JUST RELEASED! Hunted Holiday
Kiss of Christmas Magic Box Set
‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house,
not a creature was stirring…
except for the sexy werewolf in a Santa hat come to seduce you while you read…
Treat yourself to a winter wonderland of shapeshifters and vampires, elves and fairies, ghosts and other paranormal creatures!
Twenty brand-new novellas of Christmas magic from some of the stars of paranormal romance will brighten your holiday with candy cane kisses and hot toddy loving. Spend your long winter nights with otherworldly alpha males where true love always wins the day and the spirits of the season are naughty AND nice.
This is a limited-edition box set. After the holidays, this deal will disappear forever, and you’ll have to spend over $20 to get these stories!
Includes a never before released story from National Bestselling Author Mandy M. Roth
Hunted Holiday: A Vampire Romance
Dani Malloye hates the holidays, and with good reason. Though her best friend tries to force the Christmas spirit on her with giant Santas and elves that light up, she’d rather spend her time doing what she does best—enforcing paranormal law on the streets of Chicago. Nothing like a little evil bloodshed to lighten the mood. Besides, work means she can spend time with her sexy boss, Cornell Sutton. Too bad Cornell is uptight, her new neighbor, and a vampire. Everyone knows slayers and vampires just don’t mix. Or do they?
Copyright (c) 2014 Mandy M. Roth
Chapter One
Zucchinis, the other word for “it”
“Come on, Dani.”
Dani Malloye eyed her friend Mimi cautiously, positive the girl had finally lost it and the mental break had come in the form of excess holiday cheer. Apparently, when Dani had, in casual conversation, mentioned she hadn’t celebrated the holidays in years, Mimi had seen that as a challenge and accepted it.
Tenfold.
Mimi had already spent the greater part of the snowy Chicago day unloading box after box of Christmas decorations onto Dani’s snow-covered front yard in an attempt to “get Dani in the mood” for the season. No amount of setting the scene would ever get Dani on board with the holidays.
She flinched, wanting to keep from slipping into remembered pain. She wasn’t thirteen anymore. She wasn’t helpless. Ten years had passed and she had embraced her destiny. She was no longer weak or terrified. Even with the sense of empowerment, Dani couldn’t make her way back to finding happiness at this time of year. But there was no sense in ruining Mimi’s love of it all.
With a slow, measured breath, Dani pushed a smile to her face, wanting to look happy for the sake of her friend. Currently, Dani had concerns about her yard being a fire hazard once the decorations were actually plugged in. So far, the only thing dancing through her head was images of her electric meter spinning. That was a bill she had no interest in seeing.
She made good money as a slayer, or the new politically correct term—Preternatural Enforcer—but she didn’t flaunt money or spend unwisely. There had been a time when she’d lived on the streets, unsure where her next meal would come from or even if it would come. While that had changed, she wasn’t one to spend needlessly.
Mimi, having grown up in the lap of luxury, didn’t really have any true concept of money. The girl still lived in her family’s huge mansion on the other side of the city, and more often than not, Mimi had her own personal driver to cart her around. She didn’t have to work, but she did anyway. She was one of the Preternatural Magiks with Chicago’s Bureau of Paranormal Investigation (CBPI). The people in charge liked to ration them out to the teams of enforcers, just in case a magik was needed. Mimi was on the same team as Dani. They’d met during training and had clicked right away. Dani and Mimi had grown up with very different backgrounds, but that hadn’t stopped them from becoming the best of friends.
The minute Dani spotted a giant light-up Santa, still in the box, standing almost as tall as her, she shook her head, needing to stop the insanity before it became an even bigger eyesore. “No way. I’m vetoing that one.”
“Come on, Dani,” Mimi pleaded, her light blue eyes wide and her bottom lip jutted forward, pouting, as her red hair poked out from under her knitted cap. The girl had a way of getting Dani to agree to just about anything. It was the power of the best friend code of ethics. That, or big sad eyes. Dani wasn’t sure.
“The Santa was too cute for me to resist,” added Mimi.
