Ink: Some Like it Haunted

By Ellen Mint

FROM POPULAR ROMANCE AUTHOR ELLEN MINT

From the Some Like it Haunted collection

One bad boy demon for her birthday...

All Layla wanted was to spend her Halloween birthday alone. She never expected a nearly naked man in a red thong to appear out of nowhere in her living room. He calls himself Ink and insists he's an incubus bound to her. Not about to fall for that, she plans to toss him out on his shiny butt when she remembers her friends kept hinting at a late birthday present. Layla fears they got her one hot session with a man built for sex. And it's not nice to return a gift without trying it out...

In this steamy prequel to a paranormal reverse harem series, Layla learns that her entire life has been a lie and that sometimes a man who wants to answer her every desire is exactly what he appears to be.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Totally Bound Publishing
• Release date: Oct 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9781839434426

Ellen Mint

Ellen Mint adores the adorkable heroes who charm with their shy smiles and heroines that pack a punch. She recently won the Top Ten Handmaid's Challenge on Wattpad where hers was chosen by Margaret Atwood. Her books, Undercover Siren and Fever are available at Amazon as well as a short story in the Lucky Between The Sheets anthology. Married, she lives in Nebraska with her dog named after Granny Weatherwax. Her hobbies include gaming, painting, and halloween prop making. The basement is full of skeletons because they ran out of room in the closets.

Book preview

Author

Totally Bound Publishing books by Ellen Mint

Happily Ever Austen

Pride and Pancakes

Rash and Rationality

Some Like it Haunted

INK

ELLEN MINT

Ink

ISBN # 978-1-83943-442-6

©Copyright Ellen Mint 2020

Cover Art by Claire Siemaszkiewicz ©Copyright October 2020

Interior text design by Claire Siemaszkiewicz

Totally Bound Publishing

This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Totally Bound Publishing.

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The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.

Published in 2020 by Totally Bound Publishing, United Kingdom.

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Totally Bound Publishing is an imprint of Totally Entwined Group Limited.

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Some Like it Haunted

A Coven of Desire story

One bad boy demon for her birthday…

All Layla wanted was to spend her Halloween birthday alone. She never expected a nearly naked man in a red thong to appear out of nowhere in her living room. He calls himself Ink and insists he’s an incubus bound to her. Not about to fall for that, she plans to toss him out on his shiny butt when she remembers her friends kept hinting at a late birthday present. Layla fears they got her one hot session with a man built for sex. And it’s not nice to return a gift without trying it out…

In this steamy prequel to a paranormal reverse harem series, Layla learns that her entire life has been a lie and that sometimes a man who wants to answer her every desire is exactly what he appears to be.

Dedication

This book is for all the witches who want a demon bound to them. Tiny red briefs are optional.

Thanks to my editor for helping to shape this mess up. I fear I will never un-train my brain from the Oxford comma. To my best alpha reader Kristi for guiding and cheering me on as I write. And thanks to all my readers who I hope are excited for this spooky and steamy series.

Trademark Acknowledgements

The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

Jell-O: Kraft Foods Group, Inc.

Cirque du Soleil: Cirque du Soleil

WD-40: WD-40 Company

Netflix: Netflix, Inc

Snickers: Mars, Incorporated

Chapter One

Ten minutes to midnight.

Ten minutes to Halloween.

Ten minutes to my birthday.

Ah, shit! I fumbled, my phone slipping to the unfinished staircase. Luckily it bounced, and the three zombie sours sloshing through my system didn’t stop me from catching it.

Careful, Layla! my fellow nursing student Fariah called.

Dana stuck her head out of the back window and shouted for the entire block to hear, "Sorry your gift’s late. But I swear, you’ll love it when it arrives. Ten or twelve times a day until the batteries run dry."

I waved a hand at the girls, which was supposed to insist I didn’t mind the lack of a gift, but that shot of whiskey rebounded and I slapped the mailboxes instead. Sonnofa…! The second curse of the night snapped to growling as I inspected the rising red welt thanks to my drunken buffoonery. Luckily, Fariah—our eternal DD—was already slipping off to shuttle the rest of the group home.

If they’d seen me, they’d have pulled out our anatomy books and come up with a dozen different treatments for ‘drunk girl punches a wall’. Not that I was any better, my soggy brain wondering if I had a wrap back in the apartment while I stumbled up the stairs.

Slapping a wall, nearly breaking a phone and making a colossal fool of myself in front of the hot bartender would probably dim most people’s birthdays. But honestly, compared to past ones, this year’s was almost palatable. It helped that I’d stopped celebrating on the thirty-first when I was six. Last thing anyone wanted was to go to a kid’s birthday party when they could be trick-or-treating.

As I rounded the stairs, checking twice that it was the right floor, I thought back to the bartender I hadn’t been able to stop staring at. He’d had that whole ‘I could model for a surf club’ esthetic going on, complete with thick, medium-length dark hair and olive skin. But what’d had me drooling into my vampire bite were the tats. He’d known how to stylize his body, relying on black ink and the right amount of whorls and lines to draw the eye to all his best spots.

Shame that the rest had been covered by his shirt and the chance of me getting a peek had been negative billion. Don’t try to flirt when there’s a pile of latex gloves in your pocket, is all I’m saying. I can’t even imagine the freaky shit he’d thought I was into.

Seriously?

Sitting before my door was a brown package, which was always supposed to be dropped off with the manager to cut down on theft. Not that it stopped him from refusing to keep said packages and just dump them off if we didn’t collect within an hour. I checked the apartment number, thirteen, then the name on the box.

Layla Leeland. That was mine even if it was written in a super curly script my drunk ass had to turn around a few times to read. I’d bitch out the manager tomorrow… No, that’s Halloween. I’ll bitch him out on November first.

With that decided, I fumbled into my apartment. The door rattled open and smacked straight into the pile of laundry baskets I foraged from. Nursing school really took a bite out of everything in my life. Time, energy, the ability to connect with another human being.

I didn’t even have a cake for my birthday. Most years I’d at least pick up a chocolate cupcake with orange frosting and cram a candle in it. But I couldn’t bother