The Twisted Kiss: Doomsyear, Book 1 Read Online Free Page A

body and the clipped tone of her voice. “One day, you’ll thank us for turning your life upside down.”
    Yeah, right.
    Without another word, she turned and left the house.
    Deep in thought, her hands white on her steering wheel, she drove back home. Maybe what was so scary about this situation was that she was bad—no, terrible—at forming relationships. She’d had her father and she had Carolyn, but that was pretty much it as far as close relationships went. She guessed it was because she’d experienced so much loss.
    And it wasn’t only her father she’d lost.
    Grief, a dark, old friend, wended its way up from the depths of her and curled its tendrils around her gut and throat. Not a day went by that she didn’t think about her dad and miss him.
    Deep down, maybe she thought Christian and Michael could never possibly want her. After all, look at what she’d done to the other men in her life. Maybe she was preempting things before someone got hurt.
    Wow, it would be awesome if she had a shrink. Unfortunately, the nearest psychologist was at least five hundred miles away. In Sweet Rock, sadly, it was Alec, the bartender at the Twisted Kiss, who usually played that role, and he wasn’t very qualified.
    She would have to deal with this on her own, as she dealt with everything on her own.
     
     
    Christian watched Kylie and Carolyn as they talked over the bar, heads together—one light and one dark. His gaze skated over Kylie’s slender body as she leaned in, whispering furiously. He could imagine what the topic of conversation was.
    She wore her thick, dark-brown hair loose over her shoulders tonight. Usually, she kept it in a ponytail when she worked at the Twisted Kiss and he wondered why she’d done it differently tonight. Perhaps because she’d agreed to go out to dinner with him? He could hope. Whatever the reason, it tempted him. He wanted to tangle his fingers through it and use it to tug her face close to his for a kiss. He’d been waiting long before the proclamation to do that.
    Maybe soon he’d get his chance.
    It was almost eight and he shifted at his place at the bar, conscious of the vamp eyes on him. Weres didn’t usually frequent the Twisted Kiss. They had their own establishment on the other end of town—the werewolf end of town—called the Beautiful Bite. Vampires and werewolves in Sweet Rock tolerated each other, but there was a tension in their relations that came from being two highly alpha races forced to live alongside one another.
    Kylie stepped away from Carolyn and looked up, laughing, her dark eyes crinkling at the edges and her wide mouth open. His heart arrested in his chest for a moment and he took a long drink of his beer to calm the sudden hunger the sight of her ignited in him. He’d wanted her for so long, and now that she was close to being his, it was killing him.
    He knew Michael felt the same way and that killed him too.
    He and Michael had grown up in Sweet Rock and knew each other as well as any two people from opposite ends of town could. Christian wasn’t into the whole vampire-hating thing, and luckily Michael wasn’t an extreme were-hater either. Still, having to share Kylie with him rankled.
    Every man knew there was a high chance of having to share his mate once one was proclaimed by the council. It wasn’t any easy thing for alphas to do under any circumstance, even though it was a fact of post-doomsyear life that they’d had to come to terms with. The tri-pairings served a very important purpose. History had shown that in cultures with too few females, the males became overly aggressive and warlike. Two men matched with one woman in mutual compatibility was a very good thing
    Proclamations weren’t made every day, but they were always perfect. The council was never wrong. All three of them—even if Kylie didn’t know it yet—were lucky to have found their family.
    Christian would do his best to remember that the next time he saw Michael. Maybe it