Let me share some wisdom with you. There is evil in this world we cannot see, not because it is hidden from us, but because our minds refuse to accept its existence. But once we are able to get past what everyone says should not be, it becomes our responsibility to stop the evil we now see.
This insight wasn’t given to me until a year after I lost the most important person in my life: Bryce Rowan. Now, after another death at the same spot where he died—the overlook, where the mysterious lights dance amongst the trees—I begin to wonder if they were accidents after all.
Lucky for me, I’m not the only curious one in town. Cooper, a ghost hunter (aka chaser), and his sister Jada have moved to town and are starting to ask questions.
But the more we find out about this town and the people who live here, people who I have known my whole life, the more I begin to think there are those who would rather keep the evil secret, even if it means we will never be safe, and that more will die.
Gemini Brandy Nacole is a writer of urban fantasy books. She is the author of the Shadow World series and the Spiritual Discord series published by Ponahakeola Press. A reader from a young age, Brandy has always loved folklore and stories of beings that go bump in the night.
Brandy lives in Arkansas with her husband, three never stopping kids, two snooty cats, two very lazy bearded dragons, and one mellow turtle. She is a member of the Ozark Romance Authors in Springfield, Missouri. Whenever she’s not reading or writing, Brandy is spending her time outdoors wheeling, hiking, playing amateur photographer, and enjoying a good laugh.
Warning: This book is a paranormal m/m romance with some horror elements. It also crosses cowboy and vampire genres. If you don’t think cowboys look hot with fangs, you’re missing out.
Living in Montana and working the ranch is all Aaron wants to do for the rest of his life. Diagnosed as allergic to the sun thirteen years previous, every day is a struggle to get out of bed. Having to wear long-sleeved shirts, gloves, and even material to cover his face from the effects of the sun, just makes it all worse. Now, in his thirty-second year, he is sure this will be his last summer. While he hates it, he knows he needs to come to terms with the truth and put things in order for his younger cousins. Before he does so, he heads out for one night of pleasure before facing what’s coming.
Jaret loves excitement and new adventures. For over five hundred years, he has sought them out. In Montana on a whim, he comes across someone he doesn’t expect, someone who makes him feel things he does not understand and does not want to give up. In no time at all, he feels like he cannot live without Aaron. The only problem is Aaron doesn’t know who he is, what he is, nor that he isn’t going to die. Not on Jaret’s watch. With a plan to help the other man discover who he is in place, he only has one thing to worry about: whether an ancient enemy will come and destroy everything he now holds dear.
“You’re not going to die, Aaron.”
“You don’t know that. This sickness, ailment, curse…whatever the fuck it is. It’s gettin’ worse. And it’s changin’. Morphin’ into somethin’ scary. My nightmares lately have been horrible.”
“What kind of nightmares?” Of course, Jaret knew. They were the same kind all of them had during the change. Fire and ice as the body went through horrendous chills and soaring high fevers. They would only stop once the change was complete. For after that, there was no real sleep anymore.
“Bein’ caught on high mountains, pelted with snow. Of the forests here bright with orange fire. Of you—” His voice broke. “Callin’ out my name only I’m no longer here to respond.”
“Babe,” Jaret said in a soft voice, not understanding why but knowing he was closer to this drakyl than he had ever been to anyone. “We’re going to get you cured. Then you can come out with me at night. We’ll keep the place predator free while your cousins slave in the sun. How does that sound?”
A sad attempt at a laugh left the other man’s throat. “Promise me you won’t leave until I’m gone?”
Fury swept along Jaret’s veins. Anger at the sun, the fact the man next to him was terrified, and at Davis for not explaining to the poor man earlier what he was. But mostly, he was furious at himself for not telling Aaron the truth. Leaning in, he placed his nose against Aaron’s. “I promise you,” he said in a deep growl, “that you are not going to die, Aaron Drakyl. I won’t let it happen.”
Thianna loves to write strong stories with even stronger heroes. While all of her books have an erotic overtone, it is the story that is the most important to her. “The story should be able to stand on its own. The erotic elements are an add-on.”
She enjoys writing about couples with kink, paranormal couples, and straight out strangeness. But more on that later… You can find her at mm.thiannad.com.
