Blackthorne, Fiona - Moonstruck [Blue Moon 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Read online

  Blue Moon 1

  Moonstruck

  Ava Bell takes a cottage in the secluded town of Blue Moon, Maine, hoping for peace and quiet so she can finish her dissertation. What she gets are three brothers—Robert, Declan, and Sean Molineaux—who tempt her body, heart, and soul, but who also keep a dangerous secret.

  When an old darkness born of an old hatred threatens Ava, she must turn to the brothers she cannot resist but cannot trust. As uncanny coincidences become deadly attacks, Robert, Declan, and Sean fight to protect the woman that they love, the woman meant for them.

  Every hour brings her closer to the heart of the fatal secrets of Blue Moon, and every minute with Robert, Declan, and Sean awakens in her a fiery need that burns through all her defenses.

  Can Ava discover the answer to a centuries-old mystery before its dark consequences destroy her one chance for happiness?

  Genre: Ménage a Trois/Quatre, Paranormal, Vampires/Werewolves

  Length: 58,213 words

  MOONSTRUCK

  Blue Moon 1

  Fiona Blackthorne

  MENAGE EVERLASTING

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

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  A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

  IMPRINT: Ménage Everlasting

  MOONSTRUCK

  Copyright © 2012 by Fiona Blackthorne

  E-book ISBN: 1-61926-332-7

  First E-book Publication: February 2012

  Cover design by Les Byerley

  All art and logo copyright © 2012 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  PUBLISHER

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  Letter to Readers

  Dear Readers,

  If you have purchased this copy of Moonstruck by Fiona Blackthorne from BookStrand.com or its official distributors, thank you. Also, thank you for not sharing your copy of this book.

  Regarding E-book Piracy

  This book is copyrighted intellectual property. No other individual or group has resale rights, auction rights, membership rights, sharing rights, or any kind of rights to sell or to give away a copy of this book.

  The author and the publisher work very hard to bring our paying readers high-quality reading entertainment.

  This is Fiona Blackthorne’s livelihood. It’s fair and simple. Please respect Ms. Blackthorne’s right to earn a living from her work.

  Amanda Hilton, Publisher

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  www.BookStrand.com

  DEDICATION

  For my father, K.C. Khemka, who always believed in me.

  Thanks for the bluebird feather, Dad.

  MOONSTRUCK

  Blue Moon 1

  FIONA BLACKTHORNE

  Copyright © 2012

  Prologue

  It was midnight, and everything waited.

  A grandfather clock ticked loudly in a cold and empty stone mansion as the damp, chilly air blew in from over the ocean.

  Weak, silvery moonlight filtered down through the barren branches of the forest as shadows slipped between tree trunks and pools of light in a macabre game of hide-and-seek.

  In a cottage by a white farmhouse, a young woman slept, huddled under faded handmade patchwork quilts. The door to her bedroom slowly closed, though no hand or breeze touched it.

  A wolf howled, joined by other howls, as if their eerie keening could drown out the sibilant whispers of the wind through the trees.

  Chapter 1

  When she walked out of the woods, Robert Molineaux wondered for a moment if he was losing it, if she was one of Them. Then, he realized that the young woman was living flesh and blood, and that he couldn’t stop staring at her.

  The cold, wet November wind, full of salt, blasted across the lawn, stinging his cheeks and stirring the heavy, damp locks of the woman’s hair. She stood so still that for a moment, his suspicion flared again, only to be put to rest by the sight of her jeans, dingy beige parka, and muddy hiking boots…and by the adorable way she bit her bottom lip before saying, “Um, excuse me?”

  It took him a minute to figure out where his brain had gone, because all he could think of was her intriguing little face, pale and delicately boned, with a pointy chin, piquant mouth, and the most amazingly deep brown eyes. Her hair was long and wavy, and he couldn’t decide if the color was brown with a natural dark-gray cast, or a dark gray with a brown tint. She was small and slender. He could see that even underneath the baggy parka. No, this girl was not one of Them, even if her beauty did have a haunting, otherworldly cast to it.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, taking a tentative step from the woods onto the dead winter grass of the lawn. “I don’t mean to trespass. I’m just lost.”

  “Well, now you’re found,” his brother Declan said gently, stepping forward.

  “Don’t worry,” added his youngest brother Sean, grinning. “We don’t bite.”

  “That’s a damn lie,” Declan whispered under his breath, but so low that only the supersensitive hearing of his brothers would catch it.

