[excerpt]

With one swift move, he grasped her arms, pulled her across his lap, and turned her on her back.

The mischievous twinkle in her eye defined who she was: swift, cunning, sexy, loyal, and spirited beyond the norm. She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen and to have her in his arms was far more than he deserved. Lucian tucked one arm behind her back to cradle her head, while his other hand held her chin.

“Can you read my mind now?” he asked. Serina began to lift her head to kiss him when he stopped her in her tracks. He grinned. “Not so fast, m’lady.” He dipped his head to greet her, his mouth finding solace on hers. He pulled away licking his lips. “God, woman, you’re so sweet, I feel as if I may lose myself in you, and I’ve only just kissed you. Is this part of your magic?”

“Lucian if I held that force, I’d have men knocking down my door all the time, yet you, sir—” She nodded towards the remains of her front door. “―seem to be the only man intent on doing just that!”

Eden’s

Black Rose

by

Jaclyn Tracey

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either 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.

Eden’s Black Rose

COPYRIGHT
Ó
2009 by Jacqueline Kearney

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Contact Information: [email protected]

Cover Art by
Nicola Martinez

The Wild Rose Press

PO Box 706

Adams Basin, NY 14410-0706

Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

Publishing History

First Black Rose Edition, 2010

Print ISBN 1-60154-757-9

Published in the United States of America

Dedication

To the man who led me through Eden’s gate, Steven: the twinkle in your eye and your smile each morning makes getting up worth every second of the day. I owe you everything, for without you, my dream would never have seen the light of day.

To the two loves of my life, Caitlyn and Christopher, and my support group, Kayla, Crispy, Adam, Ashley, Jenn and all of you who moved into my office with me, thank you for your unconditional love, inspiration, company and reminding me the flowers got fed more than you did… I promise some day to venture back into the kitchen, but in all honesty, you did learn the fine art of take-out!

To Callie Lynn Wolfe, my editor and dear friend, thank you for your encouragement and believing in me. You are the only person who has ever asked me to do something and I did it—no questions asked.

To Wayne and Patricia Bowers, I tried my best to immortalize your generous hearts and spirits. I’ll love you forever. Cheers!

To all my family and friends, if you see a name in here you recognize, I borrowed it.

If you don’t see it in this book, I’m just getting warmed up! Big grin
J

Chapter One

London, 1896

Running a brittle, anorexic finger along the dew-drenched metal of the park bench held a refreshing quality in the midst of the heat wave. Oh, he thought, what he wouldn’t give to go home and find his casket filled to the rim with ice. Adding to that delightful idea, he threw in a cold stiff one for a late night snack. She’d be roughly five and a half feet in height, with meat on her bones. Something to sink his teeth into. Excited, he gripped the back of the seat. The cold penetrated his lichenified shell. Inhaling something foul, he cast an estranged eye around yet found no one in the vicinity. Besieged by a flurry of delirious flies acting as if they’d found a giant pile of manure, he decided the warmer weather indeed created unwanted havoc. He shielded his face with his hand and watched the insects swarm to him like iron to a magnet. With the speed of a lizard, his tongue shot out and snagged a dozen or more of the winged nuisances. After a few crunchy chomps he swallowed, satisfied.

Waiting for her to exit the restaurant, he tapped out a lonely tune in the dirt with his foot, one solitary note at a time, lifting tiny plumes of dust into the air in rhythm to the quartet playing inside. Afflicted by dust since childhood, he sneezed and the force shot his red-marble eye out of his head like a tiny cannon ball. He scurried across the ground to retrieve it, and after a quick spit-shine he popped it back in its socket a bit gritty.

For the past four years, he’d had nothing more than broken dreams of her to comfort him. So many evenings he slept on the floor…
so damned close
, lending her his bed, for what? Nothing, he conceded. The only thing his generosity produced was a sore wrist from too much time spent beneath his covers fantasizing.

He’d taken his time, plotted, made diabolical deals, and given the ultimate sacrifice for her, his life, to bring him to this juncture. Tonight she would be his. No mistakes. No turning back.

Four years ago, he’d underestimated her.

Never again.

He watched through the picture window as
his lady
danced with strangers. Repulsive, spineless, heathens hidden behind the stature of wealth and social class, attempting to fondle her as they held her soft, curvaceous, body close. He slammed his fist into the bench, the wood splintering beneath his fury. It should be him in her arms, his body pressed against hers. He shook his head and refocused, the flies dispersing in one chaotic cluster and then settling again in his hair.

