Moonlight Mist: A Limited Edition Collection of Fantasy & Paranormal)

by Nicole Morgan

  They made it back from Pyloto just a few hours ago. Unfortunately, due to Maud’s superior planning skills the appropriate clothing for the Celestial Ball were tailored and waiting for them in the home that Zayda lived in when she was on the Gateway to Redemption long-term.

  Her sistah Zahara refused to leave the Citadel to attend the Celestial Ball. Stating that she was preparing the younglings to transition to their new home when Zayda, Piele, and Riodan returned to collect them. The paperwork to adopt the four of them already in the works.

  Zayda’s was pretty sure that she was going to be a lousy matra despite the assurance of her mate that she wouldn’t. Fear of ruining the younglings had her shaking in her boots. She was going to have to go to her matra for some parenting advice for the next several years after she survived the Celestial Ball. At least she knew she could teach the younglings to protect themselves.

  Their new family was quickly expanding.

  Riodan was more concerned about not being able to get into contact with his security specialist friend. It was another reason he agreed to attend the Celestial Ball. Though Piele and Riodan were from Pyloto, Justin Steele was a Redemptite, born and raised on the Gateway to Redemption.

  “Hey, isn’t that Justin,” Piele nudged him and discretely pointed to his tall, dark-haired friend standing on the other side of the ballroom.

  "It looks like him. Let’s see if we can get closer.”

  The three of them weaved their way through the crowd. It took some effort, but they eventually found themselves at Justin’s side.

  “Justin, we are glad to see you in one piece,” Riodan greeted his friend in a big male hug. “I was starting to get really worried when I couldn’t get ahold of you.”

  “Hey Riodan, Piele. Good to see you guys.”

  "I have been trying to get in contact with you for the last few Redemption Standard Days. Where have you been?”

  Before Justin could answer they were approached by an older pale skinned Redemptite female with graying black hair done up in an elaborate coiffed.

  “Justin Aloysius Steele, where have you been?” Her strident tone demanded.

  “Matra...” Justin groaned.

  “Don’t you give me any of your lame excuses. I am just glad you’re here now and in time for the Grand Matriarch to make her announcement.”

  “What announcement?”

  “Shush, she is making her entrance.”

  They all turned to watch as the Grand Matriarch of Redemption and the ruler of the Gateway to Redemption entered the ballroom followed by her mate and her heir apparent. The Grand Matriarch was a tall regal female with a smooth unlined brown skin face. She smiled a gentle smile to everyone she passed. She was being escorted by a tall black-haired broad-shouldered male. A feeling of recognition hit Piele, but he couldn’t remember from where he had seen the male. He went through his mental files of suspects.

  The Grand Matriarch stopped in front of Zayda. Zayda bowed in respect to her. Riodan and Piele quickly followed suit.

  Riodan and Piele were stunned. They hadn’t understood that when they attend the Celestial Ball that the current and future ruler of the Gateway to Redemption would be present.

  “I am delighted to see that you accepted my invitation.” The Grand Matriarch clasped Zayda’s hand in hers.

  “It’s not like I had much of a choice,” Zayda snarky reply made Piele’s eyes widen in fear. “I look absolutely hideous in prison clothes.”

  “Well, I am glad you have become more fashion conscious.” The Grand Matriarch rejoindered.

  She moved to greet other guests. She stopped before Justin Steele and his matra where they stood off to the side of the ballroom where Justin had dragged her.

  The Grand Matriarch turned to address the gathered citizens of the Gateway to Redemption.

  A hush fell over the crowd as she began to speak. “I would like to thank everyone for attending my birthing day celebration. This one is extra special because I get to do something that I rarely have an opportunity to do. I get to issue a royal decree.”

  “Uh oh,” Zayda whispered.

  “What? Piele curiosity was overwhelming.

  “The shit is about to hit the fan. Nothing good ever comes about when she issues a royal decree.”

  “How would you know?” Riodan whispered from her other side.

  She shot him a sardonic look, “How do you think we ended up at the Celestial Ball?”

