Seduced by Chaos

by Stephanie Julian

  Cam’s brows did that little movement again as his arms crossed over his broad chest. Because of the difference in their ages, Cam had seemed more like a third parent than an older brother at times. But in all the ways that counted, they were brothers first.

  “She specifically told you not to do anything, didn’t she?”

  Damn, sometimes he swore Cam could read his mind. “She’ll never know.”

  Cam snorted, his lips quirking into a fierce grin. “Yeah. Let me know how that works for you.” Then his gaze narrowed again. “You sure you’re not biting off more than you can chew here?”

  Yeah, he probably was, but he’d already broken her confidence by telling Cam her story. And he refused to let those bastards get away with what they’d done to her and her sister.

  But that wasn’t all Cam was talking about. Cam was implying Lacey was too much for him to handle.

  And Teo started to get pissed.

  Vaffanculo, he wasn’t a kid anymore. Teo knew how to handle himself. He’d managed to make a life for himself despite being infected with the amentia. He hadn’t crawled into a hole or killed himself like some had. He’d never been in any danger of hurting himself. He’d been too damn sure he’d be able to find a cure.

  He’d always been smart, sometimes too smart for his own good. He’d never had to study to get straight As. He’d gotten two college degrees in architecture and engineering in the time it’d taken most people to get one. Then he’d designed houses.

  When he’d gotten bored with that after twenty years or so, he’d gone back to college for a couple of master’s degrees and a doctorate in history. He’d been teaching college when he’d been infected. He’d left his position to find a cure.

  His parents had guilted him into moving back home with them, afraid for his mental state. They’d given him everything he’d needed or wanted. But after a few months, he’d needed his own place again. He’d found an apartment in Reading, close to his parents and Cam.

  He’d rebuilt his life from the bottom up. He’d gone back to designing buildings because he could do it from home. The firm he worked with gave him carte blanche to do the jobs he wanted because he was that good.

  Now he wanted Lacey. He wanted her for more than a one-night stand and if his big brother didn’t approve…well then, fuck him. He’d do it without his help.

  He opened his mouth to say just that and realized he didn’t have to. Because Cam’s grin had returned.

  “Welcome to the club, little brother,” Cam said. “And you know I’ll do whatever I can to help you and Lacey. Just tell me what you need.”

  * * * * *

  Half an hour later, Cam nodded, gave him a hard hug and dematerialized back to his home a few miles away. He’d left with the promise that he and Stella would be at the bar tonight to meet Lacey.

  And hopefully have some preliminary information.

  Now alone, Teo sat on the couch, staring out the window. All he saw was green leaves and a dawn-blue sky. Across the street, City Park spread out over several blocks, making him wonder if she’d chosen this building because it was so close to the park and the trees.

  As elemental creatures, the Etruscan Fata needed that connection to nature. While it might seem odd that an entire population so tied to nature had immigrated to a city, it made more sense when you realized that this city had been built over a ley line, a powerful vein of earth magic that infused the area with power.

  The Etruscans had moved here shortly after the Purge of 1758, when the Malandante and the Benandante, a group of Etruscans dedicated to keeping the Mal in check, went head to head in the ancient Etruscan forests. The Benandante lost that battle and the Fata and Enu had paid a high price. Those who had stayed had retreated farther into the forest, disappearing, but the majority had left for the new world.

  He wondered about her parents. They had to have known, when they’d decided to have children, what their union would produce. Had they been reckless and stupid? Or so in love they hadn’t cared about the consequences? Or had Lacey and her sister been a mistake?

  A slight sound caught his attention and he turned to see her watching him from the hall. She leaned against the wall, hair mussed and eyes half closed, an oversized t-shirt hanging to her knees.

  Beautiful. Not a damn mistake.

  He held out his hand and his heart started to beat ten times faster when she smiled. She didn’t move right away though and he had a few seconds to worry.

  Then she disappeared.

