His anger receded, and a wave of protectiveness rolled over him, but he was powerless to take away the pain staring back at him. He could make a stab at shielding her from the world, but how could he stop the hell that raged inside this woman? Why did she matter so much to him? Hell, logic flew out the window a long time ago. He didn’t know why—only that she did. With frustration driving him, he stepped closer, pushing her against the bike. Her moist lips drew his gaze, and an overwhelming desire to kiss her set fire to his blood.
She stiffened and wariness flooded her eyes.
He should have stopped there, but another step put him in contact with her, and he was burning with need. He pulled her closer and gently slid his fingers through her hair, then stroked his thumb across her bottom lip.
Her breath escaped in uneven gasps and a tiny bit of tongue appeared, sliding quickly over the lip he’d just touched. Fear, trepidation, longing paraded across her face. Ty’s warning sounded in his ears again—she was dangerous, maybe even disturbed—but even if that was true, Nate wasn’t sure it made any difference to him.
“Don’t be afraid.” Shit! Immediately, he regretted his words. This woman wasn’t afraid of anything. Distrustful . . . yes. Afraid? He didn’t even want to know what could scare her.
Her eyes softened and warmed, and she stepped into him, pressing her firm body against his. He caught her around the waist and aligned his hips to hers. Ignoring the words of caution in his head, he bent ever so slowly and covered her mouth with his. Softly caressing her lips and tasting her sweetness, he forgot for a moment that they stood in an alley in a questionable area of Portland, that he barely knew this woman, and that they’d just left the scene of a real-life nightmare.
He’d longed to kiss her since the first time they’d met. She’d insulted his car that day, and not even that had been enough to get his mind off her lips. Good timing or bad—kissing her and holding her in his arms was long overdue.
An Excerpt from
HARD TO HOLD ON TO
A Hard Ink Novella
by Laura Kaye
From New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Laura Kaye comes a hot, sexy novella to tie in with her Hard Ink series. When “Easy” meets Jenna, he has finally found someone to care for, and he will do anything to keep her safe.
As the black F150 truck shot through the night-darkened streets of one of Baltimore’s grittiest neighborhoods, Edward Cantrell cradled the unconscious woman in his arms like she was the only thing tethering him to life. And right at this moment, she was.
Jenna Dean was bloodied and bruised after having been kidnapped by the worst sort of trash the day before, but she was still an incredibly beautiful woman. And saving her from the clutches of a known drug dealer and human trafficker was without question the most important thing he’d done in more than a year.
He should have felt happy—or at least happier—but those feelings were foreign countries for Easy. Had been for a long time.
Easy, for his initials: E.C. The nickname had been the brainchild years before of Shane McCallan, one of his Army Special Forces teammates, who now sat at the other end of the big back seat, wrapped so far around Jenna’s older sister, Sara, that they might need the Jaws of Life to pull them apart. Not that Easy blamed them. When you walked through fire and somehow came out the other side in one piece, you gave thanks and held tight to the things that mattered.
Because too often, when shit got critical, the ones you loved didn’t make it out the other side. And then you wished you’d given more thanks and held on harder before the fires ever started raging around you in the first place.
Easy would fucking know.
The pickup paused as a gate whirred out of the way, then the tires crunched over gravel and came to a rough stop. Easy lifted his gaze from Jenna’s fire-red hair and too-pale face to find that they were home—or, at least, where he was calling home right now. Out his window, the redbrick industrial building housing Hard Ink Tattoo loomed in the darkness, punctuated here and there by the headlights of some of the Raven Riders bikers who’d helped Easy and his teammates rescue Jenna and take down the gangbangers who’d grabbed her.
Talk about strange bedfellows.
Five former Green Berets and twenty-odd members of an outlaw motorcycle club. Then again, maybe not so strange. Easy and his buddies had been drummed out of the Army under suspicious, other-than-honorable circumstances. Disgraced, dishonored, disowned. Didn’t matter that his team had been seriously set up for a big fall. In the eyes of the US government and the world, the five of them weren’t any better than the bikers they’d allied themselves with so that they’d have a fighting chance against the much bigger and better-armed Church gang. And, when you cut right down to it, maybe his guys weren’t any better. After all, they’d gone total vigilante in their effort to clear their names, identify and take down their enemies, and clean up the collateral damage that occurred along the way.
Like Jenna.
“Easy? Easy? Hey, E?”
An Excerpt from
KISS ME, CAPTAIN
A French Kiss Novel
by Gwen Jones
In the fun and sexy follow-up to Wanted: Wife, French billionaire and CEO of Mercier Shipping Marcel Mercier puts his playboy lifestyle on hold to handle a PR nightmare in the US, but sparks fly when he meets the passionate captain of his newest ship . . .
Penn’s Landing Pier
Philadelphia