by Hazel Hunter
CONTENTS
Title
Book Description
Free Book
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
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Sebastian (Excerpt)
Note from the Author
Copyright
DOMINIC
HER WARLOCK PROTECTOR
BOOK 1
By Hazel Hunter
DOMINIC
Her Warlock Protector Book 1
Timid but tough Sophia Chambers has finally found the perfect job for her strange ability. As a private detective’s assistant, she trails and photographs people with ease, because she can make herself unseen. But when she stumbles into the arms of Dominic Berrett, she finds she no longer wants to hide.
Though Dominic’s stunning looks could easily make him a model, he’s the farthest thing from it. As a warlock and captain in the Magus Corps, he’s been deployed to bring Sophia into a witchcraft fold that she doesn’t even know exists. Despite his five-hundred years as an immortal, he discovers something unexpectedly captivating in the beautiful but shy young woman.
But when her deadly past catches up to her and an ancient enemy of witchcraft emerges, Sophia and Dominic’s intense feelings for each other surface in ways that neither could have foreseen. As passion explodes and desires are unleashed, each will make choices from which there is no return.
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CHAPTER ONE
IT WAS A perfect summer night, and dressed in her slightly tattered long gray skirt, black tank top and light cardigan, Sophia blended in perfectly with the shadows of the alley. Just a few short meters away, happy couples and cheerful drunks reeled along the sidewalk, completely unaware of the woman who stood in the dark with her smartphone in her hand.
There was no movement in the lit balcony above, and Sophia slouched against the wall, bored, tired and aching. She had been wandering up and down this alley for hours waiting for the shot she needed. Her feet hurt and her head was sore. She thought she would have given anything to be at home, cuddling her cat and watching some brainless television, but Brent had told her to get on the pavement and not come back until she had something good.
There was a scuffing of shoes on pavement, and she shrank back against the wall as a man and woman stumbled into the shelter of the alley. The woman pinned her companion against the brick wall, worrying at his shirt collar with her fingers before leaning in to nibble on his neck.
“Oh baby, baby, you feel so good,” she crooned, and the man murmured something in agreement.
His eyes unfocused as the woman pressed her body against his, but Sophia was surprised to see that he was looking right at where she was standing. For a moment, she wondered as she always did if they knew she was there. Maybe they were only ignoring her out of sheer stubbornness or out of some kind of kinky game. But after five years she knew better.
Her eyes went back to the balcony, which was still sadly empty. Some part of her wanted to give the couple their privacy, though another part of her fiercely envied what they had. She wondered what it was like to want someone so much she was willing to press him against a brick wall, just a little hidden from a busy thoroughfare. She wondered what it would be like to feel broad, strong hands on her hips, claiming her and making her moan.
The couple grew louder, and Sophia shifted uncomfortably. She didn't want to give up her unblocked view of the window, but she also didn't want to witness more than she should of the two who were so obviously enjoying themselves. Just when she was wondering what she should do, the French door to the balcony opened, and a woman in a light camisole and robe appeared.
Sophia's camera was in her hand, and she held it up, but it wasn't the woman she needed, or at least, it wasn't the woman alone.
The woman on the balcony glanced down into the alleyway. She smiled with amusement to see the heedless couple below her. She gestured behind her into the room, and a man in a terrycloth robe came out to join her.
Jackpot, Sophia thought, snapping picture after picture with her smartphone. This is going to be all your wife needs to get that divorce you won't give her, Mr. Turner.
Sophia could practically taste the soup she was going to heat up and feel her cat purring away next to her, but then it all went wrong. The couple next to her was getting increasingly energetic, and the man was apparently feeling playful. He pushed his companion away from him, intent on pinning her against the opposite wall. Unfortunately, that was right where Sophia was standing. Though her peculiar skills at making herself unnoticed were good, they did not survive someone touching her.
The woman cried out. Sophia yelped. And suddenly there were four pair of confused eyes locked on her. Three pairs were simply befuddled by what they saw, but one pair, the one belonging to the man in the terrycloth, saw her smartphone. He knew exactly what she was doing.
“Snooping, spying little bitch,” he shouted, and he disappeared into the room.
The couple who had been sharing the alleyway with her made a hasty departure, and Sophia was right on their heels. She would make it to the street and be gone and unnoticed, safe at home before the man could blink, or at least that was the way it was supposed to go.
Instead, the woman running before her lost a high-heeled shoe, and when Sophia's foot came down on it, her ankle rolled with a stomach turning wrench. She went down hard on the pavement, and for several long moments, she was simply on her side, gasping with pain. Sophia wondered dizzily if she had broken her ankle, and then as the roaring of the man in the robe became clearer, she realized that her ankle was the last thing she should be worrying about. She wobbled to her feet, her ankle threatening to buckle on her again, but she had not made it two feet before the man emerged from a service door and saw her. His meaty hands wrapped around her shoulders. He pushed his face into hers, his mouth open and shouting.
