immediately disconcerted. The scene seemed far more ominous now, which was remarkable considering the man had died in front of her. How was he related to her, she wondered. The tattoo was unique—too unique for its appearance on the body of a dead man in her woods to be a coincidence. What had brought him there? And now more than ever, she was deeply concerned over what had killed him.

  She fingered her cell phone once more, and the desire to call for help welled within her once more. She touched a button to open the call dialogue but stopped short when she saw movement.

  He was dead. She knew he was dead.

  But he moved.

  Jerking back from him instinctively, Reyna watched in fascination that bordered on terror.

  He was changing.

  His skin shifted, muscles moved, bones popped. Flesh receded and bulged, smoothed and calmed.

  When his body stilled, he was different. His hair, which had been pale gold in a spill of straight silk that rolled over his shoulders, was now a deeper, more natural-looking blond with hints of creamy brown lowlights. His skin was tanned but once again, the shade was more normal than it had been. Though he’d seemed well over seven feet tall, his height had dwindled to that of a more typical adult male.

  The thin, torn pants he’d been wearing we now destroyed beyond use. Reyna wasn’t a shuddering, blushing flower of a woman. His nudity did not embarrass her or force her to turn away. She observed all of him—the muscled, long legs that were graceful for a man though still powerful, the swell of buttocks that met an almost angular hip, and the impressive genitals nestled in curls shades darker than his other hair. He would be a hefty handful, she saw, and noted the fact with the same detachment she’d felt when studying his extra digits.

  Thinking of them, she drew her gaze to his hands. They were normal. There were no extra fingers to be found.

  “Strange,” Reyna murmured to herself. “How strange!”

  After hearing her own voice, she identified another sound that made itself known underneath the rain. He was breathing. His slender but strong chest rose and fell in a shallow rhythm.

  Then she heard another sound—one much harder to identify. It was a chuffing, slicing sound that she didn’t recognize. She saw lights above the trees and put an image to the noises—helicopters.

  “What in the world are you into, buddy?” she asked of the prone man. “Who do you have going through so much trouble to find you?”

  She couldn’t comprehend that there were helicopters scouring her woods for another reason other than the strange creature lying before her.

  His eyes popped opened and Reyna was floored by a multitude of emotions. She was shocked because of his Lazarus act, interested in the new shade of his eyes, and infused with strange, outrageous heat when their gazes locked.

  He sat up, and Reyna stayed motionless. She wasn’t intimidated by him and made it known by her refusal to back away from him no matter how strange and fantastical the situation was.

  His name was Tyris, and he had died to be reborn on this world and for this woman. When he saw her, he was filled with such a tenacious happiness that he acted without thinking or even noting the glare she gave him.

  “Finally,” he breathed, and his voice was a low timbre, a shiver-inducing roll across Reyna’s skin.

  He reached out and clasped her around the back of her neck. The next thing she knew, he was pulling her close and molding his lips to hers. She felt the shock of the kiss spread through her whole body, nerve endings alighting with alien intensity.

  She let the kiss play out for a moment, amazed at how electric the feel of his lips against hers was. When his tongue probed her mouth, she tasted his desperation and arousal and decided she’d let it go on long enough. She pushed him away with enough force to let him know they were done.

  “That the typical greeting where you’re from?” she asked coolly, using her tone to downplay how much she’d felt from the kiss.

  “My name is…Tyler,” he told her, because that was the information for his new life. He was far too happy to have found the woman he had travelled through the stars for to notice the coldness in her tone or the world around him. Activating the bracelet he now wore around his wrist with the depressing of a small button, he was grateful for the clothes that melted onto his body and the shoes that hugged his feet. He felt more normal, less inconspicuous. He was ready to be human.

  “Neat trick,” Reyna said indifferently, but what seemed to be magic made her mouth go dry.

  “I came here for you,” he told her. He was finally becoming perturbed by her expression, tone, and the rain that fell around them.

  “You probably came a long way for nothing,” Reyna said as she stood. There were pins and needles in her legs. She’d been kneeling for far too long.

  Tyler stood as well. Panic was starting to eat away at the edges of his joy at finding his mate at last.

  “You’re my mate,” he told her. A hint of nervousness colored the words. “You’re the only thing.”

  Reyna looked to the right, where the helicopter lights had been scouring the treetops.

  “There’s another thing over there and I’m pretty sure it isn’t here for me,” she told him. “You should get out of here. I don’t know who you are or what you’re into but…” She hesitated, not knowing how to end the conversation. Finally, she decided on, “Congratulations on not being dead.”

  She heard crashing through the trees and knew those sounds immediately for what they were. Those were people doing the ground sweeps who didn’t know their way through her woods.

  “What are you into?” she snapped. She was angry that there were people tromping over her property, probably involved in the same thing the strange man was involved in. Either that or they were law enforcement coming to take him away, and she didn’t want to get mixed up in either scenario.

  Turning to Tyler, she almost fell victim to that gaze—the deep blue was so lovely, almost the indigo they’d been before. He tried to hold her with his eyes, but she turned away. His face and heart both fell at her refusal of him.

  “You,” he said simply yet empathically. Reyna rolled her eyes at the candid statement. She was not such an easy mark.

  She saw the first of the men in one of the helicopter’s sweeping passes. Where she ran was a clear area between two swaths of trees which were clear because of the power line towers that occupied the space between them.

  Reyna ducked when she saw what the lead man carried. She’d been around enough of them, being a casual hunter herself, to know a rifle when she saw one. “What the hell?” she hissed at Tyler as he ducked down beside her. He decided it would be safer to follow her lead for the time being. “Are you a fugitive or something?”

  “I’d lean more toward the ‘something,’” Tyler
answered hesitantly.

  Perhaps hearing them—or maybe seeing them, Reyna didn’t know how good their night vision was—the men turned as a unit to where Tyler and Reyna were hunkered down. Reyna cursed. She was almost certain they’d been made.

  The lead man raised his rifle and fired.

  The projectile whizzed through the air and shredded leaves before burying itself audibly in a tree trunk.

  “Shit!” Reyna exclaimed. She was a survivor, used to reacting first and panicking much after if a situation called for panic.

  Reyna did the only thing she thought was logical. She stood, turned, sprinted, and plunged into the trees to her left. It was dark and it was raining, but she knew that would only work to her advantage. The people following didn’t know the woods like she did. Leaving the strange man with electrifying kisses to fend for himself, she ran.

  Tyris—no, he was Tyler now—quickly dashed after the fleeing Reyna. He couldn’t see in the blasted darkness, but he followed the feel of his mate. He’d followed that tie through a galaxy. He could certainly follow it through a night wood in a heavy rain.

  Reyna was breathing hard but she wasn’t as exhausted as she’d expect to be. Running for her life wasn’t much different from running a marathon. The stakes were higher, but the stress on her body was remarkably about the same.

  She looped around the back way, which took her about a half a mile from the trail that led to her home. There were other houses that way. She didn’t want to go straight to her own.

  Reyna debated hiding out in an abandoned concrete culvert that had rested in its spot for over a decade, but she felt herself still pursued. She moved on, attempting to be as silent as possible over the rain-heavy grasses, which thankfully muffled her progress.