  The woman’s lips twitched, as if she had thought about smiling but was not sure enough of the situation—or of them—to do so. She stayed where she was at the edge of the lawn, the tall green and gray pines and ghostly barren birch trees looming darkly behind her.

  Another blast of wind punished them, and Robert glanced up at the heavy clouds, pregnant with rain. Right on the ocean’s edge where they were, it was not cold enough yet to snow, but it was cold enough to be raw, chilling one right to the bone. The woman huddled up slightly inside her coat and squinted against the wind. He realized she must be freezing, and strangely, he felt the urge to wrap her in his arms, to warm her and care for her. Almost involuntarily, he began to cross the lawn toward her.

  “Why don’t you come inside?” he said as kindly as he could, trying to keep the possessive growl out of his voice. “You can warm up, and we can give you directions.”

  Her eyes flicked nervously from him to his brothers, and her s
cent turned from a natural floral sweetness to a sharp cinnamon bite of mistrust.

  “N–no,” she said, taking a step back as he neared her. “That’s okay. Really. I’m fine. If you could just show me the way back to the main road, I can find my way from there. I know I can’t be that far. I just lost the path. Or, maybe I took a wrong turn.”

  “How long have you been walking, honey?” Sean asked, his voice full of concern as he came to stand by Robert.

  “Um.” She hesitated, biting her soft lower lip in a way that made Robert want to nibble it, too. “What time is it now?”

  “Almost four o’clock,” Declan replied, joining them and moving to be a little closer to her.

  Her eyes widened in surprise. “Four o’clock? Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.” Declan chuckled, surreptitiously taking another step toward her.

  She frowned. “I…I’m confused. I guess I don’t understand. How…oh…oh, never mind. It doesn’t matter. I should get going back, though. So, if you could just…”

  “You’re not walking back anywhere,” Sean said firmly. “It will be pitch black soon. Night comes early in Maine in the fall.”

  “I know that,” she replied somewhat tersely, lifting her chin. “I grew up in Portland.”

  “This isn’t Portland,” Sean said. “Blue Moon is no place for a woman to be walking around after dark.”

  Robert could smell the desperation rolling off Sean and Declan, the arousal mixed with the fear of this woman walking alone in the woods or on the road after dark. Hell, he could smell himself and the desire that was simmering in his veins, stirring his cock and flooding his mind with images of her, pale and naked, on his bed. But mostly, he felt fear at the thought of her, fragile and vulnerable, left to the night and to Them.

  “Come inside,” Robert said, putting all the force of his personality into his voice. The words rang and echoed in a range that was just outside normal human hearing, but the woman started and sucked in a quick breath, her unconscious mind reverberating with the command.

  Declan gently put his hand on the back of her arm and gestured for her to walk toward the house. The smell of her fear intensified, and it stirred the deepest primal instincts within Robert. He wanted to reach out and pull her into his arms, to inhale the scent of her hair and comfort her. His conscious mind told him this was ridiculous, that he had only seen her for the first time three minutes ago. His heart, however, had settled into a new, complex, and thrilling rhythm, leaving the old simple pattern of heartbeats behind forever.

  Could she be the one? he thought wildly for a moment. Could the old legend be true?

  Catching each of his brother’s eyes as they followed the woman across the yard to the sprawling stone mansion, he knew that they were thinking the same thing, and for the first time in his 36 years, he felt hope.

  * * * *

  Ava Bell, “ABD,” or ‘all but dissertation,’ was no fool. Yes, it was about to storm. Yes, it was getting late and dark. Yes, she was hopelessly lost. But no, it was not smart to go into a house with three strangers, even if they were mouthwateringly gorgeous.

  She compromised with herself since the men didn’t seem like they were going to take no for an answer. She would go inside the house with them, but she’d stay in the entry, near the door. That way, she could bolt if she needed to. It wasn’t that she was exactly afraid of them that made her paranoid. It was precisely because she wasn’t afraid at all.

  And that scared the pants off her.

  She tried to remember when she had become afraid of men. For the umpteenth time, she wondered if it was because of her stepfather’s alcoholic mean streak, or the angry, cruel high school boyfriend, or the controlling, domineering college lover who had needed a restraining order to get the point across to him that it was over. At least in grad school, she had been smart enough to stay single. There were enough chauvinistic, misogynistic assholes in the “progressive” world of professional academia that she had all she could handle both emotionally and professionally. The last thing she needed or wanted to do was spend any more time than necessary talking with three men who seemed ready to beat their chests then pose for the cover of a romance novel.

