Charming the Snake Read online

  Praise for the writing of MaryJanice Davidson

  Beggarman, Thief

  Beggarman, Thief is the perfect example of Ms. Davidson’s style. She writes original plots; combining humor, occasional intrigue, and explosive attraction between the characters. This blend makes for a fiery story that never disappoints. If you haven’t read Ms. Davidson’s work yet, don’t wait any longer. She is not to be missed.

  -- Ansley, Romance Junkies

  Praise for the writing of Melissa Schroeder

  Federation CTD: Voices Carry

  I found myself literally glued to every page of this futuristic romance, enthralled by the very engaging characters and an interesting and quick paced plot… Voices Carry is a wonderful addition to my library and Ms. Schroeder's name now belongs in my author autobuy list.

  -- Mireya Orsini, Just Erotic Romance Reviews

  Praise for the writing of Camille Anthony

  Light on her Toes

  Camille Anthony does an excellent job creating a story and characters that are bound to draw readers in. I look forward to reading more of her work.

  -- Claudia, Fallen Angel Reviews

  Beggarman, Thief, Federation CTD: Voices Carry and Light on her Toes are now available from Loose Id.

  CHARMING THE SNAKE

  MaryJanice Davidson

  Melissa Schroeder ! Camille Anthony

  www.loose-id.com

  Warning

  This e-book contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language and may be considered offensive to some readers. Loose Id e-books are for sale to adults ONLY, as defined by the laws of the country in which you made your purchase. Please store your files wisely, where they cannot be accessed by under-aged readers.

  * * * * *

  This book is rated:

  For explicit sexual content and graphic language.

  Charming the Snake

  MaryJanice Davidson, Melissa Schroeder, & Camille Anthony

  This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Published by

  Loose Id LLC

  1802 N Carson Street, Suite 212-29

  Carson City NV 89701-1215

  www.loose-id.com

  “Savage Scavenge,” Copyright © March 2005 by MaryJanice Davidson

  “Seducing the Saint,” Copyright © March 2005 by Melissa Schroeder

  “Carte Blanche,” Copyright © March 2005 by Camille Anthony

  All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of this e-book may be reproduced or shared in any form, including, but not limited to printing, photocopying, faxing, or emailing without prior written permission from Loose Id LLC.

  ISBN 1-59632-049-4

  Available in Adobe PDF, HTML, MobiPocket, and MS Reader

  Printed in the United States of America

  Editor: Raven McKnight, Linda Kusiolek & Maryam Salim

  Cover Artist: April Martinez

  www.loose-id.com

  SAVAGE SCAVENGE

  MaryJanice Davidson

  Dedication

  For the readers who wanted to know more about Mutes.

  This story takes place three months after the events in Beggarman, Thief.

  Prologue

  Summer 2072

  Minneapolis, Minnesota

  A-Block

  Midnight

  Jamie Day, blushing bride-to-be, stretched, scratched, and yawned.

  “Grace, thy name is Jamie,” her fiancé observed.

  “Off my case, metal man. It’s not my fault you’ve worn me out again.”

  “Well, it certainly isn’t mine,” Mitchell said wryly. He pulled her close for a sweaty snuggle and stroked her hair. “One of my PR people was up here again today,” he reminded her.

  “So?”

  “So, I think it’s time I announced my intention to make an honest woman of you.”

  “Why? Why can’t we just get married downstairs -- or in here, even? And not make a big deal out of it? Be honest -- like a judge wouldn’t come up here if you asked? If Mr. Mitchell Big Dick Zillionaire asked for a favor?”

  “Leave my dick out of it.”

  “I’m just saying, why make a big thing of it? Why tell anybody, never mind your PR people?”

  “Because I want the world to know you’re mine,” he said simply.

  “Dammit! See, there you go. You say something like that and I just melt. How can I argue with that?” she griped. “Easy: I can’t.”

  “Excellent.”

  “Oh, excellent, shut up with your excellent. I’m only letting you win this one because you said such a nice thing.”

  “Darling, I always win them; sometimes it takes a bit longer, that’s all. And Jamie, I have to ask... isn’t there anyone you wish to tell? To share our day with?”

  “No.”

  “Because you could invite whomever you wish. The ballroom accommodates five thousand, but if you need more, we can get married uptown. We --”

  “There’s no one.”

  “Ah... I know you were an orphan, but surely you have some friends?”

  “No.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Anyone as charming and, uh, gifted as you must have loads of friends.”

  “You’re the only one who thinks I’m charming. And thieves aren’t well-liked in C-Block. It’s hard enough getting stuff without worrying about somebody snatching it out from under you. We all pretty much kept to ourselves.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  “It was a living, is all. Growing up, I had either allies or enemies. It wasn’t really a friend-type environment.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s no big deal.”

  “I disagree.”

  “Maybe there’s one woman I could ask,” she continued thoughtfully, “but she wouldn’t come.”

  “Really? Who is she?”

  “Never mind. Like I said, she wouldn’t come anyway. She’s really busy all the time, kind of digs into her work.”

