Whiskey & Witchcraft
Page 1
Praise for Kiki Howell
"There is a fine mixture of passion of the paranormal type as well as the romantic type that should satisfy a broad range of readers. Kiki Howell has found her niche."
— Grady Harp, Amazon Hall of Fame Reviewer about Hidden Salem
"Kiki Howell spins a tale that will bewitch your heart and leave you wanting more."
— Misty Rayburn - Top Shelf Book Reviews about Hidden Salem
"You are taken on an adventure that would appease any adrenaline junky."
— Crystal, Romancing the Book on Hidden Salem
Praise for Kiki Howell
"Kiki Howell spins a wonderful tale of passion, magic, betrayal, and a love that conquers all."
— NY Times Bestselling Author, Hannah Howell about Torn Asunder
"I think this is the most romantic novel I've ever read! True love cannot and should not be stopped because of physical differences between two people."
— 5 Howls by Emi at Bitten by Paranormal Romance about A War in the Willows Trilogy
Praise for Kiki Howell
"Ms. Howell's novella…sang to me. It will to you too."
— Justine, eBook Addict Reviews about The Sorcerer's Songs
"Kiki's use of words and descriptions is indescribable and weaves a kind of magic around the reader."
— Melissa, ParaNormal Romance Reviews about The Healing Spell
Whiskey & Witchcraft
First Edition December 2017
ISBN: 978-1-77357-028-0,
978-1-77357-018-1
Copyright © Kiki Howell 2017
Published by: Naughty Nights Press LLC
http://naughtynightspress.com/
Cover Design by: Willsin Rowe
All rights reserved.
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Names, characters and incidents depicted in this ebook are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author.
This book is for adult audiences only and may contain graphic language and sexually explicit situations offensive to some readers.
Names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author.
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Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
About the Author
Where to Find More of Kiki
Also by Kiki Howell
Ciaran Byrne is suddenly thrust into the public eye as the face of the Byrne family by the death of his father, also inheriting his family's scandals. Unfortunately, a legacy of misused magick runs like fire through his veins, and a demon trapped inside of him by a spell turns him into a beast like no other.
He knows no way around the demon failsafe his father had planted inside him. Still, over a decade later, he's convinced somewhere in him a better man lurks.
As if everything else isn't reason enough to keep his blood pressure high and his nights sleepless, Allanah Adams, the woman he'd once been forbidden to love, roams into his life.
He can see she assumes what the media tells her is true. He begs--no, orders--her to let him prove he can be different from his family, but can he prove it to himself and everyone else around him?
Whiskey
&
Witchcraft
Kiki Howell
A Dark Paranormal Romance
Naughty Nights Press ● Canada
Chapter One
His heart skipped a beat, stopped a full, breath-stealing second, as if anticipating his death, before it began to thump again in his chest, hard enough to knot his stomach and build a throb in his head. He sucked in a burning rush of air, his lungs frantic for breath as his eyes widened, fixed on the source of the terror moving his way.
The crash of an ocean wave below echoed eerily through his home. An electric current raced over his skin the same moment the lightning of an impending storm lit the sky, reflected across the wall of windows in his great room, and blurred his view for a few lingering seconds. The heat of panic crawled over his neck as he waited for his vision to clear.
As he blinked his eyes in rapid succession, momentarily blinding himself, he hoped to eliminate what had to be an apparition of his drunken mind. Before he could stop it, a throaty burst of laughter escaped him as the need to move made his muscles jump despite the fact he remained frozen in place. If anyone paid him any mind, he didn't notice. His eyes focused in on the origin of his horror. Any attempt at false bravado dripped away like the sweat burning his neck, soaking the shirt on his back. He thought to take a large gulp of whiskey, desiring the curing of his dry mouth, erasing the unpleasant toxic taste left there. Only, he dared not move his trembling hand as he white-knuckled the glass in it, fearing it might slip from his clammy grip before reaching his quivering lips.
A California palm frond slammed against the window at his back, making his stiff body jump, his pulse tremble as he fought to catch his still sporadic breath. He stood rooted in place, couldn't move even if he wanted to. Still, his leg muscles tightened as if ready to run from the spectacular horror he faced, lied to himself that it must be a hallucination, drunken insanity bringing his past into the present. Healthy fear ignited all of his senses beyond the hissing sort of hum in his ears from his blood pressure, so high a heart attack imminently threatened his young, thirty-something, hours-spent-in-the-gym body. Clenching his free hand into a fist, he refused to let this split second in time be a measure of the man he knew himself to be. No man, no matter how powerful, how rich, how strong, and he was all of these things in spades, could endure such a terrifying experience.
