Red Hot Lovers: 18 Contemporary Romance Books of Love, Passion, and Sexy Heroes by Your Favorite Top-Selling Authors

by Milly Taiden

“It’s the princess castle!” Cynthia said. She let go of our hands to run a little bit ahead.

  We followed along as the little mouse ears bobbed, aiming for the archway of the castle.

  “I’ll catch up with her,” Gerald said.

  Darion took both my hands and spun me in a circle. One of the park photographers approached and snapped a shot of us in front of the castle.

  Darion’s gray eyes glittered as we whirled around. The weather was ideal, slightly cool but not cold. We both were wearing light sweaters and jeans. His hands gripped mine solidly, then all of a sudden, he just stopped.

  “Time to go find your dad and Cynthia?” I asked.

  Darion shook his head. “Not yet.” He pulled a box out of his pocket. “I wanted to give you your Christmas present here.”

  Then he got down on one knee.

  The crowds walking around us stopped to watch. My hands flew to my cheeks.

  He opened the velvet box. “I know you totally intended to ditch me after one night. So, I worked hard to get you to stay.”

  A little girl gasped, making Darion pause to smile.

  “I promise to keep making you want to stay,” he said. “Forever. I love you, Tina Marie Schwartz. Will you marry me?”

  The photographer was waiting, his camera raised to his face. The park seemed suspended, everyone close by, holding their souvenirs, their children, the hands of the person they loved.

  Time stood completely still. I looked down at Darion, his riot of black hair, those earnest eyes. I guess this is what a normal life looked like. I had never pictured it before. But the canvas was right here, waiting to be painted. It didn’t matter what scene went behind it. Wealth. Poverty. Sickness. Health. What mattered is that you captured the feelings you had.

  And right now I knew exactly what I felt, so I said it. “I love you, Dr. Darion Marks. Yes. Yes, I will marry you.”

  The light flashed from the camera. People cheered and clapped and resumed their motion, their happy day. Darion stood up and slipped the ring on my finger. I would look at it later. Right now I wanted him to kiss me, here where everyone could see.

  And he did, thoroughly and long. I sensed a crowd growing around us, then little arms wrapped around my leg. I looked down. Manuelito.

  “Little Man!” I said.

  We were surrounded. Gavin. Corabelle. Jenny. Frankie. Everybody, even Nurse Angela. Gerald and Cynthia. They tossed flower petals at us, hugging and laughing. And I knew the scene I had just pictured had to be expanded. We didn’t need just one person in our lives, but many. To be sheltered didn’t simply mean you got married. But that you weaved a safety net of family and friends. We all needed people in our corner. As many as possible.

  I took Darion’s hands. He looked both relieved and happy. I laughed, realizing he thought I might say no.

  I kissed his cheek and whispered, “I need another promise,” as our group headed to the base of the castle.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “That we never give up on duct-tape panties and meetings in Surgical Suite B.”

  He picked me up and spun me around one more time. “Now that’s the sort of promise I can definitely keep.”

  ***

  Forever Sheltered is part of the USA Today bestselling Forever series. If you haven’t read any other parts of this emotional series, I recommend going back to Forever Innocent, which is the love story of Tina’s friends Gavin and Corabelle.

  FOREVER INNOCENT

  Book One of the Forever Series

  See FOREVER INNOCENT at:

  Amazon

  Barnes & Noble

  Google Play

  iBooks / iTunes

  Kobo

  About Deanna Roy

  Deanna Roy is the author of multiple USA Today bestselling books, including the Forever series, as well as books under her pen names Annie Winters and JJ Knight. She is a fierce advocate for mothers who have lost babies, and writing on this topic is her life’s work.

