Ghosts of Boyfriends Past (18 page)

Oh crap, is that a gun?

“Get down!”

The shout came from her left. Matt surged into the open, a gun of his own braced between his hands. Ronna didn’t think. And she didn’t obey. In that split second in the shadow of the Ferris wheel with two armed-and-dangerous men, she couldn’t see anything past the nightmare vision in her mind of Matt’s gorgeous eyes, wide with horror and shock, in a face sprayed with blood. She dove toward him, slamming him to the ground in a tackle worthy of an NFL All Star. The spit of a silencer and the answering deafening report of an unsilenced gun split the shadows.

Matt grunted as he hit the ground and her weight hit him. Footsteps pounded the dirt nearby, and he rolled, pinning her protectively beneath his body as he twisted to scan the darkness around them, his gun trained on the spot where the gunman had stood.

The shadows were empty of crazy gun-wielding Ferris wheel operators now, but Matt’s body didn’t relax. He stayed tense above her.

Tense and whole.
He’s alive.

There wasn’t any moisture where her front was pressed against his, no gushing fluids to indicate excessive bleeding from a mortal wound, but she ran her hands over his torso just to be safe, checking for bullet holes. When her hands hampered his range of movement with the gun he was still pointing into the darker shadows, he knocked them out of his way.

“Lie still,” he snapped, clearly not appreciating her life-saving tackle or her continued concern for his well-being. He dug into his pocket, shifting his weight so he wasn’t pressing her down into the filthy ground, but still shielding her as he lifted his cell phone, punched a number in with his thumb and pressed it to his ear, never taking his eyes off the shadows or lowering his gun.

She was close enough to hear the bleeping tone of a dropped call.

Matt swore and dialed again, snarling another obscenity when the call failed a second time. “Is it too much to ask for a fucking signal?”

Ronna couldn’t make herself care about crappy cell providers. “You’re
alive
.”

“Of course I’m alive.
You
could have gotten yourself killed. What the hell were you thinking?”

“I saved your life,” Ronna explained patiently. “I ruined his shot.”

“You ruined
my
shot.” Matt shoved his phone back into his pocket. “Not to mention my chances of getting a permanent spot on the task force. Damn it.” He rose to a crouch, still alertly surveying the area.

Ronna sat up as well, taking stock of her now-filthy Madame Ramona getup. There was no fabric on earth capable of withstanding being ground into popcorn, cotton-candy residue and Ferris wheel grease and coming out unscathed. Her entire outfit would have to be burned when she got home to avoid contaminating the rest of her closet.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing back here?” Matt straightened and helped her—none too gently—to her feet.

He would probably react badly if she told him she had envisioned his death and followed him out of her booth to protect him from a horrific Ferris wheel-related death. He didn’t seem to be in a very receptive mood.

Magick made him human. Only love can keep him that way.

Uncross My Heart

© 2011 Jennifer Colgan

After a century of living
la vida muerta
, Julian Devlin’s closest ally casts a de-vamping spell that leaves him defanged and demoted from his hard-won place in Baltimore’s vampire hierarchy. Disoriented by his transformation, he can’t even find his way home.

The indignities don’t end there. Before he can explain to the quirky consignment shop owner why he’s hiding in her basement, she’s punched the newly re-acquired breath out of him and smacked him upside the head with her knock-off purse.

Zoe Boyd’s scream could have peeled paint from the walls—if she could get her heart out of her throat. Common thugs aren’t supposed to have a smile so panty-melting that she finds herself apologizing for scaring
him
.

She’s also too busy managing her friends’ love lives to take on an ex-vampire with revamping and revenge on his mind. Until she guides him home and ends up neck deep in his world of trouble.

As Zoe risks her life to give him back his death, she warms the soul Julian never thought he’d own again. And when he tracks down a devilish witch who can reverse the spell, immortality without Zoe suddenly seems like cold comfort…

Warning: This novel contains sensual love scenes between a fashion-forward hero and a fashion-unconscious heroine, abuse of Italian loafers, and a few love bites. Don’t worry, freshly sharpened fangs don’t hurt. Much…

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Uncross My Heart:

“Don’t scream. I won’t hurt you.” Julian dropped his hand from Zoe’s lips and backed away from her bed, hands up, his movements deliberately slow and non-threatening.

