Feisty Heroines Romance Collection of Shorts

by D. F. Jones

  “Yeah.”

  “Dark blond hair?”

  “Mmhm.”

  “The dog was white?”

  “How do you know that?” she asked. She furrowed her eyebrows. “I didn’t tell you all that.”

  “Isn’t that him?” he asked as he pointed towards the front of the bakery.

  Hazel inhaled as her hands trembled. There was no way. She turned and heard the doorbell ring. It was him. She felt like she was in a dream. Lucas stood there with Snow. He lowered his hand to Snow’s collar and clicked off the leash, which caused the dog to run towards her. Snow nearly knocked her over as she jumped up and down.

  “Oh my God,” she said, as her tears stung her eyes. “What are you doing here?”

  “She missed you.”

  She patted Snow on the head and brought her arms around the beautiful dog in a hug. “I missed her too.”

  “She’s been miserable,” Lucas said in his deep, resonant voice. “Barely smiled lately.”

  Hazel clenched her teeth and turned towards Roger. “Hey. Can you give us a moment, please?”

  Roger nodded and smiled as he turned and headed to the back room. Hazel turned back to Lucas and the dog. She petted Snow hard as her heart pounded in her chest from excitement. She couldn’t believe they were there. He was in her bakery. She’d thought of this moment throughout the past week but had not really thought that it would ever happen.

  “Actually,” Lucas said. He brought himself down to the same level as her and Snow. “I’ve missed you too.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Really.”

  They were silent as he leaned forward and brought his lips to hers. Snow nuzzled between them, causing them to laugh.

  “What do we do now?”

  Lucas shrugged and peered down at Snow. “I guess we’ll just have to figure it out.”

  Epilogue

  Hazel

  The sand was warm against Hazel’s feet. Lucas held the frisbee in his hand as Snow rushed towards the water, barking all the way. She couldn’t help but smile as the dog leapt in the air, letting her paws land in the water without a care.

  The long drive was worth it. Hazel chuckled when she saw Snow’s pink tongue slide in and out of her mouth with her black lips pulled back. Snow looked as though she was smiling, her brown eyes glimmering as she turned to them. After all, dogs always made it seem as though they were experiencing something for the first time.

  She jumped as Lucas wrapped his arm around her waist. “I think she wants us to swim.”

  “It’s a little cold to swim.”

  “Is it, though?”

  She met his eyes. “It is. We don’t have two layers of fur.”

  “You know what we do have?”

  “What?”

  He turned her around and brought her in closer. “We have each other. We can keep each other warm by getting close, just like this.”

  “So much cheese!”

  He laughed and brought his lips to the top of her head. “I love you.”

  It never mattered how many times he told her throughout the day. Those three little words still caused her heart to flutter in her chest. “I love you, too.”

  Snow barked behind them, and they both glanced at each other. Hazel brought her hands to cup her mouth and called to Snow, “We love you too!”

  About Ashlee Price

  Ashlee Price writes about savvy, sexy women and the hot, irresistible alpha billionaires who want them.

  Currently, Ashlee is hard at work producing the next book series in between running a household and taking care of her family.

  “Thank-you for supporting an indie author! I appreciate all my fans. Your support by way of reviews and feedback keeps me going, especially at times when I questioned my abilities. All I can do is give you my best and I promise I won’t stop doing that anytime soon!”

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  Beautiful Chaos by Donya Lynne

  Chapter 1

  Cordray couldn’t feel the human lying next to her, but she knew he was there. With his muscular, tattooed arm pitched over her stomach, and the scent of his stale, sex-spawned sweat aerating the room like oversprayed Febreze, he was hard to miss. She could even taste his lingering orgasmic adrenaline in the air.

  But feel him, she could not.

  She hadn’t been able to feel shit for centuries. Not since Gideon—the only male she had ever loved—mated someone else just as her adolescent vampire body had been making its final transition into adulthood. The extreme emotional upheaval of losing the only male she’d ever been heart-over-head for had apparently caused a biological meltdown that destroyed her sense of touch, because now it took a bullet ripping into her flesh for her to feel even the slightest twinge.

  The blunt instrument sleeping beside her snorted in his sleep.

  What was his name again? Biff? Butch? Brainless? Who cared? She hadn’t come here to swap spit and exchange phone numbers with the guy. She had come out of necessity. She’d been in dire need of blood. And Biff had looked good enough to eat.

  Too bad his brains were bad news. If the zombie apocalypse hit tomorrow, Biff had nothing to worry about. Not even a zombie would want those burned-out brains. But when you were a hungry vampire who hadn’t fed in over a week, you took the first hot meal that came along, even if it wasn’t sporting a high IQ. And since sex blood was the best blood, it was critical to choose a physically appealing specimen who looked like he knew his way around a bedroom, especially when your sense of touch was nonexistent. Because when you couldn’t feel a lick of physical pleasure, it was imperative your other senses were allowed to feast.

  Sexual stimulation was the key to a good meal. All that hormonal arousal raised the body’s adrenaline and added delightfully tangy notes to the blood, turning it into a smooth merlot.

