Threshold of Pleasure

Since her short career came to a dramatic end, former cop Eden Swain has been haunted by guilt and disturbing dreams. When she gets a call from a woman she knows is dead, it nearly sends her over the edge.

Eden’s search for answers leads her to a portal—and she steps through to the world between the worlds. A decadent world where anything and everything is possible. There, she is torn between her desire for two men—one a darkly sexy vampire who promises to take away her pain forever. The other, a gorgeous wolf shifter determined to save her soul...

Threshold of Pleasure

Vivi Anna

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Contents

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

Copyright

Chapter One

“Do you believe in monsters, Eden?”

Eden Swain ran a hand through her tangled blond hair as she shifted the phone from cradling it between her shoulder and head to her hand. Sitting up and leaning forward, she no longer felt drained. The woman on the other end of the line had her full attention.

“I don’t know. I believe in evil, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“The devil inside?” the woman asked.

“Yes, something like that, I guess.”

“I’m not talking about the evil inside men. I’m talking about the forces of darkness. Demons and the like.”

Cold tendrils of air caressed Eden’s neck and face like a lover’s touch. Instantly, goose bumps rose on her arms and shivers raced down her spine. She looked around the office, seeking the source of cool air, but no windows were open. Glancing up, she searched for air-conditioning vents. There were none.

“Do you mean scaly red skin, black horns and a forked tongue?” Eden joked, trying to lessen the tension she could feel rising through the phone line.

The woman sighed. “Don’t be stupid, Eden. You know better than that.”

Gripping the handle tightly, Eden pleaded into the phone. She didn’t want to lose this one. For some reason, the woman had opened up to her. She couldn’t let her fondness for sarcasm ruin the effort the woman had obviously made to pick up the phone and call the suicide help line.

“I want to understand. I want to help you.”

There was a long pause. Eden could hear the woman’s heavy breathing on the other end. It was labored, as if she had been running—or was scared out of her mind.

“I know you do, Eden. You tried before but I just don’t know if you can.”

“What? When? Do I know you?”

The woman disconnected.

“Hello? Hello?”

There was no answer—only silence. Slowly, Eden set the handset down in its cradle. Rubbing a hand over her face, she cursed under her breath. She’d blown it again.

From the moment she’d answered the call, Eden had sensed a real opportunity to help the woman. It was as if the woman had phoned her, not just the help line. And maybe that was true, considering her last few words. Before the woman had started talking about monsters, Eden had felt she’d made a connection. A real one. However, it had snapped once the woman started rambling about evil and demons.

Maybe she had been on drugs and needed someone to talk her down. It was just that she’d seemed so lucid when they’d first started speaking. She’d sounded like an intelligent and very together person. Eden knew too well the dangers of drugs and drug users—they were unpredictable and potentially dangerous. She’d learned that the hard way.

Reaching for the glass of water on the desk, Eden noticed the tremble in her hand. She needed a real drink. It was getting harder to stay sober. She’d promised herself that she would not drink on the job, but with each desperate call from one person to another, her thirst had become nearly insatiable. Each time she picked up the phone, she imagined a glass of scotch in her hand instead.

The self-induced torture was killing her, which was probably what she was hoping for. Masochism 101.

“Why don’t you go home?”

Eden looked up at the shift supervisor, Allison, and nodded.

Putting a hand on Eden’s shoulder, Allison squeezed gently. “You’ve been here for five hours—that’s enough for one night. Go home and get some sleep. Some real sleep.”

Allison’s meaning was clear. Get some sleep not induced by alcohol. Eden couldn’t remember the last time she had fallen asleep sober. Maybe before the shooting.

Standing, Eden grabbed her leather jacket from the back of the wooden chair and slipped it on. She bent down, retrieved her bike helmet from under the table and slid it over her mop of disheveled curls.

“Be careful on that thing, hon. It’s supposed to rain later tonight.”

Eden witnessed the uneasiness in Allison’s eyes and winced inwardly. “No worries, Allie. I’m good.”

Saying nothing, Allison just nodded and went back into her little office in the corner.

The moment Eden opened the back door to the alley, the cool crisp air surrounded her and elicited shivers up and down her spine. A cold mist peppered her face. Glancing up into the dark sky, she hoped that she got home before the rain was unleashed. By the fresh tang in the air, they were in for a good downpour.

As she stepped on the metal stairs, she looked down the alley toward her bike. Good. It was still there. Since she’d started volunteering, she’d been parking behind the building, and so far, to her surprise, her motorcycle had remained untouched. The downtown neighborhood was high on crime. During her two years with the police force, she’d been on more calls in the area than she could count.

The last one ending her short-lived career.

She went down the steps and toward her vehicle.

