Darkness Seduced (Primal Heat Trilogy #2) (Order of the Blade)
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Darkness Seduced
The Order of the Blade
Primal Heat Trilogy, Book Two
By Stephanie Rowe
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Praise for Darkness Seduced
“[D]ark, edgy, sexy … sizzles on the page…sex with soul shattering connections that leave the reader a little breathless!…Darkness Seduced delivers tight plot lines, well written, witty and lyrical - Rowe lays down some seriously dark and sexy tracks. There is no doubt that this series will have a cult following. ” ~ Guilty Indulgence Book Club
“Darkness Seduced is a fabulous story with all the right elements: a strong sexual attraction, a struggle against that attraction, a tender love, a horrendous battle against unimaginable evil and a fight to save the world. You’ll love Lily and Gideon. This is the kind of story you can’t put down because you’re so anxious to see what happens next.” ~ Jeanne Stone Hunter, My Book Addiction & More
“Dark paranormal romance with passionate warriors, a cursed destiny, heartbreaking sacrifice and a gripping storyline. What I wouldn’t give to hear the “crack” of a Calydon warrior’s weapon as he protects me…swoon!” ~ Sharon Stogner, Love Romance Passion Reviews
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Praise for Darkness Awakened
“A fast-paced plot with strong characters, blazing sexual tension and sprinkled with witty banter, Darkness Awakened sucked me in and kept me hooked until the very last page.” ~ Literary Escapism
“Stephanie Rowe does it again! Darkness Awakened is an exciting journey full of fast and furious action, sizzling attraction, bad-ass Immortals and strong women with the power of Illusion. Immerse yourself in this fascinating new world and don’t be surprised if you never want to leave!” ~ Book Addict, When Pen Met Paper Reviews
“Rarely do I find a book that so captivates my attention, that makes me laugh out loud, and cry when things look bad. And the sex, wow! It took my breath away. The author keeps the tension high from page one. The pace kept me on the edge of my seat, and turning the pages. I did not want to put this book down… [Darkness Awakened] is a must read.” ~ D. Alexx Miller, Alexx Mom Cat’s Gateway Book Blog
“Darkness Awakened unfurled a two thousand year old history and mythology. Full of action and suspense, I couldn’t stop turning the pages! Darkness Awakened is… wait for it… dark. But, underneath the darkness is the promise of light. Faith and love that can overcome fate. Don’t miss out on this fabulous adventure!” ~Tamara Hoffa, Sizzling Hot Book Reviews
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Darkness Seduced (The Order of the Blade: Primal Heat Trilogy, Book Two)
ISBN-10: 985179236
ISBN-13: 9780985179236
Copyright © 2012 by Stephanie Rowe.
Cover design © 2012 by Pete Davis. Cover design and layout by Pete Davis at www.loszombios.com. Cover photos courtesy of iStockphoto.com.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, disseminated, or transmitted in any form or by any means or for any use, including recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the author and/or the artist. The only exception is short excerpts or the cover image in reviews.
Please be a leading force in respecting the right of authors and artists to protect their work. This is a work of fiction. All the names, characters, organizations, places and events portrayed in this novel or on the cover are either products of the author’s or artist’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author or the artist.
For further information, please contact Stephanie@stephanierowe.com
Dedication
For Jeanne Stone Hunter, a dear friend and a great supporter.
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to my core team of amazing people, without whom I would never have been able to create this book. Each of you is so important, and your contribution was exactly what I needed. I’m so grateful to all of you! Your emails of support, or yelling at me because I hadn’t sent you more of the book yet, or just your advice on covers, back cover copy and all things needed to whip this book into shape—every last one of them made a difference to me. I appreciate each one of you so much! Special thanks to, Jeanne Hunter, Tamara Hoffa, Rachel Unterman, Sharon Stogner and Jan Leyh, not only for their help, but for their friendship and behind-the-scenes support. Huge thanks also to Anita Nallathamby, Loretta Gilbert, Summer Steelman, Teresa Gabelman, D. Alexx Miller, Holly Collins, Janet Juengling-Snell, Jenn Shanks Pray and Jodi Moore. There are so many people I want to thank, but the people who simply must be called out are Denise Fluhr, Alencia Bates, Rebecca Johnson, Shell Bryce, Denise Whelan, and Ashley Cuesta. Thank you also to the following for all their amazing help: Judi Pflughoeft, Deb Julienne, Julie Simpson, Mary Lynn Ostrum, Maureen Downey and Mariann Medina. You guys are the best! Thanks so much to Pete Davis for such an amazing cover, and for all his hard work on the technical side to make this book come to life. Mom, you’re the best. It means so much that you believe in me. I love you. Special thanks also to my amazing daughter, who I love more than words could ever express. You are my world, sweet girl, in all ways.