  “Huh,” he nodded in understanding.

  “Besides, I know my matra.”

  “Matra.” Piele and Riodan exclaimed in shock. Drawing attention to them.

  “Shhhhh,” she hissed at them. “I can’t hear what she is saying.”

  “It is with great pleasure that I announce the engagement of Justin Aloysius Steele to Felicia von Trapp by royal decree.”

  Cheering broke out amongst the guests.

  Justin looked stunned.

  His matra looked smug, the brathas felt sympathy course through them for their friend.

  A female with pale skin and long dark black hair weaved her way towards Justin. As she reached out to kiss him words rang out over the crowd.

  “Touch my male bitch and I will chop off your fucking fingers and feed them to you.”

  The crowd parted to show the Grand Matriarch’s heir apparent making her way towards them.

  “Oh shit.” Zayda was shocked. “If I knew things got this interesting at the Celestial Ball I would have started attending them a long time ago.”

  “Who is that?” Riodan asked.

  “My sistah Zemora,” Zayda answered.

  “My mate,” Justin responded.

  About the Author

  I live in Fountain, Colorado with my husband and two kids and a whole truckload of family members. I have been writing all of my life. I became addicted to romance novels when I was teenager thanks to my matra’s love of reading. I wrote my first romance novel when I was in junior high school. I decided to stop hiding my desire to write and to just go for it.

  Thank you for reading my book. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it. Stay tuned there is more to come. Sign up for my Newsletter http://mailinglist.donnarmercer.com/sparksfly for a free Ebook. Follow me on Facebook and Twitter. Please consider leaving a review.

  Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/MissSassy714

  Bookbub: http://www.bookbub.com/profile/donna-r-mercer

  Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/DonnaRMercerAuthor/

  Donna R Mercer Website: http://www.donnarmercer.com/

  Also Available from Donna R. Mercer

  Club Envy Series

  Jericho: http://www.donnarmercer.com/jericho

  Sebastian: http://www.donnarmercer.com/sebastian

  Lathan (forthcoming)

  Brandon (forthcoming)

  Inappropriate Date Series

  Studdin’ Axxel: https://www.donnarmercer.com/studdinaxxel

  Catchin’ Wesley: https://www.donnarmercer.com/catchinwesley

  Stealin’ Reaver (forthcoming)

  Lickin’ Karamel (forthcoming)

  Book Bundles/Set

  Scorned part of the Without Limits Book Bundle: http://www.donnarmercer.com/scorned

  Hot Coffee part of the Whispers of Winter Book Bundle: http://www.donnarmercer.com/hot-coffee

  Hollidae’s Gift part of the Heart of a Hunk Book Bundle: http://www.donnarmercer.com/hollidaes-gift

  Taken By Him

  A Tentacles Shifter Erotic Romance ~ Book One

  Jan Springer

  About the Story

  Tattoo artist Catalina Brown falls head-over-tattoos for the stranger who asks for a tentacle tattoo on his…most sensitive body part. Normally, mixing business with pleasure isn’t her thing, but he’s a sensual magnet she’s instantly attracted to, particularly after she experiences a wicked-hot artistic high while tattooing his every succulent inch.

  Tentacle shifter Calder Croft catches the female’s scent when she passes his Californi
a marina, and he can’t ignore the way she fires his blood. After meeting her, he’s stunned to discover Cat has no idea she’s a shifter about to come into her Change. It takes all his self-control to keep from taking the sexy woman right on the spot.

  Calder has to tell Cat the truth about her heritage. Will she accept her birthright as a shifter—or succumb to madness, forever losing their chance at love?

  For my readers. Thanks so much for your wonderful support.

  Originally published by Spunky Girl Publishing

  Copyright 2016 Jan Springer

  Chapter One

  “He wants you to tattoo his what?” Catalina Brown’s good friend Misty Rivers shrieked in shocked laughter. They sat at the picnic table outside Catalina’s trailer, in the private RV site she’d leased for the month, just south of Carlsbad, California.

