Seduced by Danger

An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication

www.ellorascave.com

Seduced by Danger

ISBN 9781419921995

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Seduced by Danger Copyright © 2009 Stephanie Julian.

Edited by Sue-Ellen Gower

Cover art by Syneca

Electronic book Publication May 2009

The terms Romantica® and Quickies® are registered trademarks of Ellora’s Cave Publishing.

With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502.

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This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

Seduced by Danger

Stephanie Julian

Trademarks Acknowledgement

The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following
wordmarks
mentioned in this work of fiction:

Dora: Viacom

Muppets: Muppets Holding Company

Sesame Street, Elmo,
Snuffleupagus
: Sesame Workshop

Twilight Zone: CBS, Inc.

Uzi: Israel Military Industries Ltd.

Chapter One

He watched from the shadows, hiding from the residents of this tiny village like some villain in a horror movie.

Which wasn’t that far from the truth.

Most of the people here would want to kill him on sight.

And as much as he may deserve to die, he had a promise to fulfill and a reason to live until he did.

Two reasons, actually. And here came one.

The boy had grown so much in the past fifteen months, no longer a baby.

He ran through the forest full speed ahead, chasing after the five other children who also lived in this secret enclave. Only eighteen months old, he already spoke in full sentences. The kid was smart.

Unique. A miracle.

His.

Michael
Corsi
watched
Aron
run, laughing as he darted away from the twins with the leaf-green streaks in their blond hair. The boy and girl were maybe six or seven and very protective of him. They followed wherever he went, never letting him out of their sight.

The leader of this little troop, a girl just this side of puberty with long dark hair and purely Etruscan features, slipped behind a tree, making herself invisible to the others. A
linchetta
, Etruscan night elf, and already in possession of her powers. She must be further past puberty than he gave her credit for.

The other two children found similar hiding spots in the base of a dead tree. One looked perfectly human. The other had the upper body of a human, tanned brown by the summer sun, but below the waist, he had the body of a goat, complete with hide and hooves.

Holy shit.
Salbinelli
. In a forest in Pennsylvania.

Any
eteri
wandering into this little enclave would think they’d dropped into Wonderland.

The regular humans who populated most of the world lived in ignorance of the magical races. Which was probably better for everyone.
Eteri
typically didn’t handle the knowledge that there were “others” in the world very well. They tended to take up swords or pitchforks or Uzis and destroy what they felt threatened by.

The gods only knew what they’d do if they discovered the
Malandante
, those Etruscan descendents who were born different. Born with a bent toward evil.

The
Mal
worshipped power and money and they didn’t care who got hurt in the process of acquiring either. They’d see these children as commodities to be bartered or used.

Vaffanculo
, what the
Mal
wouldn’t do to get their hands on those kids.

And here I am, possibly bringing the bastards straight to their door.

Yes, he was a stupid, selfish bastard.

But he’d needed to make sure his son was safe and happy. That the boy’s mother was well cared for before he—

Pain burst in his gut like a blast from a machine gun and shot in all directions, up his spine and down his legs. Agony seared like a blue flame along his nerve endings, trying to force his body into convulsions. He locked his jaw so no sound would escape and locked his muscles into rigidity.

Sheer willpower kept him in place as he rode out the episode. Several minutes passed before, finally, the pain began to recede. Much more slowly this time than the last.

It took another few minutes before he could focus his vision and draw a deep breath. By that time the boy and his friends were out of sight.

Damn it, he was running out of time. He needed to leave here before he did something stupid—like die before he could get away and finish what he needed to do.

He didn’t want the
Mal
to even suspect that Cara was anywhere near here or that the boy even existed.

Cara…

He hadn’t seen her yet, hadn’t wanted to venture too close to her home in the daylight for fear someone, somehow, would see him or sense him, even though the spell he’d paid good money for had worked so far. But it was beginning to take its toll.

He needed to see Cara then get the hell away. One more to go…

The spell was failing. And his body along with it. He wouldn’t last much longer.

