Maiden Flight (Dragon Knights)

by D' Arc, Bianca

  Davin’s Quest

  Jaci’s Experiment

  Grady’s Awakening

  Gifts of the Ancients

  Warrior’s Heart

  String of Fate

  Cat’s Cradle

  StarLords

  Hidden Talent

  Print Anthologies

  Ladies of the Lair

  I Dream of Dragons Vol. 1

  Brotherhood of Blood

  Caught by Cupid

  Coming Soon:

  Dragon Knights

  Keeper of the Flame

  Danger prowls on two legs…

  Wolf Hills

  © 2012 Bianca D’Arc

  A Brotherhood of Blood Novel

  Detective Sally Decker’s Wyoming trip to visit her newlywed friend, Carly, turns into a dangerous adventure into the unknown when she learns Carly’s husband is a master vampire, and there’s a pack of werewolves living just up the road. As if that wasn’t alarming enough, the sexy Alpha wolf has taken a shine to her.

  Jason Moore is an Alpha on a mission to make Sally his own. His very public seduction doesn’t sit well with the pack’s available females, but instinct tells him that Sally can handle anything, including any werewolf bitch dumb enough to challenge her.

  Romance gives way to a call to arms when the pack’s children come under attack. Their rescue mission turns into a mating dance and the hunt is on in more ways than one. Their attraction is mind-bendingly hot, though startling revelations about his magic and her origins could drive a wedge between them forever. Can love help them bridge the chasm between their worlds?

  Warning: This book contains bombs, bullets, bare-knuckled and bare-naked lust, and some serious ass kicking. Please do not feed the frisky furballs, unless you’re willing to risk drawing back a bloody nub.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Wolf Hills:

  Jason stopped the bike and waited while she hopped off first. Sally was enthusiastically looking around at the scenery, her breath almost taken away by the natural beauty of the place. A brook leapt over an outcropping of rocks, tinkling merrily as it sped away downhill after collecting in a small pool beneath the waterfall.

  “What do you think?” Jason asked in a hushed voice as he came up beside her on silent feet.

  “It’s gorgeous,” she replied without taking her eyes off the beauty of nature.

  “I’m glad you like it. Thought you might.” She turned at his softly spoken words to catch the look of satisfaction on his face as he watched her watching the waterfall.

  “Did you? Take a lot of chiquitas up here, eh?” She was suddenly in a playful mood and felt like teasing him.

  “Would you believe me if I said you were the first?” His eyes crinkled at the corners as he smiled.

  “That innocent look may work on some people, but not on a hardened police detective like me.” She rolled her eyes at his expression, smiling all the while.

  “Are you absolutely certain?” He tried one more time for the earnest look, but she wasn’t buying it.

  “Sorry.” She shook her head in the negative. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

  “Oh, I can do better. Question is, can you handle it?”

  He moved closer to her, dropping the helmets on the soft grass beneath their feet. Suddenly she felt like she was being stalked by a wild predator. A thrill ran down her spine as she thought about avenues of escape. Did she want to run? It might be fun to lead him on a short chase, though ultimately, she really wanted to be caught.

  Giving in to temptation, she stood her ground as he reached her. It wouldn’t be right to start this relationship by playing games. She decided she would meet him as an equal or not at all.

  Wordlessly, he reached out, one hand just barely touching the sensitive skin of her cheek. When she didn’t move away, he deepened the contact, cupping her cheek in his warm, rough palm. Her pulse rate leapt higher as he moved even closer, right into her personal space.

  His head dipped toward hers. She closed the space between them, stretching upward to meet his kiss. And then she was lost.

  The kiss the night before was nothing compared to the full, intimate heat of him. His tongue invaded, plundered, staked his claim, and she loved every second of it. She met his challenge and returned it, reaching up to drag him downward, moving her body into his, daring him to take it further.

  He didn’t disappoint. His hands roamed her back, sliding downward to cup her ass and lift her into full contact. She could feel the hard rod of his excitement against her belly and it made her want more. More of his kiss. More of him.

  She didn’t know how long the kiss lasted. She only knew that when he drew away from her, she tried to follow. She was firmly under his spell and didn’t want to stop. Not for anything.

  Somehow—and it shamed her to realize she’d been so far gone—Jason pulled back and cooled things down. His forehead rested against hers, his breathing harsh. That was some consolation, at least. She could feel the trembling of his upper thighs against hers. She knew a little of what it cost him to stop. She felt it too.

  “Why?” The word escaped before she could stop it.

  “Too fast,” he replied through ragged breaths. “You’re human.” He let her go and stepped back as if forcing himself to do so. “Mostly human, at any rate. Were mating can be…kind of rough on the uninitiated. I’m trying not to scare you off.” He shot her a rueful expression, his grin catching her off guard, but charming her just the same. “Is it working?”

  “Why don’t you come back over here and find out?” she challenged.

  He stepped back another pace. “Later,” he promised. “First, I want to show you something.” He held one hand out to his side, inviting her to take it.

