Repercussions (Evie Cortez Book 2.5)

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

After promising he’d do everything in his power to aid Evangeline, Caleb sent his teenage daughter home where it was safer and where she wouldn’t hover and bombard Evangeline with questions she had no answers to. 

He moved over to the couch and sat next to the confused woman. With no problems with his own memories, they didn’t allow him to escape the reality of the kiss they shared on this very couch. He had made the first move, but not the last. It was pitiful how with no effort he could smell the perfume she wore that night, he could feel every texture of her lips across his, her skin beneath his hands.

“Tell me who you are.” She begged, her voice like broken pieces of glass breaking through his memories. He knew that was for the better, now wasn’t the time to try and rehash what transpired between them.

“My name is Caleb Nikolas and I live in the house two doors from you. The girl who just left was Jamie, my daughter. The two of you are very close.”

“And who are we to each other? Me and you?”

The alpha wolf was speechless and that didn’t happen very often. Without her memories Evangeline was speaking of things she never would’ve brought up before. It should be a simple question, even an expected question in her condition, yet he was speechless. “We’re in the same boat about that, because I don’t know what label would fit. We associate when the need arises.”  He didn’t want to tell her how over the last few months everything changed, they had been on the road to becoming friends but stolen kisses and a mistake on his living room floor changed all that. Again he couldn’t stop his thoughts form going there, to that one blissful afternoon she belonged to him, the feel of her body, her hands on him, and the utterly blissful sensation of being inside of her. He didn’t consider their budding romance a mistake, she did however, and managed to break his heart with her constant need to remind him what could never be. 

“I feel something toward you.” The uncertainty was all over her face. “I can’t remember why but everything inside of me is saying to trust you. For something as impersonal as you explained, why do I feel like this?”

It seemed amnesia was good for something. Without memories there was no filter on what she was willing to admit.  Caleb took comfort in knowing she still trusted him even now. “We’ve saved each other’s life.” It was the only explanation he could think of and proceed to tell her about the time she saved Jamie from being kidnapped, a warlock had been about to stab him when she intervened. It was that night he learned some of the secrets concerning her power.

A feud began that night between her and that warlock. He had been a member of the coven she grew up in and later ran from at the tender age of fifteen. To save her own life, she killed that warlock, forced to face the wrath of his grieving family and the entire coven.

Caleb was always more grateful than he could put into words for the sacrifice she made on behalf of his family. Saving his daughter was a debt he could never repay, not for the lack of trying on his part and the distance on her part. In an attempt to keep the coven from extracting revenge on Evangeline’s life, he struck a deal with them for her freedom. It worked too, until a friend from her past betrayed her confidence and dragged her back home. The elders had sentenced her to face a trial where her punishment would be decided, surely death for the life she took. If she hadn’t found a way to escape she wouldn’t be sitting next to him now.

“My life sounds like a big mess.” Evangeline sat forward, resting her forearms around her lap while she absorbed the blanks he was able to fill in. “What happened next?” 

Caleb wasn’t sure how to explain that, how to form the words that she ran to his place because hers wasn’t safe. She had used so much magic fighting and escaping the coven’s imprisonment, that she was out of control by the time she came to him. He tried to get her to calm down but all he succeed in doing was compromising his own control. One touch of his hand on her skin and he was standing at a very dangerous edge.

His wolf fought for control and won. The animal inside of him wanted to dominate her and did. A bite on her neck didn’t work. He couldn’t forget how she moaned his name, he hadn’t been the only one affected by their closeness. Over the next two hours they had more sex than he had over the last several years. With her magic and shifting abilities she had just as much, if not more, stamina than him.

“Caleb?” she called his name and pulled him free from the torturous memories. “Do you know what happened after I escaped?”

“A woman named Bess Jane was recruiting you for a job. In exchange for your employment, she threatened the coven to stay away from you.” A breath of relief left his lunges as the conversation moved past those sticky haunting memories.

“What kind of job?”

“She created a special task force under the jurisdiction of the police department and FBI. Supernatural Crime Force, SCF for short. A group of hunters and cops patrol the city and handle any type of supernatural case work.” Caleb explained easily.

“You know a lot about it.” Memory or not, she was always perceptive.

“My second in command, Jake, and his brother are original members. His close friend Zoe is a cop, she brought them in when vampires were exposed to the public almost a year ago.”

Evangeline nodded, continuing to absorb all the information he was filling in. “Something, someone, caused me to lose my memory. If the coven is off my ass then maybe it was something I was working on.” She voiced her thoughts with no hesitation, ones that mirrored closely to his own. “Oddly enough the bigger question is, what do I do now?”

“I have an idea for that, although I’m not sure you’ll like it.”