Perfect Strangers Read online

  He had watched, mesmerized by her frenzied washing. Then, he’d been caught off-guard by the sound of disembodied voices floating up from the answering machine. Her parents? For the whole long year from hell he’d managed to avoid empathy. Now it punched him right in the gut, leaving him nauseated and slightly out of breath.

  She was a waif. That hadn’t been an act. He could finally see her in the greenish glow from the machine that held her transfixed. He could see the runway-model quality to her hollow cheeks and the bones of her delicate wrists. Less than half an hour ago she’d dropped a man who weighed a good fifty pounds more than he did. He stiffened as his brain gave his heart that much-needed reminder.

  She was pitiful. And her compulsive washing and repetitive playing of the message on the machine made her seem desperately human. But she wasn’t. She was a monster. And she had to die.

  Is he the hero of her childhood dreams…or the death of them—and her?

  Prophesied

  © 2008 Liz Craven

  On the day of her birth, Lia fulfilled a prophecy that ended a 5,000-year war, and became a wife. But being the fulfillment of a sacred prophecy makes for a stifling childhood—not to mention a dangerous one. When an assassination attempt goes wrong, Lia takes the opportunity and runs from her destiny—as well as from her absent husband.

  Talon isn’t sure what to expect when he rescues his bride from a mining colony on a barren moon. What he doesn’t anticipate is her lack of gratitude and her repeated escape attempts. Determined to convince his wife to accept her duties, Talon knows he also needs to keep her safe, even if he has to lock her up in his own quarters to do it.

  As they get closer to their planet and Lia’s coronation, the danger around them increases, and so does the tension between them. For their growing attraction to turn into something more, they need to stay alive and learn to trust each other—a tall order when Lia’s experience in life has taught her that trusting people can get you killed.

  Warning: Contains adult language, sexual content, and as always, reading anything by Liz Craven may be hazardous to your sanity.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Prophesied:

  Lia’s eyes, accustomed to the dark mines, burned under the harsh office light. Blinking the tears back, the face of the speaking soldier wavered briefly, before coming into focus.

  Her heart stuttered, and she managed to keep her jaw from dropping. Just when she thought things couldn’t get any worse—or any better, she wasn’t sure which.

  His face was leaner than she remembered, giving his cheekbones a sharp edge. He had lost the soft features of a young man. The roundness of his cheeks had faded, making his square jaw more pronounced and giving him a determined look. He regarded the rep with gray eyes, the color of melted xyreon ore when light struck it. Unlike the ore, however, his flinty eyes were ice cold. The world “ruthless” flitted across her mind and a shiver danced down her spine.

  His body had been long and lanky when she had last seen him, but the man before her was not the awkward boy she once knew. His chest had filled out, making him easily three times her width. His upper torso tapered to a lean waist. Body armor hugged trim hips and strong legs. The red emblem of an elected planetary official gleamed on his shoulders.

  He barely glanced at her, and the feeling of disappointment that swept over Lia surprised her. She hadn’t wanted him to recognize her and had no business feeling hurt because she had gotten her wish.

  As she studied him, he glanced at a soldier behind him and jerked his chin in her direction. A man with blond hair and the flush of youth still in his cheeks stepped towards her. He smiled at her—the first courtesy ever offered to her in the rep’s office—and extended his arm.

  “This will only take a moment,” the young soldier assured her.

  Staring at the device he was holding, Lia took a cautious step back. The rep still had a death grip on her arm—her fingers were going numb—so the step was small, but it was enough for the soldier to hesitate.

  “What is that?” she demanded, relieved she sounded angry rather than panicked.

  “It won’t hurt.” His tone was polite, if condescending, but he didn’t lower the device.

  “What ‘won’t hurt’?” Lia snapped out.

  The young man actually blushed. “It’s a simple DNA scan. It will take less than five seconds, and you won’t feel a thing.”

  This time Lia wrenched her arm free from the rep as she leaped backwards. “Absolutely not.”

  “I promise it won’t hurt,” the youth reassured her.

  “I said no.”

  Then he spoke, and he had the audacity to sound amused. “Madam, we are looking for someone. The DNA scan will help narrow our search by eliminating you. We will compensate you for your time.”

  She snorted. Even if they gave her money, the rep would be the one “compensated” for her time. “I still refuse.”

  “We must insist.”

  Ignoring the furious glare of the rep, she stood her ground. “Under League privacy laws, a DNA scan cannot be compelled unless an individual is under arrest. Am I under arrest?”

  He lifted an eyebrow. She resisted the urge to reach up and yank it back down.

  “You are not under arrest—” he conceded.

  “Then I am free to refuse the scan.”

  “Neither are you in League territory,” he continued. He gestured towards the youth. “Caden.”