  “Is she gifted like you?”

  “It’s okay, Mitch, you can say it: mute. No, she’s not. But she’s one of those people on the fringe... if a mute got hurt, you could go to her and she’d fix you up, and she wouldn’t tell the government about you. There’s a whole bunch of underground doctors and clinics. She’s the best one. But I wouldn’t say she’s a friend, exactly. Like I said, more an ally than a pal.”

  “I’d like to meet her.”

  “Never happen. She never leaves B-Block.”

  “West St. Paul?”

  “Right. We come to her to get fixed; it’s not the other way around.”

  “It makes me feel bad,” he admitted, “that you have no one to attend our wedding.”

  “Well,” she pointed out, “now I’m one of those annoying women whose entire life revolves around her boyfriend.”

  “Husband,” he reminded her, with a light kiss.

  “Right, right.”

  Chapter One

  Minneapolis, Minnesota

  B-Block

  8:35 a.m.

  Dr. Gladys Loder glanced up from her cornflakes when she heard Jamie’s name, and waved a hand in front of the feed. A picture popped up, accompanying the news story.

  “... announced her engagement to billionaire developer Mitchell Hunter, recently known for donating the Moon Rock to the Minneapolis Science Institute. Ms. Day is from South St. Paul.”r />
  “South St. Paul!” Gladys snorted, nearly sneezing into her cereal. “Call it what it is, you feel-good morons.”

  “The couple has plans for a European honeymoon.”

  Gladys raised her eyebrows until she thought they’d fall off her head. European honeymoon? Jamie Day? That blue-haired, sticky-fingered, sharp-tongued mute? The girl was an absolute magnet for trouble; Gladys had lost track of the number of times she’d set an arm or leg for the charming crook.

  And now she was marrying Mitchell Hunter? The country’s most eligible bachelor? How had that happened? The last Gladys knew, Jamie was still lifting pretties for Brennan. Now she had gone straight (ha!) and was getting married to no less than Mitchell Hunter. The man’s breeding was impeccable; he could trace his family back to Ellis Island. Jamie, of course, couldn’t trace her family back even one generation.

  Did he know?

  Would she tell him?

  Gladys scraped the last of the skim milk out of her cereal bowl. It wasn’t her business, either way. Jamie was a good kid; she deserved every happiness. If Mr. Hunter knew his bride-to-be had special gifts, it wasn’t her problem, or her business. And if he didn’t, that wasn’t her problem, either.

  She wondered if they would try to have a baby.

  Chapter Two

  Twelve hours later, pleasantly exhausted from the clinic, Gladys went out to the small patio and picked three grapefruits from the dwarf tree she had been coddling. Unlike the fruit she saw on TV or in the store, the skin on these fruits was an ugly greenish-brown; from the pollution, she knew. They didn’t look pretty, but they tasted great and were better for her... was there a message in that? The fruit in the stores was bleached and prettied up, and that’s what everybody wanted.

  Hmm.

  She studied the tree and made a mental note to buy more fertilizer, pretending that lugging it to the eighth floor wouldn’t be a giganto pain in the cheeks. The things she did for the stupid tree!

  Not that such things needed that much work these days, not once the botanists got done with them. Steady watering, some fertilizer, watch the roots, take it inside if it was going to get below freezing. It was hard to believe the Minnesota winters used to be so cold, tropical fruits wouldn’t grow.

  She glanced out and saw the distant silver gleam of the river. Four years ago, she’d rented the two-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bath apartment because it was convenient to work; the view (the very very very very faint view) of the Mississippi River was a bonus. A four-hundred-dollar-a-month bonus. Now Gladys was sorry she hadn’t taken the cheaper apartment on the third floor; she almost never noticed the view, and never appreciated it.

  She went back inside, juiced the fruit, and pulled the latest pill-pak out of her purse. She sat down at her small kitchen table and frowned at the tiny pearl-colored tablets. This would be the first day of the sixth week she was taking them.

  Difficult to believe they were so hard to get; for her, it had been quite simple. A colleague had written the scrip without a blink; she’d had it filled at the local Valu-Mart, as well as picked up a bottle of Coca-Pepsi.

  Was she really going to do this thing? It wasn’t like a library book; you couldn’t take it back, and the fees weren’t small, either.

  Well, she thought, popping a pill out of its protective packet and swallowing it with a sip of juice, it’s not like I’ve got candidates knocking down my door, anyway.

  Then her patio door split down the middle.

  Chapter Three

  Although Gladys had worked emergency wards for half a decade and was used to any manner of startling happenings, the suddenness of the man’s entry shocked her into immobility. Her immediate thought was that there had been an accident. Other than the one that wrecked her glass door, rather.

  “Gods, are you all right?” She had dropped her juice, but the plastic cup held. The same could not be said of the door.

  He was shaking glass out of his dark red hair, so dark it was almost purple. “What?”

  When he looked at her, she saw his eyes were a lighter shade of red, the color of cherry cough drops. She couldn’t believe he walked around like that... wasn’t he afraid of being picked up? Wasn’t he afraid of scaring people?

