Mesmerized (Spellbound, #1)

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Everyone Told Her Not To Backpack Through Eastern Europe
***Intended for Adult Audiences***
This is a novelette of about 12500 words that is Part One of a Paranormal BDSM Erotic Romance Series.

Julia is the kind of girl who always did what she was told. She is the kind of girl who studied business instead of art because that was what her parents wanted. But the summer after graduating from the University of Washington, she is determined to strike out on her own.

She plans to travel Europe for the entire summer. Eastern Europe to be more precise— because she can't afford to travel the typical tourist destinations, and her controlling parents won't lend her enough money to stay the whole summer.

Julia travels from Venice to Budapest by train, taking photographs and making watercolor paintings along the way. She meets a group of British college students at the youth hostel in Budapest, and they decide to travel together to the Black Sea to stay with a relative of one of the British kids.

Plans get interrupted, and the group has to rent a flat instead of staying in Odessa for free. Money is tight, but the vodka is cheap, and the sea is buoyant and warm.

While sunning one day on the beach, a local named Alexi Petrenko walks up to Julia while she is painting. He drips on her watercolor and nearly ruins it. But she feels an almost instant attraction to the dark haired, blue eyed Ukrainian who looks like Sirius Black from Harry Potter. He is covered in strange arcane tattoos that seem to glow like his eyes.

He calls her a Capitalist. She is intrigued. She finds out he is a wine maker who is part Gypsy. He takes her to his vineyard on the back of his gleaming chrome motorcycle. There, he tells her about his past, and feeds her a sweet ripe grape that leads to a sweat ripe kiss.

Alexi causes some kind of trance to fall over Julia every time she sees him, and by the time she is back in the flat after their first date, she is having strange sex dreams about him.

She sees the dichotomy of his life: a boy who grew up in a stone cottage without running water and the man who owns five hundred acres of mature vineyards, a luxurious flat overlooking the Odessa Oprah House, and a wide expanse of beach-front property.

He captivates her; he instructs her; he dominates her; he teases her with his strange ways, and casts an erotic spell over her she does not understand.

When the British kids finally run out of money, she has to make a choice: go back to Seattle in defeat, or stay with this stranger in a strange land.