Fae Lord Redeemed: Real Men of Othercross (Paranormal Fae Romance) (Real Fae of Othercross Book 3) Read online

  Fae Lord Redeemed

  Real Fae of Othercross 3

  Marina Maddix

  Contents

  About This Book

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  About the Author

  About This Book

  He blows her mind in an experiment gone wrong—yet it feels sooooo right!

  After losing her fated mate, widowed leopard shifter Damisa Figueroa has spent the last decade learning how to live without him. Part of that journey entails crossing off items on her very long bucket list. Aside from the usual "Bungee jump over the Sanguine Sea" and "Get kinky in public," the list includes going back to school at Othercross University.

  Imagine her surprise when she goes to class one day and the stuffy guest lecturer magically gives her the most intense orgasm of her life—without anyone else in the packed room knowing! In spite of the sexy fae lord's apologies that it was an accident, Damisa is pissed. When the tongue-lashing she intends to give him turns into a tongue-lashing of an entirely different sort, he suddenly decides they're destined to be together.

  Fated mates? That's just crazy...isn't it?

  Fae Lord Redeemed is the third book in a new series of four fae romances set in the Real Men of Othercross world. If you like fated mates, second chance romance, and opposites attract, you'll love this quick, steamy romance!

  Don't miss the next book in the series, Fae Lord Bewitched!

  REAL MEN OF OTHERCROSS

  Vampire Seduction

  Vampire Claim

  Vampire Temptation

  Vampire Reunion

  Fae Lord Avenged

  Fae Lord Seduced

  Fae Lord Redeemed

  Fae Lord Bewitched

  Chapter One

  The clicking of high heels on marble floors echoed through the high hallways of Othercross University. If the Head of Magical Studies had worn them to catch the eye of Eldan Oberon, she wasn’t having much luck. Considering he had a class on his mind, Eldan probably wouldn’t have noticed if she was on fire.

  “We’re just so glad you’re with us again this year, Lord Oberon,” Angelica Fromme said with her brightest smile. A little extra bounce crept into her step, as if to enhance the parts of her that benefited from it. “The students really look forward to it.”

  “Good, good,” Eldan mumbled distractedly.

  As always, Eldan was engrossed in his notes. He could have taught “Secrets of the Fae: A Practical Survey for the Non-Fae” in his sleep. Backwards, if necessary. That fact wouldn’t have stopped him from spending weeks preparing.

  “In fact,” Angelica went on, sweeping back her mane of hair to reveal an acre of slender neck. “Demand has been so high, we increased the size of your venue.”

  That got his attention. He stopped so fast, his heels nearly left marks on the ancient floor.

  “You have?”

  He was used to an intimate classroom with only about thirty or so students. In truth, the prospect of a larger group sat uneasily with him. But when he met her eyes, he found something far more unsettling.

  Angelica gave him a sly smile. “I’d heard increased size wasn’t a problem for you.”

  So much innuendo hung in her voice, Eldan nearly broke into a dead run. Angelica had been flirty in the past, but this was downright forward. He admired the way the pretty administrator handled her position as Head of the most respected department at OCU, but that’s where his feelings for her stopped.

  “I suppose it’s not.”

  He tucked his chin and resumed his brisk stride. If he had been one to blush, that little exchange would have dragged one out of him. Hardly rebuffed, Angelica continued to indulge in double-edged invitations all the way to Room 138.

  “I know it’s more than you expected—” She caught his gaze again, glinting her green eyes at him. “—but I’m sure you can handle it.”

  She pushed the door open, and Eldan had to brush past her to step over the threshold. That was the least of his worries, as it turned out.

  Room 138 was a far cry from the more intimate classrooms he was accustomed to. Spilling out before him was a lecture hall built to seat two hundred and it was nearly at capacity.

  His jaw dropped slightly, and he set about reorganizing the cards in his hand to cover his surprise.

  “I hope I haven’t presumed too much,” she said, her voice honeying up again. “Tell you what.” She laid a hand on his forearm, drawing his attention up to her face. “Why don’t we have dinner after the session so we can discuss how it went, perhaps lay some plans for the future?”

  Eldan barely heard what she was saying as he studied the scores of eyes turning toward him. “Um, sure,” he said absently, hoping it would finally shut her up.

  However unenthusiastic his response had been, it seemed to satisfy the administrator. She glided over to a seat on the end of the second row and crossed her shapely legs as she settled herself in to watch him work. Just what he needed. An overly solicitous set of eyes right up front.

  Still busy with his note cards, Eldan quietly cursed his cousins for all the trouble they’d caused for him since the night before. He had been hard won to attend a wedding where he was sure they wouldn’t be welcome. Besides, it was the night before his annual appearance at Othercross University, which was important to him. He didn’t want to risk alienating anyone in the department with his cousins’ antics.

  To make matters worse, both Dain and Kellen had chewed up his morning with their troublemaking. At least Dain’s little gambit had worked to settle the longstanding feud that had kept the Oberons at odds with the Murphys.