“You little bitch, who the hell sent you? What the hell did you see? Give me that, give me that damned phone...”
Somehow she managed to keep her fingers wrapped around it, but she knew from the way he was scrabbling at her that she wouldn't be able to keep it long.
Brent had always told her that getting out with her skin intact was more important than getting the scoop, no matter how good it was, but her terrified mind wouldn't allow her to let the phone go. Instead, she clung to it and struggled fruitlessly to pull away.
The man roared with rage, and one fist came up. Sophia flinched, but the blow never landed because now there was someone else in the alley with them.
In the dim light of the nearby streetlamp, Sophia could see that the man who had grabbed her attacker's fist was taller than either of them. His frame was large and blocky, and he held her attacker like he wasn't any stronger than a kitten.
“I really don't think that's what you want to be doing,” her rescuer said coolly, pulling the man away.
> “What the hell business is it of yours?”
“None whatsoever. And she isn't your business either. Get the hell out of here.”
The man shoved her attacker away, and he waited until the man had vanished into the service door where he had come from before turning to Sophia.
“You all right, honey?”
Sophia was still shaking from fear and adrenaline. All she could do was nod and stare.
Now that he wasn't wrestling an angry man off of her, she could see her rescuer, and it was all she could do to keep her jaw from dropping.
He was handsome in a way that she associated with male models and actors, tall and fit. It was easy to see how strong he was. His tight, black T-shirt was stretched over broad shoulders, and the jeans he wore clung to his narrow hips like a second skin. She could tell his hair was light, but not what color it was. Sophia shook her head to stop from gawping like a fish.
“I... I'm fine, thank you.”
“You sure? He was scratching at you pretty hard.”
He reached for her arm to check, and she was surprised that she allowed him to do so. His fingers were long and lean, and when they wrapped around her wrist, she could feel how warm they were.
“Tch. He scraped you up a little, we should get that looked at, huh?”
She was getting ready to reply when the service door opened up again, and her attacker came lunging back out. This time he was holding a steel rod that he had gotten from god knows where, and emboldened by his weapon, he swung it hard at her rescuer's head.
For a horrified moment, Sophia could see the rod making contact, striking the stranger down, but instead, her rescuer turned, hand held up. There was a bright flash of light, a sizzle that was more of a feeling in the air than a sound, and a sudden burnt smell. The man was on the ground twitching, and her stranger stepped away.
“How did...”
“Taser,” the man replied carelessly.
Though she nodded, Sophia was convinced that she had seen nothing of the sort in the man's hands.
“Right, um, look, thank you...”
Sophia stepped away, ready to give her rescuer the slip, but she had forgotten her ankle. Without the adrenaline running through her system, she felt the hot pain shoot along the bone, and she stumbled. She would have scraped herself raw on the brick or took another tumble, but the man was there again, holding her up.
“Whoa, there honey. That's not looking so good. Do you live close?”
She bit her lip, looking up at him anxiously. He had saved her, but she still knew nothing about him. For all she knew, he could be a dozen times worse than the man who was laid out on the ground.
As if reading her thoughts, the man nodded.
“If you like, I can take you to the corner and get you a cab. Would you prefer that?”
Sophia made up her mind, and she shook her head.
“No, I don't live far...”
As he practically carried her out of the alley, she felt a sense of peace pervade her entire being, something that she was sure she’d never felt before. It felt like the start of something, but of what she didn’t know.
CHAPTER TWO
TWENTY MINUTES AGO
Dominic swore as the small quartz crystal in his hand flickered yet again. He waited to see if it would gain the bright blue gleam that Stephan had told him it would develop, but it only produced a milky light, not enough to read by, and certainly not enough to steer by.
All told, he had been in Milwaukee for two weeks. Though the small charm had assured him that he would find the woman he was looking for here, it had been frustratingly vague about her whereabouts otherwise.
He had been walking along the river for hours, dodging the crowds of people who were taking advantage of the summer weather. Though a part of him wanted to say ‘fuck it’ and grab something good to eat—maybe someone pretty to take home—he kept pacing along the pavement, watching the quartz for any sign of life. All told, when his phone rang and he saw that it was Stephan calling, Dominic wasn't in the best of moods.
“This thing isn't worth shit, Stephan,” he said as soon as he picked up, and his friend laughed.
“I thought I explained it well enough, Captain,” Stephan drawled. “The closer you get to your target, the brighter it glows. Step towards her, it glows, step away, the glow fades. It's not like there's a wad of instructions to get through.”