  Website | Mailing list | Facebook | Twitter | Tsu | Goodreads

  Table of Contents

  Their Second Chance by Milly Taiden

  Forever Sheltered by Deanna Roy

  Kiss of Memory by V. M. Black

  The Cowgirl Ropes A Billionaire by Cora Seton

  What a Girl Wants (Rock Stars in Disguise: Rhiannon) by Blair Babylon

  Beyond Love and Hate by Zoe York

  Ripped by Olivia Rigal

  Ready to Fall by Daisy Prescott

  My First, My Last by Lacey Silks

  Azure by Chrystalla Thoma

  Wicked Little Sins by Holly Hood

  The Royal Elite: Ahsan by Danielle Bourdon

  All for Hope by Olivia Hardin

  High Risk Love by S.J. Mayer

  Rush by Violet Vaughn

  First Taste by Mira Bailee

  The Perfect Someday by Beverly Preston

  St. Charles at Dusk by Sarah M. Cradit

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  KISS OF MEMORY

  by V. M. Black

  KISS OF MEMORY

  by V. M. Black

  Kiss of Memory © V. M. Black 2014

  Doomed to live out his days in a Victorian sanitarium, Will Davenport is the victim of severe epilepsy that is untreatable by the medicine of his time. It disrupts his memory and perceptions, forcing him into a kind of semi-infantile state even as he knows that his mind is being taken from him.

  All this changes with the appearance of Elizabeth, Lady Darnley. She has a strange power that makes his thoughts more coherent and less broken by her very presence, and she promises him the chance of a true cure—and a new life, brought by a vampire’s kiss.

  This vampire historical paranormal romance tells the story of Will and Elizabeth, who appear in the Cora’s Choice series set in the Aethereal Bonds world.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Will sat at the table. Yes, table, that’s what it was. And there was something in his hand—there had been something in his hand before the smell of burning paper, the smell that wasn’t there, so there must now still be something in his hand unless he had dropped it.

  He considered his hand. Hand. Baker’s man. Roll ’em up, roll ’em up throw them in the pan. The pan. The pan. The hand in the pan.

  The smell was sharper now, biting his nostrils. And then it was gone, just another memory among so many, like the fish in the fountain on the grounds, slipping between his fingers.

  His fingers, yes. He looked at them. They held something.

  A pencil.

  The word came to him instantly, as they sometimes did, out of the fog. And he could see it clearly now, clutched in his fist.

  Yes, it was a long, narrow, cylindrical shape. Black. And he intended to do something with it.

  “Your name, Will. Come on, now. Write your name.”

  He had a name, and it was Will. He looked at his hand and the pencil in it, and he looked beneath it and saw that there was paper. He ought to move his hand with the pencil across the paper and make his name. He knew that now.

  But what was a name? What did it look like, when a pencil made it? He scoured the rooms of his memory, but they held no answer, only a shadow where an answer once had been.

  “You can do it. I know you know how. First the W—”

  But Will didn’t know how. He knew that he once knew, but he didn’t know what the thing was that he had known. The girl—there was a girl there, in white and gray, her hair beneath a type of white hood. She was a pretty thing. Will was disappointing her, and that made him sad.

  No. That made him angry.

  He should know this thing, this name-making. He had known it before. Inside his head were so many empty rooms that had once been full. Full of his things, taken away by the stuttering silences.

  The girl was sad. That was who was sad. The girl was sad because she thought him a moron. That was the wo
rd they used in this place. They thought him mad or a moron. They argued about it sometimes. Will Davenport. Is he in the madhouse because he is mad or because he is a moron?

  Madhouse. The real one was inside his skull, because he was not mad, and he was not a moron. He just could not hold onto himself. Bits of him would come apart, making holes, whole hole, whole hole, holes whole….

  This time, it was the smell of sawdust that broke the chant. And the girl was looking shocked and displeased. He must have said something, in those holes in his memory while he was thinking about the holes.

  He looked down. His hand. Pencil. Paper. His hand ought not be holding the pencil quite in that way. But no matter now. He moved it, leaving a line in its wake, a black slash across the snowy expanse.

  And then he stopped, baffled. What were black slashes for? Why was there charcoal on paper, anyway?

