Enthralled

by Lora Leigh

  Now, there was no fighting, no hiding, no denying.

  Bracing her knee on the mattress, her palms flat against the blankets, Kate lifted herself to the bed, crawling slowly between those long, powerful legs to the male awaiting her.

  * * *

  Watching her move to him, sensuality washing over her expression, flushing her face, tightening her breasts, her nipples, sending the sweet scent of her need to fill his senses.

  Long, silken curls fell around her like twining spirals of flames as her green eyes gleamed with emerald hunger between long, sun-kissed lashes.

  Damn, his balls were tight, the engorged length of his cock throbbing with steadily increasing hunger as she bypassed it only to straddle his thighs. The silk of her panties, heated and damp from the arousal building in her, pressed against the iron-hard length as her lips brushed against his.

  With each passing second the heat building between them rose, overwhelming their senses as the need to touch, to taste, became imperative.

  His fingers speared into the curls at the back of her head, holding her in place as his lips covered hers, his tongue licking against them, parting them until she met his kiss with a fiery heat of her own.

  Spicy and sweet, the mating hormone spilling from the tiny glands beneath their tongues sent their pulses racing as the need amplified and surged through their systems.

  Devil couldn’t imagine a high greater than this. The pleasure of his mate’s kiss, her touch, the hunger and need rising between them like hungry flames licking at their flesh.

  Hooking his fingers into the elastic at her hips, it was incredibly easy to snap the stretchy lace from the silk and remove them entirely.

  The feel of her flesh, slick and hot against the engorged length of his dick, had every muscle in his body tensing, tightening in a need so primal it was impossible to deny.

  Holding her lips to his with his hand behind her head as he wrapped his free arm around her rear to lift her in place, he couldn’t hold back the desperate growl that rumbled from his throat.

  He loved to have her ride him. Loved watching her, feeling her take him. But the primal instincts tearing through him now were impossible to deny.

  * * *

  Dev,” Kate protested the suddenly cessation of his kiss as her eyes widened, surprise flaring through her as he suddenly lifted her from his body.

  “What—?”

  Before she could do more than gasp the question, he had her on her knees, one big hand pressing her shoulders down as he came behind her.

  Catching herself on her elbows and swiping her hair back from her eyes, she was suddenly confronted with her own image in the full-length mirror against the wall. Bent before her mate, his hands gripping her hips, lifting her into place as he removed one hand to grip his fierce erection.

  She watched him, watched as his gaze narrowed on the point where their bodies met, and felt the wide crest part the swollen lips of her pussy.

  That first pulse of silky pre-seminal fluid shot inside her, the unique hormones contained within it instantly sinking, stroking against her flesh and awakening sensations she wouldn’t have known otherwise.

  His head fell back as he pressed the flared head inside the clenched entrance until it was lodged fully inside the milking flesh of her vagina.

  The next spurt had a moan falling from her lips as she felt his cock head flex, felt the heat of the release inside her. Because she knew within seconds what would happen.

  That rush of sharp, fiery sensation as her pussy clenched tight and hard, an involuntary response to the stimulation of the hormones spilling inside her. The sweeping fire clenching her womb, spasming through it with a pleasure-pain that dragged a broken cry from her lips.

  A heartbeat later, as tightly as her flesh was gripped around him, flexing and milking the heavy length deeper still, her pussy wept for more. The silky slide of her juices mixed with the next hot spurt of fluid to increase the spikes of building sensation as he pushed deeper inside her.

  It was agonizing pleasure, the sweetest pain she could imagine. With each shallow thrust of his hips, each backward glide of the thick erection, the sensations only mounted. And Kate couldn’t help but watch. Just as he watched the penetration of her body.

  “Fuck. So good,” he growled, his chest heaving as a trickle of perspiration eased down his temple.

  Lifting his now amber gaze, the burning flames that lit the depths dragged a sharp breath of surprise from her.

