by Jaime Rush
Kasabian stepped up behind her, his presence nearly overwhelming. “No. This is a boy who’s been missing for a year. He’s the younger brother of one of the kids at the youth home where I volunteer. I want to find him.” He stared at the picture, anger and pain in eyes that were now more hazel than green. The shade of whiskey. “I need to find him in a way I can’t explain. Like it’s eating at my soul.” He tapped the photograph. “Maybe it’s because I imagine my mother looking at my picture the way Lyle, this boy’s brother, looks at his.”
He handed her a glass of amber liquid, dark gold in the ambient light. She took it, inhaling the smoky scent. He started making an absinthe, pouring water over a melting sugar cube into a glass of opaque green liquid. The menthol aroma filled her nose and made her eyes water.
She leaned against the black granite counter and watched him. “Every Caido who’s done the Cobra had one of those first.”
He lifted his glass up, and when she touched hers to it, he said, “Here’s to liquid courage.”
Kye felt no speck of courage as she threw back her splash and a half. You have control over this.
He finished his drink and came to stand in front of her. “Tell me what to do.”
He was at her mercy. It gave her a weird sense of power she’d never felt before. “The Caidos dropped fast once the process was complete, so you want to be on carpet. The bombardment lasts anywhere from one to two hours and then you pretty much pass out for the night. The Caido who recovered his memories woke with them the next morning.”
“Hopefully it won’t be as bad for me. I haven’t stuffed back my emotions as much. In fact, I crave them: joy, heartache, jealousy, anything. That’s why I work in a club, so I can soak them all in.”
“But don’t they hurt you?”
“I have to do the Essex once a night to manage the pain. It’s a fair trade. My essence temporarily eases a Crescent’s heartache, and theirs eases mine.”
Now she understood that strange twist of emotions she’d picked up from him that first time.
He gave her a soft smile. “And you want to know why.”
She started to say no, that it was none of her business. Might as well be honest. “Of course.”
“I think it has something to do with what they were doing to me while I was being held captive. Hayden feels the same.”
“So that’s why you’re different.” Finally, she had an answer.
His smile darkened. “Part of it.”
Great. Part of an answer.
“Get comfortable,” she said.
He raised an eyebrow. “That usually means being naked.”
The mental picture of him standing naked in front of her sent an odd tingling right down to the core of her belly. She blinked, pushing it away. “Stop that,” she said to both him and her wild imagination.
“Just saying.” He stripped out of his shirt, which made his pecs and biceps move in all kinds of interesting ways, and tossed it on the couch. His torso was golden tanned, caramel male perfection. He undid the top button of his jeans, kicked off his shoes, and stood in the middle of the rug. “You going to catch me when I fall?”
Her gaze, which had centered on the faint hairline that went down to those undone jeans, snapped to eyes with a smile in them. She almost said, I could ask the same of you. Whoa, where had that thought come from?
“I’ll try.” With a hard swallow, Kye stepped up in front of him. “How does the Essex work on your end? Can you see the exchange?”
“No, I feel it like a blind man pulling taffy, pulling their essence toward me, sending mine into them.” He demonstrated, weaving his long fingers through the air that reminded her more of an orchestra leader. Watching, with his words wrapping around her mind, sent a shiver through her body.
She cleared her throat. “You’ll send your essence out to me. Then I’ll take over. Close your eyes and get into the same state you get into just before you do the Essex.”
He held out his hands. “We need to connect physically.”
His hands slid against hers, his fingers locking around her wrists. Why did his touch always jolt her deep inside? He blinked, obviously feeling it, too.
“Close your eyes,” she ordered, completely unnerved and unable to tear her gaze from his. When he complied, she studied him for a moment, the planes of his cheeks, the thickness of his lashes. Friggin’ gorgeous. It seemed surreal, him standing in front of her like this, them about to do this.
