by Danielle Monsch, Cate Rowan, Jennifer Lewis, Jeannie Lin, Nadia Lee, Dee Carney
Noah—she knew his name at last and she liked the taste of it—stood so closely, the caress of his breath smoothed over her cheek. Elle held herself motionless, head cast down, every instinct demanding she dissolve the half-foot separating them. Those same instincts reminded her that she couldn’t go on the way she’d been living, alone and without cheer. It would be so simple to put an end to that old life. Just one little step to cover.
But then she thought of Ana and Drusilla. The bitter Mrs. Tremaine. She hated what they stood for, yet she’d become a mirror image of the trio.
She glanced at the untidy folds at the end of his sleeve and after a tug, lifted his arm toward her. With trembling fingers, she slipped the cuff link into the stitched slot. Two tries later and it held the shirt with proper precision. “There,” she said softly. “Perfect fit.”
“Elle…” Noah used his thumb to tilt her chin up, and she had no choice but to look at him now. To see the desire reflected back at her.
The moment his lips touched down on hers, it was the night of the party all over again. The gentle sweep of his mouth over hers incited a simmering passion that yearned to be stoked. Elle reveled in the feeling. Wanting it as much as she wanted to be with Noah Ashe. Now that she knew who he was, knew that he still wanted her too, she wouldn’t give him up easily.
“I shouldn’t have done that here,” he said, his forehead touching hers. His eyes stayed closed. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m not sorry.” Her voice barely broke a whisper, but this moment was for them and them alone. “If anyone says anything, we’ll just blame it on the mistletoe.”
His eyes opened and he chuckled. The sound was sweet and glorious and what she’d needed from him. It reinforced to her that they were alright and would be. “Dinner with me tonight?”
“Dinner,” she agreed.
Happy for now. Ever glad she’d met this man. Forever sure the ice queen she’d been before would never return.
The End
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About the Author
Dee Carney started her writing career in elementary school, creating amazing journeys starring her friends, where everyone lived happily ever after by page five. Since then, she’s been a waitress, a teacher, a scientist and a nurse.
Today, Dee is a best-selling, award-winning author of over thirty novels and novellas, including those penned by her erotica writing alter ego, Morgan Sierra.
Firebird Sweet
Elise Logan
Ivan Frostbreather is on a quest. A beautiful firebird has been stealing apples from his father’s garden, and Ivan is tasked with capturing the bird and stopping the theft. What he gets, though, is a talking wolf, a terrifying witch, a magical horse, and a prophecy that puts him right in the middle of a struggle for the very existence of the fae.
Now Ivan has to avoid being eaten by the witch, kill the unkillable, and rescue the woman who will be his bride.
And he has less than two weeks to do it all.
Chapter One
‡
Vasalisa spat blood onto the floor. Her cheek throbbed from the hit, and she knew her cheekbone was broken. Her right eye was beginning to swell shut and her knees sang from the pain of hitting the stone floor. She kept her eyes down. She knew better than to meet his gaze.
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know.” Her words slurred because he’d already dislocated her jaw.
“You don’t know, you don’t know. Why don’t I believe you?”
She didn’t move, didn’t answer. There was no good answer. He knew she couldn’t outright lie to him. The fae were forbidden to lie, a law that even Koschei had to follow. Because he had to follow the law, he was well aware of how adept all fae were at lying without lying.
“No answer to that?”
He kicked her in the ribs, his big foot lifting her off the floor and sending her skidding sideways.
She cried out, pain blooming hot along her sides. Her shoulder took the brunt of the skid, tearing her sleeve.
“How is she getting free of the cage?”
That she did know. She wasn’t going to tell him. She closed her good eye, breathing shallowly through her slightly open mouth.
“Answer me, Princess,” he sneered, stalking across the space between them to tower over her.
Vasalisa coughed and her ribs screamed. She spat more blood out. “I can’t answer you if I don’t know.”
Not a lie, but not an answer, either.
He reached down and grabbed her hair. He jerked her head back so he could look in her face.
She didn’t know what he saw, but his face twisted into a nasty smile. He yanked her up by the hair and her vision swam with black currents.
“Well, if you aren’t good for answers, I suppose you’ll have to be good for fun.”
His magic surrounded her in an oily veil, lifting her from the floor. Using her hair to pull her, he floated her to the massive slab of black marble which served as his work table.
She tried to struggle, knowing what was coming, but it was useless. He’d bound her power so she couldn’t use any magic on him. She could fight, she could struggle, she could scream and cry. He liked that. But she couldn’t do anything to change the outcome.
“I do enjoy watching you fight me,” he whispered in her ear.