  Lia’s stomach sank. They had her. League laws meant nothing on Tmesis. The only thing she could do was endure the scan with dignity.

  The young soldier stepped forward, pointing the scanner at her.

  Dignity be damned. With fury fueled by fear, Lia kicked out, knocking the scanner from the unsuspecting soldier’s hand. She spun and darted for the door.

  She didn’t make it three meters, before slamming into another one of the soldiers who had circled around to block her path with inhuman speed. Her breathing hitched when she took in his glowing red eyes, wide-spread jaw, and sharp pointed teeth. An Inderian. A proud and fierce race of warriors steeped in tradition, blood feuds, and honor. If their inherent skills weren’t enough to inspire fear in those they met, the rumors of ritual sacrifice and cannibalism were. They rarely left their home system, but those who did usually hired out as assassins.

  Were the soldiers seeking her out to ensure her death?

  The Inderian turned Lia to face the others, lifting her completely off her feet to do so, and she hated that her face was flushed. The impromptu flight embarrassed her. Where did she think she was going? There weren’t a lot of hiding places on a barren moon. Especially when you needed pesky little luxuries like water. Fortunately, the dirt and grime smearing her face hid her blush. At least she hoped they did.

  He stood in the same place, his arms crossed and that infuriating eyebrow still cocked, making no effort to hide his amusement.

  Caden held the scanner again, his gaze flicking back and forth between Lia and his commander who met Lia’s narrowed eyes for a brief moment before nodding.

  Caden approached her cautiously, like drawing near a nest of vipers. Lia felt a crazy urge to laugh. The Inderian held her immobilized. She could barely turn her head, much less attack a trained soldier. She wasn’t fooling herself. The only reason she’d succeeded in kicking him before was the element of surprise.

  No miner in their right mind would attack a League soldier. Lia supposed that meant she was no longer in her right mind. Not that it mattered, seeing how they were probably going to kill her.

  She had feared for her life for as long as she could remember and had half-expected to feel relief at finally facing death. She didn’t. She was pissed-off, plain and simple. And under the anger, her heart ached that the one good thing she remembered from childhood—this cold and amused man—was an illusion.

  An illusion that was probably going to kill her.

  Caden pressed a button and a beam of orange light moved over her. The crucial procedure took mere
seconds. The light disappeared, and Caden began inputting data into the scanner.

  Scrapping together what little dignity she had left, Lia addressed the Inderian. “You can release me now.”

  A nod from their leader, and she found herself standing on her own two feet. The Inderian shifted behind her and she knew he prepared to catch her if she bolted. He needn’t have bothered. With the scan completed, she felt oddly resigned and drained of energy. With her anger gone, the long day, the cave-in and her injury finally caught up with her. Not to mention the strain of the last five minutes. She wanted to sit down. Actually, she wanted to curl into fetal position. She did neither.

  A pair of boots stepped into her field of vision and she looked up into the face of the man from her past.

  “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” The brisk tone lacked warmth, but Lia sensed he was trying to be kind. Her anger had amused him. She wondered if her dejection bothered him.

  She decided to answer his question honestly. “Yes, it was.”

  He blinked, and she realized she had surprised him. Instinctively, she knew very little surprised this man.

  He inclined his head politely. “I apologize for the inconvenience.” He hesitated before dropping his voice to prevent the rep from overhearing. “We only seek to find a missing person. The scan will be used to eliminate your DNA as a match for hers. Once done, you will be free to go. We will not be passing scan results on to authorities or storing them in any public database. Your privacy and secrets will remain intact.”

  He thought her a criminal afraid of being caught. She was about to surprise him again.

  He turned away from her, dismissing her. “Caden, I believe we have taken up enough of this young lady’s time. Record her as a non-match and reset the scanner for the next subject.”

  “I can’t,” Caden sounded nervous.

  “You can’t? The scanner is malfunctioning?”

  “No, sir. I just ran and reran a diagnostic on it. I also ran the results four times,” Caden rushed to assure him.

  “Then what seems to be the problem?”

  “There’s no problem. It’s just that…” He hesitated.

  “That what?” the commander barked.

  “I’m a match,” Lia said wearily. “I’m your wife.”

  Risking everything for the one woman bold enough to betray him.

  Enemy Mine

  © 2009 Barbara J. Hancock

  Julia Rierdon attacks life with everything she’s got, taking the missions no one else will touch. Refusing to slow down long enough to embrace anything or anyone else. When her plane goes down in the Smoky Mountains, being injured and alone with a dangerous shifter chained at her side is bad enough. Fighting her bone-deep desire is a challenge she could fail.

