From Jennifer Ashley, With Love: Three Paranormal Romances from Bestselling Series

by Jennifer Ashley

  Adrian gave her his warm, wicked smile. “Why do you think I said you were worth the price? So I could do this as much as I wanted.”

  He moved her thighs apart again, pulling her to him and sinking his thumbs in the moisture that met him. “So I could taste you as much as I wanted.”

  Amber cupped his face between her hands. “Make love to me.”

  “Why do you think I tore your clothes off?” Adrian answered in a voice filled with heat. He unbuckled, unzipped, and kicked his own jeans to the floor, revealing that today he hadn’t bothered with underwear.

  Amber tilted her head back and laughed to the painted ceiling as Adrian slid himself into her. He gathered her into his arms, filling her until her mind spun with wild desire. He held her close and began to love her with firm, hard thrusts.

  “I love you, Amber,” he said, his eyes heavy. “My witch.”

  “I love you too,” Amber said, and brushed the words over his lips. “Welcome home.”

  End

  Note on the Immortals Series

  The adventure continues! Join the Immortals in the quest to save Tain and the world in Book 2, The Darkening (by Robin Popp), Book 3, The Awakening (by Joy Nash), Book 4, The Gathering (by Jennifer Ashley), and Tain’s story in Book 5, The Redeeming (by Jennifer Ashley).

  See

  http://www.jenniferashley.com/jennifer-ashley-books/immortals-series/

  for more information on the series.

  The Immortals series began with an idea I’d had swimming around in the back of my brain about ten years ago: Immortal warriors who lived in a place called Ravenscroft and were summoned to the world to fight supernatural baddies whenever they were needed. I was already writing historical romances for my publisher (Dorchester at this time), and had many commitments with them, so the series had to stay on the back burner for a while.

  One day when I was chatting to my editor, I mentioned that I’d like to be part of one of Dorchester’s multi-authored series when the opportunity arose. She replied that they had no more plans for such series, but I was welcome to pitch one if I had an idea.

  That same afternoon, I emailed her a paragraph about the Immortals, and my editor’s return email basically said, “Let’s do it!” (I think that was the easiest sale I've made in my published career!)

  What followed was me fleshing out the series idea, the characters of the five brothers, and the series arc. Joy Nash and Robin Popp came on board, and the three of us honed the world further. I gave them very (very) bare-bones scenarios for the books of Darius and Kalen, which they completely reworked into amazing books of their own. We talked throughout the writing, read one another’s manuscripts, and had many conversations to keep everything consistent.

  The collaboration was a creatively stimulating experience. The three of us turned out a fine-tuned, multi-layered world, rife with possibilities.

  The original four books came out in 2007 and put each of us on the major bestseller lists for the first time. The series was so well received that we continued with another four books in 2008.

  A few years later, our publisher went out of business, and the Immortals series was consigned to limbo. I feared that was the end of it. Happily, through e-publishing, the Immortals books have returned to life. The original books are now all available again, and the Immortals world is back up and running!

  I hope you’ve enjoyed this installment. For more about the Immortals series and other paranormal series I write (Shifters Unbound), visit my website: http://www.jenniferashley.com You can sign up for my newsletter there by entering your email into the boxes on the top. (Newsletters are sent out only to announce new releases.)

  Thanks for reading!

  Best wishes,

  Jennifer Ashley

  Excerpt: Immortals: The Gathering

  Hunter jerked out of a sound sleep, pain in every limb shattering the dark oblivion he’d sought only hours ago.

  All was quiet. Two women lay curled on either side of him, sleeping hard, the three forming a warm nest on this chilly late April Minnesota night.

  The pain eased, and Hunter began to relax. A dream. Must have been. He turned his head, breathing in the soothing scents of the night, his eyes drifting closed.

  The pain smacked him again. Hunter’s eyes snapped opened. His body hadn’t moved, though he’d sworn something had grabbed him and pulled, like giant clamps trying to tear him apart. Hunter sat up, naked and sweating, but nothing was there. No one was in the room but himself and the young women, and they hadn’t awoken.

