Excerpt of Obsession Untamed by Pamela Palmer

"I'm not getting married without underwear. Or without my gun. Not with wild animals on the loose."

Tighe took a step toward her, his mouth compressing dangerously. "You'll do whatever I tell you to do."

Delaney threw the gown on the floor. "Go to hell."

He lunged for her, grabbed her arm, and hauled her roughly against him. "I don't like this any better than you do, but it's either bind yourself to me or die. I gave you the choice already. You chose this. You chose me."

"I was delirious."

His jaw went hard as he released her with one hand and flicked open a switchblade three inches from her face.

"It's not too late to change your mind." The tightness of his mouth spoke of barely leashed violence, but in the agitated flutter of those angel wings in her head she sensed an unhappiness as raw as her own. He was being forced to tie himself to a woman he didn't love.

No, not forced.

He could have let her die.

Her fury ebbed as her heart began to ache for him almost as much as herself. "Would you really kill me?" she asked quietly. She already knew the answer.

The anger drained out of him as he retracted the blade and shoved it back in his pocket.

"No." He released her along with a sigh that echoed with pain. "But if you won't go through with this, I'll have no choice but to step aside while someone else does. The survival of our race is too important." He shook his head. "Not just to us. If we die, there will be no one left to keep the Daemons from returning. Imagine thousands of creatures terrorizing the human population. Creatures worse than my twin. A dozen times worse."

She shuddered and stared at him, her mind struggling to accept round after round of evidence that the world was so much more complex than she'd thought. "So I really don't have a choice?"

His mouth turned rueful. "You really don't."

"But you do. A human death can't mean that much to you. Why bind yourself to me when you could have let me die? When you don't want me?"

His mouth turned up in a wry half smile. "Who says I don't want you?"