  His eyes widened—just as she reappeared directly over him. Her knees sank into the cushions on either side of his hips, her hands settled onto his shoulders and her lips landed on his in a devastating kiss that immediately threw him into lust and made his cock harden to the point of pain.

  Her lips moved over his in a slow glide, refusing to rush. She kissed him with her mouth closed, as if enjoying the feel of his lips against hers. He certainly loved the feel of hers, like the finest silk caressing his skin.

  Laying his hands on her thighs, he soaked in the heat of her skin. His fingers spread and began to knead her skin. As if he’d hit some hidden button, she moaned and arched into him, her fingers tightening on his shoulders and her mouth opening against his.

  He took the opening and slid his tongue between her lips, forcing her to open wider. His hands slid under her shirt, up her thighs and to her pussy. With her knees on either side of his hips, she was spread apart.

  She moaned as he caught her clit between his thumb and forefinger, pinching and rolling until she had to release his mouth to gasp for air. He didn’t stop. He kept playing with her, watching her face for the slightest hint that she didn’t like it as rough as he liked to dish it out.

  But her expression showed only pleasure, an intense eroticism. She thrust her hips forward when he eased the pressure even slightly, encouraging him to take her harder.

  When he thrust two fingers into her weeping slit, her head fell back and she released a moan that made his cock tighten and throb.

  Then she took a deep breath as if to calm herself.

  “No,” he growled. “More. All.”

  Lacey barely heard Teo’s demand, lost in a maelstrom of sensation.

  The raw sexual energy she and Teo produced between them licked at her nerve endings like flames. She wanted to release the tight control she held over her response but she was afraid if she let go, she’d become the animal her captors had called her.

  She never wanted Teo to see her like that, never wanted to become what they had called her. When Teo pinched her clit, mixing pleasure and pain in a way that her querciola nature craved, she had to work twice as hard not to lose herself in ecstasy.

  But when he demanded more, she wanted to give it to him.

  Her brain checked out and her body, her very nature answered Teo’s demand.

  Her mouth parted on a gasp that he rightly took as surrender.

  She felt her arus shift and rise as he worked a spell to remove their clothes and she nearly cried out at the bliss that shot through her body. The air caressed her like another lover as Teo’s fingers thrust inside her channel and pinched her clit, releasing her only when she was about to come.

  Tears leaked from her eyes as she shuddered, needing that release. Her hands reached for his cock but never got there. He whispered another spell and her hands froze in midair.

  Teo’s eyes glittered, hard and bright. “Over your head, Lacey. And don’t move them.”

  As if he’d lifted them himself, her arms rose until it appeared as if they were attached to invisible chains from the ceiling. His display of power was just as sexy as anything his fingers were doing and they were driving her crazy.

  He fucked her with them, a driving rhythm that made her body quiver. His fingers on her clit dealt equal measures of agony and ecstasy and she knew he was binding her to him more closely than any ropes or magic ever could.

  She barely noticed when he began to swipe her moisture from her pussy back to h
er anus. But her body recognized what he was doing and the ache became a gut-deep agony demanding more.

  She began to chant his name, her hips moving with him, as if he were directing her body.

  Maybe he was.

  She only knew she wanted more than he was giving her.

  And he knew it.

  When his fingers left her sex, she nearly cried. But when he began to work one finger into her back passage, she took a deep breath and pushed out, wanting him to take her like that.

  “That’s right, baby.” His voice caressed her ears, her brain. “Let me in. I want your ass, Lacey. Let me have it.”

  She couldn’t form a coherent answer. All she could do was show him. She clenched around his finger.

  The primal growl that emerged from his mouth made the hair on her body stand on end. Half of her wanted to run. But only so he could chase her.

  As if he knew exactly what she was thinking, the invisible force holding her hands tightened, pulling her up until she was suspended inches above the floor.

  He kept his hands on her sex and lodged inside her, the finger in her ass moving, making small circular motions.

  “Teo.”

