Going Down (14 page)

She’s dead-set against him. He’s dead certain he can change her mind…

Position Secured

© 2010 Olivia Brynn

Marienna Valdez has a cop allergy. Their cocky, superior attitudes never fail to turn her stomach. How fitting that her reward for enduring a perfectly sucky work week is a traffic ticket from one that’s on the kind of overblown power trip she learned to hate when she was growing up surrounded by boys in blue.

But now she’s finally home, where she prepares to take the edge off with a well-deserved self-love session. Just as she gets settled in with her favorite toys, though, what should come barreling through her bedroom door but…another cop!

SWAT team sniper Marcus Pearson doesn’t need detective skills to figure out just what he’s interrupted. If he can keep Marienna quiet long enough to resolve the tense situation under her bedroom window, he intends to put down his rifle and take aim at her aversion to the badge…

Warning:
This title contains one sheet-wrapped, cop-and-damsel burrito with toys on the side. Extra batteries included.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Position Secured:

“Alpha confirm. Subject in custody.” After a moment, he stood, one smooth movement unfolding his body. Mari yanked her hand away from her pussy, almost whimpering at the injustice. She gathered the opening of her robe in two handfuls. He removed the magazine from the rifle, then carefully took the single round from the chamber. His movements showed none of the stress she would expect to see. Each was practiced, smooth and deliberate, as if he trained a deadly weapon on people every day. Perhaps he did. He straightened and scanned the room before looking through the doorway to meet her eyes.

“Echo three to Alpha base. One witness to debrief. Echo three out.”

He pulled the headset from his ear, and it dangled off his shoulder. Mari took her first good look at him facing her, and she had those damn visions from her fantasy stuck in her head.

But the man in her fantasy burned hot and wild, and this guy was cool as a slab of marble and showed just as much emotion. Maybe he was a robot. He
was
a
cop
after all. “I’m sorry I had to startle you, ma’am. I appreciate your assistance.” His voice didn’t fluctuate from the deep, even tone.

Mari nodded. “No one was hurt?”

“No. A struggle, but no shots fired.” He jerked his chin toward the window. “Seems some pretty shady deals have been going on right outside your bedroom window. Probably while you were in here sleeping…” His gaze swept over the bed and fixed on her vibrator.

Heat flooded her face. Her heart, confused at the roller coaster of emotions, pounded painfully. She pressed her thighs together to quell the need flaring in her heated sex.

“You said you were in the middle of something?”

Great. He had a photographic memory. Mari blinked, bringing him back into focus. His smirk might have sent a lesser woman running for cover, but Mari saw the intrigue behind those blue eyes. She didn’t stop to think that it might just be her hormones bouncing around like fireflies in a jar. She folded her arms across her chest, lifted her chin and raised an eyebrow.

“That’s right. I’d like to get back to my…” she paused meaningfully, “
something
now, if you don’t mind.”

He walked toward her. Swaggered would be a better word. He paused at the foot of the bed and, without releasing her from his stare, he reached over and scooped Bob up off the pillows.

Holy hell. There was no way she misinterpreted that hungry look. The man almost drooled and bared his teeth like a cartoon wolf. Mari blinked again, just in case her imagination and libido were still salsa dancing in her brain.

Two more steps toward her and he lifted her vibrator to his nose and made a show of smelling the pink silicone. His eyes drifted half closed. She bit her lower lip to stifle the moan.

“I can’t tell you how sorry I am for interrupting you.” His voice dropped to an intimate pitch, and Mari released the breath she’d been holding. “If there’s any way I can make it up to you…” He stopped once their clothes brushed. The back of her head hit the wall when she lifted her chin to meet his eyes. Heat from his body surrounded her. His musky scent wafted up to her nose, surrounding her. She sucked a deep breath, indulging in that male smell. “I took an oath to protect and…to serve.” His breath fanned her face.

She watched his lips move, and licked hers. This wasn’t really happening. This way-too-gorgeous man was not in her bedroom holding her favorite toy and standing close enough to taste. She should wake up from this fantasy before she embarrassed herself. The click and ensuing hum of the vibrator close to her ear was real, though. She met his eyes again. He nodded slowly and dragged Bob’s tip along her jaw line.