  Like teenagers on a first date, she held his hand as they walked together toward the small waterfall. He stopped for a moment beside it and she listened to the trickling water, appreciating its peaceful bounty as the cool, moist air helped bank the fire he had started within her.

  “My mother used to come up here all the time when we were kids. We used to bring a picnic lunch and she’d let us play in the water and in the woods nearby. It was our special place.”

  Touched by his words, Sally looked up at him. “She sounds like a special lady.”

  “She was.” Sally sensed a wealth of pain in his simple words. “The year I became Alpha, she was killed in the violence. There was a bit of a clan war brewing until I stepped forward to claim leadership and broker peace. It was her death that finally turned me into the Alpha I am today. It was a harsh way to discover my own inner strength, but our world is like that sometimes. You should know this before you get in any deeper.” He turned to her, his expression earnest. “Right now, you’re on the periphery. Your friends are fully in our world, but you might get away with simply being watched by one of the vamp enforcers for the rest of your life. You could go on with your normal, totally human life. Only you would know what really goes on in the dark. And it wouldn’t affect you much, other than having to swear yourself to secrecy about your friends. Those ladies and their mates are powerful enough to allow you that freedom.”

  “Carly mentioned something like that last night.”

  “Or…” he went on, “…you could choose to fully embrace the small part of you that has always been different. Like your friends, you could become part of the bigger world—the world where shifters and bloodletters and even magic users share the Earth with regular folk. The world where we live in secret among them. You could join my world, Sally. You could join with your wolf.”

  His words were so stirring, she felt in that moment, almost anything was possible. For a split second, she was ready to throw caution to the wind. She wanted to be with him, to embrace all that he was, and all that she could be. Then sanity interrupted.

  “I’m not sure.”

  Sally thought about her life to this point. Her hard-won career was waiting for her back home, along with a beautiful apartment she had spent the
last three years decorating until she got it just so. Her life was somewhat empty, now that all her friends were married and they saw each other less frequently, but it was still her life. The one she had created for herself.

  “It’s okay.” Jason dropped her hand and tucked both of his into his jeans pockets. His shoulders hunched a bit as he began walking toward the woods. She followed. “You don’t have to make any decisions today. You’re on vacation, right? We’ll just see where things lead. But I figured I should draw your attention to the facts at least once before we do some serious sightseeing.”

  His smile was easy, but she could feel the undercurrent of tension in his voice. Her response mattered to him more than he was letting on, for some reason. She liked that he wasn’t pushing her too hard. She had things to think over and she needed to learn more about Carly’s new existence. She needed to learn a lot more about shapeshifters too, for that matter. This world was completely new to her, though not as unsettling as she would’ve expected. Somehow, she had always suspected there was something more to the odd things that happened to her as a cop.

  She’d felt the pull of the full moon and chalked it up to coincidence, or perhaps superstition. She’d always been able to hear things others couldn’t and see things in greater detail than her colleagues. She had gained a reputation as a sort of super cop among her peers and enjoyed the way they treated her with increasing respect as she rose through the ranks.

  Hers was a sometimes violent job. It could be rewarding as well. Catching bad guys before they could harm anyone else had been her passion for a long time, though lately she had found herself more than once simply going through the motions. She hadn’t felt the same elation that she had when she was younger. Justice had become her goal in both work and life, and sometimes, it was hard to achieve. She’d become disillusioned with the system over the years and now that she was away from home for the first time in a long time, she realized she was at a crossroads. She could either continue the way she was going, or choose a new path.

  Jason had just laid a tantalizing new possibility before her. The question was, did she dare pursue it?

  “Jason…” She trailed off, uncertain how to ask all the questions in her mind.

  He turned toward her. They stood facing each other in the whispering woods. Suddenly the tension was back. The yearning. The need.

  “I had such good intentions.” His hand rose to touch her hair, tucking a loose strand behind her ear. His eyes honed in on her lips, parted…ready…willing. “I think I know how Adam must’ve felt in the Garden of Eden. You are temptation itself, my Eve.”

  “Sally,” she reminded him playfully, though she was touched by his words beyond bearing. No man had ever given her such verbal tribute. And no man had ever looked at her like Jason did. As if she were special, though that was too mild a word. As if she held his world in the palm of her hands.

  When light and dark collide, the sparks of destiny ignite.

  Stone of Ascension

  © 2012 Lynda Aicher

  Energen, Book 2

  Amber Morningstar ventures to New York City to celebrate the Chinese Year of the Dragon, but the night ends in devastation, leaving her the unwilling owner of a mysterious stone. Now, much as she’d like to forget that night ever happened, there’s no going back to her quiet life.

  Her mystical heritage has put her on a collision course with a new reality: shape-shifting dragons, energy-wielding Races, and a sexy protector who seems to think she possesses untapped abilities.

  Exiled among the humans for a crime he didn’t commit, Damianos Aeros has waited a thousand years for his chance to return to his people. Amber is that chance. She is the Marked One, his one opportunity for redemption—if he can find it within himself to sacrifice the woman whose beauty he has resisted for three long years.