She closed her eyes and summoned her magick. It manifested as a beautiful column of dark pink. Then she pulled her own deep yellow essence toward the column. “Send your essence to me.” In her mind’s eye, cool, silvery smoke floated toward hers, and she directed it toward the column as well. “We’re going to start with the Essex, our essences just touching.”
When they did, even that mere brush took her breath away. She focused on the pink column, sending it to wrap around their essences. It required a part of her, that small extension of her essence, but nothing too intense. Here was that sought-after addictive state where a Caido could feel without pain.
But Kye was beginning to “feel” something, too.
Kasabian’s essence was powerful, his magick strong and compelling and…sexy. It spiraled in languid, sensuous circles, and her essence began to wind around his of its own volition.
A slow smile spread across his handsome face. “Damn, I wish we were doing this for different reasons.” His eyes opened for a moment, glowing brightly with such blatant hunger, it made parts of her ache. “This feels incredible with you.”
Better than with anyone else? she wanted to ask. No, don’t ask.
“Like a sensual dance,” she heard herself saying. She was a Zensu Deuce, versed in sexual pathos and magick. She knew the chemistry between them was rare. But that was a path she could not tread. She caught herself physically leaning closer to him, too, and pulled back her body and her essence with a soft inhalation. “Which it shouldn’t. Close your eyes and focus.”
“Don’t worry, Kye. I know it’s not about that.” He tightened his hold on her. “I won’t do that to us.”
This wasn’t about sex, wasn’t about them. She recalled the photo on Kasabian’s refrigerator.
“Do you remember when I showed you how the Cobra worked using my hands? Right now our essences are resting against each other, the way my fingers laid on top of each other. We’re going to the next step now. Our essences are going to slide together like my fingers did, but remaining straight like an X.” She felt the sensuality of the two colors sliding against each other throughout her body. Lord, but she wanted to let them intertwine, the way her body wanted to intertwine with “We can’t go to the final step. Let’s stay here for a few seconds and see if that will trigger the bombardment.”
Mmm, it felt good in a way that it shouldn’t. Like lying naked in bed with an achingly beautiful man and not being able to make love to him. Heat began to generate wherever their essences touched, slowly filling her entire essence.
“I think it’s beginning,” she said on a soft breath. “I don’t know exactly how it feels, since I haven’t done it myself, but my subjects reported heat right before things got going.”
His fingers tightened on hers. “Yeah, I feel it, too, heat and pressure building inside me. And…” His voice dropped to both a puzzled and concerned tone. “Something else.”
Like a sudden storm, his essence darkened and whipped into a fury. Its tendrils grabbed on to hers. She tried to pull back, but he pulled harder. No! His hold tightened, surrounding her completely. In the same moment it felt seductively powerful and suffocating. Heat exploded between them, and she lost all sense of where he ended and where she began. No! She struggled, both psychically and physically, to free herself. She stumbled back, landing bottom-first on the coffee table. She was free of him. Except…no, she wasn’t. She felt him inside her.
He’d bonded them.
Her eyes snapped open. He dropped to the floor, caught up in his
trauma. She wanted to grab his shirt and demand that he release her, but he was lost to her now. But she wasn’t helpless. She slapped her hand on his chest and summoned her magick again. Come on, come on. The pink column formed in her mind’s eye, but her yellow was twisted with dark silver and then it vanished. She psychically groped for it, but she couldn’t muster the power to pull it back.
He had broken his promise!
As much as she wanted to run, she couldn’t leave him alone. She watched him arch in pain, fingers digging into the carpet. So many emotions roared through him like a freight train that she couldn’t single any one out. She sank down beside him, her hand on his shoulder for support even as she wanted to scratch his eyes out.
She had never seen that darkness in a Caido’s essence before. It scared her, even more so because a mystifying wanting pulsed through her. Part of what made him very different, and no doubt forty ways fucked-up—the part he hadn’t told her about—was now bonded with her.