  He remained on the couch, watching her every move through slitted eyes. “I’m going to put my cock in your ass, Lacey. I want you in every way possible. Kneel on the couch, hands on the back.”

  The invisible bindings loosened slowly, allowing her to stand on her feet as he removed his hands from her so she could kneel exactly as he’d told her.

  He rose, his controlled movement fluid in a way only those familiar with rigid control could be.

  Her breath sawed in and out of her lungs as she gripped the back of the couch, losing sight of Teo. She thought about turning her head but even before she’d moved a centimeter, Teo wrapped his hand in her hair and pulled her head back until she couldn’t move without feeling her scalp burn.

  Gods, she wanted more.

  His other hand moved between her legs again, dipping into her sex then rubbing her moisture around her anus.

  She trembled with anticipation, her knuckles white as she waited, barely breathing.

  Something brushed against her ass cheek, something soft and silky. Teo’s cock slid between her legs in a slow glide, rubbing between her pussy lips, coating himself in her juices.

  Eyes closed, she concentrated on sensation. On the warmth of his shaft, on the brush of it against her clit. And finally on the broad tip lodged at the puckered entrance to her ass. She breathed deep, forcing her muscles to relax, knowing from experience it would help.

  It felt like forever before he began to forge forward, the tight passage barely opening to let him in. Burning pleasure made her gasp as he pushed deeper and she lost all sense of reality. Only the feel of his cock filling her ass mattered.

  She moaned and pushed back and he slid another inch. Wrapping his arm around her waist, he held her still when she tried to force him to go faster.

  “Slow, baby.” His gruff voice rumbled through her. “Gotta go slow.”

  Shaking her head, she wriggled closer. “No, don’t. I won’t break.”

  But he wouldn’t go faster. Slow and intoxicating and infinitely more satisfying than any fast fuck would have been. His cock felt like a rod of hot steel reaming her in the most delicious way, taking her out of her mind and leaving only her body, filled with the most intense pleasure.

  Now she tried to stave off her orgasm, to hold on to the feelings coursing through her as Teo began to move faster. He held her against him as her arms must have given way at some point. His hips thrust and retreated, his mouth open on the curve of her neck. His teeth bit into her skin, as if he could drink her arus straight from her body.

  Maybe he could. Maybe he did, because he groaned on his last forward thrust, holding himself deep as he came.

  Her own orgasm tightened deep in her sex, sapping her strength with its power, and everything went dark as exhaustion and desire took their toll.

  Chapter Six

  “You’re sure you don’t mind? I can tell them to stay the hell home.”

  Lacey stood behind the bar, where she was checking the keg levels. “Don’t you want me to meet your family?”

  Well, damn. That made her sound like an insecure teenager. The second the words left her mouth she wanted to take them back.

  She didn’t want him to see her as needy or clingy or whiny. She didn’t want to be those things.

  That last orgasm this morning had totally scrambled her brain and she couldn’t believe she felt sexual desire sparking in her gut again. When he’d left for an hour this afternoon to go back to his apartment to change, she’d fought a rising panic that he wouldn’t return.

  Now Teo’s expression as he stalked to the bar made her pussy clench and moisten.

  How did he do that? How did he—

  Reaching across the bar, he put one hand behind her head and brought her forward, laying his lips on hers and kissing her until she softened. When he drew back, she couldn’t help her smile as he went back to taking down the chairs from the tables.

  “Of course I want you to meet them. But all together, they can be a real pain in the ass. Rio’s a brat, but Cam and Nino together are lethal to my sanity.”

  “How so?”

  Finished with the chairs, he walked back to the bar and leaned on it, tight black t-shirt stretching across broad shoulders. Some expression crossed his face and his mouth opened as if he were going to say something. Then he shook his head.

  “They’re like old mother hens,” he said. “Overprotective. Worried about things they can’t change.”

  “Like what?”

  He didn’t answer, his mouth tightening.

  “Teo?”

  His lips parted—and the door to the kitchen opened.

