Three sweet, springtime contemporary romance novellas by authors Serenity Woods, Gwen Hayes and Selah March

Purchase Link

(excerpt coming soonish)

Steampunk, angels and demons, horror, romantic elements

22,000 words

Purchase link

As the nineteenth century draws to a close, James Weston, Earl of Falmouth, is dying along with it. Although he lives in an age of airships and automatons, even London’s finest physicians cannot cure the young man’s ailing heart. His last hope lies in retrieving a powerful artifact from the remote island home of an eccentric scientist’s daughter.

Elspeth Shaw prefers her solitary life to the tragic results that come from mixing in society. Elspeth is cursed: every mortal being who forms an attachment to her dies a horrible death. Despite this, when the doomed Lord Falmouth arrives in search of the very artifact that blights her, she hasn’t the will to refuse. But the price for cheating death may be more than any human can pay…

Excerpt

These 25 unashamedly modern short romances don’t shy away at the bedroom door, from the crème de la crème of contemporary romance writers, including Lilith Saintcrow, Louisa Burton, Susan Sizemore, Portia Da Costa, Madelynne Ellis, Victoria Janssen, Michelle M. Pillow, Charlotte Stein, Sasha White…and me!

Buy at Amazon

Buy at B&N

~~~

Excerpt from “Fly By Night,” my contemporary erotic Western included in The Mammoth Book of Hot Romance:

Sweat beaded along Eli’s upper lip. “You mind if I turn on the air conditioner?”

Kate jumped like she’d forgotten he was in the room. “I’ll do it.”

She turned her back to him and fiddled with the ancient unit. Her random turning of knobs and pressing of buttons told Eli she was nervous, as if inviting strangers into her motel room wasn’t an everyday occurrence. The dim light from the single lamp gave her skin a golden glow.

He moved toward her till he stood close enough to lay a hand on her shoulder. She went dead still at his touch. He saw the leap of her pulse in her throat and thought of a skittish horse. Would she stand for him, or bolt?

The air conditioner came to life with an unhealthy whine. She turned, dislodging his hand from her shoulder, but she didn’t move away.

“We don’t have to…” he started, but the pleading way she lifted her pretty brown eyes to his face told him they most surely did. Even if he hadn’t liked her so much, he was never one to disappoint a lady.

Their first kiss was more like an experiment, both of them licking quick and light into each other’s mouths for a taste of salty skin and the last traces of tequila. He took charge of their second kiss and found her lips hot and plush, just as he’d known they’d be. He slid his fingers into her hair, pulling it loose, and cupped the back of her skull. Pleasure already throbbed like a bass-line under his skin.

He went slow, teasing her with barest of touches along the line of her jaw, the curve of her breast. Allowing the tension to build between them till it burst like a too-full rain cloud. She grappled with him then, pushing at his chest and clawing at his neck in plain frustration.

He caught both her wrists in one hand and used the other to urge her backward till her shoulders thumped against the ugly, faded wallpaper.

“Easy now,” he said. “There’s no call to draw blood.”

She glared at him. “I’m not some delicate damsel in distress.”

“Well, that works out fine, ’cause I’m nobody’s knight in shining armor.”

He released her wrists. She didn’t fight, so he bent and ran his lips along the line of her collarbone. When he slid his thigh between her legs and pressed his palm against the small of her back, she began to tremble. Right about then, he figured they’d both had enough of taking it easy.

He stepped back, pulled off his shirt and unbuckled his belt. She kept her hands on him, kept reeling him in for more kisses, interrupting his quest to get them both as naked as they could be in as little time as possible. He broke away and yanked her shirt over her head and down her arms to her wrists, trapping them a second time.

She arched off the wall and hissed in his ear like a scalded cat. “Get on with it, already.”

He twisted the fabric tighter and used the other hand to unbutton her jeans and shove them to her ankles. Then he slid his fingers up her spine to the clasp of her bra. She lifted a single, well-groomed brow—a challenge if he’d ever seen one.

“I can pick a lock in fifteen seconds flat,” he told her.

Her bra fell open before she had a chance to answer.

~~~

Chapter One

It was late October, and Boone was standing at a blackjack table in Vegas when he first heard the cries of the Sorrowful Angel of Bogey Holler. The mournful cross between a dying whippoorwill and a faraway freight train was like the touch of a chilly finger on his heart. Boone shook it off, tossed back his shot of bourbon, and breathed in the snap and tang of deep autumn in the Kentucky backwoods.

The girl curled in the crook of his arm looked up at him, the light from the crystal chandeliers glinting off her frosted-purple eye shadow. “You all right, baby?”