"Why, Ciaran Byrne, you do look like you've seen a ghost."
Her voice, soft, yet deep for a woman, rushed over him, along with a measure of dark, unhealthy lust which fired from each nerve ending.
He became acutely aware of every inch of the ethereal being standing before him. Of this world, not of this world, his senses still couldn't decipher which as his mind played tricks, attempted to dismiss the truth despite all facts and exquisite figures within his reach.
"Allanah Adams," he managed, the deep tone of his voice strangled, losing certain sounds almost completely as he'd struggled over her name. Though he sounded like a baffling idiot, he figured she knew her own damn name so he'd stop while he was ahead rather than humiliate himself further. Besides, embarrassment wasn't exactly familiar to him in any way. So, he had to swallow it down, crush it immediately, though the how-to on that remained as elusive as the next words he attempted to utter.
The smell of sweet vanilla and heady sandalwood, like an instantaneous aphrodisiac, intoxicated him more so than the whiskey ever could. The mix of her wildly colored curls framing the creamy skin of her face, set off by her deep, ruby-stained lips, and cat-green, shining emerald eyes, made his pupils dilate while sending his blood rushing in new directions that made his Dolce & Gabbana jeans tortuously tight. As he licked his lips, the taste of her came rushing back to him, a memory of the tongue if there were such a thing. Yet, when she dared put her hand on his arm, feather her long fingers over his sleeve onto bare skin, burning him, torturing him, he forgot that most feared him from his intimidating mix of money and muscles, brains and brawn if you will. Instead, he fell apart at a cellular level, as if his body could crumble right there before hers, smoking into a pile of ash like the demon inside him would in some sci-fi flick. While that wasn't possible, comparing his life at this moment to a B-grade horror movie seemed all too appropriate.
In fact, he could hear the distinctive, tenor voice narrating the simple plot of a great beast of a man literally brought to his knees, to a shell of the man he'd once been just seconds before. As this new monster came on the scene, the music would grow comically eerie, as it should be in this moment.
Only, Allanah stood there far from a monster, more an angel he couldn't have, as always. The only one he'd ever loved. The only one he'd ever lost. The only one, still, thanks to his curse, out of his reach. Although, at this moment, she stood dangerously close. He had to use all the energy he had in him to not pull her to him, crush her lithe body to his, take her against the wall behind him, the only thing holding him upright.
"Well, at least you remember my name," she murmured under her breath, her voice taut, tight as she turned her back to him, though she stayed right there, too damn close for comfort. Visions of slipping the straps of her dress off her shoulders to encourage its fall to the floor preoccupied his mind as memories of her naked before him flooded his system. Back. And. Front. Views. Memories.
"Love what you've done with the place. Not extreme or extravagant at all," she continued, the hostile distaste, heavy disapproval dripping from her tongue. Sarcasm deepened her tone to a bewitching husky. "Not that you were ever over the top or anything."
He looked around the room, which constituted exactly half of the main floor square footage. The space served well as a place to entertain guests with the other half of this floor the kitchen and dining areas, which led out to a deck overlooking the ocean. Sure, his trappings were lavish, maybe even over the top on a grandiose scale, but what else had he to do with all of his money? The funds he didn't hide away with impossible hopes and dreams that had always starred this woman before him, anyway. This lady he figured he'd never see again. Yet, here she stood, in all of her five-foot-six glory of lightly bronzed skin, glowing warm, inviting his brutal touch, which could escort her to where dark desire influenced by anxious waves of desperation took her to places she'd never been before, calling out his name, begging for more. A man, a beast, could hope, could dream.
"When my father died," he got out, redirecting his thoughts, as well as his blood flow before those thoughts became obvious in his tightening jeans, "and the place became mine—"
"The place? You mean this simple mansion on a cliff?" She interrupted him, gesturing eloquently to the area around them. At the same time she managed a glare over her shoulder, uncovered in her white, strappy dress flowing with layers of sheer floral patterned material edged with lace. Surely one of her originals, it suited her body, showed off the sensual curves of her breasts and hips, the long lines of her arms and legs.
