by Tasha Black
Lobo
Stargazer Alien Mail Order Brides (Book 7)
Tasha Black
13th Story Press
Copyright © 2017 by 13th Story Press All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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13th Story Press PO Box 506 Swarthmore, PA 19081
[email protected]
Contents
Tasha Black Starter Library
Lobo
Lobo
1. Veronica
2. Veronica
3. Georgia
4. Lobo
5. Veronica
6. Veronica
7. Veronica
8. Lobo
9. Percy
10. Lobo
11. Veronica
12. Lobo
13. Lobo
14. Veronica
15. Lobo
16. Veronica
17. Lobo
18. Veronica
19. Lobo
20. Veronica
21. Lobo
22. Percy
23. Veronica
24. Lobo
25. Veronica
26. Percy
27. Lobo
28. Lobo
29. Veronica
30. Veronica
Conan (Sample)
1. Brooke
Tasha Black Starter Library
Intergalactic Dating Agency
About the Author
One Percent Club
Tasha Black Starter Library
Packed with steamy shifters, mischievous magic, billionaire superheroes, and plenty of HEAT, the Tasha Black Starter Library is the perfect way to dive into Tasha's unique brand of Romance with Bite!
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Lobo
Her life has gone to the dogs… literally.
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After a bad break-up with a long-term boyfriend Veronica can finally devote herself fully to training search and rescue dogs for the local police department. The only problem is that she has to train the humans too, and they’re not as much fun as the K-9 officers.
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Until Lobo…
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Lobo has arrived on Earth with nothing but the brand-new human body he inhabits and the mission to find a mate and annihilate her with pleasure until she accepts him. Although nearly every Earth female he meets seems most eager to get to know him better, Lobo finds himself drawn only to Veronica. And she refuses to acknowledge their mutual attraction. The only way to her heart is through the dogs.
* * *
When one of the K-9s is in trouble, it’s up to Veronica to help him but there’s only one problem - dogs can’t talk. And while the rest of the department is ready to give up on the canine, Lobo offers to help solve the mystery and save Veronica’s best friend.
Can Veronica accept Lobo’s help while hanging onto her feelings? Or will the sexy alien bring her heart to heel?
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Veronica will have to be one sly dog to avoid Lobo teaching her new tricks…
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About the Stargazer Alien Brides series:
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Educated about humankind by the 1980s movies that came to them in an interstellar time capsule, these gorgeous gentlemen are eager to meet Earth girls...
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Season 1 focused on three couples in a small Pennsylvania town, featuring Bond, Rocky and Magnum.
Season 2 followed the story to a resort in the Catskills where three new couples meet and features Kitt, Remington and Indiana.
Season 3 continues the adventure with three new couples in a small-town police academy, featuring Lobo, Conan and Hawkeye.
Lobo
1
Veronica
Veronica Nunez ran.
In her dreams, she always ran.
In this one, she dashed through a lush green field with the sun shining above.
She didn’t have to look back to see if the dogs were following her - she felt their presence instinctively. The pack of sleek German Shepherds trailed behind her joyfully, their paws beating the dewy grass in a steady rhythm.
Though the running order of animals behind her might appear to be random, it was actually an elegant physical manifestation of their intricate emotional hierarchy. The canine closest to Veronica’s heels was the matriarch of the group. The other dogs trailed out behind like an inky ribbon. At the end capered the enormous omega, whose long legs would have put him rightfully at the front of any race.
But this wasn’t about speed.
Veronica was running as fast as she could, but the dogs were still in first gear. They respected her as their leader. They chose to fall in behind her.
When she stopped, she knew they would streak across the field, as sure as she knew the clouds would soon veil the sun, and the rain would fall hard and cold.
Even in her dreams, the other shoe always dropped.
But she loved to see the animals run. In the real world they had no opportunity to really open up and move the way they were meant to.
She stopped on a dime and waited for the rush of canines to thunder past.
But nothing came.
Cold panic washed over her and she felt the hair on the back of her neck lift.
She still sensed something behind her.
Not the dogs.
Something… different.
Slowly, she turned.
The field was empty but for a mist that carpeted the blue-green grass.
A shape rose from the wispy fog and moved toward her.
Veronica stood frozen in place, her heart pounding.
The figure was a man.
Tall, lean and muscular - handsome in a rugged way, with sharp cheekbones and deep blue eyes.
Veronica trembled, fixed in his indigo gaze, as he strode toward her until he stood before her, only inches away. A simmering heat poured off him, warming the air between them.
