Seduction In Moonlight

WARNING-Adult content. Over 18 only.

• Author: Diana Castilleja W/A Diana DeRicci
• Publisher: Tease Publishing
• Year: 2009
• All Romance Ebooks
• Barnes & Noble

Excerpt

Chapter One

Moonlight bathed the fields. That was her gift every night to the mortal realm, be it on a star struck, crystal clear night like tonight, or buried behind the tempest of her brother’s will, she shined brightly across seas and continents. It was her honor, and her privilege. Most nights she struck her duty as she had for millennia.

Tonight she knew something was different. There was a scent, a wafting lure that danced between earth and sky on the nighttime breeze. Selene’s travels through the night sky hadn’t changed course in all her time, and she knew it never would. Her place was in the sky, the passions that cocooned herbrilliance reflected in her joyous giving to those beneath her.

Yet tonight, she craved. She craved the beauty of affection, the liberation of adoration. A witness to the same emotional bonds of her fellow brothers and sisters high in the sky atop Olympus, a connection she had yet to experience. An ambrosia she had yet to savor. Tonight she would seek her pleasure. Tonight the knowledge that she would find the freedom she sought consumed her. And she gloried in that epiphany. Fresh. Free. Beckoning.

Traveling easily on the comforting silvered sliver of a moonbeam, she alighted to the cool darkness of the mortal plane.

• * * *

Edmon looked up, searching the night sky as he did every night. The beauty in the natural glow of the stars that sparkled from above always brought him peace. The heat of the day washed from his skin beneath their watchful glint. He drew air deep into his body, enjoying the brisk spring air. The seductive wave of the lake beside him reflected the full bodied glow of the moon, nearly at her peak, the reflection pearl white on the water’s surface with the pure silver of her face. He had always envisioned a woman when he caught sight of this opalescent purity. Bold yet genteel. Fierce yet loving. A woman of pure light.

He spread his arms wide and basked in her glow, feeling her heat even though Edmon knew no such thing existed on the frigid face of the moon. He still felt warmed by her. He always had and tonight, somehow, she felt closer. His skin tingled as though a woman’s touch caressed his skin.

It was a private desire, one he had never shared. A woman who had no face, no name, no body, but he had always imagined her as his. During the day, he was a warrior, a legion commander, but on the rare nights he could spend beneath this beauty, he regained his humanity. And every night he thanked the lovely lady of the moon for the beauty that she bestowed upon him to reinvigorate his waning sense of humanity. When blood and battle tirelessly called on his strength and his duty, he always found a way to return to the mistress of the night, and groveled if only in his heart for the love and attention he would never find in the capacity that he desired--hungered for.

Trees waved in the calm breeze that blew across the flat lands, bringing the scents of spring to him.

And one other that had nothing to do with the land surrounding him.

He turned.

“How…” he stammered. “My lady, why are you traveling alone on these dark roads?” Not a sound had alerted him to her arrival, neither chariot nor horse, yet there she stood in calm contemplation, regarding him. She was ethereal in her beauty. Rich brown hair, as dark as his charger’s mane sat piled atop her head in thick roping braids, woven through with pearls and pure stones. She stood as tall as he, but had a swaying reed like beauty in her body as she moved, walking closer to him.

He searched in both directions. They were alone. Out of reflex and a caution that was as ingrained as his own voice, he wrapped a hand around his sword. She never flinched.

The tunic she wore draped to the ground, silver and white with threads that glittered in the moon’s white light. Never before had he seen a fabric of its like. It seemed to create an aura of silver light around her frame, the tie at her shoulder flowed behind her, drifting on the wind like a silken sail. A single silver arm cuff graced her sleek build about half the way above her elbow, reflecting yet more of the moonbeams from overhead. She was a woman of uncommon beauty, and he swallowed to remind himself to breathe.

“You called to me,” the vision replied, when she drew close enough to speak.

A shiver of sheer want struck his spine at the melodic sound. Gods, he thought. “What kind of magic do you have to hold sway over me?” he asked, stunned, nearly frozen to the ground by her beauty. Fair skin, lovely bright brown eyes and a mouth that knew how to smile, and did so frequently. She was delicate yet Edmon sensed what he saw was not the truth of the feminine beauty before him.

Her lips lifted in one of those soft smiles, the kind he instantly knew she was naturally capable of.

Nearly ruby red lips, which he already craved with nothing more than a few words spoken between them. Soft and full, they drew his attention like the nectar of the sweetest flower to the bee.

“I hold no magic, my dear warrior. It is you who summoned me from my palace on high.” She lifted her gaze and looked proudly at the moon.

“Goddess,” he managed. Edmon knew he was staring. How could he not?

“Indeed,” she answered, her smile broadening. “Walk with me.” She gave him an enticing look, turning to stroll along the lake’s edge.

• * * *

Selene cast a look at her companion. He was unbelievably handsome for a human mortal. Strong and tall, wide and deep, like the valleys and canyons of the Earth herself. Timeless in his construction. His stride was confident, his expression bordering on arrogant, but she knew it was not the man behind the chest plate that she saw. The man who appealed to her was the one who could walk this same pace, with nothing on at all and she knew he would be aware of that fact. He exuded a confidence that called to her. A man in possession of his own destiny. Did he know how very rare and precious that privilege was, to be in control of your own life in this way?

His hair flowed in a midnight swath down to his shoulders, as dark as the night sky. Selene pulled her lips together, aware that a man, who took after her Olympian brother Helios, bright and fair, would not have appealed to her at all. Her brilliance had bathed mother Gaia for far longer than these mortal beings had been around to enjoy her wonder. This man knew the gift she gave them nightly and reveled in it.

That alone was enough to have caught her attention. Anything less would not have even caught her attention for a fleeting moment. Seeing him now, Selene understood why she had felt so drawn to the mortal realms, had craved when eons had passed without so much as a flicker of starlight to break her nightly progress. This mortal warrior could fulfill something within her, could appease a hunger that until she had seen him, heard his voice, she had been unaware of it. Maybe it was because they walked side by side rather than her watching from overhead as she had done since the beginning of time. Maybe it was because he saw her as a woman and perhaps knew what he saw appealed to him, just as he appealed to her.

She only knew she planned to find the answers to these quandaries before the end of the full moon.