Synopsis

I’ve never felt at home at Juilliard. My stagefright always makes me choke when I’m under the spotlight, something my classmates enjoy watching. But when I’m dragged into a new world—where singing is more than a talent, it’s magic—I can’t hide my voice anymore. This new power is tempting, but terrifying forces swirl around the kingdom of Cantus.

Missing girls, rivals at my new academy, Rebels, demons slaying people in the street—and it all leads back to him.

The mysterious, powerful Phantom, who lurks beneath the school and demands he be my teacher—demands which soon grow into something deeper, darker. But if I want to survive this place, or have any hope of going home, I may have no choice but to give in to him… and all he desires.

Author’s Note: Taken by the Phantom is the first book in a Magic Academy Romance series that will set your heart–and other parts of you–on fire.

And for once, I cannot help myself.

I am scarcely more than shadow, not nearly as full in form as she or Suzanna. Perhaps she will not notice or name the sensation of touch. Perhaps she will believe it a cast of the magic. Perhaps, perhaps, she will know it is me.

Just her hair. A touch. It is all I need.

I lean close to her, alight my fingertips upon her arms. I am not fully man, but half in shadow, and yet I can feel the rain soaked into the cloth, the heat of her skin just beneath. She inhales sharply when I touch her, lips parting further, eyelids fluttering. Shh, I think. A moment more. One touch.

She grants me my wish, her eyes remaining shut, and leans back ever so slightly, almost imperceptibly, into me. I draw nearer still, savoring the ripple of her hair, stirred by my breath. I am close enough I could press my lips to the vital curve of her neck, close enough I could slide my hands over her breasts, pull her flush against me, test the fit of her curves against mine.

What pleasure is there in that?

She arched herself against me when we met in the Hall of Mirrors. She consumed her own fear like the snake’s tail and came out stronger for it. Yet now her eyes remain closed.

I suddenly want to scream at her to open them. To look at me, to touch me, to want me. And yet she does not. She is little more than silk, supple against me, shaped by my contours. I press myself closer, my body against hers, and brush my fingers along the length of her arms.

Still she remains in the rhapsody of Suzanna’s closed-eye song, and still the darkness swells between the light in heady thrusts.

But Krissy does not sober. She rests her hands in my palms, her thin fingers like porcelain, dainty and fine, mine in black leather, monstrous beside them. With me beside her, she is a sun in eclipse, half-swallowed by darkness.

Her breathing has deepened; it matches mine, step for step. We are in tandem as I press myself to her, the curves of her hips, fuller in contact than in sight. That hunger inside of me stirs once more. Against the swell of her body, I harden and smother the alien urge to gasp.

Then her fingers tighten on mine, and at once there is silence.

By day, Isabella King is just another small-town gal hiding behind her Mac.But by night she’s a fire-breathing, sword-wielding, ass-kicking heroine—just like the ones in her books. She’s determined to better the world, with her sword or with her pen, one adventurous love story at a time.