  There was magic in this; it screamed at him.

  He searched the shadows, ready to blast whatever it was with his own magic, but Hunter could find no target. The bedroom was dark and quiet, no sign of any intruder, no sense of one. The pain was still upon him, crushing his chest, making him struggle for breath.

  Hunter would know if anyone had entered the house. He’d put his hand to the lintel of the front door when he’d come in, marking wards to keep away both danger and inquisitive neighbors. None of the wards had been disturbed. No death magic had crossed the boundaries, no spell. So what was this?

  Then, as suddenly as it had come upon him, the pain disappeared.

  What the hell?

  Hunter heard a whisper of feet against the carpet, but it was only the cat of the house stalking into the bedroom. It noticed Hunter and sank to its haunches, its slitted green eyes meeting his. It projected in the way of cats, My bowl might be empty. Maybe you should check.

  Hunter slid out of bed without waking the women, eased his jeans over his bare hips, retrieved his sword in its leather sheath from the dresser and padded barefoot to the kitchen, followed by the cat.

  The house was silent. The two women friends lived in an ordinary neighborhood in an ordinary town in northern Minnesota and had found an ordinary method of keeping warm tonight. They hadn’t questioned the fact that Hunter carried around a large sword; innuendo about it in the bar tonight had led to him coming home with them.

  These days most humans were afraid to walk the streets without a measure of alcohol in them for courage. Demon attacks had escalated. People hired witches to ward houses and create amulets of protection, but most weren’t strong enough to deflect demons en masse.

  So humans stayed indoors as much as possible and drank more and laughed louder. Minnesota was farming country, but this year the ground had remained frozen too long, and Hunter heard muttering about crops not being sown on time and strange weevils infesting anything farmers managed to plant.

  The two women in the bar seemed to sense Hunter’s life magic and had purred at him until he’d agreed to accompany them home. After all, protection of humans was Hunter’s Immortal warrior duty, he’d told himself. They didn’t smell of death magic, so they weren’t demonwhores; just friendly young women who enjoyed men.

  In the kitchen Hunter found the cat food and dispensed a measure into the almost-empty bowl. The cat twined itself around Hunter’s ankles, projecting the thought that this human male was preferable to the ones who usually turned up.

  Hunter felt amusement as he put away the bag of food. He’d figured he was the ladies’ boy toy of the night, and he didn’t mind at all. He always made sex fun and asked nothing in return. Once upon a time he’d thought of lovemaking connected with family, children, and happiness, but painful experience had taught him otherwise.

  As he closed the cabinet on the cat food, intense pain jerked him again—deep, searing magical agony that made him want to vomit. Hunter snatched up his sword, eager to kill whoever the hell was doing this to him.

  The cat lifted its head, chewed bits of food dropping from its mouth as it mewled. With that soft sound, the comfortable kitchen shattered into large jagged pieces, hurtling Hunter away from the cat, the warm house, and the Beltane night into cold and darkness.

  He saw a glaring light in the blackness, heard voices chanting in unison. In the middle of the light stood an impossibly tall man with a hard face and coal-da
rk eyes. He knew the man, had last seen him seven hundred years ago in a battle in Scotland. In front of the man stood a woman in blue robes wearing a garland of flowers in her dark hair. She was chanting, chanting, chanting.

  Hunter started to say, What the fuck? when the world splintered again, and he found himself spinning and twisting uncontrollably through darkness.

  Hunter landed on something hard, the wind knocked out of him. A warm, ocean-scented breeze wafted across his body, then someone with scalding hot breath and a face full of fur licked him across the lips.

  * * *

  Leda Stowe awoke in the gray light of predawn. The electronic clock on her bedside table told her it was a half hour before the alarm would go off. From the kitchen she heard the slow drip of the faucet that never shut off completely, but other than that, her house held silence.

