Waiting in the Wings (Soulgirls) (17 page)

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

She sashayed up the stairs, and his body tensed. Her last show had left him unable to walk for a day. One could only hope the encore left him similarly incapacitated.

Activating the security system, he stepped back into the elevator and rode it down to his private offices. The rooms were dark, and only a handful of his most trusted guards led by Anton and David remained in attendance, both of whom straightened as he exited the elevator.

“Is it here?” he asked.

“Arrived an hour ago, sir.” David set off ahead of him while Anton flanked him.

Even in the privacy of the building they maintained a discreet watch over him. A dozen others had drifted with him and Kristina on the streets earlier, but maintained a greater distance to give the princess the private time she craved.

A large trunk sat squarely in the middle of his office. Half-dozen vampires ranged around the bolted monstrosity. He walked around to the front and studied the seals. They were intact.

“Open it.”

The men took turns hauling off the chains and freeing the locks. When the lid flipped open, Richard smiled down at the bound and gagged Andrew. He was pale, but hardly emaciated. A week of incarceration hadn’t even begun to desiccate him.

“Good evening. Welcome to New York. I owe you for about fifty years of hospitality.” His smile grew. “I truly hope you enjoy your stay. I know I will.”

Yes.

All was right with his world.

About the Author

A national best-selling author, Heather Long lives in Texas with her family and their menagerie of animals. In addition to military romance, Heather writes a wide variety of romance from paranormal, historical western romance to contemporary romance and romantic suspense. She loves characters and the stories they have to tell. As a child, Heather skipped picture books and enjoyed the Harlequin romance novels by Penny Jordan and Nora Roberts that her grandmother read to her. Heather believes that laughter is as important to life as breathing and that the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus are very real. In the meanwhile, she is hard at work on her next novel.

Visit her at
www.heatherlong.net

Look for these titles by Heather Long

Now Available:

Into the Spotlight

Taking the Stage

Coming Soon:

Playing Against Type

Destiny doesn't like to be messed with. And the House doesn't always win.

Into the Spotlight

© 2013 Heather Long

Soulgirls, Book 1

Fifty years ago, Jeannie Williams made her way to Las Vegas seeking fame and fortune. Instead, she lost her soul and wound up performing nightly shows at the Arcana Royale. Every day, she straps on her feathers, her glitter, her stilettos, and she dances. Every day, it’s the same.

Until the day he walks in.

For six centuries, Malcolm Reynolds has been the go-to guy for anything his family needs: warrior, diplomat, wrangler, researcher, and now an attorney. He enters the Arcana Royale Casino, intent on negotiating the release of his cousin’s bad debt, but one look at the golden-skinned showgirl ignites a fire of need that he’s never experienced. When the fantasy come true sits at his table, words he never expected to hear come out of her lush mouth: “I need your help.”

Now he’s in for the toughest battle of his life, because the Overseers own both his cousin’s debt and her soul. And he’s not planning on leaving the Royale without either one.

Warning: Contains high-stakes games, sexy showgirls, and a powerful showdown between a vampire that can’t lose and the House that never does. Spells, slots, sirens and sex, oh my!

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Into the Spotlight:

“Ladies! Five minutes. Move your asses!” Heidi swept through the room, slapping bare bottoms as she passed. “Into those costumes. Let’s go.”

Jeannie flicked a glance at the stage manager’s blonde reflection striding toward her in the mirror. It was just another night. Another endless night tagged onto the caboose of an endless string of endless nights.

She didn’t bother even keeping count anymore.

Tiny black lines, ticks counting down the days of her sentence, marked the mirror. Somewhere around one thousand, she’d added a second layer. After three thousand, she’d stopped counting.

What was one more night?

“How you doin’,
chere
?” Heidi leaned against the side of the mirror, her gaze critical, her mouth pinched and her forehead puckered with frown lines. Their dressmaker-slash-stage manager-slash-backstage mother hen nursed headaches more often than not. The pain rippled across her facial muscles, tightening them in spasms.

But Heidi never commented on them.

Jeannie had long since stopped asking.

“I’m fine. I know. Five minutes.” She painted a line of glitter around each eye. Her stage makeup was heavy, dense stuff, saturating every pore and bleeding away her color for the face of the Midnight Mystery Lounge.

The swathe of glitter, crystals and diamonds decorating her eyelashes reminded her that she wasn’t Jeannie.

She was Pandora.

She was the showstopper.

God, I am so bored.

“Just another set,
chere
.”

“I know, Heidi. Just another set.” She didn’t even bother to inject enthusiasm into the words. Heidi didn’t care. Jeannie didn’t care. They could not care together. It worked.

“Dearly beloved!” A voice boomed from behind them. Heidi snorted, but Jeannie kept painting lines of glitter on each of her features, thickening the lines around her eyes and her lips. She would sparkle in the smoky darkness.

At least that was the goal.

“Dearly beloved!” Three mirrors down, Roseâtre clapped her hands together over her head, her silver and gold bangles jingling together in musical accompaniment. The chatter in the dressing room died, and all eyes turned toward her. Roseâtre’s real name was Ruthie, but as with Jeannie, no one cared about real names at the Midnight Mystery Lounge, the Arcana Royale’s premier revue. Their audience would only know her as Roseâtre.

“Does she even remember her real name anymore?” Jeannie murmured and Heidi shrugged. Somewhere after a decade, the dancers forgot. Some forgot on purpose, deliberately blotting out memories of a past before the Arcana Royale and whatever mistake landed them in the revue. Others just faded, forgetting that life existed beyond the smoke and the glamour.

