by Sierra Dean
She gave him an amused look through the curtain of her white-blonde bangs. “I’ve got it. But thanks.”
Alex warred with himself. He was pretty sure he should insist on taking over the physical labor, but she was handling things okay so far, and he honestly didn’t know what to do. He paced nervously, not used to being unable to help when all his instincts told him he should.
For the next ten minutes he felt altogether useless, hanging back as Alice removed the tire and got the spare affixed. He dutifully provided assistance whenever she needed an extra set of hands or a change of tools, but otherwise his denim-clad savior was a one-woman show. When she was finished, there was a sheen of sweat on her chest, drawing his gaze down to her cleavage. She wiped her brow and attempted to get the grease off her hands by rubbing the back of her pants.
Alice wasn’t the skinny, plastic-type girl he was used to meeting in Florida. She had more curves than a Swiss highway, and between her ample bosom and the fine fullness of her butt in those jeans, Alex wasn’t sure where he could rest his gaze without leering.
“That doughnut will hold you for a bit, but you’re going to want to take it in and get a proper replacement. I can recommend a good garage in town where they won’t look at a Porsche like it’s a spaceship. They’ll be fair in the pricing too.”
“Thanks.”
Alice collected her jacket and replaced the tools in the trunk. Finally seeing a place he might be of use, Alex grabbed the busted tire and got it stowed.
“You live around here?” He wasn’t ready to see her vanish yet and was hoping he might be able to convince her to spend a little more time with him. Perhaps someplace nicer than the side of the highway.
“Yeah. There’s a small suburb about four miles down the road. We have a place there.”
We. “You and your husband?”
Alice gave a half-smile and shook her head. “No. No husband.”
Relief hit him with a whoosh. He didn’t know her, they’d only met once before, yet he was positive he would have been crushed to discover she was off the market. As it was he would be calling his friend Tucker Lloyd—the Felons’ ace pitcher—later that night for some help with Alice insight. Tucker was engaged to Emmy Kasper, and Emmy was friends with Alice. Alex would need all the intel he could get if he had a shot in hell with a girl who looked like Alice.
And it wasn’t only her appearance. She’d changed his tire like it was the easiest damn thing in the world. Impressive didn’t begin to cover it.
Surely Emmy would be able to get him an in.
Alice shifted nervously and glanced at her car, which made Alex realize with some horror he’d been staring at her.
Think fast, you idiot.
“Know anywhere good to eat? I drove in from Atlanta. I was planning to eat at the hotel when I checked in, but…you know, room service isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
“Yeah, I have that problem all the time.” She snorted. She gave him a once-over, gnawing thoughtfully on her lower lip. He wouldn’t mind being allowed to nibble on it himself. “It’s nothing fancy, but we’re having pizza for dinner. I mean…if you don’t mind slumming it, you’re welcome to come.”
This mysterious we again. His curiosity was piqued. If she had a man at home, she wouldn’t invite him over for dinner, would she? But he hadn’t expected an invitation to her home at all, so Alice was already proving to be a source of confusion to him.
“I like pizza.”
“If you didn’t, I don’t think we could be friends.”
Friends.
That was totally what Alex had in mind.
Surviving will take a miracle. Happily Ever After’s going to take two.
Enigma
© 2014 Moira Rogers
Southern Arcana, Book 6
Anna Lenoir has always fought. First to escape her broken childhood, then to prove a female shapeshifter can stand shoulder to shoulder with the men. Now she fights for money, and her reputation is as legendary as her stone-cold heart. She’s never met a man she couldn’t walk away from.
Until him.
Bounty hunter Patrick McNamara has a scary reputation of his own, along with mysterious powers linked to his many tattoos. On the clock, they’re the perfect supernatural-crime-solving team. After hours, she’s ready to rock his world. But Patrick won’t settle for just her body, and Anna’s better at breaking homes than making them.
