Free Vampire for Christmas by Felicity Heaton

alone, when she let her guard down and
the barriers around her heart with it, she didn’t see him as a
vampire. She saw the man in him and how vulnerable he was. He stood
before her, his heart laid bare, his eyes locked with hers and
searching her innermost feelings, looking into every corner of her
soul in the hope that he would see what he was trying to
find.
    The one
emotion she feared most of all.
    Love.
    Right
now, she wanted to give him that sliver of hope, wanted to hand it
to him on a silver platter and tell him that the feeling he wanted
to see glimmered in the recesses of her soul, hidden deep within
her so she didn’t have to admit to its existence.
    But it
scared her.
    If she
let him in, he would want to be all the way in. He wouldn’t settle
for anything less. He would want all of her, right down to her
core. He would possess her, wouldn’t stop until he had every last
part of her loving him and had made her completely his, ruining her
to anyone else. She would need him more than anything, and being
away from him would destroy her.
    She
couldn’t put herself through that. She couldn’t bear the pain that
would tear her apart if she lost him. She couldn’t let him reach in
and take hold of her soul.
    She
couldn’t.
    Shannon
tore her eyes away from his. She tried to ignore how much it hurt
when he stepped back, out of reach of her touch, and the pain she
had seen in his eyes just a moment before she had looked
away.
    She
closed her eyes.
    What was
she doing? She was stronger than this. Not just physically. And she
was tired of making excuses and finding a reason not to face her
feelings for Rafe, or pretending that they weren’t real or didn’t
exist. She fought monsters for a living, killed demons and
protected people, yet she was afraid to face her
emotions.
    “ Shannon,” Rafe whispered, a trace of pain lacing his
voice.
    She met
his gaze again, hoping he would see in it that she hadn’t meant to
hurt him again, and that she wasn’t going to keep pushing him away.
She wasn’t going to keep taking things out on him. It wasn’t his
fault that she couldn’t admit her feelings. It wasn’t because he
was a vampire. Not anymore, at least. It was because she was afraid
of where it would take her and it was easier to keep her emotions
locked inside. The only thing stopping her from admitting her
feelings was herself.
    She had
to let go of her fears and take the risk, just as her heart wanted
her to.
    No one
said that love was easy.
    Love was
frightening. It made you weak and vulnerable, and she was used to
being strong now. Love was a thief. It stole your whole world from
underneath your feet and placed it into the hands of
another—someone you would depend upon, someone you would need so
badly that you couldn’t live without them, someone who would be
there in the night to comfort you. They would take care of the
heart you placed so tentatively into their protection if you only
let them. Most of all, love hurt. It made you bleed from the inside
out, made you burn with desire, made you ache with need, and made
you crave to be held tight in your love’s embrace.
    Love
consumed.
    And it
was tearing Shannon apart from the inside out, clawing away at her
defences until it found a way to escape the confines of her heart
and show itself to the object of her affection.
    Rafe.
    They say
that the eyes are the windows of the soul and she knew that Rafe
could see straight through hers to her heart. No matter what she
tried to hide from him, he could seek it out in her green eyes if
he set his mind to it. In them, she could hide nothing. They
betrayed her and gave up her feelings to him the second his met
them, and she couldn’t stop them, no matter how hard she
tried.
    So she
let him read in her eyes what she couldn’t put a voice to,
trembling with fear that he would take her heart and crush it, and
afraid that it wouldn’t change a thing and that it was too late for
them. This was their last mission. She