Eat Your Heart Out: A Romance Charity Anthology

by Skye MacKinnon

  “I don’t think I want to run away to be a space-wife.” I turned around to take another look at Earth. “Not that I’m leaving that much behind here, either,” I muttered.

  “Mate. Wife. Perhaps those words have different meanings in our languages,” Ris suggested.

  “Yeah? Would your mate have your babies?”

  He shrugged. “I would hope she would choose to—but that is far from the most important aspect of being a Brieritin warlord’s mate.”

  “Okay. I’m listening.”

  “I am the leader of my battalion. As my mate, you would be my partner in all things. Your life would be…” He looked around as if he could find the right words somewhere in this tiny spaceship. “Bigger,” he finally said. “Your life would be bigger than it is here.”

  I tilted my head at him. “How do you know that we would even get along?”

  “This tells me we will.” He waggled his translator at me. I leaned over and he showed me some kind of readout in unintelligible squiggles.

  “And if we don’t? If your little gizmo is wrong?”

  He smiled, and in doing so, he went from just gorgeous to devastatingly handsome. “My offer remains true. If at any moment you wish to come home to your planet, I will bring you back.”

  “So basically, you’re saying you come with a warranty? A money-back guarantee?”

  He frowned and began scrolling through his machine. “As in goods you are purchasing?”

  I laughed out loud. “Exactly. What if I don’t like the goods and purchasing.?”

  His eyes lit up with a gleam. “Perhaps you would like to try these goods before you decide on your purchase?”

  Nice. He has a sense of humor under all that muscle.

  I shrugged, ducking my head and looking up at him through my lashes. “Maybe. Yeah.”

  “Come with me,” he said, his voice dropping a full octave. He stood up and held out one hand to me. “Let us discover what you think of these goods.”

  Ris

  Having sex with the human before we were formally mated was risky.

  For me, not her.

  If I created a mating bond with her and she left, I would be devastated.

  But the way she looked at me—I could not resist her.

  I took her to my quarters. If she was going to panic, it was better she do so away from the equipment that piloted the ship.

  But she had shown no indication of hysterics yet.

  She might be the perfect commander’s mate.

  But first…

  “I need to show you my true form.”

  When I was certain I had her full attention, I used the genometer to drop my cloaking. She gasped, but it was not the gasp of horror I had feared.

  “I knew it,” she breathed out, then stepped up close to me and ran a finger along the spines on my shoulder. “I knew I saw something when you scared off that kid in the bodega.”

  “Careful,” I warned her. “They’re sharp.”

  She nodded and continued exploring all my spines with her fingers. Her touch sent shivers rolling through my body. I hadn’t realized my quills could be so very sensitive.

  “You feel that?” she asked.

  I nodded, unable to formulate words.

  “Those could hurt me,” she noted.

  “They could.”

  “So…is everything sharp?” she asked, giving a significant glance toward my cock, which was already beginning to harden.

  “Only if I need to protect myself,” I assured her.

  She frowned. “Wait. You’re telling me your dick can be sharp, but only if you need to use it…as what? A weapon?”

  “Would you like to find out?” I asked her.

  “Oh, yes,” she breathed. “I definitely want to find out.”

  With a touch of a button, I dissolved our clothes—I could reconstitute new ones later. Ceri gasped, but then laughed.

  I pulled her against me for another kiss, carefully pulling her arms up around my neck so they slid between the spines on my shoulders.

  The sensation of her chest pressing against mine, the feel of her breasts against me and the way her nipples tightened into tiny buds sent almost painful tremors of desire flashing through every part of my body.

  My cock hardened inside its casing, and I carefully lifted Ceri out of the way.

  “Oh, my God,” she whispered as she glanced down to find the sharp-edged casing split and fall to either side. “That thing could kill me.”

  “The casing will retreat inside my torso.”

  She laughed. “Not just the sharp part. The rest of it is just so big.”

  I lifted her and sat down on the bed so that she straddled me, slipping my hand between us and circling her clit with my thumb. She whimpered and clung to me as I felt the heat growing between us.

  When she moaned, I whispered into her ear, “I want you to fuck me.”

  Ceri

  The combination of his words and the danger of sex with a man literally bristling with sharp blades growing out of his body sent a thrill through me.

  I slid down on him, and the ache of his cock stretching me to my limit made my breath stutter in my chest. Raising myself again so that his cock almost slipped out of me, I tilted my forehead down to touch his.

  “Like this?”

  “Oh, it’s definitely a start.”

  With his enormous hands, he spanned my hips, exerting a pressure designed to slide me down the front of him until I slammed tightly against him.

  I cried out in something between pleasure and pain.

  “And that’s even closer,” he whispered, before pressing his mouth against mine, sliding his tongue into my mouth to tangle with mine, as if he were tasting my responses to the way he pumped in and out of me.

  When his thumbs brushed across my nipples, I found myself arching toward him, silently begging for more. And he obliged, cupping my breasts with both hands, squeezing the nipples hard until I gasped.

