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Reckless by Maya Banks

It was sweltering. Hotter than hell. At ten p.m. you could still fry an egg on the sidewalk. Hell, you could fry one on his desk. There was so much humidity, you practically had to swim anywhere you wanted to go.

J.T. Summers reclined in his rickety chair then braced his knee underneath his desk, because if he leaned back too far, he’d end up on his ass. He cast a mournful stare in the direction of the struggling window unit and damned the fact that once again, central air conditioning had not made it into the city’s budget.

A bead of sweat trickled down his neck, further dampening his shirt collar. He could be at home with the air turned down to sixty. Or he could be out at Seth and Zane’s doing a few laps in their pool and enjoying good company. Instead he was sitting here in a two-jail-cell department sweating his ass off.

Because he was a huge chicken shit, and he knew if he went home that she’d find him there.

He was so f**ked.

He glanced down at the paperwork he’d been shuffling for the last two hours and ignored the growling of his stomach. He was turning into a f**king pussy. Wouldn’t even venture down to the café because she’d ambushed him there two nights ago.

A mournful groan escaped his chest, and he was even gladder that no one was around to see him cower like a goddamn sissy behind his desk. Mr. Bad-Ass Sheriff. Protector of the citizens of Barley. Hiding from a woman.

Yep, all that was left was for someone to cut off his balls and tie a ribbon in his hair.

“J.T.?”

J.T. looked up to see Toby March standing in the door with a slightly queasy look on his face.

“What is it?” he asked his deputy.

“Uhm, you need to come out here and see this.”

J.T.’s eyes narrowed. “Just tell me what’s wrong.”

Toby glanced over his shoulder then back at J.T. “Ah, well, I’m not sure…that is, it would be better if you come out here. I have a…prisoner who insists on seeing you.”

J.T. surged to his feet. “What the f**k? Why isn’t he in lock-up?”

Toby’s shoulders sagged, and he gave J.T. a look that could only be described as haggard. “Maybe because I don’t want her brother to kick my ass for locking up his baby sister?”

Oh hell. Oh no, no, no. F**k it all.

He stalked by Toby and into the small reception area. He came to a dead halt, and Toby ran into his back.

There, standing defiantly by Sandra’s desk, handcuffed, was one Nikki Durant. Their eyes met, and her expression positively smoldered. Nikki didn’t look at all affected by the heat. No, she appeared cool and composed, and damn if he didn’t want to lick her from her pretty polished toes to that delectable, f**kable mouth.

“Jesus Christ, Toby, get those goddamn cuffs off her,” J.T. snarled.

“Uh, I would, man, but uhm, she sorta insisted they stay on.”

J.T. rounded on his friend. “Why the hell was she cuffed to begin with?”

“Because if he’s going to arrest me, he needs to do it right,” Nikki said in her husky, sexy-as-hell voice.

J.T. closed his eyes and prayed for deliverance. Then he slowly turned around and gave her a very pained stare.

“I’m afraid to ask. I really don’t even want to know. But since you’re standing in my jail in handcuffs, I feel compelled to ask what you did.”

She gave him an innocent smile. His entire body tightened into one vicious knot. That smile could mow down an entire army. Her gorgeous blue eyes widened, and that perfect mouth curved upward.

He mentally traced a line around those plump lips with his tongue. Then he pictured that perfect bow around his dick. More sweat rolled down his back, and he had to shift his position to disguise an erection from hell.

“Maybe you should ask your deputy?” she suggested. “I was merely minding my business.”

If it were possible, her eyes widened even further until they shone with an angelic light.

J.T. snatched the keys from Toby and stalked over to where Nikki stood.

“Cut the crap, Nikki.” He turned her around and jammed the keys into the cuffs. In another second, he had her free and tossed the cuffs back to Toby. He made a jerking motion with his thumb, and Toby was only too happy to scram.

Nikki turned around and cupped one wrist in her palm, rubbing absently.

“Not too fun, huh?”