In the blue neon glow of her bedside alarm clock, her pale skin looked like alabaster, and her eyes were huge and terrified. Clutching a thin blanket to her chest, she scrambled to a sitting position amid the tumble of pillows that populated her bed. “How did you get in here? Are you insane? What if I kept a knife under my pillow or something?”

“You don’t. I checked.”

She squeaked in indignation. “You broke into my house.”

“No. I let myself in with your spare key, which you obviously put back right where you got it from after we came in before. You know, you’re asking to be murdered in your sleep, or worse. It amazes me that a girl as trusting as you is still alive.”

“You weren’t supposed to look.”

“I looked. Sue me.” He shrugged. This had all been too easy. He’d probably be doing her a favor by draining her dry as soon as he transformed back. This blonde gypsy belonged in another era, a simpler time when people left their doors unlocked and everyone knew their neighbors. Either that or she needed a body guard twenty-four/seven.

“What are you doing back here? Didn’t you find someone to help you?”

He sighed. A lie would be easy, even if it did little to preserve the mere shred of dignity he had left. “It’s almost dawn. I needed someplace to go before sunrise, and I was kicked out of the bus station. They don’t allow people to sleep there anymore, I discovered.” Truth was, she was the only trustworthy soul he could find at this hour.

She blinked at him. “Sunrise? Um…humans can go out in the daylight. Or have you been revamped already?” One delicate hand slid toward her slender throat. Julian watched the subtle movement with a mixture of amusement and—dear God—arousal.

She’d traded her peasant blouse for a thin-strapped tank top. Clingy and white, it contrasted with her honeyed skin and did little to hide the sumptuous curves of her breasts, now peaked with taut nipples. Gooseflesh stood out on her bare arms. He wondered if she might be considering the possibility that he would lower his lips to her neck and drink…

He blinked away the traitorous thoughts. “No. I’m still human.” He laughed. “I guess I’m so conditioned to avoid sunlight that it never occurred to me. Nevertheless, I need a place to sleep for a little while. I don’t have enough cash to go to a hotel, and if I use my credit cards, I could be leading Lambert right to me.”

“Vampires have credit cards?”

“We’re undead, not Amish. How else would one purchase Gucci loafers?”

Warm yellow light illuminated her skeptical gaze when she switched on the bedside lamp. “Okay, silly question. I admit it, but give me a break. It’s four fifty-nine a.m., and I just woke up with a man’s hand over my mouth. You’re lucky I didn’t bite you.”

He let his gaze roam her half-hidden curves again. She’d be lucky if he didn’t bite
her
one way or another. “I apologize for sneaking in… Something I would
not
have been able to do if you had an ounce of common sense.” He tossed the spare key to her, and just as he’d hoped, she let go of her death grip on the blanket to catch it.

Delicious. He’d have climbed into the bed with her if he hadn’t been so desperate to keep her trust for just a little longer. He needed this girl. And he hated needing her. “Do yourself a favor and hide that somewhere else. Better yet, give it to your boyfriend for safe keeping.”

“I told you, he’s
not
my boyfriend.”

Good
. The thought crossed his mind unbidden, and he squashed it. “Can I borrow your couch? Just for a few hours?”

Her lips quivered a bit before she responded. “Sure. I’ll get you a pillow and a blanket.”

“No need to treat me like a guest.”

“But you are one.” She rose, and Julian’s gaze traveled up and down her bare legs, pausing only briefly at the still red scrapes on her knees. She’d hurt herself running from him and, for some inexplicable reason, he regretted that. He shook off the unproductive thought and took inventory of the rest of her outfit.

Tiny panties rode low on her hips, leaving a band of naked skin beneath the hem of her skimpy top. Ah. The twenty-first century had so many advantages over the nineteenth. Each decade, it seemed women became less inhibited about their bodies. It made being immortal so much fun.

She moved unselfconsciously now, and Julian followed her into the living room. When she bent over to retrieve a blanket and pillow from within the square hassock, he stifled an appreciative sigh.

