Mystical Seduction: full-length sensual paranormal romance (The Protectors)

• Dedication
  
• Prologue
  
• Chapter One
  
• Chapter Two
  
• Chapter Three
  
• Chapter Four
  
• Chapter Five
  
• Chapter Six
  
• Chapter Seven
  
• Chapter Eight
  
• Chapter Nine
  
• Chapter Ten
  
• Chapter Eleven
  
• Chapter Twelve
  
• Chapter Thirteen
  
• Chapter Fourteen
  
• Chapter Fifteen
  
• Chapter Sixteen
  
• Chapter Seventeen
  
• Chapter Eighteen
  
• Chapter Nineteen
  
• Chapter Twenty
  
• Chapter Twenty-One
  
• Chapter Twenty-Two
  
• Epilogue
  
• Thank you for reading
  
• Books in the Protectors Series:
  
• Other books in Available on Kindle:
  
• About the Author
  
• White House Gardener Mystery Series
  
• Copyright
  

For Jim

Lady Czarina dragged a colorful green scarf from a small
pocket in her decades old skirt and used it to wipe the puddles of sweat from
her neck. She felt the heat more keenly this year than the last. The sweltering
July air pressed on her bones like a constant ache.

Old as dirt
, her mother used to complain over a
quarter century ago. Thanks to the endless march of time, Czarina finally
understood what ancient dirt felt like. She likened it to sitting on a
pebble—an irritant that only worsens. Nothing could help Czarina escape her
sore, creaking bones anymore. Certainly not all this damned heat.

With the constantly rising mercury, foot traffic to her
business had slowed to virtually nonexistent, and she still needed to make a
few more psychic readings today before she’d have enough money to pay her
overdue rent.

That’s why Czarina perked up when a tall, finely dressed,
dark-haired man ducked his head and stepped into her makeshift tent. He looked
as if he could afford some of her extras.

“Welcome wanderer,” she said and gave a grand gesture that
set the bangles on her arms jangling. She might be the real deal, a palm reader
with
the gift
, but she knew it was the show and not her talents, kept
her clients coming back.

The man drew closer. She shivered despite the heat. Deep
shadows surrounded him. They danced over his soul like demons around an unholy
fire. A damp, flat darkness pulled on his aura with the same silence that
followed the grieving. His presence weighted the air around him with such force
it made her chest ached.

She drew a careful breath. It’d been a long time since she
last had the freedom to choose her own clients. Anyone with thirty-five dollars
enjoyed admittance into the tattered tent she’d set up on a vacant lot in one
of the forgotten suburbs of Chicago.

The police rarely ventured down this narrow alley. And when
they did, they weren’t looking for business license violators.

“Please, sit. Tell me what you seek,” she said, even though
the last thing she wanted to do was look past the veil and into this man’s
soul.
Stay away from the dark ones
, her mother had always warned. The
haunted ones brought nothing but trouble…and death.

But she couldn’t turn him away. She needed the money tucked
in his pocket, money so rich she could almost smell it. Here in Chicago, a
place that had never been her home, she needed every penny she could get. Just
staying alive was expensive these days.

Never a minute passed that she didn’t wish she were back in
the old country, in Liechtenstein. Back home, surrounded by a large family who
supported each other, she could be choosy. But not here. She had to eat and pay
her rent. And haunted or not, this man was the first new face she’d seen all
day.

The silent man tugged at his sharply pressed pants legs
before sitting in the empty chair, a red velvet upholstered wreck she’d
scavenged from a garbage dumpster. Without saying a word, he dropped the cash
on the silk-draped table that separated them.

She rubbed at the ache in her temples before taking his
hand.

“Tell me what you seek,” she repeated. His palm felt smooth,
as if he’d never worked a day in his life. Not a single day.

She glanced up. His eyes, deep, unreadable dark voids, met
hers. Czarina jerked back. No one should have eyes so empty, so cold. Those
eyes, she’d seen them before in a nightmare.

She dropped his hand. It landed like a dead weight on the
table between them.

“I-is it love you wish to find?” she asked, hoping beyond
hope the heat had baked her brains and had her imagining evil in the eyes of an
ordinary man.

“The Lion.”
The man’s lips didn’t move, yet she’d
clearly heard the words.
The Lion.

The scent of danger filled the muggy air within the tent.
Czarina slowly eased her chair away from the table while her eyes remained
locked on the man across from her. “I don’t know how to find him.”

The Lion belonged to part of a group of creatures who called
themselves
the Protectors
. They looked like men, lived like men, but
they weren’t human. What were they? Where did they come from? No one seemed to
know.

Lady Czarina had cared for one once. An infant found in a
neighborhood very much like this one. Discarded, perhaps. Or maybe he’d never
had parents in the first place.

The tales stored in her family’s collective memory called
these men who weren’t men an ancient race. A race to be respected…
and feared
.

“I cannot help you.” Her voice turned cold. Hard. She didn’t
want anything to do with what this man sought.

Not anymore.

They might look like humans but they didn’t have a drop of
humanity in them. She’d once tried to help the infant she’d raised, to protect
him from his fate. That one, he was the Lion’s friend—the one she called Fish.
He and the others had thanked her by stripping her of everything: her shop, her
livelihood, her dignity.

No more.

Never again.

“You must help me,” the man sitting across from her
demanded. “You
will
help me.”

