Remote in the Shadows: A Paranormal Shapeshifter Romance Read online

  "Oh, damn. Can I ask you to go into my backpack on the floor in the bedroom and grab a bottle from inside so I can give her some milk, please?" Addison asks him, her voice still very light and timid.

  "Sure." Parker walks into her room and finds the backpack. Lifting it up to the bed, he unzips the main compartment. He finds the bottle pushed over on the far side and when he pulls it out, he notices a lot of money underneath.

  He fingers the bills and he thinks she must have around five hundred dollars in cash. She's running, but why and from whom? Parker pushes the money back down and zips the bag closed. He then sets it back where he found it.

  Walking back out to the kitchen, he unscrews the bottle top and hands it to Addison. She fills it with milk for London, then hands the baby the bottle.

  No conversation occurs between the two of them and Parker's getting uncomfortable. Watching her, it's like she knows her way around his kitchen and she's finding things easily.

  He finally sits down at the kitchen table and watches her make London's breakfast, sipping his coffee. "So, are we going to talk or do I get to sit here and watch you cook?"

  "Sorry. I'm not a talker. I'm kind of a quiet and shy person. I've been told to be quiet, that I have a nauseating voice." She looks back to the stove, "Me, here in your kitchen, this is me talking. I love to cook." She looks back over her shoulder and gives him a shy smile.

  There is nothing wrong with her voice. It's beautiful, and Parker wants to hear more from her. "If you're here, I want to know you, know your daughter. You're welcome to stay here for as long as you need to be. I obviously have the room." He chuckles.

  He knows she's not a quiet person, because when she does talk to him, it's not one or two word answers. She's been told to be quiet and that she doesn't matter. That's so wrong, she matters, all too much.

  London crawls over to Parker and grabs the pant leg of his jeans, pulling herself up to standing. She wobbles a bit until she can balance and then let's go, clapping her hands together. Then two seconds later, she plops down on her diapered butt and pouts.

  Addison claps and praises her daughter and London claps some more. Parker laughs and Addison goes back to cooking. She looks like she's in deep thought, her eyebrows pinched together.

  "What's bothering you? I can see that you're thinking about something. Just tell me," Parker asks her as she sits down with the eggs, and feeds London from the plate with her fingers.

  "I don't trust easily. And with my daughter with me, it's even harder. We've been taken advantage of too much lately and I just got us out of some trouble." She says the last part with anger inflected in her voice and a fake, small smile on her mouth.

  "Well, I can understand that. I hope you can trust me and know I won't hurt either of you in any way. I hope you can trust me one day with who you're running from." Parker gets up and puts the dishes she used to cook with and his own from earlier in the dishwasher.

  "Thank you for the conversation. I have some business to take care in town this morning and I'll be back later for a shower, then we can go into town for groceries. If you can have a list ready by then, that would be great. Make yourself comfortable." Parker smiles at her and then walks up the stairs to his little room. His leopard is itching to run off some aggression from the little bit of information she's already told him.

  Sitting on the bed, he wipes his hands over his face and takes a deep breath, thinking over his conversation with Addison. She doesn't trust easily, well, no shit. She's been through something horrific and she needs to feel safe and protected. And this, somehow, is exactly what he plans on accomplishing.

  Parker is all too glad she escaped from ‘Mr. I think it's cool to beat on women.' He's hopeful that whatever his real name is, he forgets about her, lets her go, but his gut says the guy will come looking for her. Her abuser won't want her telling anyone what he did to her and then going to jail afterward. Parker wants to make sure he's ready for him when he comes looking for Addison and London.

  He puts on his shoes and socks then walks out to his truck. He drives about a mile down the road and turns off into a makeshift driveway on his property. He parks the truck about one hundred feet into the woods, gets out, then locks the doors behind him.

  Pocketing the keys, he strips off his clothing, putting it all inside the weatherproof compartment in the bed of his truck. Knowing the truck is in the cover of the trees and brush, he walks deeper in the woods, naked.

