by Coralie Moss
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Also by Coralie Moss
Summer Rules, a novelette (Contemporary Romance)
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As far as Elaine is concerned, when summer’s tourist season arrives on Salt Spring Island, it’s the off-season for romance. Her mini-empire of gourmet food trucks needs her undivided attention, and from the end of June through Labor Day, her ironclad Summer Rules are in effect. Sex is off the menu.
Richie’s on hiatus from relationships period until he meets the renowned entrepreneur, Elaine Atkins. She needs his lumberjack skills to take down the tree threatening to land on her most popular food truck. And when her assistant calls in sick, Richie can’t say no to Elaine’s plea for a temporary sous chef.
The saucy rapport and spicy heat inside her popular taco truck aren’t all coming from what’s cooking on the stove. Elaine’s a vital woman in her mid-forties, and though Richie is twelve years younger, he deftly handles everything she tosses at him, starting with her resistance. By the end of the lunch rush, he’s ready to ask her for a date. And that’s when Elaine finds out just how hard it is to stick to her Summer Rules.
Invisible Anna (Contemporary Romance)
Anna Granger wants a second chance at love. But she hasn't been on a date in five years and has no idea where to begin. Her best friend wants Anna to make herself more visible. But that means leaving her comfort zone and giving the unknown a chance. When a college flame resurfaces and a captivating furniture designer rents the cottage next door, Anna is thrust into a series of personal and professional dilemmas. Will it prove smarter—and safer—to stick with what she knows? Or can she drop her guard—and her resistance—and meet love and passion head on?
Opening Nights (Contemporary Romance)
Opening Nights is a sizzling intrigue between a talented costume designer and an upper-crust Bostonian with a bad-boy reputation.
Chase Witherell’s preferred milieu is any place but his family’s Beacon Hill mansion. Overseeing global projects keeps him where he wants to be—in the air and on the road. Touching down in Boston, he attends a fundraising gala where he’s smitten with the show’s lead costume designer. Could this stunning and talented single be the one who prompts him to unpack his bags?
For workaholic Luna O’Rourke, life revolves around the theater, where she’s just one production away from her dream job. That is, until the conniving actress, Fiona Marchess goes into overdrive to sabotage Luna’s promotion—and love life.
When the costumer’s meticulously scripted life falls apart, she must figure out whom to trust. Can Luna—who’s always worked from behind the curtains—step out and embrace the limelight with her leading man?
Tanner
Tanner drove his truck to the place where he first met the remarkable Calliope Jones. He maneuvered onto the Pearmains’ drive, made a three-point turn in front of the gate, and parked the back end deep within a tangle of thorny bushes. The paint on both sides of the truck was already so scratched, he’d never notice the addition of more.
He was careful to leave his knife in the glove compartment, lock the cab’s doors, and pocket his keys. He passed through the gate stripped of trinkets and strode around the perimeter of the empty house, following the path’s right fork into the orchard. Past the newer trees, to the older ones. He slowed his pace.
Ripening apples swayed on short sections of branches. Leaves waved in the dark, whispering temporary sound prints that dissipated as he passed.
He continued on, deeper into the orchard, until the presence of the oldest trees slowed his stride. Hobbled by age and disease, somewhere amongst these ancient beings was another force he hadn’t met face to face in so many years he’d lost count.
Tanner’s night vision kicked in, calling forward a piece of himself he kept at bay. Every knotted tree was worth his attention, but he sought only one and found it, found the great trunk blatantly split and spread like the opening to a giantess’s womb.
He planted himself near the tree, undressing with slow deliberation, exactly as he’d imagined undressing in front of Calliope. If he lived through this, her house, her touch, and the healing waters in her deep bathtub would be his next stop.
And if he was lucky, she would care for him as he had cared for her after her Blood Ceremony.
Clothes folded and stacked with meticulous care, he faced the tree, stepping close enough to shudder when rough bark met the sensitive skin of his penis. He tried to step away, but the ground shifted underneath his feet. He stumbled and turned as tentacle-like roots swept up the backs of his heels and calves and circled his legs, followed by ones at his waist, shoulders, and wrists.
Slammed against the tree, he expanded his ribcage, tried to keep his chest open and wide against the creeping tightening of whatever was attaching him to the tree.
Tanner Marechal. Bonsoir, my wolf in the night. My apple. My seed.
Bark formed like a warrior’s armor along his forearms and upper arms and capped his shoulders. More formed on the fronts and backs of his calves and up the fronts of both thighs. The outer layer of his skin and covering hairs rose to meld with the bark. The process was both painful and charged with an earthy eroticism he’d longed for his entire adult life.
The area over his heart was left free, as was most of his buttocks, his genital area, and the ladder line of dark hairs rising from the base of his penis to his sternum.
He could move, barely. The bark had formed a plate-like exoskeleton up the front and back of his torso and limbs and created a freeform helmet as it cupped the sides of his neck, the area around his ears, and the back of his skull to the hairline.
The Apple Witch showed herself once he was fully ensnared. She rose from the ground, a nubile sapling speeding through its growth until it hit peak strength. She shed her outer layer of darkened bark, slid her smooth surface against his inner legs and thighs, and positioned herself over his groin. Delicate growths of spring-green branches tipped with delicate leaves reached for him, stroking, calling, arousing.
And then she entered him as she enfolded him, and he was lost to sensations. He was stroked, probed, licked, milked, heated, fed, and sucked dry. He was there purely for her pleasure, and it seemed to pleasure her to no end to discover the empty vessel within him and fill it, empty it, and fill it again until he reached his peak.
Tanner spilled his seed as the tree consumed him. His chest rose, his ribs spread, and he shed his bark-like armor. Little roots and supple vines fell away, leaving him breathless, leaning against the tree, freed.