an excerpt

Gulietta

Summary

One explosive encounter with an immortal shapeshifter finds seductive Gulietta embracing her powerful, magical destiny...and so much more...

Kansas City-raised Gulietta. Fathered by a far more magical species than human - the identity of whom her mother never shared. Sexual needs and desires not fully understood. Secrets abound.

Gulietta’s uneasy reality is tossed onto its head when a handsome stranger enters her life and whisks her away. Games played, lives and freedoms hang in the balance. This ain’t Kansas City, and Gulietta isn’t Dorothy, but she may be the hope for the future of the Sabine females in Antius’s court. Will she also be the savior of the immortal shapeshifter, Quintus–apparently the one man who has the ability to satisfy her in so many ways? Or is he the only one? The biggest prize in this game may be love...once all the secrets are finally revealed…

Excerpt

Satyr's Court, Reate, Italy

The wide braided red leather collars were a striking improvement over the boring black of her father's court. The father of whom she'd only recently learned the identity.

Red marked the members of her newly-appointed attendants. Gulietta rose from the green vine-entangled cedar throne. She pulled a succulent purple grape from the wooden tray and popped it into her mouth. As she bit down, sweet juice flooded her mouth. Gulietta's gaze drifted around the courtyard as she stepped off the dais. Dancing stopped. Flute music and drums ceased as all eyes turned to her. Who would have thought this was where she would end up? Who could have known that her curiosity about the big black door in the photograph would lead to her destiny? This was certainly not what she had envisioned for herself.

She brushed a hand down the curve of her naked hip. She pushed her long black hair over her shoulder. In this land, behind the black door, clothing was optional. An afterthought.

"Continue with the music," she said as she strode across the garden, elves and fairies and lesser satyrs of the court making a path. Immediately the sound of music filled the courtyard once again. The fauns and nymphs began to dance, twirling and swaying to the light, cheerful music.

"Take care, Gulietta. You push me too far."

The smile was wiped from her lush lips. Her horns tingled. A rack of antlers, feminine, yet deadly. She whirled around to face the tall Roman who shadowed her every move.

"Your duty is finished, Quintus. You have returned me to my supposedly rightful place. You have done your duty to my father. Why are you still here?"

Without warning he fastened his hand to her slender hips and yanked her toward him. Too close for her to drop forward and use her horns. She beat her hands against his iron-hard chest.

"Let me go. I've let you bully me as much as I'm going to."

He shoved her backward until her back was against a stone wall. Only then did he remove one hand from her waist and fist it into her hair, effectively stilling her movements.

"Bullied you? I've protected you. I've guided you." He leaned closer until his hot breath brushed across her ear. "I've claimed you. And now you belong to me, Sabine woman. Your father promised you to me if I brought you back safely."

She struggled against him to no avail. That was the whole problem. Gulietta was a duty and nothing more. A means to an end for Quintus. More than a thousand years had passed since Sabine women had first been the coin of prosperity for Romulus, nothing but a way to populate Rome.

Gulietta beat her fists against Quintus's chest, he arched her head to the side, exposing her neck, taut and bare. His mouth fastened onto her flesh, fangs scraping across and then piercing her skin. She felt the rush of hot connection as he quelled her anger, forcing her to submit.

His tongue licked across the aching wounds as she felt her resistance ebb away. And yet the blood rushed hotly through her veins. When he finally raised his head and forced her to look at him, his eyes burned like molten steel newly forged in fire. His expression dark and lusty. This man--no, this immortal Roman guardian--a servant to her father--dug deep into her heart. And she hated that she could not find the strength to resist him. She would give anything to not want him--to not need him--as badly as she did.

She felt the familiar pain, a tug of lust that shot straight down to her vulva. She throbbed with desire, a need that thus far she had been unable to deny. And that only Quintus could ease.

"Quintus." His name, an ache of longing. The smell of him. She leaned forward and licked at a nipple, tasting him, then suddenly drove her teeth into his flesh.