Jared Read Online Free PDF

eyes, leaving enough
angle that he could sneak peaks at her. He found watching the expressions chase
across her face enthralling. “Why?”
    “I don’t even know your full name.”
    He gave her side a nudge, moving the sharp point of
her hip bone off his cock. Two squirms that had him gritting his teeth and the
soft curves of her body melded into the hard planes of his. “It’s Johnson.
Jared Johnson.”
    “Well, Jared Johnson, I can’t see where you’ll get a
bit of sleep with me crushing you.”
    Crushing? Another smile tugged at his lips. As if
there was enough of her to crush a fly. He stroked her hair off her face. “I’m
tired enough to sleep through a bronc busting. I think I can manage.”
    She was tired, too. He could feel the weariness
dragging at her. He adjusted the blanket up over her shoulders. A shiver went
through her. He upped his body heat to warm her faster. He couldn’t maintain it
that way forever, but he could long enough to heat her up.
    “So maybe you could just close your eyes and let us
both get some shut-eye?”
    She stared at him for a long, suspicious minute, but
then she either accepted he wasn’t going to let her lie on the floor or the
warmth surrounding her took the decision out of her hands. Her head relaxed
against his chest. “You are a very strange man.”
    He cupped her head in his hand, just in case she got
the urge to struggle. “Weariness will do that to a man.”
    With an astuteness that startled him she said, “I
think it’s more than weariness.”
    He didn’t want her analyzing him, or feeling sorry for
him, or any of the other emotions women liked to bring into the moment. “Trust
me, I’m just tired.”
    “I don’t believe that.” He noticed, for all her
beliefs, she wasn’t pulling away. The warmth was definitely getting to her,
draining the tension from her bones. A stab of guilt poked his conscience. She
must have been cold the whole time he’d been carrying her.
    “Believe me, I’m bone weary.”
    Weary of fighting what he’d become, weary of longing
for who he’d once been. Weary of being alone.
    “Well, I’m-just-tired-Jared, brace yourself.” She
smothered a yawn behind her hand. “Because in the morning—”
    “You mean night?”
    “I found it was easier just to think of night as
morning after I turned.”
    “That would work.”
    She nodded. “I thought so.” Another yawn. “And in the
morning, we’ll be going our separate ways.”
    Not in her current condition, and not without someone
to protect her. He held her as the minutes passed, counting her breaths,
measuring the loss of tension in her muscles by the number of limbs that
relaxed against him. First her shoulders and thighs, then her calves and lastly
her hands. He poked the backpack under his head, moving the lumps into a better
position. It was a collection of odd shapes. “Just what do you have in here?”
    “My things.”
    “Anything breakable?”
    A pause, as if she had to think about it. “No.”
    “Good.” He gave the bag a shake, resettling the
contents, and lay back down. “That’s better.”
    She was almost asleep. He should leave her be, but he
liked the intimacy of the moment with her lying trustingly on top of him,
allowing him to care for her. It’d been a long time since he’d felt this
closeness. A long time since he’d had a woman depend on him. He found he wanted
to prolong it. “Raisa?”
    “What?”
    “Does your name have a meaning?”
    “In your language, it means light.”
    He continued to stroke her hair, letting her name and
its meaning settle in his mind. Raisa. Light. It was, he decided, a pretty name
for a pretty little vampire condemned to live in the dark.

3
    THEY were being hunted.
    Jared opened his eyes and stared at the roof of the
cave, his senses flaring as the knowledge came to him in a thrust of energy.
The fact that it was barely dusk meant the hunters were werewolves. That was a
plus. Vampires made for a much trickier