Her expression didn’t falter.

“Now, want to tell me why the hell my deputy brought you in with cuffs on?”

She lifted one shoulder in a delicate shrug, and it sent her long dark hair sliding forward. The inch-wide pink streak, the one that drove him insane, glared in the fluorescent overhead lighting.

Her palms slid down her sides in a deliberate motion then shoved into the pockets of her jeans. The action sent her waistband lower, baring the thin ring in her belly button.

Sweat beaded his brow. Why me? What kind of miscreant had he been in a past life to deserve this kind of punishment?

“Your deputy brought me here because you were here,” she said simply. “You’re avoiding me.”

J.T. blew out his breath. “Come on. I’ll take you home, honey.”

He immediately cringed as the endearment slipped from his lips. She flashed him a brilliant smile. Hell, she probably thought he was encouraging her.

She closed the distance between them and moved into his space. She pressed against his chest and wrapped her arms around him, burrowing her cheek against his shirt.

His body reacted, jumping to attention. Starving. It was the way he acted around her. And she knew it. Damn her.

“You can’t run from me forever, J.T.,” she murmured. “Sooner or later, you’re going to give in. You know it, and I know it.”

Color My Heart by Red Garnier

Billy Hendricks slammed the door of his red Toyota Camry and crossed the parking lot toward the two-story apartment complex. Looked like it was about to rain. Odd for this time of summer. Clouds—heavy and angry—gathered in gray clusters above him. Good thing he’d decided not to wash the car today, he thought with a grunt, and slapped the magazine he’d picked up at the corner store to his thigh.

Taking the stairs two steps at a time, he reached the second-floor landing and heard whimpers. A figure was huddled down the hall, looking more like a sack than a human being. Frail shoulders racked with sudden, jerky movements, while sharp, heart-wrenching sobs tore into the air.

Billy moved forward, rolling the magazine into a tube and slipping it into the back pocket of his jeans. “Hey,” he said gently, on his knees as he cupped one bony shoulder in his hand. “Are you all right?”

Her head snapped back and a pair of wide blue eyes that shimmered with tears looked up at him through a fringe of wet lashes. He’d expected a kid, but he found a woman.

Young, maybe in her mid twenties, with a tiny nose and a very small, plush mouth. Her hair was cropped, so that maybe looking at her from behind, she’d be mistaken for a boy. Yet Billy found nothing boyish about her face. It was delicate. Pretty. Not sexy, not beautiful, but pretty all the same. It was smeared with mascara and moistened with tears.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

She stopped crying and gave one last sniffle before she wiped her hand across her face. “I’m fine.”

Billy required no PhD to know she was far from fine. She looked vulnerable and lost, and by the way her shoulders slumped, he guessed she was in sore need of a friend. “You don’t look fine. Can I help with anything?”

She gave him a quick once-over, as if debating whether he could deliver or not. “No, I-I’m fine. Really.”

“Do you live here? Are you waiting for someone?”

She put a thumb out and pointed farther down the hall, then grudgingly said, “I’m at 221.”

“Really? I’m 229.” Strange he’d never seen her before. Or had he? She was small, a bit on the plain side, easily overlooked perhaps.

She tried to return his smile, but hers was brief and broken, the kind you shouldn’t even bother with in the first place. “Guess I’d better get back to my place,” she said as she scrambled to her feet.

Billy followed her up, noting the top of her head didn’t even make it to his chin. Thunder rolled across the skies, the soft pitter-patter of rain hitting cement and the scent of dampened soil stirring in the air. “You sure you’re all right?” he insisted, falling into step beside her.

She nodded, and her eyelashes pointed toward the pair of old, unlaced sneakers she wore. Billy scrutinized her profile, wondering if the pain etched on her face had been put there by a man. It pressed all his buttons in the wrong way, making him want to do something violent—maybe even illegal. Her nose was tiny as a button, and her doll-like features provided an interesting contrast to the loose green cargo pants she wore.

