One Fine Fireman

by Jennifer Bernard

  Never mind what he had done to George Coney . . .

  An Excerpt from

  SKIES OF STEEL

  THE ETHER CHRONICLES

  by Zoë Archer

  In the world of The Ether Chronicles, the Mechanical War rages on, and appearances are almost always deceiving . . . Read on for a glimpse of Zoë Archer’s latest addition to this riveting series.

  He had to be here. His airship, Bielyi Voron, had been spotted nearby. Through the judicious use of bribery, she had learned that he frequented this tavern. If he wasn’t here, she would have to come up with a whole new plan, but that would take costly time. Every hour, every day that passed meant the danger only increased.

  She walked past another room, then halted abruptly when she heard a deep voice inside the chamber speaking in Russian. Cautiously, she peered around the doorway. A man sat in a booth against the far wall. The man she sought. Of that she had no doubt.

  Captain Mikhail Mikhailovich Denisov. Rogue Man O’ War.

  Like most people, Daphne had heard of the Man O’ Wars, but she’d never seen one in person. Not until this moment. Newspaper reports and even cinemagraphs could not fully do justice to this amalgam of man and machine. The telumium implants that all Man O’ Wars possessed gave them incredible might and speed, and heightened senses. Those same implants also created a symbiotic relationship between Man O’ Wars and their airships. They both captained and powered these airborne vessels. The implants fed off of and engendered the Man O’ Wars’ natural strength of will and courage.

  Even standing at the far end of the room, Daphne felt Denisov’s energy—invisible, silent waves of power that resonated in her very bones. As a scholar, she found the phenomenon fascinating. As a woman, she was . . . troubled.

  Hard angles comprised his face: a boldly square jaw, high cheekbones, a decidedly Slavic nose. The slightly almond shape of his eyes revealed distant Tartar blood, while his curved, full mouth was all voluptuary, framed by a trimmed, dark goatee. An arresting face that spoke of a life fully lived. She would have looked twice at him under any circumstances, but it was his hair that truly made her gape.

  He’d shaved most of his head to dark stubble, but down the center he’d let his hair grow longer, and it stood up in a dramatic crest, the tip colored crimson. Dimly, she remembered reading about the American Indians called Mohawks, who wore their hair in just such a fashion. Never before had she seen it on a non-Indian.

  By rights, the style ought to look outlandish, or even ludicrous. Yet on Denisov, it was precisely right—dangerous, unexpected, and surprisingly alluring. Rings of graduated sizes ran along the edge of one ear, and a dagger-shaped pendant hung from the lobe of his other ear.

  Though Denisov sat in a corner booth, his size was evident. His arms stretched out along the back of the booth, and he sprawled in a seemingly casual pose, his long legs sticking out from beneath the table. A small child could have fit inside each of his tall, buckled boots. He wore what must have been his Russian Imperial Aerial Navy long coat, but he’d torn off the sleeves, and the once-somber gray wool now sported a motley assortment of chains, medals, ribbons, and bits of clockwork. A deliberate show of defiance. His coat proclaimed: I’m no longer under any government’s control.

  If he wore a shirt beneath his coat, she couldn’t tell. His arms were bare, save for a thick leather gauntlet adorned with more buckles on one wrist.

  Despite her years of fieldwork in the world’s faraway places, Daphne could confidently say Denisov was by far the most extraordinary-looking individual she’d ever seen. She barely noticed the two men sitting with him, all three of them laughing boisterously over something Denisov said.

  His laugh stopped abruptly. He trained his quartz blue gaze right on her.

  As if filled with ether, her heart immediately soared into her throat. She felt as though she’d been targeted by a predator. Nowhere to turn, nowhere to run.

  I’m not here to run.

  When he crooked his finger, motioning for her to come toward him, she fought her impulse to flee. Instead, she put one foot in front of the other, approaching his booth until she stood before him. Even with the table separating them, she didn’t feel protected. One sweep of his thickly muscled arm could have tossed the heavy oak aside as if it were paper.

