Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin (Available Now)
It was snowing. Of course, it was December in Washington D.C., it was bound to snow eventually. The fat, fluffy flakes drifted like a wintry cape from the dark cloud laden sky. There was little breeze, so it fell and piled and between the time it took Kia Stanton to escape from the hotel and the very boring party she had attended to the little corner bar, it had covered the sidewalks.
The salt trucks were already running, their little plows lifted for the time being. The heavily traveled streets of Alexandria would stay clear for a while yet. The sidewalks were another matter.
She stepped carefully in her three inch heels. They were perfectly safe to wear in the hotel, but here, on the slick sidewalk was another story. She held the skirt of her winter white velvet dress to her ankles and wished she had just attempted to grab a cab and risk going home rather than attempting to hide for a while.
There were few places she could hide where she wasn't known. The bar seemed the least likely place. She had been inside it a time or two before in the past year. It was close to the hotels she was forced to attend events in, and those events invariably included her ex-husband, Drew.
She lowered her head as she ducked into the bar, pulling the wrap that was much too light for this weather around her cold arms.
She waved to the bartender and he nodded quickly as she headed to the table she always snagged. In the corner, where it was dark and shadowed and she could watch. Just watch the patrons as they chatted, laughed, joked.
Friends came in with friends or business associates. They could get a little loud, but they laughed and slapped each other on the back and had fun.
"It's a little cold out there tonight, honey." The barmaid, a young woman named Andrea sat a chilled bottle of beer in front of her and smiled back at her in concern as she let her eyes rove over her evening gown.
Andrea was quiet, a dark brunette with laughing gray eyes and a smile for everyone. Her sweater and jeans attested to the fact that the chill in the air outside often seeped inside here as well.
"Yes it is," Kia agreed as she accepted the beer. "They're calling for several inches of snow tonight and much more in the morning."
"Ten inches last I heard," Andrea agreed. "We should all just hunker down with a hot man and a hotter fire."
Kia smiled as Andrea turned away.
The pub wasn't very full tonight. The middle of the week, the weekend crowd wasn't here. She sipped at her beer and pulled the wrap closer around her shoulders, restraining a shiver as she looked around.
From where she sat, most of the room was visible to her. The two back corners were as shadowed as her own. They were private, cocooned with darkness.
She sighed deeply as she played with the chilled bottle of beer, stared down at her fingers and wondered why the hell she had come here. She could have gotten a room at the hotel. Drew would have known of course, and getting her room number would have been easy for him, but he couldn't have gotten in. She could have just called security. Except, the thought of the battle she would face there had her flinching. Drew wasn't above causing a scene, and he hadn't yet realized that she didn't give a damn.
All fear of societies gossip had been burned out of her the day she had been forced to retract her knowledge of exactly what her husband was, and what he had been a part of.
In two years, she hadn't forgotten that moment in time for even a single day. Or night. Some nights, she dreamed of it, and the dreams where much different than what had happened in reality.
She smiled at the thought of that. How brave she was in her dreams. And in those dreams, Chase Falladay had tempted her to acts that her ex-husband could have never convinced her to become a part of.
She picked at the paper on the beer bottle and tried to tell herself that it was only the loneliness brewing inside her that made those dreams seem so very intriguing.
Two years. She'd divorced, she had no friends. She had learned that lesson quickly. She had had only a few friends at that time, and once one of them had started the gossip concerning the club she still wasn't certain about, the others had taken up the cause and added to it. By time she had managed to do the damage control Chase had requested of her, it had blown so far out of proportion that no one would have believed it anyway.
But, she had learned valuable lessons from that event. She had learned to trust no one. Except, perhaps Chase. She almost smiled. She'd done as he told her and sued for a high divorce settlement. She'd gotten it easily. But it hadn't compensated for the pain, the humiliation, or the knowledge that her marriage had been a lie from the first day.
She tipped the beer to her lips once again, her gaze straying across the room. As she lowered the bottle she frowned, her eyes narrowing on that back corner.
It couldn't be him she told herself. That devil's black hair reflecting in a sudden spear of light, a profile that was as strong and as determined as the man himself was.
But it was him. She knew it was, and he had company.
She wasn't going to wonder at the sudden trip of her heart, the knowledge that her greatest sexual fantasy was in this bar with a man everyone in the free world knew, had no problems what so ever getting wild and depraved.
Chase Falladay and Khalid el Hamid Mustafa, the bastard of some little known Middle Eastern prince. He was in the news often, the gossip columns even more often. And he was sitting there with Chase.
As she stared, Chase's head lifted, his eyes narrowing through the smoky gloom, finding her instantly.
