by Gabi Moore
She knew, now, that his plan was the same as hers. They weren’t going to fight. They were each going to simply try and drain the other. The world narrowed into a slit, just him and her, and as Aurora clutched his hand—she couldn’t have let go if she wanted, like grabbing an electric fence—she felt her own life start to slip away into him.
Panicked, she pulled back. His eyes widened in surprise. Not at her actions—no, Aurora knew Ian suspected her intentions from the minute she walked in. He was no fool. But he’d counted on being able to overpower her. Unfortunately, his power had chosen a new master.
Aurora dragged on the line between them, and the light motes blew her way easily. Ian’s hand was crushing hers. He couldn’t let go either.
Ramona’s voice was somewhere outside their small world, but close. Perhaps even closer than she realized. Was that her mother’s hand on her other arm? Trying to stop her?
Pain welled up in Aurora, but it was too late to stop for anyone. She didn’t have to hear what Ramona was saying to know what she wanted; her own mother wanted her to stop, to spare Ian. After all, she had been waiting so long for him to come back to her.
Overhead, a shadow lurked. It was Kemandry, and she was part of their little world, too. Aurora tried to ignore her as she crawled upside down over the ceiling. Just above them, she stopped, considering.
In this gray world of power—their shared power—Aurora knew Ian was trying to tell Kemandry to attack. He was looking up at her desperately, even mouthing the words. He was ordering her to kill Aurora, just as she’d been sent to do at Witching Hour, at her own home. But Kemandry just watched curiously, and Aurora realized that she no longer knew who her master was. Too much of Ian’s power was in Aurora, now.
Terrified and thrilled, Aurora bore on, beckoning. Ian’s life force seemed to extend forever, like pulling a chain from the ocean, but it lifted from his body easily. He was trying to fight; if anything, his struggles only seemed to hurry the process. This was the natural order of things. She was younger, and stronger, and meant to take his place. She was his daughter.
The end was in sight, and Aurora fell out of her magical vision, and looked at Ian with her own eyes. He looked half-mummified, with wide, staring eyes. Horror was plain on his face, and Aurora realized that he was looking at her with all that horror. She had come here uncertain, and she would leave a killer, a killer of her own father.
With an audible snap, it was over. Aurora dropped Ian’s limp hand, and he fell back into the throne. He was dead.
And at his feet lay Ramona.
There was another crash behind her, but Aurora didn’t notice. She was brimming with magic. She felt like a burning star, better than her best day, as if she was full of possibility and promise. But all the magic in the world couldn’t un-break her heart. Aurora dropped to the ground with a cry and pulled Ramona into her arms. All the magic in the world couldn’t undo what she’d done.
Like Ian, Ramona was sucked dry of her life. The pieces fell together as Aurora held her mother and cried, as Kemandry bolted into action, unnoticed. Ramona had tried to stop Aurora from killing Ian. Perhaps she had really wanted them all to live together. Maybe she had believed Ian’s promises. That mattered little; she’d still gripped on to Aurora at the wrong time, and her life, too, had been drained.
There was a snarling growl, and many of Kemandry’s terrible sounds, rushing and crashing together behind her.
“Stop it, Kemandry!” Aurora sobbed. “Stop!”
Miraculously, she did. Aurora looked over her shoulder; Kem was just behind her, tilted her oblong head, snuffling.
She was horrible thing. Just to look at her was frightening. The way she moved, the way she sounded. What she was capable of. But Aurora was her master now, and she didn’t the heart to yell at the creature, not for simply being what she was.
“Go away, for now, Kem,” Aurora said hoarsely. “Just go for a while.”
And Kemandry was gone, just like that. Like a shadow when the lights are turned on.
Still Aurora held her mother, thin and frail and dead, sobbing.
A low growl echoed behind her. This time, Aurora turned her whole body so she could look, bringing Ramona with her. It was a wolf, a large black one. It was closer to the size of a bear; Aurora doubted any wolf in this millennium had ever grown so big. Blood dripped from its fur, and its eyes were wide and dark as they looked at her.
“L-Lucien?” Aurora hiccupped.
The wolf shambled closer and sniffed her face, as Kemandry had done. In this form, Lucien looked bigger than a car, and yet he was still there, behind those wolf eyes. Aurora couldn’t even be afraid, not after what she’d done. She looked down at Ramona.
“I killed her, too,” Aurora whispered. “She was holding on to me, and I didn’t even feel it… She’s gone…”
Aurora leaned over her mother’s body and wept. A part of her had known all along, Ramona was only missing, not dead. But now that part was dark and silent, like her mother’s lifeless eyes. Sorrow and loss were twisting Aurora’s insides, wringing her out like a rag.
A hand—a human hand—rested on her shoulder. “Just go ahead and cry,” Lucien told her softly. “I know it hurts, don’t try to fight it. Just let it go.”