When the heir to the Southwest council goes missing, their combined skills are the best chance of averting a territory war. But the hunt will drag them through the most vulnerable parts of their broken pasts. Daring to risk her heart might be the first fight she loses, and the stakes have never been higher.
Because Patrick will sacrifice anything for her. Even his life.
Warning: Contains cheap motel rooms, gas station chili dogs, supernatural politics and a literal flaming sword. Also, sex. Angry sex, dirty sex, sweet sex and thank-god-you’re-alive sex between a tough-as-nails heroine with a fragile woobie heart, and a dangerous hero who will sacrifice anything to love her.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Enigma:
She hated this part.
Anna never bothered to tell anyone how much she disliked hunting because she wasn’t sure they’d believe it. People, as a general rule, wanted to think things were simple. Easily classified. She was good at tracking, even better at eliminating threats. Knowing she hated every moment of it wouldn’t fit with anyone’s expectations of a badass bounty hunter.
She stopped in her tracks as a breeze kicked the scent of iron and cotton into her nose. Anna pushed through the dense foliage of the forest floor and found a torn T-shirt under a pitcher plant, the blood so fresh it could only belong to the man she was tracking.
Wolf. Forgetting wouldn’t do either of them any good. He wasn’t a man, had tried to be one again and failed because he’d discovered his human body didn’t fit right anymore. That was why he was there.
Why she’d followed.
She picked up the trail and ran, nose to the ground, paws rustling through the moss and ferns. The track ended in a shallow stream, little more than a trickle, and Anna growled.
If she didn’t find him…
Doubts were indulgences—wasn’t that what the Conclave instructors always said? Every moment wasted on second-guesses was a moment someone could die.
One path beyond the stream led farther into the depths of the bayou. The other, back toward the tiny town whose scant lights twinkled through trees heavy with Spanish moss. Intellect told her the darker path was too facile, too obvious. If she were on the run, she’d head toward town, double back and catch her pursuer at his heels.
But the man had come here because his wolf had pushed down everything rational in his mind and let instinct take over. Instinct would tell him to flee from signs of man, to take to the woods and stay there. Live as the animal he was.
If it were that clear-cut, Anna would have been content to leave him be. But the man would always push back, struggle to reassert control over the beast. Sooner or later, the memory of what he’d once been would drive him to seek out humanity—with disastrous, deadly results.
Anna took the dark path and forged deeper into the swamp.
Too much thinking, and it almost got her. She rounded the end of a fallen tree and stumbled into a small clearing—the perfect place for an ambush.
Her paws dug into the earth as she scrambled back, but the sharp snap of a twig heralded the attack. The feral wolf sprang from the cover of the trees to her left and took her down hard. She twisted, barely avoiding the massive jaws aimed at her throat.
Anna came up biting. She wasn’t part of his pack, and they weren’t playing. He’d go straight for the kill, and that gave her an edge. Let him try it, exhaust himself with lunge after lunge. Eventually, he’d tire. He’d make a mistake.
He was strong and he was desperate, and the fight dragged on long enough to worry her. The magic spilling out of him wasn’t dominant,
and in other circumstances she’d have tried her best to cow him and end the fight with submission instead of death.
But crazy men didn’t surrender, and that was exactly what he was, only worse.
Finally, he stretched too far as he charged her, baring the vulnerable expanse of his throat for a shade too long. One lucky shot and she took it, sinking her teeth in deep and holding on.
For as long as the fight had lasted, he died quickly, the light seeping from his eyes like his blood into the soil. Anna imagined that he looked grateful in those last moments, but she knew it wasn’t true.
Ken Trumaine of Corpus Christi, Texas, hadn’t wanted to die any more than he’d wanted to be bitten, turned into a wolf and driven insane by the whole fucking experience. He probably wanted to get drunk on Bourbon Street, pay a stripper way too much for a two-minute lap dance and go home with some goddamn hilarious war stories about his long weekend in New Orleans.
He hadn’t wanted to die.