The yellow silk ball gown flowed graciously around her ankles. With every step she took, the dress clung to the soft ripeness of her hips and small firm breasts. Having already seen what secrets lay beneath her gown, he knew there stood a pair of legs that were long, slender, guarding the entrance to what he claimed as…his.

He imagined her once again bare, with her long, ebony tresses flowing over him as she straddled him and rode him hard. Only in this fantasy, things would work out swimmingly to his advantage.

He envisioned her breasts firm and her nipples peaked with desire. He’d take her ripe buds into his mouth and taste, suckle, and then sink his teeth deeply into them. Her muscles would tighten and clamp down to grip the full length of him as he drove into her silky entrance. He’d start slowly at first, then harder and harder until wave after wave of sheer pleasure would wash over her. She’d be hot and slick and growl his name over and over until they were both sated. He knew he could and would satisfy her. Tonight, he’d make her his. After he finished with her, she would never desire another man.

Ever.

His tongue slithered across his lips in anticipation. He watched her laugh, whisper in strangers’ ears, her hot breath on their skin, while his stolen blood roiled beneath the surface of his flesh. Beneath his trousers his prurience was about to burst. He fidgeted, playing a mean game of pocket billiards, squeezing out what little life his dick had left. He fondled his only testicle, remembering how he lost the other one.

Jesus, she had one hell of a grip on me that night.

He ran his free hand over his face, resting on the hole where his eye once called home. He went back in thought to his first and last date with Raven St. James, thinking their night together wasn’t as magical as he’d promised her. What would he promise her tonight? Eternity? Immortality? A living hell? And then some!

The door to the restaurant opened, jarring his thoughts. As people sauntered into the streets, he shoved his body from the bench, stretched his long, lanky legs, and took to pacing at a good clip down the street. Coming upon a darkened alleyway, he turned brusquely to relieve his now throbbing erection. Shaking off the slime, he watched his nob wither before his eye. Back into the street, he slipped into her carriage to surprise her, only once inside he was the one surprised.

“Jasper?” His gray ugly eye cast the other man an unappreciative gaze. His red marble glared eerily ahead.

“Master.” Jasper bowed his head in respect. “I thought this task would be easier on you if it were done by someone other than yourself. This way, when Raven sees you after such a long respite, you’ll be her knight in shining armor.”

He pondered the idea, a malicious grin forming. For once in his moronic existence, Jasper made sense.

“Fine, but let me speak to her first. I must have her…” He attempted to finish his thought but repeated, “I must have her.”

“What of Lucian, my master?” Jasper asked, anxious.

He cringed at the very name. His jaw tightened, the muscles of his neck taut, his smile gone. Oh, how he loathed the man.

Lucian...The relentless thorn in his side.

Lucian...Mister Tall-Dark-And-Handsome. No doubt having an incestuous relationship with his goddess of a twin. The lucky bastard. In all likelihood, the reason Raven never came to him.

Lucian...Soon to be out of his life forever.

Hatred for this man stockpiled for the past eight years, and tonight he’d finally rid Lucian of his last breath.

Tonight, it was all about him. A small whistle escaped his nose. He hissed, “Obliterate him.”

Jasper’s laugh penetrated his soulless shell the same way he would penetrate Raven this evening. A frenzied feast culminated by her sweet surrender.

****

Not ten seconds after being jarred from her dreams by a choir of unharmonious magpies outside her bedroom window, Dr. Serina Spencer realized she was about to have
one of those days
. It was laid out in front of her, literally. She slid out of her bed and when she planted her foot on the floor, her toes sank into something warm, mushy, unexpected. Unwanted! The neighbor’s cat snuck in the window again and left her another present. Serina’s voice echoed throughout her home. “You little furball! If someone sees you in my home, it’s me that burns at the stake, not you. I don’t want anyone thinking I have a familiar. If I catch you, you’ll be down to eight lives.” A few days prior, the carcass of a headless mouse awaited her on the kitchen table and before that a garden snake on her pillow, its guts displayed in a vivid disarray. Reminded her of her first autopsy, a sloppy mess. Why was she always getting dead things dropped off at her door? Was it not enough she dealt with such matters at work? “What’s one more?” she’d asked, sarcasm-laced.

After steeping the perfect cup of black tea and adding two heaping spoons of sugar, Serina reached inside her new cooler, pulled out a glass bottle, removed the cap and poured the... “What the h—?” The congealed liquid plopped into her cup with a solid
kerplunk
, the fluid now all over the countertop. She gagged. “So much for the new cooler.” The soured concoction was heaved down her drain, where it clogged the opening. Serina headed off to work, tealess.

Definitely not the banner morn she’d anticipated.

