“This is where you tell me goodbye and erase my memories, right?”
“This is where I give you a choice.” He stood up, mimicking her position, crossing his arms in front of his chest. They couldn’t have been more guarded if they held metal shields.
“What does that mean?” she asked, feeling desperate, her dread expanding, making her pulse race. “What kind of choice?”
“I can wipe your memories or I convert you to vampire.”
“No I- “She frowned, certain she’d heard wrong. “I thought you couldn’t convert me? I thought it was illegal.”
“It’s been given approval based on special circumstances,” he said. “Those circumstances being that while Wright is now dead, Andres is still on the loose, and therefore, you could still be in danger. If you choose to bypass conversion, we’ll offer you a safe haven here until Andes has been dealt with. Once he’s out of the picture, we’ll take necessary steps to get you back to your life and your job, and wipe your memories.”
She stared at him, searching his face, trying to understand why he was so withdrawn. More memories –
hers and his – flooded her mind with understanding. Memories of him losing his family, of the night he’d told her about Darla. Of his claim that Darla had looked at him with hatred, that she thought he was a monster and that was why he had hesitated to convert her. And then his certainty that she would see him the way he believed Darla had as well – as a monster. But more than any memory, she remembered him pulling her into his lap in her kitchen and telling her he ‘fucking’ loved her. He needed her to see past his reserve, past his imaginary monster.
“I just have one question, Aiden.”
“Anything,” he said, his voice low and tight.
“If I convert,” she said. “Does that mean that I get to bite you too?” His brows dipped. “What did you say?”
“You heard me. If I convert to vampire, do I get to bite you too? Because I should tell you right now that I’m looking for an equal opportunity relationship. You bite me. I bite you.” Her voice softened. “I love you. You love me. And right now, with you over there, and me over here, I’m wondering if you want me to say no-“
He was there before she finished the words, kissing her, pulling her down onto the bed, beneath him, his long, dark hair brushing her face. “Yes,” he said. “Yes is the answer I want from you. Yes, you will convert. Yes, you want to convert. Yes, you will marry me. And yes, you can bite me as many damn times as you want to. I love you, Kelly. More than I thought it possible to love a woman. But once this is done, it’s done and I needed to know, I need to know that this is certain for you. I-” She pressed her lips to his. “Absolutely,” It was the words she’d used when he’d first bitten her. “I love you. Convert me. Do it now.” She turned her head, brushing her hair away. His lips caressed her cheek, trailed over her jaw, to her ear. “I love you, Kelly,” he murmured softly, before she felt his teeth pierce her skin. She moaned at the pleasure, seduced once again by the vampire, by the man, and absolutely looking forward to proving her bite was just as hot as his.
Coming in November 2011
In bookstores and in e-book!
Sourcebooks Casablanca (November 2011)
ISBN-10: 1402251599
ISBN-13: 978-1402251597
The Hero: Sterling
He was created, molded, formed from life, love, and misery…
Lethally daring. Ruthlessly passionate. He invites death to his door. Welcomes it with each breath he draws, each step he takes. And thus he is danger. A volatile storm that will sweep across the calm realms of humanity and shake it to the depths of its core. And that storm is…Sterling.
Product Description
Award-winning, bestselling author Lisa Renee Jones is breaking out of series romance success into single title with her fast-paced, paranormal romantic suspense series full of dark danger and sizzling hot passion.
Sterling Jeter, Renegade Super Soldier, is fearless, powerful, and wildly unpredictable. His life-threatening mission is to save the beautiful, brilliant astrobiologist Rebecca Burns from ruthless villain Adam Rain. But their immutable mutual attraction threatens to put them in the path of death... or worse...
EXCERPT:
His cheek brushed hers, whiskers erotically scraping against her skin, his breath warm against her ear as he whispered, “If I instinctively know something so simple as how to order your dinner, think what else I might know about you. What we might know about each other. How to tease each other… How to please each other.”
There was an emptiness inside her that shuddered with hope, with a plea that he would drive it away, fill it with something that wasn’t icy and cold.
He pulled back and looked at her, his eyes dark, passionate. Compelling. “No regrets, Becca,” he vowed, and she knew he’d found those words in her head. Words she’d sworn to live by when she’d left that German hospital without a cure. Words she’d spoken in her head in the lab earlier with him there.
