by Tes Hilaire
Karissa turned her face up, her lips pulled in the most delectable pout. “Is that the best you can do?”
“No. Not nearly.” He leaned down and took her mouth, kissing her with everything he had to give: his body, heart, and soul.
Coming Soon…
Book Two in the
Paladin Warriors Series
Logan’s and Alexander’s booted feet thundered down the littered sidewalk as they worked to catch up with the distant figure stumbling along on four-inch heels.
She was good. Or rather it was good. Three times the succubus had slipped through their net, starting the chase all over again. It had taken him a while to figure it out, not being familiar with all the side streets in this seedy part of town, but Logan had come to realize something over the last two blocks: they were being led in one very big, very maze-like circle.
She’s playing with us. Or this is a trap.
Flashing his hand up in the universal symbol for stop, Logan eased into the shadows of a basement apartment stairwell. Alexander followed, eerily soundless as he shifted into stealth mode.
“What’s up?” Alex asked, voicing his confusion in a hushed whisper.
“Hold on. I’m going to try and contact Valin.” He closed his eyes, centering himself and reached out on the other plane. Calling Valin when the Paladin was ghosting was never easy and rarely fruitful, but sometimes if he did it just right, a light caress across the other plane… <
<
Valin’s voice, clear as a bell, had Logan jerking his head back into the rusted iron railing that flanked the stairs leading up to the first level. He rubbed the already sore lump, silently cursing the other Paladin.
Deciding his injury was nothing more than hurt pride, Logan got to the point. <
<
Logan figured the minx would do something like that. This proved that she was playing them. If she’d really wanted to get away, she would’ve bolted at the first opportunity. The question now was how far she was willing to take their little game. And whether they could turn the tables somehow.
<>
<
Logan could feel the doubt in Valin’s thought. Understandable. When Valin was doing his ghost thing, no one knew he was there. He was invisible to any sort of mind-gifts, undetectable to any paranormal creature’s nose, and unseen by even the most keen-sighted vampires. Yet each time Valin had drawn near she’d bolted. Once or twice could be coincidence, but three times?
<>
He felt Valin’s internal shrug, <
Logan turned to Alex, who had an expectant look on his face. “Valin is going to drop back and then you and I are going to split up. Not far, just enough to give her a chance.”
“A chance to what?”
“To come after one of us.”
Alexander scoffed, shaking his head. “You think she’d be that stupid?”
“Not really, no. But she’s not acting normal. I think she has an ulterior motive here.”
“Like what?”
“I’m not sure, but she certainly seems to be trying to lead us somewhere.”
“And you want to try and lead her?”
“Exactly.” Logan jerked his head toward the sidewalk. “Two blocks down parallel streets. Then we’ll meet back up.”
Logan took off.
He had just passed the first major intersection and was creeping up on the next when he heard the sound of a scuffle. Swearing, he bolted toward the side street, following the source of the disturbance. Muscles burning, he rounded the corner just in time to see the spandex-clad backside of their succubus take off down a side street.
Alex was crouched against the brick wall of another apartment building. He jerked his head in the direction the succubus had fled. “Go. I’ll be…right…behind you. Just need to…get my breath.”
Logan squinted down at the bent-over warrior. Alex’s skin favored the color of a freshly peeled cucumber and he was still making gasping, hissing noises through his clenched teeth, but there was no blood. Nope, the only thing that seemed to be wrong with the big guy—based on the awkward vertical fetal position of his body and protective cup of his hands—was some injured pride.
Guess it was going around tonight.
“Catch up when you can.”
With a grunt from Alex, which Logan took as assent, Logan went after the creature. As soon as Logan rounded the corner and bolted into the side street their little minx had ducked into, he was greeted with an expected sight. The narrow street was empty.
He took a tentative step forward. A whisper of sound had him twisting, but not before a blast of pain erupted across the back of his head, his brain flaring with light as someone—no, something—stabbed into his mind.
Logan slammed up a barrier of mental shields, but they did nothing to counteract the effects of the first, unexpected attack. His ears rang. And when he blinked it was to the sight of his hands gripping the gritty pavement. Talk about bringing him low. The succubus, or someone with her, was proficient with mind-gifts.
Not cool.
When the pain finally subsided enough for Logan to lift his head, he was alone in the alley. Which meant she was out there. With Alexander. And Valin was incommunicado.
<
Logan pushed himself to his feet, stumbling around the corner. Ahead of him, illuminated by a lone streetlamp, Alexander struggled with the succubus. Not even half the size of him, the little minx was putting up an awesome fight, her small fists landing faster than humanly possible, each one eliciting a grunt from the large warrior. Then all of a sudden she stopped fighting, her well-aimed punches turning to floppy hand slaps, her silent efforts of escape broken by small whimpers of fear and pain.