She didn’t realize she’d shifted until she heard her own hoarse, muttered curse. Anna rose and stumbled back, caught herself before breaking into a sprint. She could run, but what was the point? Nothing to run from here, just a dead wolf and a man whose family would never find him.
She could run, but she couldn’t run away.
Anna Lenoir had gotten tattoos.
Crouched against a tree, Patrick let his gaze slide over her naked skin, indulging himself in the few moments he had before this crossed the line from cautious to creepy.
Maybe it already had. Charms masked his scent, little wooden discs etched in runes and blooded with power. They throbbed against his skin under his black T-shirt, their prickling energy a reminder of his own weakness. The last time he’d raced Anna Lenoir for a kill, he hadn’t needed magic. He’d had his own, the power and spells etched into his skin instead of wood.
She’d beaten him then too, without even knowing it.
Any second now, she’d realize he was there. His charms might hide him from most of her senses, but Anna was a wolf, a creature of instinct. She’d feel his gaze soon enough, and then he’d have a damn hard time explaining why he’d crouched in the bushes, admiring her ass, when he should have been making sure she was okay—or throwing her some damn clothes.
But she had ink. When he’d last seen her naked, she hadn’t had any. They’d been in the bayou then too, preparing for a battle. It hadn’t stopped him from fixing her surprisingly curvy figure into his mind.
Now he focused on that ink. It stood out against her skin, provided fascinating contrast even though he wasn’t close enough to make out the distinct shapes. He wanted to get closer. Touch her.
Damn, he was creepy. Closing his eyes, he whistled sharply. “Lenoir, it’s McNamara.”
Her ragged, indrawn breath carried in the still night. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Showing up late to the party again. You’re fast, woman.”
Her cheeks glistened in the moonlight, and she swiped at them with the back of her hand. “There’s no paycheck attached to this one, so you may as well go home.”
She was crying. Guilt punched through him, and he rocked to his feet, stripped off his T-shirt and tossed it into the clearing before turning his back. “Wasn’t about the paycheck. This is my town now too.”
“Sure.” The word was muffled, and her footsteps rustled out of the clearing. “You can tell Alec it’s done if you want.”
His shirt came down to her knees, covering everything he’d been leering at a few minutes ago. “I wasn’t really thinking. You probably want to change back to get out of here instead of walking barefoot.”
“No,” she said too quickly. “I’m fine like this. Thanks for the shirt.”
“No problem.” He glanced at the wolf—dead, a neat, fast kill. Merciful. “Walk back with me?”
She hesitated, then nodded and fell into step beside him. “I didn’t know you were on this one. No one at council headquarters tells me shit.”
“I volunteered.” Patrick shrugged. “Not that Alec tells me much, but Julio’s always willing to put me to work.”
“It’s not that you’re not handy to have around,” she muttered. “If it sounded that way, it’s not what I meant, okay?”
“You just sounded like you wanted to be in the loop. I don’t blame you.”
She sighed almost inaudibly. “How have you been?”
No one asked that question wanting to know the answer. Not really. “Doing good. Living the posh life in the Southeast council headquarters. I’m surprised Julio and Sera don’t bully you into coming over for family dinners.”
Anna stopped and looked up at him until he met her gaze. “How have you been, Patrick?”
Stupid him. Anna wasn’t everyone else. “Still in one piece, more or less. You?”
“Same as ever.” She fidgeted with his shirt, her fingers clenching in the black cotton. “Are you careful?”
The thought that she cared could make a man giddy, but he’d been dancing with Anna for too long to let himself cherish that hope. She blew hot and cold depending on the weather or the phase of the moon or the day of the week.
But she seemed sincere enough, so he bit back the snippy reply he’d given the last person to ask that question. “I’m not out to get myself killed, I promise.”
She frowned, intense and troubled. “I don’t know if I believe you.”
Redemption lies beyond the veil between truth and lies.