Dani paused, considering letting Mimi have her way. “No.”
“Dani, you have to admit he’s adorable.” Mimi tugged on the end of the box, doing her best to get Super Santa free from his packaging. From the looks of it, Super Santa weighed a ton.
Stretching her arms above her head in an attempt to ease her stiffness, Dani kept making a noise that indicated no way. That noise was quickly replaced by a grunt when she overstretched her tired and sore muscles.
Mimi eyed her. “Did you get checked in the infirmary after last night’s scuffle?”
“Scuffle” was a mild word for it. Millennium Park had been the scene of one hell of a battle between those who tried to police the supernaturals, and a select group of supernaturals, who had decided they wanted to do as they pleased—and doing as they pleased meant attacking humans.
That was a no-go.
Dani, a skilled slayer, and the few enforcers with her, had been grossly outnumbered when they’d been ambushed. She’d nearly gotten her ass handed to her once or twice during it all, but had come out on top. Several baddies had escaped and the CBPI was on it. If any of the perps resurfaced, the enforcers would be notified.
“I’m good. Sore, but good,” said Dani, though she was a bit worse off than she cared to admit. “But I’m still drawing the line on Super Santa.”
“Holiday mood killer,” mumbled Mimi.
Dani was about to comment when the hairs on the back of her neck prickled, wanting to stand on end but resisting. Her slayer side was more sensitive to certain types of supernaturals. That happened with a lot of slayers. Dani’s easy-to-sense supernaturals were vampires.
A smile wanted to form on her face when she put together which vampire in particular was watching her. The only one she’d ever had the hots for. The one who just happened to be her boss. She resisted, doing her best to act as if she didn’t sense him there, his gaze on her from afar.
Do not look over at his house. Do not, she repeated to herself.
Cornell Sutton, member of one of the ruling vampire families and one of the heads of her division of CBPI. More specifically, he was her direct boss and just happened to be a hunk. Tall, sinewy, with ink-black hair that hung just past his chiseled jaw line and eyes so dark it was often hard to tell when his demon rode his body. Like most vampires, he was on the pale side, but he worked it.
Man, oh man, did he work it.
Dani’s entire body tightened with thoughts of Cornell. He always smelled like cinnamon and baked goods to her. Every vampire had a natural scent. His reminded her of apple pie, which was her one weakness. She’d once asked Mimi if she too smelled baked goods around Cornell, but Mimi had stared at her like she was nuts.
Didn’t matter. The guy smelled yummy enough to eat.
Too bad he was her boss and a stick-in-the-mud. He was a by-the-book kind of guy. Always harping on her about the rules and regulations. About her duties. About her wild ways.
Mostly, she tuned him out, disliking authority figures and following orders. She thought she’d one-upped him with her streak of defiance, but then, two years ago, he’d done the unimaginable.
The jerk had bought the property next to Dani’s house as well as the next two properties beyond that, had the previous homes on the lots demolished, and then had commissioned the building of a giant, gothic-feeling mansion with matching grounds. The place did not fit into the suburban area one bit. It stuck out like a sore thumb, but he’d done it all the same. It had been completed six months prior, and for those long six months Dani had found herself living next door to her boss. He was probably watching her because he had plans to scold her for her juvenile behavior.
Yep, a total stick-in-the-mud.
A hot one.
But a stick all the same.
And Also in the Antho
Everlastingly
Michelle M. Pillow
On the run from her attackers and battered by a winterstorm, Maura O’Brian battles her way through the snow, desperate and alone. Shestumbles upon what she believes to be a secluded, abandoned farmhouse where strangevoices are be more frightful than what awaits outside. The signs keep pointingto the same person–Jack. His very name fills her heart with such intenselonging she’ll do anything to find him.
Is Jack real or simply herfevered imagination hoping for a holiday miracle?
***
Caribous’ Gift
A Kodiak Point novella
Eve Langlais
Damn it, a man had his pride and a caribou a certain majestic presence, all of which could wind up ruined if he abased himself to play a simple-minded reindeer in the town’s Christmas parade.
