Passion Model

by Megan Hart

  “Marrin is my wife,” said Keane without changing his tone.

  If the woman’s face could have blushed any more crimson, Marrin didn’t see how. Arlene Simpson stammered and stuttered and backed away like Keane had somehow insulted her when really, she was the one who’d put her foot in her mouth.

  It made Marrin feel no better to watch the other woman’s distress. Much of the time she could forget her husband was of a different race that didn’t age the same way Earthers did. She aged every day. Keane did not.

  She just wanted to forget. What she gets is her destiny.

  Emergence

  © 2010 Kim Knox

  Life as Jaime Dalton knows it is almost over. Come morning, she—the forbidden offspring of a human and a gryphon—will be owned body and soul by the First Dragon, ruler of the mythoi. He will control everything. What she wears, what she eats, when she sleeps. And with whom.

  Determined to have a final fling, she seeks out the comfort of a stranger’s arms. Except he turns out to be “stranger” than he first appears.

  Kaden Rhodes knows what it’s like to be owned. Before he follows his orders to escort Jaime to the same fate, he can’t resist joining her in one last act of defiance. Before the night is over, though, he finds she has inched her way under his skin.

  Their connection is hot, fast, completely irresistible…and they’re playing with fire. Discovery will render them useless to the First Dragon. And those marked useless end up dead.

  Warning: This title contains wild sex, dark violence and irascible dragons who shift into brooding men. Oh, and the utter perversion of mythology.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Emergence:

  The soft click of the hotel door as it closed skittered nervous energy down my spine.

  Kaden leaned against the thick, dark wood, a speculative smile cutting his mouth. Soft lamplight carved gold over his smooth features, and his amber eyes gleamed. His shadow pulsed hot and heavy in the short corridor leading to the sitting room, and I backed away from him. My heels caught in the thick, pale carpet, and I kicked the bloody shoes free. My toes thanked me. Again.

  “Changing your mind?”

  The walk from the club had been quick, silent. He’d gripped my hand and the strength, the promise of his touch had kept the fire sparking under my veins. In the wide, steel-lined lift, our reflections had bounced back at us, and I’d wanted to push him up against the cold metal and find his mouth…but the red light of security cameras glared balefully from the lift’s ceiling. And now I stood on the edge of the long sitting room and my nerve failed me.

  “No, not changing my mind.” He pushed himself away from the door, and my feet, of their own volition, backed farther into the room. Kaden was beautiful, powerful. I wanted him, I did, but…it, he, the moment, made everything real. My gut clenched, the sudden pain making me bite at my lip. I would sleep with Kaden and then the First Dragon’s envoy would escort me to his superior. At which point my life would be over. The man in front of me was my last dose of freedom. “I only have a short time,” I said, watching Kaden move towards me with liquid grace. “This time I have…”

  “It’s running too fast.” His head tilted, and the smile lurking on his mouth forced my heart to beat hard. He stood close again. His fingers brushed my jaw, and I sucked in a quick breath. Something about Kaden, the man, his shadow stealing over mine, made my body ache. “This room was another promise to yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  He glanced behind me, no doubt seeing the mess of my clothes thrown over the corner couch and the papers spread out over one end of the long dining table. “How long have you been here?”

  “Two nights.” I willed myself to step towards him, to press my body against his lean hardness. My palm skirted over his chest, teasing, playing with the smooth material of his shirt. “I wanted luxury before…”

  “What?” Kaden threaded his fingers through my loose hair and turned my face up to his. His lips brushed mine, soft, tender, and it stopped my breath. “What’s taking you away?”

  I couldn’t answer, didn’t want to. I only wanted more of his mouth, for him to deepen the kiss into something molten, wild, and for me to forget for the few hours I had left. I bit at his lip, and he growled, a low, primitive sound, and it pushed me hard against him.

  Kaden murmured something. His shadow wrapped around me in a dark, enveloping wave and I arched into him. Whatever he was, whatever ancient mythoi rode in his blood, it sank into my core. I couldn’t wait. My mouth took his, my tongue, teeth, lips battling, wanting more of him.

  Kaden groaned, his hands shifting until he could snake his arms across my back. He tugged at my skirt, yanking it up my thigh. A hot palm and fingers caressed my backside. He squeezed, urging me up, and I obeyed, lifting my legs. With an all too easy strength he held me, and I wrapped my thighs around his waist, my arms linking behind his head. Our shadows merged, shifted, unsure at the closeness, at the need burning up through us, but wanting it, wanting it as much as we did. And that wasn’t right. Mythoi didn’t cross species—

  “Who are you?” The question escaped after I dragged needed air into my lungs. My hand framed the hardness of his smooth jaw. His eyes had darkened and something sparked in their depths, a fire than made me want to strip him and fuck him. “What are you?”