He didn’t speak, only extended a hand to place it gently on her shoulder, as she would have done to calm a frightened rescue animal.
Peace washed over her at his touch.
She closed her eyes and felt warmth soak into every pore.
When she opened her eyes again, he had moved even closer, his head tilted slightly as he observed her.
He slid his hand from her shoulder to cup her cheek.
Veronica waited with bated breath. She didn’t know this man - who he was, where he came from - yet somehow she knew that she needed him to kiss her, craved it more than anything else she had ever wanted.
But he only studied her with those clear blue eyes as her body shivered with waves of longing.
He caressed her cheek with his thumb and she felt it between her legs, an ache of pleasure so strong it was almost like pain.
She gasped in surprise and he pulled his hand away.
Cold air swirled around her.
The clouds had covered the sun as she stood hypnotized by this man and his seductive touch.
The sky opened and the rain hammered down as if it were angry, pelting so hard she could barely see.
* * *
“Veronica.”
The familiar voice of her roommate confused her and for a moment she was caught between the real world and the one of her dreams.
“Bad dream, huh?” Brooke asked.
“That’s awfully rich coming from you,” Veronica groaned, untangling herself from her sheet and sitting up.
Her roommate chuckled an
d tossed her blond braid over her shoulder.
Brooke woke them all with her night terrors from time to time. It was a good thing their other roommate, Trinity, had a good sense of humor. She had trained them to turn Brooke’s occasional middle of the night scream-fests into an excuse to eat ice cream sandwiches on the fire escape while she regaled them with tales of the officers and their foibles.
Trinity was the computer tech genius for the academy. Brooke trained the cadets in hand-to-hand combat. And Veronica ran the K-9 training program.
The three women shared a dorm suite in the former police academy building. With its rusted casement windows, asbestos tile floors and lack of air conditioning, the building had been determined obsolete, and the students were moved into the old monastery the department had purchased from the city two years ago.
The monastery was undergoing a huge renovation so that it could be a cutting edge training facility for cadets.
Meanwhile, Brooke was renting the old building from the academy. She was in the process of converting the first floor into a gym. And she was living upstairs in one of the dorm suites and renting the other rooms in the suite to Veronica and Trinity.
Given that the little town’s housing market was booming and rent prices were soaring, the three women were lucky to have a place to live in the heart of the village and right next to the new campus.
But Veronica still longed for central air conditioning.
“Hope you weren’t trying to sleep in,” Brooke said.
“Nah, I forgot to re-set my alarm,” Veronica replied. “Thanks for waking me.”
She didn’t have student training sessions until nine today. But the dogs thrived on routine. They fretted if she was late.
Anyone who thought German Shepherds couldn’t tell time was a fool. Maybe they had an internal clock, as Veronica suspected. But certainly they knew that when the national anthem played over the loud speakers, they should be eating their breakfast.
In any case, she didn’t like to be late.
She headed to the shower. There was still time for her own breakfast if she hurried.
2
Veronica
A few hours later, Veronica observed her students.
She was going through the motions of an ordinary training session with the dogs, but allowing the candidates for the K-9 position to run them.
Each dog had been imported from Germany at a price approaching that of a reliable used car. Then the training for each animal had cost enough to bump up that investment into new car territory.
Which basically meant that these intelligent canines were born and educated to have the potential to perform flawlessly.
The candidates, like all humans, had no such advantages. In them, Veronica wasn’t looking for perfection. She was simply looking for a mixture of discipline, humility, and raw aptitude for communicating with animals.
There was only one K-9 position available.
Each of the five officers here today had at least three years of experience in the field, a flawless community interaction record, and a written recommendation from a superior officer just to qualify to be invited for the aptitude test.
Veronica observed silently as Officer Morrison worked with Blaze, one of the most spirited of the dogs. Morrison had volunteered as a decoy for the K-9 handlers on the Philadelphia PD - it was mentioned in her recommendation letter.
Veronica had smiled when she read it. The letter seemed less enthusiastic than its contents warranted. Officer Tami Morrison was an effective officer, popular within the community, and showed enthusiasm for supporting Philly’s K-9 handlers by volunteering her time regularly as a decoy. But her accomplishments had come off more like a shopping list.
The most promising officers were often kept out of the K-9 department and groomed for higher positions. Veronica suspected this was the case with Officer Morrison. Her commanding officer had probably written a tepid letter in hopes that Morrison could be started on a career ladder he felt was more appropriate for her.
