He couldn’t focus on the mission at hand if he was worried about something going on back home in Lover’s Leap, and often the mission at hand was dangerous, high-stakes, and potentially deadly. His life had literally depended on compartmentalizing his feelings and keeping one world separate from t...
Her suitcases had finally been delivered, but she was enjoying wearing her sister’s clothes. They made her feel like a different woman, a wild, less predictable woman, who could only be expected to do the unexpected. Deciding she could use some fresh air, she walked the fi...
Way longer than last Sunday, when I finally laid eyes on more of Penny than her adorable little toes. Even her toes are sexy. As sexy as her quick mind and the way she makes me laugh and how she’s not afraid to call me on my bullshit. But then that’s part of the problem… I’m not a fool or the kin...
Crossing to the deck railing, she cast an anxious glance onto the patio below. There Hannah and Jasper were busy setting up for their outdoor movie while having a lively debate on the merits of chocolate covered pretzels versus chocolate covered popcorn. ...
Combined with the twenty she’d lifted from the frat boy too drunk to see what he was fishing from his wallet, the money she’d made in the past ten minutes brought Erin up to an even four hundred for the night. It made it worth the anxiety she felt every time she took her turn on top of the bar. &...
Harley watched her fingers curling around the heavy rock in half time, lived the moment it took for her to swing the lichen-covered stone over her head for a hundred frantic beats of her heart, and felt the clench of her gut as she reversed direction—slamming her makeshift weapon down at a slight...
Run faster. Faster! Hitching the red chiffon of her dress up around her knees, Hannah sprinted as fast as she could down the road toward what she hoped was civilization. But her legs still ached from the six-mile hike earlier and she’d only choked down a few bites of food. She was exhausted, runn...
–Irish curse My back arches and pain shoots through my nerve-endings as I suck in one greedy breath after another, agony slamming from my fingers to my toes, before rocketing back to my head, making me groan. My head feels like it’s going to explode. My eye sockets ache and my temples throb like ...
She wasn’t crying because she was sad. She was crying because sometimes it hurt to learn that someone cared about you. When you’d convinced yourself there was no goodness or softness left in the world, at least not for you, the unexpectedness of a tender emotion could be overwhelming. ...
Her mouth went dry and her lips buzzed. Her body felt numb except for the place where Blake’s hand squeezed hers, and she figured there was a decent chance she was going to pass out. She couldn’t do this. Not really. She’d been a fool to think anything about this night wou...
Harley sat in the backseat of the tiny Figaro she’d bought their first week here, letting Dom play chauffeur as she cuddled Jasper. She did her best to memorize the feel of her son’s firm, warm body fitted against hers and the way the setting sun turned his drying curls into a golden halo around ...
But according to everything Hiro had told him, “Hannah” was in perfect health. It was her aunt who was frail. So either she was truly scared out of her mind or she was faking it to elicit sympathy from the man who’d bought her. That would be like her. She was a master manipulator. Until he’d met ...
Or the kind of thing he would have done before he realized that he wanted more than this, more than hate and revenge and taking his enemy down with him when his luck finally ran out. As the cold wind rushed past his face, two words pulsed through his mind—Jasper, Harley. T...
It was one of those un-put-down-able nightmares that sent her surging awake with her heart in her throat only to pick up where it left off as soon as she managed to fall back to sleep. In the dream, she was one of the Carolina Cult Girls, five young women who had been kidnapped from their homes w...
-Shakespeare The next time we make love is slow and sweet. I come into Caitlin with my heart so full it feels like it’s about to burst, and by the time we shatter—within seconds of each other, our cries muffled by a kiss—I am even more hers than I was before. I am a part of her, and she is a part...
As we wander around the men’s department of a store that smells like a cologne factory jizzed all over it, she hooks her arm through mine. Together, we pick out a couple pairs of jeans, two tee shirts, a button-up in case Julie insists on one of her big sit-down dinners, and two packages of boxer...