Tag: Claire

“Fertile females are like gold in Faerie, Dory—rarer even. And the fey can smell them coming. It’s like…bees to honey. You haven’t seen it—I have.” “Well, so what? They’re all adults. If they want to—” “ Fertile females.” “Oh. Oh ,” I said, finally getting it. “ Is that what you’re—” “Yes! I know what it’s like to be caught between worlds. I wouldn’t wish that on…well, certainly not a bunch of helpless children!” “But even if…I mean, the fey are notoriously infertile, right?” “With their own women, yes. These are not their own women! ” “Okay, Claire, okay. Calm down,” I told her, feeling a little strange because that was her line. “You’re their commander’s I’ve kept them so closely confined? Why Heidar has? They’ll just sneak out tonight when I’m asleep. It’s like babysitting twelve randy teenagers, and I can’t watch them all the—” “So why not get ’em some condoms?” Ray piped up. Claire stopped. And then turned to look at him. “I…don’t think they know what those are,” she said doubtfully. “They don’t have them in Faerie. The birth rate is low enough as it is; there’s no reason to develop something to lower it even further.” “Well, it ain’t rocket science,” he pointed out. “They could learn, right?” Claire was nodding, obviously liking this new idea. “Yes. Yes, they can.” She looked at me. “How many condoms do you have?” “What?” “Condoms, condoms! You must have some!”“Why must I?” I didn’t think sex once a decade warranted it. And anyway, the only guy I was into at the moment wasn’t the type to need them. Not that we would have anyway, considering that I’d spent much of the last two weeks recuperating. And that probably wasn’t going to change, since it would only make it harder when— “Dory!” “I’m fresh out,” I told her. “Well, go to the store,” Claire said, grabbing her purse and shoving it at me. “I—I’ll take the food out. They’ll have to eat first. And by the time they’re finished, you’ll be back.” “With the condoms.” “Right.” “For the giant orgy you’re convinced we’re about to have in the backyard.” “Dory! Just go!” “I’ll go with,” Ray said, getting up. “I need a snack.” Which was how I ended up condom shopping with a vampire. the house in my old Firebird. “No. She’s just…under a lot of pressure right now.” “What pressure? Her kid’s okay, right?” I nodded. Actually, I had no idea what Claire’s problem was. Maybe it was just residual. In about a year, she’d gone from underpaid auction-house employee to fey princess to new mother to woman on the run with her endangered child, who also happened to be the heir to the Blarestri throne. It was enough to put anyone on edge. But Aiden really was okay, with the conspiracy that had threatened his life over and the instigator dead. And he was now in possession of a talisman that pretty much ensured that he’d stay that way, even if someone managed to get past the wards, the phalanx in the garden, and the tense, half-dragon mother. Frankly, I didn’t fancy anyone’s chances. “She’ll calm down eventually,” I told Ray. “So what are you doing here again?” “Living,” he said, which I’d have taken for a smart remark, except he sounded pretty emphatic. But I didn’t have time to follow up on it. The nearest store was only a couple blocks away, and we’d already arrived. Sanjay, brother to Bawa of the world’s deadliest curry, ran it, but he went home at six and some new girl was on duty. We skirted the aisles of Ramen, cards of press-on nails and towers of hairspray that constituted daily essentials in Brooklyn, and finally located the condom aisle. It also housed the diapers and the baby food. I wasn’t sure if that was random product placement or brilliant advertising, but either way, there was a good selection. “So what kind are we talking about here?” Ray asked, surveying a neatly stacked display. “I don’t know. Just pick one.” “Well, there’s a lot of choice. I mean, you got your flavored, your ridged, your pre-lubed, your thin, your super-ultra-thin, “It says it glows in the dark.” “So?” “So what use is that to anybody? I mean, what am I supposed to do? Write her name in the air with it?” “I’d rather not think of you doing anything with it,” I said honestly. “Besides, the fey already glow, so you gotta think it’s a waste of—” “Ray!” I glanced around, but there was nobody within earshot. “Well, excuse me if I’m not used to buying condoms for aliens,” he said more softly. “They’re not aliens.” “Well, they’re not human. I mean, they could have anything under those tunics, you know?” “Like what?” “Like…I don’t know. It could be barbed or something.” “Barbed?” “Well, I don’t know.” He slanted me a glance. “Do you?” I just looked at him. “No, of