  “His entire cock,” Cat said plainly as she set down her wineglass. She enjoyed how Misty’s face flared a deep red that matched the “By The Sea Tattoo Parlor” decaled on the side of Cat’s nearby fifth wheel travel trailer.

  Her friend’s brown eyes gleamed with excitement. She slapped her tanned hands onto the picnic table and leaned forward, shaking her head in denial. “No way.”

  “Yes, way.”

  “You’re not seriously considering doing that?” Her friend shook her head again with increasing excitement. The mane of her shoulder-length, chestnut hair flew wild in the warm, late-afternoon, July breeze that drifted off the ocean behind them.

  Catalina answered with a casual shrug of her shoulders. Truthfully, she wasn’t sure she could actually do what this guy had requested. The only reason she was considering tattooing him was that she loved the design he’d emailed to her. It looked challenging and she loved a challenge.

  “I’m meeting with him first thing in the morning. He wants me to make it so an octopus is tattooed across his abdomen and belly, with tentacles reaching around his waist, down his legs, up around his nipples, one around his back, and he wants his cock to look like a tentacle.”

  Misty laughed. “Well, he certainly found the right woman for that, didn’t he? You’ve always loved drawing sea animals and tentacles are your fetish. I mean, look at your website. The gallery is loaded with images of sea tattoos you’ve done on your clients.”

  A warm glow flooded Catalina at her friend’s praise. Cat came through this town several times a year to visit with her old high school friend-turned-actress. It was always a nice treat to see her. But yeah, Misty was right. Cat never turned down tattoo requests that had to do with seahorses, octopi, coral reefs and especially tentacles. Truth be told, tentacles turned her on so much she couldn’t even have a normal relationship with a man because she was consumed by the fetish. When men found out she needed tentacles surrounding her when she had sex, they dumped her like a hot potato.

  “But having his entire cock tattooed like a tentacle. I mean, ouch!” Misty grimaced. “That would hurt, wouldn’t it? I mean sensitive parts and all.”

  “It would hurt nine times more if I used the machine. I’ll do the bamboo technique on him instead. Small needles, less pain, more color, less blood, and I can do what he wants with the bamboo method nine times quicker because there’s a faster healing time. So pain will be at a minimum.”

  Misty scrunched up her face. “Okay, quit the boring talk about the mechanics behind how you do your tattoos. What I want to know is, how will you handle tattooing his entire cock and abdomen and all the rest he wants to have done? I mean won’t you be embarrassed when you do that intimate part?”

  Totally.

  “Why should I be?” Catalina lied. “Customer satisfaction is my goal, right?”

  Besides, she was dying to see how good of an artist she could be in such a unique area of a man’s body. Sure, she’d tattooed cocks before, but never an entire one and never one that swept off the man’s stomach and onto his…appendage.

  “You’re a tentacle nut, woman.” Misty laughed and nodded to the side of Catalina’s forty-five-foot-long trailer. The walls had been decaled in dark, ocean blue with white-capped waves and a variety of sea life designs swirling on all four sides. The biggest drawings, of course, were the sexy tentacles with suction cups. Her business name and website URL had been boldly brushed in red on all sides of the trailer too, in order to get free advertising as she drove along the highways.

  The trailer she pulled around with her bright-blue pickup truck was her world. She ate in it. Slept in it. Worked in it. Traveled in it. She’d been traveling up and down the Eastern, Western and Southern United States Seaboards for five of her twenty-three years, always drawn to stay near the ocean. Heck, she’d loved the ocean ever since she could remember, and had been creating sea life pictures ever since her mother had stuck a crayon in her hand.

  That love for ocean animals had naturally followed when, at the tender age of sixteen, she’d become, much to her parent’s annoyance and disappointment, an apprentice to a tattoo artist in her home town of what she called Boringsville, Oregon. When her mom had passed away due to colon cancer, her dad had hooked up with the local slut and married her. Catalina had learned quickly she was in the way of the newlyweds and, at eighteen, she’d packed up her bags and headed for the coastlines, working at enough tattoo parlors to learn virtually everything she needed to know about tattooing. She’d never looked back.

