Seasons of Seduction III

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Excerpts From: ELLORA´S CAVEMEN: SEASONS OF SEDUCTION III

An Excerpt From: THE PIRATE AND THE PUSSYCAT

Copyright © LACEY ALEXANDER, 2007

All Rights Reserved, Ellora's Cave Publishing, Inc.

"So what are you wearing to my Halloween bash this year?"

Sipping on her latte, Leah cringed at her best friend´s question. "Oh God, I totally forgot. It´s October already." She gave her head a sad tilt, designed to garner sympathy. "Would you hate me if I skipped out this year?"

Across the table from her in the busy coffee shop, Tracy´s eyes narrowed in controlled irritation. "Yes." Then she shook her head as if in disbelief. "What are you even thinking? How could you want to miss my big party? You know people far and wide look forward to this all year long."

Leah just sighed, thinking the answer was obvious. "Need I remind you that I always have terrible luck with men at your Halloween party? Three years ago there was that freaky guy in the priest costume who kept trying to get me to sit on his lap. Then the year after that was the cowboy who I thought I liked until he kept lassoing me and practically forcing me to kiss him. And last year was the worst."

"Patrick the Fireman," Tracy said somberly. Then both girls sighed, remembering. While decked out as a hula dancer, Leah had met a totally handsome, confident, funny guy costumed as a firefighter. They´d hit it off and spent the whole evening together, sharing a few long, slow kisses before finally saying goodnight at two a.m. He´d taken her number and promised to call. No, more than promised really. They´d already talked about dates they were going to go on-movies they´d see, places they´d eat, and even the picnics they´d have as soon as it turned warm. That´s how right it had felt.

And despite loving what a perfect gentleman he´d been, waiting until the end of the night to even kiss her-after they´d parted ways, she´d been dying to get in his pants. She´d fallen asleep night after night remembering the way she´d felt him growing hard against the apex of her thighs as they´d made out on Tracy´s front porch, and thinking she couldn´t wait to get more of that lovely sensation-until she´d finally figured out that he wasn´t going to call.

And though she´d known it was stupid to be so hung up on a guy she´d spent one lone evening with, it had hurt. She´d really thought he liked her, and she´d let herself get way too wrapped up in him way too fast. And as it had turned out, the party had been so busy that Tracy didn´t even know Patrick or who he had come with.

"Surely you remember what high hopes I had for him," she reminded Tracy. "And frankly, I´m just not up for another heartbreak-or more of those goofballs Mike works with." Mike was Tracy´s husband, and the cowboy and priest had come from his side of the "friend pool".

"You know what you need?" Tracy asked, a conniving glint in her eye.

Leah hated Tracy´s conniving glint-it always ended up getting one or both of them into trouble. "What?" She let her gaze narrow suspiciously.

"A night of no-strings-attached sex."

An Excerpt From: PANTHER´S PLEASURE

Copyright © CATHRYN FOX, 2007

All Rights Reserved, Ellora's Cave Publishing, Inc.

Sash stepped onto the tarmac. Chilly air rushed over her flesh and helped cool her feverish skin. She drew the fresh air into her lungs and made her way into the docking station, which proved to be no different than any other docking station on any other planet. Broken down into quadrants, it housed sleeping quarters for visitors, a lounge area where business was conducted and dining areas where they could sample the local cuisine. At this particular moment she didn´t care about food or sleep, she needed a drink and hoped they were serving something that would help her forget how crappy she felt.

As she moved through the bustling building and into the lounge area, she spotted the beautiful Dahara, the ship´s liaison, sharing a drink with a man. Dahara, with her long blonde hair and hourglass figure, was the antithesis of Sash, who sported a short, spiked cut and a lithe body that could easily pass for a preteen boy. Only the finest of women, like her mother, assumed the role of liaison. Where her mother had been fair and curvaceous, Sash was dark and thin, making her believe she took after her father´s side. Not that she knew who he was. In the past, whenever she had brought up the subject, her mother had always redirected the conversation, but Sash never missed the look of longing in her eyes.

On closer inspection, Sash acknowledged that the man sitting with Dahara didn´t look like an extraterrestrial being at all, something she had grown accustomed to seeing during her planetary endeavors. In fact, Mr. Gorgeous resembled a human male from Earth. Except he looked wild and unkempt, with piercing green eyes that were panty-soaking gorgeous.

It was unexpected, really.

But interesting, definitely.

Why the hell did she have to be too goddamned sick to do anything about it? Because Link was right, it was well past time for the old grease job and oil change.

Out of her peripheral vision, Sash eyed the man as she made her way to the bar. She assumed the ship´s liaison was conducting intergalactic business, not that she knew for certain what kind of trade deals they were making. It didn´t really concern her. All she cared about during each mission was keeping her ship and her crew running smoothly.

But damned if she was the one who wasn´t running smoothly during this particular mission.

With little finesse, she plunked her small mass onto a barstool and summoned the barkeep. He moved toward her. At least the appealing sight of his long legs and muscular body helped keep her mind off her itchy flesh. If only momentarily. Restless, she shuffled in her chair and clawed at her arm. She glanced down at the long red marks left by her scratching.