  Parker starts to run and shifts instantly into his leopard, knowing he's deep enough in the trees and there's hardly any vehicles that travel on this road, but safety is first. He wants to make sure he's safe.

  Humans don't know of shifters. Only mates know of their true selves. Parker is human, but he has the ability to shift into an animal. He's the only leopard around here. He knows of a bear family just in the next town over, good friends of his, and the Sheriff in this area is also bear shifter. There's also a pack of wolves within fifty miles, but he stays clear of all of them.

  Shifters don't have to find another shifter of the same animal to find their mate. Hell, they don't even have to be a shifter to be a mate. A pure human can be a shifter's mate.

  As Parker's lithe leopard body runs through the trees and brush, his human self thinks back to the conversation between him and Addison. Remembering back to the money she had in her backpack, too. If she's running with the baby, how invested is this guy in her? Is all that money hers? Does he love her at all? Will he come looking for her? Will he try to hurt her? Is she kidnapping London and keeping her from the father? Is the car hers? So many unanswered questions!

  As all this is racing around in his brain, his cat growls more and more. Pouncing up and over boulders, around giant pine trees and down a riverbank, splashing through the cool water. It hits him in the face and Parker's human mind slams back.

  Does it really matter? Any of that? She's a woman, with a young child and she needs help, his human side says.

  She belongs to us. You can see that, can't you? Her smell flows through my nostrils, and I know she's our true mate. Her beauty, her shapely body. She will be ours soon. And we will be whole once again. The cat purrs loudly.

  How can she be for us? I've had my soul mate and I killed her. Hailey was severely hurt and lost the baby and I couldn't even get help in time for either of them, Parker shouts at his cat.

  She wasn't strong enough to hold on. The Doctor said that the way she fell and the time it took to get to her and back home, she didn't make it. It's not your fault. She was your mate. At the time. She's gone now and Addison is your other mate. Your true mate. That baby, London, will be your child as well. Hailey was your soul mate, but now you, we, have a second chance, Parker's cat whispers to him in his head.

  The leopard's stride falters and he stumbles. Coming to a stop he looks around, realizing they are almost on the edge of the acreage to the south. They've run a good thirty miles. He decides now to turn around and go back, panting the whole way to the truck. Just taking their time to think of a plan to keep Addison and London safe, and what to do with them both.

  After shifting, and then getting dressed inside the truck, Parker fires it up and heads back home. He enters the house and all is quiet. Walking to the master suite where he finds the door locked. He can only imagine that Addison and London are taking a nap in her bed, peacefully. Pillows propped around London so she doesn't fall off.

  Parker checks the list Addison made for food and supplies sitting on the kitchen table. He wants to make sure they buy a crib for London to sleep in. Maybe a high chair so she doesn't have to be fed sitting on the floor.

  He finds blocks, children's books and a few other kid things strewn across the coffee table in the living room. He walks up to his small bedroom, strips off his clothes and then gets into the shower.

  Allowing the heat of the shower spray to calm the ache from his now stretched out muscles and thinking of Addison asleep on the bed, hair mussed and draping over her face a bit, his
cock hardens. The woman is downright gorgeous.

  Little London looks nothing like her momma so he's guessing she looks like her daddy. Poor girl. But she's beautiful as well. She has a few traits from her mom. Already she has her momma's personality so maybe she will be more like her as she gets older.

  Slipping from the heat and steam of the bathroom, he throws on a fresh pair of jeans and a tee, and then walks back down to the main floor. He knocks softly on the door of the bedroom so he doesn't scare her.

  "Addison? Can you unlock the door? I'm home and showered. If you want to come to town with me, we can grab what we need and come right back," he asks through the closed door.

  Chapter Three

  Addison felt so tired and she could see London needed a quick nap, too. Parker had already been gone for a few hours, but he did say he had business to take care of in town. She didn't know how far away the town was or what town she was even in. When he came back, hopefully they could get things for London.

