by Bianca D'Arc
She’d always heard Hollywood was full of monsters.
She didn’t know they meant actual monsters.
Have Monster, Will Travel
© 2012 Lila Dubois
Monsters in Hollywood, Book 4
All of Hollywood is talking about Calypso Production’s new top-secret action movie, and Joanna is tapped to be the Production Designer. There’s just one big issue: the lead actors are monsters. Literally.
Bound by tradition and discipline, Tokaki’s clan of shapeshifers has maintained the old ways even as they’ve retreated from the human race. When members of another clan come up with a plan to expose and explain their hidden existence, he agrees to help. As the warrior who trains all others, he knows how to inflict both the maximum, and minimum, amount of damage. Because of this experience he’s asked to become something they call a “stunt coordinator”.
When Joanna and Tokaki meet it’s electric, and not just because Joanna watches him shift from a massive white tiger into a handsome, naked man. Tokaki is fascinated by the outside world, especially Joanna, who’s colorful in more ways than one. When he takes Joanna to a hidden temple deep in the Chinese mountains, neither expects she’ll be risking her very life. In order to save the woman he loves, Tokaki must turn to his family for help, risking the secrets his clan has kept for a millennium.
Warning: This title contains an artistic woman, a demanding warrior, and sexy misuse of temple grounds.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Have Monster, Will Travel:
“I know you.” The lightly accented voice was close, almost whispering against her ear.
The shiver morphed into a total-body skin prickling.
Jo turned, her bags bumping the man behind her. She was eye level with his chin and his sexy lips. They were thin and sharply defined, a salmon-rose color compared to the tapioca of his skin.
Jo always thought of people in food terms when she found them attractive.
The Farmers’ Market was crowded, but still, the Asian man was standing too close. Jo shifted her bag forward, so it rested in front of her, smiled slightly in his direction and turned away.
“I know you.”
Jo turned back. “Sorry, I think you’ve got the wrong girl.”
“No.” He shook his head once.
Jo cocked her hip to the side and winked, trying to ease out of the situation in a fun and playful way. The skin on her arms was prickled into goose flesh despite the heat. “Good lookin’, I’d remember you. I’m sad to say I think I’m not your girl.”
He was wearing a pair of jeans too big for him—she could see the fabric bunched under the belt on his hips. His T-shirt seemed equally big, the shoulder seams hanging on his upper arm. At first glance it made him seem smaller than he was, but he topped six-foot and his forearms were ropes of muscle. He was an XL in XXL clothes.
“You are one of my human women.”
“Come again, kimosabe?”
His eyebrows drew together in a straight black line. “I remember your body.”
“Is that an insult? Usually I can tell, and I’m pretty damned sure I’d remember you—”
Jo examined him more closely as she rattled on. She started from his feet, working her way up. When her gaze met his she felt a shock of awareness, so powerful it was almost a physical touch.
She recognized him then.
“Oh, oh, oh, oh.” Jo staggered back a step. She nearly went down as the totes on her right shoulder fell down her right arm, catching on her wrist but tangling in her legs.
He reached out and caught her by one shoulder.
“You’re one of them,” she hissed.
He leaned closer, his hair swinging forward to brush her cheek. “Them?”
“The monsters.” Her voice was a bare whisper.
“Monsters.” He turned to face her. Their faces were so close she could see the flecks of gold in the irises of his eyes.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Is that a derogatory term? What, what should I call you?”
“Tokaki.”
“Tokaki?”
“That’s my name.”
“Right. Well.” Jo awkwardly hitched the bags hooked around her right wrist up to her elbow and held out her hand.
Tokaki looked at her hand. He took it awkwardly in his left palm and bowed over it. When he straightened and slipped his hand from hers, the tips of his fingers caressed her palm, causing the second shiver in five minutes to shake her.
“I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you. I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“Where did you expect to see me?”
“I had no expectations.” That was the truth. It had been very clear from the way the Calypso girls acted yesterday that the men were theirs. Not only did they seem to be dating several of them, but they’d given off a possessive and protective air. Jo figured she’d be fighting tooth and nail to get a second, non-shocked look at them in order to do character sketches for her production design.