  He looked up. The girl was gone. There had been a girl, he was certain. But she was there no longer. Had she been here today, or was it another day? There was a pencil in his hand. She wanted him to make marks with the pencil. It must have been today. Surely, it was today, but all the days popped like soap bubbles when he touched them with his mind.

  “It’s time to go outside now, William. Time for a turn about the garden.”

  That was not the nice girl. That was not the sad one. That was the one with the mouth like an ugly hole in the center of her face.

  Will did not want to upset that one. Bad things happened when her mouth went big and wide, like a box.

  “You were very naughty today, William. You upset Sister Agnes. But I won’t take any of your guff, and you know it, right?” The woman bent over him. Her fingers were on his chin, digging in, biting. “Right, William?”

  “Right.” The word came. He was grateful for it because sometimes the word didn’t come, and then the woman with the ugly mouth would get angrier and angrier.

  She straightened, and Will stood up fast—too fast, because his legs forgot for a moment how to balance his body. He stumbled and caught himself.

  “Good boy,” the woman said, and she walked away, toward the big glass French window through which the light spilled into the room.

  Will joined the others waiting there, the mad ones and the ill ones and the morons, all in their white uniforms, just like him. His stomach felt like it was crowding up his throat, his head throbbed, and there was a smell that was not there, a sulfurous stench. He couldn’t let it take him now, not in front of her. But the harder he thought that, the more his head pounded, and the more the world looked very close and far away all at once.

  The woman with the ugly mouth opened the door, and the ones in the white clothes spilled out. Will went, too, his step hitching with urgency. He must get out, past the gravel terrace, into the gardens before the fit came. Otherwise, the woman would see, or the men in their gray coats and soft hats, and she would be angry and make them punish him.

  Angry. He was the one who ought to be angry—a man, not a boy, not a child, not a moron, not mad. A man with a world that broke apart, with a mind that would not hold, but still a man.

  He reached the grassy lawn, and the new-mown smell crowded out the sulfur. His shoulders, hunched and anxious, now relaxed, and he looked down at the slender gray shadows of the fish, circling in the small pool of water below the fountain.

  Fish should not live in a tiny pool under the glaring sun. They should live in ponds, rivers, lakes. Small fish, they could get no bigger here, no matter how many years passed by. They were old fish but dwarf fish, trapped fish. They slid and slipped away from his fingers when he dragged them in the cool water, but they could escape only to other corners of the concrete basin.

  Will ought not have stopped to touch the water now. He would have told himself that later if he could have remembered it. But the sleek, lithe forms drew him as they always did, and his step slowed, stopped in front of the basin, and he put his hand into the water.

  And as if it had been lying in wait, the interruption came again, like a stone thrown into a mirror. His stomach was hot and light and the sulfur came back, and he shattered.

  The woman with the ugly mouth, the men in their soft hats—they shouted at him, hurt him.

  “Quit making a spectacle of yourself!”

  Fish, dish. I am out of fish. Out of a fish dish. Out of fish, out of fish, out of fish, a fish dish. A dish of fish.

  “’Old ’im, now.”

  “’E’s a strong bugger, ’e is. Don’t look it—watch his arm!”

  The fish, the fish out of fish. Will saw grass, saw sky. He was on the grass. He could smell it now, the crushed scent of summer cutting through the rotten-egg stench. The blades pressed against his cheek, and when he looked beyond them, he saw big ugly boots. They had hit him, those men. They had kicked him. He didn’t remember it now, but he hurt, his ribs, his back, his belly. And he remembered that it had happened.

  “He was looking at the fish when he threw himself into a fit. Clearly, they are too stimulating for him. He must not be allowed such excitement.”

  But he needed the fish. He opened his mouth, tried to tell them, and shocked himself when all that came out was a string of the vilest curses.

  “Get him in now. Give him a good dunking, then wrap him up, good and tight, until he’s ready to behave again.”

  No, no, no. Not tight. Please, not tight. He would be good—

  But his voice continued on, swearing at them all.