She tossed the items at him while he debated sinking his very human teeth into one creamy inner thigh. “Put your eyes back in your head, Romeo. I already told you, I’m nobody’s entrée. Now, go. Sleep. I’m going back to bed in my room behind a door that locks, and there’s no spare key above the frame, so don’t get any ideas. If you’re still here in the morning—the
actual
morning—I’ll think about cooking you breakfast, and we’ll talk about getting you a decent place to stay until your house is fixed, okay?”

He stared for a full second, dumbfounded by her. One bite. Just one bite was all he wanted. “Okay.”

She disappeared into the bedroom then, shutting the door firmly on any further comment or fantasy on his part.

Disappointed but still oddly amused, Julian made himself comfortable on her couch.

Zoe’s heart thundered in her shamelessly exposed chest. She’d just been parading around in her underwear in front of a lunatic—a drop-dead gorgeous lunatic—who’d stolen into her bedroom in the middle of the night.

Her face burned with shame and something else. He’d been looking, and she’d enjoyed letting him look.

Was she insane? It was not okay to pretend that Julian Devlin was a normal guy. He thought he was a vampire, for heaven’s sake, and he certainly hadn’t tried very hard to disguise his desire to bite her.

She leaned against the locked bedroom door, breathing deeply to calm herself. What would she do if he was still there in the morning—
later
in the morning? What if he didn’t leave?

Thank God he was all right. That thought came out of nowhere and pushed all the other ones aside. Her guilt at letting him wander off into the night evaporated and was replaced by complete shock that he’d come back.

He trusts me.
That notion frightened her a little. That made it her responsibility to help him. But how?

Certainly not by giving him an eyeful of her ladies’ Fruit of the Looms. Though he had definitely liked what he saw.

Cool it. Get a grip
.

The sound of his rhythmic breathing reached her through the door. She chanced opening it a crack to peer at him. He was asleep already, one arm flung across his eyes as if shielding himself from something.

He’d taken off her father’s sweatshirt. It now lay folded neatly on the arm of the sofa. His naked chest rose and fell, and his muscles still looked rock solid even in sleep.

Gorgeous.

What am I going to do with you, Julian Devlin?

Zoe shut the door to the bedroom and locked it again. The real question was, what was
he
going to do with
her
?

Their wolves are howling at the moon. Their human halves are on different planets.

Black Gold

© 2011 Vivian Arend

Takhini Wolves, Book 1

Lone wolf Shaun Stevens’s automatic response to the words “happily ever after”?
Kill me now
. Yet with all his friends settling down he’s begun to think there may actually be something to this love-and-roses crap.

One thing’s for sure: his dream mate will have to out-cuss, out-spit and out-hike him. So he never expected the one to push his forever button would be a blue-blooded Southern debutante with a voice as dark and velvety as her skin.

When Gemmita Jacobs steps off the plane in Whitehorse, Yukon, it’s about more than her caribou research project. It’s her declaration of independence from an overprotected upbringing. Except there’s something in the air she can’t quite define—something that unexpectedly rouses her mating instincts.

Moments after their eyes lock, the deed is done—and done thoroughly. When the pheromone dust settles, though, all the reasons they don’t belong together become painfully clear.

It’s enough to make a wolf learn a whole new set of cuss words…

Warning: Two strong wolves getting exactly what they deserve. Includes wilderness nookie, shifters being naughty in public places, the Midnight Sun as a canopy for seduction and grizzly shifters on the loose. Oh, and don’t forget the sarcasm.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Black Gold:

Both hands slid onto a smooth surface, and Shaun halted. The connecting door to the next room was warm under his palms, a soft
thump, thump, thump
radiating from the opposite side. It took a little maneuvering to get the deadbolt undone, and he swung his door inward.

The second door, the one from the neighbouring room, remained closed, but the volume of the music and the amazing scent increased tenfold. Shaun soaked in the bouquet. Delicious and invigorating. Appetizing enough to chase away the brain-buster of a headache hovering nearby. One deep breath after another cleansed the fog from his brain and lit a direct path from his nostrils southward.