  “What you need.”

  A chair clattered to the floor behind me, and my backside hit the cool mahogany table. “That’s not an answer.”

  He smiled, brief, hard, and need for him tightened low in my belly. “Do you want to say why you want me here? Why you want to fuck a stranger?” His smile grew, and something must’ve reflected in my eyes as he said, “I thought not.” He brushed tangled hair back from my forehead, and the unexpected tenderness hurt my chest. I breathed past it. “So, till the morning, we’ll both have our secrets. Agreed?”

  My throat ached and I couldn’t speak. I nodded instead.

  “Good.”

  He tugged at my clinging top, pulling it over my head. Cool air brushed my bare skin. The top slid from his fingers, dropped in a golden puddle on the carpet, and Kaden let out a slow breath. My nipples hardened under his intense gaze, and everything in me ached for his warm lips, his tongue to find my skin and lick—

  “Here on the table?” he asked.

  “You want to eat instead?”

  The smile he turned on me, wicked, possessive, squeezed my heart. “Later. I promise.” He leaned over me, his lips close to mine. “Right now, I want you.”

  I resisted the urge to cover his mouth with mine. If I was getting naked, then I wanted to run my fingers and tongue over the smooth muscles hinted at under his shirt. “Then you have too many clothes.”

  His fingers moved and the shirt joined mine on the floor. My own hands, nervous, eager, reached for him, and Kaden shivered under the first touch of my fingertips over the rippled hardness of his stomach. His breath warmed my cheek. “Better?”

  “Almost.”

  “You want more?”

  “I want all of you.”

  Kaden grinned. “I can do that.” His smile turned evil, and he traced a languid, shuddering path over my ribs to the thin-banded edge of my skirt. He made quick work of the zip. I wriggled and the skirt and my underwear joined the growing pile on the floor. “Though you first.”

  “So it seems.” His hands were already moving to his trousers, and my fingers covered his, joining him in pushing the heavy fabric away from his hot, smooth skin. I traced my fingers along his cock, my thumb teasing over the sensitive head. Kaden hissed. “Ready?”

  He laughed and gripped my hips. “Isn’t that obvious?”

  My thighs held him, my calves sliding over the hard, hot muscle of his legs, tugging him closer. This first time would be fast, fierce, and my blood pounded at the thought. I guided him, teasing his cock over my wet flesh, little sparks of need firing under my skin as I made both of us ache for more.

  “Jaime…”

  My name w
as a soft growl, and his shadow thickened around him, encasing us, vast wings cocooning my own shadow, melting over it. The feeling was…bliss, deepening at the first push of his hips, of the slow, slow tease of him into my body.

  Kaden’s ragged breaths rushed warmth over my mouth, and his darkened eyes held me. “We need to fuck you. Right now. Hard.”

  “We?”

  “My…” He sucked in a breath, and I had to have imagined his pause, before he rolled his hips. The sensation of him hard and deep within my body rioted in my flesh and I groaned. “My shadow. It wants yours.”

  I blinked. The idea seemed forbidden…and delicious. “We…” He distracted me with a palm sliding up my spine, pressing me hard to his chest. His mouth brushed my jaw, my chin. He nibbled at my bottom lip, and the urge to deepen the kiss, to find a fast and furious release, warred with my need to question him. The question won. “How? I’ve never…”

  “I know.” The satisfaction thickening his voice pushed me against him. He groaned, and his teeth sank, hard, sharp. The sudden pleasure-pain forced me to grab at him, pull him tight against my body. “Let us share both of you.”

  Two hearts are never more than one dimension apart.

  High Octane

  © 2010 Kathleen Scott

  A routine fuel run through one of the planet’s dimensional portals explodes in violence when Major Geneieve Lockhart’s Jumper team is hammered with an unprovoked attack. With her ship disabled and contact to mission control limited, Genie faces her worst nightmare—losing her crew on the blood-soaked floor of a foreign desert.

  Help comes from an unlicensed freelance mercenary ship, piloted by a man she never thought she’d see again. Her AWOL ex-lover, Lt. Col. Dante Bowen.

  Bowen knows answering Genie’s distress call puts his undercover mission to expose a governmental conspiracy at risk. But after faking his death six years ago, he owes her something. Ending up chained in her cargo hold for transport to his own court martial wasn’t the thanks-for-the-rescue he expected.

