by Strong, Jory
PRAISE FOR
Inked Magic
“Overflowing with sensuality, an intriguing story, and a great heroine, this is a book you won’t be able to put down.”
—RT Book Reviews
“Intense, original and extremely sexy! That’s what you can expect to find in Jory Strong’s new novel, Inked Magic. It captured my interest from the beginning and held it throughout the entire book.”
—Under the Covers
“I will definitely pick up the sequel.”
—Fiction Vixen
PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF JORY STRONG
“The world is gorgeous, the characters are fantastic, and the plots will draw you in!”
—Errant Dreams Reviews
“Intriguing from the start and deliciously erotic.”
—Darque Reviews
“Jory Strong will leave you hooked and hoping for more of this dark world.”
—Romance Junkies
“Jory Strong writes an enthralling story which will quickly immerse readers in a futuristic fantasy.”
—Romance Reviews Today
“A beautiful, passionate story…Tender, loving, erotic, and consuming.”
—Joyfully Reviewed
“Strong’s terrific tale should win her many new fans. Really good stuff!”
—RT Book Reviews
Titles by Jory Strong
GHOSTLAND
SPIDER-TOUCHED
HEALER’S CHOICE
INKED MAGIC
INKED DESTINY
Anthologies
PRIMAL
(with Lora Leigh, Michelle Rowen, and Ava Gray)
Inked Destiny
JORY STRONG
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China
Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
For more information about the Penguin Group, visit penguin.com.
This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.
Copyright © 2013 by Valerie Christensen.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
HEAT and the HEAT design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
ePub ISBN: 978-1-101-62457-9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Strong, Jory.
Inked Destiny / Jory Strong. — Heat trade paperback edition.
pages cm
ISBN: 978-0-425-25361-8
1. Elves—Fiction. 2. Women tattoo artists—Fiction. 3. Psychic ability—Fiction.
4. Fantasy fiction. 5. Erotic fiction. I. Title.
PS3619.T777I49 2013
813’.6—dc23
2012046050
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Berkley trade paperback edition / July 2013
Cover art direction by Rita Frangie.
Cover design by Sarah Oberrender.
Cover photograph by Tony Mauro.
Text design by Tiffany Estreicher
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
For my cousin, Jamie. May you find a Quinn of your own.
And for my cousin, Venesa, who is also a fan. Enjoy!
Table of Contents
Also by Jory Strong
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
Twenty-eight
Twenty-nine
Epilogue
About the Author
One
Etaín stood naked in the shower, hot water and the heat of the men on either side of her eradicating most of the chill that lingered following her rescue from the Harlequin Rapist. “I could get used to this,” she said, eyes closed to savor the sensation of masculine hands gliding over slick flesh.
The truth of their feelings was a hum against her senses. They might have ensnared her equally but their call differed. With Cathal it was raw sensuality and fierce imperative, while Eamon was the attraction of like to like.
Had she once truly believed she was okay with casual sex and lack of permanence? Before Cathal and Eamon had come into her life, true intimacy had been impossible.
Skin didn’t lie to her. It was her gift, her curse, to be able to touch the eyes inked into her palms to skin and not only see another’s memories, but take them. She shivered, because now that gift was changing and her control of it failing.
Cathal and Eamon were safe where others weren’t. She shivered again, harder, at thinking about how close she’d come to having to use her gift on the Harlequin Rapist to save herself.
“It’s over,” Eamon murmured, his hard cock pressed to her ass and lower back while Cathal’s was a heated announcement of need against her belly.
“Thanks to the two of you.”
If not for the tattoos—infused with Eamon’s magic—that she’d put on Cathal’s arms, creating a bond that allowed them to find her, even now her existence would be marked by cycles of torture and rape.
“Parker won’t be able to put off taking a report.” They were lucky no one of superior rank had been among the first responders. As an FBI taskforce member, her brother’s permission to leave had allowed them to escape.
“We’ll find a safe truth when the time comes,” Eamon said.
She opened her eyes, taking in Cathal’s good looks, short dark hair and the ever-present stubble that came with being Black Irish. Opposite to Eamon’s long blond hair and smooth chest.
Until they’d come into her life, sex had been a safety valve, a way to release some hidden buildup of pressure from too much touch, too many bodies inked. And now…
It was so much more. Looking back, she was torn between amusement, for thinking it would be easy to enjoy them and walk away afterward, and fear when it came to what the future held.
Because of Cathal she’d been made an accessory to four murders. There would be a fifth when his father and his uncle caught up with the last boy who’d been involved in the drugging and rape of two sixteen-year-old girls. This wasn’t behind them. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
She slid her hands down Cathal’s naked back, pressed kisses along his throat. His eyes remained closed and she knew the cause. He didn’t want to see Eamon on the other side of her.
