Free Savage Smoke by Kay Dee Royal

wanting to blaze a trail with her fingertips over Bliss’s gorgeous body and wondering the why of it if she was no longer compelled. Instead, she stepped over to the drying clothes and donned her jeans and shirt, snuggling her feet into warm socks. Then she walked over to the fire where Bliss prepared the rabbit for cooking. She sat on a blanket next to the flickering flames.
    “Why’d you dump me into the water anyway?”
    “Your scent would carry down the river like a giant smoke signal if we didn’t wash you clean.” Bliss looked up and studied Lindsey for a moment, smiled, and went back to her task.
    “What about your scent? You didn’t dive in and rinse off.” Lindsey watched Bliss, her steady hand cutting with confidence.
    “Ahhh, so you noticed.”
    “Hard not to—since I was the only one soaked and freezing.” Lindsey rubbed her hands together near the flames, held her palms out gathering warmth, still harboring a state of frustration. Sexual tension rode high, like a bad habit developed from the numerous daily encounters with Smoke. How long would it take to bounce back to a normal sex drive?
    Bliss continued skinning and gutting the rabbit. She put together a little spit-type set-up over the fire, skewered the carcass, and placed the ends of the skewer in brackets, one on each side of the campfire so the suspended meat hung at a good height for cooking.
    “In response to your little bitch, I don’t have a scent. I’m half vampire, half Lycan. Mom did a one night stand with a vampire, apparently he wasn’t shooting blanks.” She chuckled and then continued, “Well, actually it was more like an orgy from what I’ve heard through the years. My father died when he latched onto another Lycan’s neck. Mom was pregnant with me before she mated with my Lycan father. Mom’s body finally rejected me, but thankfully she was far enough along I made it, but she didn’t.”
    Bliss grabbed a rag lying next to her. She quickly stood as if needing to move away from the conversation then walked to the small pool of water near the far wall of the cave. She soaked an edge of the rag and wiped her hands clean of rabbit blood. Bliss’s gaze swung toward Lindsey, sending a lightning shock of prickles down her spine. The rag dropped to the floor and Bliss sauntered back.
    “I’m sorry, Bliss.” Lindsey didn’t know what to make of the confusing electric charges blistering the air between them, but she did know a bit about being left on your own at an early age. Her parents, both prestigious lawyers, never had time for her. Being an only child without supervision opened up a world of possibilities in her teenage years. “How did the others in the pack treat you?”
    “Because of the vampire, I don’t carry a scent and I have the ability to compel anyone’s will, like I did to you earlier. They didn’t trust me much because of those things, but most didn’t know why I had those abilities. Only my mother’s good friend, Rosa, knew about it, a female that had joined in the orgy. Her blood killed the vamp that sired me.”
    “You’re kidding, right? Vampires? It’s been hard enough wrapping my head around werewolves, until I got stuck with the wrong one.” All the supernatural stuff she’d grown up believing as fantasy, imagination, myths, and legends. Paranormal and fantasy were the genres she used when writing her romance novels, and the reality of it unraveled inside her mind.
    “As in, you belong to another?” Bliss shook Lindsey’s shoulder. “Hey, you okay? Your eyes sort of glazed over.”
    Bliss’s voice faded as Lindsey thought of Trevor, his smile, warm embrace, his husky voice calling her Darlin’ , and his wild exploring kisses. She sighed, knowing he’d never want her again, used goods, unworthy of being his mate. A fiend marked her body and now she’d lost her real mate forever.
    Pain stabbed her heart. She gasped, gulping for air. Her world suddenly shattered. Every single moment of