by Avery Gale
Her tanned midsection was completely bare except for the crystal belly ring that dangled in her belly button. From the back she knew the view would be of the half dollar size daisy tattoo she had gotten when she turned eighteen, just above the top of her black belt. The hand-tooled leather was clasped between her hips bones, with a large belt buckle in the shape of a star. On her feet were a pair of black cowboy boots with silver embellishments, and her long, slim legs were bare.
She was dressed to kill with every intention of causing a few heart attacks tonight. Her chestnut brown hair hung down to the middle of her back in large wavy curls, and she ran her fingers through it carelessly as she walked.
Her makeup was applied with precision so her oversized chocolate brown eyes were nearly as prominent as her blood-red lips. She had always hated the fullness of her lips, but men seemed to love them. Mitch always called them dick sucking lips.
She hated Mitch now.
Mitch deserved Connie Sanders. The bleach blonde tramp had been trying to sink her claws into Mitchell Edwards for more than six months, and she had finally gotten her way. Well screw them both. If plastic boobs, and a spray-on tan was what Mitch got off on, then he deserved Connie.
Rachel was going to go out and find a man to fuck her heartbreak away. She wanted raw, dirty, raunchy sex. Not the soft, gentle missionary sex Mitch seemed to favor. She wanted to be shoved against a wall, or held down by her wrists as a large muscular man devoured her completely. That’s why she created this plan.
It was a Friday night, and that meant a packed house at Robin’s, the local bar that Rachel had waited tables at through college. She had met Mitch there, and he would no doubt be there tonight playing darts with his cronies, while Connie giggled and preened over a watered down margarita. So in order to prove to the world that Rachel Lia Morgan was completely and utterly over her ex-boyfriend, she was going on the prowl on his turf.
There were usually dozens of hot men at Robin’s on the weekends. All of the local ranchers and ranch hands from the outskirts of Stone River usually hit the bar on Friday night looking for some action. Never before had Rachel considered indulging in a one-night stand, but tonight was her night.
She spritzed a little bit of her favorite perfume on her throat, and then grabbed her small purse. On her way out the door she noticed her cell phone was blinking with a missed message. She climbed into her silver Ford F150 as she hit the play message button.
“Rach, I know you don’t want to talk to me, but I want to apologize. I didn’t mean for you to find out about Connie like that…Rach? Please call me so we can talk this out. You can’t just throw two years out the window. I made a mistake, damn it—”
The voice clicked off as she hit the delete button, and dropped her phone back into her purse. Mitch could beg and plead all he wanted, but she had already made her peace with their breakup. She wasn’t interested in his excuses anymore. She turned the volume up on her truck radio, so Miranda Lambert’s tune “Mama’s Broken Heart” blared out the windows into the night, and headed toward her freedom.
The bar’s parking lot was packed with work trucks. With exception of only a handful of cars that probably belonged to the female patrons of the bar. Rachel backed her truck into a small parking stall at the back edge of the lot, right next to a black Dodge Ram Quad Cab that looked like it had rolled off the lot and onto the ranch just a few hours ago. Realizing she had parked rather close to the truck, she carefully opened her door, and slipped out into the small space.
A large masculine hand covered hers, where it rested on the top edge of her truck door, and she gasped.
“Sunshine, if you nick my new truck with your door, I’m going to have to spank that cute little ass raw.” The voice in her ear sent a shiver over her skin, and she flushed at his words.
She turned her head to see who was behind her that would have any right to speak to her like that, and she nearly groaned out loud when her brown eyes met those of Parker Brooks. Parker Brooks was one of the four Brooks brothers who owned Brooks Pastures-a local cattle ranch. The four brothers shared two things in common, their love of ranching, and their smoking hot good looks. Dark hair, dark eyes, long lean muscular cowboy bodies, all tucked up under a cowboy hat. It made Rachel’s blood sing just thinking about the four of them.
Rane’s Giant
by Lynn Ray Lewis
Coming October 8th from JK Publishing, Inc.
As soon as Lord Ludwig left she crawled from behind the big chest, and slowly approached the prisoner. He had not moved since they brought him in and shackled him to the wall. Her hands began to warm as she slowly ran them from the top of his head to the tips of his toes so she could assess the damage done to his body.