Closing her eyes briefly, Eden swung her leg over her bike. The voices were getting stronger, as they did every day. She hoped she would make it home before the screaming started. If she could get home quickly, the scotch would soften the voices to a dull ache, an ache she’d been living with for the past year.

Eden kicked the bike over and revved the engine. Before she shifted into gear, she had a distinctive feeling of being watched. Her skin crawled as if a long, slimy snake was slithering over her body. She hated snakes—it was her only phobia, most likely developed by having two older brothers who’d loved to torment her with dead things tucked neatly in her bed at night.

Turning her head, she glanced down the alley. There was nothing there except an old green BFI bin, and discarded trash swirling around on the dirty cracked cement. She looked back to the opening of the alley. Nothing there either, not even the obligatory alley cat yowling into the night.

Eden released the brake and coasted out of the alley. She stopped at the opening and glanced down the street. At the late hour, it was nearly deserted, except for the few homeless bums picking through garbage cans for pop cans and bottles. After one last look, she revved the bike and roared onto the road.

Speeding down the street, Eden kept glancing in her side mirrors. Every once in a while she thought she saw something pale and quick like an animal behind her. But when she turned her head, the road was empty. As she zipped through the sporadic traffic, Eden was completely aware of her surroundings. She noted each vehicle, its color and make as she passed. When she glanced in her mirrors, she saw them behind her just as they should be.

Fifteen minutes on the road, and the sky opened up and sheets of rain poured down. She slowed her bike so she wouldn’t skid, but the urge to speed up itched at her hands. She wanted to be off the roads and safe in her apartment. As she zipped down each street, she felt open and vulnerable. She felt exposed.

As she turned onto her street, she spied a giant white wolf in her mirror. When she glanced over her shoulder, it disappeared. However, as she looked in her mirror again, it was there, stalking her a few car lengths behind. Fear wrapped around Eden, squeezing her with prickly, icy tendrils. Swallowing the bile that rose in her throat, she turned down the alley instead of driving to the front of her apartment. She pulled out onto the parallel street and doubled back. What the hell was a wolf doing in the city?

As she turned another corner, she glanced in her mirror. Nothing was following her. To confirm, she slowed and looked over her shoulder—still no animal or anything. Maybe she’d imagined it, had to have. Breathing a sigh of relief, Eden rounded the next corner back onto her street. She was obviously more tired than she thought. The rain must have produced weird shapes on her mirrors—with the lights reflecting off the slick black asphalt, it was no wonder she was seeing things.

After one last glance over her shoulder, Eden pulled to a stop in front of her apartment building. She parked, got off the bike and pulled off her helmet. She lifted her face to the rain and let it cascade over her sweaty skin.

If only it was that easy to be cleansed, she thought.

Wiping at the water as it flowed over her eyes, she spied a shape atop the roof of the building across the street. When she looked again, it was gone. Could just be kids out for some fun. Cautious, she eyed the building as she unlocked the front door of her complex. Satisfied that she was only delirious, Eden went inside.

Taking the stairs two at a time, she was out of breath when she reached the third floor and her apartment door. Quickly unlocking it, she went inside, turned on the lights, and tossed her helmet and jacket onto the floor by the door. Not bothering to take off her boots, Eden wandered into the kitchen and grabbed the half-empty scotch bottle on the counter. Putting it to her lips, she went to take a long pull, then stopped. It was too easy to take a drink. She needed to stop with the easy way out.

Cradling the bottle against her chest like a life preserver, she wandered back into the living room and collapsed onto the worn sofa. She put her boots up onto the scarred wooden coffee table and looked at the bottle. It tempted her but she battled the urge down. Her therapist had told her to take it one day at a time. Sometimes an hour at a time. This was one of those hours. Sighing, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and let her head fall back against the cushions.

She felt jittery and unnerved. Being inside the sanctity of her apartment did not make her feel safe. She still sensed that she was being watched, being followed. Jumping up, Eden walked to her bookshelf and picked up the small handgun she had stashed there behind a ripped copy of Pride and Prejudice. It had been over four months since she’d touched it. The last time, she had been drunk and in the middle of one of her furies. She gazed down at the snub-nosed Beretta, enjoying the feeling of it in her hands.

Squeezing her eyes shut, Eden set the gun down and returned to the sofa and talked herself down. Soon the voices in her head softened. They were now only inaudible mumbles.

Still carrying the bottle like a security blanket, Eden walked to the window overlooking the street. She glanced out and up at the neighboring building. Rain poured down in thick silver sheets, but she thought if she squinted hard enough, she could see movement on the roof. There was one last thought in her head before everything went numb.

He’s coming for me.

Chapter Two

From his perch on the opposite rooftop, Mikhail watched her through the window. The curtains were not drawn so he could see her quite clearly. It also helped that his eyesight was superior to most.

