Merry & Seduced (24 page)
Authors: Shelley Munro
Tags: #sci-fi romance, Christmas romance, shapeshifer, New Zealand
“But Mogens said shifting might be dangerous.” Camryn cupped her slim belly in protest.
“We’re going to have to risk it,” Ry said without hesitation. “It’s either that or capture.”
“Capture? What’s going on? This sort of thing doesn’t happen on Earth. Usually,” Camryn added, obviously thinking about her own kidnapping several cycles earlier.
“I’ll keep going away from the ship,” Jannike said, a lump the size of a rock closing up her throat, making the words gravely. She swallowed dryly, silently cursing both the situation and this god-awful heat from the planet’s sun. The dry temperatures sucked the juice from everything, animal and vegetable. “Go.” It was surprisingly difficult to force out the order.
Camryn still frowned, not understanding. She squinted at her husband, shifted her attention to Jannike. “But—”
“Change. Now,” Ry barked. “Jannike, if you’re captured, we’ll come for you. We will not give up. That’s a pledge.”
“Same goes.” Secs later she started running, veering around the pile of rocks and sprinting down the rolling sand hill, away from Ry and Camryn. It had to be the cargo ship they’d seen earlier, but why had they set tracker lizards on them?
A thought sprang into her mind, and she stumbled before regaining her balance.
Holy fukk.
No, it couldn’t be
her
. No, that was impossible when Jannike was light years away from her home planet.
Behind her, the baying shrieks of the lizards intensified. Sweat trickled down her forehead, stinging her eyes. She slipped in the shifting sand, arms flailing before she toppled, hitting the ground hard enough to knock the breath from her lungs.
No time to baby herself. She had to move. Faster. She had to give Ry and Camryn time to get to the ship otherwise the entire crew could get sucked into whatever trouble they’d blundered into this day. Her blue tunic clung like a lover. A skin wet from sweat. The dry rocks in her throat closed her windpipe. She panted, a painful wheeze. Gods, she had to keep going. She twisted, rolling and pushing to her feet. She lurched her first steps, only her fitness and determination propelling her forward.
Concentrate on running. Forget the trackers. Don’t think about the past.
The landscape stretched endlessly in front of her—one big, inhospitable sandpit. Overhead, the planet’s sun beat down, frying everything in its path. And still she kept trying to run. One foot in front of the other, leading the trackers farther away from the
Indy
. Faster. Faster. The
Indy’s
crew were her friends, her family, and she’d do anything to keep them safe.
Determination gave her a burst of speed, but a glance over her shoulder told her the trackers had dramatically closed the distance between them. Their brown-blue bodies glinted in the bright light, strangely beautiful despite their ferocity. Their baying cries filled her head, lent panic to her adrenaline-fueled flight. She rounded a corner and came to an abrupt halt. A box canyon. The wall of rock stretched into the distance as far as she could see.
Trapped.
Nowhere to go.
Slowly, chest rising and falling in uneven gasps, she turned to face the four snapping trackers. Their bulging eyes blinked slowly, their wicked teeth white against the brown-blue of their skin. Their stubby tails shifted lazily from side to side, strong muscles in their haunches poised to spring should she attempt a sudden move. She edged along the rock wall, and they moved with her. She’d heard their bite was nasty and some people were highly allergic to their saliva.
But she refused to go without a fight. She reached for a handhold on the rock wall, digging her fingertips, attempted to lever her body upward.
“Ho, my beauties. What have you caught me today?” The mountain of a man rode up on a cyber-beest—a combination of machine and cheetahbeest by the look of the tawny coat and spots. The cyber-beest snorted, pawing at the ground, restive under the firm restraint. The large rider wore a tight, light gray suit, shaped to his body. The man was all muscle with no fat. With his left hand, he controlled the cyber-beest while his right rested lightly on a coiled whip.
Jannike glanced left, speared a look right. A tracker bite or the nip of Mountain Man’s whip. Both would hurt.
“You won’t escape,” Mountain Man said with almost a kind smile. But the smile didn’t reach his wintry-blue eyes and she knew, deep in her gut, he wouldn’t hesitate to do whatever he needed to do to capture her.
Fukk, her past had come back to bite her in the bum. There was no other explanation.
“Why are you chasing me?”
“Why did you run?” the man countered.
Seized & Seduced coming soon!
Excerpt – One Night of Misbehavior
Copyright 2013 Shelley Munro
“C
harlotte Joanna Dixon!” A shrill voice—her stepmother’s—hacked through Charlotte’s Saturday morning lie-in and intensified the
boom, boom, boom
of her aching head. “Of all the mornings for you to sleep late,” Elizabeth screeched. “Didn’t you set your alarm clock? I have to meet the fundraising committee in an hour.” The sharp accusations kept coming, accompanied by a
thunk
on her bedroom door.
