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THE PUREST OF THE BREED, Book Two in The Community
Series
Plagued by enemies from above and below ground, a group of Vârcolac warriors fight a desperate battle to keep their secret town safe from invasion
Plagued by enemies from above and below ground, a group of Vârcolac warriors fight a desperate battle to keep their secret town safe from invasion
The night Marissa Bonaventure is
saved from vicious kidnappers by special operative, Dev Nichita, her life is
changed in ways she never could have imagined. Brought to the safety of an
underground “research institute,” she’s offered a hefty sum of money to stay on
and work for a year, money that will allow her to fulfill her lifelong dream of
owning a restaurant. But the surreal events that unfold in the strange
community of Ţărână soon make her wonder if all is what it seems. When the
shocking truth about Dev is exposed, Marissa faces an impossible
decision. She loves Dev deeply, but committing to a Vârcolac is a forever
proposition, and the only way she can be with Dev will require her to throw
away her one chance to redeem a miserable past.
The man he wants to be…
The night Dev Nichita rescues
Marissa from the claws of the Om Rău demon race, he knows she’s meant to be his
mate. Lying to her about his true nature feels wrong, but he needs time to make
her fall in love with him before he reveals that he’s a different breed of
human being. When that secret finally comes out, their relationship is
shattered in ways Dev hadn’t predicted. A 100-year-old betrayal rises up to
endanger their future together—devastating every member of his family—and Dev’s
own angry withdrawal becomes a nearly insurmountable obstacle. Then the Topside
Om Rău enemy threatens a catastrophic breach of the hidden community, and Dev
must call upon all his power as he races against the clock to save the
most important people in his life.
** THE PUREST OF THE BREED is a dark paranormal romance. It contains
profanity and strong adult situations.
Goodreads
link to book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22444972-the-purest-of-the-breed
EXERPT
Marissa
Bonaventure sat bolt upright in bed. Wood cracked and splintered, a door banged,
furniture scraped. She gulped for air, her heart galloping in her chest. A
hovering silence followed. She waited, the thundering of her heart trying to
outrun her fast breathing, but there was only silence. Okay, Jesus… She squeezed her lids tight then
peeled them open again. Only a nightmare. She blinked groggily at the dim
numbers on her digital clock—2:36 a.m.—her mind slowly registering that she’d
only been asleep for about an hour. She’d worked late cooking at Bleu Boheme restaurant tonight, some
lactose intolerant asshole endlessly chewing her ear off about all of the
cheese on the menu. Well, yes, sir, this
is a French restaurant, after all,
and generally—
A gruff voice growled a command, and then her
roommate, Lila, started screaming. Holy frick!
Not a nightmare.
There were men in her apartment!
Coming fully awake on a searing blast of adrenaline,
Marissa vaulted for the cordless phone on her nightstand. Her wildly groping
fingers knocked the receiver out of its holder and sent it skidding across the
thin synthetic carpet. “Oh, God, crap.” She threw herself after the phone, and
crashed off her mattress, the sheets tangled around her legs. Air drove from
her lungs. “Crap,” she gasped again. “Crap.”
Darts of pain shot through her elbow.
The report of heavy boots in the hallway vibrated
through the floor beneath her, the footsteps thundering toward her bedroom.
Panic shot through her stomach and clawed up her spine. She stretched one arm
toward the phone by her hamper, scooting her body across the floor like an
epileptic caterpillar trapped in its cocoon.
The door slammed open.
She jerked to a sitting position, her heart lurching
to a dead halt. A broad-shouldered shadow loomed into her doorway, the light
from her digital clock offering only a vague impression of dark, baggy
clothing, the cut of a hard jaw…and the most sinister eyes she’d ever seen in
her life. A scream launched up her throat but stuck there, unable to make it
past the strangulation of terror gripping her larynx.
“In here!” the intruder shouted down the hall, his
head turning to reveal what looked like stripes of gangrene on his jaw. No…a
black flame tattoo.