course not. You’re too uptight.” “I am not uptight.” “You’re the definition of uptight. I bet you and Mr. Muscle Bound haven’t even done it yet.” “Okay, enough with the personal—” “Nailed it.” He nodded. “You wouldn’t have freaked out on him this afternoon otherwise. ‘Oh, no, somebody’s in my head for five seconds, even if it did save my life—’” I scowled. “You don’t get it. He’s not supposed to be able to do that.” “He’s a senior master. They got skills.” Ray shrugged. “Anyway, I don’t know what you’re complaining about. As soon as a baby and that he better toe the line. There’s the senior vamps in the family, checking out the new talent, just in case they want to recruit him for one of their cliques later on. There’s the slightly older babies, trying to dig up some dirt to make sure he stays on the bottom of the heap, and so on. And they never shut up . Yak, yak, yak, yak, yak, yak, yak. It drove me crazy for years.” “Is that what happened?” “But I got used to it. So will you.” “Maybe I don’t want to get used to it,” I muttered, examining a box that promised to vibrate. I thought that was my job. I put it back. “Oh, you want it, all right,” Ray said. “The two of you practically melt the walls every time you get within three feet of—” “That’s not the same thing,” I told him irritably. It wasn’t the sex that worried me. I’d had sex; I’d never had a relationship with a vampire unless you counted Mircea, and look how well that had turned out. If I couldn’t even manage the usual father-daughter stuff, how was I supposed to handle something much more complex with someone I didn’t know half as well? Relationships weren’t my best thing. They never had been. Even the easy ones. And nothing about Louis-Cesare was easy. “It is when you’re dating a master. You gotta take the whole package, you know?” Ray said. And then he stopped, and turned to look at me. “Hey, that’s it, isn’t it?” “What is?” “You never dated a master before.” “I’ve been with vampires.” “Yeah, sure. Any regular old vamp—I can see that. I mean, you’re stronger than him; you’re the one calling the shots; you’re the one who says when you’ve had enough and it’s time to head out.” the door. He blinked. “Well, that oughta do it.” I grabbed the basket o’ condoms and went to wait in line, ignoring the looks from a couple people ahead of me, who were apparently not used to seeing someone buying twenty boxes at once. Ray went to lean on the counter, supposedly enthralled by an awesome display of toenail clippers, but in fact snacking on the salesclerk. And, predictably, my stomach curled into a knot. It was one of the things—one of the very, very many things—about dating a master that wasn’t going to work. Ray made it sound so easy, like this was just some kind of tug-of-war, some weird power play, that I needed to get past and I’d be fine. Like all the other humans who eagerly lined up to attach themselves to the great houses. Mircea probably turned away fifty a month, and those were just the ones arrogant enough to try. Louis-Cesare, as the longtime darling of the European Senate, could hardly have attracted any fewer. Ray probably thought I should feel honored to have caught his eye. That I should feel grateful. That I should feel…whatever those other humans felt. He forgot one thing. I wasn’t human. There had always been a love/hate—okay, mostly hate—thing going on with me and the vampire community. I’d tried to stay away; I’d spent years trying. Like Claire said, there were other things to hunt and most of them were much less likely to hunt me back. But there was nothing that made my blood sing, my senses reel, my heart pound quite like chasing my natural prey. to me; they never had been. There was this weird kind of yearning underneath it all, and resentment and jealousy and a bone-deep ache that I didn’t understand. Not completely. I just knew that, every once in a while, the craving got too deep and it was either fight or fuck, and mostly it was the former but sometimes…sometimes it had been the latter. Just long enough to get it out of my system, to keep myself from going crazier than I already was. And then, yeah, I moved on. Why the hell wouldn’t I? If I stayed around, it always ended the same way, and crazy or not, I didn’t particularly like the idea of staking a former lover. No matter how much a few of them had deserved it. But this wasn’t a one-night stand. This was…well, I didn’t really know what this was, since I’d been avoiding discussing it. Talking about it meant facing the fact that this weird little interlude or experiment or whatever the hell I thought I’d been doing had run its course. Because how could