Seasons Of Seduction IV Anthology [Anthology]

192 Pages·2016·0.83 MB·English

by  Strong Jory

An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication

www.ellorascave.com

Ellora’s Cavemen: Seasons of Seduction IV
ISBN 9781419912702
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Best of Both Worlds Copyright © 2007 Anna J. Evans
Death-Speaker Copyright © 2007 Katherine Cross
Diverted Destiny Copyright © 2007 Lynn LaFleur
Silk Copyright © 2007 B.J. McCall
Taste of Honey Copyright © 2007 Natasha Moore
Winter Dragon Copyright © 2007 Jory Strong

Editorial Team: Raelene Gorlinsky, Briana St. James, Sue-Ellen Gower, Denise Powers.
Cover design by Darrell King.

Electronic book Publication December 2007

This book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written
permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-
3502.

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales
is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the authors’ imagination and used fictitiously.
E ’ C :
LLORA S AVEMEN
S S IV
EASONS OF EDUCTION
Best of Both Worlds
By Anna J. Evans
Death-Speaker
By Katherine Cross
Diverted Destiny
By Lynn LaFleur
Silk
By B.J. McCall
Taste of Honey
By Natasha Moore
Winter Dragon
By Jory Strong
B B W
EST OF OTH ORLDS
Anna J. Evans
Trademarks Acknowledgement

The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the
following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

Aqua Net: Rayette-Faberge Inc.
Incredible Hulk: Marvel Comics Group
Krispy Kreme Donuts: HDN Development
Lincoln Navigator: Ford Motor Company
Mack Truck: Mack Trucks Inc.
Mötley Crüe: Mötley Crüe Inc.
Star Trek: Paramount Pictures Corporation
Anna J. Evans
Chapter One