WTF?
Alex doubled over, allowing the succubus to bolt again.
Shit, shit, shit. This bitch was too damn good. No way was she just a succubus. Not with her ability to take down Alexander. Not with her ability to stab into Logan’s mind.
With a push of speed, Logan roared, his sights zeroing in on the succubus as she whimpered and scrambled up the street.
He had no idea what happened next. One second he was sprinting down the sidewalk and the next, he tripped. His hands flew out, absorbing the worst of the fall, but not enough to stop the umph of pain as he smashed into the unforgiving pavement.
Tonight was really not his night. What had he tripped on? His own feet?
“Hey, asshole. Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?” A woman’s voice lashed out.
Nope. Not his feet. Goddammit. He did not want to have to deal with a Good Samaritan civvy right now.
He rolled over, ready to spin a story, and came face to nozzle against a can of pepper spray. Better than a gun, he supposed. Still, one little squeeze and he’d be worse than useless for the foreseeable future. And given the trembling state of the hand that was holding the bottle…
He lifted his gaze, following the trembling hand up the shaking arm to the shivering halo of blond curls that framed the most stunning set of wide blue eyes.
Angel.
Startled by the force of the thought, he shook it away. Pretty, yes. An angel…no. More like an inconvenient pain in his ass.
He took a deep breath, closing his eyes and drawing in a deep breath. Why, oh why, couldn’t he catch a break tonight?
***
Rachael stumbled back holding her can of pepper spray out like a gun as the man slowly and silently stood, brushing his black leather pants off as he looked her over. His eyes singed her like hot pokers of flame as they traced ev
ery inch of what her mom would have called a power suit. His perusal, executed with a disdainful twist of his lip, was probably meant to send her scurrying away, but that’s not the effect it had on her. All of a sudden and inexplicably, she felt naked. Her clothing completely stripped away. The power suit that had faced down numerous power-hungry board members and allowed her to steamroll over more than one grumpy old know-it-all charity organizer, felt less like armor and more like a negligee under this man’s shadowed gaze.
A very, very skimpy, might-as-well-not-be-there negligee.
Ignoring the rising heat in her cheeks, Rachael planted her feet, tipping her chin up defiantly. No perv was going to make her blush and slink off like a cowed dog.
When his perusal of her finally ended, the man folded his arms across his chest. A vast improvement from attacking her, she supposed. Maybe she wouldn’t be raped and murdered tonight.
Certifiable, Rach. Positively certifiable.
“And that would be you?” His voice, a rich aristocratic tenor, did not match his seedy-bar clothing or his actions of a short while ago. She was so puzzled by this juxtaposition that it took a moment for his words to register.
What had she said? Oh yeah, pick on someone his own size. Stupid, that. Rachael was pretty tall, standing at five foot eleven in her heels, but this man was still a head taller than her, and the man stalking up behind him was almost twice that.
What she should have done was trip the bastard up and then turned tail and run. The problem was that as she’d drawn closer to the struggle between the giant and the woman, she’d realized the woman wasn’t a woman at all. She’d been nothing more than a teen. Fifteen, sixteen at best. The thought of two grown men, two massive grown men, preying on someone less than half their age and half their size had filled her with such righteous anger that she’d just had to speak her mind.
And now her tongue was going to make her just another violent crime statistic.
Mike and Damon were going to be so pissed at her. At least the girl had gotten away.
Use your brains, Rach. You can’t fight them, but you might still have a chance if you play it cool.
She shifted the bottle farther behind her back. She wasn’t completely stupid, after all. Brandishing an empty vodka bottle at these two men would be akin to waving a red flag in front of a bull. Bad enough she’d tripped one and threatened him with some pepper spray.
She took a step back, lowering the pepper spray to her side, though not removing her finger from the trigger. “I’ll just, um, be going now.”
“I’m afraid we can’t do that.” This came from the big man as he shifted out into the street, ready to block off her escape.
Rachael followed his movement, assessing him for possible weakness. He was younger than she’d first thought, probably close to her own twenty-four, and looked almost boyish with his unruly red hair and a dash of light freckles spreading across a set of cheekbones that could only have come from some Scottish Highlander’s gene pool. On another day, in another place, he might have looked more like a big teddy bear than anything else. But not now. Not with that distinctively pissed-off expression twisting his features into a scowl.
She swallowed hard, her mind rapidly running in circles as she tried to think of a way out. All she could come up with was: stall.
“You can’t do what?” she asked in her best bubble-headed blond voice.
