Tall, Dark, and Deadly: Seven Bad Boys of Paranormal Romance
Laura Kaye
Table of Contents
Tall, Dark, and Deadly Dear Reader
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Discover Laura Kaye’s Heart of the Anemoi Series East of Ecstasy
You might also enjoy the Heroes series by Laura Kaye Her Forbidden Hero
One Night with a Hero
Dare to Resist
Blood of the Demon Dear Reader
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Discover Rosalie Lario’s award-winning Demons of Infernum series... Mark of the Sylph
Bittersweet Blood Dear Reader
Part OneBreaking all the Rules
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Part TwoDiscovery and Denial
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Part ThreeRedefining Normal
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Discover Nina Croft’s The Order series... Bittersweet Magic
Break Out
Undying Destiny Dear Readers
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Read the Novels of the Enclave by Jessica Lee Undying Embrace
Night Walker Dear Reader
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Discover the Night Series … Night Demon
Shield of Fire Dear Reader
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Get lost in the Bringer and the Bane novels… Kiss of the Betrayer
Deep in Crimson Dear Reader
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
C
hapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Discover the Return to Sanctuary novels… Out in Blue
She’s the only one who can see through his golden boy façade to the broken god within...
Chrysander Notos, Supreme God of the South Wind and Summer, is on a mission: save Eurus from his death sentence and prove his troubled brother can be redeemed. But Eurus fights back, triggering vicious storms that threaten the mortal realm and dangerously drain Chrys.
Laney Summerlyn refuses to give up her grandfather’s horse farm, despite her deteriorating vision. More than ever, she needs the organized routine of her life at Summerlyn Stables, until a ferocious storm brings an impossible—and beautiful—creature crashing down from the heavens.
Injured while fighting Eurus, Chrys finds himself at the mercy of a mortal woman whose compassion and acceptance he can’t resist. As they surrender to the passion flaring between them, immortal enemies close in, forcing Chrys to choose between his brother and the only woman who’s ever loved the real him.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 by Laura Kaye. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.
Entangled Publishing, LLC
2614 South Timberline Road
Suite 109
Fort Collins, CO 80525
Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com.
Edited by Heather Howland
Cover design by Heather Howland
Ebook ISBN 978-1-62061-034-3
Print ISBN 978-1-62061-033-6
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition May 2013
This book is for everyone struggling to surrender
what they are for what they most want to become.
You can do it, and you are not alone.
Dear Reader
I couldn’t be more thrilled to bring South of Surrender’s Chrysander Notos to you in this Tall, Dark, and Deadly set! On the outside, Chrysander is the absolutely gorgeous golden boy of the Anemoi gods, but on the inside he’s broken in ways that no one else knows—so he definitely fits every one of those descriptions and then some.
The Hearts of the Anemoi series is super sexy fantasy romance based on Greek mythology, and it’s also the first series I’ve completed in its entirety. The Anemoi were wind gods that the Greeks associated with the wind, weather, and seasons, and they were believed to have control over various points around the face of the compass. That means after Chrys makes you all hot with the South Wind, you can let Owen cool you down in the North and Zephyros make you wet in the West. Heh. And don’t even get me started on the East Wind’s Devlin—unless you crave tortured heroes that make you ache and pant, he might just be too dark and deadly for you. But don’t take my word for it. *winks*
Happy reading!
Laura Kaye
All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling.
— Blaise Pascal
I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.
— D.H. Lawrence
.
Chapter One
Chrysander Notos found his brother right where their nightmarish summer began, on top of the west tower of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. While he circled through the dark sky far overhead, Chrys watched Eurus pace the narrow catwalk atop the structure. What the hell was he doing here, of all places?
Summoning the powerful energy of the South Wind, Chrys prepared for what was sure to be another brutal battle. He didn’t want to fight Eurus. Just the opposite, in fact. But fighting seemed to be all his older brother knew anymore. The accumulated scars on Chrys’s body from the past three months proved that, and now he wore his weariness like a second skin.
But someone had to save Eurus from himself and the Olympic gods’ death sentence. And Chrys was the only viable candidate. Zephyros and Owen were mated, and Boreas deserved to bask in his new status as grandfather.
Not to mention, Eurus’s problems were partly his fault. After everything, Chrys owed him the effort. Least he could do.
Eurus froze and scanned the heavens, revealing the exact moment he perceived Chrys’s presence. No sense delaying now.
In his elemental form, Chrys shot down before Eurus took flight. Shifting into corporeality at the edge of the tower’s top platform, he braced for Eurus’s attack. He could never predict whether his brother preferred to get right to the main event of kicking his ass—not something he should be able to do, not in Chrys’s own damn season, anyway—or might be up for a little verbal sparring first.
Eurus turned on his heel, black leather duster whipping around him in the heavy, humid wind. Chrys could sense his brother’s glare through the black wraparound glasses he always wore, but the blows didn’t come. Up for the sparring, then.