He’d followed her home from her work, his intentions twofold. He had been told to keep an eye on her, to make sure she kept her distance from Threshold. And he was also curious about her. Which was why he’d taken to watching her most days now.

When he’d first been given this assignment, he’d done a lot of research on Eden Swain. He knew she’d been a police officer for only two years before the incident in the alleyway. He also knew that she’d had a breakdown afterward.

She’d left her position, although he wondered if it had been forced, and she regularly saw a therapist. He also knew she drank to forget. On many occasions, he’d followed her to a liquor store or to a small hole-in-the-wall bar, where she would sit on her own, not talking to anyone, and drink.

He also knew she was alone.

And this, he thought, was why he’d taken to her so quickly. Because of his own loneliness. It was difficult to be what he was, even in his world, which was so different from this one. He was an outcast as much as Eden was in her own way.

Her face turned in the window, her gaze tracking him on the rooftop. He knew she couldn’t possibly see him, as he was too far away and cloaked in darkness, but he ducked anyway.

He waited for a few minutes, then peered over the roof’s edge. She was gone from the window. He imagined that she’d gone to bed. This was confirmed when the lights went off in the living room and went on in what he suspected was her bedroom. Unfortunately the curtains were drawn so he couldn’t see her.

He knew she was in for the night, but he couldn’t force himself to get up and go home. So he settled on the gravel, sitting cross-legged and resting his arms on the edge of the roof. Since he barely slept, fatigue would not come for a long time. He’d sit and watch and wait. And make sure she was safe.

Although he’d been given the task to keep Threshold safe from her, he knew it was she who needed his protection.

Chapter Three

Once more the dream came.

Although adrenaline raced through her body like wildfire, the gun was sure and steady in Eden’s hands. A call had come in about screams in a downtown alley, the second call in three weeks in the same area. Before, it had been some kids playing around in the Dumpster.

This time it was a man holding a young woman hostage by knifepoint, and she was on her own until backup showed up.

The man appeared agitated, unhinged, likely high on something. He had his arm around the woman’s neck, and held a knife to her throat. There was already blood on the blade and running down her neck. The front of her light-colored shirt was stained red. She was crying silently.

“Let the girl go,” Eden said, her gun trained on him.

“Never!” he shouted, then giggled. “She’s mine forever and ever. Master told me so.”

The woman made a whimpering sound that put Eden’s back up. Then her head lifted and she caught Eden’s gaze, pleading in her eyes.

“It’s going to be okay, ma’am.”

“Of course she’s going to be okay,” the man said, “She’s been chosen.”

It was then that Eden noticed the blood on his teeth and around his mouth. He’d been biting the woman and tasting her blood. Eden’s stomach lurched at that.

“We can all walk away from this. Just let her go.”

“No one gets out alive, bitch.”

The tip of his knife dug into the woman’s throat. She tried to get away but couldn’t, the blade sliding even more across her skin.

Without flinching, Eden took the shot. Everything moved in slow motion after that.

The bullet ripped through his cheek, knocking him sideways. His hold loosened on the woman and she dropped to the ground.

Eden rushed to the man’s side to make sure he was down. She pressed her fingers to his throat. No pulse. Vacant eyes stared up at her and he wasn’t moving. She holstered her weapon and crouched next to the injured woman.

“I need an ambulance stat,” she barked into her radio. A siren could already be heard in the distance.

Whipping off her jacket, Eden pressed it to the wound in the woman’s throat. The knife had definitely nicked a major artery—blood bubbled out of the hole with every breath the woman took.

In reality, Eden had stayed there administering pressure to the wound until the EMTs arrived. But the woman had died on the gurney and they’d been unable to resuscitate her.

However, the man Eden had shot and killed had disappeared. The only evidence of him was another blood pool in the alley.

In her dreams, the woman always smiled up at her and begged, “Save me.”

She did this now, then lifted her arm and reached for some unseen entity.

Glancing around, Eden noticed a dark shape materializing through the veil of tears. She rubbed at one eye with her bloodied hand, but the shape was still blurry. In awe, she watched as a tall, dark figure approached her.

It was a man dressed in black, with longish dark hair and pale skin. As he neared, she noticed the rugged features of his face and his full, sensuous mouth. Why she noticed these things as the woman died at her feet, she didn’t know. Eventually, the dark man stood over her, staring down, his eyes shining with emotion.

As he smiled, he held out one long, elegant hand toward her. “I can make the pain go away, Eden. Just take my hand.”

She wanted the pain to recede. Too long had she lived with the emotional turmoil that the woman’s death had induced. Daylight hours brought too many sobering feelings, and the night brought agonizing nightmares, just like the one she replayed almost every night.