you care about someone when his very means of existence made your stomach hurt? Not that Louis-Cesare needed to snack on random clerks when he probably had a whole stable lined up and eager to be used. I knew that. But still. It was what he was . And I killed what he was. “What size you think they take?” Ray asked. I looked up, blinking, to see that it was my turn. “Does it matter? We have plenty.” “Well, yeah. But they’re all different sizes,” he said, piling boxes on the counter. “And what if the—what if they need something like extra small? You got enough extra smalls?” “They’re not extra small,” I told him irritably. “They don’t need extra smalls.” “I thought you said you didn’t know.” “They’re seven feet tall!” “Don’t matter,” he argued. “Plenty of big guys got a Tiny Tim. it counts, the ladies know. You don’t gotta advertise.” The mocha-skinned clerk, who could easily have made two of Ray, snorted. “Well, there’s no way to know,” I told him, “so we’re just going to have to chance it.” “You could call her and ask.” “Call—” I stopped. “You mean Claire?” “Well, it was her idea.” I had a sudden flash of Claire’s face if I called to ask what size condom her fiancé took. It was kind of breathtaking. “You want me to ring these up or not?” the cashier asked. “If they don’t fit, can we bring them back?” “No refunds on condoms.” “Just call her,” Ray said. “I am not calling Claire and asking…I’m not calling Claire.”“Okay by me. I mean, I don’t care. But you get ’em too small and they pop off, and you get ’em too big and they slide off, and either way, it’s pointy-eared babies all ar—” “Ray!” “I mean, I guess they’d go over pretty well at a Star Trek convention, but the rest of the time—” “All right! Stop it! All right!” “It’s not just Claire who’s a little tense,” he said, as I dug around for a cell phone I didn’t have, and then commandeered his. I didn’t waste time trying to figure out how to phrase this because some things are better just winged. “If you’re not buying anything, you gotta get out of line,” the cashier told me. “There’s nobody else in the store.” “Don’t matter—there’s rules. Somebody could come in, and I’m the only one on.” “Start ringing things up, then. This won’t take long.” “Why not those?” She glanced at Ray. “’Cause if that’s your man, I’d say you can leave these off,” and she pushed the three biggest sizes to the side. “Oh, no, you didn’t,” Ray said. “It’s your own fault,” I told him. She might have thought it, but she probably wouldn’t have said it if he hadn’t been snacking earlier. But that sort of thing puts some people in a bad mood—usually those with enough magical blood to recognize the theft but not to name it. And the anger tends to resolve itself into a generalized dislike of the vamp in question. And then someone picked up. “Oui?” Damn. I thought about hanging up, pretending to be a wrong number, as cowardly as that would have been. But I guess he recognized my breathing or something—which was disturbing enough right there—because he said, “Dory?” “What are you doing there?” I asked, harsher than I’d intended. “I was about to ask you the same. Where are you?” “Buying condoms,” I said, watching the salesclerk ring up a box of mediums and hand them to Ray. “Why?” “Is there more than one reason?” I asked, because “we have a garden full of randy fey” wasn’t on the approved-conversation list. There was silence on the other end of the phone. “What’s this shit?” Ray demanded, looking at the salesclerk. “Honey, truth hurts, but ain’t no way you’re a Magnum.” “Well, I ain’t no medium!” The clerk smiled. “Yeah, but I was being generous.” “Dorina,” Louis-Cesare finally said. “You do realize…I thought you had been with our kind before.” “I have.” voice had changed. “Who are they for?” “What are you doing?” the cashier demanded, as Ray grabbed another box. “I ain’t rung those up yet.” Ray pulled out a foil package and tossed the box back on the counter. “So ring it up.” She arched an eyebrow, but didn’t bother, maybe because she was watching him unbutton his fly. I caught his wrist. “What are you doing?” “Proving a point.” “Not in the middle of the store, you’re not.” “Ain’t nobody here,” the cashier reminded me, grinning. “And ain’t no way he’s filling that thing out.” “Dorina?” Louis-Cesare’s voice was loud in my ear. The one I had squeezed against the phone, which was squeezed against my sore shoulder, because I was using both hands to keep Ray’s point in his pants. “The fey, damn it!” I told him. “They’re for the fey!” “Which one?” Louis-Cesare asked, his voice going velvety soft. “All of them— No, Ray! Ray, cut it out!” “ All of them?” “No, that’s not what I—”