Table of Contents
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
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
Sneak Peek: DARKNESS SURRENDERED
Sneak Peek: DARKNESS AWAKENED
Sneak Peek: ICE
Sneak Peek: KISS AT YOUR OWN RISK
Stephanie Rowe Bio
Select List of Other Books by Stephanie Rowe
CHAPTER ONE
The weight in her soul was becoming almost too heavy to bear, and that fact terrified Lily Davenport even more than her current situation did.
That kind of thinking would doom her. It would get her nowhere, and she had to rise above it right now.
Even if it was true.
Fighting exhaustion, struggling against despair, and trying desperately to hold onto the hope that had kept her going for the last two years, Lily leaned back against the cement wall of her cell, not even caring how hard and cold it was. She just needed something to support her head for a minute. Just until she found her way back to the tough, indomitable woman who had survived two years (and counting) of hell at the cruel hands of Nate Tipton, the sociopathic Calydon warrior who’d taken her prisoner when she’d shown up at his house to interview him for her latest research paper.
Calydons were immortal warriors, descended from a crazy, evil male who’d taken one too many doses of demon-tainted water and nearly brought down the world. His legacy was thousands of immortal warriors who were cursed with both a natural instinct to protect innocents, and the horrific destiny of going rogue and destroying the very innocents the
y were born to keep safe. Each male was chosen by his weapon, and he carried its mark on his forearms where the weapons would wait, ready to be called out battle to do his bidding.
Nate, however, had no such excuses. He wasn’t rogue, and yet somewhere in the tainted recesses of his mind, he’d lost the need to protect innocents. Instead, he thrived on causing pain and death simply because it fit within his plans, whatever they were. After two years at his non-existent mercy, Lily hadn’t figured out what his intentions were, other than to inflict upon her a steady course of abuse designed to break her soul.
Her eyes at a weary half-mast, Lily studied the crusted bagel sitting on the cardboard box that served as her dining room table. That was all the food she had left. One silly piece of dried out bread that she once would have tossed into the garbage without a thought. Today it was an agonizingly tempting feast that was making her mouth water.
Should she try to conserve it a little longer, or eat?
Oh, who was she kidding? She had to eat, or else she’d disintegrate into a pathetic ball on the floor and be unable to save herself when someone finally opened the locked door of her cell.
“Okay, Lily. Up you go.” Lily wrapped her hand around the frame of the metal cot that had cushioned her for so many nightmare-laden nights. With a groan, she pulled herself to her feet. Her legs were trembling, aching with exhaustion, making her almost want to laugh.
If only the world could see her now. The internationally renowned Calydon expert, celebrated around the globe while she delivered shocking information about the reclusive immortal warriors, violent males who lived and died by their blades. How far she had fallen from the serious and staid professor who had stared down hundreds of annoyed Calydons in her lifetime, refusing to be cowed. Today, she could barely manage to hobble across the floor to bask in the delight of eating a stale bagel.
Honest to God, she felt a little defeated right now.
Dammit, no. She couldn’t afford to think like that. Wearily, Lily rubbed her hand over her eyes, willing away the exhaustion. She’d survived this long. Why not try to make it another day? You know, because she’d invested so much time and effort in staying alive and all. It would be a shame to waste it, right?
She almost laughed. God, the things she said to herself to try to stay sane.
“Okay, Lily,” she said aloud, trying to break the debilitating silence that had been closing down on her with increasing intensity. “How about a lovely candlelit dinner just for one?”
Fabulous idea.
Lily pulled her shoulders back and walked across the dirty floor, her legs shaking with weakness as she fingered one of the fading bruises on her arm. She eased herself down to the floor beside the cardboard box. Sitting beside the bagel was a tin can of water. Even though the bagels were stale, at least the water was fresh, or as fresh as whatever was coming out of the faucet in the crumbling cement wall. She preferred to think of the water’s orange tint as a rose-wine color, as opposed to something more unpalatable and probably more accurate.
Nate thoughtfully left Lily eight bagels to gnaw on while he gallivanted about the Pacific Northwest murdering more people. He thought it was hilarious and ironic to leave her with bread and water each time he went out on a mission.
She? Not nearly as much.
Nate had been due back after one day, and now it was day eight, and there was still no sign of him. Good, because it had given her a chance to recover from his latest assault. Good, because it made her hope he’d finally been killed. Bad, because it left her locked in a basement waiting for his brutally terrifying partner to come and get her. As always, he took all his guards with him when he went out on his killing spree, so there was no one left in the house to make sure she didn’t die of starvation. If Nate was dead, his partner was the only one who would be coming for her.
Lily shivered as she recalled the ice blue eyes of Frank Tully, so cold, so chilling, and so terrifying. As much as Nate had brutalized Lily over the last two years, he was nothing in comparison to how badly Frank had unnerved her the one time he’d come by the house.
