To promote the release of the first book in a line of inexpensive Kindle books I'm starting to help put food on the table (literally), here is an early update! I'd put another one right after this one, but since that often confuses readers who just drop by and skim down to the latest chapter before seeing if there were any before it, I think I'll just wait for Monday. In the meantime, check out my new book I've been working so hard on!

It's called "Wendy" You can find it on Amazon under the pen name T.S. Lowe. ^.^ I'll include its synopsis at the end of this chapter.

The thin line of light beneath the door was just enough to make out a pale outline of her face. Her white hair had escaped her bun in leaps, leaving only half tucked away with the rest trailing streams of curling white-silver over her shoulders and back. One settled against his bare arm, cool and smooth as glass.

Shadows flickered across the light. Heavy boots thumped down the hall below, impossibly close, and a walkie-talkie crackled.

"...we got three down, you better..."

Then it had gone too far to hear. Without his own heavy breathing and the sound of the water hitting the floor below, Kai could hear the fog horn blaring in the distance. He was mildly surprised he had missed it at all.

"What's happening?" He felt her whisper as a warm brush across his neck.

"You would know more than me," he breathed back. "What do you hear?"

She went silent. He could feel just the barest trace of her breasts and knees as she struggled to keep the distance between them. Beneath the pungent air of the inflatable, rubber life boats, her musk twined into his senses. He closed his eyes and breathed through his mouth.

"There's a lot of movement," she whispered. "They're all heading to somewhere on the deck. It's...it's hard to hear anything else above that blasted devil of an engine and the echoing. Ugh, I hate metal. You hear everything."

"Maybe a container went overboard." The ribbon of hair slid snake like across the curve of his neck as she shifted. He shivered. "Let me know when no one's nearby." Then they could run to their coats and tuck in, no one the wiser. Damn it, his back was starting to ache. His wings protested against being held in so tightly. He dared to relax them and felt himself pushed forward a precious inch, which spread her breasts against him and brought her stomach into his. Her legs shifted to find comfortable room about his.

Though he wasn't quite panting anymore, he could still hear himself breathing. Loudly. Heat crawled up to his face as he wondered what she could be thinking and he snapped his mouth closed, but that just brought her scent back into his lungs. It filled him like warm smoke till it mingled with the fire in his belly, releasing it into his blood. A heady wave of the heat pooled in his stomach, weighing him down.

He held back a groan. "Are we clear."

"Not yet," she whispered. The faint light glittered off the shine of her eyes. It took him a second to register she wasn't looking at the light, as he had been, but at him. He became aware of the feel of her breath again, ghosting past his neck and curling up his chin.

This couldn't be normal. It just couldn't.

When he felt her fingertips land upon his arm like butterfly wings, he flinched.

"Don't!" He almost squeaked.

They drew back, but somehow she had drawn closer. "What's wrong?" The rise in pitch conveyed fear. He hadn't meant to scare her. Hell, he hadn't meant to be scared himself.

He forced a deep breath through his nose, which wasn't as clearing as he had hoped it to be. "It's nothing, I..."

Her breath. When had it risen to his lips? In a flush of heat he remembered her taste.

Had the kiss in the hospital really been to heal him? He should ask her. He should get it out in the open, be blunt like Tyson, be honest like she--

Ever soft lips formed against his, shattering his thoughts. He comprehended that one of her knees had slid between his thighs to bring her flush against him, and softness--feathery, downy softness--blanketed to either side of him. Her long fingers landed, butterfly-light once more, upon his chest. The edge of her nose touched his.

The steel resolve of his soul melted. Weak-kneed, he went splay-winged against the wall of rubber and sunk to the ground. She followed him, her velvet lips feathering after his own till he found her tucked between his legs against his chest. He couldn't remember when he twined his arms around her to pull her near. All he knew was a euphoria like he'd never known. It blinded him like fireworks, eased him down like the strongest drug, made him cry out to dig deeper into her like the first taste of food after days without.

The part of him still functioning wondered if this was what the guys had meant when they explained their reasons for risking punishment just for a night in a woman's bed. Was this the beginning of that disgusting, stupefying, weakening thing called sex? That animalistic urge he had always discounted as being the most base and defiling need of his manhood?

But as he took her in with wonder, following her lips with his own as she moved him into gentle kiss after gentle kiss, he couldn't see it. There was nothing disgusting about this. 'Rutting' was an insult. This was just touch, kissing, warmth, safety and peace as he had never known it. Her presence and feel blocked out the dangerous world as soundly as the most intense beybattle. He found himself yearning to convey this...this sheer, naked emotion rising up so powerfully in him it brought tears to his eyes. So, as gently as he could, he caressed her face, her neck, and her arms, all the way down to those slender little fingers laid out against his chest. Caresses as chaste as his tenderness.

Suddenly, his mouth went cold as she drew back with a quiet gasp.

"Kai...Kai, you love me?"

Her voice made him ache with its vulnerable uncertainty.

His floundering fingers went to her face without thinking, almost in pain with the need to banish her anxiety.

"Yes," he gasped.

"Really?" His heart leapt with her elation. "You--you love me too? You'll be with me? My Kai? My Kai forever?"

Something chill and unwelcoming dripped down his spine. The cloud nine his awareness had flown too vanished, and he could sense the impact of earth coming.

What the hell was he doing?

She sensed his hesitation as soon as it came on. "Kai, don't--"

"Calm down," he said lowly, even as he tried to ease her off of him in the small space.

