Haunted Hearts — Christine Pope

His prison lives in his very bones. She holds the key that could free him…or break him.

Elena Salazar doesn't exactly have permission to house-sit, but she's sure her cousin Ava won't mind the not-quite break-in. After all, Ava would want her to feel safe. And free. Two concepts Elena's still adjusting to after eleven years a prisoner in her own home, thanks to her terrifying ability to summon demons.

She manages to make peace with the resident ghost in Ava's house, but she has to do some really fast talking when a tattooed, tautly muscled warlock shows up with Ava's keys in his hand and deep-seated pain in his troubled eyes.

The Salvadoran Escobar clan is healing under new primus Gabriel's leadership. But no one is likely to forget that the cruel former primus used Alessandro Escobar and his fearful gift as a weapon, unwilling though he was. When Gabriel sends him to Ava's house for an extended “vacation,” Alessandro packs his bags with a heavy heart.

No one warned him the house was already occupied.

Elena is beautiful, skittish, fragile, with a demon for a friend and a nervous habit of hiding behind her books and her art. Alessandro drinks in her sweetness like water from a desert spring. But if he dares reveal who he is, what he is, the key to her heart could vanish, leaving him the lonely prisoner of his gift.

This time, for good.

Note: Haunted Hearts, the final book in Christine Pope's Witches of Canyon Road series, can be enjoyed as a standalone paranormal romance.