This man had taken a beating like none before him. His skull was a web of cracked bone, and three of his ribs were completely broken, with one sticking out from his flesh. His thickly muscled legs were striped by fresh rope marks, and his entire body was bruised with deep painful injuries. The stab wound in his gut worried her a bit, but not as much as the cracked skull.
This warrior had not gone down easily.
She had to sit astraddle his thick muscular thighs to reach his head with her hands. Goddess, but the man was huge. Her legs were spread so far apart she could feel the burning stretch in her own thighs. It was good he was unconscious because she could feel the thick bulge of his man’s organ nestled between her own sex.
Rane placed her hands on his head over the worst of the webbed bones under his hair and skin. She began the tedious task of melding the bone back together, making sure to interlock every small shard of bone so none would be left to float around in his skull after she healed him. Any tiny sliver of bone could cause damage and pain later, so it was better to get the pesky things taken care of the first time and be done with it.
She leaned over him for hours, concentrating on healing his skull, and pushing the gel that was causing pressure on his brain to seep out of the lesser openings where the skin was broken. Even if she had water to wash away the blood, she would not have done it yet. It would take another day, at least, to heal the rest of his injuries enough to remove him from this place, and place a pile of ashes in his spot.
Rane was getting quite a collection of big men hiding in the cave near the river. As soon as she heard that the Lord had a new prisoner, she slipped into the dungeon through the secret rock in the wall, and observed the guards and the Lord or Simon come into the room to torture the men for information.
When they left the men beaten and shackled at death’s door, she slipped through the wall and healed them enough to secrete them out of the room, and into the small tunnel leading into the forest.
Today’s discovery of a new prisoner was merely happenstance. She had been hiding in the dungeon because this was the one place Simon rarely ventured into without his small gang of hangers-on. She again thanked the Goddess for the small size of her body as she hid behind the trunk of torture implements in the darkest corner. There had been no time to hide in the tunnel without being seen by the guards.
That she was already here in this room when they brought him in was a blessing for the warrior had he but known it. The bleeding in his brain causing the swelling would have killed him after days of torturous pain. That is, if the stab wounds and the blood seeping from the place his rib stuck through his flesh had not caused him to bleed to death. Or the wound became infected with filth, and he died from the infection.
Rane took her hands from the warriors head and waited for the wounds to bleed a little more before sealing the seeping wounds on the inside of his flesh. That way, when his captors came back they would see what it appeared to be. The huge man still incapacitated from his mortal wounds, complete with fresh blood still slowly causing him to bleed to death. They liked that. They took bets on how long a prisoner would still bleed, and even how much they would bleed before death. Almost to a man, Lord Ludwig’s men were as depraved as he and his sibling.
It
puzzled her as to why this warrior, and the past three like him, had not been killed outright on the battlefield as so many had been. Nor had they been subjected to the lord’s usual depravities. For some reason he seemed to fear these men, and when a small pile of ashes had been found where the prisoner had been chained, all he did was grunt and nod his head. He ordered his guards to sweep up every ash, and scatter the ashes into the wind over the fields.
When the lord felt particularly like he needed entertainment, and there were no prisoners in the dungeon, he would have a villager brought into the hall on a trumped up charge, and allow his men to torture the poor soul. The villagers were raped and beaten for screaming during the process. One man had been strung up over the blackened beams overhead, and roasted over a vat of bubbling fat. His screams were said to still echo in the hall on cold nights.
Sadly, by the time each villager was tossed out of the hall like a pile of garbage, if still alive, their mind was too broken for Rane to heal them. She might heal their bodies, but the mind was in the hands of the Goddess.
Excerpt from Rush Against Time
Twisted Fates Series Book One
by Willow Brooke
Jessa Meadows shifted her weight between each foot unable to stand still. Today had proven to be even worse than the previous with no end in sight. The past few months had been a hurricane of agonizing disastrous events. With a huff, she slung her silky golden hair over her shoulder and handed the huge cup of coffee across the counter to the disgruntled and obviously caffeine deprived woman. When she turned around to grab the glass blender pitcher, she knocked it off onto the tile floor and it exploded into shards.
