Drop Dead, Gorgeous!

by MaryJanice Davidson

  He bent to run a finger through one of the corkscrew curls. Its end was soaked with blood. The knife felt warm in his hands still. Actually, it was the warmth of her life staining it.

  He turned her over and peered into dulled brown eyes that accused him in their lifelessness. Gone was the sparkle—sometimes mischievous, sometimes amorous, sometimes fearful—that used to meet him. Now, the deadness of her eyes convicted him where he stood, even if a jury would never do so. The guilt of this night, this black, merciless night, would hound his waking hours, haunt his dreams, submerge his peace, indict his soul. There would now always be blood on his hands. For that reason alone, he would never allow himself another moment of happiness. Not that he would ever find it again. What joy he would have had, might have had, lay now at his feet in her perfect form. Strangely, in death, she had managed to escape its pall. Her skin was still luminescent, still smooth. If it weren’t for the vacuous eyes, the blood soaking her throat, the collar of her green dress, the dark auburn of her hair…he might hold to the illusion that somewhere inside, she still lived.

  He reached a shaky hand to touch her cheek. It was warm, soft, defying death even as it stiffened her body.

  He bent farther, let his lips graze hers one last time. Their warmth was a mockery. Her lips were never this still beneath his. They always answered his touch, willingly or not.

  He saw a tear fall on her face, and for a second was confused. It rolled down her cheek and mixed with the puddle of blood. He realized then that he was crying. It scared him. He hadn’t cried since he was a child. But now, another tear fell, and another.

  Through his grief, he knew what he would have to do. She was gone. There was no way to bring her back. Her brother would be searching for her soon. She wasn’t an ordinary Negress. She was the daughter of a prominent Negro publisher, now deceased, and the widow of a prominent Negro lawyer. She had a place in their society. So, yes, she would be missed. There would be a hue and cry for vengeance if it were ever discovered that she had been murdered.

  Which was why he could not let her be found.

  He knew what he had to do. It wasn’t her anymore. It was just a body now. Yet, he couldn’t resist calling her name one last time.

  “Rachel.”

  Then he began to cry in earnest.

  Tyne pushed through the sleep-cloud that fogged her mind. The dream-world still tugged at her, reached out cold fingers to pull her back. But her feet ran as fast as they could, ran toward the name hailing her, pleading with her to hurry. The name reverberated around…Rachel…Rachel…Rachel…

  “Rachel…Rachel…”

  The sound woke her. She slowly opened her eyes, lay there for a moment, not remembering. Gradually, disorientation gave way to familiarity. Shaking off sleep, she became aware of her surroundings. Recognized the curtains that hung at the moon-bathed window, saw the wingback chair that was a silhouette in front of it. Sometime during the night or early morning, he had retrieved her clothes and laid them neatly on the chair’s back.

  He was shifting in his sleep, murmuring. Then she heard the name again, just as she had heard it in her dream. “Rachel.” He strangled on the syllables, his voice choked with emotion—with…grief, she realized. She sat up, turned. His back was to her, shuddering. He was crying…in his sleep. Was calling to a woman—a woman named Rachel. Someone he’d never mentioned before. And obviously a woman who meant a lot to him, and whose loss he freely felt in his unconscious state. So he’d lied about never having been in love. But why?

  A pang of jealousy moved through her, pushed away affection, gratification. She didn’t want to be solace for some lost love he was still pining for. Didn’t want to be a secondhand replacement to someone else’s warmth in his bed. She looked over at the clock. It was almost four anyway. She might as well get home to get ready for work.

  She shifted off the mattress delicately, grabbed her clothes from the chair and started for the door. She would dress downstairs to make sure she didn’t wake him. She turned at the door to look at him. The shuddering had stopped. There was only the peaceful up and down motion of deep breathing. She opened the door, shut it lightly and made her escape.

  Here’s a look at

  AND ABLE

  by Lucy Monroe.

  Available now from Brava…

  Hotwire’s blue eyes burned with sexy challenge. “I want a kiss, Claire…Are you going to give it to me?”

  “Sure.” She went up on her toes, intent on bussing his cheek.

  He turned his head just enough, though, and her lips ended up pressed lightly to his. She didn’t open her mouth, but she didn’t pull away immediately as she’d planned to, either. She hung there, suspended by the connection between their mouths, her body humming with excitement. One second the kiss was soft and light, and the next he yanked her against his hard, male body and his mouth slammed down over hers with definite intent.

  He took her mouth with the skill and power of an invading army…or one very formidable mercenary.

  The man certainly knew how to kiss. He ate at her lips until she was dizzy from the pleasure of it. His fingers massaged her jaw, as if encouraging her complete surrender, the only kind she was sure he recognized. She’d never experienced anything so amazing in her life as Hotwire’s kiss. She moaned out her approval while gripping the front of his white silk dress shirt in her fists.

  He growled something she could not understand against her lips and then his hands skimmed down, over her naked shoulders and around to the exposed skin of her back. His fingertips touched bare skin between the velvet lacing and played tantalizingly with the bow.

  Man alive, what would she do if he untied it? She’d read about being branded by a man’s touch, but had never known what it meant…until now. Her skin grew hot under his fingers, so hot she would swear burn marks would be left behind. Only it didn’t hurt like a burn.

  It felt too darn good for her sanity.