She halted at the door, her back to him as she opened it.

Billy lingered there as she entered, waiting for some sort of indication, a sign that she’d be all right.

She turned to him slowly, her eyes downcast. Then her lashes rose and her gaze—now a vivid, electric blue—shocked the air right out of him. And then she jumped him.

Billy staggered back from the impact of her weight, her ravenous mouth all over his face at once. His mind reeled as he clamped his hands on her arms. “Whoa, now hold on a sec.”

She held on, all right. She held on tighter. Her arms firmed around his neck and her legs clenched tight around his hips, her ankles locking behind him. Her mouth—which moments ago he’d thought a tiny, delicate thing—felt like it was devouring him.

Every organ inside him froze from the shock while his cock responded with a jolt. No one had ever jumped him this way. He’d had come-ons. One night stands. Plenty of girlfriends.

He was tall, well-built, had a smile his female friends claimed was an open “invitation”. But never in his twenty-nine years had he been attacked this way.

Her mouth felt hot, wet, frantic. Her hands moved up to clutch his face and hold him still for her voracious kisses. She rocked her hips against his, scraping his erection. She gripped him so tight if she’d had any more force in those slim hands, his jaw might have cracked.

And shit. She made the most amazing sounds. Little mews that put him in a fever. In sudden response to her lusty attack, every fiber in him exploded, and his body fairly screamed at him to touch and taste the wanton female against him.

“Okay, hang in there, sweetheart.”

Taking control, he grabbed a fistful of soft black hair and pulled her head back. He kissed his way up her jaw and licked her damp skin as he headed for her mouth. Hungry for it. No, starved.

Her sigh sounded almost reverent. “Oh, yes, please.”

“You afraid I’ll leave you like this?” he murmured and urged her lips apart with his. Their mouths blended and their tongues met in a decadent, calescent tangle. He pushed and retreated and then swept up to the roof of her mouth to leave no part of her untasted.

She trembled as he ran one big hand down her hips and grasped the side of her thigh. He could feel her warm flesh through the fabric of her pants, the lean muscles in her legs under his palm. Their tongues played, melted, and her smooth vanilla bean flavor warmed every cell in him to a burn. “God, you’re so sweet. I’d be a fool to walk away right now.”

Heat of the Moment by Elle Kennedy

Shelby peered past Carson’s impossibly broad shoulders, trying to catch a glimpse of Garrett. Apparently the game had ended, because most of the men in the other room were pushing back their chairs and heading for the door. A few approached the doorway, poking their heads in and thanking her for opening up the bakery. She just smiled, waved and wondered where the hell Garrett had run off to. Probably to find a woman who was into kinky sex and threesomes.

Too bad. Because if he’d ever bothered to ask her, he might be surprised to know that she was exactly that kind of woman. Just because she’d never acted out any of her fantasies didn’t mean she didn’t have ’em.

“So we’re taking off,” Carson was saying. “But we thought we’d help you clean up a bit before we left. Garrett took the beer bottles out to the recycling bin. I came in here to get a rag so I could wipe down the tables.”

She was genuinely touched. “You guys don’t have to do that.”

“It’s the least we could do. You didn’t have to open the café up tonight but you did. Might as well repay you with some clean-up.”

He shot her a crooked smile, and a flicker of heat sparked inside her belly. Carson really was an attractive man, she realized. She’d been lusting over Garrett for so long she’d barely noticed what any of his friends looked like, and for the first time, she actually took the time to look at Carson Scott, really look at him. And she definitely liked what she saw. Dirty blond hair, cut short but not short enough that he looked like all the crew cut boys who walked around Coronado. His eyes were blue, his features classically handsome, and he was as ripped as his friend Garrett. Obviously you couldn’t be a Navy SEAL without possessing one of those hard, sleek bodies that never failed to make a girl drool.

“Do I have icing on my chin or something?” Carson teased. “Damn, I knew I shouldn’t have eaten one of those cupcakes you brought out to us.”