No way was he wearing damned tinsel in his antlers.
Like hell was he sporting a red nose and pulling a sleigh.
But he changes his mind when he meets the woman in charge of the event.
Single mom, Crystal, is doing her best to offer her daughter the best Christmas ever. It’s their first in Kodiak’s Point, and she’s not about to let some vain jerk ruin it for her little girl.
If playing dirty is what it takes…then bring on the Christmas games.
As Crystal and Kyle butt heads—and lips—they discover more than goodwill this holiday season. They’re gifted with a second chance at love.
***
Kissed by Temptation
A Coven Pointe novella
Deanna Chase
The last place sex-witch Mati Ballintine wants to be is at a holiday sorority party. But when the high angel from the council orders her to protect a new angel recruit, she has no choice but to go and grit her teeth through the frat boys’ advances.
The night turns from bad to worse when a demon appears and is hell-bent on taking the angel to Hell. Mati and her incubus boyfriend Vaughn will need to combine forces to not only save the angel, but everyone else the demon leaves in his wake.
***
A Ghostly Gift
A Southern Ghost Hunters novella
Angie Fox
One simple mistake…
It really didn’t look “that much” like an urn.
For a girl who is about to lose her family home.
So she dumped it out onto the rose bushes, and rinsed it with the hose.
Releases the ghost of a long-dead gangster.
He really didn’t have to be so rude about it.
And open’s Verity Long’s eyes to a whole new world…
Verity Long doesn’t want to see ghosts, and she’d rather not let anyone know her little secret, either. But when a restless spirit stirs up trouble in her friend’s holiday shop, Verity and her very new, very dead gangster friend decide to take a peek.
There they discover a mystery a eight decades in the making, and are tasked with reuniting a pair of war-torn lovers before they are doomed to spend eternity apart.
***
Love Singer
Mimi Strong
A struggling musician discovers she’s a witch who can cast spells with her songs. Or at least that’s what the sexy professor trying to seduce her says.
***
Bear Witness
A Pearson Security Bear Shifters novella
Michele Bardsley
After Gretchen Myers rescues her murdered stepsister’s baby, she’s nearly killed in a not-so-accidental car crash. When she wakes up in a Las Vegas hospital, she’s alone … until Rafe Pearson shows up. Not only does he have the baby, but he manages to rescue her from yet another attempt on her life.
Rafe is approximately the size of a linebacker with the looks of a GQ model. Yet, Gretchen has never seen a man so lonely. And he’s never met a woman so stubborn. But while she and the baby are in danger, there’s no way the former cop will let them out of his sight.
As a bear shifter who lives in a cabin deep in the woods of Mount Charleston, he has the perfect place to protect his new charges. Then the persistent hunters track down their vulnerable prey, and Rafe discovers too late that these killers are inhuman…
***
A Heart in Winter
An Aethereal Bonds novella
V.M. Black
Sarah defied her family and married for love beneath her station. Her happiness with Baron Marston was multiplied when they welcomed two sons into their family. But a wasting sickness has overcome Sarah, one that has resisted every poultice and purge of the greatest doctors in England. Soon, it would claim her life—if it were not for the promise of one last sage, whose vampire’s kiss brings her not only eternal youth but a bond that transcends all human oaths.
Can any mortal love, however strong, survive the seduction of an ageless vampire? Christmas is coming, and Sarah can only be at one hearth.
This story is set in the history of the Aethereal Bonds world.
***
Blood Deep: Vegas Vampires Book 1
A Steel Born novella
Jessa Slade
Avery Hill’s mother went missing one Christmas, and now she reluctant writes “News of the Weird”-style reports while searching for the truth of what happened years ago. When she finds herself in Las Vegas for the holiday, caught in a battle between light and dark fey armies, only a 700-year-old soul-wounded warrior cursed with eternal life can save her—before his own time runs out.