#Karen Chance, Fury’s Kiss

duel. It was days like this that made me wonder how, even with his fighting ability, the guy had survived as long as he had. He was honest and honorable and ethical and generous, in a culture that was exactly none of those things. That didn’t even value those things, because “good” was a relative term and being a good vampire was to be like Marlowe: cunning, deceitful, ruthless, overwhelming. Or like Mircea: calm, patient, resourceful, relentless. “Kind” wasn’t in the job description; “compassionate” even less so. Damn it, the man needed a keeper. Yeah, sure he did. A dark-haired, dimpled, dhampir keeper, which wasn’t going to happen, so just shut up . Sometimes I didn’t think it mattered what Mircea did in my head, because I was already crazy anyway. said resentfully. “Quoi?” I sighed. “I’m fine ,” I said, just wanting to get this over with. “I see what you mean,” he told Claire drily, and she blinked at him in what looked like surprise. There was no point in stalling, so I walked over and sat down, really glad that I’d had that drink earlier. Even with Claire’s presence leeching the manic energy off my skin, like some kind of supernatural magnet, I was still crawling with it. Any other time, I’d have been crawling the walls, too—or, more likely, punching through them. As it was, I wanted this done

Furys Kiss Karen Chance 
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And my thoughts fractured, the room spun, and I came with a sound of pure desperation. Which, in retrospect, probably wasn’t the best idea when you live with a bunch of sensorially gifted creatures. Who, it seemed, couldn’t tell the difference between a cry of passion and a cry of pain. As was demonstrated when the bedroom door suddenly blew off its hinges and Louis-Cesare flew backward and disappeared. Leaving me blinking in confusion at the new, vampire-shaped hole in my dresser. And my closet. And my wall. Which were less noticeable than you might think with an eight- dozen or so blond-haired fey swarming into the room through the door looked at both of us. And then a slight tinge of amethyst slowly suffused the delicate scales covering the beast’s cheekbones as it took in my lack of clothes—and blood and gore and missing limbs. “Oops?” it said gruffly, before melting back into my very embarrassed redheaded roommate. I snatched my robe closed and plunged through my destroyed furniture and fluttering bits of wallpaper, into a closet that was now a wreck of plaster and hanging two-by-fours. And found that, yes, the hole did go completely through the house. Parts of my wardrobe were scattered all over the side lawn, with most of my bras for some reason decorating the neighbor’s fence. But that was better than what had happened to my boyfriend, who had ended up— Oh, shit.“Dory, what—oh,” Claire said in a small voice, coming to stand beside me. Being two stories up, we had a perfect view of the car that had just pulled into the grassy drive along the side of the house, probably because it couldn’t fit anywhere else since it was a stretch limo. A stretch limo that now had a naked vampire sticking out of the ruined windshield, firmly wedged between the wipers and the mirror. Right in front of a driver whose usual icy sangfroid had been shattered by an up-close-and-personal view of the world’s greatest ass. At least it can’t get any worse , I thought, and then three more vamps piled out of the backseat. And came around the car. And looked at Louis-Cesare, who was ignoring them in favor of staring up at me, an unreadable expression on his face. “Should I apologize?” Claire asked, sounding worried. “That…probably wouldn’t be the best idea right now,” I said calmly, looking down at two Senate members and a senator’s to explain an underwear-strewn yard and a naked master vampire, when the brother looked up. “Oh, they do this sort of thing all the time,” he said, responding to some question I hadn’t heard. He shaded his eyes, and then a smile broke out over his handsome features. “Oh, there you are. Hello, Dory!” He waved. The other vampires turned to look at me, and I gave up. I went back into the bedroom, which had miraculously cleared of fey. Except for the one behind me, biting her lip. “Dory—” “It’s okay.” “But the room—” “It’s fine.” “And your clothes—” “I’ll get them later.”

Fury’s Kiss,Karen Chance, Dorina and Claire
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“Perhaps I am in love.” I stopped knotting the tie of the robe and looked up. And met clear blue eyes, which were suddenly far more serious than I knew how to handle. “That’s…You…” I stopped and licked my lips. “That’s not how this is supposed to go.” “How is it supposed to go?” He looked genuinely curious. “We trade witty banter for another minute and then I storm out.” “Do you wish to storm out?” “Yes!” And it wasn’t a lie. In that moment, I really, really wanted to get out of there. I wasn’t in the headspace for this battle right now. I wasn’t stupid; I’d known it was coming. But this wasn’t the time. I hadn’t figured out what I wanted to say yet. And I was tired and hurting and confused, and the arms he wrapped to the robe, I let him manipulate that, too, unknotting the tie, pulling it out of the loops, parting the soft old velour, but leaving it hanging on my shoulders like a frame for my body. Somehow that made me look even more nude, and as a barrier, the robe was less than worthless. The velvety folds caught and enhanced the warmth radiating from the body behind me, and the thin material did nothing to camouflage the hard lines of the chest and hips and legs pressed against mine. If anything, it magnified the differences between us, soft and hard, small and big, cold and oh, so warm.

Fury’s Kiss Karen Chance Louis cesare aand dorina
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Look, It’s a bike for Radu!!!!!

