RAVEN
(GUARDED HEARTS BOOK 3)
by Claire Marta and Nia Farrell
Cover Design by Crystal Visions
Release Date September 22, 2020
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Unseen enemies threaten the newest fated mate and her child.
Nurse practitioner and midwife Raven O’Malley has no idea what she’ll be getting into when she takes on her newest client, who lives at the Citadel with not one but two handsome men. The other cadre members are equally attractive but it’s Cayden McPherson and Killian O’Connell who set their sights on her.
Raven has enough to deal with. A daughter, a puppy, a demanding job, and a mobster ex-husband. Now a blackmailer wants her to spy on the Citadel or she risks her daughter’s life.
The cadre members know there are forces of darkness to battle and evil exists in both worlds. Can Cayden and Killian protect the woman they love or will they lose her to enemies seen and unseen?
Shifters with a sci-fi twist, the Guarded Hearts series follows members of the Order of the Phoenix. While interconnected, each title can be read as a stand-alone. MFM ménage erotic romance written for Ages 18+.
Excerpt (NSFW):
Cayden was just leaving the kitchen when she caught up to him.
“We need to talk,” she snapped. Catching his hand, she dragged him down the hall and into the infirmary. “What the feck is going on?” she demanded.
Cayden frowned. “What?” he asked, feigning ignorance.
“They know,” she grated. “Casey. Morgan. The others. They know about us. What did you tell them? What did you say?”
The medic rubbed a hand over his face and blew out a breath. “Ye’re nae gang tae like it,” he warned. “We’ve been holding off, telling ye because of it, but there’s no help for it now, is there? Yer scent is enough tae make it clear that we’ve done the deed,” he told her. “Our kind can smell when a woman goes through the flux and her body is transformed. Ye need to talk to Morgan and Casey about what they went through, but Casey’s experience is like tae be closer. Morgan’s change was put off when she ingested vampire blood—”
“Vampires?” Raven stared at him, incredulous. “You’re telling me that there are vampires? That they’re real.”
He nodded, his green eyes as serious as she’d ever seen them. “They are that,” he told her. “One targeted Morgan. We killed it, but another one kidnapped her. We got her back and cleaned out the nest. We think we got them all now.”
“You think. You think? Jaysus, Joseph, and Mary! You should have told me!” she yelled at him. “Bloody hell! You and your mate could have told me any time, but you didn’t say a damn word, just lured me upstairs and had your way with me. You’ve changed my body without my consent. Now I’ve put my daughter in danger after thinking I was bringing her to a sanctuary. My ex kept things from me. I’m warning you right now, I expect full disclosure in the future or there’s going to be hell to pay. Do you hear me?”
She poked him in the chest to make her point.
Cayden released the breath he’d been holding. “Let me call Killian, then. Get him down here. If we’re gang tae hae a heart-tae-heart, it needs tae be the three of us.
Zana was with Willow and Prince. Free to come, Killian joined them as soon as he could make his way downstairs. “What’s up?” he asked, picking up the tension in the air.
“She knows,” Cayden told him. “Or knows the start of it, anyway. She’s demanded full disclosure. It’s better tae hear it from the both of us than tae hear it from one and again from the other.”
Killian nodded. “Ye’re the medic. I’ll let ye explain the way of things.”
“We’ve told ye what we are, that these robes of flesh have four strands of DNA. When a fated mate is found, the introduction of sperm starts the transformation process to change her body, making it compatible, able to conceive and bear children.”
“I don’t understand,” Raven clipped. “I can’t have children. I told you that. It shouldn’t have affected me.”
“But it did,” Killian assured her. “We don’t understand it either, but we knew from the first that you were the one for us, the woman to complete us. The males of our kind experience what we call the quickening. It’s a physical response to a fated mate. Lets us know that she’s the one. We felt it with ye. We will not question God’s will. Ye were chosen for us. Transformed by us. But there are other things…”
Raven was seething at their disregard for her. “And you thought it was just fine to go and do it because it’s all in the plan?” she grated. “You gave no thought to what I wanted or the fact it’s not just me. Do you know how selfish that is? How arrogant?” She buried her face in her hands. “I really can’t deal with this right now. I should get Willow and Prince and pack up the damn car and get the hell out while I can.”
“Ye need tae listen,” Cayden told her, lowering his voice in a way that did strange things to her insides. Grasping her biceps, he pulled her easily to him. She wanted to grind against him. Use him like they’d used her. How dare they!
Raven struggled to break free, clawing at his arms deep enough to leave bloody scratches when he refused to let her go.
She went still when she saw the gouges healing before her eyes.
“Full disclosure,” Cayden growled in that voice of his. “This is a hint of my true voice. It has power… affects people in different ways. Mine will make ye wish to obey. Doctor’s orders.” He said it half-jokingly, but the man was deadly serious. “Iosefa’s will put someone tae sleep. The new mothers are sure tae keep him on call when the bairns get here and they need some rest. These bodies hae regenerative powers. Accelerated healing. Lack of scarring. But the thing ye need most tae understand is that ye’ll live as long as us.”
