Taming Two Warriors: A Kindred Tales PLUS length Novel Read online

  Taming Two Warriors

  A Kindred Tales Novel

  Evangeline Anderson

  www.evangelineanderson.com

  Taming Two Warriors, 1st Edition,

  A Kindred Tales Novel

  Copyright © 2020 by Evangeline Anderson

  All rights reserved.

  Cover Art Design © 2020 by Reese Dante

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writers’ imagination or have been used factiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to a retailer of your choice or evangelineanderson.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  Cover content is for illustrative purposes only.

  Any person depicted on the cover is a model.

  Contents

  Taming Two Warriors

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

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  Taming Two Warriors

  Two Sisters in need of protection

  Two Warriors who have sworn to keep them safe

  With Melli and Liosh, it’s love at first sight

  But Jodi and Vorn clash at once.

  Will the sisters be safe and can they succeed at…

  Taming Two Warriors?

  Jodi and Melli are sisters who are in grave danger. The scaly, lizard-like Varians are after both of them, which means both sisters need bodyguards.

  Enter Vorn and Liosh. The two Kindred warriors are sworn to keep their charges safe, even at the cost of their own lives. But when they have to split up and live with the two sisters, things get complicated…

  Jodi and Vorn drive each other crazy. Jodi can’t figure out why she finds the big Beast Kindred so annoying and Vorn has no idea what Jodi’s problem is. Will the two of them kill each other…or give in to the passion simmering just beneath the surface?

  Melli and Liosh have an instant attraction. Liosh knows at once that Melli is the one for him—the female the Goddess has sent for him to Claim. But Melli has a shadowed past and she doesn’t believe she’ll ever be able to be with the tall Blood Kindred, no matter how much she loves him. Can Liosh heal her of her trauma so the two of them can bond?

  The situation gets even more complicated when Jodi’s fiancé comes home and the Varians sniff her and Melli out. Now Vorn and Liosh are in a desperate race to save the women they love—will they succeed?

  You’ll have to read Taming Two Warriors to find out…

  One

  “Can’t believe we have to bring Kindred bodyguards home with us just to be safe down on Earth. This is so screwed up!”

  Jodi punched a message savagely into her cell phone, no doubt giving her fiancé, James, a heads up on the fact that she was bringing another man home with her, Melli thought, watching her big sister as she muttered and tapped.

  Melli didn’t know what Jodi was so upset about—it wasn’t like James would care. He wasn’t the type to get jealous—even of the seven-foot-tall Beast Kindred who was currently riding in the front seat of their shuttle. Vorn, as he was called, would be dogging Jodi’s footsteps from morning until night, making certain the awful lizard aliens who had nearly killed them back at their mom’s house, didn’t get to her again. It was for her own safety, but Jodi obviously wasn’t happy about it at all.

  Of course, Melli had a Kindred bodyguard of her own, too.

  Liosh, the Blood Kindred, sat beside Vorn, who was piloting, the two of them talking quietly in low voices that Melli couldn’t quite make out. They were probably talking about bodyguard business or something—or maybe the best way to keep the lizard aliens—the Varians, they were called—away.

  For her part, Melli was glad to have a Kindred protector—she honestly felt like she needed one!

  All this had started when their mother had accepted a date with a Kindred warrior on Valentine’s night. He had taken her clear off planet for what Melli was certain was a more than platonic outing on their very first date—which was, of course, exactly the kind of thing their mother always lectured her and Jodi, never to do. How many times had she said, “Never, ever go off with a man you don’t know to an isolated place—it’s dangerous!”

  And then she had gone and done exactly what she’d always told Melli and Jodi not to.

  Unfortunately, their Mother’s much-younger Kindred boyfriend, who had turned out to be a master thief, had stolen a valuable artifact from the lizard guys which made them extremely grumpy. This had resulted in them penetrating the protective field the Kindred had placed around the Earth twice while searching for said artifact. And since they seemed to believe that either Melli and Jodi or their mom still had it, none of them were safe until the hole in the security system was patched and filled.

  Their mom, Vicky, was just fine—she had elected to stay on the Kindred Mother Ship with her new guy, Chain. They had already bonded—although that was another thing their mother always lectured about, forming attachments too quickly—and had decided to start a life together up there.

