Morgan’s fingers flew across the laptop keyboard propped on her knees. She took a deep breath, cleared her mind, and looked out past her pink-painted toes resting on the railing and across her yard to the densely wooded area at the edge of her property. Her mind’s eye found her guest winding his way through the trees. She still had time before Jack stepped out of the woods separating her land from his. She couldn’t wait to meet him.
Images, knowings, they just came to her. She’d accepted that part of herself a long time ago. As she got older, she’d learned to use her gift to seek out answers.
She finished her buy-and-sell orders and switched from her day trading page to check her psychic website and read the questions submitted by customers. She answered several quickly, letting the others settle in her mind until the answers came to her.
One stood out. The innocuous question about getting a job held an eerie vibe.
The familiar strange pulsation came over her. The world disappeared, as though a door had slammed on reality. The images came to her like hammer blows, one right after the other, and she took the onslaught, knowing something important needed to be seen and understood.
An older woman lying in a bed, hooked up to a machine feeding her medication. Frail and ill, she had translucent skin and dark circles marring her tortured eyes. Her pain washed over Morgan like a tsunami.
The woman yelled at someone, her face contorted into something mean and hateful. An unhappy woman—one who’d spent her whole life blaming others and trying to make them as miserable as she was.
A pristine white pillow floating down, inciting panic, amplified to terror when it covered the woman’s face, her frail body swallowed by the sheets.
Morgan had an overwhelming feeling of suffocation.
The woman tried desperately to suck in a breath, but couldn’t. Unable to move her lethargic limbs, she lay petrified and helpless under his unyielding hands. Lights flashed on her closed eyelids.
Death came calling.
A man stood next to the bed, holding the pillow like a shield. His mouth opened on a contorted, evil, hysterical laugh that rang in her ears and made her skin crawl. She squeezed her eyes closed to blot out his malevolent image and thoughts.
Murderer!
The word rang in her head as the terrifying emotions overtook her.
Morgan threw up a wall in her mind, blocking the cascade of disturbing pictures and feelings. She took several deep breaths and concentrated on the white roses growing in profusion just below the porch railing. Their sweet fragrance filled the air. With every breath, she centered herself and found her inner calm, pushing out the anger and rage left over from the vision. Her body felt like a lead weight, lightening as her energy came back. The drowsiness faded with each new breath. She’d be fine in a few minutes.
The man on horseback emerged from the trees, coming toward her home. Her guest had arrived.
Focused on the computer screen, she slowly and meticulously typed her answer to the man who had asked about a job and inadvertently opened himself up to telling her who he really was at heart.
She replied simply:
You’ll get the job, but you can’t hide from what you did.
You need help. Turn yourself in to the police.
An Excerpt from
THROWING HEAT
A Diamonds and Dugouts Novel
by Jennifer Seasons
Nightclub manager Leslie Cutter has never been one to back down from a bet. So when Peter Kowalskin, pitcher for the Denver Rush baseball team, bets her that she can’t keep her hands off of him, she’s not about to let the arrogant, gorgeous playboy win. But as things heat up, this combustible pair will have to decide just how much they’re willing to wager on one another . . . and on a future that just might last forever.
“Is there something you want?” he demanded with a raised eyebrow, amused at being able to throw her words right back at her.
“You wish,” Leslie retorted and tossed him a dismissive glance. Only he caught the gleam of interest in her eyes and knew her for the liar that she was.
Peter took a step toward her, closing the gap by a good foot until only an arm’s reach separated them. He leaned forward and caged her in by placing a hand on each armrest of her chair. Her eyes widened the tiniest bit, but she held her ground.
“I wish many, many things.”
“Really?” she questioned and shifted slightly away from him in her chair. “Such as what?”
Peter couldn’t help noticing that her breathing had gone shallow. How about that? “I wish to win the World Series this season.” It would be a hell of a way to go out.
Her gaze landed on his mouth and flicked away. “Boring.”
Humor sparked inside him at that, and he chuckled. “You want exciting?”
She shrugged. “Why not? Amuse me.”
That worked for him. Hell yeah. If she didn’t watch herself, he was going to excite the pants right off of her.
Just excitement, arousal, and sexual pleasure. That was what he was looking for this time around. And it was going to be fun leading her up to it.
But if he wanted her there, then he had to start.
Pushing until he’d tipped her chair back and only the balls of her feet were on the desk, her painted toes curling for a grip, Peter lowered his head until his mouth was against her ear. She smelled like coconut again, and his gut went tight.
“I wish I had you bent over this desk right here with your hot bare ass in the air.”
She made a small sound in her throat and replied, “Less boring.”
Peter grinned. Christ, the woman was tough. “Do you remember what I did to you that night in Miami? The thing that made you come hard, twice—one on top of the other?” He sure as hell did. It had involved his tongue, his fingers, and Leslie on all fours with her face buried in a pillow, moaning his name like she was begging for deliverance.
She tried to cover it, but he heard her quick intake of breath. “It wasn’t that memorable.”
Bullshit.
He slid a hand from the armrest and squeezed the top of her right leg, his thumb rubbing lazily back and forth on the skin of her inner thigh. Her muscles tensed, but she didn’t pull away.
“Need a reminder?”
An Excerpt from
PRIVATE RESEARCH
An Erotic Novella
by Sabrina Darby
The last person Mina Cavallari expects to encounter in the depths of the National Archives while doing research on a thesis is Sebastian Graham, an outrageously sexy financial whiz. Sebastian is conducting a little research of his own into the history of what he thinks is just another London underworld myth, the fabled Harridan House. When he discovers that the private sex club still exists, he convinces Mina to join him on an odyssey into the intricacies of desire, pleasure, and, most surprisingly of all, love.
It was the most innocuous of sentences: “A cappuccino, please.” Three words—without a verb to ground them, even. Yet, at the sound, my hand stilled mid-motion, my own paper coffee cup paused halfway between table and mouth. I looked over to the counter of the cafe. It was mid-afternoon, quieter than it had been when I’d come in earlier for a quick lunch, and only three people were in line behind the tall, slim-hipped, blond-haired man whose curve of shoulder and loose-limbed stance struck a chord in me as clearly as his voice.
Of course it couldn’t be. In two years, surely, I had forgotten the exact tenor of his voice, was now confusing some other deep, posh English accent with his. Yet I watched the man, waited for him to turn around, as if there were any significant chance that in a city of eight million people, during the middle of the business day, I’d run into the one English acquaintance I had. At the National Archives, no less.