“No, nothing on your chin,” she said, cheeks warm as she turned away and stopped checking him out.

She rounded the counter and grabbed a rag, then walked back and handed it to him. Trying not to stare at his ass, she trailed him into the café and watched as he efficiently wiped down all the tabletops. Carson had just finished when Garrett returned, the chimes over the door jingling as he walked inside.

Shelby’s heart immediately did a couple of jumping jacks. Damn it. Why did John Garrett always manage to make her pulse race?

“Thanks for having us,” Garrett said, his voice slightly gruff.

“No problem.” She swallowed when she saw him edge back toward the door, suddenly anxious for him not to leave.

She still couldn’t believe he thought she was vanilla, and maybe it was crazy—fine, it was crazy—but she got the feeling a golden opportunity was staring her square in the eye. That tonight would be her one chance to show him that she wasn’t the sweet freckle-faced prude he obviously thought her to be.

“Well…good night,” Garrett added.

Their gazes locked, and she could swear the air hissed and crackled with mutual attraction.
Fine, it was probably the heat making the crackling noise, but still…

She broke the eye contact, slowly glancing over at Carson, who’d dropped the rag on one of the tables and was moving toward his friend.

Don’t let them leave.

The urgent voice inside her head caught her off-guard, but only for a second. Because after that second was up, she realized that she really was looking at a golden opportunity. A delicious, ridiculously tempting opportunity.

She’s too sweet. She’s definitely not the type who’d be uninhibited in the bedroom.

God, it would be so wickedly satisfying to prove them wrong. Show Garrett that his wild ways didn’t scare her and that she was perfectly capable of taking him on. Taking them both on.

Heat simmered in her belly, radiated in her limbs and made her weak with…desire. Oh God. She’d always imagined what it would be like. Two men. At the same time. The guys she’d dated in the past would have been aghast if she admitted to that particular fantasy. Even Matthew, who had seen nothing wrong with sleeping around on her, would have been horrified.

Was she crazy? Perverted? Suffering from heat stroke?

Maybe, but who the heck cared? They were all adults here. And yeah, maybe she was a little tipsy from the tequila, but like Lieutenant Asshole had said, tipsy shmipsy. What was so wrong with acting wild and crazy every now and then?

If wild was what she needed to be to show Garrett she could rock his world, then why not?

“See you later, Shel,” Carson said.

Garrett’s hand was on the doorknob.

“It’s still early,” she found herself blurting. “You guys should stay and hang out a while longer.”

His hand froze and he glanced at her over his shoulder. “You want us to stay?”

She managed a feeble shrug. “Sure. Sleazebag Paul left his tequila bottle here. We might as well put it to good use.”

Both men just stared at her, but Garrett’s hand did drop from the door handle…

“Besides,” she added, “it’s so hot out there.”

“Pretty hot in here, too,” she heard Carson murmur.

She met Garrett’s gorgeous brown eyes and offered a little smile. “So what do you say?”

Lady Sings the Blues by Mallery Malone

Hotlanta was earning its nickname tonight.

Alina Gabriel surveyed the crowd packing the lower level of her club, The Scarlet Lady. Ladies’ night always brought out a good crowd of hot bodies wanting to see and be seen. She’d made sure the beer tubs and bars were well stocked, knowing that scantily clad women would be rushing the nearest bartender to order shots, beers and fruity drinks.

The anticipated rush had nothing to do with the ninety-degree temperature outside. She had Joshua Hanover to thank for that.

Brilliant blue eyes, somewhere on the spectrum between turquoise and teal, mesmerized the crowd through luscious dark lashes. His hair called to mind a luxurious mink coat, sleek, rich, begging to be touched. Generous lips almost always caught in a secret smile softened the strength of his features, the determined chin and proud nose.

Still, Alina knew it wasn’t just his looks that had women packing The Scarlet Lady three nights a week. No, she also had his guitar to thank.