  The time he’d wasted chasing around Kellen had been its own thing. A welcome distraction from the day of instruction ahead. If he’d known about the up-sizing of his audience, he might have been even more grateful for the diversion. As things were, he took a deep breath and settled back on his heels.

  Eldan was a born teacher. Everyone said so. Not that he took pride in that, necessarily, but he let the balm of his reputation soothe any nerves that had crept up—either from his cousins, the crowd, or the advances of a vivacious instructor. He had this, and he knew it. Now it was just a matter of getting things started.

  Stepping to the center of the floor, he cleared his throat lightly. In an instant, the room stilled before him and what little murmur of conversation there had been died out. It was a curious kind of power to control a room like that—completely independent of any true magic.

  No, this was purely and simply respect.

  Smiling at his audience, he indulged in the notion that it was in fact earned. Eldan Oberon was never one to sit back in queasy pride, but acknowledging a simple fact was something else again. Simple facts were the foundational blocks of his life.

  “Good afternoon, and welcome to—”

  Eldan’s easy start crumbled beneath him as the door to 138 slammed open, unleashing a redheaded hurricane into the room. In a flurry of papers and books, some of which cascaded to the floor, Eldan caught sight of a pair of electric eyes the color of lapis lazuli.

  “Oh, shit, you haven’t started already have you?”

  “I was just about—”

  “Dammit! My bad.” This tall, voluptuous maelstrom of a woman crouched low
to scoop up her scattered notes into a disordered armful, her bountiful cleavage on full display under a tight, low-cut leopard print top. “Sorry, everybody!”

  She offered a kind of genteel wave, then turned to hiss a whispered, “Sorry,” to Eldan.

  “Just find a seat.”

  He tried not to be curt, but if one more curve ball came his way, he would be in danger of actually losing the thread of his day.

  “You got it.” Manhandling her clutch of possessions, she shot him a finger gun, complete with wink and teeth click.

  As Eldan watched, she clambered up the steps toward the handful of empty seats in the back. To his own surprise, his focus kept drawing him to her shapely backside, clad in black yoga pants that accentuated every curve and crease, as she scaled each stair.

  Finding himself doing that was almost as unsettling as anything else that had happened. What had gotten into him? He’d never blatantly scoped out a woman’s ass before.

  With a quick scan of the room, he was relieved to find that everyone was too distracted by their interloper to notice his wandering eye. At last, she scrambled into a chair and thumped down. Shooting him a thumbs up, she settled herself with a gentle rustling.

  Free to get back to the task at hand, Eldan cleared his throat, loudly this time. He even gave a slight what-can-you-do shrug to the first few rows, drawing a low murmur of laughter. Not least of all from the flirtatious department head who had escorted him in.

  “Good afternoon and welcome,” he began again, already gaining lost ground. “As many of you know, my name is Lord Eldan Oberon of the Frostfire clan. It’s been my pleasure to join you at OCU for several years now, to offer demonstrations in the art of the fae and to encourage you…”

  His focus faltered. A hand was stretched high in the back row, flapping and waving for attention. Even before it commanded the center of his attention, Eldan knew exactly who was beneath the wriggling fingers. For the briefest moment, he thought to ignore it, but something told him that would only lead to a bigger disruption.

  “Yes, miss?”

  He pointed her out, letting his “miss” hang, inviting her name. She clearly didn’t take the hint, only leaning forward in her chair to call out.

  “It’s a big hall, Mr. Oberon.”

  “Lord Oberon,” he whispered to himself.

  “We’re gonna need you to speak up. It’s hard to hear up here in the nosebleed section.”

  “Thank you.” If he had been trying to be polite before, his patience was wearing fast. Still, he kicked up the volume a bit. “There are aspects of our magic that are practicable, even among those who are not of our race. Given a room this size, I imagine some of you have seen some of these demonstrations before, but bear with me while I get into today’s—”

  “Speak up!”

  Gone was the waving arm. Instead, the interruption was cried out through a pair of cupped hands. That was enough to break what little thread of endurance he had left.

  “Since you’re having so much trouble hearing in the back, why don’t you join me down here on the floor? Clearly you’re used to the attention.”

  “Perfect,” she called back, oblivious to his insult.

  While she stepped over those between her and the end of the row, Eldan collected a chair and readied it for his victim. Under normal circumstances, he would have thought of his assistant in these demonstrations as a subject, but victim was beginning to feel far more applicable.

  Watching her stride down to join him, he was able to appraise this woman with clearer eyes. Far from a fresh-faced co-ed, she had to be over forty. She was agile, attractive, and most likely a shifter of some kind. Judging by the lithe way she carved a path down to him, Eldan suspected some kind of big cat.

  “What’s the plan?” she asked when she reached him, blue eyes lit with anticipation.

  “A simple demonstration of telekinetic skill,” he said, offering her the chair.