Another man entered, and her mouth sagged. And she
thought Gangrene Face’s shoulders had been broad. The man who’d just shoved into her room was twice as big, his
shoulders size Incredible Hulk, and a hundred times scarier. She saw him
clearly as the lights from a Navy helicopter on its weary way home to NAS North
Island raked through her organza curtains like a prison searchlight. A body
clothed in a black leather jacket and dark cargo pants was revealed, along with
the man’s shaved head, sporting tattoos—same black flames as Gangrene—climbing
from above his ears to the top of his bald head. He looked like an Aryan Nation
sociopath, brutal and violent and…what could he possibly want with her?
He stalked toward her, and her stomach iced. She
scuttled sideways against the wall like a crab, her teeth set in a grimace, her
eyes darting toward her bedroom window. Only a few feet away, but…five floors
down equaled lots of bone breakage on the streets of San Diego.
“She must be the bit o’ skirt we’re lookin’ for,”
Gangrene told Hulk in a British accent which really didn’t fit this scenario.
Hulk drew up right in front of her, six-feet-umpteen-inches
of darkness, chilling, ruthless power emanating from him.
She kicked violently at the jail of her sheets and
found a scream, finally, belting it out as loud as she could.
“Shut your gob,” Hulk snarled.
Like a genie being commanded into its bottle, her
voice obeyed immediately and rammed back down her throat. Yes, yes, upsetting a man like this is an extremely bad idea.
He reached for her.
She pressed backward so hard, she wondered the drywall
didn’t crack against her spine.
Grabbing her shoulders, Hulk jerked her out of the
wrap of her sheets and onto her feet, the violence of the gesture jolting a cry
past her lips. With a bruising grip still on her upper arm, Hulk hauled her at
a stumbling pace from her bedroom into the hallway.
“Please,” she gasped, hot tears spilling down her
face. “What do you want from me?”
They passed her roommate’s bedroom, and Marissa
glimpsed Lila peeking out from behind the door, a bed sheet wrapped toga-style
around her body. Not such a good night to get caught sleeping in the nude.
Lila’s lips trembled. “Oh, Marissa,” she breathed.
Her roommate’s you’re
doomed tone turned Marissa’s legs to pudding, just, squish, down she went onto her knees.
Hulk made a guttural sound of impatience and yanked
her to her feet again.
“P-please,” she stammered. “D-Don’t hurt me, please.”
She pulled against his hold, but it was like trying to stop a Kodiak bear. Her
feet skidded along the length of the hallway, carpet burning the soles of her
feet.
“Cow,” Hulk snarled. So much for not upsetting the
man. He tossed her over his shoulder, the chains on his biker jacket biting
into her skin through the thin fabric of her pajamas. The rounded position of
her back pulled painfully at her spine, and she choked on her next breath. The
fragility of her body, something she usually so successfully ignored, roared
dead-center into her consciousness. Panic greyed the sides of her vision at the
feel of hard, solid muscles beneath her. This man was massive. He could do
anything to her, anything, and she’d
be utterly helpless to stop him.
“Lila!” Marissa screamed, more tears dripping off her
nose. “Call 911!”
“Oh, shit!” Lila lurched out from behind her door.
With a careless backhand, Hulk swatted Lila across the
mouth, the blow, shockingly, lifting Lila off her feet and rocketing her all
the way back onto her bed. She thumped onto her mattress with a frightened cry,
her makeshift toga breezing above her waist and her legs flinging wide, giving
everyone a full-on shot of her muff.
Gangrene leered at the sight. “Hang about, Mürk. I
want to give this one a stuffin’.”
“There’s no time,” Hulk—apparently, Mürk—retorted. “We’ve got to leg it,
Tëer, everyone else is at the warehouse by now.”
Tëer grumbled something foul, but tramped out of the
apartment along with Mürk, thankfully for Lila’s virtue, and got into the
elevator.
Fingers tangled into the back of Mürk’s jacket,
Marissa prayed for some late night partier to come home conveniently now and find her upended on this
behemoth’s shoulder. She filled her lungs with a potential scream just in case,
but no such luck. The parking lot was equally Judgment Day deserted and dark.
The scratching together of palm fronds in a mild June breeze was the only sound
besides the clomp of both men’s heavy boots on the asphalt.