She made a little tittering noise to begin a protest that he couldn't help but find cute, but complied to his wishes and pulled back. Their legs became hopelessly tangled in each other and spare rope they must have knocked off hooks on their way down, but he could breath now, at least.

He took a steadying breath. "Look, you can't..." He closed his eyes to try and focus, even though what little sight he had wasn't much. "You're making a mistake with me. I...I can't make you happy."

"Don't," she said in a small voice he didn't like. "Let me decide that for myself."

"No, listen to me. You don't know me. Tyson's known me for years and he doesn't even really know me--know how awful I can be and I've betrayed him so many times--"

"--I know, he told me--"

"Listen to me!" It wasn't so much a shout as it was a plea, and he cringed at the sound. It brought back too many bad memories. He hated this. "How many men of your own kind have you met? You can't just--I don't know anything about being gentle or loving. I was raised to be a killer--you know what kind of people Cain had been recruiting, don't you? I'm one of those people. I can't let you do this to yourself."

"Kai--"

But he overrode her, terrified that if he let her speak she would talk him out of it. "Please, Ayah, I've hurt so many people, I've hurt my best friends--my only friends multiple times. I couldn't live with myself it I hurt you too, and I will. Please, can't you--Ray, have you tried Ray?"

She snorted. "Try? I'm not at a buffet--"

"Ray loves you, he's nearly torn me apart for just speaking badly about you, he would make a better...whatever you're looking for. He's the kindest person I know."

Her legs were withdrawing from his as she drew them up to her chest. "So you don't want me?"

"That's not what I--"

"That's the only thing you could be saying," she said, her tone more brittle and harsh than he had ever heard it. "You think I'm too stupid to make a choice for myself in who I want to be with? You think I kissed you because you're the only one of my kind besides Cain? I've loved you since that moment you returned from getting Tyson's and Max's souls. I saw you, and do you know what I saw?"

"Ayah, you don't know--"

"I saw a imperfect, injured boy with a guilt complex who I had known for a fact was experiencing more fear in his body that anyone around me had felt in a weeks worth all at the same time."

"So you pitied me? Some basis for lov--"

"But you went anyway! You were terrified, and yet you acted as though nothing scared you. You risked your life, you snarled and growled in danger's face, all for your friends." She must have heard how loud she was getting, for she quieted to a soft whisper. " I've never, ever seen anyone so brave. You're whole body is on fire, and yet you keep coming."

Something in her voice made him drop his chin and open his eyes. The pale light from within the door still brought out the highlights on her hair enough for him to see that she had hidden her face in her arms.

"Unlike me," she whispered.

He made a half grunt, half snort of disbelief past the emotion in his throat. "Brave? Hardly. Tyson, Max, Ray, hell, even Chief. They're brave."

She shook her head. "Bravery is when you push through despite the fear. None of them have as much to fear as you." She sighed and he felt the last of her feathers pull away from him. "I wish...I wish I was more like you. I wish I was brave--I wish I was passionate and strong and dedicated."

"It appears you see me in a biased light. I'm..." He closed his eyes again. He had to focus. "Look, even if those things are true, it doesn't change the fact that I'm unheathily inexperienced to the ways of...tenderness, so to speak. Even if you see me behave now, just wait when stress or bad times come--"

"What, like now?" she said, all sour and spit. "Tell me one time when everything has been all fine and dandy for you since I've come along? If you're terrible cruelty is how you treated me when you thought I was going to suck out your teammates' souls, that's cute."

Irritation rose up in response to his desperation. He knew if he let her talk she would do this; paint him into a corner. "I'm trying to protect you."

"You're just hurting me!" she cried. "Why won't you let me close, Kai? Can't you let me choose for myself whether you're too horrible?"

Now it was his turn to coil back. It was suppose to be for her good, to keep her safe. Had he just been trying to protect himself the entire time? In trying to spare her feelings, was he just sparing his own guilt and despair? His own fear of rejection?

That crammed him up and locked up his reason. In moments like this, when his mind failed, his emotions took over, and they were rarely kind.

"Whatever," he found himself snarling. He reached up to grab the edge of the deflated rubber boat he had been sitting against. "Destroy yourself against me. It isn't like you have any sense of self-preservation anyways. When your miserable and trapped, remember I warned you."

And growing more and more riled by his own cruel words, a painful roar rising up from his gut, he pawed for the door knob and threw open the door. He more or less fell out, but turned it into the first thunderous step of his march. He didn't care anymore if the freight crew saw him in all his feathery glory, he needed air. He needed away from her suffocating smell and his own self-loathing.

Lucky for him, he came upon his trench coat before he came upon the deck and had himself mostly covered by the time he kicked the door open--

And straight into the barrel of a shot gun.

"Was wondering when you'd quit pounding around and get out here."

"Wendy" synopsis:

Wendy knows she tends to be a mother hen to her friends. But if she doesn't, who will? Her boys are lost from their parents in more ways then one, especially the mysterious Kolya, who awkwardly befriended them after fleeing the Russian mafia. She almost wishes he hadn't when she finds herself on the end of what must be a one-sided love. After all, why would the cool, handsome, aloof Kolya have any interest in a nagging she-man like her?

But when Kolya's past catches up with them, getting rid of an unwanted crush will be the last thing on Wendy's mind.

You get a book and I get milk. You don't get me milk, and you still get an extra chapter of your favorite story.