Inflicted with the ravpyrii curse, Hugo de Grava will gamble anything for his freedom. Even if he has to destroy even illusion in the sunlit realm. But the dangerous magic that made Avery fear for her sanity and made Hugo a vampire isn’t done with them yet, and long-lost worlds are on a collision course on the deepest night of the year…
***
Home for the Howlidays
A Montana Wolves novella
Chloe Cole
Niklaus Maslov left Stone Creek, Montana in his rear-view mirror three years ago and never planned to go back. His pack’s ways are antiquated, and the girl he loves will never be his. But when his father, the pack’s alpha, sends him an urgent message, he can’t deny the protective instinct drawing him back to his hometown, or the lure of the one that got away…
Petra Stevens has had her heart stomped on once and vows it will never happen again. When her former lover and packmate returns to Stone Creek, all the rage and hurt she felt when he’d left comes bubbling to the surface…along with other feelings she can’t control. If she can just avoid him while he’s in town, things will be fine.
But fate has other plans.
***
Shadows Beneath the Falling Snow: An Elven King Prequel Story
A “Claimed by the Elven King” novella
Cristina Rayne
When an unprecedented visit from the supreme elven king, Kirion, disrupts elven princess Miriel’s usual plans during the winter solstice, it’s the least of her worries when a single touch by the powerful king could reveal a secret she and her family have desperately kept for over a hundred years. However, King Kirion has a few revelations of his own that could also change Miriel’s life forever.
A holiday tale set two thousand years before the events chronicled in Claimed by the Elven King.
***
A Christmas to Bear
A Wolf Rock Shifters novella
Carina Wilder
There’s nothing quite like the feeling of going home to the family for Christmas. And that’s exactly why Aria’s chosen to avoid hers like the plague and head to the quiet mountain town of Wolf Rock to ski, celebrate single life and admire the male shifter population from afar. Funny how a little accident can turn a girl’s world upside down. Lucian is a sexy, reclusive polar bear shifter who’s stayed out of humanity’s way for ages, and he expects humanity to return the favour. That includes clumsy women who aren’t great at skiing but are remarkably gifted at smashing into trees.Will the laws of attraction trump the laws of common sense? Probably. It is Christmas, after all. The season of mistletoe, warm hearths and the warmest hearts.
***
A Cold Winter’s Bite
Dawn Michelle
December meant more to Hunter Wynn than holidays and time off from a stressful job as the owner of a law firm. It meant the annual getaway he and his partners lived for. A trip to the cold forests of Canada for a winter hunt. Alone and isolated, anything could— and did— happen.
This year it was Hunter’s turn to bring the guest of honor, and he’d just met the perfect girl for it. Pretty, intelligent, and lacking any close friends or relatives. The only question leftis whether Hunter can sink his teeth in her before she sets her claws in him.
***
The Hunter’s Moon
Windham Werewolves
Shawntelle Madison
Kaden Windham will do anything to protect his wolf pack, including saving a dying werewolf hunter. Hunter Cynthia McGinnis doesn’t want or need his protection. And despite the fire that ignites between them, she would rather take him down than become his mate.
***
Lords of Misrule
Lords of Misrule
J.S. Hope
Reporter Alessandra “Alex” Donati is in Venice chasing the story of her career. While the city prepares for the Christmas festivities, Alex is hot on the trail of a group that celebrates a much older – and much darker – festival, one that offers sex and sacrifice in exchange for power and wealth.
Alex is smart. She’s going into this with open eyes. She thinks she can handle anything the city and its ancient rites throw at her, including gorgeous cult leader Sebastian Assante, but she’s wrong. As the lines between fantasy and reality blur she finds herself caught up in the passion and excess of the Saturnalia Festival, and she loves it. The attention is thrilling. The heat and lust of the rites dizzying, and the hunger of the revelers intoxicating…but when the masks come off what lies beneath is terrifying.
Plus brand-new holiday stories from:
Molly Prince and Aubrey Rose
Viola Rivard
Lola St Vil
Terah Edun
Jessica Ryan
The post JUST RELEASED! Hunted Holiday appeared first on Nocturnal Journal.
