Second Chance Desire (Hot Moon Rising #8)

By Dominique Eastwick

Knox Fort only wants to be left alone. Eight years ago, his world crashed when his mate walked out on him. After a stint in jail for a bar fight, he did the only thing he could. He emotionally closed off to everyone and everything. Now he is content to act as a sentinel for his pack and work at his auto garage.

When Emerson Kingston returns home to deal with her mother’s estate, car trouble and ex-lovers aren’t in the plans. But opening old wounds is sometimes the only way to move on, if moving on is possible with a man who has closed himself off to the world.

Fate is a wicked bitch who doesn’t always care what you want. Can Knox and Emerson figure get their second chance, or will it kill them in the end?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Decadent Publishing
• Release date: Feb 20, 2017
• ISBN: 9781683611479

Dominique Eastwick

Award winning author Dominique Eastwick currently calls North Carolina home with her husband, two children, one lazy lab and one lazy Norwegian Elk Hound. Dominique spent much of her early life moving from state to state as a Navy Brat, because of that traveling is one of her favorite past times. When not writing you can find Dominique with her second love...her camera.

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Second Chance Desire

Copyright  2017 by Dominique Eastwick

ISBN: 978-1-68361-147-9

Cover art by Ravenborn Covers

All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work, in whole or in part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

Published by Decadent Publishing Company, LLC

Look for us online at:

www.decadentpublishing.com

A Note from the Author

When Desiree Holt asked if I was interested in writing for this series it took me just the time to type yes and send to let her know. I am so honored to be part of this series with authors I adore. I hope you love Knox and Emerson as much as I did. I believe it or not the alligator scene is real…true story.

Happy Reading,

Dom

Second Chance Desire

Knox Fort only wants to be left alone. Eight years ago, his world crashed when his mate walked out on him. After a stint in jail for a bar fight, he did the only thing he could. He emotionally closed off to everyone and everything. Now he is content to act as a sentinel for his pack and work at his auto garage.

When Emerson Kingston returns home to deal with her mother’s estate, car trouble and ex-lovers aren’t in the plans. But opening old wounds is sometimes the only way to move on, if moving on is possible with a man who has closed himself off to the world.

Fate is a wicked bitch who doesn’t always care what you want. Can Knox and Emerson figure get their second chance, or will it kill them in the end?

The Hot Moon Rising Series

Wolf Moon by Desiree Holt

Venus Moon by Desiree Holt

Blood Moon by Desiree Holt

Hidden Moon by Afton Locke

Moonlight Danger by Tina Donahue

Silver Moon by Merryn Dexter

Hunger Moon by Merryn Dexter

Second Chance Desire by Dominique Eastwick

Coming Soon

Dire Moon by Eliza March

Also by Dominique Eastwick

Strawberry Kisses

The Duke and the Virgin

The Marquis and the Mistress

The Earl and His Virgin Countess

Infiltrating Her Pack

Shifting Hearts

Siren’s Serenade

Healing His Soul’s Mate

Breaking the Mating Bond

The Virgin’s Infiltrator

Healing Harvest

Second Chance Desire

Hot Moon Rising Book 8

By

Dominique Eastwick

Dedication

Special thanks to Desiree Holt for thinking enough of my writing to invite me to be part of her world and play with her babies.

As always thank you to Nadine who always pushes me to stop procrastinating.

Moonlight Wolf Pack

Charlie Aquino (human) – Detective for the sheriff’s gang task force for Palmetto County Sheriff’s Department. His partner is Jesse Farrell.

- Mate: Liana Cosa

Liana Cosa Aquino – Refugee from a different pack. She works part-time as a waitress at Moonlight Diner.

- Mate: Charlie Aquino

Silver Ellis (human) – Was the witness of a violent crime and placed in Kirk’s protection as a favor to Jesse Farrell and Charlie Aquino. Works as a school teacher.

- Mate: Kirk Matheson

Alexa Martin Farrell – Left her pack over a disagreement with her alpha. She moved to Florida and helped the pack find a small community of cottages in Moonlight, Florida. She works as an Internet researcher and gets jobs through her online website. She also does research for The Defenders.

- Mate: Jesse Farrell

Jesse Farrell (human) – Detective for the sheriff’s gang task force for Palmetto County Sheriff’s Department. His partner is Charlie Aquino.

- Mate: Alexa Martin (who saved him when on assignment he was attacked by a gang)

Shelley Fields - Owns a farm and orchard with her mother Eileen, growling fruits and vegetables. She is helping out at the Moonlight Diner temporarily because the owner, Don, is sick.

- Mate: Alan Shifflett

Riesa Marlowe (human) – A psychic who helped locate Hannah Raines.

- Mate: Derek Sawyer

Kirk Matheson – Works for The Defenders Agency. Has a cabin offset in the woods, about a mile from town.