Unfortunately for her superior, but very fortunately for Veronica and the dogs, Morrison showed incredible aptitude for K-9 work.
Blaze was not the easiest dog to work with. He was young and had a dominant streak that Veronica had to patiently check at every training session.
But Morrison seemed to have hypnotized Blaze with her very movement. She had adopted a sort of staccato quality to her steps that had Blaze’s ears perked up and his eyes searching her face for clues as to what might happen next.
Tami was essentially giving the young dog a pep talk with her gait, and Blaze was responding famously.
She jumped him over a couple of hurdles easily as Veronica watched and enjoyed. She would try Morrison next with the beta female and see if she was able to slide into Masha’s more reticent energy.
“Nice, Morrison,” Veronica yelled.
Morrison waved back, a big grin on her face.
“Reeves, you’re up,” Veronica called to the beefy guy with Biscuit on the end of his leash.
Officer Biscuit was a magnificent animal, an enormous Shepherd with large, intelligent eyes, broad shoulders and an elegant form. He was strong without being dominant, obedient and affectionate but never goofy.
His name was the unfortunate result of a contest in which the department had made an attempt at public relations by asking the community to vote. Sadly, the public had also been allowed to decide the names that would be voted on, and the main pool of participants in the process came from the local elementary school, where a second grade teacher had used the vote as an example of the democratic system. No one else in the community had taken much of an interest, so Veronica’s paragon of canine virtue had been named by the crayon crowd.
All told it could have been worse. The name “Officer Squarepants” had only lost by eleven votes, so they’d dodged a bullet there.
No matter his name, Officer Biscuit was the clear standout among the dogs housed at the old academy.
Percy Reeves was a standout among the human candidates, but not for positive reasons. He showed neither the department record nor the natural aptitude of the other candidates. The only place he shone was in his letter of recommendation. Veronica wondered if his superior wanted him relegated to K-9 where he would be out of the running for higher posts.
She certainly would not have invited him here today if not for his last name.
Percy Reeves was part of the Reeves family that owned Reeves Feed Supply, a local chain of pet food stores. Reeves Feed Supply was a successful business and the founder believed in paying it forward. As a result, the Reeves Foundation was responsible for funding a lot of otherwise unfunded programs, including the K-9 training program Veronica was heading up. Two years ago, the Reeves Foundation had provided a three year grant that allowed Veronica to buy the dogs, feed and house them, fulfill their medical needs and even pay herself a modest salary. It was a dream come true.
So if the Reeves family wanted to send one of their own to work with the dogs, Veronica could hardly tell them no. She just hoped he outperformed his resume.
She watched as Reeves stood, impatiently tapping one foot. He was short and stocky with a shock of bright red hair, which he ran a hand through nervously.
“Go, Reeves,” Veronica called.
He ran forward, forgetting to indicate to the dog that they were beginning.
Biscuit was too professional to let on that anything was wrong. He leapt forward, the morning sunlight shining in his dark fur.
Reeves hesitated as they approached the first jump.
Biscuit, ever perceptive, stopped on a dime.
Reeves turned pink up to his hairline and yanked on the leash.
Biscuit trotted up obligingly.
“Keep up, mutt,” Reeves snarled.
“Easy,” Veronica called to him. “Always respect your partner - whether he has four legs or two.”
Reeves scowled at her.
She told herself he must be squinting in
to the light.
“This is a great example,” she told the others, waving them over. “Part of the K-9’s training is obedience. But obedience only gets you so far. When the shit hits the fan, you want your partner to have intuition.”
Morrison was nodding up and down, as were Carlson and Fletcher, two of the other candidates.
“So if he’s so intuitive why didn’t he pick up on the fact that I want him to jump?” Reeves demanded.
“You hesitated,” Veronica said matter-of-factly. “He could tell you weren’t sure what you wanted. And he was giving you time to decide.”
“What are you talking about?” Percy’s machismo was coming out. She’d seen the same thing a dozen times in candidates - wrong candidates. “Believe me, I know what I want. This dumb dog just needs to know I’m in charge.”
Veronica found her eyes drawn back to Biscuit.
The noble creature studied his current handler, his posture and the tilt of his head indicating a mannerly curiosity.
“Let’s take a quick break,” Veronica said. “Percy, stick with me for a minute. Everyone else go grab a drink of water. Meet me back here in ten.”