When Isabelle Martin steps onto Sawyer Auto Repair’s parking lot, she can’t believe it’s come to this. After dropping out of a school she never really wanted to go to in the first place and dumping a boyfriend she never really loved to begin with, she thought coming home to Claremont, North Carolina would solve all her problems. Instead, she’s still reeling from her mom’s death six months earlier and trying, but failing to help her dad, who’s sunken deep into a whiskey-fueled depression. Working in the local, motorcycle club-owned, auto shop’s office is a last resort, but it’s the only option she has...even if it means working with Caleb Sawyer, the bad-boy biker with swagger to spare who used to drive her up the wall in high school. Caleb Sawyer is on the fast-track to a downward spiral. He used to think he had the world at his feet--all he has to do is be patient, earn his keep in the club and in the shop, and his legacy within the Iron Horsemen MC will be his for the taking when the time is right. But that just doesn’t mean anything without his old lady by his side, who wants to leave Claremont more than she wants to stay with him. When the bottom finally drops out, nothing prepares him for the impact and he deals with it the only way he knows how--with whiskey and women. Despite all that, being around Isabelle Martin, the girl whose feathers he ruffled so easily in high school, somehow brings him back to life. She doesn’t take any of his crap, but she calls him on it without judgment and without pity. Despite some initial animosity, Caleb and Isabelle quickly realize that the perceptions they had of each other in high school couldn’t be further from the truth. The more time they spend together, the closer they become and the more they gravitate towards each other. Both are at a crossroads, but stuck in reverse. Isabelle needs help; she just doesn’t know how to ask for it. Caleb needs a life preserver; he just doesn’t know where to find one. And ultimately, on the path to rediscovery and identity, all roads lead them to exactly what they need--each other. New adult/contemporary romance told in alternating points of view. Recommended for readers 18 and older. Book #1 in the Carry Your Heart series that follows Caleb and Isabelle’s journey spanning the course of eight years.
Caleb
“Coffee?” she gestured towards the empty cup to my right. When I nodded, my mouth too full of peanut buttery awesomeness, she poured me a cup with a smirk.
“Do I want to know why you’re out on the prowl tonight? Or...wait, if you just finished up with some random chick, I’m not sure I want to hear about it,” she crinkled her nose a little as she spoke and if I didn’t know her better, I would’ve thought her tone was a little harsh.
Good thing I did know her well enough to recognize sarcasm in her voice when I heard it.
“I’m trying this whole bein’ sober thing,” I grinned back at her. “Shocking, right?”
“Who knew you’d grow up to be so responsible?” she shot back and she bit her lip to keep from laughing.
“Gotta grow up sometime, I guess,” I replied good-naturedly.
“Well,” she smiled softly. “If it helps, I’m glad you’re not face down in a gutter somewhere.”
“I’d much rather be here with you, darlin’,” I winked.
She just rolled her eyes and tossed an empty sugar packet at me. I gestured down to the open notebook to her right and forced myself not to peek at, careful to respect her privacy and her space.
“Whatcha workin’ on over there?”
She looked back at me sharply and then her expression shifted from surprised to confused to tired and finally rested on forlorn. I didn’t have it in me tonight to even begin to understand what any of that meant or what my words had to do with anything. It was almost midnight and we should really be in bed.
Mind outta the gutter, Sawyer.
Separate. In different beds. Sleeping. Nothing else.
“Oh,” she answered finally. “Nothing all that important really. I was trying to figure out some stuff, but that didn’t work out too well.”
“Alright, so when do I get to commission something?”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Well,” I shrugged as I shoveled another bite of pie into my mouth. “I figured you’re gonna be rich and famous someday, so I better get an Isabelle Martin original while I can still afford it.”
“Aw,” she called out in a sing-song voice. “You called me Isabelle.”
I wagged my fork at her. “Don’t get used to it.”
“Okay,” she leaned forward a little more. “So, say you were to actually commission something. What would you request?”
That one was easy.
“My bike. Definitely. I can already see her…”
Isabelle’s shoulders shook with laughter. “Wait a minute, wait a minute. Did you just refer to your motorcycle as a she?”
I blinked back her. “Uh. Yeah. That’s what she is. She’s beautiful and she’s perfect and if you so much as say a bad word about her, I’m gonna get up from this table right now and I won’t ever talk to you again.”
Her hand covered her mouth to muffle her laughter. “Whoa, buddy. Simmer down. I promise,” she made a cross sign over her heart, “I won’t say anything bad about her.”
All she got from me for that was an eye roll.
“I mean, you’ll really do it, right?”