But he’d needed just one more look before the anger consumed him and the spell failed.

Damn,
Aron
had grown fast. Michael had noticed how the boy’s dark auburn hair, shades darker than his mother’s, appeared to be laced with copper in the sun. How his face had retained the chubby baby features Michael remembered. And how his eyes were carbon copies of Michael’s own.

Aron
had looked happy. Unafraid.

Blessed Mother Goddess, may he stay that way forever. And never be made to pay for his father’s sins.

* * * * *

“Let
Aron
stay at our place tonight, Cara. The twins are dying to have him to themselves and it’ll give me a break from their constant bickering if they have someone else to play with. And sweetie, you really need a night of uninterrupted sleep. You’re starting to look…haggard. I’m worried about you.”

Cara Kohl forced a smile for her friend Johanna’s well-meaning but too-kind description of her appearance.

She looked like shit and she knew it. She hadn’t had a full night’s sleep since… Well, she couldn’t really remember the last time she’d slept through the night. Probably since before she’d turned seventeen.

Two months ago, she’d turned twenty-eight. She knew she looked much older.

Apparently worry did that to a person. Go figure.

And for the past year and a half, all she’d done was worry. About
Aron
. About Michael.

And now the hunger that had been dormant since
Aron’s
birth had started to fire back to life. It wouldn’t be long before she was exposed to her new friends as a fraud. She’d been passing herself off as a half-human
linchetta
. Would they force her and
Aron
to leave when they found out she’d lied to them?

“Cara?” Jo’s voice made Cara’s gaze jump back to her friend’s narrowed eyes. Jo had so many questions but Cara knew she wouldn’t ask them.

No one here asked many questions. They were all hiding from a world that wasn’t safe for them anymore. A world where knowledge of their very existence would make them freaks. They’d be hunted. Dissected. And worse.

And even though her son looked like any other
etera
, with the exception of his sharply pointed ears, just the fact of his birth made him a target.

Could she let her son sleep anywhere other than next to her?

Since
Aron
had been born, he’d slept by her side. Only in the past three months had he slept in his own bed in a corner of her bedroom in the cottage they shared in this hidden village in southeastern Pennsylvania.

Would he even
want
to sleep away from her?

Well, of course he would. Her son had no fear. He was growing up just as she’d hoped. Free to run. Unafraid. Safe.

“I swear, nothing will happen to him,” Jo pressed, as if sensing her weakening. “I’ll even ask
Dagobert
and Cornelius to stay too.”

Cara sighed, knowing
Aron
would love to spend the night with his best friends. And Jo, an Etruscan
gianes
who’d been living in this small enclave since the birth of her twins five years ago, would die for Cara’s son, just as she would any of the five other children who called this little village home.

Ten-year-old Cornelius spent so much time at Jo’s, Cara often wondered why he and
Dagobert
bothered with the upkeep on the tiny cottage they shared. True, Dag was twenty-one, a young man by any civilization’s standards. Of course he’d want his own space.

Still, the orphaned
salbinelli
brothers spent many nights at Johanna’s.

Maybe Cara should be asking herself if she would be able to get any sleep if
Aron
wasn’t there.

Well, she would if she let
Flavia
whip her up a sleeping potion. The bubbly
strega
had a Goddess gift for working with the herbs she grew in her rambling garden.

“Okay,” Cara finally agreed. “And thanks, Jo. For everything.”

* * * * *

Michael waited until after midnight to risk a glimpse into Cara’s cottage.

From the branches of a tall tree just inside the perimeter of the heavy-duty camouflage spell that kept the enclave hidden from the outside world, he’d watched Cara leave her one-story cottage just before dark.
Aron
had practically dragged her across the small, grassy center square to the home opposite theirs.

After spending a few minutes there, Cara had left. Without
Aron
. She’d turned back to look several times before walking to the building farthest from her own. There she’d knocked on the door, spent a few minutes inside then left with something in her hand.