“Let me.” It could have been a question, but it sounded more like a statement, or maybe an order. “Tell me it’s okay. Tell me you want this.”

She tried to think. If this really was happening, she needed to think straight. The vibrator hummed a path down her neck. He deftly slipped it beneath the fabric of her robe and farther down her chest. She let her arms drop to her sides.

“You have to understand. I get called on an assignment like today and I can’t think about anything but my target. I can’t be distracted. I can’t think about the woman who opened her door to me wearing a flimsy ass robe. I’ve got the lives of innocent people and my fellow officers to consider. I’m stressed out enough with that. I usually relieve myself afterward with a workout in the gym, followed by a solo in the shower, but I’ve never been presented with the likes of you when I’m feeling this.”

“The likes of me?” Mari surprised herself with her ability to speak clearly. His words puffed against her lips, and Mari could even taste his breath. Coffee.

“A fucking sexy as hell woman like you,” he continued, dragging her vibrating dildo around her breast. “Aroused. Naked…”

“I’m not…”

“Take this off and you will be.” He used his free hand to peel her robe off one shoulder.

Mari shut her mouth with a click. She’d been about to say she wasn’t a sexy woman, but she wasn’t a stupid one, either. She didn’t even shiver in protest when her robe slithered to the carpet to pool around her feet. Why should she? This was all a crazy dream that she’d awaken from any second now. She wasn’t really standing naked in front of a cop in her hallway.

“Tell me it’s okay,” he repeated. “I can feel the heat coming off of you. I can even smell your arousal. Let me take care of it for you. Tell me it’s okay.”

But Mari couldn’t say the words. She could barely wrap her mind around the fact that this was real, let alone say something. The vibrator teased the skin below her navel, but he wouldn’t go farther.

“Touch me,” he panted against her lips before she could answer. Her lids drifted closed in anticipation of a kiss that never came. “Please, touch me. Pull my shirt out. Let me feel your hands on me.” He simply rested his mouth against hers while he spoke.

At that point she realized her arms hung limply at her sides. She laid both hands on his stomach. Just as she thought, he was in exquisite shape. His abs tightened beneath her fingers. She indulged in the first touch of his body. Hard male. A wall of muscle and man, wrapped in this thin T-shirt. She gripped it and slid the hem from his pants. He hissed when her hands met his bare skin.

“Fuck, yeah. Tell me. Tell me it’s okay.” He planted his elbow by her ear and leaned against her, caging her to the wall.

“It’s okay,” she whispered. “I want it. I want you.”

“Goddamned beautiful…” He wasted no time in sliding the vibrator inside her. His moan blended with hers in a tuneless harmony. He didn’t move it once the vibrator was firmly seated deep in her channel. “Don’t come yet, baby. I need one thing from you first.” He didn’t continue until she lifted heavy lids to meet that electric blue stare. “Tell me your name.”

Mari’s legs almost gave out on her. Marc caught her and pressed his body against hers to hold her up against the hallway wall. She whimpered and tried to grind against the humming intrusion. He switched it off. The sudden silence drew another whine from her throat.

“Tell me.”

Mari slid her tongue along his lips. She didn’t want to talk. She wanted him to kiss her. She wanted him to quit fucking around and make her come. She moved her hands around to his back, reaching up to trace the indentation of his spine. She nipped his lower lip and squeezed her channel around the vibrator.

“Huh-uh.” He turned his head enough to press his cheek against hers. “Tell me your name or I walk out right now.”

He wouldn’t dare. “Please…does it really matter?” She scraped her fingers back down and around to his abdomen, until she held the waistband of his pants and belt in a tight grip.

“Yes. It matters. What’s your name, sweetheart? I want to shout it out when I come for you.”

“Oh, my God. Marienna. Marienna Elena Valdez. But you can call me—” She gasped.

He pulled out the vibrator, flicked it on, then slid it back inside with a twist. “Marienna,” he breathed, and then he kissed her.