The breath left her throat. He couldn't know it was her. There was even less light here than there was in his corner. Then Khalid turned as well, his black eyes amused, his expression sensual as he lifted a glass and toasted her.
Shock raced through her. There was no way to run now, no way to hide. This wasn't a society ball or event where she all she had to do was drift to another pocket of guests and so on to avoid either of them.
Chase, because he was a temptation. Khalid because he was known to help Chase tempt the women they shared in the past months.
News of the club of men who shared their women may have died down over the years, but there were certain men rumored, always rumor only, to enjoy that particular pleasure more than any other.
Only a few, as though those brave, hungry souls relished the gossip they caused.
She took a long sip of the beer to ease the dryness in her mouth as she jerked her gaze away from them. They couldn't truly know who she was, she assured herself. She had to assure herself of that, otherwise, she'd never be able to force herself to stay in place.
Chase stared into the corner, wondering if Kia had any idea how the light spilled from the bar and glistened over the winter white velvet wrap and dress she wore. She looked like a snow princess fallen from the cloudy skies. Soft creamy flesh, champagne blonde hair, blue eyes, wide with a hint of nerves and fear. And something else.
Hell, he had to be drunk. That something else couldn't have been there.
"I wondered how long it would take her to get curious," Khalid remarked as he turned back to Chase.
"Curious about what?" Chase asked, watching as the lights caught the twinkle of diamonds in her upswept hair.
"About you my friend, and the pleasures you could give her. I've watched her gaze sweep over you for two years now. And wondered what she hid beneath those lashes that swept over her eyes each time," he explained.
Chase snorted. "Hatred?"
Khalid shook his head. "Never that." His smile was hard, curling with knowledge. "The two of you tip toe around each other as though you're terrified of the electricity flashing between you. She knows what you are." He leaned forward at that point. "And still, she's curious. I of course would be available if you needed a third."
"You're horny," Chase growled. "Who says I'd pick you for my third anyway?"
Khalid chuckled at that. "Who cares? A woman such as that one, you would have no hardship in finding a man willing to provide that service. But I would know immeasurable pleasure in being so chosen."
The amusement in Khalid's black eyes had Chase shaking his head at the other man.
"Perhaps it is fear that holds you back?" Khalid grinned then. "Your brother Cameron I have learned is floating in monogamous bliss where his woman Jaci is concerned. Perhaps, you are afraid it is contagious?"
Chase tore his gaze from Kia. She looked cold. She was too close to the door to manage any warmth dressed as she was. As soft, as delicate as she looked in it, she had to be freezing.
She tugged the wrap more firmly around her shoulders when Chase realized he hadn't torn his gaze from her for long. Perhaps a second. Maybe.
"Why not ask her to join us for a drink?" Khalid suggested. "She would be well hidden here with us." He waved a broad hand at the corner next to Chase. "And I have no doubt she wouldn't be warmer."
Chase was rising to his feet before Khalid was finished talking. He ignored the other man's laughter and moved across the room. She would join them, or he would take her home. Any other option was out of the question. She was tempting him to the point that his back teeth ached at the thought of touching her, and he wasn't thinking about the erection pounding beneath his slacks.
She watched him as he approached. He felt her eyes on him, raking over him, nervous little looks that made him tense in arousal. She'd been doing to this to him even before her ex-husband had tried to force her into a ménage. And he'd been furious that Drew had chosen to try to draw her into that lifestyle without her knowledge beforehand.
"You look like a snow fairy," he leaned against the heavy post that supported the ceiling, only a few feet from her table.
Her gaze lifted, her slender neck rippling as she swallowed tightly.
"Well, it is snowing tonight," she cleared her throat.
It was there between them, he could feel it. He could see it in her eyes, almost taste in the air around them. If she left that table to join him, it was going to be for much more than a drink.
He glanced away from her for a moment, acknowledging that every attempt he had made to stay away from her had just flown the hell out the window.
When he turned back, his jaw clenched.
"I'm not playing games with you Kia. I have too damned much respect for you that that." He held his hand out to her. "Would you like to join us?"
She looked over to where Khalid had turned in his chair enough to watch them. His dark eyes gleamed with sensual, sexual knowledge. Just as Chase's did.
She stared at his hand.
She had wondered for two years what being with him would be like. What the pleasure could be. The knowledge in his eyes when he told her, it was only for the pleasure.
"What if I can't?" she whispered, knowing what he meant. "What then?"
"Then you can't." He continued to hold his hand out. "It's your choice."
It was her choice. She hadn't been offered a choice before, she had nearly been raped by her husband instead.