I’m not a man to share when I’m serious about a woman.
Then don’t get serious about me.
She’d warned him, but still a fist formed around her heart, squeezing at the threat he might come to regret his involvement with her, t
hat in the end, he might walk away, unable to handle sharing her.
Her hand brushed over his hip on its way to curl around his hardened length. “I want you. I want you both. Let’s go to bed.”
They left the shower.
Cathal took the towel from her, sliding it over her body, lingering over breasts capped with dark pink nipples. Within days of meeting her she’d become the beat of his heart, the relentless, molten pour of lust pumped directly into his bloodstream so that time away from her had become the crawl of eons.
Her lips curved with knowing. “Like what you see?” she asked, echoing the question he’d issued when first joining her in the shower.
“Definitely.” He’d like it even more when sight was accompanied by taste and scent and the touch of skin to skin.
A murmured command from Eamon and a warm, unnatural breeze swirled to life around them, smelling of tropical winds, drying shower-wet hair, though raising chill bumps on Cathal’s flesh. Magic again. Eamon’s again. So casually and easily summoned it made Cathal’s heart race with something other than need for Etaín, with a hard-wired fear accompanied by a sense of foreboding.
“Show-off,” he said, hearing the growl beneath the joking tone he’d tried for.
Eamon’s smile was the white flash of shark’s teeth, his amusement a deadly thing. “Feeling threatened?”
Cathal bared his teeth in response, a reaction he’d been fighting from the first instant Eamon had made his interest in Etaín known.
“Boys, boys,” Etaín said, the label turning the tide of hostility and unintentionally uniting them in common purpose.
“Is that how you think of us?” Eamon asked, hands going around to cup breasts capped with nipples that hardened instantly, the sight of them sending a throbbing pulse through Cathal’s cock. “As boys and not men?”
Her laugh was a hot, fisted squeeze around Cathal’s dick. “Less flattering to call you junkyard dogs fighting over a hunk of meat, even if you’re gorgeous enough to be paraded around a show ring.”
Eamon’s thumbs brushed across her nipples, causing a hitch in her breath, and her back to arch in an offering Cathal could no more resist than had it been a summons. The towel in his hands fell to the floor.
They’d shared her once before. On that night, too, Eamon had stood behind her, hands on her bare breasts. Daring him to join the two of them, inviting him, and he’d crossed the distance like a man drunk on lust, a man compelled…
By magic. He sensed it now, but it didn’t fog his head this time any more than being alone with a naked Etaín did.
Cathal bent, capturing a nipple between his lips and laving it with his tongue. Satisfaction was a hot surge through his cock at her soft moan of pleasure, at the way her hands speared into his hair, holding him against her breast as she pulled away from Eamon in an effort to give herself more fully to him.
It made him harder, hungrier, touching on primal, competitive instincts she’d no doubt claim reached back to the caveman days when strength and prowess and victory determined who fathered the next generation. He wanted it all with her. He’d agreed to come here, tonight, and he wouldn’t lie to himself—Eamon’s presence didn’t diminish the desire. But tomorrow was another day.
It’d grate on his nerves, those nights she spent with Eamon, but he’d welcome those he had alone with her. And he intended to have them.
Etaín could feel the hum of Cathal’s resistance even as she felt the heat of his lust joined to hers. She could know his exact thoughts if she desired it.
Don’t think, just feel, she wanted to tell him. This can work. I need it to work.
Desire burned her from the inside out, a hunger for both men that transcended the physical. She moaned as pleasure moved through her, a coiling turbulent wave going from breasts to clit.
Cathal’s sucks, the pull of his mouth on her nipple, were echoed by the tug and twist and tightening of Eamon’s fingers on the other areola as he kissed upward along her neck, pausing to nuzzle her earlobe.
More. Everything. That’s what she wanted. What she craved.
She reached backward and grasped the long strands of Eamon’s hair as Cathal kissed downward, his tongue tracing the rim of her belly button, dipping in then moving lower. If she had more willpower when it came to him, she would protest, telling him to wait until they were stretched out on the bed. Instead she parted her thighs in invitation, whispered yes the instant his lips captured her clit.
His hands settled against her hips, holding her firmly against Eamon, preventing movement and making her prisoner to sensation. Not just the coil of her own desire or the scorching heat of it, but theirs as well.
She wanted to watch Cathal. She wanted to eat him with her eyes, devour him, but with the first stroke and swirl of his tongue to her clit, he made her helpless. The truth was, she’d been unable to resist the allure of either man though she’d known both would bring trouble.