  “So sweet, Kate,” he growled, his gaze moving to where he was pumping in shallow thrusts, his hips moving rhythmically as he fucked deeper, deeper inside her with each movement until in one final surge, he was buried to the hilt.

  A final spurt of fluid shot against her inner walls, the thick head pulsing with the release, caressing the sensitive flesh he filled so fully.

  “Dev, please.” The desperate cry wailed from her lips as he held her hips in place, refusing to allow her to thrust back against him, to work him inside her until the sharp bursts of painful pleasure eased.

  “Let me feel it,” he groaned. “The feel of your sweet pussy gripping me so tight and hot. Fuck, Kate, it’s like fucking electricity surrounding my cock.”

  She whimpered at the pleasure that filled his voice as the little bursts of sensation continued to flare through her pussy.

  Pleasure and pain.

  And it didn’t end. It wouldn’t end until he began moving. Until the broad length of his cock was shafting hard and deep inside her. Until then, the fluid he’d pumped inside her would keep clenching and tightening her flesh while spikes of pleasure demanded more of her heated juices to spill inside her and ease the ecstatic torture.

  “Please, Dev.” Breathless, riding a wave of sensation so powerful it was stealing her breath, Kate pleaded with him to ease the clenching demand building between her thighs.

  Her clit was throbbing, pulsing in time to each rippling shudder that worked through her pussy, until in desperation she lowered her hand between her thighs, her fingers finding the nerve-rich center and rubbing it with quickening strokes of her fingers.

  “Yeah, play with that pretty clit,” he crooned, coming over her, his knees bracing hers apart, his hips moving just enough to cause the head of his cock to stroke the inner muscles, just enough to send screaming shards of pleasure to race through her nerve endings.

  “Let me feel you come like this,” he demanded, his gaze meeting hers in the mirror. “Let me feel that hot little pussy tighten, mate. Milk my cock, sweetheart. Suck my release straight out of my—”

  A harsh groan filled her ears as his lips moved to the mating mark at her neck.

  Because she was tightening around him. Impossibly tight in long, rippling contractions as the clitoral stimulation began electrifying her senses, pushing her closer, driving her harder.

  Inside the heat channel, Devil worked the head of his cock, stroking hidden nerve centers as the broad shaft stretched her, seared her flesh. The pulsing throb of his erection stroked each inch of flesh it stretched, burning against the shuddering and clenching muscles wrapped around it.

  Her fingers moved faster, a whimpering cry leaving her lips as he found a nipple with the fingers of one hand and gripped the tight point erotically, pulling at it, applying just enough pressure—

  Oh God, she was so close.

  A sizzle of brutal sensation shot from her nipple to her clit. Her pussy tightened again, clenched, as his hips moved against her rear, faster, the tiny thrusts stroking, rubbing until in one blinding second she spiraled into an ecstasy that consumed her soul.

  She screamed as she felt the first spurt of his release jetting inside her. In the next heartbeat, the thickening in his cock locked him in place as his hips began to move against her, tugging at the grip her flesh had on him with each convulsive spurt of his seed inside her.

  It was like flying through pure, rich sensation. All she could do was feel the sharp spikes of pleasure driving into not just her body, but a
lso her soul. It wrung a desperate cry from her throat as his teeth pierced the mating mark once again, his tongue licking against it to ease any pain, and filling it with heat and pleasure instead.

  Gasping, shuddering with each explosive starburst erupting inside her, she prayed it never ended, but she knew she wouldn’t survive if it wasn’t over soon.

  “I love you, Kate,” he suddenly groaned at her ear. “God help me, mate, I’ll love you past death.”

  He loved her.

  In the two weeks since the flames of mating heat had wrapped them together, he hadn’t spoke the words. She’d given him her love, whispered it nightly, but never with expectation.

  She had never thought he would love her. They were mated. He was a man of realism, of practicality. Love wouldn’t fit into the life he saw before him.