  Without really thinking about it, she opened her mouth. His tongue tangled instantly with hers and took immediate and absolute possession of the interior of her mouth. Pleasure jolted through her body, spearing her right between her legs and she arched her pelvis toward him.

  His hands traveled down over her bottom to the backs of her legs below her skirt hem, then came up under her skirt and back up her legs. She almost jumped out of her skin when he touched the sensitive flesh of her inner thighs. He curled his big fingers around them, holding her while his thumbs kneaded her bottom and he lifted her into closer contact with his body.

  She undulated against him in a move that felt entirely natural, but froze in shock as her mound brushed against the hard roll of his erection.

  He wasn’t so inhibited. He used his grip on her to move her up and down the length of his engorged and rigid penis, making a low, masculine sound of pleasure as he did so. Tremors more powerful than a Richter 10 earthquake went off inside her.

  “Stop trying to seduce my maid of honor, Hotwire. It’s time to throw the bouquet.” Josette’s voice crashed through the passionate haze surrounding Claire, bringing her back to reality with a thud.

  What in the world had she been doing?

  Hotwire jolted like a man shocked by a live electric wire and broke the kiss, practically tossing Claire away from him. She tottered on her unfamiliar heels and almost fell. He reached out to steady her, his expression pained, but snatched his hands back the moment she stopped wobbling.

  The silence between them was more charged than the air after an electric storm.

  “You have five minutes and then I’m tossing the bouquet,” Josette said, her gaze faintly amused and assessing, before she turned to head back to the reception.

  It would take Claire five minutes just to get her breath back. How was she supposed to walk back into the reception following that?

  After several more seconds of charged silence, he said, “I’m sorry. That was way out of line.”

  “I liked it.”

  Take a peek
at Lori Foster’s “Luscious” in

  BAD BOYS OF SUMMER.

  Coming in June 2006 from Brava!

  The knock on the door startled Bethany Churchill so that she almost fell off the couch. With blurry eyes, she squinted at the kitchen clock on the far wall. Barely seven A.M.! Another glance at her sister’s bedroom door showed that Marci slept on.

  Wrapping herself in the borrowed sheet, Bethany hauled herself off the couch and went to the door. She put one eye to the peephole, and moaned at the sight before her.

  Big, tall, sexy male.

  No, no, no. She didn’t need this, not today, not right now, not before caffeine.

  Without opening the door, she called out, “What do you want, Luscious?” Her teeth snapped down on her tongue and she mentally cursed. “I mean, Lucius.”

  At the sound of his deep laugh, her head hit the door with a thump. Damn the other women in the building for giving him that ridiculous nickname. So he was SWAT. And brave. And he looked downright luscious. Luscious Rider, they called him, a name that seemed strangely apropos to her sleepy brain.

  Not that Lucius, the egomaniac, ever complained over the endearment. Nope, he soaked in female adoration as if it were his due.

  “Bethany, I take it?”

  How could he always tell them apart? More than one guy had been confused over time. More than one guy had insisted he didn’t have a preference, as if she and her twin were interchangeable, especially if Marci proved unavailable.

  But not Lucius.

  He behaved very differently with each of them.

  Issuing an obvious challenge, Bethany said, “Yeah, so?”

  “Open the damn door.”

  “Why?”

  His head hit the wood this time. “I need to see Marci. Now open up.”

  Of course he wanted to see Marci. The men always wanted to see Marci. Her twin had a charisma that somehow hadn’t entered Bethany’s gene pool. “No, she’s asleep.” And I’m in my underwear, and I haven’t yet recouped enough from a bad week and a long night to face you.

  Another couple of hours sleep, at least three cups of coffee, then she might be ready to square off with the hunky landlord.

  A hesitation, then, “When did you get in, Bethany?”

  Uh-oh. She knew that tone of his, a tone he never used with Marci. “Midnight. Why?”

  “You realize you’re breaking the rent agreement by imposing on your sister so often.”

  Screw yourself, Sergeant, she mimed to herself—but she didn’t dare say the words aloud. After all, he was the landlord, and Marci really liked her apartment. “I’m only here for a few days.” Or weeks. Maybe even forever, if she didn’t find her backbone. “No big deal.”

  “It will be a big deal if you don’t open the door.”

  “It’s early.”

  “And I have an emergency.”

  Now more awake, Bethany put her eye to the peephole again. Lucius looked rumpled and tired, but in a good, cozy and warm way—not panicked. Definitely not injured. Her suspicions rose. “What kind of emergency?”

  From behind Bethany, Marci yawned, then said, “What’s going on?”

  Well shoot. They’d awakened her sister. “I don’t know.” She glanced over her shoulder at Marci. “It’s Lucius. He wants in for some reason.”

  “I have an emergency,” Lucius yelled, proving the paper-thin walls did little to protect privacy.

  Also in a T-shirt and underwear, Marci strode forward and edged Bethany aside. As if Lucius Ryder saw her in a state of undress every day, Marci opened the locks, removed the chain, and swung the door wide without a hint of modesty.

  It was then that Bethany detected the beastly howling coming from Lucius’s apartment across the hall.

  BRAVA BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  850 Third Avenue

  New York, NY 10022

  Copyright © 2006 by MaryJanice Davidson

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  Brava and the B logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN 0-7582-1896-6

  * Defined by Merriam-Webster as: 1. in or into the interior; 2. inside.

  * Defined by Merriam-Webster as: 1. outside; 2. the lack of something or someone.

  *Defined by Merriam-Webster as: 1. together, with this.