by Opal Carew
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ISBN: 978-1-63311-001-4
Tall, Dark and Paranormal: 10 Thrilling Tales of Sexy Alpha Bad Boys
Box Set Copyright © 2014 by Lori Handeland, Laura Kaye, Caridad Pineiro, Stephanie Julian, Opal Carew, Randi Alexander, Terry Spear, Paige Tyler, Sara Humphreys, Judi Fennell
Cover Design by Kim Killion, The Killion Group
Digital layout by www.formatting4U.com
Crescent Moon
Copyright © by Lori Handeland
Forever Freed
Copyright © by Laura Kaye
Sins of the Flesh
Copyright © by Caridad Pineiro
Spell Bound
Copyright © by Stephanie Julian
Spellbound
Copyright © by Opal Carew
Haunting a Cowboy
Copyright © by Randi Alexander
Huntress for Hire
Copyright © by Terry Spear
Dead Sexy
Copyright © by Paige Tyler
Asmodeus
Copyright © by Sara Humphreys
Beauty and The Best
Copyright © by Judi Fennell
All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any electronic or mechanical means—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without written permission.
Ten Thrilling Tales of Sexy Alpha Bad Boys – from some of the hottest names in paranormal romance, this $.99 limited-time boxed set has something for everyone, from werewolves to vampires, ghosts to demons, and witches to wizards. With over 825,000 words in these ten full-length novels, you’ll spend hours falling in love with each of these wickedly hot heroes.
CRESCENT MOON - From New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author Lori Handeland comes an entry in her RITA award winning Nightcreature Novels - For a century there have been whispers of a werewolf in the Crescent City. The discovery of bodies in the swamp draws cryptozoologist, Diana Malone, to Louisiana. When her first guide turns up dead and former Special Forces officer, Adam Ruelle, offers his services, Diana accepts, though local legends label his Cajun family cursed, deranged, even mad. By night, Adam is everything she ever dreamed of in a lover. By day, Diana has her doubts. What is he hiding?
SPELLBOUND by New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author Opal Carew, writing as Amber Carew - What is Lucinda, a tenth level wizard, to do when Destiny pairs her with a man who is utterly domineering, overwhelmingly masculine, incredibly irresistible and, according to her most trusted friend, extremely dangerous?
FOREVER FREED by New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author Laura Kaye - When tormented, empathic vampire Lucien Demarco meets Samantha Sutton and her daughter Olivia and they befriend and accept him without fear, he hopes for a second chance at everything he once lost. As red-hot desire sparks between Samantha and Lucien, she tempts the forgotten man within. But as lies, revelations, and old enemies threaten everything Lucien holds dear, he will have to fight for Sam's heart and her life to claim his last chance at a happy forever. Golden Leaf Award Winner for Best Paranormal Romance.
SINS OF THE FLESH by New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author Caridad Pineiro - Mick Carrera is the kind of man people come to no one else could handle their problems because Mick either solves their problems or eliminates them. But nothing can prepare Mick for his latest problem: genetically engineered Caterina Shaw, a woman who is nothing like what he's been told. Inhuman and yet beautiful, Caterina is determined to fight for her life. As passion erupts between them, danger threatens from those who would eliminate Caterina’s existence to safeguard their secrets.
SPELL BOUND by New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author Stephanie Julian A warrior born to defend. A young witch who needs his protection. A dangerous desire neither of them expected. If the heat consumes them, it could destroy the very things they've vowed to protect.
HAUNTING A COWBOY - A Brand New Story from USA Today Bestselling Author Randi Alexander When ranch foreman Thad McCade’s life is disrupted by something supernatural, he hires a ghost whisperer to clear his home. But Madam Ruby is not at all what he expected. She’s Cheyenne Redford, she wears a business suit, drives an expensive SUV, and Thad would rather have her whisper in his ear than whisper away his ghost.
HUNTRESS FOR HIRE by USA Today Bestselling Author Terry Spear He’s a hunter turned vampire, she’s a huntress of vampires—he’s needs her cooperation to free his family; she’s trained to kill his kind. Rebel vampire huntress Rachael Bremerton wants revenge against Piaras, one of the most ruthless vampires in Dallas, for the murder of her parents. But when she’s lured by another vampire, Adonis, into the darkness—the same darkness she’s feared since she was a child—she’s torn between her huntress sensibilities and some strange desire to be with the creature she’s meant to despise and destroy.
DEAD SEXY by USA Today Bestselling Author Paige Tyler Can her love save him from a curse worse than death? Romance author Simone Kent thinks she’s found the most perfect guy in all of New York City—in bed and out. But Drake Parrish is far from perfect. Cursed by an evil Voodoo priestess, he’s lived like a recluse for eight years. Simone falls fast and hard for Drake, while he finds himself feeling things for her he hasn't ever felt. But the Voodoo priestess is back, and determined he won't have a future with Simone, even if that means killing both him and the woman he loves.