“Hi, James, I’ve been thinking…about us.”
Oh my god, that’s so dumb. You can’t say that. Us? What us? You’ve gone for coffee with
the man three or four times. He’s going to think you’re an even dumber blonde than you really
are.
“Hey, James, I was wondering if you’d want to go out for a late dinner tonight, you
know—instead of coffee? Maybe make it, I don’t know…a date?”
You’ve actually stooped to asking a man out. If they were really interested, if he were
interested, he would have asked you. Sad, Melissa, just…sad.
“James, we need to talk.”
Gag! You sound like you’ve read too many self-help books.
“Do you believe in destiny, James?”
Stop it. I’m laughing so hard I’m about to pee myself.
“James, do you want to fuck me? Because I’ve been hot for you for months. My
pussy gets wet just walking by your station, your smell makes me feel like I’m about to
lose consciousness from lust and I’m definitely going to lose my mind if you don’t strip
me naked and get your cock in me before the end of the night.”
Silence. Blessed mental silence. Take that, über-critical inner voice.
Melissa smiled at her reflection in the mirror for the first time in over half an hour
and gave her curly, nearly white-blonde hair a satisfied fluff. She was all alone in the
Decadence dressing room, had been for at least an hour as she struggled to find the
words to tell her secret crush how she really felt.
She’d wanted to find the perfect way to describe the insane mix of lust, love and “I
want to snuggle you every night before I go to sleep” feelings that throbbed through
her every cell whenever James’ soulful brown eyes met hers. He made her so distracted
that she’d fallen twice as she exited stage right after the final dance number, that’s how
powerful her reaction was to the new assistant stage manager.
She was determined to let him know how he made her feel—tonight. So far,
however, the only words that didn’t make her want to vomit were blatant sexual
propositions.
Which is a great way to show him that you’re not just another dumb showgirl with more tits
than brains.
“Will you give it a rest? Please?” Melissa pleaded with her reflection as she
smoothed on a coat of sheer pink lip gloss. After three hours in heavy stage makeup, it
was all she could stand to have on her face after the show. James had told her one night
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Best of Both Worlds
that she looked prettier without makeup. It was the only statement he’d ever made
about her appearance.
Because he’s not the type to go for looks alone, and he’s probably not the type to fall for the
sexy siren routine either.
“He’s a nice guy, but he ain’t the Pope. The sexy siren routine always works.”
The inner voice was quiet again. Guess even she couldn’t argue with such cold,
hard facts.
Melissa sighed and pulled on her faded jean jacket, the one that perfectly matched
her baby blue eyes and accentuated her ample chest. The reflection that stared back at
her was beautiful, sexy, with a hint of innocence that had made her a riotous success
with the gentlemen since the tender age of fifteen. She looked good, she knew that, but
even more importantly, where the male of the species was concerned, she looked like
sex personified.
She’d lost track of how many times a man had told her that she had five-hundred-
dollar-an-hour lips, or that her completely natural D-cup breasts were a god-given
miracle on her lean five-foot-seven frame. She’d learned at a young age to use her
sexiness to her advantage, even when it made her feel rotten inside to do it. She hadn’t
seen any other way to get the life she’d wanted.
Foster children of only average intelligence with no one in the world they could
count on learned to play to their strengths. Melissa’s had been dancing and being
pretty, sexy. After growing up on the outskirts of Vegas, becoming a showgirl had
seemed like a no-brainer.
And, until a few months ago, she’d been happy with her life, her job, her simple
one-bedroom condo and her few close friends. So she rarely dated. So what? She’d been
content to play the vixen onstage and the homebody off. She didn’t even really miss sex
anymore. Her few sexual encounters had left so much to be desired that Melissa learned
to take care of the occasional itch with her vibrator or the detachable nozzle in her
shower. She didn’t want a man and sure as hell didn’t need someone around making
her feel like tits and ass on a full-time basis.
Until James. James, the man she knew all her girlfriends would call a MUTBLE,
Man-Unlikely-To-Be-Laid…Ever. He was at least an inch shorter than her own five-
seven, balding and probably weighed in a few grams shy of one hundred and fifty
pounds. But something about him made her hornier than a two-peckered billy goat.
One of her second foster father’s favorite sayings. Crass, but powerfully descriptive.
Maybe it was simply that he made her laugh, or that he really listened when she
talked. Hell, the man even seemed to take her advice seriously. No one took Melissa
seriously, not one single person in her entire life. She was the fun, freewheeling, good-
time girl. She was the bubbly blonde who never let life get to her. That was what people
expected of her and that was what she delivered.
Still, sometimes it hurt that not one of her friends had ever asked about her
childhood. No one ever seemed concerned that life as a foster kid from the age of five
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Anna J. Evans
might not have been a bucket of margarita mix with the tequila included. But James had
asked and James seemed to know exactly—
“Oh my god!” Suddenly Melissa’s thoughts were interrupted by a series of loud,
piercing blasts, booming sounds that seemed to shake the walls and tilt the ground
under her feet. Seconds later, the door to the dressing room was thrown open. Her stage
manager stood on the other side, half her face covered in blood.
“Fucking shit.”
“Mary?”
“Fucking crazy fucking shit, I can’t even describe to—”
Another sharp round of blasts cut Mary off mid-sentence and the air behind her
was suddenly alight with rays of blue and white light.
“Run, Melissa, out the back door!”
“What’s wrong, are you—”
Melissa turned just in time to see the fifty-something woman thrown forward into
the dressing room by what could only be called a massive explosion.
“Mary!”
She dropped her purse and was running hell-bent for leather before she even had
time to process the fact that she was wearing high heels. Even in her sneakers, however,
she probably wouldn’t have been able to do much to cushion Mary’s fall. The woman
was built like a brick shithouse—another of her second foster father’s favorite sayings.
“Oof.” She hit the ground hard, Mary in a heap on top of her, frighteningly limp
and alarmingly heavy. As soon as the breath whooshed back into her lungs, Melissa
struggled to ease the other woman off her. She had to get to the phone, had to get help.