Damn, when had her nails gotten that long? And the hairs on her arms seemed much longer as well, and darker. How peculiar.

Shifting her attention, she caught the barkeep´s glance and noticed that he too had those same mesmerizing green eyes. They reminded her of cat eyes, actually. A wild cat. Dangerous. Unpredictable. Fierce.

She found her thoughts drifting, wondering for an instant if the men from Lannar were as wild in the bedroom as they looked. Her pulse raced with excitement, anxious to find out as her gaze raked over him once again. It was always pleasant when a species appealed to her sensibilities.

Slut that she was.

An Excerpt From: ON HER BACK

Copyright © RENEE LUKE, 2007

All Rights Reserved, Ellora's Cave Publishing, Inc.

Simone Harris closed her eyes, willing away the burn of tears, swallowing past the tightness in her throat. She shouldn´t be the one to do this, shouldn´t have to do it alone. But there was no one else. Jerold, her brother, was gone, his body tucked beneath six feet of soil at Arlington National Cemetery.

And now his best friend, Elijah Russell, was coming home injured, two months too late to see his grandma before she succumbed to cancer.

Sucking in a shaky breath, she opened her eyes and lifted her gaze to the top of the escalator where a man in camouflage stepped into view. He looked breathtaking in his service uniform-proud to wear it, powerful, determined.

With her heart pumping like mad, she took in the sight of him-broad shoulders, coffee-and-cream skin and pale hazel eyes.

Intoxicating eyes.

Eyes she knew and loved.

Eyes that made her insides knot up and her pussy go wet.

Even with their distance, he met her gaze and held it as the metal stairs slowly carried him closer. Her hands were shaking. Hell, so were her knees, but this wasn´t a time for weakness. She wiped her sweaty palms across her skirt and took a few calming breaths.

He needed her strength, and she just needed him. Needed him so badly. In her life. In her bed. Needed him like crazy to ease the ache between her legs. To fill the void in her heart reserved for him.

Thinking back, she couldn´t recall when hanging around Jerold and Elijah to be a pest had changed to wanting to be around them because she was crushing hard on her brother´s friend. Or when the innocence of her crush had turned into love and womanly desire.

But it had. And she did desire him.

As she stared into his eyes all the longing from those solitary nights of masturbation resurfaced, mixed with the heavy, unforgettable sorrow of the last few months, and she felt torn-emotionally battered. It wasn´t until the escalator delivered him to the airport´s lower level and he stepped off that Simone noticed the cane he gripped in his right hand and the way his once-upon-a-time swagger had turned into a limp. Her chest tightened up. This man-this beautiful man-who´d gone away to war with a touch of arrogance had returned with his body damaged and a look of defeat in his eyes.

She ached to help him. To ease his pain. To see the gleam of confidence in his amazing eyes return to replace the dull emptiness.

An Excerpt From: I WAS AN ALIEN´S LOVE SLAVE

Copyright © CHARLENE TEGLIA, 2007

All Rights Reserved, Ellora's Cave Publishing, Inc.

Thirty-two years old and washed up. Pitiful.

One more book, one lousy book, that was all she had to come up with to fulfill her contract. Unfortunately, it couldn´t be a book about killing her landlord for not fixing the broken light in the foyer of her building, forcing her to go up the stairs to her apartment in the dark.

No, it had to be a book about true love, blazing passion, happily ever after. And she´d been staring at the blank screen of her laptop day after day, week after week, as the months to complete the manuscript and fulfill her obligation crept past until desperation drove her out into the streets looking for some star of inspiration to hitch her imagination onto and ride to The End.

She was nearly out of time. If she couldn´t do it, she really would be in trouble. She would get a reputation for not being dependable and she wasn´t good enough to be labeled difficult to work with. She was replaceable. Especially if she missed her deadline.

Maybe a hypnotist could cure her writer´s block.

Maybe, as her friend Angie was always advising her, she should just get laid.

"Get your oil changed, girlfriend," Angie would say. "Go do some hands-on research."

There were always lots of jokes about the kinds of books she wrote and the research involved in them. The joke, however, was on her, because the only experience she´d had lately was in her vivid imagination. Not so much due to lack of interest in the idea as a lack of real-life heroes to do hands-on research with.

And now the lack of real-life heroes had led to her wellspring of fictional heroes drying up like the Sahara.

"Stop it, Michelle, you´re getting depressed and that will not help," she muttered to herself. She huddled into her black wool jacket and shoved her hands deep into the side pockets. "You can do this. You can write twenty pages a day from now until the end of the month and make that deadline. You just have to focus."

Focus. On believing in the impossible, a heroic man, true love and happy endings. Think happy thoughts and her fingers could fly.

She needed fairy dust to fly, didn´t she?

Or maybe she only needed to make a wish.

She turned to look at the neon sign that hung above her, a tilted cocktail glass with a multiple-pointed star on the rim and the words Starlite Lounge spelled out below.

Why not? Nothing else was working.