  He bent his head to take one of my breasts into his mouth, sucking in time to the rhythm of his cock inside me.

  I wrapped my legs tightly around his waist, digging my heels into his ass as I strained against him.

  My breath turned hot as I whispered, “Harder.”

  I lost track of the threads burning through me, of the emotion I knew was ready to explode through us both as Ris pumped faster and faster.

  His orgasm blew through me like molten lava, setting every nerve ablaze as I screamed his name.

  I flew apart from my core, searing us together as wave after wave of passion burned through us, leaving only me, Ris, and this amazing connection to one another.

  Afterward, as we lay together, still panting, I ran my fingers gently along the razor-sharp spines protruding from his shoulders and watched as the spiny casing enclosed his cock again.

  “Have you decided?” Ris asked after a long moment. “Will you go with me?”

  I didn’t even have to think about it. “Oh, yeah. I’m definitely going with you. For now, at least.”

  He drew me into his arms, pulling me into a deep kiss.

  And to think, I used to consider moving to New York an adventure.

  Love this steamy short? Be sure to leave a review for the set!

  About the Author

  USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times bestselling author Margo Bond Collins is a former college English professor who, tired of explaining the difference between “hanged” and “hung,” turned to writing romance novels instead. Sometimes her heroines kill monsters, sometimes they kiss aliens. But they always aim for the heart.

  Want to hang out with the author, win book prizes, see the cool covers first, and support Margo’s books on social media? Sign up for Margo’s general newsletter here for news about all her books, plus freebies and more. You can also join The Vampirarchy, Margo’s street team on Facebook and check out her website: www.margobondcollins.net.

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by Margo Bond Collins

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  Interstellar Shifters

  The Alien Warriors' Reparation Brides Series

  Gravity

  Alien Romance Boxed Sets

  Captured and Captivated

  Alien Embrace

  Reverse Harem Alien Romance

  Her Alien Crew

  Snatched

  Her Salad Twins

  Edeline Wrigh

  Heat level: 1

  What’s more embarrassing than being a rabbit shifter? Being a werewolf. When Kylie-the-rabbit meets “The Twins,” a bonded pair of wolves, they have some differences to work out.

  The question: Will they ever eat their veggies? Find out if first impressions stick in this short excerpt.

  Her Salad Twins

  There was something about the way he chopped a cucumber that turned her on. Maybe it was because she knew that he wouldn’t have the things in the house were it not for her, let alone the whole matter of him cutting it delicately with a serrated knife.

  Did the werewolves have the slightest idea how to make a salad? No. They did not. Was Blaise taking about three times longer to cut the cucumber than he would be if he were using a proper knife? Absolutely.

  Was Kylie going to tell him?

  No. She was not.

  She would, however, stare at him shamelessly while his back was turned.

  She could see the muscles in his broad shoulders move as he worked.

  It was a testament to how well she had them wrapped around her finger - or, well, foot - that she’d gotten the werewolves not only to allow her to take up precious fridge space with her vegetables, but that Blaise currently was fumbling around with a damn cucumber.

  She took mercy on him, sidling up to him in a move that made him lose his focus. The knife slid off the surface of the vegetable, landing on the wooden cutting board with a soft thud.

  He sighed in exasperation. “You sure you don’t just want to eat-“

  She glared at him, and he did the wise thing and shut up.

  “C’mon Blaise, you know she’s always going to eat like the damn rabbit she is,” Ryan said, coming down the stairs. Topless, still in pajama pants that somehow highlighted his girth under the flannel. He had a white t-shirt over one shoulder, though, as if he at some point intended to cover himself.

  She was pretty sure he did that on purpose. There was no actual reason he couldn’t have put the t-shirt on in his bedroom.

  She’d once actually asked Blaise if his twin - or “twin”, since they weren’t actually related - had always made a habit of coming down for breakfast topless, and Blaise had done an outstanding job of avoiding answering the question. Which was pretty much the same as him saying “no,” right?

  Not that she minded. Ryan was mostly an asshole, it was true, but other than the playful teasing he directed at her, he seemed to save it mostly for the other wolves. And he wasn’t bad to look at, either, though the scars overlaid across his muscles spurred questions he wouldn’t answer.

  They’d budge one day, though. She knew it. After all, she already had Blaise cutting cucumbers.

  “The rest of the salad is done,” he said, pointing to a bowl further on the counter. It looked - well, pretty good, all things considered, though it looked like he’d done himself a favor and bought most of the vegetables pre-sliced. That didn’t stop him from sounding almost ashamed about his attempts on the cucumber, though.

  “It looks wonderful,” she said, wrapping one arm around his back and the other around the front to grab what remained of the cucumber.

  It was... bad. That was putting it mildly. But she wasn’t going to comment on that, because she could almost certainly tell he was already self-conscious about that, and she wasn’t about to shame him for it.

  It was pretty funny though.

  “I’ll just eat it like this,” she said.

  Then she brought it up to her mouth and wrapped her lips around it, maintaining eye contact with Blaise as she did so. She held it for a long moment, longer than she really needed to, then pushed the cucumber a little further in and pulled it most of the way out before taking an ever-so-small bite off the edge.

