And To Cherish Read Online Free

shouldn’t a mate be difficult to find? Surely, he wouldn’t appear one night in her hometown? Without one bit of searching?
    No. Not now. Not here. Not like this. She refused to accept it.
    Cherish was good at denial. That’s how she managed just about everything. She forced her mind to work it through. Cover the incident with something else. Alter it to a different experience.
The woman’s blood had contained some sort of drug.
That was it. Cherish had imbibed something odd. Something she couldn’t absorb. Maybe she was allergic, and this was a reaction.
    That had to be it.
    She was not allowing thirty minutes of time to destroy her afterlife. So. What had happened? She’d handled two kills. Fed. Nothing else. This was simply a normal evening...like all the others that had come before. She’d finished an assignment. It was time to return to her decaying wooden coffin that should be in the pauper’s section of the cemetery. That’s where they’d placed it. On that moonless night. During the Civil War. They’d buried her coffin beneath barely a foot of soil. Atop two layers of older coffins. Because nobody wanted to waste time and effort and space on an illegitimate orphan.
    If anyone had opened the lid and checked, they might have suspected that Cherish hadn’t perished of any fever. She was simply resting. Waiting for nightfall. So she could rise, see the poor excuse for a burial plot they’d given her, and correct it. She’d moved her coffin the first night, breaking into the Bartlett Family mausoleum over in the hill section. Appropriating a rich man’s space. Nobody had noticed her poorly-equipped coffin in a back corner.
    Not then.
    Or since.
    For some reason, the thought of her resting place caused her eyes to sting with a long-forgotten sensation of...could this be tears? After all these years? No. Impossible. This was stupid. And it was stopping.
    Cherish blinked until her vision cleared. Set her jaw. Made her decision. She’d return to her coffin-home. Pull the shred of material they’d placed as her shroud over her. Rest. She was
not
suffering emotions. She refused. She denied. Tears were for the weak-willed, and that was one thing she’d never been.
    Cherish bent her knees, prepared to jump, but something stopped her. It hit right through her chest, seizing her heart in a painful spasm as it stole her intent, along with her breath. It was unbelievable. Ridiculous. She hadn’t needed breath a half-hour ago. And now, she had trouble if it went missing? She scowled and wrapped her arms about herself, willing the sensations away. Why did this have to happen, anyway? And why her?
    She refused to have a mate. She didn’t even like humankind. As far as Cherish was concerned, people were mean-spirited. Evil. Manipulative. Rude. Arrogant. Greedy. Hypocritical. Spiteful. Vengeful. She might was well stop listing traits. Her list was long. She’d received a good dose of what humans were capable of during her lifetime. Afterlife hadn’t altered her opinion one iota.
    And she really detested men.
    Especially good-looking men.
    Like that Doctor Reid.
    Cherish closed her eyes. Brought his image to mind. He’d been introduced as Doctor Reid. Doctor Samson Reid. Samson. Cherish licked her lips as a tingle of something blissful slid along her spine. Oh. Doctor Reid wasn’t just good-looking. He’d been amazingly handsome. Eye-catching. Tall. Fit. With blue eyes that caught. Hooked. Stole wits. Caressed...
    She gasped. Her eyes flew open in alarm.
    Deny it, Cherish
.
    At least, the gasp had gained air. As if she needed it. She sucked in a huge gulp. Held it. And then eased it out. But before she’d finished, a shiver added to her troubles, racing along her skin, raising goose bumps before it centered in her belly. It started spreading warmth. And when it reached her heart, it wrapped that organ with a layer of pleasure that radiated outward with every beat. There was no denying that. Her heart was definitely