Now, with the crescent moon high in the sky, he stood outside her door, wanting so badly to go inside and claim her as his.

Gods be damned, he’d missed her these past fifteen months.

From the first moment he’d seen her, six years ago in that New York apartment, he’d known she was his.

And he’d thought he’d never have her.

The
Mal
bastards who had kidnapped her and her twin sister when they were just seventeen years old had used them as sexual toys for years. As a
querciola
, an Etruscan succubus, Cara’s very nature made her a sexual creature. A walking aphrodisiac. Just her presence could make a eunuch get a hard-on.

Since there had been no known
quercioli
born in more than a thousand years, the tales about them had become more like horror stories. The females—
quercioli
were always female—had been demonized as wild animals preying on men’s sexual appetites to fuel their own raging sexual need.

Michael’s rage rose up to choke him at the thought. Cara was not an animal. She was a delicate, beautiful woman who’d been brutalized by the
Mal
. Yes, she needed sexual energy to survive just as much as she needed food, but she’d never hurt anyone with her appetites.

And from the looks of her now, she was starving.

The
Mal
had done this to her. Those bastards had forced her and their son to live in fear, hiding. And by doing so, had deprived her of what she needed to live.

Fury threatened to make him lose control of his tightly held anger. And that could prove fatal. To him and anyone around him.

The
strega
who’d created his cloaking spell, the spell that made him invisible on demand and had kept him one step ahead of the
Mal
for the past fifteen months, had tied the spell directly to his
arus
, the magic inherent in his blood.

Since he’d been born
Mal
and the
strega
’s
magic was the very antithesis of his, if he used his
arus
to perform any magic other than the invisibility spell, it could backfire and kill him, creating enough of a blast to take out anyone in the vicinity.

And he couldn’t die before he’d made good on his promise to make it safe for Cara and
Aron
to live in the world, not just in this little pocket.

He’d killed four
Mal
in the past year, men who’d had a hand in enslaving Cara and her sister. He’d made them disappear completely, but first he’d made them suffer and he’d told them why.

He hunted one more, one more animal who didn’t deserve to live.

Would Cara be horrified at what he’d done? Or would she understand that it was the only way she and
Aron
would be safe?

Hell, she’d probably never know because he’d be dead in a few months.

Would she mourn for his loss? Would she even know he’d died?

Did she miss him with the same burning ache he felt every day?

Just one look.

One hand on the door, he scanned the area again to make sure no one saw him then pushed open the door just enough to slip inside. There were no locks here, no dead bolts. No need for them. He shut the door without a sound.

The front room ran the width of the building. A small kitchen to the left. Seating area to the right. Three rooms at the rear, each door open. The center was a bathroom, the one to the left had an empty bed and chest of drawers. And in the right…

His heart started to pound like he was a horny teenager. And he knew it wasn’t due to Cara’s
querciola
nature.

Damn, he’d missed her. Missed her sweet smile that never failed to warm his cold
Mal
heart. Missed her hands on him, stroking him. Missed the passion that flared between them, the emotional connection they shared that was so different from anything he’d ever experienced before.

When you were born
Mal
, you were raised to feel nothing other than rage, envy, greed, jealousy, hate.

Cara had made him love her.

He crossed the floor slowly. He didn’t sense any wards on the cottages, probably thought they didn’t need them because of the heavy spell surrounding the village.

An
etera
hiking in the forest could walk right by the enclave and never see it, the spell was that powerful. Even someone with magical powers wouldn’t find it. They’d circle for hours but never find their way into the village. All they’d see were trees.

Someone with a shitload of magic had created that spell. Someone like a deity.

The
Mal
didn’t play well with most of the Etruscan pantheon who still walked the earth. Whoever had set up this enclave would kill him for trespassing without bothering to ask for an explanation first.

Michael had been able to slip through only because he had the blood connection with
Aron
to guide him like a homing beacon. Still, he didn’t think that would save his ass if he were caught. So he better not get caught.