Seduced in Shadow (7 page)

Ellie’s orgasm came without warning. She moaned against the wall, her muscles convulsing around his cock until he was sure he’d never pull free. Not that he ever wanted to.

Christ, he could die right here and he’d do it with a smile on his face.

Then he was coming too. The climax hit him like a shot of lightning straight down his spine and through his cock. Hell, maybe this
would
kill him.

Wrapping an arm around her waist, he anchored her to him, not wanting her to slip and fall, not wanting her to move at all. He just wanted her to stay right here like this, his cheek against her back, his cock still pulsing inside her.

Antonin felt her take every breath as if it were a struggle.
Good.
He felt the same.

They stayed that way for several minutes, water dripping around them, until he felt her try to straighten. He pulled away and turned her to face him, taking a hard look into 50

Seduced in Shadow

her eyes. She met his directly before her gaze slid to his ears. Then she shook her head in disbelief.

Disbelief at what? Was she really that freaked out over his ears? Was she upset that she’d had sex with him again? What?

“Ellie?”

“Yeah?” Her eyes slid back to his and her languid smile made the band around his chest loosen. Sighing, he lifted her into his arms, shouldering open the glass door and setting her on her feet on the thick soft rug outside the shower stall.

After discarding the condom, he grabbed a towel off the heated rack and started drying her. He patted her hair, soaking up some of the excess moisture, before wrapping it around her body and securing it at her breasts. Then he took another and dried himself, all the while keeping an eye on her.

“You really are an elf.” Ellie shook her head, her expression one of wonder.

Looking straight into her eyes, he nodded. “In English, yes, I’m called an elf. But my proper designation is
linchetto
. I’m a
Fata
, a member of a magical race of beings that originated in Europe in a time before history. My family can trace its lineage back to the ancient Etruscans.”

Her pretty mouth dropped open again, making him wonder what it would be like to be taken in her mouth. He really had to get his mind off sex or…or Justin might catch them in the act when he arrived.

Ellie moved her lips to say something but nothing came out. Not surprising since he’d probably just overturned her entire worldview. Most humans, even when confronted with irrefutable proof that there were other beings on the planet, refused to believe. It messed up their narrow outlook on life.

Even though Ellie might be a little more open-minded than most humans, considering she could communicate with animals, she was still speechless, so he continued explaining. “My parents raised my brothers and me in the human world.

They taught us how to fit in, how to hide the fact that we can make ourselves invisible 51

Stephanie Julian

by becoming smoke or mist or haze and that we can move faster than the human eye can see.”

He didn’t want to go into the
bassadone
spell right now. It would confuse her even more. “The
Fata
have a longer lifespan than humans and we’re hard to injure.”

Ellie drew in a breath as if she were going to ask a question. Then she held it so long he thought she might faint from lack of oxygen to the brain. When she finally released it, she just shook her head and didn’t say a word.

Antonin wasn’t sure what she meant by that exactly but he took it to mean she wanted him to continue. He had to be careful though what he said now, because it wasn’t his place to tell her what she was. It was her father’s. Or Justin’s. And her brother would probably want to hang him by his ears if he spilled those beans. So what the hell else could he tell her?

While he was thinking, she found her voice. “And the man at the park this morning? Who was he? Has he been following me too? Why did he pick this morning to try to take me?”

“He’s part of a bigger organization we’re fighting and we’re pretty sure they want to get to Justin through you. But that’s probably something he should explain to you. I can tell you that your brother had someone watching over you. I’m not sure why they picked today to make a move. Maybe they thought they’d be able to find Justin without resorting to kidnapping you. I don’t know.”

Her eyes narrowed. “But who wants Justin and why?”

Damn, he hated not being able to tell her the whole story. He’d come inside her body, made her come in his arms. He wanted to take her back to bed. He’d never expected to fall quite so hard or so fast for this woman. Although he’d known she was special the first time he laid eyes on her.

Antonin shook his head. “You’ll have to ask Justin.”

Her head cocked to the side. “You don’t know?”