  But if you wanted aged Cristal, you waited until the host was in the throes of orgasm. That was when blood tasted the best. Rich, fragrant, and laced with honeyed sweetness, orgasmic blood was like Godiva chocolate compared to that cheap shit they made hollow chocolate Easter bunnies out of.

  Not even Biff the Brainless could screw that up. His blood had been beyond delicious.

  She checked the digital clock on the nightstand. It was going on midnight. Her lunch break was over, and she had a meeting with King Bain—a.k.a. her half-brother—in less than an hour to discuss a new assignment. A “priority,” he had called it before pointedly telling her not to be late.

  Her gaze dropped to the arm weighing her down. If she didn’t bust a move out of this deadweight’s bed in less than T-minus five minutes, late was exactly what she would be.

  She gingerly plucked the man’s arm off her stomach and moved it aside, only for him to swing it back over her before she could escape, wrapping her up and tucking her body against his like she was his own personal woobie.

  For Chrissakes. Couldn’t these guys just be grateful she didn’t want to stick around and cuddle?

  She attempted to gently peel herself out of the man-child’s embrace again, trying not to wake him.

  No such luck.

  His eyelids cracked open. “Hey, baby…” He stretched and offered a sleepy smile that he probably thought passed for sexy. “Where are you going?” He spoke with a drowsy drawl, but with enough suggestive undertones that it was obvious he was looking for an encore of the one-sided bump-and-grind
they’d finished fifteen minutes ago before he fell into a sex coma.

  She squirmed free of his grip. “I need to be somewhere.”

  He chuckled seductively as he snatched her arm and yanked her back, rolling on top of her. “Yeah, right here, baby.” He wriggled his hips in an effort to part her legs, but she cemented her thighs together.

  “Somewhere else,” she said more firmly. She pushed against his chest, but he resisted.

  She didn’t have time for this shit. Tossing him aside like a used Kleenex would be easy enough, but she didn’t want to have to hurt the guy unless she was forced to. She might want to tap that vein in his neck again someday.

  Using the tip of his finger, he traced the outline of a purple iris tattoo that extended down the front of her shoulder to the upper swell of her breast. Then he bent down and lapped his tongue over her nipple. His effort was wasted on her since she couldn’t feel it.

  “Baby, you know you want this.”

  Had he just called her baby three times in less than thirty seconds?

  “Look, I really need to—”

  “Come on, gorgeous, don’t be a bitch-tease.”

  Cue needle-scratching-record.

  Being called gorgeous wasn’t so bad, but “bitch-tease”? Bitch, please. Even if she had been a willing receptacle for another go-round with his penis, being called anything with “bitch” in it would have promptly murdered the idea.

  Patience, meet dead end.

  With the ease and swiftness of a gorilla tossing around a stuffed animal, Cordray cranked back Brainless’s arm, flipped him onto his back, and leaped on top of him. Slamming his fist against the wall, she crouched, revealed her fangs, and hissed with the fury of a coiled cobra.

  His eyes popped open like he’d seen Death.

  Now she had his attention. And—sniff—was that urine? Seriously? She glanced down. Piss burbled from the tip of Biff’s penis like a tiny fountain before dribbling off his stomach and pooling in the folds of the rumpled sheets.

  Forcing back her amusement, she returned her gaze to his petrified stare. “I don’t think you heard me, Biff. I’ve got somewhere I need to be.” She gave his cheek a pair of not-so-gentle pats. “But thanks for the blood.” She flashed her fangs, winked, then hopped off the bed and began plucking her clothes from the floor.

  He slapped his palm against the side of his neck, searching for punctures. He wouldn’t find any. They’d already healed. And of course, he didn’t remember being bitten. He’d been too busy having an orgasm to notice, and the dose of venom she’d injected just as her fangs pierced his skin had numbed the pain and scattered his reality enough for him to remain oblivious while she took her fill.

  She grinned and bobbed her eyebrows knowingly as she dropped onto a nearby chair and sorted her clothes.

  Biff remained frozen to the mattress, staring at her like she was the devil as she yanked on her black lace panties and bra, skintight leather pants, gray-and-black camouflage tee, and black knee-high combat boots.

  With a smattering of tarnished silver rings, studded leather wrist cuffs, a nose ring, and a chain-link choker around her neck, she was the picture of modern goth.

  She stood, pulled on her leather duster, flipped her ass-length black-and-blue braids over the collar, then gripped Brainless’s mind with hers. Within seconds, she stripped all memory of her from his gray matter and planted an alternative narrative for what had gone down over the past hour.

  “It’s been fun, Biff.” She strolled to the door, gave him one last glance, then stepped out into the hall. “But not that fun.” The door latched behind her.

  She might look Biff up again in the future, though. He had vintage blood worthy of bottling, and he’d been an energetic lover. Physical. Aggressive. Rough. He had thrown her around and abused her flesh quite nicely. Cordray liked that in a man. On extremely rare occasions, the really physical ones gave her what she called a mental orgasm, which she had figured out occurred when her body released without her being able to feel it. Mental orgasms were as close as she got to feeling pleasure, so she tended to hang on to lovers who might be able to work one out of her.

  Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the time, though, she had to live vicariously through the orgasms of others, and Biff looked like living art when he came. That alone made him worth tapping again. That and the hope that he might be able to give her a mental O someday.

  Just as long as he didn’t get too clingy. All that “baby this” and “baby that” tonight had pissed her off. Cordray was not and never would be anyone’s baby. The guy gave good blood, but that’s where it stopped. That’s where it always stopped. After barely surviving what Gideon had done to her, she didn’t need the complication that followed love around like the grim reaper.

  But, hey, when life hands you lemons, you throw them as hard as you can against the nearest brick wall and watch the damn things spray lemon shrapnel everywhere. Screw making lemonade.

  Cordray wasn’t one to feel sorry for herself or quote sweet-and-sappy affirmations. Taking action was her coping mechanism, so she had turned her heartbreak—and the curse that had come with it—to her advantage, becoming King Bain’s best bounty hunter and deadliest assassin.

  She’d been shot and stabbed so many times she could fill Lake Michigan with the amount of blood she’d lost, and was there even a bone left in her body that hadn’t been broken at least twice? But—like the Energizer Bunny—she just kept going, able to continue fighting when others would have succumbed to the agony.

  That was the gift of not being able to feel pain.

  But the burden of her profession—and her inability to feel touch—made for a lonely life. Or maybe it was more accurate to say it forced her into an existence where she was better off alone. Cordray didn’t mind being alone. In fact, she preferred that over the alternative. She would rather be alone and alive than risk going through the TNT of heartbreak two-point-oh by falling in love again. If that happened and she got dumped a second time, she might not come out alive.

  Cordray was nothing if not a survivor, so screw love and romance. It had never brought her anything but pain. All she needed was a hot vein when she was hungry and the occasional bar brawl to give her something to do with her hands. Everything else could suck it.

  Chapter 2

  “Cordray.” Bain’s chief of security warily greeted her with a disgusted sneer.

  She pasted on an overly sweet smile. “Donovan.”

  There was no love lost between her and Donovan. He thought of her as an unnecessary intrusion who garnered too much unwarranted face time with the king, and she considered him far too inept to be Bain’s head of security. She’d had to clean up more than a few of his messes and wondered why Bain hadn’t already pink-slipped him. But, hey, at least his continued employment gave her job security.

  “I’m here to see Bain.” She started down the main hall of the royal mansion like she owned the place.

  “You are to address His Majesty as King Bain.” Donovan rushed after her as if she required an escort to Bain’s private study.

  “I’ll pass.” She pushed on, her pace steady and confident, causing the hem of her leather duster to billow around her like a cape.

  He grumbled under his breath about insubordination being grounds for imprisonment.

  “Good luck with that,” she quipped.

  She and Bain worked hard to keep their sibling relationship a secret, with good reason, but calling him King Bain sat like acid on her tongue. To her, he was simply Bain, her half-brother, not the ruler of the vampire race.

  But she should really try harder to use his official title, if only to keep up appearances. If word got out that Bain’s father had sired a daughter with a human, it would taint the whole bloodline and risk fracturing the vampire community’s loyalty to Bain’s leadership. And since adversaries were never in short supply, even among vampires, she and Bain didn’t need to make it any easier for them to turn on one another over something that sh
ouldn’t even be a thing.

  That said, she enjoyed dropping his royal title around other people. It unnerved and intimidated them, which fit right in with her desire to keep people at arm’s length, as did her severe appearance and piss-off attitude.

  And it worked. To everyone but Bain, she was the local freak show. Someone to cross the street to get away from. People stared at her, whispered their disapproval behind her back, and avoided making eye contact with her as if she were Medusa and could turn them to stone with one glance.

  Good. Let them think the worst about her. It kept them away. People who got too close could hurt you. Maybe not physically, but mentally and emotionally. Cordray had already had enough of that kind of pain to last her a millennium.

  “I don’t need an escort, Donny,” she said as Donovan led her down the back hall toward Bain’s study. “I know the way.”

  He ignored her, his resentment palpable. He thought the jobs Bain gave her should have gone to him and his team instead. But talk about blunt instruments. Donovan was a buzz saw that made too much noise and left too many blood-stained witnesses. Bain needed a scalpel that moved with silent precision, getting in and out without drawing attention. Not exactly Donny’s specialty.

  They reached Bain’s office, and Cordray brushed past her escort before he could knock, unceremoniously opening the door and strolling inside.

  Bain looked up from behind the massive cherry-brown desk on the far side of the vast, meticulously decorated space.

  Donovan practically leaped inside the room. “Sire, I’m sorry for the interruption. I tried to stop—”

  Bain held up his hand. “It’s fine, Donovan, I’ll take it from here.”

  She and Donovan exchanged bitter glances, then he stepped back and cleared his throat as he directed his attention to her brother. “Of course, sire. I’ll be right outside if you need—”