  She lay still, stretching her witch senses to decide what had awakened her. She heard the usual rush of wind in palm trees outside and the crash of breakers on the beach, the tide at its height. No throb of helicopter or motorboat, not even her animals making noises in the night. But every sense she possessed told her the wards around her island had just been breached.

  Foremost in her mind were the threats from the animal “collector” from whom Mukasa, the African lion in her largest enclosure, had been rescued. Diego Valdez, head of a Mexican drug cartel, had been incensed when an animal rescue organization had liberated the abused Mukasa, and he’d vowed to have his lion back, by force if necessary. This little island of rock and beach, though technically belonging to California, lay very near the waters of Mexico.

  Leda lifted the tranquilizer gun she kept next to the bed and opened the box in the bedside drawer to load it. Tranquilizer darts worked equally well on a human being as they did on a big cat in a frenzy. The intruder would be out long enough for her to call the Coast Guard or the DEA who patrolled these waters.

  She pulled on a T-shirt and khaki shorts and slipped on her sneakers. Her enclosures at the moment held only two animals, the lion Mukasa and a Japanese bear called Taro. Taro was waiting until facilities were ready for him in Hokkaido, where he’d be transferred back into the wild. Mukasa’s fate had yet to be determined.

  Valdez’s threats aside, both animals were valuable to unscrupulous collectors who would sell them for untold sums, dead or alive. Leda’s wards were strong, her air magic enhanced by the trade winds that blew continuously across the island. No one should have been able to breach them.

  She walked onto the veranda with the rifle in one hand and her radio in the other. The radio was better than a cell phone out here, because she knew there would always be a Coast Guard dispatcher on the other end. She hung the radio on her belt, then reached behind the door and snapped switches that flooded the compound with light.

  Taro reared up against the twelve-foot chain-link fence of his large enclosure, grunting a greeting. He was a curious animal, liking to watch everything she did. Leda felt a measure of relief that he seemed unhurt and unbothered.

  Mukasa, on the other hand, did not appear. Leda walked down the wooden steps and quietly across the sand. She saw nothing out of the ordinary—no boat rocked next to her sailboat at the end of the little wharf, the helipad and airstrips down the beach were empty, and no lights glittered on craft out to sea. Leda heard nothing but the wind in palms and the roar of waves sliding up the beach.

  Something moved in Mukasa’s enclosure beyond the pool of light, something upright and human that skulked in the shadows. Leda let herself get angry. The threats of the drug lord enraged rather than frightened her, especially after what Valdez had done to the noble Mukasa.

  She drew power from the air and traced a rune of protection with the toe of her sneaker, pouring her magic into it. A faint yellow glow danced from the rune, the color of air magic.

  She cocked the rifle and aimed it at the gate. “I see you in there,” she called. “Come out. Now.”

  Mukasa walked into the circle of light, growling the deep grunt of an irritated lion. Relief trickled through her that he was still alive, unhurt.

  “I’m waiting,” Leda said clearly. “I will fire this weapon, and believe me, I’m a dead shot.”

  She sensed the man in the enclosure homing in on her rune in the sand. What was he—witch? Demon? But she felt no death magic from him. Of course, a strong demon or vampire could hide its death magic—not a comforting thought.

  He walked forward and stopped behind the inner gate. Each enclosure had two gates with a small passage between—opening and closing one gate at a time ensured that the wild creature inside wouldn’t charge out whenever Leda or her assistant had to enter.

  The man inside stood a good six inches taller than the six-foot gate. The lights of the compound glinted off golden highlights in his hair, but the shadows masked his features. She sent a cautious tendril of magic toward him. What was he?

  The returning blast of power nearly knocked her over. He exuded life magic; it roared out of him to crash like the breakers on the beach. Sand whirled, and before her startled eyes, it rushed to fill in her rune of protection at her feet, erasing it completely.

  Leda steadied the rifle. “Come out,” she repeated in a hard voice. “Leave my lion alone.”

  Mukasa padded over to stand beside the man. The lion, with his full mane and massive girth, came up to the man’s chest. She watched, amazed, as Mukasa rubbed his head against the intruder’s torso.

