Second Chance Desire (Hot Moon Rising #8) Read online

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  Second Chance Desire

  Copyright 2017 by Dominique Eastwick

  ISBN: 978-1-68361-147-9

  Cover art by Ravenborn Covers

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work, in whole or in part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Decadent Publishing Company, LLC

  Look for us online at:

  www.decadentpublishing.com

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Breaking the Mating Bond by Dominique Eastwick

  A Note from the Author

  When Desiree Holt asked if I was interested in writing for this series it took me just the time to type yes and send to let her know. I am so honored to be part of this series with authors I adore. I hope you love Knox and Emerson as much as I did. I believe it or not the alligator scene is real…true story.

  Happy Reading,

  Dom

  Second Chance Desire

  Knox Fort only wants to be left alone. Eight years ago, his world crashed when his mate walked out on him. After a stint in jail for a bar fight, he did the only thing he could. He emotionally closed off to everyone and everything. Now he is content to act as a sentinel for his pack and work at his auto garage.

  When Emerson Kingston returns home to deal with her mother’s estate, car trouble and ex-lovers aren’t in the plans. But opening old wounds is sometimes the only way to move on, if moving on is possible with a man who has closed himself off to the world.

  Fate is a wicked bitch who doesn’t always care what you want. Can Knox and Emerson figure get their second chance, or will it kill them in the end?

  The Hot Moon Rising Series

  Wolf Moon by Desiree Holt

  Venus Moon by Desiree Holt

  Blood Moon by Desiree Holt

  Hidden Moon by Afton Locke

  Moonlight Danger by Tina Donahue

  Silver Moon by Merryn Dexter

  Hunger Moon by Merryn Dexter

  Second Chance Desire by Dominique Eastwick

  Coming Soon

  Dire Moon by Eliza March

  Also by Dominique Eastwick

  Strawberry Kisses

  The Duke and the Virgin

  The Marquis and the Mistress

  The Earl and His Virgin Countess

  Infiltrating Her Pack

  Shifting Hearts

  Siren’s Serenade

  Healing His Soul’s Mate

  Breaking the Mating Bond

  The Virgin’s Infiltrator

  Healing Harvest

  Second Chance Desire

  Hot Moon Rising Book 8

  By

  Dominique Eastwick

  Dedication

  Special thanks to Desiree Holt for thinking enough of my writing to invite me to be part of her world and play with her babies.

  As always thank you to Nadine who always pushes me to stop procrastinating.

  Moonlight Wolf Pack

  Charlie Aquino (human) – Detective for the sheriff’s gang task force for Palmetto County Sheriff’s Department. His partner is Jesse Farrell.

  - Mate: Liana Cosa

  Liana Cosa Aquino – Refugee from a different pack. She works part-time as a waitress at Moonlight Diner.

  - Mate: Charlie Aquino

  Silver Ellis (human) – Was the witness of a violent crime and placed in Kirk’s protection as a favor to Jesse Farrell and Charlie Aquino. Works as a school teacher.

  - Mate: Kirk Matheson

  Alexa Martin Farrell – Left her pack over a disagreement with her alpha. She moved to Florida and helped the pack find a small community of cottages in Moonlight, Florida. She works as an Internet researcher and gets jobs through her online website. She also does research for The Defenders.

  - Mate: Jesse Farrell

  Jesse Farrell (human) – Detective for the sheriff’s gang task force for Palmetto County Sheriff’s Department. His partner is Charlie Aquino.

  - Mate: Alexa Martin (who saved him when on assignment he was attacked by a gang)

  Shelley Fields - Owns a farm and orchard with her mother Eileen, growling fruits and vegetables. She is helping out at the Moonlight Diner temporarily because the owner, Don, is sick.

  - Mate: Alan Shifflett

  Riesa Marlowe (human) – A psychic who helped locate Hannah Raines.

  - Mate: Derek Sawyer

  Kirk Matheson – Works for The Defenders Agency. Has a cabin offset in the woods, about a mile from town.

  - Mate: Silver Ellis

  Hannah Raines Molina – She was kidnapped and saved by Jesse and Charlie with the help of Riesa Marlowe, a psychic. Works as Alexa Martin’s research assistant.

  - Mate: Rand Molina

  Rand Molina - Derek’s second-in-command in the Moonlight pack. Partners with Derek Sawyer at The Defenders, a private security agency.

  - Mate: Hannah Raines

  Derek Sawyer – Alpha of a small pack. Most of their original clan was destroyed when developers took the land they were living on and many of their pack were killed by hunters. They hid in an abandoned orange grove until Alexa offered them the bungalows in exchange for their help. He and the others have embraced Jesse and Alexa and Charlie and Liana and given the female shifters a new sense of belonging.

