The Last of the Monsters

by Lila Dubois

  It would be a few days until they learned who the shooters were, what their motivation was. For all Akta knew, it was the man in the club last night. It could also be two agents from Blackwolf, or crazy religious fanatics. In the end, it didn’t matter—what was done, was done.

  A mob of people had surrounded the theater. They’d gone on with the premiere as planned, but by the time the movie was over, the street had been jammed with reporters, and the security people had had to bring in extra manpower. The party hadn’t been the sedate affair they’d anticipated, but a wild celebration with entrance screening to rival that at Fort Knox. Akta idly wondered when the other guards had managed to find a metal detector on short notice.

  Before anyone was allowed to leave the party, Lena had been forced to remind the crew that they were still bound by the nondisclosure agreements. It wouldn’t stop all of them, but hopefully it would keep some people from talking to the hungry reporters who waited outside.

  The only ones left were those of them who were at the heart of it, and they were trapped by the crowd. Spectators, photographers and reporters had turned this section of Hollywood Boulevard into a zoo. They’d been told that the police wanted to speak to all of them about the shooting, but it would have to wait—every cop in Hollywood was down on the street, trying to get the crowd to disperse.

  They had turned on the eleven o’clock news very briefly and been both amused and horrified to see the coverage of the event, which included a few stills of Henry and Runako midchange—half human, half monster. Not pretty.

  But the photo most people were showing was the one of a wounded Henry, holding Akta, either while she was still in her fake faint or when she had her hand on his face.

  “I’d like to propose a toast,” Cali said. She was leaning back against Seling, who was naked, except for the loose shorts he now wore on his human body. “To Akta.”

  “Me?”

  “To Akta,” Lena agreed, raising an empty champagne flute. “For your quick thinking.”

  “They would have thought we were ashamed or scared if you all had run off the red carpet,” Margo added. “You stayed. You’re braver than I am.”

  Akta blushed and Henry rubbed her back. Like the other guys, he was naked, save for the knee-length shorts. “Beautiful and smart,” he said, pulling her in for a kiss.

  “To Akta,” the others said.

  “I hope no one is too drunk to talk to the press.” Jack Vice made his way over to them.

  “How did you get in?” Lena demanded.

  “More importantly, how do we get out?” Cali asked.

  “Get out? That’s not happening. I’ve lined up top anchors from the major networks. I’m moving you all to a suite in the hotel next door. My people are bringing fresh clothes. We’re ready for this, just moving the timetable up a day.” He looked both smug and excited. While they were half-dressed and bedraggled, Jack had not a hair out of place, and his suit was perfect. “The shooting was great,” he added.

  “Definitely,” Henry muttered.

  Jack eyed him. “Are you dying?”

  “No.”

  “Then you’re fine.” His gaze swung to Akta. “Quick thinking. I like the faint, that added something. We’ll play up the fact that Henry was protecting you, that you are all victims here.” He rubbed his hands together. “If you’ll follow me, we’re going to use the service tunnels to get you next door.”

  Weary, they watched the PR guy walk away.

  “There’s a reason we wanted to work with movie people, not PR people,” Luke said in a tired voice.

  “What do we do?” Margo asked.

  “We go with him.” Lena pushed to her feet. Her maroon sheath looked a bit worse for wear.

  “Wait.” Luke rose, took her hand. “There’s something we need to say, to all of you.”

  Runako nodded, pulling Margo onto his lap.

  “Thank you.” Luke’s voice was rough with sincerity. “This wasn’t your fight, and I’ve come to realize we had no right to ask this of you. But thank you, for everything.”

  “For better or for worse,” Lena said, smiling at Luke.

  Henry hugged Akta to him, kissing her temple. There was no going back, and they might never be truly safe again. Akta could live with that, because Henry made her happy, and she would rather be happy with him than safe and miserable without him.

  “Fuck that.” Cali jumped to her feet. “The rest of the world is just going to have to put on their big girl panties and deal. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m ready to go give an I-told-you-so interview to someone.”

  Cali marched away. Seling ran after her and scooped her up, carrying her toward the doors as he laughed.

  “I refuse to die because we let Miss Manners be the first one to give an interview,” Jo said. She and Tokaki followed Cali and Seling.

  “For the love of…” Lena hurried after them—as always ready and willing to do damage control—with Luke by her side.

  Margo looked at Akta. “Shall we join them?”

  Akta blew out a breath. “Do we have a choice?”

  “We don’t have to go,” Henry said. “Runako explained how to have sex with a human woman while in monster form. We could—”

  Akta jumped to her feet. “Not happening. I blame you for this, Margo.”

  “I had Stockholm Syndrome at the time. I can’t be held responsible for my actions.” Margo linked her arm with Akta’s.

  Henry stood and watched the woman he loved walk away.

  “Things are going to get bad,” Runako said quietly.

  “I know.” Henry had no illusions that the worst was over.

  “We may not survive this.”

  “True.”

  “The Clan may be doomed.”

  “Probably.”

  They looked at each other and Runako grinned. “No matter what happens, it was worth it.”

  Henry watched as Akta paused at the door to smile at him. “Yes, she is.”

