The spider sat in the crack in the wall and spun his plans...

Travis stared down at the bloodied face of the woman he'd pined over for years. He hadn't dared to touch her, not wanting to bring her grandfather's wrath down on her head.

But Grimm had hurt her anyway.

For that alone, the other god would die.

"Travis?” Her voice was broken, barely a pained whisper, but he heard it.

He heard everything she said, whether she knew it or not.

She could barely open her eyes. She looked so small and fragile in the bed, it broke his heart. She licked her lips. “Travis, is that you?"

"I'm here, Jamie.” He took her hand in his and held his rage back by sheer force of will. He wanted so desperately to brush back her hair, but Fenris had seen to it long ago that he couldn't.

He could no longer blame the Wolf for what he'd done. Grimm had been manipulating all of them, even back then. He hoped Logan had succeeded in freeing his child from Grimm's chains.

His attention returned to her as she moaned. “I'm here."

And you'll never be alone again.

About the Author

Dana Marie Bell wrote her first short story when she was thirteen years old. She attended the High School for Creative and Performing Arts for creative writing, where freedom of expression was the order of the day. When her parents moved out of the city and placed her in a Catholic high school for her senior year she tried desperately to get away, but the nuns held fast, and she graduated with honors despite herself.

Dana has lived primarily in the Northeast (Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, to be precise), with a brief stint on the US Virgin Island of St. Croix. She lives with her soul mate and husband Dusty, their two maniacal children, an evil ice-cream stealing cat and a bull terrier that thinks it's a Pekinese.

You can learn more about Dana at: www.danamariebell.com

Sometimes love knocks softly ... and sometimes it breaks down your door.

Taken

© 2009 Anya Bast

Anne's morning starts like any other normal day—and ends in a race for her life. The surprise that

interrupts her regular date with a latte looks a lot like Frankenstein, except this monster is for real. And it chases her straight into the arms of two mouthwatering hunks who whisk her away from everything she knows. That would be Earth.

Suddenly life isn't so normal anymore.

Caleb and Van have been watching Anne for several weeks. Women are scarce in their world, a situation that sometimes forces two or more males to share one wife between them. Anne is their perfect match. Now all they have to do is convince her of that—while trying desperately not to let their intense desire for her scare her away.

Then there's the little matter of protecting her from the Guardians, who want to make sure no match is ever made...

Warning: Contains explicit language, ménage a trois sex scenes and big scary monsters Enjoy the following excerpt for Taken:

Van gave a low, throaty laugh that gave her goose bumps. “It's something Caleb and I have done often, shared a woman. You're different, of course, more meaningful to us. All the same, we will take the lead.

And once we've started"—he raised his hand another inch, until his index finger touched her cunt—"you won't be worried about the logistics anymore. Just leave that to us."

Gah part two. Her mind stuttered for a moment before she could form a coherent thought. Okay, so where was the downside again? It was ... er, where?

"Uh, okay."

Van gave her a slow, sure smile that made her feel warm and a little achy.

Caleb leaned in and kissed her earlobe. “In the bedroom where you woke up, there is a door leading to the bathroom. Stay here, finish your meal, then go there in about five minutes.” Van and Caleb slid from their seats and left the kitchen.

Oh God, what was she doing? Had she seriously just agreed to have sex with the two men who'd abducted her that very morning? What the hell was going on in her head? Was she completely hormone blinded? If she was, could she be blamed? She shook her head and stared out the kitchen window at the perfectly idyllic scene beyond it. Right now, she was alone. If she wanted, she could get up, leave the house and walk out into the forest. Of course, then she had a host of other problems. What alien creatures lurked in those surrounding trees? Where was the portal anyway?

Was there even a portal at all?

And, by the way, what healthy, unattached, red-blooded woman with a positive attitude about sex let an opportunity like this slide past? It's not like she would be betraying someone she'd left behind. Her career had dominated everything in recent years, though she had been dating fairly steadily. She was just ...

picky. A man had to be really special in order to compete with her first love—the law. She hadn't met any man yet who had challenged that primary passion of hers.

So why not play?

Portal or no portal, coma or no coma, she was not going to allow this opportunity to pass her by. She pushed her bowl away, stood and walked into the bedroom where she'd awoken. Candles lit the round room, casting a rosy, flickering glow over the satin bedclothes of the large, round-shaped bed she'd slept in. A fire burned merrily in the hearth.

The bathroom was large with fluffy rugs covering the tiled floor. A huge bathtub took up one corner. The warm water within softly circulated with the help of gentle jets. Caleb and Van were nowhere to be seen, but surely they had been the ones to fill the tub.

She shed her clothes and laid them over a chair in the corner, near a standing shower. There was a black hair clip on the counter and she twisted her long hair up and secured it so it wouldn't get wet. Then she walked up the steps to the tub and sank into the welcoming water. Anne couldn't stifle the deep groan of pleasure that issued from her throat as the heat entered her muscles and relaxed them.

She had just rested on one of the ledges circling the inside of the tub when Van entered the room wearing only a towel. Caleb followed soon after, also dressed in only a towel. The light in the room was dim, but she traced each of their chests, shoulders and arms with her gaze in the time it took them to cross the room and reach the bathtub. Caleb was leanly muscular and smooth of chest, whereas Van possessed a smattering of golden hair. Both of them had broad shoulders, narrow hips and washboard abs. Both of them were any woman's fantasy fodder.

Van whipped his towel off and slid into the water. She got only a glimpse of his cock, nestled in a tangle of gold hair, sculpted thighs and a curved, perfect ass. Caleb entered the water more slowly, dropped his towel at the edge and sliding down into the water. It gave her a chance to check him out fully. She loved what she saw.

This moment, with the gazes of these two men on her so hungrily, made up for much of the hardship and stress she had endured throughout the day.

"Do you like the water?” Caleb asked, as he eased to one side of her.

"It's incredible. It's different in some subtle way from the water I'm used to."

Van moved to her other side. He pushed a few escaped wet tendrils from her hair clip over her shoulder and studied her face for a moment before speaking. “It is naturally cleansing water. You do not need soap. Also, it has minerals in it that will relax your body and help you sleep, cara . You will need extra sleep for a while after having gone through the portal. It's a sort of inter-dimensional jet lag."

"Uh, huh.” Her thoughts were miles away from the bath water.