But this wasn't Drew. This was the man that had been honest with her from the start. He had, in small ways perhaps, but in ways impossible for her to miss, protected her.
She looked at his hand again, remembering the dreams, the fantasies, and all the lonely nights she had assured herself, if this night ever came, she would have the courage to take his hand.
She stood slowly, holding her wrap around her shoulders with one hand as she saw Khalid rise from his chair in the back of the room.
"The limo's outside." Chase took her hand in his, broad, warm fingers wrapping around her smaller, paler ones. "Are you going home?"
Where she was alone? Where she could dream about him rather than taking her courage in both hands and becoming the woman she had been wishing she could be.
Bold. Courageous.
She was breathing harshly. She could feel her breasts rising and falling, felt his gaze flick over them as he began to pull her to the door.
"I don't want to go home yet," she finally whispered.
Available February 3, 2009!Reviewer Top Pick! "...a page-turning tale that you will hate to see end" Susan ~ Night Owl Romance
Coyote's Mate by Lora Leigh (Coyote Breeds, Book 2)
Publisher: Berkley (Available February 3, 2009)
ISBN-10: 0425226336ISBN-13: 978-0425226339
For six years Anya Korbin worked with Del-Rey Delgato--the genetically altered rebel known as the Coyote Ghost--to free a group of coyote women kept in her father's lab. As Anya matured into a woman, she and Del-Rey grew close...but then he broke his promise and killed her father. Now she must deal with her animalistic desire for the one who betrayed her.
Sneak Peek of Chapter One of Coyote's Mate by Lora Leigh ©...(unedited excerpt)
Anya was where she was supposed to be, but things weren't going as they had been planned. Nothing had gone as planned. When she returned to the labs that evening, within hours, the attack came.
There was no warning. There was no call. Security alarms were blaring, cell doors were opening as safeguards were overrode and locks on the weapons rooms deactivated.
She pushed the scientists into a secure, hidden wall she had found the month before. They hadn't been here long enough evidently to know all the secrets of the labs. Dr. Chernov had replaced the aging scientists ten years before and brought his protégé, a much younger female scientist along with him.
"Don't leave. Don't move," she ordered them. "Stay here until you hear only silence."
Pale, shaking in shock, the two scientists did as they were told, huddling in the little room as Anya slid the secured door closed and rushed to the exits that led to the cold, desolate land above ground.
"Anya, get out of here," Sofia Ivanov, one of the administrative assistants gripped her arm and dragged her down another hall. "Go that way." She pointed to the stairs. "They're free. I'll cover you."
Cover her? Anya stared behind her as doctors raced from labs with weapons drawn. They were firing on personnel? Shock rushed through her, tore through her mind. She knew those men and women. Knew them well. And they were firing on the personnel attempting to escape?
"Run damn you!" Sofia pushed her to the exit. "Get out of here before I have to shoot you."
Anya ran. As she ran, fury fed the fear and the shock that coursed through her adrenaline laced mind. This was the exact plan she had given Del-Rey for the rescue. Had he not trusted her? He had attacked only hours after her return, giving her no time to ensure her father and cousins weren't here?
No, it had to be something else, she sobbed in desperation as she raced up the stairs. She gripped an older woman's arm, one of the secretaries and pushed her ahead of her.
"Hurry Marie," she urged the other woman as she sobbed and nearly fell. "We must hurry."
Other personnel were racing past them as Anya grabbed Marie's arm and all but dragged her up the steps. Marie had children, grandchildren. A husband that was ill. She was needed. And besides, she always brought the breed cookies. She was kind and gentle.
The door was broken from its hinges above, laying on its side as security forces were waving personnel through, urging them to hurry, to rush. Masks covered their faces to protect them from the cold. It was bitterly cold outside, and Marie had no jacket, no coat to wear.
"Run for the barracks," she told the other woman. "It will be warm there and safer. We'll hide there."
She ran into the cold, aware of the gun fire, the yell of voices, the clash of forces. Then she was only aware of the hard arm that wrapped around her waist, jerked her against a broad chest and the knife that lay at her throat.
She could feel the cold blade pressing into her throat, pinching the flesh, within a breath of actually cutting her skin.
"Kobrin, I have your daughter."
Loud, echoing through the valley, she knew that voice, knew the growl that sounded in it and felt the sob that tore from her throat.
Betrayal. He had betrayed her.
Agony tore through her with such pain she could only sob at the reality of it.
The sound of gunfire faded away. Personnel were no longer rushing through the doors, she could hear them at the entrance though, feel the tension that thickened the air.
Del-Rey. She felt the first tear fall. Oh God, she had trusted him. She had trusted him so much.