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And then Fred came to the rescue. “No, no, no, I got this,” he said, jogging in from the lounge, and talking to someone over his shoulder. “Got what?” I asked warily as he turned to me and grinned. Don’t know why.” Because they’re depressing, I didn’t say, since he was only trying to help. But honestly, who bought black balloons? Fred, apparently, and now he was blowing them up. “Trust me … I used to do this … all the time,” he told me in between breaths. He soon had a cluster of long, skinny tubes, which he then proceeded to tie together using vampire speed. One second, there was a depressing bunch of cylinders, and the next … It was worse. The kids were glancing at each other, like they didn’t know what to make of it, either. But Fred looked hopeful. And then he started moving his creation up and down, so that the tortured appendages hanging off either side flopped about in a dying-bird sort of way. One of the littlest girls made a sound and hid her face.“Fred,” I began, trying to figure out how to say please stop without hurting his feelings. And then one of the guys solved the problem for me. “What the fu—uh, heck?” “Leo,” Roy said, frowning at him from beside the bar. “What? I said heck. And look at that thing.” “What is it?” another guy asked. “A spider?” “A bat, obviously,” Fred said. And flapped it about some more, on the theory, I assume, that he just hadn’t been vigorous enough the first time. “Freakiest thing I ever saw,” the vamp mumbled. “Freakiest?” Roy dropped ice into a glass. “You haven’t been here long enough.” “Then why does it feel that way?” “I have more,” Fred said, finally realizing that his distraction was not a hit. “A lot more. I used to make these all the time—well, the pig bladder kind—” “But were any of them any good?” Leo asked. Fred stopped to glare at him, while Roy assessed his latest attempt. “What is that?” “It’s a clown!” “Oh, demonic clown. Great choice.” gift from someone I cared about, so I just never had. Plus, they had a charm on them I thought the girls might like. It had proven oddly accurate at reading the atmosphere around a situation and giving advice in the form of a pertinent card. And sure enough, practically as soon as I touched them, one popped up. A black one. A black one with a leering devil on it.Well, shit.

Karen Chance Tempt the Stars
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Radu nodded, but he didn’t leave. “You know, even if she hadn’t been an evil mutant, she was always quite bad for him. Not that I meddle.”  “Of course not.” “But she was. He needs a nice, levelheaded girl. You’re levelheaded, Dory.” “I’m insane, ’Du.” “Well, not all the time. And when you’re not, you’re quite lovely… in your own odd little way.” “Uh, thank you?” Radu patted my arm. “You’re welcome.”

Death’s Mistress, Karen Chance
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expected. He pulled me away from the fridge, bent me over the marble-topped island and dug his fingers into the tense muscles of my back. I groaned. He started at the base of my spine, teasing out the knots as skillfully as if he’d done it a dozen times before. My body recognized the coarseness of familiar calluses, and a heavy warmth spread through me. He paused to tug the T-shirt off over my head, and I didn’t resist. When he reached my shoulders, which had been tight long before I leaned into the strokes involuntarily, head rolling back as he kneaded away at the tension knotted around the base of my skull. By the time he finished, the pain was gone, although it was possible that I’d fallen madly, irreversibly in love with Louis-Cesare’s hands. I might have said something to the effect, because he chuckled and brushed his lips over the back of my neck, meltingly warm.

Dorina, Death’s Mistress, Karen Chance
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Links to buy Kindle editions of Karen Chance works

Touch The Dark (Cassie Palmer 1): http://amzn.to/2oDvOMK

Claimed By Shadow (Cassie Palmer 2):http://amzn.to/2nRP3Ci

Embrace the Night (Cassie Palmer 3):http://amzn.to/2nyCE48

Curse the Dawn(Cassie Palmer 4):http://amzn.to/2oDKcES

Hunt the Moon (Cassie Palmer 5):http://amzn.to/2nRPFru

Tempt the Stars(Cassie Palmer 6):http://amzn.to/2nyxCVq

Reap the Wind (Cassie Palmer 7): http://amzn.to/2nyGQ3V

Ride the Storm (Cassie Palmer 8):http://amzn.to/2oDHqPW

Buying Trouble (Dorina Prequel):http://amzn.to/2oDLOON

Midnight’s Daughter (Dorina Basarab 1):http://amzn.to/2oDs5P8

Death’s Mistress

(Dorina Basarab 2) :http://amzn.to/2nysQr0

Fury’s Kiss 

(Dorina Basarab 3) :http://amzn.to/2nRPjkK

Zombie’s Bite (Dorina freebie):http://amzn.to/2oTo08S

Masks( Mircea):http://amzn.to/2nyvIEs

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Deleted Scene Hunt the Moon

I yawned again, because the damn coffee was weak as water, and tried to think. “I don’t know,” I finally told him. “There were at least four or five, but there could have been six or even more. It was hard to tell. Like you said, they were freaking Weebles.”
“Weebles?” Caleb looked confused. “I didn’t say anything about Weebles.”
“Evil Weebles,” Fred added.
“What the hell are Weebles?”
“You know, those little round toy things?” I said. “They wobble but they don’t—never mind.” Deleted scene but just too cool to keep to myself

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