  “Bella mia, we’re gonna need to do something about that oven. It’s still not heating to the correct…temperature.”

  Frederico Salano, Lacey’s cook, strode into the bar from the kitchen, hands waving, Italian accent thick as his marinara sauce. He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Teo.

  The round little man, who stood barely five feet tall and should own his own four-star restaurant instead of working in her little bar, had a fierce temper, a quick laugh and a loyal streak a mile wide.

  When she’d placed an ad for a cook on the bulletin board in Uni’s Temple behind Marelli’s Trattorria, she’d never expected a monaciello chef from the famed Etruscan banquet hall, The Cellar, to apply for the job. She’d hired him immediately and given him carte blanche on the menu.

  A branch of Etruscan Fata, monaciello were wizards with food, infusing dishes with flavor that was only partly magical.

  Fred’s defection from The Cellar had created such a stir among the Etruscan community that her business probably fared better than it should have as a new establishment. But in the two centuries since the Etruscans had settled in Reading, monacielli had only worked in The Cellar. That he’d come to work for her was a major coup on her part. But it had made others look at her more closely for a while. It had made her that much more careful about passing herself off as a half-human linchetta. So far, no one suspected otherwise. Not even Fred.

  Like her regulars Mike and Joe, Fred tended to be overprotective of her. And even though he stood less than five feet tall and looked like a miniature version of a certain male Food Network chef with his dark curly, receding hair and round body, the man could handle a knife with deadly skill.

  Right now, he was staring at Teo like he was a dead fish on his cutting board.

  She could practically smell the testosterone filling the air.

  Stepping slightly in front of Teo, she said, “I’m sorry, Fred, why don’t we call the dealer now to have him take a look at the stove.” Then she turned to Teo, who wore a bland expression on his face. “Teodoro de Feo, Frederico Salano. Fred runs the kitchen. He’s the best chef in the city.”

  Fred slanted a quick smile her way before leveling his
hard gaze back on Teo. He took Teo’s hand when he stuck it out but held onto it when Teo would have pulled away. “You’re one of Luc de Feo’s sons, yes? Not a very social creature, are you? Hadn’t seen you at The Cellar since you were a boy.”

  Teo nodded. “My job requires long hours and a lot of travel.”

  “And what is it you do, Teodoro?”

  She turned back to Teo, wondering how he’d answer that one.

  “I design houses.”

  Lacey held her breath as Fred thought that one over. She could tell he wanted to ask more questions, and frankly, so did she. She had no idea what Teo did for a living. Time for that later.

  Fred nodded once then turned to her again. “Took a call for you a few minutes before you came down. Asked for you by name but wouldn’t give me her name.

  Gave a weird message. Said to tell you the flowers bloom in May, see you there.”

  Lacey wasn’t sure if Fred said anything after that because the buzzing in her ears drowned out everything else.

  She only realized she’d passed out when she woke and found herself held in Teo’s arms.

  “Hey, babe.” Teo’s voice soothed along her jittery nerve edges and for a second, she wondered if she’d had a dream and was still in bed. Then Fred pressed a cool damp cloth to her head and she knew she hadn’t imagined what she’d heard. “It’s all right, stay still.”

  “Teo.”

  “Shh, sweetheart. Don’t move around too much. Does anything hurt? Your head, your chest? What the hell happened?”

  Good question. Had she heard Fred correctly? Had someone called and used the code words she and Cara had devised years ago? She had to know.

  “Fred.” She sought the little chef’s eyes. She had to see his eyes when he answered her. “Fred, repeat what you told me. Please.”

  She felt Teo stiffen against her and Fred’s eyes narrowed as he repeated the phrase, word for word. Her lungs constricted as Teo’s arms tightened around her.

  It was exactly what they’d planned. Every word. And they’d been so careful. They’d never spoken the entire phrase out loud. They’d planned to use it when they’d finally escaped as a signal to let the other know she was okay.