Free Beauty's Beasts by Tracy Cooper-Posey

was trying to hold his temper in. “You literally fell into our world last night, Riley. How can you possibly appreciate…?” He hesitated.
    “You want to make sure I appreciate the right things and hate the things that should be hated,” she finished. “You want me to soak up a lifetime of prejudices and learning in a day, so that I will genuflect at the right moment, will be scared when I should be, and will laugh at the same things as you two.”
    Nicholas straightened up. His anger faded.
    Riley shrugged. “I’m sorry, Nick. That can’t happen. Not in the real world. If you wanted me to be another Tally, then you shouldn’t have abandoned me as a baby and left me for the foster system to take care of.”
    He sucked in a sharp breath.
    “That’s not how it happened, Riley,” Damian added.
    “No?” She brushed her clean hands of invisible crumbs to hide their trembling. “I wasn’t exactly in a position to argue at the time.”
    “You were born in 1983, on the same day your father was killed. By 1983 record-keeping and social services were much more effective and regimented than they were when Nicholas and I helped raise your mother. Even so, we helped your mother for the next year or so hunt down Lirgon and look after you. But when Lirgon and your mother died, it was bloody, brutal and close to public. The authorities got involved. Your mother’s body was found and when they realized who she was, they put you into the foster system.” Damian shrugged. “We were not next of kin, Riley. In 1984 we could barely produce identity papers saying we were alive.” He grimaced. “We’ve not been so unprepared since.”
    “You left me in the system. Alone. You didn’t try to find me.” Riley wished the plaintive note wasn’t there in her voice, but there it was.
    “We couldn’t find you,” Nicholas said simply. “We tried.”
    Damian lifted a hand. “He’s lying just a bit. Once you emerged from the foster system, he had your St. Louis location within twelve months.”
    She looked at Nick. His gaze cut away from her.
    “But you still didn’t contact me. Why?” she demanded.
    Damian answered again. “We could see you were building your own life. We didn’t want to dismantle it just because we selfishly wanted to bring you back into ours.”
    Her eyes pricked with hot, hard tears. “It didn’t occur to you I might like to have the choice?”
    Nicholas’ blue-eyed gaze speared her. “There’s no choice when we’re in your life. The underworld is destructive and seductive, and it takes over your life until there’s nothing left but this—the hunt, the chase, the constant thrill of your next target and the bizarre bohemian shadow world that normal humans have no idea exists right under their elbows and behind their ears.”
    She shuddered. His eyes seemed to grow larger, until all she could see was the summer blue of his gaze. Staring directly at a vampire is a challenge . Damian’s words echoed in her mind.
    “Let me go,” she whispered.
    Nick blinked and turned away.
    Riley drew in a breath. Then another. Her heart was thundering and her clitoris was swollen and pulsing. Her breasts were aching and heavy, the tips pushing at the soft material of the singlet. She licked her lips. She was powerfully aroused—Nicholas had been forcing her to it with his stare. She wiped her sweaty palm on her jeans, trying hard not to look at Damian, for she knew he would be able to sense her aroused state. At least here on the rooftop the open air would sweep some of her telling pheromones away.
    When she thought it was safe, she let her gaze lift up from her lap. Right into Damian’s eyes. He clearly had been waiting for her to look up. He had returned to his deceptively indolent lean against the edge of the roof, both arms spread against the ledge. Now that she was looking at him, he spoke. “Riley has a psychological need to stay in control, no matter what. She probably acquired it from her turn in