- Mate: Silver Ellis

Hannah Raines Molina – She was kidnapped and saved by Jesse and Charlie with the help of Riesa Marlowe, a psychic. Works as Alexa Martin’s research assistant.

- Mate: Rand Molina

Rand Molina - Derek’s second-in-command in the Moonlight pack. Partners with Derek Sawyer at The Defenders, a private security agency.

- Mate: Hannah Raines

Derek Sawyer – Alpha of a small pack. Most of their original clan was destroyed when developers took the land they were living on and many of their pack were killed by hunters. They hid in an abandoned orange grove until Alexa offered them the bungalows in exchange for their help. He and the others have embraced Jesse and Alexa and Charlie and Liana and given the female shifters a new sense of belonging.

- Partners with Rand Molina at The Defenders Agency, a private security and bodyguard agency.

- Mate: Riesa Marlowe

Alan Shifflett - When shifted, Alan appears with snaggled teeth and missing patches of hair. He’s prone to violent outbursts. His teeth tear his lips, leaving wounds when he shifts. His father owns Moonlight Diner, which he is currently managing. He is also a programmer.

- Mate: Shelley Fields

The Defenders Agency - A private security and bodyguard agency formed by Rand and Derek once they were established in the little enclave of cottages. It provides good income for the pack. A majority of the pack is involved in the cases they take.

Jesse and Charlie are their contacts with the sheriff’s department and also refer many cases to them.

Chapter One

Knox Fort doubled over as sharp stabbing chest pains shot through him. Convinced he might be in the middle of a heart attack, he gripped the socket wrench in his hands and tried to breathe through the haze of pain. That he had never heard of a shifter having a heart attack didn’t matter. As the sting subsided, two things happened at once. The double ding of his auto garage waiting room door rang, alerting him of a customer’s arrival, and the hairs on the back of his neck rose. This was no heart attack. Heartbreak, maybe, but cardiac arrest, no.

Determined to ignore the woman twenty feet away, he went back to repairing the muffler over his head. Only then did he notice the wrench bent at an eighty-degree angle lying useless in his palm. He climbed out from the pit and under the large SUV on which he had been working on for the last six hours.

Fucking, fuck, fuck, fuckers.

He knew he presented his usual air of off-putting indifference. Emotions long buried, in fact thought to be dead, churned. Guess what, asshole, you can still feel. The one woman he never wanted to see again stood less than few yards from him in the only auto repair shop in a thirty mile radius. Since she couldn’t know he was here, she wouldn’t unless she needed help, and the sooner he resolved her issue, the sooner she’d be gone again.

The door from the waiting area into the garage slammed open. With nothing between them, now, her scent nearly took him to his knees. He waited for the sizzle to fade, as the door made its slow close, before turning to eye the boy coming at him. No more than seventeen and with his whole life before him, the idiot had dropped out of school and gotten in with the wrong crowd. The local sheriff’s deputy had begged him to take the human boy under his wing. Give him a chance. Easy enough, but keeping the pack’s secrets from him proved a bit more challenging when dealing with a curious teen.

Knox, there’s a chick here. Cedro Alvarez indicated the woman standing on the other side of the glass door.

Customer, he managed through teeth clenched tight enough to crack. Hopefully, the teenager would think his displeasure was only at his disrespect of women.

Right. There is a customer—

I know. He handed the boy the bent tool. See if I have another one of these wrenches, would you?

What the hell, brah? Cedro eyed the tool with awe and would have asked more questions if Knox hadn’t sent him one of his I-have-no-patience-for-questions looks. Right, I’m on it.

I’ll deal with the…customer. He opened the glass door to the waiting area with his hip as he wiped his hands on a rag that might have had more grease on it than his skin. But he wasn’t here to impress this woman. He’d tried that once before.

Never again.

A heady mix of hyacinth and cedar assailed his nostrils. His cock, ignorant to what the rest of him knew was best, came to life, demanding he pay attention. For a second, he drank in her full hips and shapely ass in the tight skirt and killer heels. Her blonde hair pulled into a tight bun allowed him to view the delicate skin he’d once loved to kiss. His gaze dropped to her left hand holding her purse. Her ring finger remained bare. Angry at himself for letting her affect him in any way, he growled, What do you want, Emerson?

Emerson Kingston looked up from her phone. As the blood drained from her face, he prayed she wouldn’t faint. If he touched her, he wasn’t completely certain which way his tightly leashed emotions would go.

How the hell did you end up here? she asked when she finally regained control of herself. Her voice was as sexy and husky as he remembered.

It’s as good as any other place. He wondered the same about her, though. What do you want?

Want? She gazed at him with large blue eyes.

He should be enjoying her discomfort, but all he wanted was her gone. Every second in her presence chiseled away at the wall he had