“It got me to Milwaukee, and that's all the farther it got me,” Dominic retorted. “It's been flickering like it's busted for the last two weeks.”
“You broke it, then. I made that myself, and if I made it, it works.”
“Seriously, did you send me out here with a broken flashlight inside a pretty piece of rock? If you tell me now, I'm only going to rearrange your face a little bit...”
Stephan laughed, but then it was cut off. There was some muttering on the other end of the line, and when Stephan came back on, he was a little more restrained.
“The Commandant says we need to stop fucking around. Okay. What's happening with that beautiful piece of magic I put in your hands two weeks ago?”
Dominic sighed, leaning against the wall. The bar crowd was going strong, and as he talked to Stephan, he kept his eye on them as well. Some of the men met his gaze with a challenge, and more than some of the women gave him an appreciative once over. Despite the fact that he was on a job, despite the fact that the crystal in his pocket wouldn't stop pulsing unreliably, he couldn't stop himself from smiling back. Something about the night, about the river, about the way the summer air was bright and mild made him think of his long-lost Venice, the city of his birth.
Venice was still there, but the place that he had known had been gone for more than five-hundred years. It was in Venice that he had been initiated as a Mage, and it was in Florence where he had spent the first fifty years of his immortality gambling, flirting, and making a living as a paid duelist. It was also in Venice where Matteo Salvestro had come looking for him and informed him in no uncertain terms that it was time to join the Magus Corps.
“Your talents are too powerful to waste playing with courtesans and representing spoiled lordlings in duels,” his mentor had said sternly, but now, on what was looking like a waste-of-time-mission far from his usual territory, Dominic might not have agreed.
“Your device lit up just fine on my way to the city,” he told Stephan. “Then when I got here, it started to fade, and now I could maybe use it as a nightlight and not much more. It flickers sometimes, it brightens up, but then nada.”
There was a pause, and somewhere on the east coast, Dominic knew that Stephan was biting his lip and frowning in concentration.
“That means...look, I know this doesn't make sense, but what I think that means is that she's there and not there.”
“That makes less sense than anything else you've said so far. Didn't the big man tell you to stop fucking around?”
Stephan's laugh was a short, unamused bark.
“I made that thing you are calling a nightlight. This isn't some kind of hedgecharm or love potion from the nearest pennywitch, okay? That thing is meant to target your girl's life source. Blue means that you're getting close, and red means you've got her. The fact that she's fading in and out...”
“Means that she's a vampire?”
“God I hope not, but no. I think it means that she's hiding herself or doing something to jam it.”
“That would take training,” Dominic said flatly. Suddenly the mission was taking a completely different tilt, and he tensed a little.
“Well, four years is a long time to be on the run, my friend. If she's jamming something I made, she's got to be something else again. Maybe she ran into a rogue mage who loaded her up with nasty tricks, or maybe she made a pact with a demon. It's happened before.”
“Great.”
“Look, the Commandant wants to know if you need more guys out there...”
Dominic stiffened.
“No. Repeat, that is a neg
ative, Stephan. I can handle this. I'm going to handle this.”
“Yeah, sounds like you. But that's what I've got. If my charm is doing something weird out there, well, that just means that things are weird out there. Go out loaded for bear. Or pissed-off demon. Or Mage Corps-hunting rogue.”
“Gotcha.”
Dominic ended the call and shoved the phone back into his pocket, scowling hard. No one was going to take this mission away from him, not when it had been entrusted to him specifically. He didn't want other Magus Corps investigators cluttering up the field. The city was only so big, after all, and there were only so many places for a witch who could block one of Stephan's charm to hide.
However, that didn't mean that he had to find her tonight. Dominic shoved the quartz crystal into his pocket, determined to ignore it for at least the evening. A man couldn't work all the time, and there were plenty of interesting things to be found in the city for a man who liked to have a good time. At least, that's how Dominic thought it was going to go when he heard a shout from the alley he was passing. He was almost bowled over by a disheveled couple who were exiting it, and when he glanced down the alleyway, he could see a large man bearing down on a small, staggering woman clinging to her cell phone.
Well, so much for a night off, he thought wryly, and stepped into the alley.
CHAPTER THREE
SOPHIA HAD THOUGHT that the man was big in the alleyway, but it was nothing to how he looked in her tiny studio apartment. He filled up the space like a bear in a cardboard box, but it didn't stop him from entering the unit as if he owned it. Perhaps it should have made her prickle, but instead there was something oddly endearing about the way he sat her in her small wing chair and headed to the bathroom.
“Do you have an elastic bandage somewhere?” he called out. “I've got painkillers here for you.”
