The Protector (Lone Wolf, Book 1) (29 page)

“I can change you, sweetheart, and
you’ll be safe forever,” said my father, searching my face.
 
“I can turn you into a vampire.”

To be
continued…

Elizabeth’s life is in
danger, but can Layne keep her safe?
 
And will the choice Elizabeth must make tear them apart forever?
 
Experience this star-crossed romance as it
unfolds in the second Lone Wolf book,
The Guardian
, coming soon!

Sign up to be notified when the next Lone
Wolf book is released!

If
you enjoyed
The Protector
, you’ll love Bridget’s Sullivan Vampires.
 

The
following is an excerpt from “
Eternal
Hotel
,”
the first novella in the Sullivan Vampires series, a beautiful,
romantic epic that follows the clan of Sullivan vampires and the women who love
them.
 
Advance praise has hailed this
hallmark series as “
Twilight
for women who love women” and “a lesbian
romance that takes vampires seriously!
 
Two thumbs up!”
 

…So
this
was the staircase
from last night, next to the front desk.
 
The Widowmaker.
 
It must be.
 
I’d never seen a steeper set of stairs.
 
From up above, they looked simply like the
rungs of a ladder in a barn—so steep and so tall and almost impossible to even
think of taking.

It’s not that I don’t like
heights—I’m pretty okay with them.
 
But
these stairs were something else.
 
I
wasn’t taking these steps—I’d have to circle back somehow and find the other
spiral staircase down to the first floor

As I turned, I caught the first
floor out of the corner of my eye.
 
Because of the cathedral ceilings of that first floor, it seemed much
farther away then I’d thought it was.

It was then that something strange
happened.
 

The ground seemed to
spin under me for a moment, bucking and heaving like I was trying to walk on
waves of carpeting, not good firm floor.
 
Or did it really?
 
Was it just a
trick of the eye?
 
Either way, I took a
step backward as a shadow fell in front of me, but there was no floor beneath
that foot stepping backward, then, and I was
tumbling
backwards, shock
cold enough to burn me flooding through my body as, impossibly, I began to fall
down the stairs.

A hand caught my arm.
 
I hung suspended over the abyss of the air,
my back to the emptiness, and in one smooth motion, I was pulled back.
 

Saved.

The hand was cold, and the body I
brushed against as I was hauled out of the air felt as if the person had
stepped out of a prolonged trip through a walk-in freezer.
 
I looked up at the face of the woman who had
saved me, and when I breathed out, I will never forget it:
 
my breath hung suspended in the air between
us like a ghost.

She was taller than me by about a
head, and I had to lean back to gaze into her eyes.
 
They were violently blue, a blue that opened me up like a key and
lock as she looked down at me, her eyes sharp and dark as her jaw worked, her
full lips in a downward curve that my own eyes couldn’t help but follow.
 
She wore a ponytail, the cascades of her
silken white-blonde hair gathered tightly at the back of her head and flowing
over her right shoulder like frozen water falling.
 
She wore a man’s suit, I realized, complete with a navy blue tie
smartly pulled snug against her creamy neck.
 
She looked pale and felt so cold as her strong hand gripped my wrist,
but it was gentle, too.
 
As if she knew
her own strength.

I saw all of this in an instant, my
eyes following the lines and curves of her like I’d trace my gaze over an
extremely fine painting.
 
And, like an
extremely fine painting, she began to make my heart beat faster.
 
That was odd.
 
I was never much attracted to random women, even before I dated
Anna, even before Anna…well.
 

But this wasn’t just my heart
beating faster, my blood moving quicker through me.
 
This was something else.
 
A weightlessness, like being suspended in the air over the staircase
again, the coolness of her palm against my skin a gravity that I seemed to
suddenly spin around.
 
When she gazed
down into my eyes, she held me there as firmly as if her hands were snug
against the small of my back, pressing me to her cool, lean body that wore the suit
with such dignity and grace that I couldn’t imagine her in anything else.

I was spellbound.

She said not a word, but her
fingers left my wrist, grazing a little of the skin of my bare forearm for a
heartbeat before her hand fell to her side.
 
I shivered, holding my hand to my heart, then, as if I’d been
bitten.
 
We stood like that for a
heartbeat, two, the woman’s eyes never leaving mine as her chin lifted, as her
jaw worked again, her full lips parting…

“Are you all right?”
 
I shivered again.
 
Her voice was dark, deep and throaty, as cool as her skin, as
gentle as the touch of her fingertips along my arm.
 
But as I gazed up at her, as I tried to calm my breathing, my
heart, we blinked, she and I, together.

I knew, then.

I’d heard that voice before.

I’d seen this
face
before.

“Have we…met?” I stammered, eyes
narrowed as I gazed up at her in wonder.
 
We couldn’t have.
 
She shook her
head and put it to the side as she looked down at me, as if I was a
particularly difficult puzzle that needed solving.
 
I would have remembered her, the curve of her jaw and lips, the
dazzling blue of her eyes.
 
I could
never have forgotten her if I’d only seen her once.
 
It would have been impossible.

I took a gulp of air and
took a step back again, unthinking, and her hand was there, then, at my wrist
again as she smoothly pulled me forward, toward her.

“The stairs,” she said softly,
apologetically.
 