  “I don’t know about this guy. He sounds kind of creepy, getting a tattoo like that.” Misty frowned, but Catalina just couldn’t get into the maybe-this-guy-was-dangerous mode her friend’s face was showing. This man actually sounded intriguing and she wanted to meet him. Big-time.

  After Misty left, Catalina headed back into her trailer and quickly popped the email from her mystery client up on her laptop. She read it over for the hundredth time since getting it a couple of days ago.

  Would you be interested in doing this design on me? I’ve heard you are an expert with certain aspects of sea life.

  Then he’d asked if she would do an octopus on his belly and the tentacle thing. Yes, he had to have a fetish or something. She also loved how he seemed to be a passionate romantic, because he wanted a red rose entangling a rusty, metal-shaped lock with a heart-shaped keyhole, dangling from the tentacle that wound around to his backside. Kind of like a surprise for the woman he would present himself too. Lucky girl.

  Catalina smiled and, against her better judgment, found herself getting turned on by the idea of a guy wearing such a unique tattoo. Something like that would be exactly what she would tat on her own man.

  Immediately, she shook those thoughts away. No romance in her life. She was perfectly happy doing the traveling tattoo gig. She’d put a lot of money in setting up her business and she had all the proper sterilizing equipment and work licenses required by each state she visited. She wouldn’t give that up for anybody. Even for a fantasy of a client who wanted a tentacle tattoo.

  Promptly at nine the next morning, a knock rattled her side door. He was here! Suddenly Catalina was all flustered and nervous. Second thoughts about this man whirled through her head. What if he was a madman like Misty had said? No, he couldn’t be crazy. He was into tentacles, just like her. And she wasn’t certifiable.

  Blowing out a tense breath, she cast one last look into the bathroom mirror. Perfect. She looked great. Professionally dressed in loose jeans, a white blouse and, of course, her dangling, tentacle earrings. Not that she was trying to make an impression on him or anything.

  She grinned in the mirror, took a second to pinch her cheeks to make them look a bit redder, thus healthier. The knock came again and she left her tiny bathroom located near the back of the trailer and hurried down the narrow hallway to let him in. As she swung the door outward, she couldn’t help but inhale at the tall, clean-cut, dark-haired man who looked up at her with the greenest eyes she’d ever seen.

  “Hi!” he said, and then smiled. A dimple exploded on his left cheek and she swore she forgot who she was and why he was here. For a very long s
plit second it seemed as if only the two of them existed in the world.

  “Am I too early?” he asked in a very deep voice and she realized she’d been staring at him.

  It was nine a.m. sharp and he already had a nice five o’clock shadow lining his cheeks, strong chin, and the area over his upper lip. And he had the most kissable-looking lips she’d ever seen.

  She shook her head, trying to whip away the thoughts that this would be a man she wouldn’t mind getting to know better. “Just on time. Please, come in. Have a seat at the table and we can discuss more of what you want done.”

  She held the door open for him as he climbed the three steps into the office part of her trailer. Have mercy, but the man was a tall one. He towered over her five-foot-six-inch frame. He had to be more than six feet of hunk.

  “Nice outfit,” he said as he looked around.

  His gaze scanned the mellow, yellow, vinyl bench seats with the small, pullout table between the seats. On that table sat her coffee machine, some mugs, an open laptop, her calculator and several drawing pads for her designs. The nearby shelves were filled with ink bottles and other tattooing supplies. On the other side of the shelved wall was her work area, which consisted of a tattoo chair, equipment and more shelves with tools of her trade.

  “Thanks. It’s crowded, but everything I need is here. When I’m out on the road, sometimes tattoo supply stores can be far and few between, so I keep a big stock.”

  She followed him to the table, assessing his firm-looking ass hugged by a pair of tight, stone-washed blue jeans. He wore an ultra-tight, black t-shirt that illuminated some exceptionally thick pecs.