Before she could protest, he grabbed her neck with his
unyielding hands. Icy fingers like bands of steel squeezed.

“Tell me.” His lips remained pressed together, but his voice
growled in her ears all the same. He shook her like a feral dog would a small
rabbit. “Where is the Lion?”

A vision slapped her in the face.

Bright.

Blinding.

Unbending.

A life flashed before her dimming eyes. Not a prophecy of
her future, but the Lion’s.

She saw the Lion at work in his bar. His heart had long been
closed off to everyone around him, even his friends. And though sexual
yearnings pulled at him from every angle, the Lion denied himself any pleasure.
He’d remained celibate for many years now.

Oh, what a fool you are, Lion!

The long span of celibacy would only make the force poised
to rip his future to shreds that much more powerful.

“Horace West,” the lipless voice crowed, pulling Czarina out
of her vision and back to her very frightening present. A slow smile drew
across the stranger’s face as his hold on her neck began to crush bone.

“No,” she gurgled. She didn’t want this. Never this. They
were all pains in the ass, but they didn’t deserve to—

“The force waiting for him…she’s going to be Horace’s death—”
With no one of use to hear her, Lady Czarina used her last breath to make one
final prediction, one only Horace could change. “She’ll be his death, and he
will be—”

“
Her destruction
,” Lady Czarina’s killer finished for
her.

The house band at the popular nightspot, Club West, thumped
a sensual Latin beat. Horace leaned against the door to his office while
keeping an eye on the dance floor.
His dance floor
. He shifted
uncomfortably.

Young women bursting with life moved sinfully close to their
partners as if the music carried them mindlessly in a ritual that men and women
had played out since the beginning of time. All those luscious feminine bodies
dressed in outfits designed to tease. The array of slinky fabrics did one hell
of a job displaying a banquet of tight delectable curves.

A perky breast peeked out of a beaded top as a woman danced
through the crowd and nearly brushed against him. A beautifully rounded ass,
perfectly designed for a long, sweaty night of sex, swayed not three feet away.

Damn
.

He scrubbed his hand over his face. He’d kept his hungers at
bay for far too long. His thoughts strayed to the sexual more and more often
lately. He’d begun to think of these women as objects first and humans second.

Not good.

Not good at all.

Not that he’d dare act on his cravings.

He couldn’t. All he planned to do tonight or any other night
in his club was watch. And make sure no one did anything stupid.

A high shriek over near the bar jarred him to attention,
followed by another and another.

What the hell?

He’d raced halfway across the dance floor when he realized
the shrieks were laced with giggles.
Down boy
, he told himself,
don’t
go making an ass of yourself. Especially not in front of her.

His newest bartender, Faith Summers, was at the center of
what looked like a cheerleader’s convention. Four perky women jumped up and
down in a circle around Faith, while they laughed and laughed their pretty
heads off.

It was Faith’s night off, but his employees often spent
their free time at the club. They had the pull to get their friends to the head
of the line. The wait outside could last nearly half the night, otherwise.

“I can’t believe you actually went and did it!” one of
Faith’s groupies shouted above the music.

Faith smiled. Even from halfway across the room, Horace
could see the wicked spark that lit his newest bartender’s light blue eyes. She
shook back her shoulder length dark blond hair. Her pearly lips parted. And
slowly, seductively, her pink tongue licked her plump bottom lip and then
arched up.

Good God, she’d pierced her tongue!

Horace’s eyes nearly rolled out of his head. Did she know
the rather sensual purpose of that smooth metal stud? He closed his shocked
eyes and fought away a startlingly realistic image of her running that newly
pierced tongue over his tightening arousal. The cool steel contrasting with her
hot flesh…

Down boy. I’m serious this time.

Faith’s friends shouted with laughter again.

Horace let out a long frustrated sigh and returned to his
spot at his office door. Over the years, his lack of love life was turning him
into a predator, one that lurked in the shadows and stalked the young, the
beautiful, the helpless. He was slowly turning into the same kind of creature
he’d been charged to protect the humans against.

He grimaced and crossed his arms over his chest. Faith and
her friends had moved out onto the dance floor. He tried to ignore her, to put
her out of his over-heated thoughts.

Her zest for life, her explosive happiness only reminded him
of how lonely his life had become over the past few months. No, that wasn’t
quite right. He’d always been detached from the world, apart and yet unable to
completely break free. His friend’s recent marriage had only highlighted the
unforgiving loneliness he’d ignored for as long as he could remember.

Sure, he could smile at probably any one of these beauties
losing themselves to the primal drumming of the music and lure her over to him.
It wouldn’t take much more than a few charming words to entice a woman to his
bed. It wouldn’t hurt if he also happened to mention how he was the owner of
Club West—the exclusive club with an entrance line that often wrapped around
the block in the River North neighborhood of Chicago. Its popularity was making
him filthy rich.

Funny, Horace had never cared about money. Success had
always been his goal. He tackled any challenge set before him, no matter how
steep. He never cared about the recognition he received for his efforts. More
often than not, he shunned the attention.

Not that his desire for solitude mattered much. As long as
he could remember, people had been drawn to him.

Years ago, a one-night-stand—one in a long line of
beauties—had once told him that he had a dazzling force of personality. And
that personality of his gave him the power to weaken a woman’s resolve.