  The bridges between them may be in ashes, but their desire burns as hot as ever. Even as Genie wonders what happened to Bowen’s code of honor, her body betrays her heart at every turn. The hostile race that attacked her ship, though, is coming back to finish them off. The only way to ensure freedom—on both sides of the dimensional divide—is to put her trust in the one man who betrayed it…

  Warning: This book contains action-packed dimensional travel, hot military wartime sex, betrayed lovers and evil, power-hungry bastards.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for High Octane:

  “It’s all right, baby. You’re safe.”

  Her forehead and back were damp. Her body trembled. She hadn’t woken up yet.

  He rocked her back and forth, singing what had been their song. Slowly, her body stopped shaking and her breathing evened out. He ran his lips over her cheeks and eyes. Gently, he rubbed his lips against hers.

  Genie’s lips parted and she kissed him back.

  “Bowen,” she breathed against his mouth. “You never could carry a tune.”

  A deep rumble started in the depths of his soul. No, she was right there. His singing voice sounded like the last strains of a bullfrog dying under immense torture. It had been a source of constant amusement between them.

  Bowen lifted a hand and ran it down the side of her face, cupping her cheek. “Are you all right now? You were having a bad dream.”

  She frowned and looked away from him. “Bad is an understatement.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?” He brushed the hair from her forehead.

  She shook her head and ran her hand up his arm to rest on his shoulder. “I talked to Cash this afternoon. He said they know of a traitor on this side of the divide.” Worry darkened her eyes, put a wrinkle between her brows.

  He let a small smile curve the side of his mouth. Gathering her closer to his chest, he said, “Are you trying to warn me about your boss?”

  “This isn’t a joke.”

  “No, it’s not. It wasn’t a joke when you locked me in the cargo bay either.” When she looked as if she might apologize or argue, Bowen stopped her words with a deep kiss. Genie stole her arms around his neck and held tightly to him.

  The kiss changed. It became desperate, hard.

  If he could crawl inside her soul and never leave her, he would. The drumbeat of a heart pounded against his chest. Bowen wasn’t sure if it came from him or Genie. He didn’t care much. All he wanted was to sink into her and wash away six years of loneliness.

  He rolled them so he was on top of her.

  Genie opened her warm thighs and wrapped her legs around his hips. She nudged against his erection, sending pleasure shooting down his shaft and into his balls.

  He broke the kiss to pull back and look at her. “Are you sure?”

  “I’ve missed you.”

  He’d missed her, too. But he didn’t say it. Didn’t let her know that every day of his assignment had been torture. Not knowing if she’d moved on and married. If she’d quit the Jumpers to raise a family. Or if she’d lost her life on some blood-soaked plain on this side of the divide.

  In one quick tug, he had his shirt off.

  Genie leaned up and ran her hands over his pecs, spreading her fingers out in his chest hair. Bowen took her hands and brought them up to his mouth, kissing each one in turn.

  The sheet had dropped down to her waist. The glow from the lamp bathed her in golden light. She looked like a damned goddess staring up at him. Everything about her was perfection.

  His gaze slid down her body, stopping at the red marks that still marred her breasts. “I’m sorry. I tried to get to you sooner.”

  She glanced down. “They’ll fade.”

  But the memory would follow Bowen for the rest of his life. Even now, in the moments before lovemaking, he couldn’t stop the constant loop of that horrible video footage from replaying through his head.

  “Do they hurt?” He dropped one of her hands, reaching out to trace a bent knuckle over the injury.

  Her slightly puckered nipple grew diamond hard as the side of his finger grazed against it. Her back arched in response. Genie’s nipples had always been ultra-sensitive. He moved the pad of his thumb over her, stroking her, watching in fascination as her eyes closed and lips parted.

  She hadn’t answered his question, but from the look of it, she wasn’t in any pain.

  “I’ll give you at least an hour and a half to stop that.” A sweet smile curled her lips up at the corner.

  The teasing words brought a lump to his throat. Tears burned behind his eyes. She’d said that the very first time they’d made love.

  Her gorgeous eyes opened, the smile faded. “Bowen?”

  He could barely squeeze out the words. But she looked so beautiful and trusting, staring up at him like he was her only salvation. God above knew she had no reason to trust him after he’d abandoned her. She still didn’t know why he’d left. And Christ, he was under orders not to tell her either.

  He leaned down and moved his lips over hers, still cupping her breast. “Shhh. Just let me make love to you.”

  Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

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