  - Partners with Rand Molina at The Defenders Agency, a private security and bodyguard agency.

  - Mate: Riesa Marlowe

  Alan Shifflett - When shifted, Alan appears with snaggled teeth and missing patches of hair. He’s prone to violent outbursts. His teeth tear his lips, leaving wounds when he shifts. His father owns Moonlight Diner, which he is currently managing. He is also a programmer.

  - Mate: Shelley Fields

  The Defenders Agency - A private security and bodyguard agency formed by Rand and Derek once they were established in the little enclave of cottages. It provides good income for the pack. A majority of the pack is involved in the cases they take.

  Jesse and Charlie are their contacts with the sheriff’s department and also refer many cases to them.

  Chapter One

  Knox Fort doubled over as sharp stabbing chest pains shot through him. Convinced he might be in the middle of a heart attack, he gripped the socket wrench in his hands and tried to breathe through the haze of pain. That he had never heard of a shifter having a heart attack didn’t matter. As the sting subsided, two things happened at once. The double ding of his auto garage waiting room door rang, alerting him of a customer’s arrival, and the hairs on the back of his neck rose. This was no heart attack. Heartbreak, maybe, but cardiac arrest, no.

  Determined to ignore the woman twenty feet away, he went back to repairing the muffler over his head. Only t
hen did he notice the wrench bent at an eighty-degree angle lying useless in his palm. He climbed out from the pit and under the large SUV on which he had been working on for the last six hours.

  Fucking, fuck, fuck, fuckers.

  He knew he presented his usual air of off-putting indifference. Emotions long buried, in fact thought to be dead, churned. Guess what, asshole, you can still feel. The one woman he never wanted to see again stood less than few yards from him in the only auto repair shop in a thirty mile radius. Since she couldn’t know he was here, she wouldn’t unless she needed help, and the sooner he resolved her issue, the sooner she’d be gone again.

  The door from the waiting area into the garage slammed open. With nothing between them, now, her scent nearly took him to his knees. He waited for the sizzle to fade, as the door made its slow close, before turning to eye the boy coming at him. No more than seventeen and with his whole life before him, the idiot had dropped out of school and gotten in with the wrong crowd. The local sheriff’s deputy had begged him to take the human boy under his wing. Give him a chance. Easy enough, but keeping the pack’s secrets from him proved a bit more challenging when dealing with a curious teen.

  “Knox, there’s a chick here.” Cedro Alvarez indicated the woman standing on the other side of the glass door.

  “Customer,” he managed through teeth clenched tight enough to crack. Hopefully, the teenager would think his displeasure was only at his disrespect of women.

  “Right. There is a customer—”

  “I know.” He handed the boy the bent tool. “See if I have another one of these wrenches, would you?”

  “What the hell, brah?” Cedro eyed the tool with awe and would have asked more questions if Knox hadn’t sent him one of his I-have-no-patience-for-questions looks. “Right, I’m on it.”

  “I’ll deal with the…customer.” He opened the glass door to the waiting area with his hip as he wiped his hands on a rag that might have had more grease on it than his skin. But he wasn’t here to impress this woman. He’d tried that once before.

  Never again.

  A heady mix of hyacinth and cedar assailed his nostrils. His cock, ignorant to what the rest of him knew was best, came to life, demanding he pay attention. For a second, he drank in her full hips and shapely ass in the tight skirt and killer heels. Her blonde hair pulled into a tight bun allowed him to view the delicate skin he’d once loved to kiss. His gaze dropped to her left hand holding her purse. Her ring finger remained bare. Angry at himself for letting her affect him in any way, he growled, “What do you want, Emerson?”

  Emerson Kingston looked up from her phone. As the blood drained from her face, he prayed she wouldn’t faint. If he touched her, he wasn’t completely certain which way his tightly leashed emotions would go.

  “How the hell did you end up here?” she asked when she finally regained control of herself. Her voice was as sexy and husky as he remembered.

  “It’s as good as any other place.” He wondered the same about her, though. “What do you want?”

  “Want?” She gazed at him with large blue eyes.

  He should be enjoying her discomfort, but all he wanted was her gone. Every second in her presence chiseled away at the wall he had spent too long putting in place. “I assume you have a reason to be in my waiting area? Or are you simply here to waste my time?”

  Again. The word went unspoken.

  “My car is making some funny noises and pulling hard to the right.” She appeared ready to bolt, and he figured if there had been another option, even an AutoZone where she could fix the matter herself, she would have taken it.

  Mechanical issues. Good. Talking about cars he could do in his sleep; he didn’t need to think about it or her. “Did you hit something?”

  “I might have hit something.” She averted her eyes.

  “You might have?” Why did people lie to their mechanic? Like he wouldn’t figure it out once he got under the hood.

  Ring!