ASMODEUS: DEMON OF LUST by Bestselling Author Sara Humphreys Kai Kelly inherits her estranged grandfather’s estate in Bliss, Idaho, and life becomes anything but blissful. The discovery of a beautiful but unusual ring in the attic, leads to much more than she bargained for. When the other members of the brotherhood realize that Asmodeus has found the ring, they descend on Bliss, determined to get the ring from Kai at any cost. Asmodeus is faced with choosing between the brotherhood and his one true love and he quickly realizes that the battle for Hell is nothing compared to the battle for her heart.
BEAUTY AND THE BEST by Bestselling Author Judi Fennell Once upon a time…a long time ago, there lived a beast of a man, locked within a castle with no one to love him. This is not his story. This is the story of another man, locked within himself, and the Beauty who sets him free. Jolie Gardener's new boss, reclusive widowed artist Todd Best, who hasn't produced anything since the death of his wife, is an interesting guy. He a) shows up buck naked on her first day on the job, b) asks her to pose for him - in the nude! and c) discovers she's an aspiring romance novelist who finds the tragedy of his lost love inspiring, thereby throwing her out of his house, his life...and his heart. What's a girl to do? Fall in love, of course!
Table of Contents
Crescent Moon by Lori Handeland
Forever Freed by Laura Kaye
Sins of the Flesh by Caridad Pineiro
&nb
sp; Spell Bound by Stephanie Julian
Spellbound by Opal Carew
Haunting a Cowboy by Randi Alexander
Huntress for Hire by Terry Spear
Dead Sexy by Paige Tyler
Asmodeus by Sara Humphreys
Beauty and The Best by Judi Fennell
Crescent Moon
A Nightcreature Novel
by,
Lori Handeland
Copyright 2006, 2014 by Lori Handeland
Chapter 1
A life spent fulfilling a vow to a dead man is really no life at all, but I’d loved Simon Malone, and I’d promised.
I’m a zoologist by trade, a cryptozoologist by choice. If I’d followed my training, I’d be holed up in a zoo or worse, studying giraffes and pygmy goats. Instead, I trace rumors of mythical animals and try to prove they exist. A frustrating exercise. There’s a reason no one’s captured a Bigfoot. They don’t want to be found, and they’re a lot better at hiding than anyone on earth is at seeking. Or at least that’s my theory, and I’m sticking to it
Most cryptozoologists attempt to find undiscovered species or evolutionary wonders—real animals, nothing paranormal about them—but not me. I’d made that vow. Foolish, but when a woman loves a man the way that I loved Simon, she does foolish things, especially when he’s dying in her arms.
So I follow every legend, every folk tale, every scrap of information, trying to uncover something mythical and prove it real. Though I’ve never believed in magic, my husband did, and the only thing I’ve ever believed in was him.
I was having very little luck with my quest until the night the phone rang at 3:00 a.m. Insomnia and a very empty checking account made me answer it despite the hour.
“Dr. Malone?” The voice was male, a bit shaky, old or perhaps ill.
“Not yet.”
I needed to find a cryptid—translation: unknown animal—prove its existence, write a thesis. Then I could attach those lovely letters—Ph.D.—at the end of my name. But since the whole vow incident I’d been too busy chasing lake monsters and Sasquatch clones to spend time finding a new breed of anything.
“Is this Diana Malone?”
“Yes. Who’s this?”
“Frank Tallient.”
The name sounded familiar, but I couldn’t figure out why. “Have we met?”
“No. I got your number from Rick Canfield.”
Swell. The last guy who’d said those immortal words, “You’re fired.”
Rick was a lawyer who’d gone on a fishing trip with a bunch of other lawyers near Lake of the Woods, Minnesota. In the middle of the night he’d seen something in the lake. Something slick and black and very, very big.
Being a lawyer, he was smart enough not to tell the others he’d lost his mind. Instead he’d gone home, searched the Internet and made some phone calls, trying to find someone to help him discover if what he’d seen had been real or imagined. He’d found me.
“Rick thought you’d be free to help me,” Tallient continued.
I was free all right. Unemployed. Again. A common occurrence in my life. I was very good at looking for things, not so good at actually finding them. However, I was one of the few cryptozoologists willing to travel on a whim for cash.
I wasn’t associated with a university—not anymore. Not since Simon had gone over the edge, tarnishing both his reputation and my own. I depended on the kindness of strangers—hell, let’s be honest and just call them strange—to fund my expeditions. Right now I was fresh out of both expeditions and funds.
