by Mary Hughes
Lucien let the icy-hot pain starting to spike in his temples show on his face. “I could come quietly,” he said, making his voice tight with strain. “For a price.”
“I don’t negotiate with supervillains.”
“Not even for my surrender? My complete surrender.”
Interest lit her up-tilted emerald eyes, but her jaw remained clenched in an unyielding line. “No deals. I won’t bribe you to play nice when you’ve already lost.”
“But all I wanted was a kiss.”
She went motionless above him, as if she’d forgotten the need to breathe.
“One little kiss,” he purred. “And I’ll go meekly to my jail cell. No tricks. No trouble.”
He couldn’t read her expression. Something odd and almost hopeful colored the suspicion in her gaze. She hesitated. The train rattled closer. Her fingers eased their death grip on his hair.
“Why?”
“Are you kidding? I’ve always wanted a shot at the great Darla Powers. Who hasn’t? That Maxim spread changed my life.”
Her eyes darkened. “That damn magazine—”
“Hey, don’t damn that magazine. I could compose sonnets to that magazine. Especially your issue. I think you single-handedly launched a generation of twelve-year-old boys into puberty with that spread.” The picture had become a cultural icon. Darla Powers, the super answer to Marilyn Monroe. “Tell me you still have the bustier and I’ll die happy.”
She blushed. “That is none of your business.”
Dear God, she still has it. Unwholesome interest stirred below Lucien’s belt. He’d been joking, but now he couldn’t get the image out of his head. Her incredible figure overflowing the snug black lace with a shimmering red D curled under one breast in a parody of her suit. Maybe she still wore it. Maybe she put it on for the schmuck boyfriend who’d let her walk out on their date. Jealousy gave his gut an ugly twist, but he ignored it. She wasn’t with her schmuck boyfriend now.
“One kiss,” he said, the words coming out as more of a demand than he’d intended, his voice so dark and hungry he barely recognized it. “One kiss and I’ll do whatever you want.”
The words were supposed to be a lie, but at the moment he almost believed them himself. Darla Powers was a woman who could own a man’s soul if she put her mind to it. If she could let herself be that bad…
She leaned over him, and he sank his hand into the curls at the base of her skull. “C’mon, princess,” he coaxed, his gaze locked on her pillowy lips. “Even good girls get to be bad sometimes.”
She went rigid in his arms. “No. We don’t.”
The train was nearly there now. Ten seconds… Darla began to resist his hold, but Lucien had run out of time for persuasion. Now or never.
He sat up and twisted abruptly, using a pulse of superspeed to get her sprawled on her back before she realized negotiations were over. He caught her startled gasp on his lips.
The kiss was a sneak attack—quick and fierce and designed to startle and unsettle her. It wasn’t supposed to sear across his nerve endings with unexpected heat. He wasn’t supposed to be tempted to fall into the taste of her and abandon his will to fight. Soft, warm, luscious—the definition of a dangerous woman.
Her hands fell away from his hair, shoving at his shoulders without any real strength as she made the most deliciously wanton noise in her throat.
In a different world, he would stay here and finish what they’d started, explore this incendiary chemistry, coax that sound from her again and again. But she was still a hero and he’d long since been cast in the villain role. If he wanted any future for his sister, he couldn’t waste time playing doctor with DynaGirl.
The first train car thundered into the abandoned station.
He threw himself off her. “Sorry, princess.” The last of his reserves went into a surge of superspeed as he leapt onto the tracks and sprinted down the tunnel in front of the engine. The racing train sealed the tunnel entrance behind him before DynaGirl could gather herself to follow.
He didn’t have time to thrill at the victory of escape. He was too busy trying to maintain his speed until he reached the next platform so he didn’t end up a bloody smear on the tracks.
Lucien ran, his head slowly exploding, the stolen papers crinkling in his pocket with the sound of success, Darla’s taste still sweet on his lips.
Biting Oz
Mary Hughes
Real vampires do musicals.
Biting Love, Book 5
Gunter Marie “Junior” Stieg is stuck selling sausage for her folks in small-town Meiers Corners. Until one day she’s offered a way out—the chance to play pit orchestra for a musical headed for Broadway: Oz, Wonderful Oz.
But someone is threatening the show’s young star. To save the production, Junior must join forces with the star’s dark, secretive bodyguard, whose sapphire eyes and lyrical Welsh accent thrill her. And whose hard, muscular body sets fire to her passions.
Fierce as a warrior, enigmatic as a druid, Glynn Rhys-Jenkins has searched eight hundred years for a home. Junior’s get-out-of-Dodge attitude burns him, but everything else about her inflames him, from her petite body and sharp mind to what she can do with her hip-length braid.
Then a sensuous, insidious evil threatens not only the show, but the very foundations of Meiers Corners. To fight it, Junior and Glynn must face the truth about themselves—and the true meaning of love and home.
Warning: Cue the music, click your heels together, make a wish and get ready for one steamy vampire romance. Contains biting, multiple climaxes, embarrassing innuendos, ka-click/ka-ching violence, sausage wars and—shudder—pistachio fluff.
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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.
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Biting Oz
Copyright © 2012 by Mary Hughes
ISBN: 978-1-60928-958-4
Edited by Christa Desir
Cover by Kanaxa
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: August 2012
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