If it didn´t help, she would get hypnotized. Or laid. Or both. Anything to keep her word, make her deadline, earn her next advance and avoid going back to being a secretary. She´d been a lousy secretary.

"Star light, star bright," Micki chanted, "First star I see tonight. I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight." She closed her eyes and wished, fiercely, passionately, with all the feeling she could summon.

I need my hero. I need to believe in true love and happy endings. Please.

An Excerpt From: SUNSHINE FOR A VAMPIRE

Copyright © N.J. WALTERS, 2007

All Rights Reserved, Ellora's Cave Publishing, Inc.

The moon was a huge golden orb floating in the night sky with a sprinkling of stars hovering around it. But it wasn´t full. Not yet. By her reckoning, it wouldn´t be truly full until tomorrow night. She wished it were already here because that would mean tonight was already over.

Sunshine DeMarco strolled through her garden, admiring the night-blooming flowers. Her fingers lovingly stroked the bell-shaped angel´s trumpet before trailing across the moonflower that she loved so well. There was a profusion of evening primrose and four-o´clocks. Each plant bloomed only at night and either had a unique fragrance or was white in color, drawing the otherwise quiet insects to them after dusk settled.

Her garden was much like her-only opening up to the world after the sun had gone down. Sighing, she lowered herself onto a stone bench, which sat directly in the center of her garden. Her sanctuary. Here she could be herself without worrying about the censorious glances that she received when she was around others of her kind.

Vampires.

She just didn´t fit in. Never had. Her family line was old, part of the upper class of society, and everyone knew that the aristocracy prized the purity of their bloodlines more than anything. They bred true-tall, dark-haired and dark-eyed, except for the occasional redhead with witchy-green eyes, which was exotic and erotic. Sure, they all had the occasional human in their family trees, but no one talked about it. Vampire genetics were almost always dominant...except that hadn´t happened in her family. By some stroke of fate, the recessive family genes had surged forward when she was born, making her forever an outcast among the ruling elite. A short, blonde-haired, blue-eyed vampire was almost unheard of, especially among her peers.

Her mother had claimed that Sunshine represented a precious part of the world that none of their kind could inhabit and had named her appropriately. As a small child, she´d felt special. But when she´d ventured out among her own people, she´d felt like a freak, a genetic anomaly, an aberration.

Beyond that, she didn´t fit into the whole vampire lifestyle. Most of them enjoyed opulent, rich surroundings, overindulging in everything from food to drink to blood. They laughed a little too loudly, gossiped way too much and were incredibly bored with life, always searching out the next adventure to keep them entertained. Personally, Sunshine thought they´d be much better off just finding something constructive to do with their time. After all, what was the point of living forever if you weren´t going to do something useful?

An Excerpt From: A MAN OF VISION

Copyright © KATE WILLOUGHBY, 2007

All Rights Reserved, Ellora's Cave Publishing, Inc.

"If I may be frank," Alessandro Rossi said after lighting his cigarette. "Signore Valtieri requires sexual release. Often."

American expatriate Delphine Alexander sipped her wine. "If you´re trying to shock me," she said, "it´s not working."

The two of them sat at a café on the Rue de Vaugirard, pleasantly removed from the busy Champs Elysées. The late afternoon sun graced the street with golden light.

Delphine had just finished a six-month stint with a Parisian stockbroker who decided that he could no longer keep a mistress now that he was getting married.

How ridiculously un-French of him.

As a result, she discreetly put out the word that she was without a patron. The very next day, Rossi had called with a lucrative proposition from the world-renowned sculptor, Cristoforo Valtieri of Florence, and she immediately scheduled a meeting. She adored Florence. Nestled in Tuscany with its russet rooftops and historic soul, the city called to her like a lover. She could learn a new language, add some Italian pieces to her couture wardrobe and earn a hefty fee if what Rossi said on the phone was to be believed.

"You are a true professional, Signorina Alexander," Rossi said, exhaling smoke. "I expected nothing less."

"Then let´s talk terms, Mr. Rossi. You mentioned that Valtieri is willing to offer money above my usual fee. How much more, and why? Did you send him a copy of my standard contract?"

"Yes, Signore Valtieri agrees to your terms. He was actually shocked at some of the items on your taboo list. He wants only the basic services and has already undergone the tests you require." Rossi pulled out papers that guaranteed Valtieri was free from sexually transmitted disease and laid them on the table. "The reason he offers so much extra is that he wants you on call twenty-four hours a day."

"What?" Looking up sharply from the medical forms, she couldn´t mask her surprise. "That´s unheard of."

"He was adamant. He requires you to live in the villa. You´ll have your own rooms, but he needs you to be available at a moment´s notice. As I said before, his needs are great."

Delphine reached for her wine and took a controlled sip, even though she wanted a gulp. "That´s impossible. That´s slavery. I need time to myself."

"He understands that, of course, but he works extremely odd hours and wishes for you to accommodate that. You would start with three months. Then, if both of you desire it, he is willing to extend the contract."

"And the compensation?"

"Thirty thousand a month."