Boone shrugged. “Bad memories.”

The girl, whose name Boone had already forgotten, smiled at him in the way women sometimes do. “I bet I can fix that.”

“Yeah?” He pulled her closer. “I’ll take that wager.”

But on New Year’s Eve, as he battled his way up a windblown sidewalk in downtown Chicago, Boone heard the Angel’s cries again. Along with the heartbroken wailing and the raw, wet scent of winter in the Appalachian Mountains came the distinct image of a face he hadn’t seen in a dozen years—one with gold-tipped lashes surrounding bluebonnet eyes, and a smile as honest as the day was long.

Delia Concannon. Lord, but she looks even better than she did at seventeen.

He told himself he didn’t believe in visitations from angels, sorrowful or otherwise. Then he climbed into his pickup truck and drove.

A while later—seventeen weeks, two days and four hours, not that Boone was keeping count—the Angel caught up to him in Lexington, where he’d holed up in a motel near the airport. This time, he didn’t bother to tell himself any lies as he pointed his truck toward Harlan.

Now he was driving too fast down an unlit dirt road, radio locked on a bluegrass station and a woman’s name caught in the back of his throat. Through the open window he inhaled the scent of wild honeysuckle that meant spring was kindling in the Cumberland Mountains. He crossed the Harlan County line four hours ahead of the sunrise.

Boone Butler was home.

Delia sat straight up in bed and clamped a hand over her mouth to stifle a scream. All around her, the shadowy room echoed with the sound of another woman’s fading sobs. The clock on the nightstand read quarter past three.

She slipped from under the sheets, crossed to the window, and looked down on the road that ran by her house at the mouth of Bogey Holler. Through the darkness she spied a pair of taillights on the gate of a pickup truck. It was too dim to make out the color of the vehicle. After a few seconds, the truck pulled onto the road and took off, the taillights growing smaller until they finally winked out. Delia stood watch a while longer before she took herself back to bed.

Just another nightmare. Doesn’t mean a thing.

She lay there, unsettled and sleepless, and with every beat of her heart she heard a name that hadn’t crossed her lips in years.

You’re an idiot. Boone Butler never loved you, and he’s never coming back. Go to sleep.

But when her alarm went off at a quarter to five, Delia was already on the other side of Harlan County, standing behind the counter of the little diner she’d owned for going on three years now. Here there was no ghostly weeping—only the bright, buzzing glow of fluorescent lights and the scent of coffee so mighty and all-consuming that it seemed to be another permanent fixture of the place, like the faded pink Formica or Delia’s best friend and second-best waitress, Pea Hawkins.

Upon entering the establishment, Pea squinted up at Delia through her round, frameless glasses and said, “Girl, you look like seven kinds of hell. Ain’t you been sleepin’?”

Delia slapped a plate of ham and red-eye gravy on the counter in front of her friend and shrugged. “Bad dreams. They’ll pass.”

“The Angel again?” The sharp note in Pea’s voice cut through Delia’s muzzy head like a hot knife through day-old grits, making her flinch. “That’s the third time since Christmas. You ought to go see my granny for a charm.”

“Maybe I will.” Delia was glad to have the conversation cut short by the arrival of Kathleen, her very best waitress, followed by the day’s first customers.

The diner stayed busy through the morning hours and well past lunchtime—and why wouldn’t it, offering huckleberry pie with vanilla ice cream for two dollars a serving, not to mention coffee at fifty cents a cup plus free refills? Pea said she should charge double, at least, but Delia couldn’t bring herself to gouge her friends and neighbors, especially since hard times had come once more to Harlan.

To hear the old folks tell it, they’d never left.

It was in the middle of the afternoon lull when Delia heard the Angel’s cries again. She was peeling fruit for a cobbler, and the sound startled her, making her run the tip of the paring knife into the base of her thumb.

Boone Butler, Boone Butler, Boone Butler…

The name echoed in her head, a drumbeat beneath the Angel’s sobs. Together they drowned out the slurp and gurgle of the percolator.

Swearing a purple streak under her breath, Delia reached across her workspace for something to staunch the flow of blood. As she did, Kathleen’s tobacco-and-whiskey-roughened voice drifted into the kitchen via the pass-through window.

“I heard one of the Butler boys is back in Harlan,” she told a customer at the counter.

Delia froze where she stood, a clean white towel clutched in one hand and blood dripping from the fingertips of the other.