She was still laughing. “Well, sure.”
“Do I still have to pay you?” I murmured in a low voice.
“Hmm...pay for the coffee and get me another piece of pie and I think we’re square.”
“Deal!” I thumped my fist on the table for good measure.
Isabelle just laughed with a wide grin on her face and for a moment, I felt frozen by how happy she looked. Beautiful.
If I could just get a little of that, feel a little of what she was feeling right now, maybe I could get one step closer to actually feeling like a normal human being. But then again, every time I was with her, it was easy to forget all that other shit and just laugh and talk and just be normal.
“So,” I cleared my throat. “What brings you here in the middle of the night other than the fact that you can’t sleep?”
She was quiet for a moment and when her eyes flicked back up to mine, my chest tightened at the pain radiating in them.
“I guess I just...well, I just really missed my mom tonight,” she murmured, staring into her coffee cup.
I nodded. That was a feeling I knew all too well. Something told me there was a little more going on, but didn’t see the point in pushing her. I didn’t want to overstep or make her any more upset than she already was but this? Feeling the sting, the heart-wrenching loss of losing a parent...this was something I might actually be able to help her with.
“You know,” I started cautiously. “It’s still hard for me walk into the clubhouse everyday and not wonder where he’d be--where I’d be--if my dad was still alive and kicking. Sometimes, when I’m on the lot, I can almost see him in the shop, workin’ on a truck or pickin’ me up to take me for a ride. I guess it doesn’t get any easier, but it helps to remember those things, you know? The little things, the good things, even if it sucks sometimes, because...I guess that’s all you have left, you know?”
Her eyes glimmered with something I couldn’t quite put my finger on and I wondered if maybe I’d said too much or maybe not enough. It was always hard to tell with her. Sometimes, I felt like I knew exactly what she was thinking and other times...
“That’s funny,” she shook her head with a sad smile. “Because sometimes when I walk past our kitchen counter I have these flashbacks of when I was five and I remember racing home everyday after kindergarten to watch Dirty Dancing. I know, great parenting, right?”
A grin tugged at my lips as I chuckled with her. It was good to hear her talk this way, especially since the only time she’d really spoken of her mom was the night I’d completely lost my shit in front of her, and I knew, from firsthand experience, that she probably needed to talk more about her mom than she did.
“So, this one day,” she continued softly. “I must have done something really bad--I mean really naughty--to make my mom this mad. I still have no idea what I did. Funny how that works, right? But I remember her being so mad she was just red all over--I mean furious with rage--and she takes my Dirty Dancing tape...you know the good ol’ VHS ones? And she takes the tape, lifts it over her head all dramatic, and then smashes it into the counter right in front of me.”
We were both shaking with laughter now.
“Oh, I cried and cried and cried. I couldn’t believe she actually did it! And I wouldn’t come out of my room for the rest of the night because I was so mad at her. So then the next day, when I finally came down for breakfast, there was a brand new Dirty Dancing tape there waiting for me on the kitchen counter.”
“Wow,” I chuckled. “She must have felt pretty shitty to get you another copy like that.”
“Yeah,” she nodded with a grin. “Well, of course, I had to promise never to do whatever it was I did again in order to get it and she promised never to smash my stuff again.”
I wiped my eyes from laughing so hard and shook my head. “I never pegged you for such a problem child.”
“What can I say?” she shrugged. “I’m just full of surprises.”
She didn’t know the fucking half of it.
K. Ryan is a former English teacher, who graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point in 2009. In between ‘real life’ duties, she’s been writing the Carry Your Heart series quietly on the side for the last two years. When not writing, she’s either binge-watching something on Netflix, running, reading, or cheering on the Packers. She lives in the Green Bay area with her crazy-supportive boyfriend and the best decision of her adult life, a not-so-stray cat named Oliver.
When ex-Olympic gymnast, Adaley Knight wakes on her eighteenth birthday she only has one wish, to leave the only town she’s ever known and start fresh.
Finding herself enrolled at a college across the globe, the once modest Adaley is almost unrecognizable. Her new persona dances on the wild side by sinking her teeth into the first bad boy she sees. The only problem is he’s not the least bit interested.
Ryle Benson, baseball extraordinaire and brooding campus bad-boy keeps everyone at an arms length. Things have never come easy for him and the last thing he needs is getting involved with any female.