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Seduced in Shadow

Yeah, he knew. He’d just sworn to keep his mouth shut, which didn’t sit well with Ellie. But he wished he could wipe away the hurt and confusion in her eyes so he took the only route open to him.

Antonin closed the short distance between them in a heartbeat, wrapped a hand around her neck and covered her mouth with his.

Ellie let him kiss her for all of three seconds before she pulled away, shaking her head.

“No more of that.” She held a hand out in front of her. “You kiss me and I completely lose my train of thought. And don’t you dare smile at me like that.”

Blessed Goddess, she was beautiful in her anger. Her eyes shot daggers in his direction and, with her chin jutted upward, she looked like a queen. Antonin continued smiling. He couldn’t help himself.

“Oh you…” Ellie turned and threw the towel at him then she grabbed the t-shirt he’d given her and yanked it over her head. Next she pulled the boxers up her legs, rolling the waistband a couple of times to keep them on her hips.

Maybe the clothes would help them keep some distance, even though he could feel his desire for her rising again.
Fat chance!

Ellie knew Antonin watched her every move. His slitted eyes burned into her as if she was performing a striptease and he’d been in jail for ten years.

It made her feel sexy and desirable, neither of which had been in her vocabulary since she’d returned to Berks County and become a hermit.

Of course neither had the word
linchetto
.

She’d just had sex with a drop-dead gorgeous, incredibly sexy myth who knew she could talk to animals.

Did she believe him? It sounded crazy, all that stuff about magic. And his ears…

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Stephanie Julian

Her brother Justin was the smartest man she knew and he’d always believed there were things that couldn’t be explained through science or logic, that some myths had a basis of fact to them.

Her dad had believed too. She vaguely remembered long walks in the forests in northern Berks County, just her and her dad. And the animals that had followed them, talking to her. He’d believed her when she’d told him she understood what the animals were saying and he’d convinced her of the need to hide that ability.

As she’d gotten older, she’d learned too well how to hide her gift. She hadn’t wanted to be different from all the others kids. She’d wanted to fit in, to have friends, boyfriends. She’d known that would have been impossible if they’d even suspected she could talk to animals.

She’d have been a freak, a weirdo. An outcast.

Ellie took a deep breath and released it in a sigh. “So…magic really does exist?”

Antonin nodded but didn’t speak.

Instead he moved toward her, drawing her attention back to him. He’d pulled his cargo pants up and zipped them but hadn’t bothered to button them up on top, so they hung low on his lean hips.

Good God, the man was absolute male perfection. He wasn’t overly muscled but he wasn’t thin either. His eyebrows were thick dark slashes over those stormy gray eyes and his dark hair—

Okay, her raging libido was
so
not helping her right now. Every time she had a coherent thought about what was going on, it got messed up by the sheer beauty of him.
Focus, Fiorella.

“And Justin is in trouble?”

Antonin sighed and shook his head. “I can’t tell you anything more about Justin, Ellie. It’s gotta come from him.”

“But it has something to do with his job?”

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Seduced in Shadow

He just stared at her.

She huffed. Fine, the man wasn’t going to budge on that issue. “Then tell me more about you. Where did you grow up? Who are your parents? What do they do? Where did you go to school? Did you go to school? Do—”

Antonin held up one hand like a traffic cop. “Why don’t we go down and get something to eat and I’ll answer your questions. You should have something to eat.” On that note, he just walked out of the bathroom.

Sighing, Ellie followed him down the hall to a narrow staircase that led to the first floor. Antonin guided her through the front living room, where dark heavy shades diffused the morning sunlight, to the dining room and finally into the bright white kitchen at the back of the house. He waved her into a chair at the table along the back wall. Through a large window, she saw a stunningly beautiful but small garden completely enclosed by a tall wooden fence.

“Do you want something to drink?” he asked. “Water, juice, wine?”

The clock on the stove said it was only eleven a.m.
Screw it.
“Wine, please. White, if you’ve got it.”

He nodded, his expression sober. “Sure. Not a problem.”