“Since you didn’t locate Nessie—” Tallient began.
“Nessie’s the Loch Ness Monster. I was searching for Woody.”
Which was the name Rick had bestowed on the thing. People have no originality when naming lake beasts, always opting for some variation of the body of water they supposedly resided in.
As usual, the moment I’d arrived at Lake of the Woods with my cameras and recorders whatever Rick might have seen had gone poof. If it had ever been there in the first place.
In my expert opinion, an obscenely large muskie was responsible for the tales, not a supernatural lake monster, but I hadn’t been able to prove that, either.
“I have a job for you,” Tallient continued.
“I’m listening.”
I had no choice. Though my parents were incredibly wealthy, they thought I was nuts and had stopped speaking to me the instant I married Simon. After all, what could a handsome, brilliant, up-and- coming zoologist from Liverpool see in a not-very-pretty, far too sturdy grad student unless it was her parents’ millions? He already had a green card. That Simon had told them exactly what they could do with their money had only made me love him more.
In truth, I fit into Simon’s world better than I’d ever fit in my own. I stood five-foot-ten in my bare feet; on a good day I weighed a hundred and sixty. I liked the out-of-doors—didn’t mind dirt or sun, wind or rain. I’d joined the Girl Scouts just so I could camp. I’d done pretty much anything and everything I could think of to emphasize my differences from the never-too-rich, never- too-thin lifestyle of my mother.
“Can you access the Internet?” Tallient asked.
“Hold on.” I tapped my laptop, which sprang from asleep to awake much quicker than I ever did. “Okay.”
Tallient recited a www-dot address. An instant later, a newspaper article spilled across my screen.
“ ‘Man Found Dead in a Swamp,’” I read. “Not unusual.” Swamps were notorious dumping grounds for bodies. If the muck didn’t take them, the alligators would.
“Keep going.”
“Throat torn. Feral dogs. Huh.” I accessed the next page. “Child missing. Coyotes. No body. Seems straightforward.”
“Not really.”
Tallient recited a second address, and I read some more. “Wolf sightings.”
My heart increased in tempo. Wolves had been Simon’s specialty; they’d turned into his obsession. Now they were mine.
“Where is this?” I demanded.
“New Orleans.”
If possible, my heart beat even faster. Once red wolves had roamed the Southeast from the Atlantic to the Gulf and west to Texas. They’d been sighted as far north as Missouri and Pennsylvania. But in 1980 the red wolf had been declared extinct in the wild. In 1987 they’d been reintroduced, but only in North Carolina. So...
“There aren’t any wolves in Louisiana,” I said.
“Precisely.”
“There’s a legend, though... .” I struggled to remember it. “Honey Island Swamp monster.”
“I doubt that Bigfoot-like footprints found thirty years ago have any relationship to death, disappearance, and wolves where they aren’t supposed to be.”
He had a point.
“Could be an ABC,” I said.
The acronym stood for “Alien Big Cat”—a cryptozoological label given to reports of out-of-place felines. Black panthers in Wisconsin. A jaguar in Maine. Happens a lot more than you’d think.
Most of the time ABCs were explained away as exotic animals released into the woods when they became too hard to handle or too big to fit in an apartment. Funny thing was, no one ever found them.
If they were pets, wouldn’t they be easy to catch? Wouldn’t their bones, or even their collars, turn up after a truly wild animal killed them? Wouldn’t there be at least one record of an ABC being hit by a truck on the interstate?
But there wasn’t
“This is a wolf, not a cat.”
I was impressed with Tallient’s knowledge of crypto-terminology but too caught up in the mystery unfolding before my eyes to compliment him on it.
“Same principle. Could be someone dumped a wolf in the swamp. Nothing special about it.”
Except wolves weren’t vicious. They didn’t attack people. Unless they were starving, wolf-dog hybrids, or rabid. None of which were a good thing.
“There’ve been whispers of wolves in and around New Orleans for years.”
“How m
any years?” I asked.
“At least a hundred.”
“What?”
Tallient chuckled. “I thought you’d enjoy that. The disturbances don’t seem to occur in any particular month, or even a common season. But they always happen during the same lunar phase.”
“Full moon.”
No matter what the skeptics say, full moons drive people and animals wacko. Ask anyone who’s ever worked in an emergency room, psych ward, or county zoo.
“Not full,” Tallient said. “Crescent.”
I glanced at the thin, silver, smiley moon visible from my window. “What was the date on those articles?”
“May.”
Five months ago. “And since then?”
“Nothing.”
“Could be because the bodies weren’t found.”
“Exactly. Things that hunt under a certain phase of the moon do so every month. They can’t help themselves.”
I wasn’t sure about “things,” but I was sure about animals. They were nothing if not creatures of habit.