She rolled them around inside her and let them take root, rewarded herself with a deep inhalation of Sterling’s addictive, masculine scent. “No regrets,” she said softly.
A slow smile formed on his lips. “I love it when you agree with me,” he teased.
Becca laughed. “You’re crazy.”
“About you,” he said huskily.
She felt a little schoolgirl rush from that. In the past, she would have felt like the geeky bookworm with the quarterback, uncomfortable and out of her league, but not with Sterling. Never before had a man taken her from such dark emotions to laughter. A place she might just find real escape.
She pressed her hands to his face, her lips to his. Absorbing him. Breathing him in like a little piece of life. They lingered that way, heat simmering between them. Expanding… drawing them in closer to one another without ever moving.
His tongue flickered against her lips, pressed past her teeth as he slid it against hers for a long, sensual taste. “Your kisses taste like honey,” he murmured. “What does the rest of you taste like?” She shivered at the erotic comment—the promise he was going to find out. He kissed her again. Crazy-wild, hot-kissed her, and she loved every second of it. Loved his tongue, his lips, and his hands sliding through her hair, over her face.
Becca ran her fingers through his thick, blond hair. She loved his hair—a little wild like him. Hot like him too. With each stroke of his tongue, each touch of his lips, she felt liberated.
Her palms traveled over his chest—warm, hard muscle, her reward. She was extremely, intensely interested in those muscles, like the best science project in the world that had to be studied. She explored his arms, his biceps, how they felt beneath her palms. Inching forward in her chair, she arched into him, for research purposes, of course. To explore how he would feel pressed close to her. Her breasts ached for his touch, her nipples tight and swollen, in need of his mouth. God. Had she really just had that brazen thought? She was a good girl; she always had been.
His hands slid over her breasts, fingers teased the stiff peaks of her nipples. Her hands covered his, silently telling him she wanted more, because she couldn’t ask or demand. Because she was still that
“good girl” at heart and couldn’t seem to let it go.
But she didn’t want to be a good girl. If anyone knew the meaning of “life is short,” she did. Becca ran her lips over his jaw, hid her face in his neck, and nibbled as she said, “You know what I want?” He slid his hands around her waist. “If you say Chinese food, I’m going to object.”
“I’ll give you a choice then,” she said, feeling braver with his jest. “Feed me, or take off your clothes.”
“I’m all for getting naked, if you are,” he quickly agreed.
“You first,” she bargained.
And while the idea of standing in front of him naked, him fully clothed, would make her feel vulnerable, exposed, it apparently had none of those effects on him.
“Okay,” he said, unaffecte
d by the idea as he pushed to his feet and started undressing. And only seconds later, he stood there in all his naked glory, and she sat there, fully clothed.
Sterling uses humor and flippant remarks to mask those wounds so I thought I'd share a few fun
“STERLINGISMS” as I call them.
"We Renegades write our own rules. The good, bendable kind that let me kick your ass all over the curb and then do it again just for fun.”
****
After being punched -- "Feels Good"
****
“You don’t know the meaning of ‘wait,’ do you?” Caleb asked.
Sterling grinned. “You wouldn’t love me if I did.”
****
“I’ll be taking that vial of ICE you got there in your pocket. Then you can mosey on along and take the rest of your lifetime on vacation. You know, do whatever retired drug dealers do. Play the casino tables. Watch SpongeBob for all I care. Just get the hell off my streets.”
****
“You’re the suit-wearing, talk-down-to-you, and then bust-your-wallet-in-the-balls, kind of asshole. I’m the dirty-boxing, back-alley kind of asshole.”
***
Sterling’s lips twisted with a wry taunt. “The next two bullets won’t hit the ground. Think of all those little bones in your feet blasted away by the steel force of a bullet.” He shook his head.
“Ouch. That hurts just thinking about it. Even on an ICE high, that’s gonna bite like a bitch.
After that, we’ll move upwards.” He pointed the gun at Mohawk’s knee. Then his thigh. Then shoved the gun toward his crotch. “About midway up is where all the fun starts. If I blow it off, will ICE grow it back? Wanna find out?”
***
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Lisa
Lisa Renee Jones, Hot Vampire Seduction
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