For Joshua, his guitar was muse, lover, friend. It was bitch, goddess, mistress. He loved it as much as he needed it. He could make it cry and sing and moan. Every woman who flocked to his performances wanted to be his guitar.

Night after night Alina would watch as his fingers, long and strong and callused at the tips, danced over each string, stroking, pressing, plucking. Every woman in the audience felt an answering chord strum deep in the channel of her sex. If they didn’t, they were dead.

Alina wished she could be immune to his charms, but she wasn’t. After nearly three months of performances she still creamed her panties watching him make love with his guitar. Joshua had been very good for her bottom line, but he was hell on her hormones.

Not that Joshua noticed, she thought ruefully. He didn’t notice his hordes of adoring fans either, no matter how desperately they jockeyed for position during his shows, knowing he was single. When Joshua performed, he was in a world by himself, with his band, Blue Highway, there almost as window dressing.

Even if he would glance up from molding his guitar to his will to whip the audience into sonic bliss, he wouldn’t see the thinner, prettier and more desperate women clamoring for his attention. He wouldn’t see Alina standing at the glass wall of her second-floor office or prowling the bar top.

Joshua was blind.

Sometimes he wore tinted shades over those magnificent eyes, sometimes he didn’t. Having sat across from him in her office on more than one occasion, Alina was glad Joshua couldn’t see. Otherwise he’d realize just how hot and bothered he made her.

She bit her lip in sexual frustration. The need had been building all night. Blues music always made her horny—Joshua’s music intensified that desire. Joshua’s specialty: singing sensual songs about softly sexing someone.

God, he made her wet.

“You going down, Miss Scarlet? He’s playing your song.”

Alina looked up, surprised to see Bobby, one of her bouncers, standing a step below her. She surveyed the crowd and found a large portion of the male contingent turned her way, rhythmically clapping. Over the applause, she could hear the bluesy opening riffs of what they’d all come to think of as her song, “Red-Letter Woman”.

Alina smiled. As much as the women came to see Joshua, the men came to see her in her club persona as the Scarlet Lady. Miss Scarlet was known to dance atop the main bar with a riding crop in one hand and a bottle of Stoli in the other. She’d made her money by looking good, and knew she had exercise to thank as much as the genes passed down from her black father and Latina mother.

Tonight she had a different sort of exercise in mind, thanks to Joshua and his damned guitar. Since she had a while to go before she could sneak away to her private office, she’d have to get her kicks by dancing instead. The bar top wasn’t going to cut it, though. Joshua had gotten her hot. It was time to return the favor.

* * *

Joshua hid a smile as the applause grew louder, accompanied by whistles and catcalls. Miss Scarlet had obviously taken the bait and agreed to grace the club with a dance.

He didn’t need to see her. His band mates couldn’t talk about anything or anyone else since they’d started this gig. They debated whether she was black, white, Latina, or a combination of all three. Not that it mattered. A hot woman was a hot woman, his sax man said, and everyone agreed Miss Scarlet was definitely that.

Alina Gabriel, aka Miss Scarlet, wore a shade of red every day. Pete had gotten good at describing every outfit she wore and every move she made. Tonight, Miss Scarlet wore a pair of red leather boots with lacing up the back, a strip of black that would be a skirt on a first grader, a red corset and matching gloves up to her elbows.

Joshua hadn’t seen colors or much of anything else since he was twelve, but he remembered red. It was his favorite color.

No, he didn’t need to see her to know her. He knew the husky alto of her voice, the particular cadence of her words as they talked business and shows and receipts in her office. He knew her scent, a tantalizing combination of licorice and ginger and sometimes leather whenever she passed him. He knew that most days in her heels her chin topped his shoulder, which probably put her at five-seven in her bare feet. He knew she had a soft laugh that made things tighten low in his gut.

He knew he wanted her. Hell, every man in the club wanted her—and some of the women too. He also knew he didn’t have a chance. It wouldn’t stop him from trying, though.