“What did you say?”

~~~

Long and Short Reviews calls Ain’t No Sunshine a “Best Book”:

“Do yourself a favor. Grab this book. Or better yet, let it grab you….  Ain’t No Sunshine is a multi-dimensional tapestry woven of the Concannon and Bulter families’ past, Delia and Boone’s personal pasts and their present. The mystery, setting, characters and plot vie for main billing. Selah March excels in each area and the reader reaps the benefit. The title is an ear-worm and the story sticks in your head the same way. Ain’t No Sunshine reminded me of good bread pudding—moist, dense, chock full of both nuts and sweet surprises—rich in country flavor and extremely satisfying.” ~Water Lily at Long and Short Reviews

~~~

Buy it here.

Through rain, sleet, dark of night—or heartache—love is an unstoppable force of nature.

A sweet small-town romance with paranormal-ish elements of suspense.

Link to excerpt/purchase.

~~

From Long and Short Romance Reviews (best book of the week!):

“Do yourself a favor. Grab this book. Or better yet, let it grab you…

…Ain’t No Sunshine is a multi-dimensional tapestry woven of the Concannon and Bulter families’ past, Delia and Boone’s personal pasts and their present. The mystery, setting, characters and plot vie for main billing. Selah March excels in each area and the reader reaps the benefit. The title is an ear-worm and the story sticks in your head the same way. Ain’t No Sunshine reminded me of good bread pudding—moist, dense, chock full of both nuts and sweet surprises—rich in country flavor and extremely satisfying.”
~Water Lily at Long and Short Romance Reviews

Treat yourself to 25 days’ worth of short stories by well-and-lesser-known (like me) M/M authors! For free, even! Such a deal.

*Registration required. Read at your own risk. Explicit, extremely NSFW content ahoy!

God bless us, everyone!

A young soldier maimed in an accident and no longer fit for the battlefield answers the call to serve. Lieutenant Daniel Willoughby is ready — if not eager — to fulfill his duties as squire to Lord Thanatos, the Champion whose gift is swift, merciful death.

Daniel is prepared to sacrifice his mind and body in service to his new lord and master. He’s about to discover Thanatos wants that…and so much more.

* * *

Excerpt from Chapter 3:

Despite the pilots’ fears, the landing of Transport #34 on the estate of Lord Thanatos — located somewhere in the hills to the west of the city, or so Daniel guessed — was uneventful. They disembarked with no fanfare, and the shuttle did a vertical lift from the elevated pad that sat fifty yards from the gates of a large, formal garden.

Daniel squinted as the glare from the rising shuttle flashed over his face. When it was gone and the deepening shadows of evening settled around him, he removed his glasses and tucked them into the breast pocket of his duty-rig.

From his position on the landing pad, he could see the garden below was dominated by what appeared to be a maze. Fashioned from massive evergreen hedges, it grew eight feet high, lush in the middle of one of the most desolate regions west of the Great Mountains. Its branches were illuminated by thousands of tiny, white lights, and at its center stood a large, bubbling fountain. Daniel didn’t bother to hide his awe.

“Welcome to Nightshade.”

Too dazed to speak, Daniel nodded. The breeze washed over him, sweet and potent, undercut with a sharp tang. He sniffed the air. “What is that?”

“Eucalyptus. Lavender. Night-blooming jasmine.”

Botanical species that hadn’t been seen outside a laboratory in at least fifty years. Yet they grew here? Daniel lifted his face to the breeze again. This time he caught a warmer fragrance — something spicy that made his nose tingle and his mouth water.

He turned to ask how Lord Thanatos managed the irrigation for such a large display of plant life and plowed directly into the Champion’s chest — which explained the new, arousing scent.

“I beg your pardon.” Daniel coughed and shifted away. “I was distracted. I’ve never known anything like this place.”

“It pleases you?” The bland tone of the Champion’s question didn’t match the sharp look he sent over his shoulder as he led Daniel down the steps of the landing pad and toward the garden gates.

Another test. “If it pleases you, of course.” Daniel struggled to keep up with the Champion’s long stride along the paved path. “Is there something the estate lacks? Repairs needed? You could make a list. I’ll start work tonight–”

Thanatos stopped short. Daniel pitched forward, nearly falling in an attempt to halt and turn at the same time.

“Do not babble. It irritates me.”

“I beg your pardon, my…” Daniel swallowed. Instinct told him that to bow his head would only compound his mistake, so he stood still and waited.

Ahead of them, the gates opened with neither a word nor a gesture from the Champion.

“Come.” Thanatos led Daniel into the garden and to a wrought iron bench that stood beneath a trio of spiky trees Daniel thought must be cypress. “We will talk.”

They sat. In the silence that followed, Daniel scanned the sky. No stars looked down. The rising half-moon was a smudge behind a thin screen of clouds. Daniel glanced at the ironwork of the seat beneath him and was startled to see the ornate design set with polished gemstones the size of human eyes.