Also by Jaime Rush
Dragon Mine
Dragon Rising
Dragon Awakened
ACCLAIM FOR JAMIE RUSH’S
THE HIDDEN SERIES
Dragon Mine
“Awesome…not to be missed…a quick, sexy read!”
—MyBookAddictionReviews.com
“It’s just a quick taste of what’s to come with the series but it was fun, satisfying, and has me ready for more…This one is worth the read if you love paranormal romance and just want a quick dragon fix.”
—HerdingCats-BurningSoup.com
“The lighthearted approach to the dark paranormal world won me over…I liked the humor, I liked the love rediscovered story line, and I just plain liked the story!”
—TheWindowSeat13.com
“A great novella to begin things…I cannot wait for the rest of this series…Full of vivid imagination, emotional growth, and challenging battles both physical and magical, Dragon Mine is a must read.”
—RomanceWitchReviews.blogspot.com
Dragon Rising
“A fast-paced paranormal romance, full of danger, mystery, and smoking hot romance…I’m completely hooked on this series and I’m looking forward to the first full length novel.”
—ReadinginPajamas.wordpress.com
“Oh this little novella was the perfect blend of adventure, intrigue, and romance…there is tension from the very beginning between the two and this is one of the beautiful things about this read.”
—BittenbyLoveReviews.com
“It’s masterfully written and full of twists and turns…I’m really looking forward to what’s next in the Hidden series and can’t wait to learn more about this magical world.”
—RomanceWitchReviews.blogspot.com
THE DISH
Where Authors Give You the Inside Scoop
From the desk of Jaime Rush
Dear Reader,
Enemies to lovers is a concept I’ve always loved. Yes, it’s a challenge, and maybe that’s what I like most. It’s a given that the couple is going to have instant chemistry—it is a romance, after all! But they’re going to fight it harder because they have history and a good reason. Each person believes they’re in the right.
That’s how Kade Kavanaugh feels. Being a member of the Guard, my supernatural world’s police force, he has had plenty of run-ins with Violet Castanega’s family. They live in the Fringe, a wild and uncivilized community of Dragon shifters who think they are on the fringe of the law as well. And mostly they are, except when their illegal activities threaten to catch the attention of the Muds, the Mundane human police. Because Rule Number One is simple: Never reveal the existence of the Hidden community that has existed amid the glitter and glamour of Miami for over three hundred years. Mundanes would panic if they knew that Crescents—humans who hold the essence of Dragons, sorcerers (like Kade), and fallen angels—lived among them.
Violet is fiercely loyal to her Dragon clan, even if it does sometimes flout the law. But when one of her brothers is murdered by a Dragon bent on firing up the clan wars, she has no choice but to go to the Guard for help. There she encounters Kade, whom she attacked the last time he tried to arrest her brother.
My job as a writer is to throw these two unsuspecting people together in ways that will test their loyalties and their integrity. And definitely test their resolve to resist getting involved with not only a member of another class of Crescent, but a sworn enemy to boot. Juicy conflict, hot passion, and supernatural action—a combination that truly tested my hero and heroine. But their biggest lesson is never to judge someone by their name, their heritage, or their actions. I think that’s a good lesson for all of us.
We all have magic in our imaginations. Mine has always contained murder, mayhem, and romance. Feel free to wander through the madness of my mind any time. A good place to start is my website www.jaimerush.com, or that of my romantic suspense alter-ego, www.tinawainscott.com.
From the desk of Kristen Ashley
Dear Reader,
While writing MOTORCYCLE MAN I was in a very dark time of my life. An extended dark time, which is very rare. Indeed, it’s only ever happened that once.
In fact, I wrote nearly an entirely different book for my hero, Tack. He had a different heroine. And it had a different plot. Completely. But it didn’t work for me and it has never seen the light of day. I abandoned it totally (something I’ve never done), gave it time, and started anew.