He turned to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of Italian
Prosecco
, pouring her a glass before setting it and the bottle on the table in front of her. She took a healthy sip and watched Antonin pause, as if listening to something she couldn’t hear.

She glanced around, noting again the time on the clock. Only four hours had passed since she’d decided to get up and run this morning.

“Should have stayed in bed,” she muttered.

A slight popping noise made her turn her head. Antonin’s house was laid out like a row home, which meant she could see straight from the kitchen through the dining room to the living room at the front of the house. The blinds at the front window were 55

Stephanie Julian

opaque but left in enough light for her to see everything clearly—and she clearly saw what appeared to be a rip in the air in the middle of the front room.

Ellie shook her head. Okay, maybe she’d fallen and knocked herself silly at the park this morning. Maybe all of this was a hallucination—which would suck big time, because the best sex she’d ever had would only have happened in her head.

But at least that would explain why her brother Justin appeared to step out of that rip, along with a gorgeous redheaded woman.

Ellie blinked a couple of times but her brother didn’t disappear. She opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out.

Justin shook his head as if to clear cobwebs, noticed her and lifted his hand in greeting.

She heard him say, “Let me explain,” before she closed her eyes and let the darkness on the edges of her vision take her down.

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“Why the hell didn’t you warn her? Or at least keep her in another part of the house? Shit, she didn’t need to see that. Gods be damned, Antonin. What were you thinking?”

As Justin continued to ream him a new one, Antonin tuned the guy out. He’d caught Ellie just before she slid off the chair then carried her to the sofa in the living room, telling Justin to go to the kitchen and wait.

Justin hadn’t wanted to but his blood-bound mate Scarlata, her voice pitched too low for him to hear, had tugged on Justin’s arm until he’d followed, still swearing at Antonin.

Justin was right of course. Antonin should have kept Ellie upstairs. But he’d been worried her brother would freak when he realized they’d had sex. It shouldn’t matter.

They were both consenting adults and it really wasn’t any of Justin’s business what they did. But he’d wanted to spare Ellie any embarrassment and he was fucking sick of being unable to answer her increasingly difficult questions.

Antonin shook his head to make sure his ears were covered. It was an old habit, hard to break. But when you’d lived in the human world as long as he had, you learned a few things about hiding.

Ellie’s eyelids fluttered and finally she opened them enough to stare into his eyes.

“I’m usually not a fainter,” she said right off, making him smile. “But you’ve got to admit it’s been kind of an odd day for me.”

He wanted to kiss her but settled for tightening his arms around her. “Ellie, are you okay?”

“Yeah. But,” she grimaced and swallowed hard, “did my brother really just…materialize out of thin air in the front room?”

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Stephanie Julian

He nodded, keeping his gaze on her. “Yes, he did.”

“And you’re a…a
linchetto
?”

He nodded again.

Ellie appeared to mull that over, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth. He wanted to kiss her so she’d stop before she hurt herself.

Lifting one hand, she slid her fingers into his hair so she could push it back behind his ear. Her digits stroked along the outer edge from the lobe to the tip, sending a shiver of pure eroticism through him. She touched his ear with the same reverence she’d stroked his cock earlier.

And now he had a hard-on.

Her lips parted as she drew in a deep breath and their gazes locked.

“Is someone finally going to tell me what’s going on now? Because I’m afraid the next thing you’re going to tell me is that I have to choose between the blue pill and the red pill.”

He smiled at her
Matrix
reference, relieved that she’d retained her sense of humor.

“Good movie, but no, there are no pills. There are things you don’t know however.”

Her mouth twisted. “That I figured out for myself.” She looked over his shoulder then twisted her head around to look behind them. “Where’s Justin?”

“In the kitchen. Do you want me to—”

Ellie put her fingers over his mouth and shook her head. Then she wrapped her hand around his neck and pulled him down until their lips met. He opened his mouth over hers and let her kiss him. Antonin tasted a little desperation and a whole lot of heat in that kiss. He fell into the heat with a vengeance until it folded around him like a blanket.