Crowned by Fire Read Online Free Page A

words were spoken directly into her sensitive ears. “Shall I leave you like this?” he said, so softly that no human could have heard him.
    She fell into silence. The knife was almost through the silver links now. They were densely woven, true, but silver was fragile, and his blade was sharp.
    He slipped the chains off her body and the moment they were off, she wasted no time scrambling to her feet, guarding the injury the Slayer had inflicted with her boot.
    “You shouldn't joke about that.”
    “ What?” Finn was finding it difficult not to stare. Her nipples were hard, puckering from their contact with the chilled, misty air. When he let his eyes fall, once, briefly, they snagged on the dark triangle between her thighs. He drew in a breath and looked away, disgusted by her, and by himself, and by how badly he wanted to take her until there was nothing left. He met her eyes again and saw them flicker, as if she wanted very badly to look away. There was a flush in her cheeks, and her mouth was tight.
    It was as if she had been placed on this earth to tempt him.
    “Imprisoning a shape-shifter.” It took him a moment to realize what she was responding to. Her face was pale; the silver had drained the flush in her skin, making her look sickly and sallow. “That kills us, you know.”
    He did know. He knew that all too well. He had done it.
    Finn grabbed her by the arms, painfully conscious of the fact that she was still nude, and that her bare breasts were crushed against his chest. The skin of her arms burned hot against his palms, and the heat of her was making him sweat through his clothes.
    “ Why don't you defend yourself properly?” he demanded.
    “ If I don't fight, I die.” She looked away. “If I fight, and I kill, I become what I hate.”
    “ Circle of life,” he said, tossing off the phrase most shape-shifters were quick to use in their own defense. “You can't fight what you are.”
    “ No.” She jerked free—and that never failed to surprise him, how much stronger than him she was, despite being so much smaller in stature and size. He watched her unlock the door and unzip her backpack, slipping a light dress over her head. She stepped into a fresh pair of underwear and pulled them up beneath the hem of the skirt in a show of modesty that seemed almost superfluous. “It doesn't work like that. It doesn't have to.”
    “ You were born a killer, and you'll die a killer,” he told her. “Fight that, and you'll die sooner, although we all die in the end.”
    “ I don't believe that.”
    “ I've watched you narrowly avoid death four times now,” Finn said. “What does that tell you?”
    “ That you're bad luck.”
    He slammed his fist against her car, and she jumped. “You are going to die .”
    She turned around, and seemed surprised to find him standing so close. Surprised and alarmed. She was so vulnerable, this shape-shifter. Her large, hazel eyes were so artless, so innocent, that they stripped her soul of all artifice.
    “Are you planning on killing me yourself, witch?”
    He had tracked down hundreds of shape-shifters, hauling them in to meet their fate—and their deaths. But in all those years of hunting, he had never met a shape-shifter quite like this one. She was a Glamor, and they made a point of assimilating to humankind, which perhaps explained why. She was very good at pretending, but even she couldn't quite hide the instincts that boiled beneath the surface, cresting at her most vulnerable.
    Shape-shifters were social animals. Though territorial, they were fiercely protective of their families and their mates, and felt such losses acutely. Catherine had lost both her mate and her family in one sweep, and it had left her devastated.
    It would be so easy, he thought, to get her to let down her defenses, to allow him to get close. As much as she hated him, she had no one else. When she had been trapped by that Slayer, she had even called for him by name.
    Finn reached out, and