  “Your search has ended, zaika.” His voice was heavily accented, deep as a cavern. “Here I am.”

  An Excerpt from

  FURTHER CONFESSIONS OF A SLIGHTLY NEUROTIC HITWOMAN

  by JB Lynn

  Knocking off a drug kingpin was the last thing on Maggie Lee’s to-do list . . . Take three wacky aunts, two talking animals, one nervous bride, and an upcoming hit, and you’ve got the follow-up to JB Lynn’s wickedly funny Confessions of a Slightly Neurotic Hitwoman.

  “I see a disco ball in your future.” Armani Vasquez, the closest thing I had to a friend at Insuring the Future, delivered this pronouncement right after she sprinkled a handful of candy corn into her Caesar salad.

  Disgusted by her food combination, I pushed my own peanut butter and jelly sandwich away. “Really? A disco ball?”

  If you’d told me a month ago that I’d be leaning over a table in the lunchroom, paying close attention to the bizarre premonitions of my half-crippled, wannabe-psychic coworker, I would have said you were crazy.

  But I’d had one hell of a month.

  First there had been the car accident. My sister Theresa and her husband, Dirk, were killed; my three-year-old niece, Katie, wound up in a coma; and I ended up with the ability to talk to animals. Trust me, I know exactly how crazy that sounds, but it’s true . . . I think.

  On top of everything else, I inadvertently found myself hurtling down a career path I never could have imagined.

  I’m now a hitwoman for hire. Yes, I kill people for money . . . but just so you know, I don’t go around killing just anyone. I’ve got standards. The two men I killed were bad men, very bad men.

  Before I could press Armani for more details about the mysterious disco ball, another man I wanted to kill sauntered into my line of vision. I hate my job at Insuring the Future. I hate taking automobile claims from idiot drivers who have no business getting behind the wheel. But most of all I hate my boss, Harry. It’s not the fact that he’s a stickler for enforcing company policy or even that he always smells like week-old pepperoni. No, I hate him because Harry “likes” me. A lot. He’s always looking over my shoulder (and peering down my shirt) and calling me into his office for one-on-one “motivational chats” to improve my performance.

  I know what you’re thinking. I should report his sexual harassment to human resources, or, if I deplore the idea of workplace conflict (and what self-respecting hitwoman wouldn’t?), I should quit and find another job.

  I was getting ready to do just that, report his lecherous ass and then quit (because I really do despise “helping” the general public), but then the accident happened. And then the paid assassin gig.

  So now I need this crappy, unfulfilling, frustrating-as-hell clerical employment because it provides a cover for my second job. It’s not like I can put HITWOMAN on my next tax return. Besides, if I didn’t keep this job, my meddling aunts would wonder what the hell I’m doing with my life.

  An Excerpt from

  THE SECOND SEDUCTION OF A LADY

  by Miranda Neville

  Enter the thrilling, sexy world of Georgian England in this splendid Miranda Neville novella—and catch a glimpse of Caro, the heroine of the upcoming The Importance of Being Wicked, on sale December 2012.

  “Eleanor!” She looked up. He stepped forward to meet her on the bridge. “Eleanor!” He should ask her how she was, why she was there. But he didn’t care why she was there. All he wanted to do was take her into his arms and tease her stern mouth into returning his kisses.

  His outstretched arms were welcomed with a hearty shove, and he landed on his back in cold water.

  “What—”

  She looked down at him, grim
satisfaction on her elegant features. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Quinton, but you were in my way. I have things to attend to.”

  As he struggled upright in the thigh-deep water, she completed her crossing. Cold soaked through every garment, chilling his skin, his ardor, and his heart. “Wait! You are trespassing,” he called, a surge of rage making him petty. He’d been wrong, yes, but his intentions had ultimately been honorable. She had sent him about his business with a cold rebuke. And returned all his letters unread.

  “Oh? Is this your land?” she said with a haughty brow, knowing well that his home was over a hundred miles away, near Newmarket.