  His mouth fell open, and his hand lowered back onto the counter.

  Good.

  “Are y’all gonna continue the soft-core scene in here or can I make myself breakfast? I’m starved.”

  “No one’s stopping you,” Blaise retorted, still mostly staring at her.

  “Just trying to be respectful to Bunny. I know how she feels about me cooking-“

  She spun from Blaise to glare at Ryan again. “I swear to fucking god.”

  Ryan just raised his eyebrows. “What do you swear to me?”

  He had a tone. A tone that made her heart race and her breath catch in her throat.

  He still hadn’t put the damn shirt on.

  It was a battle of wills now. He kept staring at her, letting the question linger in the air. She stared back, trying to find the words to respond.

  She wanted a witty retort.

  None came.

  It was Blaise who interrupted the silence. “You wish,” he said, but his joke came out flat. Too little, too late.

  At least it got her brain to work again. “You’re going to make fun of me for being a rabbit shifter my entire life, aren’t you?” she asked Ryan instead of answering directly.

  He let out a bark of a laugh. “I mean. Probably. Didn’t think wererabbits would be a thing that existed, and yet... here you are.”

  She sighed. He knew it drove her up a dang wall when he referred to her that way.

  “You’re just salty you can’t control when you shift.” But she put the cucumber back in her mouth before she could say anything meaner, this time keeping eye contact with Ryan, who was.

  Well.

  Just as easy to rev up as Blaise, if the way she’d caught him staring at her over the past month had taught her anything. But less likely to admit it and more likely to be pissed off by it.

  “Whatever,” he said, but it came out like a growl that seemed to say it was anything but “whatever.” “I warned you.”

  Then the bastard set his white shirt across the back of a chair and waltzed over to the fridge to pull out two massive steaks.

  “Are you kidding me? Can’t you wait for her to leave first?”

  Ryan’s mouth pulled up into a side smile. “Maybe when I’m the one fucking her.”

  Kylie looked from Ryan to Blaise, hoping Blaise would have the sense to say something. Anything, really. But he just raised a single eyebrow and looked at Kylie as if she knew something he didn’t.

  “I don’t know why you’re looking at me like that,” she said to him pointedly, then shifted on her heel to leave. “At this rate, I’m never gonna fuck either of you.”

  “Wait, hold up.” It was Ryan. She could hear him, though it wasn’t like she was going to turn around to address it. “You’re telling me you’ve never had sex-“

  “God damn it, Ryan, are you really about to ask her-“

  “You’re telling me that the way she acts around you is not communicating to everyone that-“

  “Shut up, Ryan,” Blaise said, bunching him squarely in the ribs. It caught him off-guard, and he folded around it, nearly dropping the knife in his hand.

  “C’mon, dude. Man to man.”

  “Man to man?”

  “Wolf to wolf.”

  Both of Blaise’s eyebrows were raised now, and he looked at his brother as if he expected to find a reason to punch him again. For real this time. Not enough to just make him wince. What he found there, he wasn’t sure, but it took him enough by surprise that instead of evading the question, he finally just answered it.

  Blaise shook his head. “It’s all a game to her,” he said, “but I’m involved in it. It started as a joke.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “We’re not involved,” Blaise said, “she’s do
ing it to drive you mad. And it seems to be working.”

  Several weeks prior.

  Kylie had been taking her normal morning stroll, starting just an hour or so before sunrise. It was a touch earlier than most of the actual rabbits usually were sighted, which suited her just fine; it meant she was less likely to be followed by an overeager male trying to live up to the promiscuous reputation they had.

  Not, of course, that this would have been a conscious process, Kylie reminded herself. Yet she digressed. That they weren’t human and weren’t bound to social standards on such matters wasn’t the issue; that she did not want to have kittens with them - or anyone - was.

  And so it was a normal morning in the early spring, roughly a week after the last freeze until next winter, and she began her strolling while the full moon was visible in the sky.

  These were her favorite mornings: the ones where the glow of the orb illuminated the fields on the edge of the woods, where she could smell the dewdrops of the night in the hours before they dried, where the buzzing of the bugs among the grasses shifted from the chirping of crickets to the grasshoppers and bees.

  She found her way to her normal tree, a willow at the edge of the pond, and stripped her clothing. She liked this tree for the crook in its trunk that held her clothes, delicately, and watched them until she got back, day after day. And when they were safely tucked away, hidden by the way the leaves of the willow hung, she stepped out into the night.

  In the beginning, shifting had been... well, excruciating. Not painful, not like the weres she heard stories about, but she’d grown up a shifter and growing pains meant shifting even when you didn’t want to, even when everything in your soul desired to stay sitting on the couch and binging Oreos and Netflix. Eventually, of course, her mother had rightfully told her there had been enough of that, and ultimately it was a blessing, since as an adult, this meant she now had the control to binge Oreos and Netflix without worrying that her body would react to a frightening scene by literally transforming into a terrified bunny so it could more effectively scurry away.