  Forty or not, now that she was close, he was slightly taken aback by her beauty. Not only that, but a waft of scent caught him as she sat down, and he wondered where she’d bought it. Which was strange, because he’d never wondered over perfume before.

  “Please close your eyes,” Eldan instructed. “This is an exercise in touching someone without physical contact. It’s possible you’ll feel a small nudge, but it’s more likely to feel like a light breeze blowing over your skin.”

  He had reached slightly for the word “skin,” having been distracted by the glow of it across her chest. Her low cut top—and the view it offered—found him at a loss as to where exactly to look.

  “I’m going to talk you through this so you can repeat the process back to me when we’re through, sound good?”

  Another thumbs up.

  “Alright. Pay close attention, sometimes shifters have unique difficulties with this kind of work. Ultimately, it all comes down to a particular focus of attention.”

  Eldan placed his hands near her shoulder, beginning close, then moving back a fair distance until the air between them was charged with elemental power. The waves radiating off her were particularly strong, and he had to gauge his distance appropriately to keep the pulses from coming on too strong.

  “Once you’ve selected a focal point, concentrate the power into your palms. Then, reaching across with your core power…”

  When Eldan released a micron of his own power, a sensation like a blast of electricity jolted between them. It buzzed up the bones of his arms, flinging him violently against the wall behind him. With a shattering thump, he slumped to the floor and began to judder and writhe as a paroxysm snapped every nerve ending in his body. If he had been using his energy to touch her, some insane force had somehow snapped it back from her into him.

  As shocking as that was, the ecstasy he was experiencing made it hard to complain—despite the indignity of a guest lecturer bucking around in the throes of passion on the floor of a jammed lecture hall.

  Chapter Two

  This wasn’t what Damisa Figueroa had signed up for. Like, at all.

  When she felt that powerful burst of energy hit her, much like a swirling tornado laying waste to everything in its path, she immediately knew that something was wrong. Of course, there wasn’t much she could do about it. More accurately, there wasn’t anything she could do about it.

  Eldan Oberon’s magic filtered past Damisa’s barriers and slammed itself against her with the brutish force of a runaway train. Before she could even process what was happening, her feet had left the floor and she was flying back toward the wall, her limbs flailing like a rag doll someone had thrown out of a moving car.

  After connecting solidly with the wall, she slumped down to the floor, thinking that the worst of it had already passed, but she was wrong. Every single one of her nerve endings seemed to crackle as she sat there helpless, a powerful current surging through her. Her insides clenched, and her eyes rolled in their orbits. She pressed her legs together, struggling to control the scorching heat that had settled there, but it was useless.

  “Oh god,” she moaned past gritted teeth, throwing her head back as she was blasted with the most powerful orgasm of her entire life.

  For a moment, she didn’t even know where she was. Her thoughts were like colored ribbons whipping in the breeze, and every muscle twitched as if she had been tased.

  Then came the applause.

  Dazed and confused as her climax subsided, she pressed herself against the wall and cracked open her eyes. Slowly, the world around her came back into focus, and her cheeks started burning as she noticed the almost two hundred faces in front of her. Every single one of the students was clapping it up, and some of them even sprang to their feet. If this was the humans’ favorite Big Game, then Damisa had just scored the winning touchdown.

  Not that she felt victorious.

  Instead, she felt confused.

  And angry.

  Professor Oberon had just tricked her in the most humiliating of ways. Under other cir
cumstances, she wouldn’t have minded an orgasm with someone as handsome as he was—his shock of long blond hair, mesmerizing golden eyes that sparkled under a crown tattooed on his forehead, and ridiculously ripped physique had actually made her drop her books when she’d walked into Room 138—but this was just wrong.

  Unconsciously, she clenched both her fists and rose up, her body burning with murderous intent while still tingling from the climax. Who the fuck did this guy think he was? She clenched her jaw so hard that she felt her bones strain, and the leopard inside her stretched its limbs and pulled its claws out.

  “You asshole!” she snarled, her anger carrying her toward the subject of her rage.

  His eyes were slightly unfocused as he noticed her approach, almost as if he were as confused as she was. Not that Damisa cared. She was more than ready to kick him in the balls, rip his throat out, and—

  “Easy now.” Angelica Fromme, the head of the department, rushed toward Damisa as fast as her heels could carry her and grabbed the angry shifter by the crook of her elbow. “There’s no need for that kind of language, Ms. Figueroa.”

  “Just as there’s no need for…”

  Damisa trailed off, suddenly realizing that Angelica and the others probably—hopefully—weren’t aware of exactly what had just happened. They had almost certainly felt the burst of magical energy, and they sure as hell had seen her being flung across the room…but that didn’t mean they knew about the mind-blowing orgasm that had quite literally left her weak-kneed.

  “Yes?” Angelica asked, arching one eyebrow as she looked at Damisa with a stern expression. “Professor Oberon was just performing a demonstration of magic. I’m sure he didn’t mean any harm, so there’s no need for you to get angry, dear. Granted, no one was expecting this, but let’s not overreact.”