  About the Author

  Lila Dubois is a tech writer by day and a romance writer by night. She’s living her own version of a romance novel with her Irish Farm Boy, whom she imported to Los Angeles. Having spent extensive time in France, Egypt, Turkey, Ireland and England, Lila speaks five languages, none of them—including English—fluently.

  To learn more about Lila, please visit www.liladubois.net or email her at author@liladubois.net.

  Look for these titles by Lila Dubois

  Now Available:

  Sealed with a Kiss

  Calling the Wild

  Monsters in Hollywood

  Lights, Camera…Monster

  My Fair Monster

  Gone with the Monster

  Have Monster, Will Travel

  A Monster and a Gentleman

  Glenncailty Castle

  The Harp and the Fiddle

  The Fire and the Earth

  Coming Soon:

  Glenncailty Castle

  The Shadow and the Night

  Wraith Accords

  Carnal Magic

  The heat he brings isn’t movie magic. It’s real.

  A Monster and a Gentleman

  © 2013 Lila Dubois

  Monsters in Hollywood, Book 5

  Cali knows exactly what will happen if her latest movie fails. It won’t just destroy her directing career and company, Calypso Productions. It might mean global war, and the extinction of an entire race of beings—the monsters.

  The last thing she can afford is distraction in the form of a midnight-haired, caramel-skinned monster who can—literally—bring on the heat.

  Seling enjoys humans, and not, as some have suggested, as a snack. As one of the stars of a movie that will allow his people to come out of hiding, he especially enjoys watching the movie’s intensely focused, human director.

  After one particularly frustrating day on the set, Cali and Seling give in to a blistering night of pleasure. Seling wants more; Cali isn’t ready to risk her heart. But it al
l may become moot when someone leaks raw footage that could incite the very panic they’re trying to avoid.

  And the only way to find the culprit is to unleash a monster so dangerous that it’s like bringing a nuclear bomb to a knife fight.

  Warning: This title contains a strong-willed woman, a banshee (no, they’re not the same person) and two men who know how to please their women.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for A Monster and a Gentleman:

  Seling scrubbed his fingers on his scalp, eyes squeezed shut to keep the shampoo from getting in them. He hadn’t quite gotten the hang of bathing as a human yet, and the number of things he had to do to his human body—wash the skin, wash the hair, shave the face, clip the nails, put on deodorant, put on sunscreen…

  The list was endless. He missed the hot mineral water that ran in the bathing pools in his Clan’s home high in the Rocky Mountains.

  He rinsed the shampoo—he wouldn’t make that mistake again—and got out. The bathroom and shower in his trailer were tiny, and he was sharing it with one of the human actors, a man playing a military general. They’d created trailers he could use in his true form, but he was taking this as an opportunity to learn how to live as a human, so he’d decided to forgo a larger truck trailer.

  The human actor wasn’t in the same scenes as Seling, so he had the trailer to himself. He’d waited over an hour for Cali, but she hadn’t stopped by. The sun would be coming up soon, and not long after that drivers would come and drive the trailers and trucks away to the next location.

  Since Seling didn’t have a car and couldn’t drive anyway, he had to wait for a driver to get him and bring him to the condo he was sharing with his Clan-mate Henry. When he first came to L.A., after Margo and Runako rescued him, Henry, Luke and Runako had all been living in the large condo, which was on the penthouse level of a building Cali’s dad owned.

  Cali.

  He wanted that human.

  She was dark and intense, and when she looked at him he felt her focus and attention, as strong and potent as if she’d reached out and touched him. Seling liked females who knew what they wanted and were willing to tell him…and who wouldn’t balk when he told them what he wanted.

  From the few things he’d heard the others say, it seemed that human women were just as sexual and adventurous as the females of other species he’d been with. There were very few monster females, so most of Seling’s partners had been outside his own species—creatures who, unlike his Clan and the other clans of beings humans would call “monsters,” weren’t ready to make their presence known.

  Since Runako had brought him to L.A., everything had moved very quickly, and Seling hadn’t spent as much time with Cali as he would have liked. She and the other human females had been busy hiring the crew to help make the movie, while he and the males had trained with Tokaki, the best warrior in the world, in preparation for the battle scenes. He’d never had a chance to get her alone.

  They were into their fourth week of filming, and the days seemed to have developed a routine. He’d been watching her, noting her schedule and looking for a time to get her alone.

  Despite their earlier conversation, it seemed tonight wouldn’t be the night.

  Naked except for the towel he was using to rub his wet head, Seling bumped his way out of the bathroom at the same time as the trailer door opened.

  “Seling?” The door banged shut behind Cali, who froze when she saw him. “Oh.”

  Seling blinked in surprise, hooking the towel around his neck and holding the ends. “Cali. You finished the shot?”

  She looked tired, but still sexy. She wore jeans and a creamy white shirt with a light jacket over the top. Her headset hung around her neck and the battery pack weighed down one side of her waistband, exposing a strip of brown skin.

  “I—yes. Actually, they did it in one take and it was spectacular, but I had to take a call from Margo.” She took a deep breath. “Are you going to put on some clothes?”