Aurora looked up at him. He knelt beside her, naked, of course, but at the moment nothing could have seemed less important to Aurora. His face was bruised and bleeding. In fact, most of him was bruised and bleeding. But his eyes were kind, and he left his hand resting on her shoulder. In the wrecked wall behind him, Milo stood, watching from a distance.
“Thank you, Aurora.”
Aurora froze and spun toward the other door. When Ian died, his spells had snapped, and now Ylessa stood in the doorway, rubbing her eyes like a sleepy child.
Her wings furled and unfurled gently, as if she was testing their strength, but the fairy picked her way across the floor on foot until she stood over Ramona. Hope fluttered in Aurora’s chest.
“Can you…?” Aurora couldn’t even bear to finish the question. Ylessa was already shaking her head.
“Call her back to this form? No. Your mother has already moved on to new life, to a better life. One where she isn’t waiting, endlessly, for the likes of Ian to return to her.”
It was all Aurora had expected, but still, disappointment was almost worse than the loss itself. She looked around, and there was Lucien, there was Milo, there was Mr. Cheng and Lester through the broken wall, all watching her. This was going to be her new life, her new family.
She looked down at Ramona Potier in her arms, lifeless, but finally at peace. No more waiting, no more worrying. No more long nights at the kitchen table, staring out the same window.
Aurora settled her mother gently on the floor and cried.
Her voice echoed against the walls of the townhouse; Aurora had never been in such an expensive house.
“Madame Moreau lived here all alone?” she asked, incredulous.
Lester nodded. “Yeah. She deeded everything to me when she passed away, but my family doesn’t know about… well, all this. The magic and stuff.”
It had been a week since Ian and Ramona had died. Mr. Cheng and Milo were taking care of that entire mess; there were police to deal with (“Right up my alley,” Milo announced cheerfully), and the funerals to plan. And Moreau’s will to settle, which, as it turns out, was not such a big problem.
“Who’s going to run her company?” Aurora asked anxiously. “Did she have a plan for that?”
“Don’t worry about that,” Lester waved her off as they strolled through yet another huge and empty room, furnished expensively for no one. “She had an army of people taking care of the business side of things. We all thought she wasn’t preparing, but, well…” Lester trailed off with a sigh and a sniffle.
Aurora wrapped her arm around his shoulder protectively. “I know.”
“Anyway, she has a few properties, all paid off, and they’re mine now,” Lester pushed on. “And I thi
nk you should live here. Someone should.”
Aurora looked around at the hollow space. “All by myself? What about your family?”
“How am I going to explain why a rich white lady from France left all her money to me without admitting to the magic?”
He had a point.
Aurora already knew what her answer was going to be. She couldn’t refuse; there was nowhere else for her to go, anyway. Lucien had told her three days ago that her old apartment was settled, and everything from there that could be salvaged was in storage, waiting for her to find a new home. Only, Aurora didn’t have anywhere else. She had family in Louisiana, but she’d never met them. She doubted her grandparents wanted to see her, anyway. They’d disowned Ramona for leaving with Ian.
“I guess,” Aurora sighed. “It is a nice house. I don’t know how I’m going to pay the property taxes.”
“I told you not to worry about that sort of thing.” From the hallway, Lucien strode across the wood floors to join her and Lester. “We’ll take care of it.”
“So you said,” Aurora rolled her eyes.
Lucien leaned down and kissed her on the cheek. “You should learn to trust people a little.”
Aurora smiled, but didn’t answer. A new life was opening up at her feet. The price had been everything she loved most about her old one, but there was no going back. The only direction was forward, with her new friends, into a future that was uncertain and unfamiliar.
And if Lucien thought that was going to make her more trusting, he had another thing coming.
- THE END -
STEAMY CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE
HEART OF DARKNESS
A Standalone Bad Boy Romance Novel
Preview
Just as I leaned in to kiss her again, I heard her screen door bang open behind me.
A strange voice.
“Maddy? Maddy are you home?”
Her muscles tightened so quickly in my hands I thought they’d snap. Her eyes went wide and wild, and she froze. I was about to ask her if she was expecting someone when the voice came again, and her eyes shot to a point right behind me. I spun around to see a man standing in the living room.
My mind raced.
“Baby…?” his voice trailed off as we both took one another in.
I had been trained for this. For these high-cortisol moments where one strange moment seems to stretch out forever. I thought of the blue and yellow mark on Maddy’s face. In that split second, I twisted my body round to position myself between him and her, throwing my weight into my thigh muscles so I could spring up quickly.
There was the entrance I had come through, behind him, likely one in the kitchen and if this was the kind of built-in-the-80s house I thought it could be, there’d be a cheap frosted glass fitting in the bathroom that could be kicked clean out in an emergency. There was a glass ornament to her left that I could wield if necessary, but I had a better chance of taking him directly, since he wasn’t armed and a good few inches shorter than me. Low-ish muscle tone, no tats, civilian dress and no defensive posturing. I could have him pinned to the floor in less than six seconds.
“Who the fuck…?” he started saying, and I realized she was cowering a little behind me.