Nate had isolated her, used physical force to manipulate her, and had kept her captive for some future grand plan she had been unable to figure out, but he’d never managed to take away her determination to stay alive and fight until she could find a way to escape.
But one look into Frank’s eyes, and Lily had known he had plans for her. Plans that would make her beg for death long before he’d ever give it to her. She’d met Frank only that one day, and it was after he had left that Nate had done truly horrific things to her—
Tears welled up with such unexpected suddenness that Lily was caught off guard before she could will them away. Tears that were tainted with memories long past, long-buried nightmares brought to the surface by her thoughts about Frank.
God, no. She couldn’t afford to think of her past right now. She had no resources left to deal with it. She had to hold tight to her emotions and carefully direct her thoughts, or she’d lose it. She knew she was so close to the edge, barely hanging onto hope, sanity and strength. “The past is gone,” she announced. “Let it go.”
But she was still blinking hard against the tears as she took the last remaining bagel out of the plastic bag and set it next to the tin of water. “Ana will come,” she told herself. “Have faith in her.”
Nate had kidnapped Ana Matthews several months ago, but Lily hadn’t managed to get in to see her until two weeks ago. God, that moment when Lily had seen another human being, a woman, a friend, it had almost been too much. It had been so overwhelming after the isolation of the last two years.
Nate had taken Ana with him on this last killing spree so he could use Ana’s powers help him murder. Lily and Ana had devised a plan—if one could call it that—for Ana to escape and send help back for Lily.
Lily had to believe Ana was still alive. She had to. Because if Ana was dead or even incapacitated, the only one coming for Lily was Frank, because Lily was becoming increasingly convinced that something had happened to Nate. She was too important for him to risk leaving her behind to possibly starve to death. With Nate gone, even if Ana were alive, it wouldn’t matter if Frank made it here first…
“God.” Lily pressed her forehead to her palms and squeezed her eyes shut against the sudden swell of tears, unable to stop a sob from wrenching out of her throat. She’d battled to stay sane, to stay positive, and to believe that someday she’d go home. She’d worked so hard to maintain some semblance of herself—how could it end with her dying of starvation in a basement? Or at the brutal hands of a madman like Frank? Two years of hopelessness surged over her, crushing her and that last shred of hope slid out of her grasp as she finally gave in—
“No!” She lifted her head and took a shuddering breath. “It’s not over yet. It’s never over.” She lifted her head and glared at the ceiling Nate loved to stomp on whenever he thought she was sleeping. “You aren’t stronger than I am,” she shouted. “I’m going to win.”
Silence.
Her throat tightened, but she resolutely broke an inch off the end of the bagel and put the rest back in the plastic bag for tomorrow. Because there would be a tomorrow for her. There would be.
She picked up her tin can to toast herself—
There was a loud thud from the hallway, a shudder so forceful the floor shook beneath her. She froze, and then her heart burst into frantic life.
Lily bolted to her feet, the tin can hitting the cement floor with a clank. Water splashed over her bare feet, but she didn’t move, staring at the door as adrenaline pounded through her. Was it Nate? Frank? Or had someone arrived to snatch her out of hell?
A loud crash reverberated through the basement and the door shuddered. Someone was trying to break her out! Not Nate, because he had a key. It wasn’t Nate. Tears of relief flooded her eyes. Someone had come to rescue her? “I’m in here,” she shouted as she ran to the door. “Help!”
There was no answer, just another th
undering crash and the glaring din of metal against metal as the steel door shook this time. Someone was trying to beat the door down? “Hello?”
Again, no response, just another violent blow against the door.
A sudden chill shot down Lily’s spine, reality rushing with agonizing clarity into her mind. If someone were there to rescue her, they would be yelling for her, giving her reassurance, or trying to ascertain if she were alive behind that steel door. Whoever was trying to break down the door didn’t have rescue in mind. The door trembled again as something metal slammed into it with a shattering clang…metal against metal.
Frank. He had Calydon warriors working for him, Calydons who sported steel weapons that would be able to take down her cell door.
Oh, God.
Bile rose in Lily’s throat as she whirled toward the corner where she’d hidden the one item she’d been able to turn into a weapon during her sojourn in hell. She grabbed the metal rod that used to frame the underside of her cot, nearly dropping it as another crash exploded through the basement.
Her ears ringing from the noise, she clutched the metal rod, making sure the end with the splintered spike and the two inch pieces of wire hanger was pointing away from her, and then ran back across the room.
She almost whimpered when she saw a metal blade pierce the steel door. Then it was yanked back and slammed again, this time coming through further. Far enough for her to see the intricate design on the blade, a design typical of a Calydon warrior’s weapon.
She stared at the shiny metal blade, her chest so tight she couldn’t breathe. She’d never be able to take down a Calydon. Never.