Raven’s solar plexus chakra closed tight enough to cause a cramp. “And how long is that?” she said, afraid to ask.
“Three hundred years, give or take,” Cayden told her.
“Three…?” She stared at him, caught in a nightmare that had just gotten worse. “You’re saying I’ll live three hundred years? And what about Willow? What about my daughter? You bastards! You bloody bastards! And don’t go using that voice on me,” she warned them. “I will never forgive you for this. Never!”
“Raven,” Killian crooned, trying to make peace. “We love you. We’d never do anything to put you in harm’s way or come between you and your child. We want Willow to be our daughter, too, the child that we wished for but will never have. Tobias said there’s a chance that she’s a fated mate for one of our kind, but Theo thinks her destiny lies elsewhere, with a fae princeling who’s waiting fer her to grow up.”
“You love me,” she scoffed. “You don’t know what love is. We had sex. We scratched an itch. Satisfied a physical need. I didn’t know you enough for it to be more. I still don’t.”
“Please,” Killian begged her. “We’re asking fer the chance to prove ourselves to ye.”
Raven felt anger, rage, but there was also lust. It was so fierce, she found herself responding before she was aware of it. Grabbing the back of Killian’s head, she forced his lips down on hers. There was no control. Just overwhelming attraction merging with her turbulent emotions. She wanted to make them pay for what they’d done. Show them that their desire was meaningless. Not if they didn’t have her heart. That wouldn’t happen now. Not after such a betrayal. How could she trust them?
Killian didn’t resist but responded by thrusting his tongue into her mouth. Reaching with her free hand, she fisted a handful of Cayden’s shirt and drew him to her. Two mouths fought to claim her lips. Their bodies crowded hers until her hips hit the examination table.
Fueled by anger, driven by revenge, she grabbed Killian’s collar and pushed him into one of the two armless stack chairs against the wall. Reaching down, she judged his hardness and took him out.
“I want you ready for me,” she told him. Ignoring Cayden, she stripped off her clothes and knelt between Killian’s feet, giving him a blow job he didn’t deserve but that her body needed to handle him. When he was wet enough, she stood up and straddled him like a stripper about to give him the lap dance of his dreams. Taking his erection in hand, she stroked her slit with his glans, parted her folds, and sank down on his shaft, working it like a dildo, a tool for her particular pleasure.
It wasn’t long, she grew greedy for more. “You,” she snapped at Cayden. “Pants off. Cock lubed. On the stool and over here.”
She didn’t have to tell him twice.
Cayden dropped his drawers and slickened himself up. Sitting on the wheeled examination stool, he did as ordered and rolled it between Killian’s feet. It was just low enough, he was shy of reaching her. Grasping her hips, he rose from the stool and found her star.
“No! Not there,” she snapped. “I want you both in my pussy. Bang my box like it’s never been banged. Think you can handle that?”
Cayden growled and showed her that he was up to the challenge. She rose partway up and held herself still while Cayden pressed his cock against Killian’s and worked his way inside, sinking his length into her, inch by inch until both men were ball’s deep inside her.
She lifted herself up and rammed herself back down. Killian groaned. Cayden’s stool went flying. She sank down on their cocks again and again, using them like they’d used her, coming once, twice, three times before the men shuddered to a finish inside her. Cayden eased out of her and grabbed some paper towels, handing them to her to stuff between her legs. She dismounted, tossing one of the towels at Killian to use. Finding her clothes, she started dressing, wordless, lecturing herself that she had no reason to feel guilty for using them as fecktoys. It was no more than they deserved after what they’d done to her.
“Raven,” Cayden crooned.
“No voice!” she snarled, shoving her feet into her shoes. “Not a word. From either of you! This was sex. Sex! Lust, not love. Now you know the difference. Don’t ever confuse them again.”
She left them without a backward glance and headed upstairs, blinking the sting of tears from her eyes, refusing to feel anything beyond the physical releases that she’d had. By the time she reached the fourth-floor guest suite, she’d sworn off all men.
“Out,” she warned Zana, giving him a look that told him she meant what she said.
The Persian was confused but obeyed, shutting the door behind him.
“How’s Prince doing?” she asked her daughter, memorizing the picture the two of them made. She’d be the one consoling Willow when she watched her puppy grow old and die. Who the feck was going to console her when she lost her child?
Damn them.
Thanks to Cayden and Killian, she was doomed to outlive her daughter. They could take their tall tales of vampires and fairy princes and shove them up their arses. If they knew what was good for them, they’d leave them the bloody hell alone.
She was here for Casey and Morgan, but Willow was her world.
They’d be wise to remember that.
Author Nia Farrell 