They stopped at a rusted-out blue Honda Civic, one
headlight-eyeball dangling from the front by wiry veins, and then screech, metallic hinges wailed for oil
as Mürk hauled open the trunk. He flung Marissa off his shoulder with all the
care he’d show a dead body, and—the trunk!
She fastened cat claws into his T-shirt and clambered
back up his body. “No!”
He peeled her off and thrust her toward the dark
opening again.
She crammed her foot against the edge of the trunk,
the metal sharp and cold against her bare flesh. “Don’t put me in there!”
With a growl, he folded her into a ball and slammed
her inside.
Ribs met spare tire in a dizzying blast of pain. Her
spine throbbed. She wheezed a breath and shoved upright, ignoring the pinpricks
of light sparkling across the field of her vision.
With a palm on her shoulder, Mürk rammed her back
down. “Bloody hell,” he hissed.
“Not in the trunk!” She opened her mouth to yell for—
He stuffed a ball gag into it, then flipped her onto her stomach. The stench of
brake fluid assaulted her nostrils; a lug wrench ground into her cheek. Liquid
fear clutched her lower belly as Mürk secured the strap of the ball gag tight
against the back of her head, then bound her wrists.
She bucked and flailed, whipping herself back over.
She gnashed on her ball gag and tried to scream around it. Not in a trunk!
“Stop throwin’ a benny, you split arse.” Mürk’s gaze
was tundra cold, black as the end of the world.
She sobbed in panic, her nostrils pinching and
releasing, pinching and releasing. She couldn’t breathe! She kicked her legs
up.
“You keep givin’ me trouble, ducky, and I’ll sock you
in the turnip so many times you’ll never find your way back from ugly, savvy?”
His voice was deep and dark like first generation Hell, but also incongruously
laced with that touch of British culture. He braced a hand on the open lid of
the trunk, his Guns & Roses T-shirt hiking up to reveal a peek of gnarled
scar on his belly. Somebody had tried to gut this maniac jerk? Shocking!
The trunk lid started to come down…
She shook her head wildly at him, trying to scream
again, her chest and throat tightening.
He slammed the lid shut, interring her in black. She
thrashed her head from side to side, her heartbeat erratic, her eyes bugging
and rolling as she tried to see anything…anything...
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tracy
is the award-winning author of gritty romance, her books spanning genres across
paranormal (The Community series), military suspense (The Wings of Gold
series), and Historical (The Baron’s War trilogy). During
nearly twenty-five years spent as a military wife, she lived all over the
United States and in Europe, enjoying seven years overseas in the diplomatic
community, first in Rome then in Madrid, until she settled back in San Diego.
Tracy holds a master’s degree in Marriage, Family, and Child Counseling, and
has used this background to create a fan-based website called The Character
Couch, where romance’s favorite couples are brought into a fun session with
therapist, Regan Malloy. Her debut paranormal novel, THE BLOODLINE WAR, is a
Bronze Medal winner for romance of the prestigious Independent Publishers Book
Award (IPPY).
Buy Links
Amazon: http://amzn.to/UXOGX7
Contact Links
Website: http://tracytappan.com/
Facebook: Tracy Tappan Romance Author
Twitter: @TracyTappan
Email: Tracy@TracyTappan.com
Amazon: Author page http://amzn.to/1h1pBnZ
The
Character Couch website: http://www.charactercouch.com/
4.5 Stars
Marissa is from a rare bloodline, one that makes her one of the few how can have children with vampires. When she's kidnapped and then saved by Dev she's given a chance at half a million dollars is she works underground for a year. What she doesn't know is that it's a ploy in which they hope she falls in love with one of the men down there and stays...forever.
Dev knows from the moment he falls on Marissa that she's his mate, but with their new ways of doing things he can't tell her what he really is right away. As their feelings grow secrets kept could ruin them before they get a chance at forever after.
Marissa has had a crap life when it comes to those closest to her, she's never fit in and didn't know why.
Dev is a total sweetie wrapped up in one very hot warrior package. He's hates the typical vampire stories and tries his hardest to be different from the stories.
These two have their share of problems, but I loved seeing the back and forth between them and seeing how they reacted to new situations. The storyline is interesting and keeps you glued to the pages. Don't believe me? I stayed up till 1:30 in the morning to finish it because I couldn't put it down!
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