Chaining the Beast

By Desiree Acuna

She is just trying to survive from one day to the next. Leon might be in prison, but he has a long reach. She had to quit her job and move to a small town where she’s opened a beauty parlor—that does a little of everything—including tattoos.

The stranger that comes in wanting one is just too handsome, too tempting for her to keep her wits about her.

That makes her an easy mark, because Baliel is an incubus. And it’s almost too late for her to save herself by the time she realizes what she’s been caught up in.

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Concepts Publishing
• Release date: Jul 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215804148

Book preview

CHAINING THE BEAST

By

Desiree Acuna

( c ) Copyright by Madris DePasture writing as Desiree Acuna, June 2023

Cover art by Jenny Dixon--2022

ISBN 978-1-60394-

Smashwords Edition

New Concepts Publishing

Lake Park, GA 31636

www.newconceptspublishing.com

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

Chapter One

Thomasina ‘Tommy’ Baxter walked briskly, holding her head as if she was focused on watching the sidewalk for trip hazards when, in fact, she scanned both sides and in front of her as she walked—searching forever for the man who’d turned her life into a prison.

She scarcely remembered, now, what it had been like before. What was the point in visiting those times, anyway?

This life was all she had. It seemed likely it was all she would ever have when once upon a time it had seemed every day held promise. Something good was waiting for her—just around the corner.

Or at least the possibility of it.

It had occurred to her, more than once, to wonder why it was that she clung to life so desperately when ‘he’ wanted to take it from her—had tried twice and nearly succeeded.

The short answer was that she just didn’t know.

All she would’ve had to do was to stop fighting and it would have been over. She’d be free of fear, free of the horrible sense of being stalked by a hunter … endlessly, awake or sleeping.

She couldn’t do it, though.

She kept fighting because she wanted to live—in spite of everything.

Even though she thought she’d given up hope of finding any kind of peace and happiness.

Otherwise, she wouldn’t have found a dead end town and set up shop.

A big city would’ve offered anonymity. She could’ve faded into the background.

But then it would’ve been harder to see him, Leon, easier for him to sneak up on her.

She was certain that was how he’d caught her before.

She couldn’t be cautious enough when she was surrounded by so much activity and so many people.

Besides, she’d lived in a mid-sized city her entire life.

She was so out of her depth in the tiny one-horse town she’d moved to, that in and of itself made her miserable.

It was strange considering she’d never really been able to blend in, been a part of any crowd at all, that she should feel isolated.

But she did.

She supposed it was because there were no familiar faces.

She’d known so many people before, recognized faces, remembered little tidbits of a passing acquaintance with them, that she missed the familiar.

And maybe the familiar of the city itself?

It certainly wasn’t much of a challenge becoming familiar with the new town.

And yet … she hadn’t seen the buildings, houses, and streets so many times over decades that she knew them.

Despite all of that or maybe because of it—or maybe from none of it—the stranger that passed her on the street and nodded politely almost made her walk right into the sign pole beside the sidewalk.

It was almost like a body slam—the impact to her psyche.

The face was … so totally symmetrical, such perfection, that it looked almost alien. In point of fact, she didn’t realize until much later that that was what was so stunning about his face, so appealing—beyond everything. He had a very nice mouth—not too narrow or too wide; firm lips that were thin and hard, but not too thin; a long, perfectly straight blade of a nose that ended in the aquiline flare of nostrils that almost suggested a supercilious sneer—and wide spaced eyes an icy shade of piercing blue.

The bone structure itself was appealing.

His face as a whole was stunning.

Capping that was a thick, glossy mane of hair—just a little longer than typical, faintly wavy, and blue-black.

His complexion was dark, but with reddish tones rather than the yellow more typical of olive complexions.

His body was as perfectly symmetrical as his face despite the fact that he appeared to be well over average in height and certainly was beyond average in breadth of shoulders.

She wanted to look back at him when he passed so badly she almost slammed into the sign. Fortunately, she detected it in time to merely ‘glance off’ of it.

But the ping of the minor collision brought an uncomfortable ‘glow’ of embarrassment to her cheeks and encouraged her to scurry on her way instead of glancing back for one last look.

It was almost as embarrassing that she was all atwitter as if she’d encountered a celebrity of some kind.

Which he wasn’t.

She felt no recognition at all and she knew she would have if he’d been a celebrity—politician, sports hero, or silver screen idol.

She might have been living in the back of beyond—now—but she certainly hadn’t always.

She was so preoccupied with the drop dead gorgeous stranger that she almost walked right past her house.

Well, did.

But she only missed the walkway by a hair and she ‘recovered’ by heading to her mailbox as if she’d planned that all along.

Just in case anybody was watching.

There were a couple of bills and a fistful of sales papers—nothing exciting or particularly disturbing. She gathered it up and headed to her door, wondering who in the world the stranger was and what he was doing in a one horse town like Delany.

The ‘glow’ vanished abruptly at that thought.

A wave of dizziness followed swiftly by a wave of weakness hit her as she fit her key into her lock and it struck her that he might have a very unpleasant reason for being in town.

* * * *

Hunger wafted through