Spell Bound (Darkly Enchanted) (59 page)

She held out her hand for the knife. When he motioned for her to take it, she shook her head. With a faint tremble, Gabriel drew the knife along her palm, barely hard enough to draw blood. Then he handed the knife to her and she did the same to his opposite hand.

Without hesitation, they laced their cut hands together as he nudged her legs farther apart with his own and slid into her. Just enough to make her gasp. He pulled back and thrust again, this time sinking all the way.

“I won’t let anything happen to you, Shea.” He withdrew, delicious friction setting off shudders through her body. He slid home again, slow and gentle, setting a tantalizing rhythm.

She felt heat begin low in her stomach, felt the tension build until she sought his mouth with hers and slid her tongue into his mouth as he slid into her body below.

He refused to hurry, even when she dug her fingers into his ass and arched into him, moaning his name. His easy rhythm made her burn more than any furious motion could have.

But it cost him to take it so slow. His breath labored out of his lungs with the force of a steam engine, bathing her neck in moist heat. His skin dampened with sweat, intensifying his scent and making her hands glide over his back and shoulders as she sought to touch every inch of him.

When she reached his ass again and slid one hand between his legs to rub at the sensitive skin between his cheeks, he finally broke.

His hands tightened on hers, the blood smearing, meshing. His hips swung hard and fast, his cock rubbing every erogenous zone in her sex, overloading her brain with ecstasy.

With a cry, she arched into him as she climaxed, her sex clenching around him and milking his cock until he groaned and released into her, his seed bathing her in warmth.

Her world narrowed down to the two of them, bound together in love and sweat and blood. And then she felt something else. Something magical, something that broke apart from them and crested, making them cry out at the absolute joy of it.

It burned in their veins and sizzled along nerve endings until they were spent, gasping and drenched.

Gabriel collapsed on top of her, surrounding her with his scent and strength, his face buried in her neck. He was heavy, but it felt good. Right.

It took her a few minutes, but finally she was able to muster enough strength to turn her head and whisper in his ear. “What was that?”

He shook his head and shifted so he wasn’t covering her completely. Sliding his hand out of hers, he held it up for them both to see. When she saw nothing but a thin healed scar, she checked her own and saw the same.

A smile curved her lips and she looked up to find Gabriel staring at her with a ferocity that made her sex clench. “You’re mine now. And I’m yours. Whatever comes at us, we’ll deal with it together.”

Her smile grew. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Epilogue

Serena woke with a gasp, one hand pressed against the pain in her chest, the other going to her eyes.

They burned, as if someone had thrown acid into them.

Great Goddess, what now?

She drew in a deep breath—and the pain stopped.

“Serena, are you okay?”

Quinn’s voice came out of the darkness of his apartment in Philadelphia. He’d insisted on bringing her here after the debacle in Reading. She should have said no. But she’d been weak.

Now…now something was wrong. No…not wrong. Different.

“Serena?”

Jumping out of bed, she ran for the attached bathroom, threw the light switch—

And stared into the mirror at her own golden-brown eyes that she hadn’t seen in five-hundred years.

Excerpt

Seduced by Magic

By Stephanie Julian

Through the window, Scarlata watched the man sleep.

The warm summer air caressed her bare skin, pebbling her nipples into tight nubs of pure sensation and drawing her womb into a ball of anticipation.

She’d come to kill him.

Not fuck him.

Still, her sex moistened and her breasts ached each time she caught a glimpse of him.

This man—who wanted to make her a pet. Or worse.

Well, the tables were about to be turned.

She shook her wings for a second before tucking them close to her back, merging them into her skin. Then she walked to the front door—the only door—and laid her hand on the cool brass knob. It turned, even though he’d locked it before stripping naked and falling into his tumbled sheets.

Science didn’t allow for magic. That was his first failing. Only the first of many, she was sure.

Walking through the door of the single-story cabin, she stopped to look around the room. To the right, a living area contained an upholstered chair, a table and a television on a stand, tucked neatly into the corner. She crooked a finger and the TV hummed to life. The snowy screen baffled her for a moment until the rectangular box next to it hummed and clicked. Then the TV screen cleared and people appeared. Two men and one woman involved in a convoluted sex act featuring grunting and awful music.