  He said it again, louder: “What?”

  Oh, dear. A mute. And, as in many cases, a not terribly bright one, either. She stepped closer and raised her voice. “Are. You. All. Right?”

  “I will be as soon as you stop yelling,” he said cheerfully. Glass crunched beneath his boots as he came further into the room. “Yucka, my ears are still ringing!”

  She blinked. She was having trouble following current events, and was embarrassed she was having trouble. Get hold of yourself, Gladys. Right now! “Are you hurt?”

  “Besides the obviously not-glad-to-see-me look on your face? Nuh-uh. Well, I’m a little hurt, but it’s nothing I can’t recover from. Still, would ‘good morning’ kill you?”

  “It’s evening,” she pointed out through numb lips. His voice... it was difficult to describe... like verbal velvet. Rich and deep, a radio star voice. It perfectly matched his blunt good looks -- the broad face, the unusual hair and eyes, the wide shoulders, the long legs. He towered over her, and she was a bit tall for a woman, a hair away from six feet. “Not morning.”

  “The rules of good manners still apply.” He bowed from the waist as if he were thanking an audience after conducting an orchestra, and shook his head like a dog. More glass flew. He looked up at her, and the corners of his mouth twitched. “I need you, Dr. Loder.”

  She tried again to collect her scattered wits. Oh, those eyes... those shoulders! “Of course. Where is the accident? Are many people hurt?”

  “Uh...”

  “Are! Many! People! Hurt!”

  “Dr. Loder, honest to megatroid, if you don’t stop screaming, I’m probably going to barf all over you.”

  “Sorry. It’s just that I’m not sure you’re following what’s going on.”

  “I’m not sure you are, honey. Come on, let’s go.”

  “I’ll get my bag,” she said, and darted to the hall closet. Thank gods she had restocked just that morning! “It’s all fully supplied and ready to go.” Since most mood-altering drugs had been legalized by Shea’s Act of 2021, not only had crime rates dropped like rocks, but nobody had to worry about junkie break-ins. Thus, she could say something like “it’s all fully supplied and ready to go” to hold up her end of the conversation, and not worry about being robbed.

  “What?”

  “Never mind. Just take me where I’m needed.”

  “Yowza,” he muttered, giving her a sudden appraising look, his eyes glowing like coals.

  “What?”

  “Never mind.”

  Chapter Four

  So far, he wasn’t impressed with the great Dr. Loder, the Angel of C-Block.

  But then, he was in a bitchy mood. He probably wouldn’t have been impressed if he’d met the president. He was in this thing to win, and if meeting the Angel hadn’t been everything he’d hoped (she seemed a little slow on the uptake, for starters), then that’s how it was, too bad, so sad, pass the gravy.

  “Nice elevator,” he said as they stepped inside. “I can’t believe they turned ‘Livin’ On A Prayer’ into muzak.”

  She pressed B, then turned and looked at him with sober, dark eyes. Brown hair, brown eyes, too skinny, too tall. Your typical twentieth-century Homo sapiens. He felt a little sorry for her... it must suck not to evolve. “What?” she asked.

  “Never mind.”

  “Didn’t you see the elevator on your way...” She trailed off, and he waited for her to put it together. “No, of course not; you didn’t come in the conventional way. How did you get up to my floor?”

  “Oh, ways and ways,” he replied cheerfully.

  “I’d like to know. Can you fly? Walk up walls? Teleport? Can you disrupt the air around you -- is that what happened to my deck door? Can you --”

  “What rude ques
tions from the great Dr. Loder,” he said with mock amazement. Actually, not so mock. By contemporary standards, they were rude questions. The twentieth-century equivalent of asking, “So, are you planning to ever lose all that weight?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said at once, and a little color came into her cheeks. She was a great-looking woman, no question -- when she wasn’t blushing like a virgin, her skin was the color of whole milk, not a freckle or a mole anywhere (that he could see). Too thin, yeah, but she probably couldn’t help her metabolism. If she spent all that time in C-Block, ministering, she probably didn’t have time for many six-course meals. “I didn’t mean to butt into your life.”

  “That’s all right,” he said as the doors opened. He followed her out into the garage. “I butted into yours.”

  “Yes, but it’s my job. It’s what I’m here for.”

  “Yep, Humanitarian of the Year, that’s you.”

  She gave him a sharp look, and her dark brows crinkled together. “If you have something to say, by all means...”

  “What? You’re swell. We of the C-Block are so grateful.” He said it in a tone so honeyed, he almost made himself sick.

  “There’s no winning with you people, is there?”

  He nearly tripped. “‘You people’?”

  “You heard me,” she snapped. Now there was a lot of color in her face. Damn, she was a cutie when she was torqued off. “I’m down there pretty much every day, helping run the free clinic, and you all know I won’t turn you in, but when I try to get an apartment in C-Block, it mysteriously doesn’t happen. I bust my ass helping you people, and what thanks do I get?”