  He lifted the handle from its cradle before it rang for a second time. “Fort Garage”

  “Hey, Knox.” The voice of Jesse Farrell, sheriff’s deputy and mate to one of his pack’s females, buzzed through the phone line.

  “I have yours on the lift now. You know it would cost you a lot less money to buy a new ride than have me keep fixing this junker up.”

  The other man laughed. “You know how much I love that thing.”

  “Give me about thirty minutes, and I should have the hole in the oil line fixed.” He placed the receiver into its cradle and turned back to her. “I can’t examine your car, Emerson, until I get through the ones before you.”

  The parking lot was currently full. There was no way she could have missed them when she came in. “That’s okay. I figured as much, so a rental is being delivered.”

  “A rental? Yours can’t limp along to where you are going?”

  With fist on her hip, she stared at him wide-eyed. “If I could go somewhere else, don’t you think after seeing you I would have left?”

  Good, she had caught his hostility, not that he had been trying to hide it. Only then did a thought make his blood turn cold. “You aren’t passing through on your way to somewhere else?”

  “No, I’m in town for personal reasons.”

  “Personal?” He glanced at the appointment book by the register, afraid of what she might see in his eyes. Anger, fear, and worse…longing. “Do you plan to be in town long?”

  “For a bit. There are some things I need to take care of.” Could she be anymore vague?

  “Hopefully, it will resolve quickly, then.” Unspoken, he wanted her done and gone.

  “How long should I tell the rental company I will need their service?”

  He walked out, tossing over his shoulder, “I won’t know until she is on the lift.”

  Out of view, he let out a long hiss of air. His wolf screamed to be allowed free to run, and he couldn’t deny he wanted to fuck her until they couldn’t stand. For seven years, he had maintained his indifference with the world. Eight years ago, he’d left his pack for a few weeks and gone to Miami for some advanced mechanical training. While there, he’d met Emerson, a carefree woman with hair the color of the sun’s rays and eyes as blue as the deepest parts of the Atlantic on a calm day. She drew him like a beacon the first day.

  She was enjoying the last moments of freedom before reporting for boot camp. One glance, and thoughts of anything but this flaxen beauty had failed him. Except while he was in class, she was at his side, and it took no more than the first kiss for Knox to recognize how important Emerson was to him and his wolf. More than a simple fling, she was his mate.

  On their third date, she gave him her virginity when she ended up in his bed, and had stayed each night after. He planned to introduce her to his pack. He would need permission to bring her into the fold, even if their mating had to wait until after she finished Basic and perhaps her first deployment.

  Under the full moon that fateful night, he claimed her as his, but he didn’t tell her his intention, didn’t think it would matter to a human. He could never imagine how wrong he might be. When he returned to his studio rental the next day after class, he found it empty. A few days later, a postcard arrived with five letters written in her perfect handwriting. Sorry. Nothing else, no explanation, just one word.

  A week later, he received his certification and returned to his pack, angry, alone, and eager to fight anyone who crossed his path. His bar fights became legendary, and anyone searching for trouble knew he would be happy to oblige them. A stint in the human jail wised him up. The judge, sick of seeing him come through the drunk tank, declared a hard lesson in tough love in order. It worked. He returned from his thirty days incarceration a changed wolf.

  To keep the anger in check, all other emotions had to be locked deep away. His alpha hadn’t been sure what was worse, the angry Knox who went in or the Fort who came out. Now his pack referred to him as Fort Knox. He was a strong fighter, a for
ce to be reckoned with in battle, but an excellent mechanic who preferred solitude. Not something a wolf usually desired. When the remnants of the pack escaped to Moonlight, after losing their home and previous alpha to a vicious attack from another pack, one of the females had been assaulted out by the empty garage. In the interest of setting someone up closer to the highway to keep an eye on potential threats to Moonlight and avoid further confrontations, he obtained a small business loan and, after getting the alpha’s approval, moved from the subdivision where the rest of the pack dwelled to the small room connected to the garage.

  It had been a win-win for everyone. He was close to the Moonlight Diner and the convenience store should trouble make its way toward them. Behind his shop lay a natural wild area which connected to the pack’s new land, making it a great place for members to leave their clothing and supplies while on a run. His life, if not happy, was at least content, controlled, and busy.

  Now his control was in danger of snapping, and he couldn’t be sure what would come, lust or anger. But neither was likely to end well for someone.

  “Knox, are you okay?”

  The teenager’s voice broke through his musings. “What?”

  “Are you okay? You seemed almost paralyzed.”

  “Just thinking.” He rubbed at the stress lines forming on his brow.

  “Whatever.” Cedro handed him a new wrench, the bent one still in the teen’s grasp. “So I’m still trying to figure out how the hell you bent this wrench.”