  She rushes to get the dishwasher going in the kitchen with the dishes they used for breakfast and then she moves into the living room. She glances around, noticing all the toys on the floor from playing with London. She quickly cleans them up and sets them all on the coffee table. This way Parker won't yell at her for leaving toys all over the house. They're technically picked up and won't be stepped on.

  With the dishes going and the toys off the floor, he shouldn't have to yell at her or smack her around. He's apologized to her a lot since she's been in his home. She doesn't understand why he's apologizing for things. But what if he's not like that? Yelling, punching, kicking and blaming her for everything? He's much bigger than Derek. When he hits me, it's going to hurt a lot more. Bruise longer.

  Addison thinks back to Derek's car, and how she ran it off the road. He's going to kill me for wrecking it, literally, when he finds me, and then he'll kill London because he never wanted her in the first place.

  When Addison left in a hurry early that morning after Derek had rolled off her and fallen asleep, she'd told herself, No more tears falling because of that demon of a man. I hope he gets run over by karma one day. Maybe get his ass beat by someone, someday.

  She'd had enough of men and them hitting her and putting her down. She has self-worth and is a human being, for Christ sake. No way am I staying here any longer than I need to. I need to leave and find the car, see how damaged it is so I can keep going. Get to my sister's place.

  Addison's older sister, Vanessa, lives in southern California with her husband, Kenneth and their young daughter, Kiley. She was hoping to get there and stay with her until she could get a job. Support herself and London. Nessa has no idea she left Derek. Addison doesn't even have a cell phone to call and tell her that she was on her way.

  While sitting at the table this morning, eating breakfast that Parker had made for her, she couldn't look at him. Derek never wanted her to look him in the eyes unless he was beating her. He wanted to see her tears. Her fear of him made him more powerful.

  Addison remembers when her and Derek first started dating. He used to be a loving man, making good money at his job. Hell, she never even knew what he did for a job. He didn't wear a suit, so it wasn't a fancy office.

  She couldn't even say when exactly his personality changed from loving man to a demon monster. It was over time, a gradual change, but not overnight. It was some time after she moved in with him.

  Derek would leave by ten in the morning for work and would come home for dinner. He would beat her because there was something wrong with dinner, or the kitchen wasn't clean enough, or whatever other reason he could dream up. There didn't have to be a real one, just something he decided wasn't right and used as an excuse to beat her. Then, thankfully, he abruptly calm down and would leave again. This had been the routine weeks almost every single day for months.

  Sometimes he wouldn't come home until well after midnight, reeking of booze and cheap perfume from some other woman. She was sure of it.

  Who knows who or what he was doing. He kept a roof over her and London's head and food in the fridge. When she had told him she suspected she was pregnant, he was so pissed. He punched her in the face, then her stomach, then started to kick her in the ribs when she was down.

  When he was tired and heavily breathing, he walked out the front door. Later that same evening, he came home with flowers and dessert in to-go boxes.

  He had told her he was sorry over and over that night and he made sweet love to her. He was gentle and loving, apologizing profusely and swearing it'd never happen again.

  The next night, late in the evening as they'd been watching the football game on television and he'd drunk a couple beers, he'd received a text message then got up and left without saying a word.

  Later that same night, he came back drunk. He smacked her around again and tore off her clothes, demanding she have sex with him. She didn't want to because she was so sore from the beating and she'd made the mistake of saying no. He'd taken his fists to her more then, punching her in the kidneys and stomach, kicking her in the ribs and then, finally, when she lie sobbing and bleeding on the floor thinking she could take no more, he grabbed her by the hair and threw her to the bed. It was well after midnight when he sexually assaulted her in their bed.

  When he was finally finished fucking her, he pulled out, rolled off her and fell asleep; already snoring before his head hit the pillow. She knew he'd done a number on her this time, and was sure she had cracked ribs, but she managed to crawl to the bathroom and shower.