And some just stop caring altogether…

Jeannie sighed and set the glitter brush down. Heidi moved on cue to help her don the weighted headdress with its red and white foxtails and diamond beads. It weighed over thirty pounds, and her head and neck would be in brutal pain by the end of the third number.

But she would look spectacular.

“Everyone forgets,” Heidi whispered, as her fingers worked through the headdress. Behind them the girls bounced up, adjusting arm sleeves of foxtails, which drooped to the ground. The golden lamé dresses hugged every curve, chains of crystal, diamond and pale-colored gems peeked out from beneath the fabric. The girls checked each other’s headdresses. Their foxtails were weighty, but only about ten pounds to Jeannie’s thirty.

Kiki danced in place at the head of the line, her hips bumping to a song only she could hear. The gyration warmed her up. She would be the first up the stairs and out onto the stage. She would burst through the door, potential energy unleashed, a payload delivering a megaton of enthusiasm, lift and sensation.

Jeannie sighed.

Heidi adjusted another strap, testing it against pull and murmured. “Two minutes.”

“I know.”

Two minutes to become Pandora.

Two minutes to let go of Jeannie.

She didn’t need two minutes anymore.

“Kiki!” Heidi yelled over her shoulder. “Go!”

“Holla!” Kiki whooped and charged up the steps, graceful in her five-inch heels. Sparks shot in every direction as the twelve bejeweled women bounced up the stairs.

Jeannie followed, but without the click-clack of running on the stairs. She ascended, shedding her humanity with each step. Years of practice shuttered her emotions, smothered her soul and silenced her sense of self.

At the top of the steps, Jeannie vanished.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the Arcana Royale and the Midnight Mystery Lounge present Pandora!”

The music, velvet pulsations, squeezed her heart in time to the rhythm, and she surrendered. Across the sea of night, blue eyes blazed in the darkness. Pandora stared at them. Her heart paused, startled, and then the sluggish, ho-hum beat pounded, a descant bass to the sameness of the night.

She barely hit her first mark, waiting almost a full count from the first bars of the music. With every pop of her hips, every twist of her shoulders, every kick of her legs, she sought out those blue eyes, burning like icy flames in the blackness.

Her abdomen cramped, the chill of desperation quieting only when she found those burning eyes in the cold, empty dark.

Maybe tonight wasn’t the same after all.

Who’s afraid of the big bad hybrid?

A Love Worth Biting For

© 2013 Roxy Mews

Hart Clan Hybrids, Book 1

Amber Paulson’s wolf has chosen a mate for her, but Amber is not amused with its pick. Jake Meyers might look amazing in a wet T-shirt and have the cheekbones and strong jaw that artists drool over. Too bad he is missing a pulse.

Jake is a vampire, well, mostly. Then a tall, curvy redhead pops up on his radar and something awakens in him. Even though he tries to stay away, Amber gets under his skin, and his vampire/werewolf heritage starts to become more bark and less bite. For the first time, he feels the call of the moon, and he knows it’s all because of Amber Paulson.

Amber’s trying to stay away, and Jake’s trying to not turn furry. They both fail miserably—and with a lot of sweaty and enjoyable property destruction.

By giving in to her mating call, Amber finds out more than she ever wanted to know about herself, her family, and the rogue wolf who took so much from her so long ago. As her past comes back to bite her, she’ll have to decide what she’s willing to give up for her mate. Her home? Her pack? Her…heartbeat?

Warning:
This book contains a snarky shifter heroine who could give Sookie a run for her money, a hot hunk of a vampire with a soft (and furry) side, and sex so sizzling that even an inter-species war can’t get in the way.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
A Love Worth Biting For:

I wasn’t prepared for it. That’s what everybody says when they meet the love of their lives. But I’m not everybody. Hell, most of the time I’m nobody, or at least I try to be. I was given the name Amber Paulson for crying out loud. A name like that does not a rock career make. Daddy always told me that the urge to mate is something you can’t control. That you would just find yourself smacked upside the head one day. If you were lucky.

I didn’t know anyone in my Pack who was mated. That’s not to say we are virgins.
Hell no!
Everybody that uses the expression “Fuck like bunnies”? Well, those people obviously haven’t met a werewolf. Me and the rest of my Pack get furry on occasion, but for the rest of the time we rocked a decidedly human form. Those forms just have libidos of epic proportions.

Anyway, I was walking through the latest campus we had moved to. It was some little rinky-dink town in Indiana of all places. Land-locked, but lots of places just outside the city for a wolf to run. Big enough to get lost in, small enough to get away from everybody when you needed to. The campus was walkable, and I took my time, because if I hurried, I could outrun an Olympic medalist. And I still had plenty of time until my next class.

Mary called and reminded me not to be late. Mary Fields was my best friend these days. I liked humans, but I loved Mary most. I met her on my first day of orientation, and somehow she puts up with me. I threw her a quick text to let her know I’d see her in class.

Did you know the average werewolf lives for four hundred years after turning? I’ve been around for fifty as my wolfy self, so the American History class was one I have repeated often. From the complete lack of effort needed this time through, either I was radically expanding my brainpower or society was expecting less and less intelligence from the general student body. Which brings me back to me not being prepared. I was walking slowly to class, when one student body in particular caught my attention.

There always seems to be an impromptu game of football being played on the practice field outside the cafeteria that involves guys taking their shirts off and trying to impress the co-eds in hopes of getting the chicks’ shirts off later. Personally, unless you’re taking down a twelve-point buck with your shirt off—while covered in hair—I am not usually impressed.