  “Is she always like this?” the man asked Mukasa. His voice was deep and low, and had a place in dreams of the most erotic kind. It was a voice that hinted at sultry nights and cool linen, and pleasure Leda could scarcely imagine.

  Mukasa made a faint answering noise in his throat. The lion remained still as the man opened the gate, moved through the passage in what Leda could only describe as a saunter, and started to open the second gate.

  “Close the first one behind you,” she called.

  “Why?”

  “Because he’ll get out, that’s why. Mukasa is smart enough to run around you.”

  “He wants to come out. He wants to see what’s up there.” The man pointed to the dark cliffs lifting from the palm-lined beach. The hand that made the gesture also held something long and thick, a sword or some such weapon.

  “Close that gate, or this dart goes into your chest.”

  The man looked back at Mukasa. “You’ll have to stay behind for now, my friend.”

  The lion grunted as though he understood, then turned and walked back into the deeper part of the enclosure.

  The man closed the gate behind him and opened the second gate. He shut that one as carefully and stepped into the light.

  Holy Goddess of the Moon.

  Not only did his voice come from erotic dreams, so did his body. A tall, hard body in nothing but a pair of jeans that rode low on his hips. A tattoo of some kind peeked over the waistband. He had arms thick with muscle, a chest of honed pectorals dusted with golden-brown hair, hips tight below a narrow waist, thighs filling out the denim, and strong, bare feet.

  The lights of the compound accented the gold in his hair, and the eyes that studied her from an impossibly handsome face were emerald green. Leda suddenly imagined those eyes half closed in seduction, fixed on her as though she were the only woman in the world.

  Bedroom eyes, her mother would have called them. Watch out for those.

  The man held a sword sheathed in leather, its hilt thick and plain. A fighter’s weapon.

  “Put your sword on the ground,” she commanded.

  To her surprise, the man obeyed. He gently dropped the sword and looked at her expectantly, bare toes curling in the sand. “Why did you bring me here, witch?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “To fight?” he went on, as though he hadn’t heard her. “Or for sex? I hear some slaves hate women summoning them for sex, but me, I’m all for it.”

  Slaves? Summoning? Sex?

  “I didn’t summon you.”

  He
took a step toward her. “Do you have anything to drink? I could murder some coffee.”

  “Stand still and tell me who you are and why you’re messing with my lion.”

  He didn’t stop. Another step, then another, drawing him closer. “I’ll make the coffee, I’m good at it. Then we can talk about the summoning. Or your lion. Or sex. Whatever you want.”

  Was he insane? Probably. Too bad, but just because he was utterly gorgeous and exuded life magic that nearly floored her didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous.

  The man kept walking toward Leda, leaving footprints in the sand. His smile was lopsided, his hair mussed, sand clinging to his jeans and bare torso. Delectable.

  “Did Valdez send you?” Leda croaked.

  “Who’s Valdez?”

  She felt his magic concentrate and slide around her, and knew her own power was nothing in the face of his. His magic could make her drop the gun, fall to her knees, give him the animals, anything he wanted. Her island, her home, and he’d take it over with a sheathed sword and a crooked smile.

  Leda shot him.

  His green eyes widened, and he glanced down at the dart protruding from his left pectoral.

  “A tranquilizer?” he said in mild surprise. “How interest . . .”

  His right leg folded under him, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he toppled limply to the sand.

  End of Excerpt

  Books in the Immortals Series

  by Jennifer Ashley,

  Robin Popp, and Joy Nash

  The Calling (by Jennifer Ashley)

  The Darkening (by Robin Popp)

  The Awakening (by Joy Nash)

  The Gathering (by Jennifer Ashley)

  The Redeeming (by Jennifer Ashley)

  The Crossing (by Joy Nash)

  The Haunting (by Robin Popp)

  Blood Debt (by Joy Nash)

  Wolf Hunt (by Jennifer Ashley)

  Forbidden Taste (by Jennifer Ashley)