****

After thirteen grueling hours spent in Hell’s garden, Serina’s affectionate name for the morgue, she’d had it! She’d seen enough blood and guts to last her a lifetime or at least the rest of today. She couldn’t wait to escape the confines of these walls.

Glancing around the room through weary eyes she bid, “Sweet dreams,” to the decomposing cadavers, praying none responded, although it wouldn’t surprise her. She pulled the door tight, locking it behind her.

Serina’s mind took a small detour with the sound of the latch.

Do locked doors keep bogymen out?

No but they keep out handsome suitors, not that you’ll see any in this century!

Do closed windows laced with garlic keep vampires at bay?

You could ask the guy from this morning, but oh—wait a minute, you muted him permanently.

How ’bout holy water and crosses?

That’s a Father Butler question.

Have I really lost my marbles? Was that demon real? And do I really want the answers?

Yes. I hope not and no, respectively.

Thinking back, her afternoon had been born in the bowels of Hell. No other explanation befit the day. Her assistant fled shortly after they took down a newly turned vampire. The dead man blasted out from the cooler, like a boxer taking to the ring, snarling, scratching at everything and everyone. He had no clue as to whom or what he was only that he thirsted for someone’s blood. Eyeing Serina, he licked his lips in anticipation. She still couldn’t believe it.

Earlier, she’d placed the man on ice, his ribs cracked open and a nice slice separating his skull from his brain. Before her disbelieving eyes, the man refashioned himself. His rib cage closed in like a giant Venus Flytrap, securing the rotted organs inside, while his teeth popped out one at a time, clanking on the floor like loose change. He sprouted four heart-stopping dents in their place and gave Serina a little flash of fang.

After securing her dignity so that she did not wet herself, Serina wasted no time and screamed bloody murder. Realizing that wouldn’t correct the situation, she swiftly beheaded the man, ripped out his heart and stuffed him in the incinerator. Serina concluded he’d died from a newly discovered blood disorder, hemophilia.

Apparently not.

Days like this one, she could do without. Hated being wrong.

With the heat beleaguering her, she decided to go straight home. Normally, she’d have already been to the orphanage, helping out, but the mere thought of little people climbing atop her, all hot and sticky, well, she quelled the idea fast.

****

Once home and settled, feet propped up on an adjacent chair, Serina read by candlelight her cherished book by John Waller,
The Discovery of the Germ: Twenty Years That Transformed the Way We Think About Diseases
. Most nights candlelight relaxed her. Tonight, the little bonfires roasted her bum. Misting, Serina tried to decide if she should keep her favorite, lacy robe on or trot about in her birthday suit.
Misting
, her endearing word for sweating. Sweating conjured up pictures of filthy rogues, or her after a day like she had at the morgue. Misting seemed delicate like the morning dew on her beloved rose bushes. It was feminine and soft, like her. She chortled at the very idea of her being feminine. There wasn’t an ounce of grace to be discovered within her.

Her dressing gown, gathered in the back, resembled the train of a wedding dress. Black silk rosebuds adorned it. The front of her robe needed no decorations. Her generous endowment had that covered and then some.

An hour earlier, she’d struggled ridiculously to get the two buttons closed, exhaling all her air, hoping to deflate her chest just enough to hook them.

“Finally,” she’d said triumphant. “Although to breathe no longer seems an option. At least I’ll look ravishing when someone finds me out cold on me floor, a lovely shade of blue.” After she sucked in a huge gulp of air, one of the buttons broke free and flew across the room. Frustrated, she got down on her hands and knees to search the floor. What she found left her red-eyed and runny-nosed. Maybe tomorrow she’d dust and sew the button back on.

And then again?

****

In an attempt to hop right back into her book, Serina found her own skin an uncomfortable fit. With her hair glued to her like tentacles of an octopus she remembered why she always wore it up.
Blythe and her brilliant idea! “Wear your hair down, Dr. Serina! You’re too finicky, too matronly. You’ll wind up a spinster surrounded by hundreds of cats.”

“Why do I listen to her? I most certainly will not have cats for company. Spinster?” She grunted as she made her way to her kitchen for a wet cloth. Bringing the cool, moist rag to her, she wrung it out across her neck. The brief respite from the heat as the water trickled down between her breasts was enjoyable until the robe became soaked and transparent. Serina glanced at her chest. Her nipples, now perky and wide-awake, appeared ready to burst through the robe. She tweaked them gently. “You old girls hot enough? You’re bloody well big enough!”

Laughing at her foolishness one moment, doubled over the next. Her sixth sense was never a gentle breeze coming to call. It was a hurricane with an urgent message. A storm approached.