Charlotte stared up at the damp spot on her bedroom ceiling and started silently counting to ten.
One. Two. Three.
Snippets of music, memories of a sexy masculine form crept into her mind, and her count faltered. Last night she’d experienced the dizzy taste of freedom and now the thought of her normal routine rubbed like a raw blister. Her mouth settled into a mutinous line. Maybe she’d stay here all day.
“Charlotte!” Doors slammed. The water pipes in the old Victorian groaned as they gave up water for the shower. “Hurry up.”
Or not.
Sighing, Charlotte scrambled into jeans and a T-shirt and trudged down the sweeping stairs to the kitchen. On automatic pilot, she started the coffeemaker then filled the jug to boil for Gran’s tea. While she waited, she trotted outside to grab the early morning post from the mailbox.
Soon the scent of fresh coffee flooded the kitchen, making her stomach lurch in protest.
Maybe the last glass of Champagne hadn’t been the best idea.
Gritting her teeth, she set the breakfast table, then swallowed down two headache tablets and assembled a tea tray for her grandmother. When she carried the tray and three letters upstairs, she found her grandmother was already awake, perusing one of the new craft magazines she’d had Charlotte purchase for her the previous day.
“Morning, Gran. How are you feeling? You have mail from your friends.”
“Charlotte.” Gran put down the magazine and peered over her glasses. Her blonde curls were already brushed into submission and a pale pink lipstick gave her face a touch of color. She cocked her head in Charlotte’s direction like an inquisitive bird. “You were late home. Tell me about the ball.”
“Shush, someone will hear.” Heat suffused Charlotte’s cheeks as memories of the previous evening rose to thump her over the head—seductive music, dancing, glasses of tickly Champagne.
Many
glasses of crisp, fruity Champagne. And Zorro.
Her entire evening summed up in a few words. She’d let a tall, masked man seduce her with his charisma and endless glasses of Champagne. The night of freedom had gone to her head along with the alcoholic buzz, and for one night, the mysterious and very sexy Zorro had shoved her loneliness aside. Unsteady hands poured tea for her grandmother. After adding a touch of milk, she handed over the cup and saucer.
“I danced so much my feet are sore,” she said, opting for a partial truth. She did have a blister on her little toe.
“Good. Did you see Elizabeth at the ball? What about Jenny and Rachel?”
Charlotte plopped on the end of Gran’s bed and nodded cautiously. The pain was muted now, the tablets working their magic. “They seemed to enjoy the ball. Everyone danced all night. The band was excellent.”
Gran’s faded blue eyes twinkled behind the lenses of her glasses. “Did they recognize you?”
“They didn’t glance at me twice.”
“I told you so.” Her grandmother’s gaze zeroed in on her neck.
Charlotte recalled the addictive kisses Zorro had trailed down her throat, the sensual bite and suck, and groaned inwardly. Kisses plus suction equaled one thing.
Hickeys.
“Did you meet someone special?”
“No,” Charlotte said quickly. Too quickly.
“I see.”
Charlotte was glad someone saw because she didn’t understand her actions of the previous night. Yes, she’d had too much Champagne, but she’d known what she was doing. No one had forced her to kiss Zorro or to run her hands down his naked chest. Heck, no one had forced her to scream with the pleasure of her orgasm either. It was as if an alien had taken possession of her—one who enjoyed the heck out of sex.
“I think I’ll go down to breakfast this morning,” Gran said unexpectedly. “I want to hear about the ball.”
“I’ll help you dress.”
“There’s a tube of concealer in my dressing table drawer,” Gran said. “Perhaps you should apply some to your neck while I’m taking a shower. You don’t want Elizabeth asking embarrassing questions.”
Discover more about One Night of Misbehavior
here
.
Shelley Munro is tall and curvaceous with blue eyes and a smile that turns masculine heads everywhere she goes. She’s a university tutor and an explorer/treasure hunter during her vacations. Skilled with weapons and combat, she is currently in talks with a producer about a television series based on her world adventures.
Shelley is also a writer blessed with a VERY vivid imagination and lives with her own hero and a rambunctious puppy in New Zealand. She writes erotic romance in the contemporary, paranormal and historical genres and has several self-published titles. You can learn more about Shelley and her books at her
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Contemporary
Love and Friendship series
Clare Chronicles
Fancy Free series
Paranormal
Sci-fi/Futuristic
Middlemarch Capture
House of the Cat series
Gayrotica
Historical
Merry & Seduced
Copyright © 2014 Shelley Munro
ISBN: 978-0-473-30358-7
Editor: Mary Moran
Cover Art by Kim Killion of
Killion Group Inc.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles and reviews.