  Seling looked down at his naked body. “I’m still wet.”

  “You’re distracting me. Get dressed.”

  “What do you mean, distracting?” Seling grinned. Maybe tonight was the night after all.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I don’t. At my home I spend most of my time naked.”

  “That must be fun for the girls, but you’re in the middle of a human city, so—”

  “I don’t care about girls.” Seling took a step, then another, Cali’s body tensing a little bit more with each move he made. “But grown females, females who want to receive and give pleasure, interest me very much.”

  “Are you hitting on me?”

  Seling jerked back, confused as to why she would ask that when he clearly wasn’t hitting her and wouldn’t, unless that was her kink of choice. Then he remembered that was a way of asking if he was trying to entice her to bed.

  “Yes, I am hitting you.”

  “Hitting on. Hitting on me, and we can’t do this.”

  “We can. I’ll show you.” Seling grabbed her hips. A shudder went though her and Cali closed her eyes, licking her lips.

  “We can, but we shouldn’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s unprofessional, because it might mess up the movie, because—”

  Seling kissed her. Fusing their lips together, Seling used his hips to push her back against the door. He’d had sex in his human body a few times—for scientific purposes, of course—but he never remembered this electric thrill. His need for her was not just a heavy ache in his loins, but seemed to lick across his skin like fire.

  Fire was something he knew.

  Fire was something he liked.

  That cold day in hell? It’s here…

  Ivory

  © 2013 Lola Dodge

  Manhattan Ten, Book 2

  If Ivory’s fellow flight attendants whisper that she has ice in her veins, they’d be right. She’s spent years ruthlessly suppressing her dangerous ice powers, pretending she didn’t grow up wild on the tundra.

  Her legendary coolness has held solid—until a crazed attacker snaps her composure, unleashing her ice beast and blowing her cover. And she’s not sure if the man who defuses the situation is any less dangerous.

  When Panther’s trans-Atlantic catnap is interrupted by Ivory’s ice spear through his mark’s gut, he doesn’t hesitate to claim her as one of the Manhattan Ten. It’s the only way to shield her from prosecution. It doesn’t hurt that the Nordic beauty puts his inner cat on the prowl.

  Panther tempts Ivory in every smoldering way, but to let him melt her resistance is a risk she can’t afford. But when her past rises up to claim her, Pan is caught in the crossfire…and the only way to save him is to let the beast claim her, body and soul.

  Warning: Contains one smoldering ice vixen and the sexy beast man who wants to get his claws all over her. Make sure your icemaker is in tip-top shape before reading. Mukluks optional.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Ivory:

  Eight hours out of Auckland, the plane’s temperature controls fizzled. Instant passenger meltdown followed and call buttons lit the aisles like stars on the tundra.

  In the oppressive heat and recycled air, my coworkers wilted. Red-cheeked and dripping sweat, they fetched non-stop drinks for the passengers, filling their plastic cups with sorry, melted ice cubes.

  I handed my passenger a frosty cold can of Heineken. “Anything else, sir?”

  “No. Thanks.” The man pressed the iced-over can to his neck, and his head lolled back in bliss.

  Rewa scowled at me from the opposite side of the drink cart. Her hair lay plastered to her face, and she muttered about switching sides on the next run. Trading positions wouldn’t make her cans any colder.

  I wouldn’t use my powers on a routine flight, but chilled drinks were harmless, and I was enjoying myself. When I pressed my hand to my cheek, it felt almost lukewarm. The cold lived in my family’s blood, and such warmth was a rare treat.r />
  We docked the drink cart in the galley, and I left Rewa to commiserate with the others. When I checked my reflection, I didn’t blame them for the dirty looks. My tight bun hadn’t shifted all flight, and my fair skin was the same smooth porcelain as always. Should I mist myself to hide the difference?

  No. If the droplets froze against my forehead, I’d hardly blend with the regular humans and no one who noticed my lack of sweat would realize what they were really seeing.

  “Val?” I snapped my mirror shut as one of the first-class attendants approached, looking as harassed as the ladies in coach. “Can you pop up to first? Janna might have heat stroke.”

  “Of course.” First-class passengers were fussy, and on this flight, I was the best equipped to handle their complaints.

  For what they paid, I’d be fussy too.

  The first-class cabin was tucked upstairs, away from the gaze of the commoners. It wasn’t as crowded as coach, but the heat still rose. A few more degrees and I might have broken a sweat.

  Despite the plush lounge chairs and carcasses of tiny alcohol bottles—or maybe because of the alcohol bottles—misery hung in the heat-choked air. The worst off was the screaming infant in the first row. The mother’s hugging and rocking were all in good faith but weren’t helping matters, and her designer makeup looked like a melted mask.

  Babies could be forgiven in most situations, but with no air-conditioning, the other passengers might mutiny.

  “May I, ma’am?” I opened my arms to the child.

  She probably wasn’t in the habit of handing her child to strangers, but she took a long look at me. The wheels turned as she noted my cool skin and untouched complexion. Maybe she caught the chill off my hands. She handed the baby girl over.

  “What’s her name?” I patted the baby’s downy head, taking care not to cool too fast.