Jessa cursed under her breath at the broken glass that lay scattered around her feet. The past six months she had been slammed straight into her first heat with a vengeance. The more she fought it, the longer it dragged on and the more intense it grew. What was supposed to be a milestone in growing up as a shifter had become a living nightmare. It was similar to human puberty, only jacked up on steroids. A shifter could not scent their mate or be scented by their mate until after losing their virginity, or receiving a kiss from them. It was expected of all shifters to experiment sexually during this time, where in the human world it was socially and morally wrong to scratch every hormonal itch. Like wild animals, they would bang every single wolf who so much as gave them a wink and a smile. It was an animalistic fuck fest, and Jessa wanted no part of it. Her wolf fought for control, lunging at every weak spot in an attempt to take over. She was mentally drained, and physically restless. Obviously clumsy could be added to the growing list now, too. Yippie freakin’ skippy. Frustration pooled in the rims of her eyes and threatened to spill as she cleaned up the shards.
Every man within sniffing distance was all up in her personal space, eagerly offering his services in every humorous and pathetic way possible. The problem was, she refused to give her virginity to the first mutt that came along. It might be unheard of in shifter society, but Jessa wanted her first time to be meaningful. The idea of falling on her back for the first horn dog that came along at the right time made her stomach turn.
Lost deep in the recess of her thoughts while robotically preparing the next order at Mocha Express, her wolf growled and pranced in a challenging dance at the scents that wafted in her direction. The sudden yelp from the group of girls at the counter was a reality mental slap. The animalistic noise must have slipped out, because they now looked at her as if she had grown a tail. She had to resist the urge to peek behind her and make sure she hadn’t. Super. Jessa offered up a sweet smile, hoping it would dissipate their sudden shock. Mocha Express was one of the few chains that catered to both humans and otherworldly creatures, offering treats and beverages for shifters, vampires, and many other magical creatures that humans were oblivious to. Plus, it provided cover for the group that occupied the attached mansion.
Vampires and shifters took up residency at Gates Manor, a huge mansion that dated back into the eighteenth century. The eclectic group of paranormal prodigies worked together to keep the balance of the world in order. To prevent the devil from spreading evil through demon possessions and taking over the magical community, angels banded together with this elite group and gave direct orders for them to follow. Not many knew of the group’s existence, and great measures were taken to keep it that way. They were known as the Guardians by the select few who helped and fought with them on each mission.
Michael Stone was the head vampire in the agency, who was in charge of all of the vampires on the continent. He had a huge army of vampires at his ready who fought without question and at a moment’s notice. His wife, Christina, was the most powerful witch who originated from the first bloodline. Her aunt Autumn had been until Christina accepted her powers in the moon ritual. Together, the duo was unbeatable. Most witches needed three to harness magic to their full abilities. Autumn and Christina didn’t.
Next was Alan Black, one of Autumn’s two mates. He was the alpha of the wolf shifters in Northern America and represented them in the Guardians. Her other mate, Braden Wilder, was the alpha of the jaguar shifters in North America and also member of the Guardians. Together, they all made up one big, happy—odd family.
Working the day shift at Mocha Express meant more humans and the need to contain her wolf better, but it also meant less shifters that her mangy mutt would try to jump on. It was a catch-22.
Unfortunately, word must have gotten out of her schedule change. The door chimed announcing the arrival of the mob of six shifter men, all sporting huge grins and hungry looks. The intensity shooting from their eyes confirmed the hunger they had wouldn’t be sated with Danish rolls or pastries. Anger immediately boiled through her veins. Tough luck, boys. You aren’t getting your hands on my cookies. Make a move. I dare you.
Quickly drawing her attention back to the task-at-hand, she hurriedly finished the order and braced herself for the scene that was about to unfold. With her wolf chomping at the bit, she gritted her teeth and shoved the animal back into its restraints. Time for some fun. Let’s see if you boys can keep up! She plastered the biggest smile she could muster, and turned to her overeager customers. “Good afternoon, gentlemen! What can I get for you today?”