  Melli was grateful her mom was safe and happy, but she and Jodi were still in danger. And it wasn’t like they could just decide to move to the Mother Ship with their mom. Melli was still in her sophomore year at USF and Jodi was in grad school at the same college. Pulling up roots and moving off planet just wasn’t practical for either sis
ter right now.

  Which was why Melli was so grateful to have her own bodyguard—the Blood Kindred, Liosh.

  He had come to her rescue when the Varians attacked her mom’s house and Melli had fallen out of a tree and broken her leg. He had fought off the disgusting, lizard-like aliens—blasting them into grease spots—and then examined Melli carefully before gathering her into his arms and holding her close to comfort and protect her.

  It was the closest Melli had been to a man in a long, long time and she was surprised that her panic response didn’t kick in when the big Kindred held her. Maybe it was the fact that he wasn’t human and her body responded to him on a visceral level because of it. He didn’t even smell human, Melli thought—he smelled amazing—fresh and clean like the Arctic ocean with a warm hint of masculine spice underlying it.

  Her bodyguard was tall too—nearly seven feet to her five-six, which meant they had a significant size difference. He had lifted Melli with no problem, even though she had put on a little weight since moving out of the house and starting college. And the way he looked at her with those pale, husky-blue eyes of his made Melli want to reach out and touch him—made her wish to be wrapped in his arms again.

  Stop it, she scolded herself, forcing her eyes away from the front seat where she could see Liosh’s profile as he talked to Vorn. You know nothing permanent could come of it so you might as well not start in the first place.

  Inwardly, she sighed. Yes, that was true enough. She was probably going to be single and alone forever, no matter how many handsome Kindred warriors came into her life. It was time to just admit that to herself and try to keep things light and casual between her and Liosh.

  Once she had thought that she’d be able to date and marry and raise a family—but those dreams seemed very far away now. They had been torn away from her back in high school, the night of her junior prom. They—

  But no. It didn’t do any good to dig up past wounds. Melli had mostly gotten over what had happened to her—mentally anyway. But physically was a different story altogether—it was like her body just couldn’t let go of the trauma.

  I’ll keep it friendly and casual with him, she promised herself, stealing another look at the big Kindred with his neatly clipped dark blonde hair and pale blue eyes. And I won’t hang all over him—no matter how much I might want to.

  She balled her hands into tight fists at her sides, making the promise fiercely. She was, by nature, a touchy person who liked a lot of physical contact—or she had been before…

  Melli pushed the thought away and looked out the window of the shuttle at the blue-green curve of the Earth getting bigger and bigger. Soon they would be home. Thank goodness that the Kindred medical technology meant her broken leg was already mostly healed. Commander Sylvan—who was also a doctor—had said she would need to be a little careful with it for a while, but on the whole, he thought she would recover completely and not have any long-term problems from the break.

  I’m lucky, Melli told herself. My leg is going to be okay and I have a big, strong bodyguard to keep me safe until the danger blows over.

  I can’t believe how unlucky I am, Jodi thought, as she punched savagely at her cell phone. They weren’t within contact distance yet, but she had a message all ready to send to her fiancé, James, the minute they hit the Earth’s atmosphere and her cell carrier kicked in.

  First we get attacked by aliens, then Melli breaks her leg so we have to go up to the Mother Ship and then I get saddled with that Wookie in the front seat. That Vorn.

  She glared at the Kindred warrior in question, who happened to be piloting the shuttle taking them back to Earth. It was hard to put her finger on why he got on her nerves so badly but he certainly did.

  Maybe it was because he was everything her fiancé James wasn’t, Jodi speculated. Vorn was huge and muscular—seven feet tall if he was an inch—while James was barely taller than her own 5’7 and frankly, kind of slim. Of course, he made up for it with his acerbic wit and fierce intelligence, but there was no denying there were times Jodi wished she could wear heels instead of flats when they went out.

  Also, it would be nice if he could help her with things like opening tight jar lids or fixing things around the house when they broke. But James disdained such traditionally masculine duties, preferring to live the “life of the mind” as he

  called it, and concentrate on loftier concepts than who was going to fix the car if it broke down or open the lid on a jar of pickles.

