Second Valentine's Day present: snippet from Natural Evil (e-novella, Mar 20th)

Really shaken for the first time that evening, Claudia tried to hide the impact that Luis in his human form had on her.

He was so tall, she noticed he had to be careful that he didn’t scrape his head on the trailer’s ceiling. His body was massive, heavy muscles overlaid on strong, sturdy bones, with a wide, powerful chest that tapered to a long, washboard stomach. His smooth brown, silken-looking skin wrapped the whole package like the world’s most extravagant Christmas gift, and that sheet he’d knotted at his lean hips was the bow. He had dark, bitter chocolate eyes, boldly molded features and a mouth that was so full and sensual, it should have looked girlish but didn’t. His thick black, gleaming hair held a hint of curl. It was a touch too long for the style he wore and flopped in his eyes, as though he were a couple weeks’ late in getting it cut.

As he walked toward her, he moved with a fighter’s easy, athletic confidence, and when he brushed her cheek, his mouth was very warm against her chilled skin.

She was used to big, tough men, and experienced with commanding them in combat missions. In some ways, Luis’s physical presence was so damn familiar it was comforting on a visceral level. That was disturbing all on its own, because her gut insisted that she recognized him and his presence filled a hole that had been inside of her ever since she had lost the others in her unit and retired.

As if that weren’t enough to knock her off balance, his presence had an intense vitality filled with a sexuality that ran dark and hot. It was sultry, powerful. It was knowledgeable. He carried that knowledge in his DNA, and it manifested in every languid, graceful move of his body and in those dark, intelligent eyes.

This was a man who’d had a whole lot of sex and he really, really liked it. And why wouldn’t he? By the time he hit puberty, every female he met and probably several of the males would have fallen over in invitation the moment they laid eyes on him.

And she was not immune either to his particular potent brand of alchemy.