  Something then—more sky, grass. Then he was inside. Corridors, sterile plaster and tile with tiny cracks as thin as a spider’s silk, as familiar and as strange as the lines of his palm. And then the blast of cold, all over his body, cold and wet.

  He was in the water now, in a pool like the fish. Maybe he was a fish, and he might slip away, under the hot sun. But there was no bright blue sky and his lungs burned as he sank down, hot like fire.

  Hands dragged him up. His face burst from the surface, and he remembered what it was like to breathe.

  “Almost lost ’im there, you ruddy idiot.”

  “’Ow was I supposed to know ’e weren’t going to put ’is ’ead up again? ’E was standing just fine when ’e was swinging at us before, weren’t he?”

  “Got them sheets? Get ’im out, then.”

  The men lifted him up, out of the water, faces red and blowing from the strain as the ugly-mouthed woman watched from the corner. Will was naked. He didn’t know how it had happened, but he didn’t know how many things had happened. He didn’t know why he now felt so tired that he could hardly lift his head, or why he could hear every word that the men were saying and play them over and over in his head, but he didn’t know what any of it meant.

  His limp body was laid out on a big white wet sheet, and the men set about wrapping him up in it, swaddled tighter than an infant, the wet layers clinging, unyielding in their pressure on his body so that he could not have moved even if he had wanted to. He lay in the cocoon of sheets on the cold, hard tile and thought only of breathing, because that was all that he could think about when the cloth hugged him so tight that it squeezed the air from his chest.

  “That’s it, then,” said one man in a gray coat.

  “Thank you,” said the woman. She stood over Will. “Dr. Gautier shall be most displeased to hear of your behavior. I am sure he shall put you on a stricter regimen in the future. No more of the nonsense with Sister Agnes. You lie here and think about that for a while.”

  Her ugly shoes turned on the tile floor. She was gone, and the light went with her. Will lay in the darkness. There was nothing but the cold, the hard floor, and the pressure of the sheets around his body, so he didn’t know when his world was broken and when it came together again because it was all the same for a very long time.

  By the time there was a sound at the door again, he had soiled himself, his tongue felt thick and parched, and the outside of the sheets was dry when he bent his cheek to his shoulder to try to scratch an itch on his face.

&nbs
p; “Lady Darnley, really, now, I must protest in the most strenuous terms. The isolation rooms are not suitable for a lady’s sensibilities.”

  “I assure you, Dr. Gautier, my sensibilities are quite impervious to insult. Open the door now. I should like to see this intractable case of yours.”

  A bolt slid back. Light returned. And with it was a vision who carried spring in her rustling skirts.

  And behind her came The Doctor, and Will’s heart shrank in his chest.

  “Fah! It stinks in here. How long has he been here like this?”

  “Sometimes it is necessary that the patients be restrained for considerable lengths of time, madam.” The Doctor held a broad white handkerchief over his nose, the heavy cologne from it floating down to burn Will’s throat.

  “I do not see that this one needs to be restrained for so long that he must shit himself, Dr. Gautier. Send someone here to clean him up. And give him water.” Her brows knit together over her wide black eyes.

  “I ought not leave you alone with him, madam. He has proven himself dangerous in the past.”

  “Utter nonsense. Good day, Dr. Gautier. I would like to speak to your incorrigible case. Alone, my good sir.”

  “As you say, Lady Darnley.”

  And then The Doctor was gone. And only beauty was in the room, layered lace, smooth skin, and a mass of hair as red as flame. She was like a nail in the center of the world, a point of stillness. Everything else might spin or fall away, but she was immovable.

  “You sent him away.” Will’s voice cracked with dryness and disuse. Four words. He counted them again and again in his mind. He had not said so much in a very long time.

  The woman approached, dainty pointed shoes under the frilled edge of her whispering skirts. “Indeed, I did. Sister Agnes says she thinks you are clever in there somewhere. What say you to that?”