  But he’d placed love in it.

  Holding her close, his release filling her as she gave a final shudder of pleasure, he whispered the words again.

  “I love you, mate.”

  “I love you, mate,” she whispered in return. “Forever.”

  * * *

  Holding her close, his face buried against her neck, his body shuddering in the aftermath of pure rapture, Devil felt that final barrier inside his soul give way beneath the emotions pounding against it.

  He loved her.

  With all his heart, with his scarred soul and the darkness that would likely too often return, he loved her.

  And he deserved her.

  By God, he deserved this woman, this tiny, Irish flame that had burned through his resistance and stolen his heart.

  Just as it was whispered around the estate and in the outlying towns. She was the Devil’s due.

  The Devil’s soul.

  And every dream he’d ever known.

  THE CURSE OF THE BLACK SWAN

  A League of the Black Swan Novella

  ALYSSA DAY

  This is for everyone who knows the pain of losing a parent. Dad, you left us far too soon. I hope somebody up there told you that I’ve made my writing dreams come true.

  Also, thank you to awesome reader

  Jen Cash-Cook for Brynn’s name.

  THE CURSE OF THE BLACK SWAN

  A thousand years ago, on the edge of the Fae lands, a beautiful young peasant woman was bathing in a stream, singing a song of gratitude for the golden sunshine and the magnificent day. However, unlike many who play in the daylight, the girl also sang her thanks to the moon, who rested in diurnal slumber and yet heard the lilting melody of the girl’s voice and was pleased.

  But others with darker purpose heard the girl’s wondrous song, too. The king of the land, a cold, hard man who beat his hounds, his children, and his wife with equal fervor, followed the melody to the stream and found the girl, innocent and glorious in her nudity, and he determined to attack her with his rapacious lust.

  The girl pleaded with the barbarian king, which availed her nothing. So then she ran, and she fought, as her father the woodsman had taught her, and she managed to keep the king at bay until the sun dipped below twilight’s horizon, when her strength finally gave out. The king, enraged by her defiance, stabbed her through the heart and left her to die. As the girl bled to death on the bank of the silvery stream, the night wind whispered in her ear that the moon, who had appreciated the gift of the girl’s song, had taken pity on her.

  “I will save you from this king, but you must agree never to leave me, and to become a black swan and sing to me every third night for the rest of your life, and swear also that your daughters and their daughters will continue to fulfill this promise.”

  The girl, who had lost all hope as her blood pooled near her body and then slipped into the moonlit stream, parted her lips, barely able to speak. “And if I agree, will this gift—this curse—never end?”

  The moon reigned alone over the dark night, and thus had her own measure of cruelty, but she knew well that mortals needed the promise of hope to survive, and so she offered this version of the truth in return:

  “You and each generation’s eldest daughter will be released from your vow when you meet your one true love and bear him a daughter.”

  The girl’s tears flowed as her blood had done mere moments before, when she agreed, and the moon caused a magnificent fountain to appear on that very spot. In the center of the fountain, a perfect black marble statue of the beautiful young woman, one hand held out to a swan, now stood as eternal monument to the vow.

  From that day until this one, a black swan swims in the fountain and sings her songs of loss and longing every third night, while the moon smiles her icy smile. This woman who is also a swan plots and plans for how to avoid falling in love and how to never, ever bear a daughter who would be forced to carry the curse. But the moon’s pull is strong, and she is determined not to lose the lovely swan song, so these plans have never succeeded.

  Not yet.

  ONE

  Bordertown, a place where the Fae, demon, and human worlds intersect, hidden in the heart of New York

  Sean O’Malley ran into the burning building, dodging and weaving around the rest of his colleagues who were running and limping out of the inferno before it exploded or completely collapsed, either of which was due to happen any minute.

  “O’Malley, get your ass back here,” his boss, the new Bordertown fire chief, shouted.

