Eternal Sin by Laura Wright Page A

spotting her mother already seated beside Sara on several small, flat boulders in the center of the stones. Petra’s blood sister. She still couldn’t get used to that concept. Neither of them had noticed her yet. They were deep in conversation, and for one second Petra felt a splash of jealousy move through her. Sara already had one mother. She didn’t need Petra’s too.
    “Hey, Bestie,” Dani called out to her.
    Petra stopped, realized she’d been walking toward her mother and Sara, and glanced over her shoulder.
    Dani’s hawk eyes narrowed. “You never repeated that last bit.”
    No, she hadn’t.
    “I will never let him touch me again,” Dani urged.
    Petra gave the hawk a quick grin. “Thanks for the ride, Bestie. I owe you.” Then she made her way toward the gathering stones and the family she barely knew.
    •   •   •
    Phane couldn’t take his eyes off the female hawk. He stood on the very top of the highest rock within the gathering stones and stared. Every member of his family that could handle sunlight—except Ly, of course, who had once again refused to come—was seated and waiting a few feet below him. Like Helo, Phane had also been curious about the Rain Forest and its creatures. After living all of his life among vampires, Phane had wanted to know about that other part of himself. The one that had never been discussed or revealed. But in all that time—hell, even back at the house in SoHo—he’d never contemplated another being like himself.
    He felt his hawk scratch inside his skin as he watched the female shift from avian form to human. In the air, gliding, swooping, touching down, she’d been fucking magnificent. But on land, in her female form . . . Shit, he’d never seen anything or anyone so hot. She was the perfect height, not too tall, not too short. Her body was a mix of athletic strength and dangerous, supple curves. Her blond hair was cut in a short and sexy style that accentuated her beautiful, sharp-as-shit face, and mysterious black eyes and a ripe mouth that she seemed to work well and often. But it was the piercing—the small ring through her nose—that made Phane’s entire body erupt in possessive desire.
    He wanted to lick it, run his fangs over it.
    Maybe while she bit his neck.
    His cock strained against the zipper of his jeans. Then went steel hard as before his very eyes the last shreds of hawk feathers disappeared and she was completely and totally nude. His obvious, lecherous gaze raked over her spectacular body just seconds before she slipped on a thin electric blue dress.
    She’d been naked. In front of anyone who cared to look—and Phane was pretty damn sure there were many who wanted to look—and she didn’t give a shit.
    That was his kind of female.
    Fuck, he might be in love with her already.
    He thought about shifting into his hawk and gliding down to stand beside her. He needed to stake his claim, let her know he planned on mating with her. Not today. Not unless she agreed to it, of course. But soon.
    Unfortunately, the dark-haired veana who looked so similar to Alexander’s Sara stepped into the center of the stones at precisely that moment, drawing everyone’s attention. Phane knew the female was in swell , but he hadn’t realized how far along she was. Five, maybe six months. She looked good though, healthy, her face and eyes bright—far better than when he had seen her last.
    “Why have you all come?” she asked the small crowd of Petra’s mother, the Roman females, Helo, Phane, and Dillon.
    The last was the first to speak. “This land, Petra, your existence—it has all been a closely guarded secret for some time.”
    “Try forever,” said the hawk shifter female, who stood in the shadows of a massive boulder, just a few feet behind Petra.
    Damn, she was tough. Phane liked tough.
    “Right,” Dillon amended. “Well, it’s a secret no longer.”
    “Do you speak of more than yourselves?” asked Petra’s mother, Wen, who sat