A wounded cop. A frightened woman. A desperate race to save a child in danger…

The Midnight Effect

© 2009 Pamela Fryer

In a single phone call, Lily Brent’s entire life—past and future—becomes foggy with confusion and danger. Her estranged sister is dead, and the body is lacking one definitive mark: a surgery scar from the kidney Lily thought she’d donated to her sister long ago.

There’s more than a mystery on her hands. There’s a niece she never knew she had, and a madman on her trail who’s hell-bent on getting the child back.

When a beautiful woman crashes her car into his remote mountain gas station, followed closely by a man with a silencer-equipped pistol, three years of inactive duty fall away as Miles Goodwin springs into action. He saves Lily and her golden child, but nothing can save him from the painful reminder of the family he lost. Retreating to his emotional coma, however, isn’t an option; they’re far from safe.

There’s something strange about a six-year-old girl who’s never eaten a hamburger or heard of Tinkerbell—and who seems to be the source of psychic phenomena so powerful, someone’s willing to kill to get her back.

Warning: Contains heart-pounding suspense, a charm-your-socks-off kid, and a compelling romance that may inspire you to combine your DNA with someone you love!

Enjoy the following excerpt for
The Midnight Effect:

Miles Goodwin tipped his chair back as he took a slug from his beer. Across the tree line the remainder of the day was a bloody smear on the horizon. The setting sun drifted away mockingly.
Another day and you’re still here because you don’t have the courage to put your revolver in your mouth.

He smacked at a mosquito on his neck. The bugs were relentless at dusk, but this was Miles’ favorite time of day. Swallowing darkness was moments away, when he wouldn’t recognize each agonizing minute in the passage of time. Night was limbo in the personal hell his life had become.

It was a chore to drag himself out of bed every morning, painful to endure every endless minute. The mark of each sunset brought him one day closer to the end he longed for. Closer to the end he didn’t have the courage to seek on his own. Suicide was a sin, and if there was a sweet hereafter, he wouldn’t join Sara and Michelle there if he took his own life.

The roar of an engine pulled his attention to the dark tunnel of Northern pine where the highway wound out of sight. The front legs of his chair fell onto the porch with a
thunk
. He rarely saw a customer at his little gas station after six. By now most of the tourists were already in town at the expensive restaurants, sipping their second martinis.

A classic Mercedes two-seater raced around the bend and went into a drift on squealing tires.

The car fishtailed before regaining traction. Clouds of white smoke poured from the exhaust as though it had blown a head gasket. As it barreled down the highway at breakneck speed, chunks of rubber flapped at the right rear wheel. The car was out of control, but the driver wasn’t trying to stop.

Sparks flew from the rim as the last shreds of the tire disintegrated. The car careened down the embankment on the side of the highway and launched itself off the incline, headed directly for his small station.

“Jesus!” Miles leapt to his feet and dove off the porch, narrowly missing the rusted edge of a twisted bumper as he hit the ground. He scrambled to his feet and ran, still clutching his foaming beer bottle, as the car crashed into the pumps.

A dull
whuff
pressed on his eardrums as the pumps exploded. For the space of a heartbeat the dusky forest was as bright as high noon.

Miles hit the emergency shut-off lever at the side of the garage and the tanks sealed off, but the car was already on fire. There were no sprinklers at the historic station’s stand-alone island.

Nobody could have lived through an explosion like that. At that horrific moment, he knew there was at least one dead body at Goodwin’s Garage.

The irony hit him—there could have been two. What had made him run? He’d been longing for death for three years, aching for it more with each day that passed. Yet at the first sign of danger he’d been on his feet, preserving his sorry ass. It had been instinct as much as police training.

Dammit to hell.

Momentum had taken the car past the worst of the flames. The windshield was a shattered milky spider web, but still held.

Conditioned by police training, he ran toward the car without thinking, more concerned for the driver than for himself.

Movement shifted behind the white-green kaleidoscope of safety glass. A hand passed over the steering wheel, and Miles knew it was a woman in the car.

She’s alive—there must be a God in Heaven.

The driver’s door opened as flames burst across the hood. She staggered out and fell to her knees.