Lora Leigh - Enthralled

“I love you, mate,” she whispered in return. “Forever.”

Holding her close, his face buried against her neck, his body shuddering in the aftermath of pure rapture, Devil felt that final barrier inside his soul give way beneath the emotions pounding against it.

He loved her.

With all his heart, with his scarred soul and the darkness that would likely too often return, he loved her.

And he deserved her.

By God, he deserved this woman, this tiny, Irish flame that had burned through his resistance and stolen his heart.

Just as it was whispered around the estate and in the outlying towns. She was the Devil’s due.

The Devil’s soul.

And every dream he’d ever known.

This is for everyone who knows the pain of losing a parent. Dad, you left us far too soon. I hope somebody up there told you that I’ve made my writing dreams come true.

Also, thank you to awesome reader

Jen Cash-Cook for Brynn’s name.

A thousand years ago, on the edge of the Fae lands, a beautiful young peasant woman was bathing in a stream, singing a song of gratitude for the golden sunshine and the magnificent day. However, unlike many who play in the daylight, the girl also sang her thanks to the moon, who rested in diurnal slumber and yet heard the lilting melody of the girl’s voice and was pleased.

But others with darker purpose heard the girl’s wondrous song, too. The king of the land, a cold, hard man who beat his hounds, his children, and his wife with equal fervor, followed the melody to the stream and found the girl, innocent and glorious in her nudity, and he determined to attack her with his rapacious lust.

The girl pleaded with the barbarian king, which availed her nothing. So then she ran, and she fought, as her father the woodsman had taught her, and she managed to keep the king at bay until the sun dipped below twilight’s horizon, when her strength finally gave out. The king, enraged by her defiance, stabbed her through the heart and left her to die. As the girl bled to death on the bank of the silvery stream, the night wind whispered in her ear that the moon, who had appreciated the gift of the girl’s song, had taken pity on her.

“I will save you from this king, but you must agree never to leave me, and to become a black swan and sing to me every third night for the rest of your life, and swear also that your daughters and their daughters will continue to fulfill this promise.”

The girl, who had lost all hope as her blood pooled near her body and then slipped into the moonlit stream, parted her lips, barely able to speak. “And if I agree, will this gift—this curse—never end?”

The moon reigned alone over the dark night, and thus had her own measure of cruelty, but she knew well that mortals needed the promise of hope to survive, and so she offered this version of the truth in return:

“You and each generation’s eldest daughter will be released from your vow when you meet your one true love and bear him a daughter.”

The girl’s tears flowed as her blood had done mere moments before, when she agreed, and the moon caused a magnificent fountain to appear on that very spot. In the center of the fountain, a perfect black marble statue of the beautiful young woman, one hand held out to a swan, now stood as eternal monument to the vow.

From that day until this one, a black swan swims in the fountain and sings her songs of loss and longing every third night, while the moon smiles her icy smile. This woman who is also a swan plots and plans for how to avoid falling in love and how to never, ever bear a daughter who would be forced to carry the curse. But the moon’s pull is strong, and she is determined not to lose the lovely swan song, so these plans have never succeeded.

Not yet.

Bordertown, a place where the Fae, demon, and human worlds intersect, hidden in the heart of New York

Sean O’Malley ran into the burning building, dodging and weaving around the rest of his colleagues who were running and limping out of the inferno before it exploded or completely collapsed, either of which was due to happen any minute.

“O’Malley, get your ass back here,” his boss, the new Bordertown fire chief, shouted.

Sean ignored him, just as he’d ignored the previous fire chief. He’d heard something in that building. Maybe it was only a cat, and no matter how much it tore him up inside when he found evidence that a helpless animal had lost its life in a fire, he knew the rules: Firefighters didn’t risk their lives for pets. Not that he usually gave a rat’s ass for rules, and he’d certainly bent a few to save pets in the past. They all had.

But it hadn’t sounded like a cat. It had sounded like a baby.

Zach, the closest thing to a friend Sean had on the crew, planted himself in front of Sean, blocking his path to the door.

“Not this time,” Zach shouted.

They had to be loud to be heard over the roar of the flames that were greedily consuming the old building. Too much rotten wood, too little upkeep—it would be easy to blame that, if this hadn’t been the fourth building in as many nights hit in exactly the same way. They had a serial arsonist on their hands.

“I heard a baby. Get out of my way, or I’ll go through you,” Sean said, deadly calm and deadly serious.

He didn’t have time to delay. There was no way he was taking a chance on giving up on a baby who needed him. Not now and not ever—not ever , but especially not today, after his mom’s bombshell.

Zach was a couple of inches over six feet tall, but Sean was bigger by a few inches and probably by forty pounds of muscle, not to mention his extra abilities. Zach didn’t hesitate; he moved out of Sean’s way, fast, as soon as he heard the word baby . None of them understood how Sean could hear things that nobody else could, but they knew it was true. Enhanced hearing was one of his super powers, they liked to joke.

They also all knew that he could withstand temperatures that would have fried most of them alive. They didn’t joke about that one. He’d caught more than one of his colleagues watching him warily after they’d fought fires, their expressions similar to how he imagined he’d watch a feral wolf. They weren’t all that far off.

They knew he was different, but they didn’t know how different. Sean didn’t tell anybody he was half fire demon. Life was easier that way. Even in Bordertown, where demons were as common as low-caste Fae or shady humans, fire demons were considered to be the worst of the worst: crazed berserkers and the most terrifying of predators. His abilities already isolated him enough from the rest of the tightly knit crew. He didn’t need to add to it.

All of this ran through his mind in the few seconds it took for him to hit the building doorway running. He burst into the conflagration, head down and racing for the spot where the sound had originated. Second floor, to the left. He barely paused at the staircase, but the view was enough to make a sane man flinch. A roaring wall of orange-red flame screamed toward him, and the heat knocked him back a couple of steps. His skin felt the heat, even under his suit, and when the fabric started to melt off his body, he discovered that his protective gear wasn’t rated anywhere near high enough.

Whatever accelerant the arsonist had used wasn’t purely chemical; no way would a normal fire be burning that hot. Magic was involved here. In fact, it would take black magic to push a fire to these levels. Sean could feel his eyes flaring as his pupils contracted, and he knew that anybody watching him would see the irises turn deep blood orange in color and start to glow.