On a moan she surrendered, closing her eyes and giving herself over to their care. Eamon’s hands were like molten fire on her breasts, but then fire was one of the elements he was most strongly linked to, the essence of who I am, he’d told her as they looked into a mirror taking up a great expanse of wall, the spells woven into it allowing a glimpse into things hidden by skin and physical form.
She’d seen and experienced more evidence of magic, but this, being alive, being with them both at the same time, was the purest of magic, the most addicting of it, better than anything.
Pleasure whipped through her, turning her breath into fast, shallow pants. Her blood pooled between her thighs, and her heartbeat thundered there as if it lived in swollen, wet folds and engorged clit.
She strained, trying to drive her clit deeper into Cathal’s mouth, begging him to suck harder as orgasm shimmered just out of reach. Now! The scream built inside her only to have him abandon her clit.
He slid his tongue through puffy cunt lips and wet channel, teasing her with shallow thrusts so her opening clenched and unclenched. She struggled against implacable male hands, held stationary by firm grips.
Eamon’s tongue mimicked Cathal’s, fucking into her ear canal, hot torment to an area that had turned into an erogenous zone since meeting him. Their twin assault while imprisoning her was very nearly a punishment, sensual torment for coming so close to dying and leaving them behind to wonder at what she suffered before breath ceased and she went still and cold.
She tried to cant her hips, her inner thighs wet with arousal instead of water. “Do it,” she ordered Cathal, channel rippling, trying to grasp and hold his tongue, to pull it deeper into her body and make it a substitute for the thick, hardened cock that rose to press against his belly while Eamon’s felt like satin against her buttocks and back.
Eamon’s husky laugh was all that came of her command, followed by a silky threat. “We’re not the ones at your mercy this time, Etaín. You’re at ours.”
They proved it to her, holding her on the edge of release as she writhed and strained, the vines tattooed on her arms like live things absorbing the lust and heightening it to the point where her heart beat too fast, burned like a small sun trapped in her chest and about to explode. And then it did, consciousness disappearing in a sundering pulse of ecstasy, pleasure sweeping outward and leaving deep, infinite peace.
Magic slammed into Eamon with Etaín’s surrender to pleasure. He nearly came, his cock pressed hard and hot to her flesh, his testicles swollen, tight sacks pulled upward in near agony.
Victory and satisfaction surged through him, along with a sense of camaraderie as Cathal rose from his crouch, features flushed but eyes filled with the same emotions. She was theirs. Safe and whole because of them. Wordlessly Eamon lifted Etaín into his arms, Cathal reaching the bed first, jerking luxurious sheet and comforter downward.
Etaín’s eyelashes fluttered as Eamon lay her on the bed, her lids opening as he stretched out on his side next to her, Cathal doing the same opposite of him.
Her dark, da
rk eyes were pools of sultry seduction, languid still from orgasm, though sparks of amusement shimmered like the flash of silvery minnows in ocean shallows. “Well, that was a first for me. Not that either of you need a boost to your egos when it comes to sex.”
She took possession of hardened cocks, Cathal moaning, breath seizing in a quick, sharp inhalation where Eamon refused to cede control. “Take him while I watch,” he said, issuing a command, his hand replacing hers, fingers wrapped tightly around his cock when she obeyed, releasing him to roll into Cathal, onto him as Cathal went willingly to his back.
Like a pagan goddess rising from the sea of deep blue sheets, and created of flame, she straddled Cathal. The sun streaming through the window caressed her, the gold of her aura almost that of a pure Elf, the sheen of magic reminding Eamon of water lapping a pristine shore as he wanted to lap her, to probe her wet core with his tongue and taste her essence.
From the very first, Eamon found the sight of Etaín with Cathal arousing. It was more so now as he watched her guide Cathal’s cock to her opening, teasing him by allowing him to experience the satin heat of her channel only inches at a time.
Cathal’s hands palmed her breasts, fingers clamped on nipples as intoxicating as the finest of wines. His hips lifted from the mattress in hard jabs meant to press him deeper into her body, his cock glistening, darkened in his need for Etaín.
“Tease,” Cathal panted, the growl in his voice a warning he wouldn’t let her torment him for long.
“And you’re not? The two of you aren’t?” she said, including Eamon with the slight turn of her head. Her gaze swept over him, the liquid hunger her expression delivered making his hand tighten in a near-painful fist on his shaft.
Dark satisfaction settled in her eyes. In centuries of being alive, he’d never ceded as much to any woman as he had to this one in just days.
Her attention returned to Cathal, her body lifting and lowering, drawing out the pleasure until finally Cathal put her beneath him. He pounded into her, hands held to the mattress, his mouth on hers, swallowing her moans and finally her cry of release before pistoning furiously, muscles cording, his breathing ragged and rough as he yielded to ecstasy.
