Lover Enslaved: Thieves of Aurion, Book 1 (42 page)
Read Lover Enslaved: Thieves of Aurion, Book 1 Online
Authors: Jodi Redford
Owen, the nearly dead ex-soldier she once found at her gates, is a different sort of man. He didn’t want anything—except to give her flowers and make her laugh. As he drank in her healing magic like life-giving water, she drowned in his eyes. She was taught to defend against Man’s violence; she was helpless in the face of his kindness.
Now that she has had a taste of it, she would kill to keep it.
Her visions tell her it’s only a matter of time before more soldiers attack her boundary. With no intention of failing her people—or losing the man she loves—she uses her magic to unleash an apparition with the power to decimate armies.
But there’s a price to be paid—in blood. As the tide of it rises higher, everything she has fought for threatens to slip through her fingers. Including Owen…
Warning: Contains hot interspecies sex, a creepy boogey monster lurking in the shadows, a male gardener with not only a green thumb but shape-shifting body parts, and a horde of man-sized bloodthirsty bugs bent on world domination.
Enjoy the following excerpt for
At Earth’s Edge:
Standing on her tiptoes, Aderyn adjusted her panels to better absorb the sun’s weak rays. Owen used plastic and mirrors to trick the sun into warming his plants. She used a mix of quick-boiling potions and recycled human technology. From this height, she could overlook her entire domain—Owen’s plot with its plants arranged in no particular order, her herbal beds lined up in military precision, but adorned with Owen’s whimsical garden folly, the outer gates and beyond that, shifting sand, broken bits of bedrock and abandoned junk.
A gleam of silver caught her eye. An insalubrious scent joined it. She glanced at Owen, puttering contentedly in his garden. Even when she’d found him at her gate, covered in blood and human bits, his scent had remained unadulterated. As sweet as his treasured flowers, as pure as the rose water he made for her, as ill-suited for his uniform as she was for her Tower.
Yet, this scent lingered, twisting around her like a noxious vine. She paused, leaning against the Tower’s wall for support. The stones hummed, warning her as well. A man approached her gates. Ill-intentioned and filled with poison, accoutered in that curious ripple of silver and black armor the soldiers of Man seemed to like. Six winters ago, Aderyn had burned and buried the remains of a similar uniform in a corner of her courtyard. The stranger walked with a swagger, a long, silver rod sheathed between his shoulder blades. She started down her catwalk, intent on reaching her gate before Owen did.
Owen picked up a basket of produce, greens the color of newborn leaves, reds brighter than a fresh drop of blood on a pin-pricked finger, waxy yellows reflecting the sullen sun’s rays, and pungent white garlic and leeks, reeking of veiled things that slunk beneath the soil. She’d made the basket for him, conjuring the limbs from her homeland last winter, twisting them into a pleasing shape and fastening handles for her lover’s fingers to slide through.
The soldier raised his hand, rapping on the gate.
Hurry
, the foundation stones whispered.
Hurry
, the nodding roses called, vines shrinking from the man’s scent.
Her heart thudded in her throat.
Hurry
.
Owen’s stride altered, his head swiveling toward the sound.
Her motions slowed, as if time and a loop of mage-warped air conspired against her. Her hands slid, unhurried, up an unseen boundary. “No!” The word lingered around her, sound’s progress halted as well.
What manner of magic was this?
She watched him approach the gate.
The portal
, she pleaded.
Do not draw the bolt. Look. Look first, dear heart. Smell his corruption. Do not let him pass within.
Tucking the basket under one arm, he slid open the bolt. She whispered words, fragments of long-forgotten spells, prayers to deities she’d neglected. She begged the hinges to rust, the walls to throw their rocks and seal the opening.
Only Owen stirred.
Poisoned lips moved. Hands unsheathed a murderous weapon.
No!
The skin split on her hands. Her blood smeared the walls of her invisible prison. She screamed, bereft of words.
Owen crumpled to the cobblestones, his basket bouncing beside him. The wood shrilled as blood sprayed its limbs.
The man looked up at her and grinned.
A word flickered in the corner of her mind, one that disregarded all boundaries, all manner of magic. She’d never spoken it. She did not know of any Collcrin who had. It teased her, swaying just out of her reach. She reached out, arms no longer human but blood-soaked, twisted limbs. Leaves rustled, urging her forward. Her lips formed the word.
A breath of cold air darted up her backside, making her shiver and blink.
She woke from her vision, sweating and panting. Owen lay beside her, lips parted, breathing heavy. His body was tangled in the bedding, leaving her sky clad and exposed. She touched the back of her hand to his cheek, then his brow. Tugging the quilt from his grip, she laid her hands over his bare chest. His heart beat, slow and steady. She had the urge to seize his shoulders and shake him awake, just to hear him speak, be it sleep-slurred or angry.
He lived. Whatever she’d dreamt had not yet come to pass.
Would not come to pass
, she swore.
She slid down to lie beside him, wrapping her arms around him, drawing strength from his mortal heat and the steady pulse of his heart.
Lover Enslaved
Jodi Redford
Sometimes love is the only prize worth stealing...
Thieves of Aurion, Book 1
Mara Sheppard has no love for the Fae, but to free her brother from prison, she’ll do whatever the treacherous Queen Nalia asks. Even kidnap Dashael Rhyder, a womanizing thief.
She should have known the deal would go sour.
It’s almost too easy to bait and trap Dashael. Resisting his potent Fae allure isn’t. Especially since Nalia’s unexpected demand for a missing magical rune means Mara will have to hold strong far longer than she’d planned.
Dashael’s best shot at escaping? Seduce her. If he can survive a few dozen of his closest enemies out for blood
and
the queen’s scheme to make him her personal stud…he might just make it.
Then his game of seduction trips over a snag named Mara, and he falls. Hard. For a commitment-phobic thief, love might as well be a prison sentence. Yet the idea of losing her makes him miserable.
Mara can’t deny that her enemy has stolen her heart. But their love is about to be tested by a lifetime of secrets. The risk may not be worth it. Especially if a life together means death for one of them.
Warning: Contains one or more of the following: Hot, sexy thieves, pain-in-the-butt sprites, handcuffs, intriguing new uses for a silk bed curtain, and scorching, shake-the-ceiling-tiles sex.
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
11821 Mason Montgomery Road Suite 4B
Cincinnati OH 45249
Lover Enslaved
Copyright © 2009 by Jodi Redford
ISBN: 978-1-60504-635-8
Edited by Sasha Knight
Cover by Natalie Winters
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
electronic publication: July 2009
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