  “Effectively, yes,” he said, clambering up the bank. “I have control of the Townsend estate for another three weeks, until my ward reaches his majority.”

  “In that case,” she replied, “I’ll collect my charge and be off.”

  Ignoring the squelching in his boots, he reached for her again. In the bare second his wet hand rested on her lower arm, warm under his chilled fingers, longing flooded his veins. “Eleanor,” he whispered.

  “Get your wet hands off my gown.” She shook him off.

  “Won’t you forgive me?”

  Her grey eyes held his. He’d seen them bright with affection and wild with ecstasy. Now they contained polished steel.

  “I think, Mr. Quinton, it would be better if we both forget that there is anything to forgive.”

  Max deliberately mistook her meaning. “Good,” he said. She watched him unbutton his clammy, clinging waistcoat with the outrage of a dowager. Yet she’d seen him wearing even less. Or felt him, rather. It had been dark at the time.

  The garment slid down his arms. “I’m ready to apologize again, but I’d like it even better if we could begin a new chapter. Can we start again? Please, Eleanor.”

  Eleanor watched Max Quinton drape his wet waistcoat over a branch, in fascinated disbelief that, meeting her after five years, he should be stripping off his clothes. She trusted he wouldn’t be removing all of them. The entreaty in his voice affected her, but only for an instant. Giving him a dunking had blunted the edge of anger that his appearance provoked, that was all. Nothing else had changed.

  “I made it clear in the past,” she said coldly, “that our acquaintance was over. Forever. Should we meet again, which I trust won’t be necessary, you may call me Miss Hardwick.”

  “Don’t you think that’s absurd, given what we once were to each other?”

  She stepped farther away from this unpleasantly damp man. Never mind that his figure was displayed to advantage beneath clinging linen, fine enough to limn the contours of his chest and reveal an intriguing dark shadow descending to the waist. It was true that his thick, wavy hair looked quite good wet, but she no longer responded to the lilt of laughter in his deep voice. “Our past relationship was founded on falsehood and meant nothing. I never think of you, and I’d like to keep it that way. We meet as indifferent strangers.”

  A smile tugged on his lips. It was one of the first things she’d noticed about him, that hint of humor in an otherwise grave face. “Do you often push strangers into rivers?”

  “You deserved it.”

  An Excerpt from

  TO HELL AND BACK

  A LEAGUE OF GUARDIANS NOVELLA

  by Juliana Stone

  All Logan Winters wants is to be left alone with the woman he loves. But fate isn’t on his side . . . Logan and Kira are back in the latest League of Guardians novella from Juliana Stone.

  Priest knew he was in trouble about two seconds after they exited the bed-and-breakfast. Up ahead, just past the giant pumpkin display, stood a pack of blood demons. They’d donned their human guise, of course, but it did nothing to hide the menace they projected. A family of five gave them a wide berth as they traversed the sidewalk, and he watched as the mother hustled her children past.

  Smart humans.

  The damn things looked like a bunch of thugs—all of them well over six feet in height, with thick necks, tree trunks for legs, and shoulders as wide as a Mack truck.

  They were mean and strong, but dumb. Bottom feeders who kissed the asses of most of the underworld. He wondered who they called boss.

  Normally, Priest wouldn’t have blinked. As an immortal knight of the Templar, he was used to dealing with all sorts of otherworld scum. In fact, it had been a few months since he’d flexed his muscles and connected his fists with demon hide. Normally he looked forward to this kind of shit because life, such as it was, gave him only a few moments to feel truly alive. Making love to a hot-blooded woman did that. Waking up to the smell of fresh rain did that. Killing a bunch of punk-ass demons did that. He glanced to his side.

  But normally he worked alone.

  Casually he leaned his tall frame against the brick façade of the coffee shop to his right and kept Kira out of view. The woman didn’t say anything—she didn’t have to. Her pale features and large, exotic eyes couldn’t hide her fear. But there was something else there, and it was that something else that was going to make all the difference in the world. Anger.

