Free Raging Passions by Amanda Sidhe Page B

blocked her. She blinked, stunned that she’d let her passion overrun her good sense. “We have to get you out of here.” She wiggled out from beneath Caden. “Ripper will kill you.”
    At the sound of someone clearing his throat, Rage glanced at Dean leaning in the doorway. He dangled the keys from a ring balanced on his outstretched finger. “Well, well, well. Rage, my darling. Whatever will you give to me…” his eyes roved suggestively over her, “what will you do for me with that fabulous body of yours to get your hands on this little batch of keys?”

Chapter Six
     
    Curling back her lips from her fangs, Rage considered boning the Offspring like a fish where he stood. Before she’d even fully taken a step in Dean’s direction, Caden caught her elbow.
    Caden growled, “Dean, you ass, get me out of this thing before I stake you myself.”
    Straightening from where he lounged as artistically and as handsome as the model he looked like against the doorframe, Dean smiled broadly. “No wonder you two were going to get married. You are exactly alike. Neither of you has a sense of humor.”
    Gaping in shock, Rage watched Dean select the correct key from his ring and unlock the collar that Caden wore. Even with the bandages taped to his chest, Caden stood straight and defiant as Dean freed him.
    “What took you so long?” Caden growled. He snatched up his fatigue pants and jerked them on. Rage dressed just as quickly. She might yet decide to spoon Dean’s eyes out of their sockets for his voyeurism, but right now they needed any help they could get.
    “Hey, give me a break.” Dean tossed aside the collar he’d removed. “I had to wait until the house quieted down. Besides, I don’t hear a lot of sympathy and concern about the cracked ribs and punctured lung I suffered saving your ass from Ripper.”
    “Wait…” Rage stepped back and stared at the men. “What? You two know each other?”
    “It’s a long story,” Caden said, gathering Rage to him, his hands curling possessively around her lower back. “We have to leave. The three of us. You have to come too. Your clan will destroy you for this betrayal.”
    Enclosed in Caden’s embrace, Rage searched his brilliant blue eyes. He felt warm and strong. Familiar and yet foreign. She remembered loving him, deeply. But she wasn’t that girl anymore. And he wasn’t the same man. Different though they both were now, the love still felt the same. Rage curled into Caden’s body, wanting to wrap herself up in him. Where would they have been if their love story had not been interrupted? Would they have reached “happily ever after”? Was there even a chance that they could rewrite their ending after all this time? “It is because I want to give ‘us’ a second chance that I can’t leave yet.”
    Dean’s hands glided onto Rage’s shoulders and he squeezed gently, massaging, as he spoke. He’d moved in close behind her so she could feel the muted heat of his vampire body enclosing her, but he did not actually press to her. “Caden is not just an executioner, Rage,” he explained. “He is a Summon for the Executioner Clan. Ripper knows this. So do others. They will not permit you to survive this.”
    The way they surrounded her was both meant to reassure and to insist she submit to their protection. Rage looked at Caden, seeing him differently now. He’d seen a lot. The tension firmed the muscles beside his mouth and around his eyes, as if they’d become accustomed to doing so. As a Summon, a human servant to a vampire or clan, he would have naturally witnessed quite a lot of violence that most humans would have cringed away from. So much more so with the Executioner Clan. There were executioners and then there were Executioner Clan executioners. Vampires policed their own numbers. A clan’s Kinsmen eliminated their excess and inappropriate Offspring. The Executioner Clan eliminated excess and inappropriate Kinsmen and Offspring alike.
    The