  Sean ignored him, just as he’d ignored the previous fire chief. He’d heard something in that building. Maybe it was only a cat, and no matter how much it tore him up inside when he found evidence that a helpless animal had lost its life in a fire, he knew the rules: Firefighters didn’t risk their lives for pets. Not that he usually gave a rat’s ass for rules, and he’d certainly bent a few to save pets in the past. They all had.

  But it hadn’t sounded like a cat. It had sounded like a baby.

  Zach, the closest thing to a friend Sean had on the crew, planted himself in front of Sean, blocking his path to the door.

  “Not this time,” Zach shouted.

  They had to be loud to be heard over the roar of the flames that were greedily consuming the old building. Too much rotten wood, too little upkeep—it would be easy to blame that, if this hadn’t been the fourth building in as many nights hit in exactly the same way. They had a serial arsonist on their hands.

  “I heard a baby. Get out of my way, or I’ll go through you,” Sean said, deadly calm and deadly serious.

  He didn’t have time to delay. There was no way he was taking a chance on giving up on a baby who needed him. Not now and not ever—not ever, but especially not today, after his mom’s bombshell.

  Zach was a couple of inches over six feet tall, but Sean was bigger by a few inches and probably by forty pounds of muscle, not to mention his extra abilities. Zach didn’t hesitate; he moved out of Sean’s way, fast, as soon as he heard the word baby. None of them understood how Sean could hear things that nobody else could, but they knew it was true. Enhanced hearing was one of his super powers, they liked to joke.

  They also all knew that he could withstand temperatures that would have fried most of them alive. They didn’t joke about that one. He’d caught more than one of his colleagues watching him warily after they’d fought fires, their expressions similar to how he imagined he’d watch a feral wolf. They weren’t all that far off.

  They knew he was different, but they didn’t know how different. Sean didn’t tell anybody he was half fire demon. Life was easier that way. Even in Bordertown, where demons were as common as low-caste Fae or shady humans, fire demons were considered to be the worst of the worst: crazed berserkers and the most terrifying of predators. His abilities already isolated him enough from the rest of the tightly knit crew. He didn’t need to add to it.

  All of this ran through his mind in the few seconds it took for him to hit the building doorway running. He burst into the conflagration, head down and racing for the spot where the sound had originated. Second floor, to the left. He barely paused at the staircase, but t
he view was enough to make a sane man flinch. A roaring wall of orange-red flame screamed toward him, and the heat knocked him back a couple of steps. His skin felt the heat, even under his suit, and when the fabric started to melt off his body, he discovered that his protective gear wasn’t rated anywhere near high enough.

  Whatever accelerant the arsonist had used wasn’t purely chemical; no way would a normal fire be burning that hot. Magic was involved here. In fact, it would take black magic to push a fire to these levels. Sean could feel his eyes flaring as his pupils contracted, and he knew that anybody watching him would see the irises turn deep blood orange in color and start to glow.

  Sean analyzed the situation for options, but the stairs were the only way up; no matter that the stairwell was a tunnel of flame and probably going to explode any minute. He took them four at a time, barely clearing the last one before the explosion hit and the stairs collapsed into a burning mass of tinder. He glanced back at the fiery pit at the bottom of the stairwell and grimaced, and a falling chunk of ceiling smashed down on his helmet, nearly knocking him on his ass.

  He stood there, head ringing and skull vibrating, and realized that one of these days he was going to kill himself trying to act like a big damn hero.

  But not today.

  The sound came again, and he still wasn’t sure. Wounded animals sometimes sounded a lot like babies. It could go either way. But he’d come this far, and he’d be damned if he’d leave anybody behind. He took the first door across the hall to the left, unerringly finding the source of the sound. The front room of the apartment, cheaply furnished but neat and tidy, was only beginning to burn, and he had a moment to hope that the bedrooms were in good shape before he hit the closed inner door running. Two seconds later, about a hundred pounds of shaggy black fur smashed into his chest.