He gave her hair a last pull before fastening her wrists and ankles to the table. She’d learned early that fighting the magically reinforced bindings only made things worse. The more she struggled, the more they cut into her flesh and the more she bled. The more she bled, the more Koschei liked it.
She took stock while he readied his toys. Dislocated jaw, broken cheekbone and ribs, bruised shoulder, scraped side, possible concussion. The good thing about being fae was that her injuries would heal quickly.
Koschei bent down, his beautiful face inches from hers. He licked the blood off her chin and the corner of her mouth. She shuddered but forced herself not to give him more than that.
“I’m so pleased you are here,” he murmured against her battered face. “You have such spirit. It makes it so pleasant to keep you. Such lovely skin.”
Vasalisa swallowed a whimper as he ran one preternaturally sharpened nail down the center of her chest, slicing open her tunic.
He parted the sides, baring her breasts.
Koschei didn’t want her for sex. Or at least, not intercourse.
He traced one nail over the swell of a breast, leaving a thin trail of pain. She knew he’d sliced her skin open. She knew he’d do worse. For Koschei, pain and blood were more arousing than any mere sex act. He’d slice her skin, break her bones, leave her raw, broken, and bleeding.
The bad thing about being fae was that her injuries wouldn’t kill her.
*
She floated through the dream ether, conscious but not conscious. She knew what the body endured, could feel each cut, each blow, but the magic created distance. Distance she used to protect the c
ore of her self, to keep Koschei from cracking her open and sucking her dry. If he managed to do that, he could take her magic from her and leave her a shell, incapable of more than basic craft.
But Koschei didn’t know about the dream walking, and she wasn’t telling.
Dream walking like hers was rare. Usually dream walkers could only enter dream ether while unconscious, and they had little control while walking. But Vasalisa had complete control, to the extent that she could manipulate the dream and even the other dreamer, though she needed a connection to enter another’s dreams.
It was a dangerous gift, both for the dreamer and the walker, but it was also the thing which kept her whole under Koschei’s torture.
She paused in the ether, reaching out to pick up a golden apple. Masha had begun bringing the apples to her a few weeks ago, when Koschei had begun playing with her in earnest. The apples were sweeter than any she’d ever tasted, the magic in them speeding her healing and shoring up her personal shields.
Vasalisa didn’t know where Masha got the apples, but she was certain whoever owned the trees missed the fruit. When she’d said as much to Masha, the bird had shrugged off her concern, worried more over Vasalisa’s health than any repercussions for theft.
The moment she held the golden apple in her hand, the ether began to swim with new images.
Her body jerked and pain bled into the edge of her awareness. Koschei had cut deep. She glanced down to see the wound open in the meat of her thigh. Walking was going to be a problem.
She lifted her gaze from her leg to find herself facing a man.
Vasalisa took a surprised step back. She didn’t know this man. How had she connected to him in the dream ether?
This man was huge, not just tall but broad. His golden hair hung loose around his handsome face, framing extraordinary silver eyes. She’d never seen eyes shine like these, as if the iris was molten metal. He was gloriously naked. The pale skin of his arms was covered with densely woven dark blue runes and the winding lines of the tree of life. The inked designs glowed with power in the dream ether. They crossed under his collar bones and connected his arms so it appeared he was wearing a sort of mantle of rune-magic.
His broad shoulders, emphasized by the rune tattoos, framed a solid, muscular chest and a torso that spoke of actual work, not the naturally slim build of the fae. His lean hips and powerful thighs served to frame the thatch of bright gold at his groin. She raised her eyebrows at his substantial penis.
Her libido stirred from cold storage, interested. She’d have to be dead not to react to the man in front of her. She wasn’t dead yet. Not as long as the tribute kept coming.
Agony pulled her up short. Koschei was using obsidian blades to peel her skin from her body. The cut in her leg had given him the edge he needed to begin.
Those liquid silver eyes studied her from head to toe, making her aware that her tunic was torn and she showed every wound of her physical body. While she’d been practically drooling, his lack of reaction made his feelings clear.
He watched expressionlessly while the wounds changed.
“Are you real or dream, lady?”
His resonant voice sank into her like balm. She’d never have guessed a man’s voice would soothe her so much. She wanted him to keep talking, distracting her.
“Real enough,” she answered, her voice raspy. “The bodies are real, the place is…between real and dream.”
He cocked his head to the side, his eyes on her expanding wounds.
“Who does this to you and why? What crime warrants this punishment?”
She released a slow breath. The tone of his voice shifted, now cold and empty. It wasn’t soothing now, but hard.
“Koschei. I am his prisoner, though I have committed no crime. He does this because he enjoys it.”
His eyes narrowed, then shifted, landing on the apple in her hand.
“Where did you get that?”
Vasalisa paused. Command rang through the demand, and a very real anger. The apple was the connection?