  Ross Walker knew Julie was dangerous the minute she walked into his casino. She exactly matches the image of his destined mate imprinted on his dreams. One moment of distraction and he’s on his way to prison—putting at risk the future of the Cherokee Ani’Kutani, an ancient clan of shape shifters.

  He ought to make a break for freedom. Instead he stays to heal her wounds. Giving in to their wild, undeniable passion, Ross prays their mystical connection will help Julia see beyond what she’s always believed about shifters and see the forever in his dreams.

  Warning: This book contains a kick-ass heroine who has faced death and come out on the other side ready for anything and everything. It also contains a sexy cougar shape shifter who’s man enough to give her more than she’s bargained for…again and again.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Enemy Mine:

  She was being hunted.

  Knowing it and doing something about it were two very different things.

  She had a banged-up knee that made standing painful and walking any faster than a hobble impossible. She had an empty stomach and the lightheadedness to prove it. So empty in fact, that if she had claws and fangs she might be stalking him.

  As it was, clawless, fangless and getting-the-hell-out-of-here challenged, she was forced to put her back up against a tree and wait.

  He was out there.

  And he was angry.

  The wreckage of their plane smoldered peripherally to the south. Smoldered even though her stomach told her it had been many hours since the crash. She’d only regained consciousness in the last half an hour.

  And now this.

  It was what she deserved for taking a non-military flight with a captured shapeshifter in tow, a wealthy powerful shifter in control of half the state. She should have waited for a military cargo plane and a fighter-plane escort.

  Then again, she wasn’t sure that anyone deserved to be chewed.

  It was four days before the most ambitious raid ever planned against shifters. Now, because of her impatience, she was in the remote mountains of North Carolina with no help in sight and she was about to be savaged by a man she’d thought about sleeping with twenty-four hours ago.

  Ross Walker.

  He would have been incredibly handsome if he’d been a down-on-his-luck used-car salesman. As the head of a powerful shapeshifter clan, he was incredibly handsome and untouchable. Untouchable always seemed to push Julia Rierdon’s buttons.

  When he had stalked onto the plane, even though no man should be able to move with predatory grace in shackles and chains, she’d gone white-hot for long, long seconds. She didn’t know if it was the challenge in his eyes or the muscles in his thighs, but she’d let herself look and look some more. The answering heat in his brown-eyed gaze should have made her blink and look away.

  She didn’t.

  The end of the world as they had known it had made most of the remaining human population cautious. It had made Julia determined to prove she was alive.

  One thing she should have known—never shoot come-hither glances at a shapeshifter—unless you want to be up against a wall very soon thereafter.

  She didn’t hit the galley wall too hard. Only hard enough to send tumblers tumbling and bags of peanuts flying. That quickly, she’d found herself with cool refrigerated metal drawers at her back and the hot hard body of an aroused shapeshifter all along her front.

  Guess which had gotten the majority of her attention?

  “Backup. Call for backup. The shifter’s gone postal,” a uniformed agent had shouted as he grabbed for Walker.

  “We need a tazer up here, now!” another agent had shouted into the transmitter clipped to his ear as he too went for the man pinning her to the wall.

  Walker ignored them.

  His dark eyes had locked onto hers and he’d pressed even closer. It’s not like she could cry jerk when she’d been checking out his thighs moments before, and she wouldn’t cry mercy. No way, no how. Instead of crying anything at all, she’d tilted her chin and given him the dewy-eyed look that had gotten him into this trouble in the first place. She’d even thrown in the pouty lips for good measure. She was no longer wearing the low-cut sequined dress and the four-inch stilettos she’d worn into his Cherokee casino, but “the look” she could do in jeans and sneakers.

  He’d gotten it.

  He’d gotten that it was a challenge and not a come on. He’d understood she was tweaking him for falling for the oldest trick in the book. His full sexy mouth softened and tilted in an appreciative smirk.

  But then, then he’d spoiled it all—her cheekiness and his humor—by pressing his lips to hers.

  The first shock? It wasn’t hard, bruising domination. The second? That it was seductive, soft and teasing. She was so taken off-guard she’d actually liked when a hint of moisture, just a hint of tongue, had brushed against her slightly open lips.

  She might have kissed him back given one more second. She might have even sighed or whimpered because that slight hint of heated moisture was so not enough.

  Thank God, she’d been saved from that humiliation by two more uniformed agents. All four big men were able to pull Walker back…but only because he’d been ready to step away.

&nbs
p; “We’re not finished,” Walker had said to her calmly, even though four burly agents were handling him way less than calmly.

  Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

  It’s all about the story…

  Action/Adventure

  Fantasy

  Historical

  Horror

  Mainstream

  Mystery/Suspense

  Non-Fiction

  Paranormal

  Red Hots!

  Romance

  Science Fiction

  Western

  Young Adult

  www.samhainpublishing.com