He just couldn't let the memory slash fantasy of them entwined, heated, manic, go. He'd thought, literally hard and heavy, on it a million times in the years she'd been gone from his life. He'd enhanced the memory into one hell of a fantasy by now. Yet, here she stood before him after all of these years, and his stressed imagination worked in overdrive.
"How the hell did you end up with it anyway?"
"Well, my brothers didn't want it, so I bought out their portions. I don't know, I wanted to, maybe needed to... I needed to change something, so I started here in the house I grew up in. And, I felt the need to change it dramatically. I went out of my way to find a decorator known for her unique flair and told her to go crazy."
"Crazy. That describes it. You live on a cliff overlooking an ocean, and that wasn't enough water for you, you had to make the entire floor of this room a water feature?"
"You don't like it?" He inquired, not able to read her tight, maybe forced smile as to whether she liked the changes or hated them. She'd never cared for the extravagances of his family when she'd been young and poor, so he'd guess the latter, but things had changed for her in recent years. "I mean, you've earned enough money yourself now, run in close to the same crowds as I do these days, exist in the same tax bracket. Surely you're used to shows of wealth by now."
"I didn't say I didn't like it," she countered, taking a large gulp of what looked to be a mix of whiskey and ginger ale. His workaholic brain wondered if the light amber liquid were one of the newest blended whiskeys called the Mystics, premium blends of American and Irish whiskeys produced by his company, Old Alchemy Distillery.
"Usquebaugh?" he asked, referring to her drink with the Irish term for whiskey, meaning water of life, since they were on the subject of water it seemed.
"What else would one drink in the home of a Byrne?"
He left it at that. Didn't keep going for lack of anything to say that might calm the obvious ire he now read loud and clear in her strained voice. He didn't know how, in this moment, to make her see him as she once had so many years ago, as a man worthy of her love. He hadn't cherished it enough, her attentions, the fleeting moments they had spent together. Nor had he the strength, so young then still, to stand up to his family's distaste of his choice and the evil use of money his father threw out to tear them apart.
There'd been a time, forever ago, another life it seemed, where she'd maybe even been grateful to be with him. Not due to his wealth, of course, she'd never been one of those girls, just happy to be in love, and seemingly happy it was with him. In fact, way back then, they had been inseparable, their bodies connected like magnets if they were in the same room. The phantom memory of her body against his wrought equal measures of pain and pleasure as glimpses of her soft skin, bared for him, came rushing back again and again, yielding blinding flashes of heat to his blood.
They stood there, for a few silent moments, both looking over the crowded room. It had come out extreme. She hadn't been wrong. The entire base floor consisted of about four feet of water. You walked up a few steps to the room to walk on wooden floors that had been crafted to look like boardwalks, though highly polished versions. A structural glass floor system connected them to grant a view of the water without anyone falling in, or needing to watch where they were walking. Except for at the edge on the far left side of the room from where he stood. At that point in the room the glass and wood stopped at varying lengths to expose the water between the edges of the floor and a weeping wall water feature prominently housing a large fireplace in the middle of it.
He had a thing about fire and water: the opposing forces, destructive and impossible, like him, his life. F
rom the wall flowing with water on either side of the fireplace, large, metal candle holders complete with thick, white towers of melting wax added to the whole elemental effect. It was stunning really, the mix of orange and yellow flames over patina ripples due to clear water flowing over metal and stone. Many evenings he sat here, whiskey in hand, a glass or whole bottle depending on his mood. He'd stare, mesmerized, thinking of her, of the life they could have together if he lived in another world, another time, another dimension, maybe. More to the point, if he'd been born to a different man, to a father rather than a hellish fiend, she'd have remained his, without question, and he'd never have been forced to leave the love of his life alone.
"Why are you here, Allanah?" he asked, wishing the thought hadn't fallen out of his mouth in such a fashion that he sounded like a defeated man.
It wasn't in his nature. Not ever. To lose. To want. Never had been. Except with her. Which was why he'd lost her, because he'd shown an inkling of weakness. In that instance being in love with someone had been seen by the family as beneath him, so his father had beat it out of him. No, weakness had never been an option except for that brief period in time when he'd had her in his arms, in his bed, thinking them unseen by the man, the dictator, the beast, he'd been forced to call father. Yet, the woman could bring even a man like him to his knees, begging. Even now, right this particular minute, he feared. Probably the reason his father ended it so quickly. She'd have been a distraction to the tyrant's creation of another monster to groom to run his company. The hate harbored over his imposed loss still brewed inside him to a lethal inferno with just a single thought.