  She wanted so badly to get his vile smell of hard drinking and the stinky, sweet smell of perfume from the other woman off her that she scrubbed her skin raw. All the swirling emotions and smells made her vomit a few times in the shower.

  After the water turned cooler, she dried off gently. Already noticing the bruising and welts forming on her face and skin. She pulled a soft white tee shirt over her head and a pair of black shorts up over her hips. Then quietly she climbed back into bed with the demon. She quietly cried herself to sleep, holding her ribs with her arms. She knew that if she was quiet, and made herself small, maybe he'd forget that she was there.

  A soft knocking on the bedroom door startles Addison awake, and she freezes in the large king sized bed, pulling the covers up to her neck, listening, not moving, hardly breathing. A glance over next to her in the bed, reassures her London is still asleep, despite the knocking and the thrashing about she was sure occurred during the nightmare. She must have been dreaming of that monster, remembering that night and all the others just like it. Derek frequented her nightmares often, playing the staring role in her torments almost every night for years, either in her dreams or in reality.

  The knocking continued, but then she hears Parker's muffled voice through the closed door, bringing her back to the present in a flash but with a huge sigh of relief. It's not Derek.

  "Addison? Can you come unlock the door? I'm home and showered. If you want to come to town with me, we can grab what we need and come right back."

  She gets up carefully, trying not to disturb the baby. "Oh, sorry," she lamely replies to him in a hushed voice and hurries to unlock the door. She jogs back to the bed and sits with her knees under her chin, wrapping her arms around her knees, pulling herself in tight and small.

  Addison remembers sitting like this when Derek would come home, or she would hide under the blankets pretending she was asleep. Not that either worked, really. If Derek wanted sex, he just took it from her.

  Seeing the kindness in Parker's eyes, she doesn't think he could ever be evil like Derek. She wants to believe it so bad. It's almost shameful to put both of their names in the same sentence, or in the same thought.

  There is no comparison between the two men. Derek is shorter, but only by a few inches at most. He is lean and somewhat muscular, about one hundred eighty pounds and in decent shape.

  But the two men, their body structure, way different. Not even close.

  Parker is well
over two hundred, for sure, solid muscle, and he's taller by a few inches, she's sure of it. He looks like he'd be a protector of those he loves. But he looks sad. His face lights up when he's around London, but then Addison can see pain behind his eyes too. It makes her curious and she wants to know what puts that look of loss into his gaze.

  She watches as Parker walks into the room, cautiously. She knows he's afraid to scare her and she appreciates his consideration. He's always watchful of his movements around her. Not too fast or too close, knowing she doesn't like to be touched. She's had bad touch for too long and doesn't want any kind of touch anytime soon.

  Parker slowly sits on the bed, his gaze glancing to the still sleeping London on the other side. He sits back some more, eyes down cast, and folds his hands in his lap. After a pause and a deep breath, he looks back over to London once more and then to Addison.

  "She's a pretty little girl you have. How old is she?" he whispers.

  "Thank you. She will be a year old in August."

  Addison slowly let go of the death grip she had with her arms around her knees, moving to cross her legs together on the bed. She's learning to relax around Parker and it feels good. She notices him smile at her doing so.

  "When will she wake up? I want to get going to town and back because it's quite a drive roundtrip. But I understand the need for her to nap."

  He's considerate of her needs. Sweet to know.

  "She should wake up soon. I can wake her and change her diaper and we can go now." Addison likes being around Parker. She's starting to feel comfortable and safe around him. But yet, she can't help but feel guarded. As of now, she gets a good feeling from him, one that tells her he wouldn't hurt her or London, but there's something about him. Something dark lurking there.

  "If you could, that would be great. Sorry about cutting her nap short."

  She sits forward and puts her hand on his thigh, just above his knee, and he looks her in the eyes, seemingly surprised she's touching him. "It's okay, but thank you. It's been a long time since anyone has cared about what her or I need."