Enticed

INSTINCT

ETERNAL

DARKNESS &
LIGHT

BLUE MOON

RESONANCE

CAGED

UNNATURAL

“
A
lip-biting, thigh-crossing good read!
[...]
Ethan and
sex—need I say more?
” ~ Keri Lake, author of the
Sons of
Wrath
series

“
Ethan is
super sizzling in this mini novella.
” ~ Sandra,
JeanzBookReadNReview

“
If you've
been looking for a HOT read, there is definitely some steam going
on here!
” ~ Wendy, Goodreads member

“
Oh holy
hawtness!!
[...]
Ethan is more than HAWT and Shelley just
went up a few notches in my book!!
” ~ Maghon, Happy Tails and
Tales

ENTICED

Published by J.A.
Belfield

www.jabelfield.com

Copyright © 2015 Julie
Anne Belfield

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. No
part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or
transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying,
recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the
prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of
brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and other
non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

This book is a work of
fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the
products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any
resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, events,
locations, or any other element is entirely coincidental.

Cover art by Aimee
Laine.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
1

For The Hollerers.

Without you, this story
wouldn't exist.

Dear
Reader,

First of all,
thank you so much for picking up Enticed to read. If you're new to
my writing, I can only hope you fall in love with Ethan Holloway as
much as fans of the series have. If you're a Holloway Pack fan,
then you 100% have my street team, The Hollerers, to thank for this
little side story coming to fruition—in particular, you should
totally thank author Keri Lake, who has some serious heat for Ethan
and nagged me to even consider writing it in the first place, and
then egged on the other Hollerers to nag at me, too.

For anyone
unaware, this is a step up on the heat level ladder, when compared
to the main Holloway Pack titles. I wanted to give Ethan a fitting
birthday, expose him a little, show his more demanding
and
his more tender side. I have no apology for doing this, because I'm
not sorry—in the slightest.

Read on. I hope
you enjoy.

J.

From the
opposite side of the table, Kyle waved his coffee mug toward me.
“To Ethan. And another year done and dusted.” Trouble spilled from
his hazel eyes, beneath the auburn eyebrows he wiggled. “Soon
you’ll be as old as the old men.”

“He already
is,” Dad muttered from behind his laptop screen, where he scoured
the classifieds for land sales. “As old as me when I was that
age.”

Kyle grinned.
“See?” He’d bombed over with Brook to join us for breakfast, to
‘celebrate my big day’. Like it was something spectacular to behold
that the clock had ticked past midnight of the day before to
announce me a year older, when, in reality, I was less than twenty
four hours older than when I’d been thirty five.

Even Brook
smiled, her exotic eyes warming to a bright gold, offset by the
dark oak strands of hair trailing low over her shoulders. “Any
plans?” she asked in that reserved way of hers, and Dad lifted his
gaze.

Over by the
cooker, Mum sent us a sideways glance, her chestnut bob bouncing a
little. A few feet along from her, Sean sat on the countertop,
waiting for the bacon to fry, his mess of dark hair sticking up
like it’d been rampaging all night. Not all that different to how
I’d probably looked myself since getting up—in every way possible,
seeing as both he and I had grabbed most of Dad’s appearance genes
from the nugget he’d contributed toward our creation.

“No plans as
yet,” I said in answer—which was the truth—and Brook’s smile
widened, like she knew something I didn’t.

In the past,
we’d celebrated birthdays pretty much as we celebrated the freedom
of every weekend—by fooling around outside enough to burn off
excess energy, eating stupid amounts of food even for us, and
falling asleep in a heap until someone decided they were aching too
much to stay put. Birthdays had also always been something shared
with the pack alone. Over the last couple of years, though, the
pack had grown—both in size and acceptance criteria—and it seemed
weird having what would’ve once been considered ‘outsiders’ wanting
to be a part of that.

I eyed Brook
from across the wood of the oak tabletop. First time I’d ever had a
cat come give me birthday greetings.

My mind shifted
to Gabe. First time I’d had a surrogate teenage son to call me at
first light and wake me with a duet of happy birthday from him and
his young mate, too.

First time,
really, I’d had a female of my own to spend time with for the
event, even.

Not that
Shelley and I’d discussed anything about my birthday. Not that we’d
made plans. In fact … had I even mentioned it to her? I couldn’t
remember. Was just another day, after all.

“Okay, food’s
up,” Mum said, swinging the frying pan across to a plate set on the
counter, and slapping at Sean’s hand with the spatula when he snuck
it out for some. “Birthday boy gets first rasher.”

Rolling his
eyes, Sean hopped down to his feet. I knew the instant Jem stepped
into the room behind me by the way his gaze sharp-focused to my
right, followed by a blast of warmth softening his expression.

Lia, their
daughter, had taken to sleeping in a little later, and Jem took
full advantage of that. Which made her often the last one up at
weekends—sometimes during the week, too. Not that I blamed her
after the few weeks of teething Lia went through. Not a damn one of
us had enough sleep with all the wailing. Curse of enhanced
hearing, I guessed.

“Hey.” Jem’s
warm breath hit my shoulder, and her arm folded over my chest from
behind, her familiar musk drifting toward my nostrils. “Happy
birthday, tough guy.”

Something
tapped against my chin, and I peered down at a long-necked bottle
of golden liquid. “Talisker Storm?” I asked, reading the label, as
Sean worked a puffy-faced Lia from Jem’s clutches.

“You haven’t
tried this one before.” Straightening, she flicked her blonde wisps
over her shoulder, detangling her fingers when they got caught.
“Besides, I’ve kind of killed the cheesy T-shirt angle already.”
She had, too—half a dozen of her ‘gifts’ sat in my bedroom drawers.
“So I had to find a new obsession to kill for a while.”