Thanatos cleared his throat. “Do you know who I am, Daniel?”

Enough with the tests, already. “You are Thanatos, called a daemon spirit or a demigod by the ancient Greki.”

“That is what I am, not who I am.”

“I don’t–”

Thanatos held up a hand. “Ask the monks. Ask them what became of the man called Nikolos Petrakis.”

“I’m sorry. I’m not following you at all.”

Thanatos sighed, and the breeze seemed to sigh with him. “Thirteen years ago by the Brotherhood’s calendar, Nikolos Petrakis was a sheep farmer on an island called Chios, in the Aegean Sea. He had a wife, two sons and a daughter five months in the womb.”

What does that have to do with the price of unBlighted blood in St. Francis? Daniel gnawed on the inside of his cheek to stifle his impatience. “Yes? And?”

“And the Brotherhood of the Black Canna rattled their beads and swung their censers and chanted a spell as dark as any ever worked…and here I am. Thanatos, spirit of Death, in the body of Nikolos Petrakis.”

The clouds parted and the moon emerged, bone-white and cold. Daniel shivered.

Was there any correct way to respond to this information? The truth of how the Champions rose hadn’t been part of his education. So the monks had stolen the body of a living human — the bodies of five living humans — to work their magic? Daniel wished he could be surprised. Or disgusted. Anything but quietly resigned.

“It bewilders me, even now,” Thanatos murmured. “Until the day I was joined with Nikolos Petrakis, I had no needs. No wants. No…humanity. Now I have all of these and more.”

“You have a personality,” Daniel said. “The sheep farmer’s personality?”

“So it seems.” Thanatos frowned at him. “Why do you smile?”

Did he dare say something so outrageous? No Ritual of Fealty. No blind obeisance. Not yet, at least. Maybe my last chance to be myself, to speak my mind.

Daniel coughed into his fist to cover the laughter that threatened to choke him and said, “I wonder if the Brotherhood didn’t do Petrakis’ wife a favor.”

The Champion stared, his brows arched high above his black eyes. Daniel braced himself and waited for whatever came next. A bird called — some nocturnal creature with a sweet, shrill warble. A Nightingale? Not possible. They’ve been extinct for a century or more.

“I suspect,” Thanatos began, his words drenched in what Daniel now surmised to be a Greki accent, “his overbearing arrogance was redressed by the size of his cock.”

Now Daniel did choke. “You’re trying to shock me.”

“And if I am?”

“Keep trying.”

The living spirit of Death inside the body of the sheep farmer grinned at Daniel. The glow from the newly revealed moon glinted off his teeth. Somewhere overhead, the bird called again. Daniel thought back to his ornithology text — a book he hadn’t seen since his aptitude scores required him to report for military duty at the age of fifteen.

The unpaired male Nightingale sings to mark his territory, and to attract a mate.

Just as quickly, the Champion’s smile dissolved into something darker. “Ask them, Daniel. Ask the monks if the soul of the sheep farmer resides in what they call heaven or hell. Or does it wander somewhere between the two, like a poor man’s Orpheus?”

The Nightingale stilled its cry. Even the breeze fell silent. Daniel was suddenly aware of how much space Thanatos occupied, and how little lay between them on the small bench. He whispered, “Why don’t you ask them?”

“I have. Many times. They give no answers.”

Thanatos stared in the direction of the house, where someone had lit the lamps in one of the lower rooms. The sound of voices rose into the still air, followed by male laughter. “I had hoped to have this night to ourselves, but it appears we are blessed with company.”

“Company?” As Daniel listened, the laughter grew louder.

“My fellow Champions. You are familiar with them?

“Lords Kratos, Dolos, and Eros, and Lady Nemesis.”

Thanatos nodded. “They will, no doubt, be delighted to make your acquaintance.” He rose from the bench. “Come. There will be much merriment to welcome you, if I know my comrades.”

Side by side they walked the path toward the massive stone dwelling. Each time Daniel tried to drop back in deference to Thanatos, the Champion slowed his pace. Finally, he stopped and confronted Daniel. “Why do you dally?”

Daniel lowered his head. “Holy Protocol, my lord.”

Thanatos loomed over him, leaning in close till his breath rushed over Daniel’s neck. He bent and touched his lips to the stretch of skin just under Daniel’s ear. Then he bit, pinching a tiny bit of flesh between the sharp edges of his teeth.

A thrill of pain, hot and sweet, shot through Daniel and he swayed like a stripling in a stiff wind.

