Michele Hauf - Tempting The Dark

His calling...

...might be her destruction

When the door to Daemonia is opened, Savin Thorne is reunited with a childhood friend he thought he’d lost forever. After years of captivity, Jett has escaped—along with hordes of monsters streaming into the mortal realm. With Savin, she has her first experience of desire. But their passion can’t save them. It might even be their undoing...

MICHELE HAUFis a USA TODAY bestselling author who has been writing romance, action-adventure and fantasy stories for more than twenty years. France, musketeers, vampires and faeries usually feature in her stories. And if Michele followed the adage “write what you know,” all her stories would have snow in them. Fortunately, she steps beyond her comfort zone and writes about countries and creatures she has never seen. Find her on Facebook, Twitter and at michelehauf.com.

Also by Michele Hauf

The Witch’s Quest

The Witch and the Werewolf

An American Witch in Paris

The Billionaire Werewolf’s Princess

Tempting the Dark

The Dark’s Mistress

Ghost Wolf

Moonlight and Diamonds

The Vampire’s Fall

Enchanted by the Wolf

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

Tempting the Dark

Michele Hauf

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-08214-3

TEMPTING THE DARK

© 2018 Michele Hauf

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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www.millsandboon.co.uk

Version: 2020-03-02

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Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Extract

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

Savin Thorne stood before the weird, wavery, silver-blue vibrations that undulated in the midnight sky twenty feet above the lavender field. He waited. Twenty minutes had passed since he arrived in the beat-up pickup truck he barely kept alive with oil changes and the occasional battery jump. He’d gotten a call from Edamite Thrash regarding a disturbance in this countryside location, north of Paris.

He knew this area. It was too familiar. His family once lived not half a kilometer away. Yet when driving past the old neighborhood, he’d noted his childhood home had been torn down. Construction on a golf course was under way. Just as well. The bad memory from his childhood still clung to his bones.

To his right, Edamite Thrash, a corax demon, stood with his eyes closed, his senses focused to whatever the hell was going on.

Savin could feel the undulations in the air and earth prickle through his veins. A heebie-jeebies sensation. The demon within him stirred. Savin tended to think of the nameless, incorporeal demon inside him as “the Other,” for no other reason than it had been a childhood decision. She was upset by whatever was irritating the air. And when she stirred, Savin grew anxious.

Ed had been getting instinctual warnings about this disturbance for days, and tonight those dire feelings had alerted him enough to call Savin.

Savin reckoned demons back to Daemonia. The bad ones who had no reason or right to tread the mortal realm. The evil ones who had harmed mortals in this realm. Sometimes even the good ones who pushed the boundaries of secrecy and might have been seen by humans or who were trying to tell the truth about their species.

Savin wasn’t demon. He wasn’t even paranormal. He was one hundred percent human. Except for the part about him hosting an incorporeal demon for the past twenty years. That tended to screw with a man’s mental place in this world. But most days he felt he was winning the part about just trying to stay sane.

A sudden whining trill vibrated the air. Pushing up the sleeves of his thermal shirt to expose the protective sigils on the undersides of his forearms, Savin planted his combat boots and faced the sky that flickered in silver and red.

Ed hissed, “Savin, did you hear that?”

“I did. I’m ready.”

Behind them, hefting a fifty-pound sack of sea salt out from the back of a white hearse, Certainly Jones, a dark witch, prepped for his role in whatever might come charging at them.

“Hurry up, Jones!” Ed called. “It’s happening!”

With that announcement, the sky cracked before them. A black seam opened from ground to clouds. From within, a brilliant amber flame burst and roiled. A whoosh of darkness exploded out from the seam.

Savin cursed. That could be nothing but demons. An invasion? He felt the dark and malevolent beings, incorporeal and corporeal, as they flooded into this realm. Cool, hissing brushes across his skin. Wicked alien vocals. The gnashing of fangs and rows of deadly teeth. Tails scything the air. Claws clattering for flesh. And the ones he could not see vibrated a distinctive hum in his veins.