Pretty boy gone slumming took a step toward her, chipping away at the distance she’d opened up with her retreat. “Let you go.”
Guess the time for talk was over. She twisted, bringing up the pepper spray and plunging down on the trigger with her thumb. The big man dodged but some of the spray must have hit home because he roared, his massive forearm rising in front of his face. A flash of movement warned Rachael and, with a screech worthy of a B-movie actress, she swung the heavy liquor bottle from behind her back, aiming for the general region of her other assailant’s head.
He did something with his hand, a negligible wave, and the bottle went sailing. The next moment his body slammed into hers, his arms encircling her like a wrestler.
She struggled, curling her hands pinned between his rock-solid chest and her own breasts into claws. Her screams for aid reverberating off the buildings.
“Hush. Hush.”
No way. She was not going to go down like some meek lamb.
Only she did. His words, so soothing, not only slipped like a blanket of calm over her body, but slipped into her very being, easing her panic. Silence descended as she melted into his hold.
What the hell is this? What is he doing to me?
Hypnotist. It was the only explanation for this lax, out-of-body feeling she was experiencing.
“Look at me.”
Obstinately, she tried to turn her face to the side. And found she couldn’t. Her own body betrayed her, her head tipping back, her gaze lifting…
His eyes. Like silver. But not cold. Molten like a turbulent sky just before a summer storm.
She was slipping under his spell and knew it. Worse, she didn’t care.
“That’s it.”
His voice lapped over her like a warm wave. Her body shuddered, warmth seeping in wherever his hands touched her. And his eyes. God those eyes.
Those eyes flared. Pupils expanding. Great pools of black trimmed with silver.
And then everything went white.
The Storm That Is Sterling
by Lisa Renee Jones
He’s her best weapon…
Sterling Jeter has remarkable powers as the result of a secret experiment to create a breed of super soldiers. Now he has to use everything he’s got to help beautiful, brilliant Rebecca Burns, the only astrobiologist alive who can save humanity from a super-enhanced, deadly street drug.
Sterling and Rebecca’s teenage romance was interrupted, and now they’re virtually strangers. But the heat and attraction are still there, and even entrapment by an evil enemy can’t stop them from picking up their mutual passion right where they left off…
Praise for The Legend of Michael:
“Jones launches a new series with this thrilling story of love and determination in a society on the brink of war…Readers will be hooked.” —RT Book Reviews, 4 stars
“Awesome series…plenty of action and romance to keep you glued to your seat…An auto-buy for me.” —Night Owl Romance, Reviewer Top Pick
For more Lisa Renee Jones, visit:
www.sourcebooks.com
Demons Like It Hot
by Sidney Ayers
If you can’t stand the heat, get out of hell’s kitchen.
A Recipe for Disaster…
Matthias Ambrose is a demon mercenary who never took sides, until his attraction to the spunky caterer he was hired to kidnap leads him to almost botch a job for the first time in eight hundred years. Now he must protect her from his former clients, but even an ice-cold demon like Matthias struggles to resist her fiery charms.
Or the Perfect Ingredients for Passion...
Completely engrossed with planning menus and prepping recipes for her shot at cooking show fame, star caterer Serah SanGermano refuses to believe she’s on a fast track to Hades. But how’s she supposed to stick to the kitchen if she can’t stand the heat of her gorgeous demonic bodyguard?
As a diabolical plot to destroy humanity unfolds and all hell breaks loose in Serah’s kitchen, she and Matthias find themselves knee-deep in demons and up to their eyeballs in love…
For more Sidney Ayers books, visit:
www.sourcebooks.com
King of Darkness
by Elisabeth Staab
Eternal commitment is not on her agenda…
Scorned by the vampire community for her lack of power, Isabel Anthony lives a carefree existence masquerading as human—although, drifting through the debauched human nightlife, she prefers the patrons’ blood to other indulgences. But when she meets the sexy, arrogant king of the vampires, this party-girl’s life turns dark and dangero
us.
But time’s running out for the King of Vampires
Dead-set on finding the prophesied mate who will unlock his fiery powers, Thad Morgan must find his queen before their race is destroyed. Their enemies are gaining ground, and Thad needs his powers to unite his subjects. But when his search leads him to the defiant Isabel, he wonders if fate has gotten it seriously wrong…
For more Elisabeth Staab books, visit:
www.sourcebooks.com
About the Author
Daphne Award–winning author Tes Hilaire started creating whole new worlds to escape Upstate New York’s harsh winters before finally fleeing to sultry North Carolina. Her stories are edgy, exciting, and bring a hint of dark fantasy to paranormal romance. And no one ever has to shovel snow. For more information visit www.teshilaire.com.