I had thought it was rubbish. Of course, on going back and reading it later, I realize it wasn’t. I actually think it’s great. It just wasn’t Tack. And the heroine was not right for him. But never fear, I like it enough; when I have time (whenever that is in this decade), I intend to rework it and release it, because that hero and heroine’s story really should be told.
Nevertheless, when I finally found the dream woman who would belong to Kane “Tack” Allen in MOTORCYCLE MAN, I was still questioning my work because things in life weren’t going so great.
You see, sometimes I battle my characters. Sometimes they urge me to take risks I feel I’m not ready to take. Sometimes they encourage me to glide along an edge that’s a little scary even as it is thrilling. And when life is also scary, your confidence gets shaken in a way it’s tough to bounce back from.
But Kane “Tack” Allen is an edgy, risky guy, so he was pretty adamant (as he can be) that he wanted me to just let go and ride it with him. Not only that, but lift up my hands and enjoy the hell out of that ride.
But as I was writing it, I still fought him. Particularly the scene in Tyra’s office early on in the book, where they have a misunderstanding and Tack decides to make his feelings perfectly clear and in order to do that, he gets Tyra’s attention in a way that’s utterly unacceptable.
I fretted about this scene, but Tack refused to let me soften it. I even sent it to my girl, a girl who knows me and my writing inside and out. If I remember correctly, her response was that it was indeed shocking, but I should go with it.
Ride it out.
In releasing MOTORCYCLE MAN, I was very afraid that my life had negatively affected my writing and the risks Tack urged me to take would not be well received.
As you can imagine, I was absolutely elated when I found I’d done the right thing. When Tack and Tyra swiftly became one of my most popular couples. That Tack had rightly encouraged me to trust in myself, my instincts, my writing, and give myself to my characters to let them be precisely what they were, let them shine, not water them down, and last, give my readers the honesty. They could take it. Because it was genuine. It came from the soul.
It was real.
And because of all this, MOTORCYCLE MAN will always hold a firm place in my heart. Because that novel and Kane “Tack” Allen gave me the freedom I was searching for. The freedom to ride this wave. Ride it wild. Ride it free.
Lift up my hands and ride it being nothing but me.
From the desk of Christie Craig
Dear Reader,
Here
are two things about love I took from my own life and used in TEXAS HOLD ’EM:
1. Love can make us stupid.
Sexy PI Austin Brook is a smooth-talking good ol’ boy Texan. Where women are concerned, he wings it. Why not? He’s got charm to spare. But one glance at Leah Reece and he’s a stumbling, bumbling idiot. First he accidentally blows his horn as she’s passing in front of his truck, causing her to toss up her arms and drop her groceries. Wanting to help, he snatches up a plastic bag containing a broken bottle of wine and manages to douse Leah with Cabernet from the waist up. And since he likes wine and wet T-shirt contests, it only makes her more appealing and him more nervous.
For myself? On a first date with a good ol’ Texan, we were both jittery. I’d dressed up in a short skirt. The guy, thinking he should be a gentleman, pulled my chair out in the crowded restaurant. I had my bottom almost in the seat when he moved it out. Way out. He might’ve looked like a gentleman, but there was nothing ladylike about how I went down. All the way to the floor, legs sprawled out, skirt up to my yin-yang. Laughter filled the room. Snickering in spite of his apologetic look, he added, “Nice legs.”
Later when he dropped me off at my apartment, I struggled to get the door of his sports car open. Forever the gentlemen—hey, that’s Texans for you—he rushed to open my door, and then shut it. Standing close, he heard my moan, and completely misunderstood. He dipped in for a kiss.
I stopped him. “Can you open the car door?”
“Why?” he asked.
I moaned again. “Because my hand’s still in the door.”
With a bruised butt, and three busted fingernails, I eventually did let him score a kiss. It’s amazing I married that man.
2. Love is scary.
Divorced, and a single mother, I wasn’t looking for love when I met Mr. Craig. Life had taught me that love can hurt. And I’m not talking about a sore backside or fingernails. I’m talking about the heart.