Shadows Of Fate
© 2010 Angela Dennis
Shadow Born, Book 1
After witnessing her husband’s murder, Brenna Baudouin temporarily lost control of her Shadow Bearer powers. Her penance: one hundred years policing hordes of supernatural misfits that spilled onto Earth after a cataclysmic war.
When she learns she’s been assigned a new partner, something about the other Shadow Bearer sparks her suspicions. Particularly when people closest to her start turning up as piles of ash.
Gray Warlow holds tight to the glamour that allows him to get close to the woman on whom he plans to wreak vengeance for betraying his people. Yet as he manipulates his way past her distrust, he begins to see her not as the heartless monster he was led to believe, but a strong, vulnerable woman.
As they work to put together the pieces of a killer’s macabre puzzle, an attraction deeper than blood and bone flares between them. And they must reveal their deepest secrets to avoid becoming the final targets.
Warning: A thrill ride of supernatural proportions. Contains violent battle scenes, nail-biting suspense, crazy hot sexual tension, and enough twists and turns to make your head spin.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Shadows Of Fate:
Her gaze stretched to the bar. Beneath the glittering liquor bottles and burnt oak, a bottle of Jack in one hand and Grey Goose in the other, stood her target. Dirty blond hair brushed past his eyebrows, the rest tied back in a rubber band. He seemed innocent enough. As he flipped a glass bottle behind his back, muscles rippling on his shirtless body, magic seeped from his skin. It flowed around the women stretched across the bar, their assets on display as well as their lust.
Thankfully, he didn’t get much bang for his buck. This one was weak. Newly possessed, the demon hadn’t had time to gain a strong enough lock on the victim’s body. This shouldn’t take long. The piles of paperwork she had left on her desk might even get done tonight.
She pushed through the crowd, stripping her leather duster off her shoulders as she went. The black corset underneath, paired with tight leather pants, flattered her figure. She turned heads, especially the demon’s. She released the hair tie at the back of her neck. With a quick shake, her burnt copper curls slid down to her waist. She stopped at one of the tiny tables and threw her coat across the barstool.
Eyes closed, she pretended the music was something more aesthetically pleasing as she stepped onto the dance floor, keeping her mark at the forefront of her mind. She felt his eyes on her body as she swayed t
o the music. Hips gyrating to the heavy beat, she pulled on her glamour to blend in with the other dancers as she let her magic wrap his body. Losing herself in the music, she let him watch her move, feeling his desire amp. His energy vibrated as he made his way through the crowd, his power wild.
His hands draped her hips and he pulled her to him, his magic sliding over her body. Darkness tinged her aura, but she shrugged it off. Dealing with demon magic never got easier, but his wasn’t powerful. Grinning, she wrapped her hand around his neck, pulling him close until her lips brushed his ear. His burning skin jumped against her touch.
They stilled for a moment as the DJ switched tracks. “Think you could get me a drink?” she breathed, brushing a hand down his bare back. “I’m thirsty.” She grinned as he nodded, eager, the demon jumping beneath his skin.
“Anything for you, darlin’.” He wrapped a possessive arm around her waist, moving her toward the bar. “What’s your poison?”
“Whiskey. Straight.”
A grin played on his lips. “My kinda woman.”
Pushing past the other bartender, he grabbed a bottle of Jack and poured her shot. She caught it as it slid across the splintered wooden bar. Tossing it back, she reveled in the slow burn of the liquor. It was an old favorite. Just cause she was working didn’t mean she couldn’t treat herself.
She tossed back a second shot, thankful she didn’t have the ability to get drunk. Giving the demon her best longing look, she leaned forward. “Thanks. I needed that,” she murmured. “What’s your name?”
“Zed.”
Leaning forward, she traced a finger down her cleavage. “Do you think you could give me a ride home, Zed?” she asked. She bit one finger in a nervous gesture, knowing he was buying it. “My friend went home with some guy and left me here. I can wait.”
His eyes flashed, and she knew she had him.