If the casino was being invaded by terrorists, she had to let someone know. And she
had to get medical attention for her stage manager. Mary had been like a mom to her
and the other girls in the Decadence show for the past four years. There was no way
that she would leave her here unconscious, at the mercy of whoever was causing the
explosions in the hallway.
“Mary! Are you— Melissa? What are you doing in here?”
“James, thank god.” Melissa had never been so glad to see someone in her life.
James’ worried brown eyes appeared over the portion of Mary’s back that still pinned
Melissa’s chest to the ground, flooding her with a relief that just didn’t make sense. No
matter how much she loved the guy, he probably wasn’t big enough to help her out
from under the stage manager. But at least he could call for help, he could—
“We’ve got to get you out of here. You should have been home an hour ago.” James
wrapped his arms under Mary’s shoulders and pulled, easily lifting her from Melissa
and laying her gently on the ground.
“I was waiting for you and…how the hell did you do that?”
“You were waiting for me?”
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Best of Both Worlds
God help her, but the surprised excitement on his face was enough to make her
nipples tighten and her breath quicken, even in the midst of whatever violence was
going on around them. She was sick. She might need to make another appointment
with the therapist she’d been seeing a few years ago. This was going beyond lust into
the realm of indecent obsession.
“James, I know now is definitely not the time, but—”
“Arack! Falgar ever non es arc!” Guttural voices sounded from down the hall,
speaking a language unlike anything Melissa had ever heard. It sounded like French
mixed with German with a little bit of wild pygmy thrown in. And it was loud, scary
loud, and getting louder by the second.
“Damn it. I didn’t want to do this, not yet.” James cast an angry look toward the
dressing room door.
“Do what? James, what’s happening?”
“Stand back, Melissa, over by the mirrors.” Jesus, he sounded so commanding, so
self-assured, it made her sex throb almost painfully.
She suddenly wanted nothing more than to lift up her jean skirt and slide her
fingers inside her black silk panties, to ease the ache that churned low in her belly as she
worked her fingers through her slick, swollen folds. She’d never been this ready to be
fucked, not even with her second boyfriend, Peter, the self-professed master of foreplay.
Even James had never affected her so strongly, but then she’d never seen him with that
dark look on his face, that expression that made him look like a warrior ready to do
battle.
A small warrior, yes, but no less fierce or self-assured for the lack of size and bulk.
“I’m sorry, ‘Lis, I never wanted to pull you into something like this,” he said, using
the nickname that never failed to make her heart flip over and a goofy smile appear on
her face. Even with the obvious danger approaching, Melissa probably would have
smiled if James hadn’t started to glow bright yellow and orange, his eyes deepening to a
brown that was almost black.
“Oh my…god.” His skin gradually became completely translucent, treating her to
an unobstructed view of his internal organs before he began to stretch, skin bubbling,
growing, shifting, right before her eyes.
Melissa screamed. She couldn’t help herself. The girlish sound of horror was out of
her mouth before she could think twice. She’d seen a lot of stuff in her unusually
colorful thirty years of life, but nothing like this. Not even foster mother number three,
the one who’d prided herself on more than three hundred tattoos on her five-foot
frame, could top the pure weirdness factor of what was happening to James. The
transformation couldn’t have taken more than a few seconds, but by the time he was
finished, Melissa would never have recognized him as the same man.
Gone was the small, balding sweetheart with the tender brown eyes. In his place
was a giant, a giant with skin just a bit too yellow to be human, long, dark orange hair
that hung down to the middle of his back and the face of a Greek god—with a body to
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Anna J. Evans
match. The simple jeans and t-shirt James had been wearing had shredded, Incredible-
Hulk-like, as he changed, leaving all six foot seven or eight of him bare to her gaze.
And gaze she did.
She couldn’t seem to help herself. In all her life, she’d never seen such a stunning
example of raw, masculine beauty. High cheekbones and a pair of full lips that made
her ache to nibble them graced his powerful face. Incredibly broad shoulders and
enough sculpted muscle to make a prize fighter green with envy filled out his chest
before his taut abdomen narrowed, leading her eyes down, down, to where this new
James was undoubtedly getting happy to see her.
Even only partially erect, he was huge, his cock already thicker than any man she’d
ever taken to her bed. And as he grew more aroused, the member began to glow, a soft
yellow-orange that drew her like the proverbial moth to the flame. She suddenly
wanted nothing more than to cross the room, get down on her knees and take that
shining shaft into her mouth. She wanted to taste his heat, his fire, wanted to know the
most intimate smell of him, to taste the flavor of his passion as he lost himself down her
throat, to cup the swollen, heavy balls that tightened behind his erection in her hands,
to—
“You’re in danger, Melissa,” he said, his tone deep, husky and as rampantly male as
the rest of him.
“I am?” God, she sounded as aroused as she felt, her voice a breathy, purely
feminine invitation to take her, here and now, hard and fast and forever.
Forever? Where had that come from? She didn’t even know this man, didn’t know if
he was even James, let alone the same James who had stolen her heart over multiple
cups of café con leche.
“You are, but if you don’t quit looking at me like that, I’m going to lose the sense to
care about what’s coming through that door.”
“Why?” she asked, lifting her eyes to his. The same. They were the same eyes, as
soft and deep and compassionate as they’d been before. This was James, an entirely
different version of James, but still the same man.
“Because I’ll have you up against the wall, my body inside you, fucking you,
making you come, pumping in and out of where I’ve been dying to be for longer than
you can imagine.”
Damn, the man had a way with words. And she had thought she was the master of
the blatant sexual proposition.
“Oh. Well, I guess I—”
“Falgar! Galton des euxes galton!”
Melissa screamed and clamped her hands over her ears. The guttural voices were
painfully loud as their owners entered the dressing room and the bodies of the
monsters that barged inside as completely terrifying as James’ new form was arousing.
Three small, squat, goblin-like men with dark green skin and more teeth than their
10