  As the battle over Earth’s energy intensifies, Amber and Damian struggle to resist the power drawing them together. The flashpoint of desire casts a glaring light on the critical choice. Trust the energy—and each other—or let the world plummet into ruin.

  Warning: Contains energy-wielding Races, shape-shifting dragons, an ultra-hot Chosen One and a young woman who doesn’t realize she’s been Marked to determine the fate of the world.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Stone of Ascension:

  She was the one.

  This woman who pulled at him. Who enticed and lured him like no other.

  She was the one who could save him. The one who could return everything he had lost. His family, his status, his community and most of all, respect from the people who really mattered—the Energens.

  Excitement whipped through him, awakened from a long, dormant absence, forcing Damian to call on the patience that had served him so well. He had to temper the anticipation with the calm, icy reality of all that must be done. He studied his lost beauty, ignoring the heat that radiated up his arm from her wrist and the energy that was attempting to suck him in, closer to her.

  Her gaze lifted from her hand to stare at him in defiant resignation. Her chin was tilted up, showing off her strong jaw and graceful neck. But it was her eyes that captured him, as they always did. They were a stunning shade of hazel and gold rimmed with long, dark lashes. He felt like he was staring at a pair of precious jewels that currently sparked with shock, fear and a touch of strength. Her eyes were a deadly weapon she wielded without knowledge.

  His body responded immediately, tightening and rippling with the energy that pulled at him. He was instantly in tune with her like he’d known her forever.

  As if she belonged to him.

  Impossible.

  Stifling the strange notion, he focused on the task. “You called me here. Why?”

  “I what?” the beauty sputtered, then her eyes narrowed and her back stiffened. “I did not call you here.” She paused as if a thought just took hold. “How did you get here?”

  Her voice held strong even as she jerked on the arm he held hostage. There was no pretense that she didn’t recognize him. No shock of amazement or fainting that might consume a weaker woman. Giving her a brief explanation could go a long way in gaining her trust.

  A trust that would get him what he needed.

  “The energy called me here. To you. You bear the sign of the Marked One.” His fingers skimmed over the mark of the bird once again. “The sign to all in the Energy races that the Great War is coming.” There, done. “Now, you must come with me.”

  Shock flashed across her face, her golden eyes sparking with irritation. “Do I look crazy to you?”

  His gut clenched, desire pulling hot against the pooling energy that built in his system. No. Crazy was definitely not how he would describe her.

  He raised an eyebrow. “So it’s common for strange men to appear before you out of thin air?” Her suddenly still, pale face brought a small quirk of satisfaction as the question hit its mark. “I was called here for a reason. How did you do it?”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  The ring of truth in her voice gave him pause. Was it possible she really didn’t know what was going on? Was she that innocent, that unaware of what she was? “You did something. The energy was clear, pure—stronger than any I’ve ever felt. It still is.”

  Her fist clenched around an object in her hand. Damian flipped her wrist to see what she held. He inhaled sharply in stunned silence when he saw the stone gripped tightly within her grasp.

  “Where did you get that?”

  Once again she pulled on her arm. “It’s mine,” she stated almost desperately. “It’s just a stone.”

  He chuckled softly. “Wrong. I think we both know it’s more than just a stone. Its beauty alone screams of power and reverence. And if that wasn’t enough, the energy it emanates is unlike anything I’ve ever felt.” He twisted her wrist from side to side to get a better look at the object. Oddly, he had no desire to take it from her.

  The stone appeared almost fluid, churning in varying shades of violet, white
and gold that continually climbed over each other in a persistent struggle for dominance. More importantly, it hummed with power. Old, ancient, enchanted. It was strength in its purest form.

  It was a power that would be sought by many. Just like the Marked One would be.

  With reluctance, he let go of her wrist and instantly felt the missing connection. His fingers stung like they had fallen asleep and were trying to reawaken. But then he realized his entire body felt that way. His blood pumped and hummed with renewed vitality.

  The urgency pushed at him. They needed to move before others arrived. He picked up the small wooden box that sat open on the counter, extracting the simple gold circle that rested within it before closing and pocketing the box.

  Damian stepped forward and pulled her into his embrace before she could protest.

  “It’s time to go.”

  The simple words were the only warning she received before he dissipated out of the small shop with his beauty clamped firmly in his arms.

  Maiden Flight

  Bianca D’Arc

  War is coming for the dragon knights…but love may find them first.

  Dragon Knights, Book 1

  A chance meeting with a young male dragon seals the fate of one adventurous female poacher. The dragon’s partner, a ruggedly handsome knight named Gareth, takes one look at the shapely woman and decides to do a little poaching of his own.

  Sir Gareth both seduces and falls deeply in love with the girl who is not only unafraid of dragons but also possesses a rare gift—she can hear the beasts’ silent speech. He wants her for his mate, but mating with a knight is no simple thing. To accept a knight, a woman must also accept the dragon, the dragon’s mate…and her knight, Lars, too.

  She is at first shocked, then intrigued by the lusty life in the Lair. But war is in the making and only the knights and dragons have a chance at ending it before it destroys their land and their lives.