It was him. No question. The guy that had hit her. I stood up and puffed my chest a little. I didn’t want to let her know it, but I would relish giving this guy an ass-kicking, if he asked for it.
I slowly extended my hand, not taking my eyes off him.
“Zack Hunter. Nice to meet you. And you are?”
I knew all about guys like this. Wiry little shits with attitudes better suited to snappy handbag Pomeranians than grown men. I’d patrolled with some of them, too, and they were all talk and hot air until it came down to actually backing it all up with action. How had such a beautiful woman gotten involved with him?
He smirked at me and peered round my shoulder to glare at her.
“Baby? Are you kidding me? This guy?” he laughed and then lifted his eyebrow at me. “She tell you she already has a boyfriend, shithead?”
I felt Maddy’s little hands rise up and touch the small of my back. I can’t describe it, but that little touch alone, so soft and tentative …well, it broke my heart.
“Zack,” she peeped from behind me, “he’s not my boyfriend. We already broke up. A long time ago.”
“I think you’d better leave,” I said, voice calm.
The air crackled a little as I felt him gathering his courage. Predictably, he lunged forward with flat hands and shoved my shoulders. I barely moved, and simply took a step towards him, clenched fists to my side. I peered at him through narrowed eyes and said slowly, with as much threat as I could squeeze into my voice.
“We can do this if you want, but it will not go well for you…”
It was faint and lightning quick, but I could have spotted it a mile away: that brief, panicked flutter across his face as he realized I meant it. But he was bluffing hard, and stood his ground.
I didn’t need to look to tell that Maddy had already dashed off and was now pinned against the wall, watching us with horror.
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RESISTING THE BAD BOY
A Standalone Bad Boy Romance Novel
Blurb
Living the wild life, bad girl Nyx was all about sex, drugs and running wild. That is until one fateful night when a car accident killed both her parents and left her in the care of her controlling aunt.
Nyx wakes up to the cold, sobering new reality: she needs to clean up her act.
She’s accepted at Blackworth’s, an exclusive theatre college in London where she’ll learn to do set design for the country’s best stage productions.
But the only condition?
She’ll have to behave.
When hot, unpredictable Adam Morgan enters the scene, Nyx is more than a little tempted, and realizes that being good is going to be harder than she first thought.
Bored with staying on the sidelines, and unable to resist this actor’s dark charisma, Nyx soon finds herself falling fast into an exciting world where pleasure, chaos and magic reign supreme.
Adam Morgan is a bad influence, no doubt about it. But he might also be just the bad influence she needs…
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MANHANDLED
A Standalone Bad Boy Romance Novel
Preview
Bruises can be romantic, in their own way…
There were signs of him all over my body.
I looked down at the marks round my upper thigh, like the scattered blue petals of a strange flower. If they had been put there by anything other than his hands, they would have seemed ugly to me.
But they hadn’t. And so they didn’t.
One look at my body and you could tell that he had been there. On me - in me.
But in spite of all the things I knew in that very moment, there was no way in hell I could've predicted what was about to happen.
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BARE HANDS
A Bad Boy Romance Novel
Preview
"I needed an excuse to run away, and he had ‘excuse’ written all over him in big, tattooed letters…“
Penelope Murphy is a naïve, 19-year-old American missionary with a domineering fiancé who thinks her big ideas about volunteering in Africa are just plain stupid. But she’s determined: for six months, she’ll work on a community garden in a rural village in Malawi.
Everything is going to plan until she meets Viktor, a dangerous bad boy with a checkered past who completely destroys her ideas of right and wrong.
In a strange new country, Penelope is soon in over her head. Despite the locals warning her about this lone wolf who lives in a mysterious cabin in the woods he built with his bare hands, Penelope can’t resist. She’s soon drawn to the dark, new world he opens up for her, one sexy step at a time…
Once Penelope’s good girl mask starts slipping ...she finds doesn’t want
to put it back on. Viktor and Penny are both running away from something – but can they ever escape one another?
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ABSOLUTION
A Dark Bad Boy Romance Novel
Preview
It was the first and probably the only pink and gold Birkin bag this young stud would ever see.
Not that he could possibly understand just how much money he was actually looking at, but still. I knew. He wasn’t here to look at my shoe collection and I wasn’t here to hear about his sob story working at the pool boy factory or whatever.
We were here to fuck.
If you think you’ve heard this story before – you know, the one where the bored housewife messes around with the plumber or the repairman or the mechanic while her husband is at work – well, what can I say. Parts of my life certainly are predictable. My life, from some angles, looks a hell of a lot like a cheesy daytime soap. But that’s not all it is. You might not believe me yet, but this is a story about love.
No, really. You’ll see...
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BREAK
A Bad Boy Romance Novel
Preview
The woman in front of me was being fucked within an inch of her life.
Her entire face was flushed red, the color extending far down onto her chest and to her two swollen nipples.
'What do you think – should we let her come?' her tormentor said through strained breath, flashing deep, laughing brown eyes in my direction.