I nodded,
touched by the fact she’d bother to notice my tastes. “Nice.”

As I stuck it
on the sideboard behind me for later, the usual bustle of breakfast
commenced: Mum hauling all the plates of bacon, eggs, toast,
mushrooms, and hash browns across to the table, Jem settling into
her seat beside me, Lia still rubbing her little fists into her eye
sockets as Sean tucked her onto his lap at his place beside Jem,
and Dad folding down his screen and paying attention as even Kyle
and Brook drew their chairs in a little closer. In another moment,
we all had plates and cutlery slid beneath our noses, and pretty
much all conversation ceased as the more important task of eating
took its place.

Just as Mum had
ordered, nobody touched anything before I’d scooped up what I
wanted—and I smiled at them through every damn item I dished. I’d
ploughed my way through everything bar remnants of hash brown and a
strip of bacon when the metallic groan of the front gates sounded
out.

I tilted my
head as I chewed, tracking the low rumble of an engine, and
recognised the tone as Dan’s ex-HiLux. Shelley and I’d bought the
pickup from Dan a couple of weeks back, when he’d made noise about
trading it in for a new set of wheels, though he’d shocked us all
when he showed up with a bike as his new ride.

At the dual
slamming of truck doors from the driveway, I smiled. Gabe’s arrival
likely meant Shelley's too.

I didn’t bother
turning when the front door swung open and two sets of footsteps
hit the tiles of the hallway. Instead, I inhaled—frowning when the
scents I grabbed had zero to do with my female.

A hand clamped
down on my shoulder and shook a little. “Happy birthday, old
man.”

I mustered a
smile for Gabe. “Less of the old,” I said, as he rounded my seat,
with Mia—not Shelley—in tow.

“Oh, I dunno.
You got some grey coming, you know.” Mia’d never been shy since the
first time I met her. “Gonna have to start thinking about dyeing
those soon.” Her long ebony hair slid over her shoulder as she
leaned in and nabbed a piece of toast off the table. “Whatcha got
planned?” she asked around chewing.

I shrugged, my
brain still half expecting Shelley to come through the door in some
kind of delayed reaction.

“Well, you can
start by opening these uber cool pressies we got you,” Mia said,
snatching a packet I’d barely registered out of Gabe’s hands.
“You’ll love them. I helped Gabe pick them out.”

I faux groaned.
Neither of them had hit their twenties yet—who the hell knew what
they’d come up with. “Do I really want to see?”

“Yep.”
Grinning, she slapped a thin square-shaped parcel on the table next
to my plate.

I stared. At
the parcel. Well, at the packaging. It was lilac. With fairies on
it—fairies with flower heads for hats and toadstools for seats and
ladybirds for companions. “You pick out the paper, too?”

“I like
fairies,” she said, grabbing another slice of toast.

Ignoring the
stifled chuckles from the pack, the snort from Jem, and the untamed
smiles from both Brook and Mum, I peeled back the stuck-down flaps
of paper and peeked inside to find white fabric. “Is it safe to
delve deeper?” I asked.

Pausing in her
chewing, Mia shot out a muffled, “Wimp.”

“Be nice,” Gabe
said, drawing her toward him with a hand slipped around her waist.
“It’s his birthday.” He tucked her back against his chest and
stared overtop of her head, and I pulled the gift from its bindings
and shook it out to reveal a T-shirt.

Jem barked out
a laugh beside me, while I could only stare at the T-shirt. More so
at the design: 'WOOF!' In big letters. Right across the front.

“Classic,” Jem
said.

I turned to
her, ignoring the jiggle of Sean’s shoulders next to her, as he did
a crap job of hiding his laughter in the crook of Lia’s neck. “Is
this your doing?”

She held up her
hands, grinning. “Hey, don’t look at me. Though, you’ve got to
admit, it’s pretty cool."

I grunted. No
way I’d admit that.

“Try it on,”
Mia said.

I think I may
have grimaced. “What—now?”

“Well, you
can’t have your other pressie until you do.”

I sliced my
gaze across to her and Gabe, and noticed, for the first time, the
second package he held.

He peered back
at me through the pale blond curls hanging low over his brow, the
apology in his bright blue eyes warring with the manic twitching at
the corner of his lips. “This one’s better,” he said.
“Promise.”

Grumbling
beneath my breath, I shrugged out of the grey Umbro shirt I'd
shucked on that morning, and worked the gift over my head, before
poking my arms through the sleeve holes. I held out my arms and
glanced round at the others. “Well?”

Across the
table, Kyle snorted, as Brook smiled and said, “Perfect.”

Nodding like I
agreed, I wiggled my fingers at Gabe, knowing the sooner I had it
over with, the sooner Mia’d leave me alone. “Okay, gimme.”

The second gift
was box-shaped and clunked when he leaned in and set it down on the
table. Not wasting any more time, I tore the paper from the end and
slid out a metal box with a clasp on and a little plastic handle. A
brown angry-looking cartoon wolf, with six teeth pointing out
either side of its long snout and wearing green dungarees, had been
printed onto the lid.

My eyebrow
arched up.

“Your own
lunchbox,” Mum said from her seat next to Dad. “Very cute.”

I turned my
eyebrow on her, but all it got me in return was an amused glint in
the chocolate eyes she’d passed onto me and Sean.

“Open it up,”
Gabe said, before I even had the chance to reach for the clasp.

It gave a quiet
snap as I tugged it free, and I grinned on lifting the lid, beneath
which I found around a dozen Snickers bars staring back at me.
“Now, this is more like it.”