Kiss of the Succubus

By Tammy Calder

“Those woods aren’t fit for man or woman. Especially woman.”

Ranger Lys is on a mission to gather a rare herb that could save the prince. But she has a second, more personal goal: to seduce Dellen, the handsome but frustratingly stuffy knight she is travelling with. She has almost given up on him when the pair reach a lonely farmhouse on the edge of a wild, foreboding forest—a forest rumoured to contain the herb they seek.

Lys is sure something strange waits beneath those boughs, but the last thing she expects is to encounter is an elven warlock and his pet succubus. Can Lys save herself and Dellen from the warlock’s clutches, or will she lose herself to the kiss of the succubus ... forever?

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This novella is approximately 20,000 words. It contains adult content, hot sex and mild BDSM themes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cassandra Page
• Release date: May 5, 2018
• ISBN: 9780648130222

Book preview

Copyright © 2018, Tammy Calder

All rights reserved.

First published in Australia 2018 by

Cassandra Page

The right of Tammy Calder to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her under the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.

This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, recorded or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Cataloguing-in-Publication data available from

the National Library of Australia www.nla.gov.au

ISBN: 978-0-6481302-2-2

Cover design by Cassandra Page

Cover image: © Shutterstock / Kiselev Andrey Valerevich

Editing by Lauren Clarke

Also by Tammy Calder

Possessed: His Ghostly Game

You may also like:

The Lucid Dreaming duology by Cassandra Page

Lucid Dreaming

False Awakening

Contents

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Acknowledgements

One

Lys leaned against a fencepost, tension thrumming through her. Relax. She tried to ease her rigid shoulders.

It didn’t work.

The farmyard seemed typical enough. To one side was a sturdy stone building, one storey but with a canted ceiling that would allow for an ample attic. A blocky barn made of painted timber had doors thrown wide to reveal a shadowed, dusty interior. A fenced paddock contained an ambling, fat pony with a scruff of mane and a speckled hide. There were even a pigsty, a cottage garden, and a milking shed complete with a lowing cow. It was the very picture of a productive farm.

None of these things were what bothered her, what made her fingers itch to pull the longbow slung across her back, pluck an arrow from her quill and draw. No—it was the forest beyond the edge of the tilled farmland. It grew thick and wild, climbing through, around and up the foothills of the mountain.

And that made her even more uneasy, because she was one of the King’s rangers. No forest bothered her. She owned the shadows. So why did the sight of them fill her with anxiety?

Pursing her lips, she pulled her gaze from the looming shadows, turning back to her companion. At the sight of his tall, armoured frame and eyes both bright and dark, something unknotted in her chest.

Dellen stood beside the farmer. The two men were of a height, perhaps half a foot taller than Lys herself. Neither of them was a stranger to physical labour; they each had defined muscles and calloused hands. But there the resemblance ended. The farmer was darkly tanned, with a slight paunch and craggy features.

Dellen was … Dellen.

Lys had known the knight gallant for several years, and—even among his brethren—there was something special about Dellen. Even here in this dusty yard, in the shadow of an untamed mountain, he seemed to glow with his own inner light: his posture straight, his shoulders back, his chin lifted with pride. He was handsome, but there were other handsome knights. It almost seemed to be a job requirement. It was more that his sense of the rightness of his work, and his oath to his god, permeated his being. It allowed those regarding him to overlook the way dust clung to his boots and how his beard hadn’t been tended in the several weeks they were on the road.

Such a waste.

Dellen handed the farmer a single silver coin as big as his palm, and the two men shook hands. He turned towards Lys, his breastplate glinting in the sun, and nodded. Returning the gesture, she strode across the yard to the hitching post by the road that led back towards more civilised lands. Her sleek black mare, Fleet, shifted from foot to foot beside Dellen’s taller grey warhorse, Ava. Clicking her tongue, she pulled Ava’s head up from a tuft of sweet grass. Come on, dove, she murmured, stroking the beast’s velvety nose. There’s sweet grain awaiting you, but you shouldn’t snack. You’ll grow too fat to carry him.

Fleet nudged her in the side, and Lys laughed. Patience, my cheeky one, she told her mare. Let’s get Her Majesty settled first, and then you’ll have all my attention.

A stableboy—a young son of the farmer, if those same craggy features were any indicator—watched with widening eyes as she approached the barn, Ava clopping along behind her. When he reached out a hand, tentative, for the reins, Lys shook her head. But it was Dellen who spoke.

No, son. His voice was warm, despite the admonishing words. My horse won’t be tended by any other hand than mine. His dark-eyed gaze met Lys’s across the saddle as he unhitched the saddlebags and lifted them down. And my companion’s, he added, his eyebrows faintly raised.

Lys smirked back at him, again rubbing the huge mare’s nose. Dellen hadn’t believed she could win over his warhorse, which was trained to be hostile to strangers. You can fetch my mare, if you like, she told the boy. She’s a sweetheart. Just don’t turn your back on her. She’ll take a nibble if she can.

As the boy shot off across the farmyard, Dellen, strangely, blushed.

Do we really need to leave the horses here? Lys asked in a low voice once the boy was out of earshot.

The farmer’s name is Cam. He says that the foothills are too treacherous for anything less sure-footed than a goat. Dellen set the bags down and reached beneath the belly of the horse to undo the saddle. And he says the forest…

Lys frowned at him. The forest? Yes?

Well, Dellen said, swinging the saddle down and draping it over a railing, "it’s just local superstition.