The man hadn’t been with a woman since he’d arrived at this cabin in the eastern Pennsylvania forest five weeks ago. He hadn’t taken his car anywhere and the only person to visit had been a food-delivery boy.

She knew he’d become frustrated in the past week, having found nothing to prove his theories.

A smile curved her lips. Obviously he was frustrated in other ways as well.

Turning, she took in the chaos that began on the far side of the room. Papers covered the dining table and the lone wooden chair. She ran her hands through the pages, creating a pale waterfall onto the floor.

Words like “subject”, “test” and “resistance” jumped out at her from those pages. The English language continued to sound harsh to her ears, even after more than two centuries.

Still, when he spoke with a voice that reminded her of the growl of a Lucani, it held a kind of magic of its own.

Leaving the dining area, she followed a paper trail down the hall to a small room on the left, where the chaos seemed to have a system. Books tottered on waist-high stacks, papers and magazines in piles. A slim notebook computer sat on a table under the window. Over the past five weeks, she’d watched—sometimes from a nearby tree branch or sometimes just outside the window—while he sat for hours on end, either typing or staring into the forest surrounding the house.

Fool human. He’d never seen her. Not even when she walked next to him while he hiked through the forest, watching the raptors that had given Hawk Mountain its name glide on the air currents. Her glamour allowed her to stand five feet in front of him without his knowledge.

Fool to think he could outwit her, to believe he could trap her and keep her in a cage to study like an animal.

She turned, letting her anger begin to heat her blood, and headed for the open doorway on the other side of the hall.

Walking into his bedroom without making a sound, she felt cool wood flooring give way to plush carpet, decadent against the soles of her sensitive feet. She stood for a brief second, eyes closed, as she dug all six of her toes into the luxurious wool rug. He’d brought this rug with him. She’d watched as he’d unrolled it beside the bed the first day he’d arrived.

When she opened her eyes, she let her gaze find him in the pale glimmer of moonlight filtering through the window.

A stream of silver cut across his back, leaving his head and shoulders in darkness but revealing a sleek expanse of back and the hollowed curves of his gorgeous ass.

Goddess, he was a beautiful specimen.

She cocked her head to the side, watching the steady rise and fall of his back. His skin gleamed with a slight sheen of sweat due to the heat of the night. Even here in the forest, the temperature hovered around eighty degrees.

This region of the United States was in the thrall of a heat wave. Temperatures reached one hundred degrees during the day, while barely dropping into the low eighties overnight. He’d abandoned most of his clothes the last few days, wearing only a pair of shorts that brushed his knees and hung low on his hips. He didn’t bother with underwear anymore.

She drew in a breath, surprised at how hard she had to work for it.

She wanted to touch him. Needed to touch him so badly her fingers ached and curled into fists at her hips.

An ancient spell to ensure his continued slumber whispered from her lips and she watched it sink into his skin with a pale shimmer.

Spreading her fingers, she reached out to touch the warm flesh of his back. The smooth texture reminded her of new leaves and his scent… Oh, his scent was sweat and heat, musk and male. It made her lungs tighten even further.

It would be a shame not to have him before she disposed of him. It’d been ages since she’d enjoyed sex with an etera, a human with no magical abilities. Eteri had learned to be inventive in ways forgotten by her people, the folletti. A race of the mythic Etruscan Fata, folletti had long ago lost the ability to enjoy themselves.

Unlike the
Enu
, the humans of magical Etruscan descent such as the streghe and the shape-changing
versipelli
, the
Fata
, such as the folletti, the
linchetti
and the salbinelli, had non-human attributes—wings, pointed ears or furred legs.

Some
Fata
who could blend did so. Like the
linchetti
. But those like her, with hooves or wings, lived in hiding, in fear of being discovered.

Reduced to seeking refuge in the ever-shrinking parts of the world humans had forgotten, could not penetrate or simply didn’t want, those types of
Fata
cared more about survival.

This man threatened her existence. And those under her care.

Sprawled in the center of the bed, he murmured something in his sleep and rolled onto his back. Her breath caught in her throat at his masculine beauty.