Keeping Secret (Secret McQueen) - By Sierra Dean Page 0,102

sharper than her blade, a vampire with serious brooding issues but a skilled tongue, and an A-lister with a bad habit of eating his fans. This novella takes place approximately one year prior to the events of Something Secret This Way Comes.

Enjoy the following excerpt for The Secret Guide to Dating Monsters:

We crossed the street on a Do Not Walk, narrowly avoiding an overzealous cab, and Holden guided me onto East 33rd by placing his hand on the small of my back and motioning me in the appropriate direction. We must have looked for all the world like one of those beautiful couples people love to hate. He made us pretty, I just helped make us a pair. It didn’t hurt that the dress gave me the illusion of being more stunning than I actually was.

When we were angled the right way, his hand lingered below my shoulders in a protective gesture. His fingers were level with my hair, and from time to time he would catch and hold one of the curls for a second, then release it.

“You realize we’re almost there, don’t you?” I asked, running out of patience.

It wasn’t his touch that bothered me. It was the delay in his narrative. Vampires have no sense of urgency, which drives me mental. They’ll forget what they’re saying and muse silently to themselves for hours if you don’t remind them to resume their story. I guess living for centuries must make time feel different.

He dropped his hand, as though touching me was part of his distraction, then licked his lips as he prepared to speak.

“It would seem, according to the West Coast Tribunal, one of their rogues has crossed into our jurisdiction.” His hands were now stuffed in the pockets of his gray dress pants. Summer or not, Holden Chancery would never be caught dead in shorts. Climate control isn’t really an issue for vampires.

Plus he was already dead.

“Oh?” I didn’t want to say too much, just wanted him to continue speaking.

Holden reached into his blazer and withdrew a familiar white envelope. The paper was a heavy linen finish and smelled sweet but faintly peppery. It was closed with an honest-to-God wax seal, stamped with Sig’s personal insignia.

My heart always caught with butterflies when Holden brought me one of these deliveries, and tonight was no different. With the slightest tremor of excitement, I took the envelope and held it close for a moment. Here it was, the promise of the hunt. The reward of the chase. The killer inside both my monsters lived for this.

I got down to brass tacks. “How much?”

“Ten.” Thousand. Wow, this guy must have been pretty naughty. The average rogue was worth five hundred if they were part of a sect, a thousand if they ran solo.

Yup. I’ve killed vampires for a mere five hundred dollars. But considering rogues would always be an issue, and I had a menacing reputation to uphold, five hundred bucks for a night’s work wasn’t too shabby. The most I’d ever earned on a single job was ten thousand, so this was a pretty nice number to hear again.

The warrant in my hands would cover almost seven months of rent.

Or five months and some new clothes to replace what Holden had insisted I throw out.

I popped the seal with a satisfying crack and was unfolding the paper when Holden’s attention shifted. A second later I knew why.

“Secret?” The voice was low, comforting and masculine without being overwhelming. It did happy things to parts of me I rarely acknowledged. He also didn’t stumble over my name, so he scored points early in the game for that. With a name like Secret McQueen, it was easy for people to make a mess out of it.

I turned away from Holden, the envelope still in my hand, and was pleasantly surprised by what greeted me.

Detective Tyler Nowakowski lived up to Mercedes’s designation of handsome. He was tall, at least six foot two, and lean without bending towards lanky. His eyes were a little too large, but it gave him a look of attentive curiosity. In contrast, his mouth was small, giving his face the appearance of an inverted triangle. His nose and jaw were strong, alluding to the Slavic heritage hinted at by his name. His hair, short and black, was styled with a minimal amount of gel.

He wore dark jeans, about half a size too big, based on how low they had fallen on his narrow hips, and he’d topped it with a