  He reached his hand forward, as if to caress her cheek. All the while, his eyes scanned the immediate area looking for demons. To anyone glancing their way, they appeared to be a couple deeply involved in each other. Lovers.

  Priest ignored both her flinch and her quick recovery as his gaze swept along the street behind him. His liege—the Seraphim Bill—hadn’t told him much of this assignment, but he knew enough. He knew where Kira Dove had been.

  The gray realm.

  It was a place he was all too familiar with, and he had to give it to her, the little lady had spunk. Anyone who escaped purgatory in one piece was strong. He’d never met the hellhound, Logan Winters, but his woman had guts.

  His eyes hardened when he spied a second pack of blood demons hunkered down near the bed-and-breakfast they’d just left. When he felt the unmistakable shift in the air that spelled real trouble, his insides twisted.

  Lilith’s crew.

  Just fucking great. His Harley was nowhere near where he needed the damn thing to be. He was surrounded by demons, in the middle of a large crowd of innocents and this little bit of woman had the very bowels of hell on her trail.

  A new scent drifted up his nostrils. Lilith’s pack hounds were here somewhere, and their human disguises would be hard to penetrate. Those guys were pros.

  Priest straightened and dropped his hand from her cheek until he drew her delicate fist into his large palm. Damned if he was gonna let the queen bitch of hell get to Kira Dove. Strong white teeth flashed as he smiled and looked down at her.

  “You ready to rock and roll?”

  Huge eyes stared up at him, their dark depths hiding a hell of a lot more than pain and fear. There was strength there . . . determination, and—he smiled—a fuck-you attitude.

  She nodded and then whispered, “Let’s do this.”

  An Excerpt from

  MIDNIGHT IN YOUR ARMS

  by Morgan Kelly

  For fans of Downton Abbey and readers of Jude Deveraux and Teresa Medeiros comes the brand-new tale of a love that crosses the boundaries of time . . . from debut author Morgan Kelly.

  Laura collapsed on top of him with a weak moan that he sucked from her lips as he withdrew and coiled himself around her, face to face, his arm cradled along her spine. They were both slick with sweat, drenched in the only substance that quenched what it had ignited.

  “One doesn’t learn that in finishing school,” he murmured appreciatively into her ear, when he could speak. She giggled, hiding her face in his shoulder.

  “I suppose you think me utterly wanton?” she said. “Isn’t that a word you use these days, to describe women like me?”

  “There are no women like you,” he said, tucking a damp curl behind her ear.

  “Not here,” she agreed, snuggling against him.

  “Not anywhere,” he said.

  Laura smiled and pressed her lips to his chest. He ran his fingernails sl
owly up and down her back, and she nearly purred. He loved the way their skin stuck together, as though they were truly fusing into one person. His eyes grew heavy, and he blinked, afraid that if he fell asleep, she would simply disappear. He didn’t know the rules. He didn’t know if there were any. They seemed to be making them up as they went along.

  “In this time,” he said, “are you truly not yet born?”

  “Not for years and years.”

  “Then how is it you can exist, here and now, with me?”

  She looked up at him, her head arched against the pillow. “I really don’t know, Alaric. I only know that I do, and that I have never felt more alive than when I’m with you.”

  “If you . . . stayed, here, with me, what would happen when you are born?”

  Laura rolled onto her back, her leg still hooked around him and her body pressed alongside his. She cradled her head on her arm, the sinuous curve of her underarm upraised. Tiny beads of sweat pearled her collarbone, a necklace of her own making. “I don’t know. But my time isn’t a good one, Alaric. It’s a dangerous time, when the whole world has been at war with itself. I’ve seen things I can’t erase from my mind. People have done things that take away their humanity—and now they are expected to carry on like decent citizens.”

  “I know what war is,” Alaric said.

  “Not war like this,” Laura said quietly. “We can never be the same, any of us. Being here with you makes me feel like none of that could ever happen.”

  “Maybe it won’t,” he said gently, running his palm over her sweet flesh.

  “Oh, it will,” she said. “And then it will happen again. Time isn’t the only endless cycle.”