I’d taken a step closer
to her this time, and there was hardly any space between us, even as I realized
that my hand was at her waist, steadying myself against her.
 
I took a step to the side, quickly, then, my
cheeks burning.

“I’m sorry,” I managed,
swallowing.
 
“And…thank you…”
 
Her head was still to the side, but this
time, her lips twitched as if she was trying to repress a smile.
 

“I’ve been meaning to remodel these
steps.
 
Not everyone knows how steep
they truly are,” she said, and her lips did turn up into a smile, then, making
my heart beat a little faster.
 
I took a
great gulp of air as she held out her cool fingers to me, palm up.
 

“I am Kane Sullivan,” she said
easily, her tongue smoothing over the syllables as the smile vanished from her
face.
 
“You must be Rose Clyde,” she
said gently, the thrill of her voice, the deepness of it, the darkness of it,
saying my name, the way her lips formed the words…I nodded my head up and down
like a puppet, and I placed my hand in hers.
 
Her fingers were
so cold
, as she shook my hand like a delicate
thing, letting her palm slide regretfully over mine as she dropped my hand with
a fluid grace I had to watch but still couldn’t fully understand.
 

I was acting like an idiot.
 
I’d seen beautiful women before.
 
But Kane wasn’t beautiful.
 
Not in that sense.
 
She was…compelling.
 
Her
face, her gaze, her eyes, an impossibility of attraction.
 
I felt, as I watched her, that buildings,
trees, people would turn as she walked past them, unseeing things still,
somehow, gazing at her.
 

I knew her, then.
 

The painting.
 
The woman in the painting from last night,
with the big, black cat, lounging and regal and triumphant and unspeakably bewitching.
 
The naked woman, I realized, as my face
began to redden, warming beneath her cool, silent gaze.
 
She was the woman from the painting.
 
But as I realized that, as we silently
watched one another, I realized, too, that that would have been impossible.
 
It had been a while since college, it was
true, but I could still tell when a painting was a few hundred years old.

The woman in the
painting could not possibly have been Kane Sullivan.
 
And yet, it couldn’t possibly have been anyone else.
 

“I’m…I’m sorry,” I spluttered,
realizing—again—how much of an idiot I must look to this incredibly attractive
creature.
 
Her lips twitched upward
again, and her mouth stretched into a true smile this time, the warmth of it making
the air around her seem less frozen.
 

“You’re fine.
 
It’s not everyday that someone completely
uproots their life and charts a course for places unknown,” she said, turning
on her heel and inclining her heard toward me.
 
As she turned, I caught the scent of her.
 
Jasmine, vanilla…spice.
 
An
intoxicating, cool scent that was warm at the same time.
 
Unmistakable and deeply remarkable.
 
Just like her.
 
I stared up at her with wide eyes as she gestured gracefully with
her arm for us to walk together, like she was a gentleman from the past century.
 
True, she was wearing a sharp man’s suit
(that I was trying desperately not to stare at or trace the curves of it with
my eyes—and failing), but there was something incredibly old fashioned about
her.
 
I kept thinking about that at that
first meeting.
 
Like she was from a
different era, not the one of smart phones and the Internet and fast food
french fries.
 
No.
 
The kind of era that had horse-drawn
carriages, corsets and bustles and houses that contained parlors.
 
We began to walk down the corridor together,
in the opposite direction I had come, me sneaking surreptitious glances at her,
her staring straight ahead.

The spell of the moment was broken,
but a new spell was beginning to create itself, weaving around the two of us as
we walked along the corridor.
 
As she
spoke, I stared half up at her, half down the hall stretching out in front of
us.
 
All of my actual attention, though,
was on this woman.
 

Every bit of it.
 
She was just like that.
 
So…compelling.
 
She was a gravity that pulled me in, hook, line and sinker.
 
I didn’t know then how much of a gravity she
had yet to become to me.

You
can get
Eternal
Hotel
,
the first in the Sullivan Vampires series, available now!

Sign up to be notified when Bridget
releases anything new!

Acknowledgements

I’m incredibly lucky in the fact that most of my
closest friends are writers, and really amazing ones at that.
 
Without their support, feedback and constant
“you can do it’s!” I can tell you right now that none of my stories would
exist.
 

Special thanks to P.J. who reminds
me why I love these stories so darn much when I’m having a really rough writing
day.
 
She always gives me the strength
and courage to write my heart out.
 
You’re a daily inspiration to me and I’m so blessed to know you!

Marian and Ruby, to whom this book
is dedicated, are two of the best friends I could ever have wished for.
 
Thank you for always being there for me, for
asking for more stories, for loving my wolves and vampire ladies.
 
Thank you for your unwavering support and
love.
 
I love you both so much!

R.M. is an unwavering support and
an inspiration and this incredible person who I’m really blessed to call my
friend.
 
Thank you for loving and
supporting my vampires, and loving and supporting me.
 
I’m grateful every day for your friendship!

My fans are incredible and so
supportive.
 
Thank you so much for your
kind words, thank you so much for reading my stories and for loving my vampire
and wolf ladies as much as I do.
 
Special thanks especially in this volume to Terri, who’s been really
vocal in her support of me, which I appreciate so much!
 
Thank you to everyone who’s read my
books—you make this journey so much better by being on it with me, and I
appreciate you so much!