Underlayes, Book 3
Supernatural Suspense, Paranormal Romance
Release Date: May 10, 2020
Publisher: GothicMoms Studios
Reina and Ricardo have a relationship that’s as close to perfect as one can get. Coming home after a romantic honeymoon, they’re ready to settle down and begin their life together.
But when Reina literally bumps into someone from her past, their future turns into a thing of uncertainty, and her life begins to unravel. Things are no longer as they seem when this dangerous stranger embeds himself into their lives.
Will this vampire and his bride survive a wizard bound and determined to recreate his obedient mate from a past life? Or will they show him that sometimes the past is best left buried?
***Part of the Underlayes series, but can be read as a standalone.***
I don’t know why so many people always wish they had a do over in life. I mean, I guess I get it in a way. And probably more-so would if what happened to me hadn’t happened. But it did.
I have no memory of the life I led before being turned. Ricardo, my Fated One, and I had been together for only a year, but it felt like I knew him for much longer than that. He said that memory loss was something that sometimes happened to the newly turned. I took his word for it, since that’s not exactly something you can just look up on Google without finding a bunch of nonsense. And we stayed in a pretty tight-lipped community, amongst others like us. But no one delved into anyone else’s business. There were some we were friendly with, but not really friends. He said the night he turned me I had been on the brink of death, that he had found me in an alley left for dead. That he knew me before in passing, and couldn’t just let me die. We’ve been together ever since.
I woke up after having yet another dream that felt like much more than just that, with my entire body feeling as if I had just done an entire triatholon the night before. I sat up and put my head in my hands, my head feeling like it was in a vice grip from hell. It had been happening for the past few weeks, and had been getting worse instead of better.
I climbed out of bed, careful to not wake Ricardo. It was early still, but I had no intentions of going back to sleep, no way was I risking having another one of those dreams. They hurt too much to wake up from. They weren’t nightmares, far from it, but when I woke up they were fragments I couldn’t manage to piece together. But for some reason I almost always found myself if not in pain, then in tears when I woke up from them. And not just that, there was some form of power inside of me trying to break free, but I had no idea what it was or how to access it, yet.
Stepping into the bathroom I didn’t bother with turning on the light, just slipped my black lace chemise over my head and stepped into our large, walk-in shower, and turned the water as hot as I could bare it. As I stood there directly under the spray flashes of a man kept appearing behind my eyelids. I could barely make out his features, but for whatever reason not being able to recognize him made me more than just sad, but hollow inside like something was missing.
“Rena, why are you up so early love? The sun has just barely set.” As quiet as I had been getting out of the bed I must have still woken Ricardo. I was so lost in thought that I hadn’t even heard him open the shower door. He stood directly behind me and pulled my body flush against his own, swept my hair to the side and gently grazed his fangs along the crook of my neck before letting them sink into my skin.
Ricardo was not a male of many words, but what he lacked in syllables he made up for in sensation. His cold body grew warmer as he fed from me, I could feel his shaft growing and hardening against the crease of my ass. The water cascaded down both of our bodies as he licked the bite marks closed, and his large hands began to work their magic. With one hand, he began kneading my breast, squeezing right to the borderline between pleasure and pain as his other slid down to my hips then around my waist until it found the shaved, heated entrance that was waiting for him. He slipped his fingers, not inside of me, but only slid them along my tight, wet folds, then to tweak and tug at my clitoris, the sensation of that alone enough to put me on the verge of climax.
I whimpered as he removed his hand, but he was by no means done with me yet. Ricardo bent me slightly, splaying his pale ivory hand over my own, much smaller mocha one, interlacing our fingers along the tiles of the shower as I grabbed onto it for purchase. He then entered me in one swift, hard stroke. I screamed out as the feel of his long, wide shaft filled me so completely that if he wasn’t an expert at using it, it would have hurt, instead it felt so good that my juices were already flowing around him. I came again as he found that perfect rhythm, his heavy length sliding up against my walls, the sensation making me so dizzy I would have lost my grip on the wall had he not still had hold of my hand. The water from the showerhead only added to the sensations.
Just as I felt myself coming to a full-on climax, the lightning bolt shaped mark on my outer thigh began to burn. The pain of it made me bend over further, making him not only go deeper, but also made me tighten even further around him. I became a mixture of both pleasure and true pain all at once, I could barely recognize which of the two my moans reflected. Ricardo slid out of me then, and before I had a chance to feel the emptiness of his shaft no longer there, he had me turned around, lifted up with a crushing grip on my hips, and was impaling me once again. As though he felt a sense of urgency, he pistoned in and out of me even harder and faster than before, which took my mind away from the flaring pain in my thigh.
As Ricardo gave me another stroke so deep inside of me I felt his sac rubbing against my entrance I screamed out with one last climax as he jettisoned inside, the warm trickling feel of it making me come that much harder. But when I closed my eyes, I was looking into the metallic silver irises that haunted my dreams, and they looked angry as hell. I could almost hear a faint, foreign, yet familiar voice in the back of my mind saying, I will find you.
When I opened my eyes, Ricardo was staring straight into mine, but it felt like he was seeing right through me to somewhere else, especially when he said, “She’s mine.”
Before I could ask him anything or think any further, he claimed my lips in a claiming, almost punishing kiss. Then I felt a tiny pinprick on the side of my hip and promptly blacked out.
***
Halfway across the world from where Ricardo and Rena were, a warlock wearing only a pair of black shorts, knelt down on the ground in the rain in the dark of night in a cemetery, the droplets shimmered down his muscled, ebony chest and back. He summoned the lightning to the palms of his outstretched hands, letting it empower him further, as he called out to his ancestors. “Ancestors, my foremothers, and forefathers, I come to you tonight, the anniversary of the night you gifted me with one of my greatest gifts, to ask your help in finding her. Help me bring her back to where she belongs, at my side.”
The storm became malevolent then, lightning struck around Jonathan left and right, which both fueled and empowered him. He threw his head back as he soaked it all in. As he closed his eyes, his haunches rose when he finally saw her, with the vampire that had somehow ensnared his powerful, beautiful mate. He tried yet again to communicate with her through their mark, but something was blocking him still, but he felt it slipping, and that little slip was all he needed to learn her location.
Reaching into his back pocket, Jonathan pulled out his phone and dialed his brother. Without bothering with any pleasantries, all he said was, “It’s time to hunt us down a vampire, and bring home my mate.”
About the Author
When you become a Mom, you begin to put yourself last, and your combat boots begin to collect dust. Going to your child’s PTA meetings in full Gothic, especially industrial, regalia is pretty much frowned upon. Especially by your own children, and your teens would die of a heart attack. But, one should not have to completely stop being themselves, uniqueness is greatness. So all of that darkness is put into words in her books, and designs in her jewelry sold in her Etsy shop, GothicMoms DarkCharms.
A single mother of five beautiful children, but by far more than just that. T. A. Moorman is an artist, a violinist, a lab assistant, a seamstress, a crafter, a writer, a blogger, a reviewer, a dark confidant and a darkly dangerous, fiercely protective friend.