Thanatos released him. “In Commander Skott’s office, you begged me to test you. I warn you not to test me in return.”

“I understand,” Daniel whispered. His stubborn streak of rebelliousness — that part of him so reviled by Brother Janus — seemed to melt in the scorching heat of Thanatos’ presence.

“Call me Nikolos.”

“Nikolos.”

“Louder.”

“Nikolos.”

“Very good. I am partial to a man who is graceful in defeat.” The Champion ran his hand down Daniel’s spine, from the nape of his neck to the swell of his ass. Daniel could feel the press and drag of each finger through the fabric of his duty-rig. “I think we will make a tight fit, you and I. But do not keep me waiting, Daniel Willoughby.”

He turned away. Daniel stood on the path, fighting to regain his composure.

Overhead, the Nightingale trilled.

***

Available soon in eBook and print from Amber Allure/Amber Quill Press.

When did that happen?

I’m at Tales from the Crit today, blogging about the Redeemed and Unredeemed Alpha Jerks we hate to love.

HARD HARVEST, part of the “Three Kinds of Wicked” series.

Futuristic, Ménage à trois, Parnormal & Occult

Purchase link.

In twenty-second century America, war, disease and pollution have wiped out three-quarters of Earth’s population and left most women sterile. Scientists are battling the specter of human extinction. Now they’ve devised a DNA test and built a database to help each of the remaining fertile females find her perfect genetic counterpart, thereby ensuring healthy, hardy offspring.

For Midwestern farm girl Hannah Jenkins, this means accepting a stranger as a potential mate. Unfortunately, the handsome Dr. David Cabot isn’t everything she’d expected. Distant and humorless, he spends all his time in the makeshift laboratory he’s set up in the family barn. He and Hannah use more energy sniping at each other than communicating their wants and needs. After a few months of passionless monthly encounters with no pregnancy to show for it, Hannah is certain David will abandon her at the end of their trial marriage.

Then a stranger saves Hannah from robbery at gunpoint, and Hannah hires him to work as a farmhand. The mysterious Trey intrigues both Hannah and David, but can he show them how to make love without making war?

EXCERPT:

“I want to help you, Hannah. Do you believe that?”

Hannah drew a long breath and let it out on a sigh. All at once, she felt bone-weary and a thousand years old. “Yes, I believe it.”

“What if I told you it might take something…” He paused, seeming to search for the right word. “Something unconventional to help your marriage.”

She shook her head. “I’m not following you.”

He smiled and his gaze traveled over her, making her feel wanton and next-to-naked in the middle of her own damned kitchen. “What would a woman like you consider unconventional, Hannah?”

His eyes held hers from across the room, plainly trying to communicate his meaning without resorting to clumsy words. Again she heard the echo of that faraway wind and the brokenhearted woman who called his name—had been calling his name for long years, waiting for the return of the man she loved more than life, the man she trusted with the fate of her very soul….

Hannah scrubbed a hand over her face. “I’m too tired for riddles, Trey.”

“I know, and I’m sorry. But will you think about it?”

As if she had any choice now that he’d put the idea in her head. She nodded, looking away from those sad, dangerous eyes to the cracked linoleum beneath her feet.

“Good.” He let the screen door close quietly behind him on his way out.

When he was gone, Hannah climbed the stairs and headed for the bathroom. The house was quiet. Her brothers had proven yet again how soundly they slept, so she left the door open to catch the breeze from the open window in the hall.

From the top shelf of the linen closet she took three thick, beeswax candles, lit them and set them on the floor near the ancient, claw-footed tub. Then she opened the tap and let it run for a scant minute. She filled the tub only a quarter of the way, her concession to the recent lack of rain. Her body felt lazy and stupid as she stripped out of her clothes and slid into the water.

Unconventional. It could’ve meant a few different things, but when she closed her eyes, all that came to mind was the three of them—Trey, David and herself—lying together in a shameless sprawl.

Both men, at the same time. Their hands, their mouths, their…other parts, touching her, inside and out. Using her for their own pleasure, and letting her make use of them.

She shouldn’t have wanted it. Even if he didn’t act like it, David was her husband. It was her duty to want only him. But like as not, both he and Trey would be gone by the time the wind blew snow like a tattered bridal veil over the landscape. Then she’d be left with only memories until the next candidate showed up—assuming he ever did.

Of course, Trey might’ve meant something entirely different. She couldn’t be sure without asking, which she intended to do first chance she got.

But if she was right? And if Trey somehow managed to talk the supremely stubborn Dr. Cabot into allowing such a huge breach of his precious Commission protocols?

Hannah wouldn’t say no.

***