“Behold the do-gooder. How nice for me.”
“Why are you here, E?” Chrys asked. No way Eurus’s return to the exact spot where he’d killed their brother’s wife—or tried to; Mars had interceded and brought her back as a goddess—was coincidence. It meant something, but with Eurus it was hard to tell exactly what.
“Mmm, just basking in pleasant memories,” he said with a sneer. “What’s your excuse?”
Acidic rage churned in Chrys’s gut. Their brother Zephyros and his wife Ella were happy now, but that didn’t erase his recollection of Zeph’s brutal agony when they’d thought Ella gone for good. Chrys shoved the useless thoughts away. Eurus liked to pick at a person’s most sensitive scabs. It was one of his specialties. So Chrys caged his anger and refused to take the bait. “I’m here for the same reason I’ve been dogging you all summer. Come back to the Realm of the Gods with me. Atone. We can work this out. It doesn’t have to go down this way.”
“Grow the fuck up, Chrysander. I don’t want your help. And I sure as hell don’t need it.” He fisted his right hand, flashing the faceted firestone ring he wore in the bright lights that marked the tower’s corners.
Chrys’s eyes tracked the movement. That damn ring was half the problem. It belonged to their father, Aeolus, the most powerful storm god of them all, and somehow Eurus had gotten his hands on it. Which explained the entire summer’s worth of ass kicking. The sacred stone gave its wearer the power to control all the winds and, thus, him. Bad enough when his father made use of those powers. Catastrophic now that Eurus could.
Chrys hadn’t told anyone that Eurus had Aeolus’s ring for fear that knowledge would hammer yet another nail into his brother’s coffin—not to mention their father’s for not making that little revelation himself. Now, that shit was just waiting to hit the fan.
“What’s your end game here? Huh? You’re playing right into the Olympians’ hands, and for what? For now, they’re letting the family resolve this situation, but once they’re involved, it’ll be too late.” The humid bay breeze whipped around him. He tugged long strands of hair out of his eyes.
“As if I would tell you, boy.” Eurus crossed his arms over his broad chest and sighed. “I tire of your questions.” The smug smile that settled on his face was all the creepier for the new, slashing red scar carved into the left side of his face from temple to lips. How he’d gotten the wound—which could only have come at the hand of a stronger god—Chrys had no clue. “In truth, I tire of you.”
Chrys ignored the way his heart tripped. A lifetime of trying—and failing—to win your big brother’s approval made you a bit sensitive, though. Fucking hell. “Eurus, man, come on. I just want to help you. You’re my brother. And we can fix this.”
&
nbsp; The firestone flared to life, a soft red that soon blazed so bright it was hard to look at.
Chrys braced, his muscles suddenly alive with tension. The air constricted around his body.
Eurus’s ring finger twitched.
It was all Chrys needed to see. In a heartbeat, he flashed into his elemental form and shot skyward.
Eurus’s energy followed.
How many more fights did Chrys have in him? Dark clouds already gathered and billowed around them. Inky tendrils of Eurus’s malevolent East Wind gusted over him, crawling through his energy as if searching for a weak spot. Even in his elemental form, Chrys shuddered as he released a burst of power to throw them off.
But it was too little, too late.
Preternatural disturbances in the air rammed him from all directions as if he were a featherweight boxer facing an invisible heavyweight opponent. Icy cold North Wind that Eurus had no business commanding lashed against him like a frozen whip, the frigidity stealing Chrys’s breath and power with every cutting impact. Exactly what his brother intended, since Chrys’s intolerance to cold wasn’t exactly a secret. Chrys dug deep into his powers and poured on everything he could muster, but hell if three long months of fighting a stronger god hadn’t depleted his reserves. He rocketed across the bay and over the Eastern Shore, hoping to draw the threatening storm over the Atlantic Ocean where it would do less damage to land and people.
A ripple of electricity shuddered past him, as if conducted by the humidity. Damn it all to Hades. The defeated thought had barely formed before Eurus’s attack hit home. Lightning belted around him in tight, suffocating, scorching loops.
Chrys cried out, an agonized roar that unleashed a series of deafening crashes of thunder.
Knowing he was out of time, he struggled to twist free and flung bolts of his own, zinging electricity across the sky in flashes of red and purple and orange so unnatural he knew they’d capture the attention of humanity, but he had no choice. Soon, he would be completely at his brother’s mercy. Not that Eurus had any. And damn if that gem of an admission didn’t highlight the possibility that Eurus was a total lost cause. But how was he supposed to just give up on the brother he’d spent the better part of his life trying to save?
He didn’t have time to ponder an answer.
Eurus’s electricity attached to Chrys’s energy signature, slowly but surely stealing his self-control and siphoning off his life force, like a vampire supping at leisure from his victim’s throat. An immortal could only be injured by another of stronger power—and that fucking ring was giving Eurus, normally the least powerful of the four Anemoi, everything he needed.