The tables are reversed as she tries to be bad, tempting fate, and he tries to fight his. The push and pull is half the fun. But what happens when one pushes a little too hard?
“Dare.” Ryle’s voice is cool, calm and collected as he mumbles his answer, like there isn’t another option.
“I dare you to—” Bradley’s interrupted by several females shouting in unison. “Take off your shirt!”
Ryle nods his head to the adorning crowd and grabs the rim of his shirt. Everyone with lady parts around the fire starts to drool. Me included. His movements are slow and sensual, and he doesn’t even bat an eye. Apparently removing an article of clothing in front of a crowd is a typical thing for him to do on a Saturday night. My needy eyes take notice to the “V” that waves hello to me as cloth is lifted from his body.
I melt.
Literally. My body fills like goo, and I wilt until nothing is left but a puddle of want and need.
“Ow ow.”
“Yumola!”
“Sexy beast.”
I feel like I need to wash my ears out. Rolling my eyes, I snatch Tank’s drink out of his hands and down it. Bottoms up.
Nacole Stayton is twenty-something years young and currently resides in the Bluegrass State where she spends her nights writing vigorously. She has a passion for helping others and wears her University of Kentucky gear proudly. While her husband loves all things outdoors, Nacole enjoys the finer things in life, like getting pedicures while reading on her Kindle. She is passionate about her faith, family, and The Vampire Diaries.
No amount of white sand or distance could bury their past.
Some things are just never meant to be forgotten. When Julian Moors returned from Thailand he left behind all his belongings, his father and only brother in Melbourne and moved to Sydney. One girl shattered his world and left him with more questions than answers. Behind the persona, Stevie Appleton tries to outrun her past. Nightmares and memories have started to collide, putting her future and her heart at risk. No one can know the secrets she tries to keep locked away, even if it means betraying the people she loves the most. Everyone has a story but not everyone has a past quite like Stevie and Julian. When they meet years later, don't expect a happy ending. The past holds skeletons and not even these skeletons can be buried.
“Blondie, wake up for a second,” Julian whispered in her ear. Stephanie groaned and shrugged away from his touch. “Could you maybe put your erection away?” He peeked over to see her eyes still closed and her cheek rested on the back of her hand. Julian shook her once again. “You’re naked. Are you always this distracting in the morning? I’d like to wake up just once without a hard-on.” “Julian, I’m going to give you something for your ego.” She pulled the blanket higher, covering her perfect breasts. Her breasts are magic. Perfect rack. Ducking down, he pressed his lips against the smoothness of her neck. “My ego is ready.” “I bet it is.” Stephanie took a deep breath. “You are annoyingly good at sex. Go to work and let me somehow deal with the fact that I like having sex with you. Okay?” Julian had smiled against her skin before he quickly sat up. “Blondie, Blondie, Blondie!” he honeyed while he shook her with more force. Stephanie groaned before she finally sat up and rubbed her eyes. Pissed off Stephanie Appleton was a sight. So was just woken and admitted he was a satisfying lover Stephanie Appleton. She was an all-round vision. “WHAT?” Julian formed a fist and held it towards her, waiting. She glanced down at it and frowned. Her adorable frown distracted him from the fact that her breasts greeted him this morning. “Put it there.” He lifted his fist a little higher. Stephanie’s eyebrows furrowed. “You want me to bump fists with you? Why?” The smirk on his face had caused her to roll his eyes at him. “You said I’m good at sex. I like to believe I’m awesome at it, but we’ll save that kind of correction for later. You said you also like having sex with me. My ego loves that very much. And for your ego, I’m gonna tell ya that you are ridiculously good in bed. We have to bump fists for great teamwork. I come. You come. We come. What a lovely partnership we have going.” “Oh, my God! I am never having sex with you again!” He tilted his chin up at her and then cocked a brow. “What an empty threat. Seriously, put it there. Let’s celebrate what an awesome pair we are.” Stephanie playfully pushed at his shoulder and got off the bed. “You’re an idiot. I am not bumping fists with you for that. I’m going to find a way to dent that damn ego of yours. You’re going to slip up sometime, Moors. You can’t be that great in bed all the time.”
Len Webster is a romance-loving Melburnian with dreams of finding her version of 'The One.' But until that moment happens, she writes. Having just completed her BBusCom from Monash University, Len is now busy writing her next romance about how a boy met a girl, and how they fell completely and hopelessly in love.
