Taken By Storm

By Tori Minard

Falsely accused of adultery and abandoned by her husband, Mercy Wheaton endures her Novus Vitan prison sentence with courage. She knows she’ll never escape.

Used as a test subject in a secret Novus Vitan lab, Demon Kin soldier Storm Kelzenec has lost everything, even his identity, to the madness that consumes him. He knows nothing but the driving need to find and subdue a female.
And now he wants Mercy.
A sizzling hot novella of driving lust, overwhelming passion, and love.

Taken By Storm is a novella of 46,000 words. Tales Of The Demon Kin stories can be read in any order.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Enchanted Lyre Books
• Release date: Aug 10, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311740168

Tori Minard

Tori Minard writes paranormal romance and urban fantasy. When she isn’t writing fiction, she enjoys dancing, gardening, reading about folklore and mythology, surfing the web, and most of all immersing herself in other people’s fiction. Tori has had a lifelong fascination with magic and ritual techniques, and has had years of self-study in these areas. She was born in Alaska and now lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband, son, and micro-dog.

Book preview

Taken By Storm

Tori Minard

Cover by Tori Minard with photos by Vladimir Sazonov, © Curaphotography, © Margojh

Copyright 2014 Tori Minard

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This story is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents are invented by the author or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any similarity to actual persons or events is purely coincidental. All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the author.

Enchanted Lyre Books

Used as a test subject in secret experiments, Storm loses everything to the madness that consumes him. He knows nothing but the driving need to find and subdue a female. When Mercy Wheaton’s captors lock her in with a crazed Demon Kin, she knows he’ll destroy her. But she never imagines he’ll also set her free. Hot romance novella of 46,000 words. Demon Kin stories can be read in any order.

Chapter 1

He needed sex. They wouldn’t allow him to have it. They had put him here, stuck him in a cage as if he were an animal, laughed at him, taken his clothes, strapped a metal cage over his cock so he couldn’t touch himself. Couldn’t get even that much relief from the need that pounded at him, clawed him.

Demanding. All the time. Every instant of every day and night, when he was awake, when he was asleep, until he could hardly eat and sleep eluded him. Until he couldn’t remember his own name.

He leaned against the door of the tiny, gray cell they called his room. He could smell the humans in the equally gray corridor, even though a powerful reek of disinfectant tried to cover it. There were no females in that group. He could smell others of his kind, males, somewhere nearby but not close enough for him to hear. Not close enough for him to speak to them.

Were they being treated the same way?

His fingers brushed the skin at the back of his neck and found the tiny rectangle they had inserted under his skin. Somehow, that little rectangle kept him from knowing their thoughts. It kept him from influencing his captors with his mind. It made him as weak as they were.

He didn’t understand anymore what the rectangle was. He’d forgotten the word, just like he’d forgotten his name. But he knew that if he didn’t have it, he could force them to release him. He could force them to do whatever he wanted. But they’d put it in him when he was unconscious, and now he was helpless against them.

He growled at the thing. It needed to come out. Now.

His fingernails were dull and short, but they were the only weapons he had. He would have used his teeth, except he couldn’t set them at the back of his own neck. So fingernails it was.

He dug them into the skin on either side of the rectangle and kept digging until they pierced his skin. He gritted his teeth at the extra burst of pain, his fangs on full display. Blood flowed from the wounds he’d made.

His skin turned slippery. Still, he kept digging. Farther in. Deeper. Deeper. There—the hard edge of the tiny rectangle. He pinched it between his fingertips and carefully pulled.

A weird electric bolt of painful energy surged through him, as if some invisible person yanked on all his nerves at once. His hand locked in place as he shook all over. His limbs, his whole body, it was all out of his control.

His teeth chattered loudly from the shaking. His legs trembled and quaked until they shook him right off his feet and he landed on the smooth, cold floor of the cell. The electric shocks continued to surge through him, one after another, until he was blind with agony.

Somewhere, a wild animal was screaming and roaring as if it were being tortured. No. It wasn’t a wild animal. It was him.

A burst of cooler air hit his skin. The smell of humans flooded him. They were talking—their voices buzzed incomprehensibly around his screams, but he couldn’t understand what they said. Several sharp stabs penetrated the electric torture that consumed him, their sting barely perceptible.

Blackness washed through him and he sank into it, grateful for its oblivion.

***

To love and obey, as long as ye both shall live. Mercy Wheaton had sworn those words years ago, when she’d married her husband, Cletus, and she’d meant them at the time. She’d never expected it to be quite so hard, though. Maybe she hadn’t loved Cletus, or even liked him much, but her parents had chosen him as her husband and she’d trusted their judgment.

Yet her marriage had led her to this place, the Novus Vita Planetary Prison For Women Number One.

Cletus Wheaton stared across the table at her, his thin lips drawn so tightly they all but disappeared. His small, blue eyes looked even squintier than usual in the harsh light of the prison’s visitor chamber. His gaze traveled over her rough, gray prison gown and the shackles on her wrists with undisguised contempt. She was his wife, yet he’d never had anything but contempt for her.

The divorce is final, he said, a subtle note of satisfaction in his voice.

Not his wife anymore, then. Mercy leaned forward, the shackles bumping the thick, wooden table between her and her former spouse with a loud rattle. Cletus, you know I’m innocent. Why are you doing this?

It’s Mr. Wheaton to you, whore.

I’m not a whore and you know it.

He drew himself upright, puffing out his scrawny chest. You were duly convicted of adultery in a Novus Vitan court of law and that’s good enough for me.

I know this is about Ronilda. You want to get rid of me so you can marry her. That way, he could keep Mercy’s dowry and have Ronilda’s too. The fifteen year old Ronilda would make exactly the sort of meek little wife Cletus would like, and she’d probably pop out a dozen offspring in as many years, unlike Mercy, who seemed to be barren.