Eden wasn’t sure how long her mind could survive her inner torment. Not much longer, she was sure.

Raising her head to meet his gaze, Eden felt a sexual tug. The man invoked sensations she had long ago dismissed as unimportant. She wanted him to take her pain. She wanted him.

He grinned as she raised her arm. But before she could touch his hand, Eden saw red flames dance in the black of his eyes....

“Eden.” His voice was a caress, touching her in places she hadn’t been touched in far too long. “You want to forget.” He smiled and she spied a pair of fangs jutting from his upper jaw. It sent a shudder down her body, but she didn’t pull away.

“You want so many things. I can give them to you. Will you let me?”

Her hand moved toward him as if it wasn’t her hand at all. No! She shook her head and snatched her hand back. Frantically, she looked around. Everything was wrong. Where was the woman she’d been unable to save? Where was the blood?

Where was she?

She was no longer in the alley surrounded by death and carnage—she was in a room, a bedroom, facing a bed with red satin sheets and candles. Hundreds of candles. Candles everywhere.

Someone stood behind her—she could feel his presence and she both wanted to lean back into that solid mass and surrender to him and she wanted to spin around and shove her gun beneath his chin.

“Eden.”

It was him. The dark man. The one from the alley. She’d have recognized that voice anywhere. Deep, potent as the smoothest scotch, faintly accented. He had the kind of voice that spoke to her on more than one level.

“Eden, I want you. Please, let me touch you, for both of our sakes.”

His voice didn’t just sound like scotch—it had the same effect on her. Numbing her senses, dulling her inhibitions. She turned around to face him, fully intending to tell him off, but one look at him and all intentions evaporated.

She’d been with men before but never with one who looked like him. He wasn’t real. He couldn’t be. He was too perfect, standing there with his silk pajama bottoms riding low on his hips and nothing else. His feet were bare. His chest was bare and smooth and sculpted like that of an elite athlete. But it was his face—his rugged jaw, his patrician nose, his dark, dark eyes—that pierced her with desire and longing, that affected her most.

And those fangs. They weren’t long—were almost invisible among the rest of his teeth—but she saw the curve of them, and the sharp tips.

“You want me, too. I can see it.” He approached her with the fluid grace of a panther and Eden was mesmerized by the unconscious play of muscles across his torso as he neared.

It took effort to lift her eyes, but she somehow managed, and when she met his gaze, she caught her breath. The intensity of his stare stole the air around her.

“How badly do you want to forget?”

“Very,” she whispered.

He touched her face, the softest of caresses. “Will you permit me to help?”

“How?”

“Like this.”

Up until that moment, everything had been happening as if in slow motion. But the minute the dark man said like this, time sped up. His hand whipped out to circle her neck, pulling her closer. His other hand lifted her chin, tilting her face toward him.

One second he was looking down at her, the next his lips were on hers. No, not on hers—they were a part of her.

If what he was doing was kissing her, it was like no kiss Eden had ever experienced. His kiss was hungry and desperate and controlling and possessive. She responded in kind, needing his mouth and his tongue and all of him. As if her life depended on it.

Her tongue laved across those fangs, and it sent another pang of lust between her thighs.

No amount of scotch could compare to the effect one kiss from this man had on her. She was drunk from him.

“More,” she whispered against his lips. “I need more.”

She could feel him smile against her lips.

He picked her up and carried her the few feet to the bed and ever so gently set her down on the cool silk before joining her.

“You are so beautiful.” He stroked her cheek, the edge of her jaw, down her neck to the base of her collarbone. “You have no idea how much I want you.” With a hand behind her neck, he pulled up as he lowered his head to kiss her.

It had been too long. That was the only explanation for the effect this man was having on her. His touch, his lips, his words—all of him made her forget everything else.

Was this what he’d meant when he’d said he’d help her forget?

“Tell me how. Tell me how to forget,” she said breathlessly.

He stopped kissing her neck and raised his head so that he could meet her gaze. “You need only give yourself to me.”

This time, when she saw the fire leap into his dark pupils, she didn’t care. She’d give anything to forget.

“I want to, but...”

“Lie down.”

He gave her a little nudge and Eden fell on her back. She didn’t even bother to wonder what had happened to her jeans, her shirt, her bra...her gun. The only thing she had on was her panties and that was it.

Lying there, with her hands above her head, she had never felt more desirable than she did at that moment—not even when she’d been with Charlie—as the dark man’s gaze devoured her from head to toe and back up again.

“Do you give yourself to me?”

Eden didn’t even hesitate. “Yes.”

His smile was as dark as his bottomless pupils, and he leaned across her and kissed her. First her lips, then her throat, then lower.

“Please,” she sighed, arching toward him. “Please.”

He moved lower until his mouth found her breasts.

“Yes!”