  Of course, “the life of the mind” was all well and good. Jodie was in grad school herself and appreciated academia and the mindset that went with it. But on a practical level, it could be kind of a pain sometimes, especially when she ended up doing what she had been raised to think of as “man stuff.”

  After all, pickle jars didn’t open themselves.

  But she digressed. There were other ways the big Kindred contrasted with her fiancé that also irritated her, she thought.

  For instance, James was nearly hairless—as sleek as one of those naked cats breeders sold to people who wanted a cat but were allergic to them. He barely even had any pubic hair, which Jodi had found odd until she got used to it. He was also prematurely balding up top—his scalp showing clearly through his thin, light brown hair.

  Vorn, on the other hand, had long, thick, wild black hair that was streaked with gold. His eyes were golden, too above his dark, neatly trimmed beard, giving him an almost savage, feral appearance that couldn’t have contrasted more strongly with her fiancé’s neat, buttoned-down, clean-shaven academic look.

  Of course, Jodi had no idea what Vorn looked like naked—she strictly forbid her mind to go there and speculate—but she was betting he wasn’t in the hairless cat category. He probably had a lot of chest hair to go with all that hair on his head—which she normally liked. But somehow on the big Kindred, it was just annoying.

  Where are we going to put him? she wondered to herself. She and James shared an apartment near the USF campus—but only nominally. Half the time her fiancé slept at the big mansion on Bayshore Drive—the ritzy part of Tampa—that his father had given him when he earned his first doctorate. He was working on his second at the moment, in astrophysics and once he got a few drinks in him, he never let anybody forget it.

  He’d offered to let Jodi move in with him and let go of the apartment for good, but Bayshore was in South Tampa—a long drive from the USF main campus. Also, she liked her independence. It was good to have her own space—a space the big Kindred was shortly going to be invading, Jodi reminded herself in irritation.

  It wasn’t like they didn’t have a guest room in their apartment—they did. But Jodi used it to store things. Personal things. It was also where she went when James was home and she wanted a little privacy. With the big Kindred installed there semi-permanently, she might never get what she liked to call “alone time” again, which was going to be very bad for her mood.

  Still, she couldn’t put him on the couch when they technically had a spare room to put him in, Jodi admitted to herself grudgingly. Her mom had taught her how to be a good hostess and the strict code of Southern manners she’d been raised with couldn’t be easily set aside, no matter how much the big Kindred got on her nerves.

  If only he didn’t smell so damn good! she thought, glaring at Vorn again. This time he caught her look from the corner of his eye and shot her an answering stare in return. Clearly he wasn’t any happier about this assignment than she was.

  Jodi looked away first, telling herself she shouldn’t distract their pilot, though honestly, it was difficult to hold that wild, golden gaze for too long. Even though she was sitting in the back seat, his wild, musky scent seemed to invade her senses. It reminded her of wood smoke from a campfire mixed with leather and an underlying spicy note that smelled both dangerous and somehow completely masculine.

  Like some kind of freaking pheromone! Jodi thought resentfully, shifting in her seat and pressing her thighs together tightly. For some r
eason the scent of the big Beast Kindred made her long for a little “alone time” which she was pretty sure she wasn’t going to get. Damn it, how was she going to manage time to herself to take care of necessary things if that stupid Kindred was constantly with her all the time?

  She was seriously going to go crazy!

  She’s making me fucking crazy, Vorn thought, as Jodi finally broke their little staring contest and looked away. Her pretty mouth was curved down into an irritated frown and he could tell by her scent—which he was already more attuned to than he liked—that she was agitated.

  What was it about the curvy little Earth girl that got under his skin so fucking much? He had no idea—he only knew that the moment he’d seen her jump out of that tree at her mother’s house and try to protect her little sister from the Varians with nothing but her bare hands, he had become intently focused on her.

  He could still remember how Jodi had looked—her green eyes flashing, her long dark hair wild around her shoulders as she shouted angrily at the lizard-like aliens to “leave my little sister alone, you assholes!”