Cletus turned red at her accusation. That’s not true. He shoved his chair back and got to his feet. You are a whore. You were nothing but trouble from the day I married you. Always arguing, always with every man in the village sniffing around your skirts. Well, I’m done with you and good riddance.

He spun on his heel and stomped to the visitor chamber door. The male guard on duty opened the door for him, his expression inscrutable. Mercy watched her now-ex-husband leave her without a backward glance, the ugly overhead light shining off the bald spot on the back of his head and his wispy dishwater-colored hair.

She covered her face with her hands. She wouldn’t miss Cletus. Not even for a minute. Their marriage had been a nightmare from the beginning. But she’d harbored a foolish hope that he would see she’d been wrongly convicted and take her out of this terrible place.

Why had she ever thought that? He’d been the one to find her in flagrante delicto with Marcus—never mind that Marcus had forced her. Cletus didn’t care about that.

The female guard assigned to take her to and from the visitor chamber jabbed her in the back with a powered-down shock stick. Time to go, Wheaton-5.

Mercy dropped her hands to her lap. The guard poked her again. She got to her feet, stifling the glare she wanted to level at the other woman. Glaring was considered a minor infraction, a show of disrespect that would probably earn her a real shock with the shock stick. The pain of electric shock was an experience she’d do almost anything to avoid. Once had been more than enough.

The plain ugliness of the visitor chamber gave way to even greater bleakness as they walked—Mercy in the lead, the guard with shock stick at the ready—into the main hallway. Beyond was corridor after corridor of nothing but unadorned concrete walls and floors, stained with decades of use and punctuated only by the occasional metal security door where the guard had to produce passwords so they could continue.

It was vital to maintain a high level of security. After all, they wouldn’t want their whores, female debtors, beggars, and petty thieves to escape. Who knew what awful havoc they would wreak if they ever got loose in society?

Several security doors later, they entered Mercy’s ward. As far as she could tell, it looked exactly the same as every other ward in the prison. Even the prisoners looked much the same, and not only because they wore identical gray gowns. They all had the same shorn heads, the same pale, resentful, frightened faces, the same hollows in their cheeks and beneath their eyes.

She’d seen herself in a mirror once, after she’d been in prison a few weeks. She’d hardly recognized herself. Her luxuriant black curls were gone, reduced to a fuzz of black velvet on her scalp. Her normally mocha-colored skin had turned a weirdly bleached-looking tan, her lips so pale they almost disappeared. She had almost disappeared. This place was toxic to her.

As the last security door crashed into place behind them, a trio of men in the company of another female guard came around a bend in the hall ahead of them. The men had horns on their heads. Long, serpentine tails with furry poufs at their tips swayed gracefully behind them.

Dear Maker. Demon Kin.

Mercy stopped short on a gasp. The guard slammed into her back.

What in hell is wrong with you, Wheaton-5? she snapped.

W-who are those m-men? They obviously belonged to the conquering race that had ripped control of her homeland away from her people. She’d heard of the Demon Kin, but only ever seen one.

About ten years earlier, at the young age of fourteen, a handsome Demon Kin male had turned up in their remote farming community. He said he was adventuring, traveling to faraway corners of the galaxy before taking up his responsibilities in his homeland. That, at least, was what he’d told her. Right before she helped the village elders capture him and hold him prisoner until soldiers could come to take him away.

He’d seemed so beautiful and exotic, and she’d been fascinated by him. But the elders, and their local Teacher, had explained to her how evil the Demon Kin were. Mercy hadn’t wanted to hurt him. But she hadn’t wanted to allow evil to flourish, either. She hadn’t wanted to be a bad girl.

He was the only one of his kind she’d ever seen until now. She’d been hidden away in a jail cell by the time the conquerors had made their way to her small community.

The guard peered around her and chuckled. Those are your new masters. Hadn’t you heard? The Demon Kin are taking over administration of this prison. That’s the new warden and his assistants taking the grand tour. Would you like to meet them?

Mercy flushed at the woman’s sneering tone. No.

No? That’s all right. I’m sure you’ll have plenty of opportunity later. I hear the Demon Kin are short on females. They’re going to have a rousing good time with all you inmates.

Short on females. That was one way of putting it. Their planet, Malefica, had been afflicted with a plague that had wiped out most of their women. The Teachers said it was a judgment sent by the Maker for their evil ways.

While she and the guard had been talking, the Demon Kin had closed half the distance between them and the women. They walked with animal grace, their bodies moving with a slight rolling gait that reminded her of Cletus’s favorite barn cat. All three men had fixed their gazes on the women, as if they couldn’t look anywhere else.

They must be profoundly short on women, if Mercy and the ugly female guard could mesmerize them so easily.

Mercy’s breath grew shallow and fast. Her palms began to sweat. What would they want with us?

The guard laughed outright. Are you joking? What do you think they want? And they’ll get it, too. I hear they get up to all kinds of nasty perversions. She laughed again, maliciously.

She stopped talking as the three Demon Kin bore down on them. The one in the lead, a tall man with hair the color of ripe wheat, stopped in front of Mercy. He stared down at her with an enigmatic smile. She trembled as she looked up at him; he reminded her so much, so painfully, of the one she’d betrayed.

The blond one smiled more broadly, showing the fangs possessed by all Demon Kin. Who’s this?

Wheaton-5, sir, the guard said. We’re on our way back to her cell.

What’s her crime?

Whoring, sir.

Mercy went hot with shame. She couldn’t look at the man anymore, so she stared at the cracked concrete floor instead.

She seems an unlikely whore, the Demon Kin said. He caught her chin and tipped