“A gift from a friend.”
“It was stolen by a bird from my father’s gardens.”
She reached out, offering the apple to him. Her hand spasmed around the apple as Koschei continued his grisly work.
He frowned. “This is a dream.”
“Of a sort.”
“Why, then, does it feel more real than other dreams?”
She sucked in a short, sharp breath. Even in the dream ether, the pain made thought difficult.
“It’s your dream,” she told him. It was true and not true. It was their dream, shared between them by her magic and the bridge created by the apple. “We share the connection of the apple.”
He shook his head. “Keep it. Eat it to heal.”
“I owe you a boon. What are you called?”
“Ivan Frostbreather, son and heir to King Yddris Icemage. No boon is owed for this.”
“And yet, a boon is still yours. I will remember, Prince Ivan.”
“Ivan. What is your name?”
Her eyes went wide, pain ripping along her nerves as Koschei tore into her abdominal muscles, exposing parts never meant to see the light of day.
She gasped, looking down at her torso. The world went gray, narrowing to a pinprick of light. Then nothing.
*
Ivan shot out of bed. Anger and horror mixed with confusion in his belly, making him queasy. He ignored it, getting his body under control. Dreaming of a woman with her viscera spilling out before him had not been restful.
A slight noise spun him to face the window. On the other side of the glass was the bird he sought, shining like firelight. One of his father’s golden apples sat next to it.
Ivan lunged to the window, intent on wrenching it open and grabbing the bird.
Before he could get the sash unlatched, the bird spread its wings and flew from the sill, the apple in its talons.
Ivan watched in disgusted admiration.
The bird was beyond beautiful, but it was also the reason he was on this gods-forsaken quest. It wasn’t enough that it was stealing the apples, which infuriated his father. No, his father had taken it into his head that he needed the bird alive. Captured and in a cage at his court, a trophy for others to admire. No matter how Ivan had argued against it, his father had been set.
Yddris was many things, but chief among them was immovable. Only extreme obstinance would have gotten him where he was, and he wore it like a badge.
The court seer had told Yddris that only Ivan would have a chance at completing the quest which would stop the theft of the apples. More precisely, she’d said only the one who had taken something from the bird could complete the quest. The first night he’d stood watch and seen the firebird at the apple trees, Ivan had nearly managed to catch her. Instead, though, he’d been left with a single long tail feather as proof of the creature taking the fruit. Something he now regretted. Deeply.
But…there was the woman. This woman who appeared in his dreams holding an apple from his father’s tree. There was something there, something beyond his disgust at what was being done to her, something more visceral than simple compassion. He’d had to fight himself so he didn’t touch her, and that was strange.
She hadn’t been beautiful. Or, maybe she was and he just couldn’t tell. Even her hair had been so matted with blood he hadn’t been able to determine the color. The wounds had been an insult to a beautifully formed body, though he’d been able to see only patches of skin through the ruined clothes and the blood and gore. The one eye he could see had been intensely, fiercely blue. In that single eye he’d glimpsed determination and a burning will. This was no weakling to bow under the first blow.
The fading bruises and healing cuts in places where her skin was clear made it obvious that this Koschei had worked her over before.
Ivan set his jaw. If she was real, he would find her. He would kill for her.
He didn’t know why, but he knew it was truth.
Grimly, he dressed for travel. His father had given him one quest, but Ivan had another of his own.
He wouldn’t fail in either.
Chapter Two
‡
It had taken him a solid two weeks of magic-assisted travel to get this far. Every night added to his frustration and impatience. He’d dreamed of the woman twice on the journey. The first time she’d thanked him for the apples. She’d been veiled and draped, and gone before he could even ask her name. The second time was another round of torture. She smiled at him and asked him to talk to her, she liked his voice. He hadn’t known what else to do, so he’d sung to her. Sung as he’d ridden across the land, sung to her until the torture took her under and she vanished from the dream. She hadn’t been back, and he was certain it was her choice. It infuriated him.
That he couldn’t reach her. That he couldn’t save her. That he didn’t even know who she was.
He drew a breath and released it. Thinking of her didn’t help now. Right now, he had a job to do.
He picked up his sword. The silver runes shone against the blackened steel as he slid it into the sheath. He took a moment to gather himself before dressing to meet with the Queen of the Rus for the first time. He aimed to look both dashing and intimidating.
Ivan strapped his sword belt into place, reviewing what he knew of the Russian court.
His father didn’t think much of Queen Alina. She was a farseer, a strong magic but not of much use in battle. When Ivan had asked about the queen, Yddris had barely contained a sneer. According to him, she ruled by whim, with no order or discipline. Weak and ineffectual, a placeholder on the throne waiting for her niece to come to power.