  Looking up at the huge stone mansion as she drew near, Ava realized it was extremely old. She guessed it was eighteenth century or even earlier, with its gray and grim façade, tall windows, and clusters of chimneys. The windows on the ground floor glowed faintly golden from light that seemed to come from deeper inside the house. Something about the shadows just at the edges of the windows made her shiver with an unnamable dread.

  “Are you okay?” asked the first man who had spoken to her when she came out of the woods. Bachelor Number One, she thought to herself with a silent cynical laugh. This bachelor was over six feet tall, with thick black hair, naturally dark olive skin, and broad shoulders. It was hard to tell anything else about his body because of the leather barn coat that he wore. Still, that was plenty to go on.

  “I’m fine, thanks,” she replied.

  “You sure?” asked the second one who had spoken to her. Bachelor Number Two. This fine-looking man also stood over six feet tall, with close-cropped lighter brown hair and a face that showed the rugged lines of being exposed to sun, wind, and water on a consistent basis. He wore a jacket that looked like it was meant for an extreme sportsman, probably some unaffordable, technologically amazing outdoor gear from L.L.Bean.

  “Positive,” she said, suppressing the urge to laugh despite her underlying unease.

  “We’ll get you warmed up real quick with a hot toddy when we get inside,” said Bachelor Number Three. This one seemed a little younger than the other two, but not by much, and he certainly wasn’t any shorter than them. His mouth seemed permanently set in a grin, and his hair was black like his one brother, though his features seemed more similar to the second brother’s.

  Brother?

  Brothers?

  She bit her lip as she figured out that these three men were clearly brothers. There was enough resemblance between them to suggest it, but she gasped a little when she realized what had made her recognize their relationship. Their eyes.

  Golden-amber eyes.

  What froze her to the marrow, though, was that she absolutely knew she had seen these eyes before.

  Chapter 2

  The heavy oak front door locked shut with a satisfying bang and clack of the thick iron bolt. Not that inside the house was more cheerful than outside, Declan thought. But at least it wasn’t near the woods, near Them.

  “Here,” he said, reaching out to the woman, wanting to peel the wet coat off her slender shoulders. “Let me take that for you.”

  “No, um, thank you,” she replied nervously. “I’m not staying. I really do have to get back.”

  The agony he felt at the mere thought of her leaving him, of being unprotected, was as unexpected as it was deep. It was like hitting a surprise swell in the boat and landing with a jarring crash on the surface of the water.

  “Well,” Robert said, smiling gently at her, “at least we should introduce ourselves. I’m Robert Molineaux. These are my brothers, Declan and Sean.”

  Declan nodded silently, but Sean piped up, “The pleasure’s all mine.”

  “Oh,” the woman said flatly. “Hello. I’m Ava Bell. I’m over on West Road, if you can tell me where that is from here.”

  “West Road?” Sean exclaimed. “That whole dirt road can’t have more than five old vacation houses along it, and they’re all empty after Labor Day.”

  “They are all empty,” Ava replied with a ghost of a smile. “I’m just staying in one of the cottages for a little bit.”

  Ava…Ava…Ava…all Declan could think of was what a beautiful name that was. Beautiful, ethereal, just like her. He wanted to take her in his arms, gently, carefully, and cradle her against him, feel her wrap her body around his as he sank kisses into her lips and learned her shape and softness. Desire stunned him, rendering him silent, and one glanc
e at Robert showed that he knew his older brother felt the same way. Even Sean’s cockiness was flavored with an eagerness to please that he was pretty sure he had never seen before.

  She drew them to her, like the moon that could pull oceans across the world, like the moon that fired their blood.

  He could hardly dare to ask himself if she could be the one. It was too much to hope for, and yet, he had never felt this way before about any woman. Besides, there was the legend. He had never believed in it, but now, he couldn’t help but wonder.

  “Which cottage are you staying in?” Robert asked, a worried note in his voice.

  “It’s just a little guest cottage,” Ava replied evasively. She seemed so skittish about revealing anything about herself, and Declan suddenly found himself wanting to know why. In fact, he found he wanted to know everything about her, from the shape of her toes to the books that she liked, to the way she tasted.

  “You mean the White Farm cottage?” Sean demanded anxiously, and the name finally stung Declan’s brain back into working order.

  “You’re staying at White Farm?” he echoed, trying to keep the overpowering worry for her out of his voice.

  “Uh, yes,” Ava replied, eyeing them as though they had all lost it. Well maybe they had. Maybe they had all lost it to her. “Look, I just need directions back to the main road. I can walk from there.”

  “You’re not going back there,” Robert growled, and Declan shot him a warning look to tell him to keep the animal out of his voice.