Tokaki was looking around. Jo took the opportunity to study his profile. He had high, thick cheekbones and black hair falling unevenly to his collar with a pronounced widow’s peak. It was easy to see how a face like his would have served as a model for the artists who painted fierce samurai thousands of years ago.
“I’m glad to see you. I am,” Tokaki turned back to her, “surprised by how overwhelming it is.”
“Why would you be surprised?”
“I’ve been to the human town near my home many times. This market seems like that one, but it is not. I should be able to move among you easily, but I am…”
He seemed genuinely distressed that he was out of place and overwhelmed. Jo gave herself a little mental head slap. She’d been so wrapped up in her own reactions she hadn’t given any real thought to what the monsters would be going through.
“Hey, don’t worry. If I were in your position, I’d be curled up in a ball next to the guy back there playing the bongos.” Jo hiked her bags back onto her shoulder and looped her arm through his.
There was a rill of sensation when their bare skin touched. Whew. He really was something else.
Tokaki looked down at their linked arms. Slowly he bent his elbow, making the linked arms more natural. Jo smiled at him.
“Everyone feels out of place when they’re visiting a new place. And you’re doing it in,” she lowered her voice, “a new body.”
Tokakai’s voice was equally low. “This body is not new. It’s the human body I’ve always used.”
“Really?” Jo hadn’t stopped to consider what she was doing, where she was leading them, until she noticed they were on their way back to the red line station. “Did you want to stay at the Farmers’ Market?”
Tokaki was looking at a stripper clothing store as they passed it. Ah, Hollywood. “Where would I go?”
“If you don’t have plans, you could come back to my studio with me.”
Tokaki’s head swiveled to her, a lock of hair falling from his widow’s peak to brush his cheek.
“My studio is a work space. It would be work-related. I mean, to the movie.”
He just stared at her. Jo drew her arm from his, fiddling with the strap of her bag.
“And I’d like to…show you around L.A. It’s rude not to show people around when they first get here. You haven’t been to L.A. before, have you?”
“No.”
“Great!”
Jo, stop talking, you idiot.
Jo took a deep breath. “Or I could call you a cab so you can get back to Akta’s house.”
“I’m not staying at Akta’s house. I’m staying with Mir’ek, Henry.”
“Is that where you want to go?”
“No. I’d like to go with you.”
Jo relinked their arms. “Then follow me.”
The Ice Dragon
Bianca D’Arc
She is the kingdom’s only hope… and the king’s one chance at love.
When a royal black dragon falls under enemy fire, only the wi
ld Northern Ice Dragon and his unlikely female rider can save him. Half wild, like the baby Ice Dragon she calls friend, Lana is a rare and powerful dragon healer. She saves the life of the royal black, only to learn this most sacred of dragons is half-man, able to shift from one form to the other at will.
Roland is king of all dragons and humans in his land, but he’s far from home, mortally wounded, and his only refuge is the incredible woman who has saved his life and her young wild dragon friend. Lana is the purest form of magic to him, heaven to his senses in both dragon and human form. He knows almost from the first moment that he wants her for his very own.
But a warlord plots in the north, seeking to kill the dragons, who protect the northern border, and overrun Roland’s peaceful kingdom. Lana and her incredibly skilled Ice Dragon friend are the only ray of hope for the knights and fighting dragons of the Northern Lair. Just as Lana is the only love Roland will ever know. He can reunite her with her lost family, but can he win her heart and make her his queen?
Warning: This book may feature an Ice Dragon, but the hero is smoking hot in either of his forms. We recommend keeping a fan handy in case you experience a sudden need to cool down.
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
11821 Mason Montgomery Road Suite 4B
Cincinnati OH 45249
The Ice Dragon
Copyright © 2012 by Bianca D’Arc
ISBN: 978-1-61921-396-8
Edited by Amy Sherwood
Cover by Angela Waters
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: October 2012
www.samhainpublishing.com
Table of Contents
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Epilogue
About the Author
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