Shelly Laurenston,
Cynthia Eden
ISBN 0-7582-2726-4
Read an Excerpt »
Buy Now »

Two of paranormal romance’s bestselling authors combine their extraordinary talents and set the pages on fire with an after-dark anthology featuring Alpha males so hot, so wild, and so bad, they may just be the best you’ve ever had…

Shelly Laurenston - Miss Congeniality

It’s those damn stockings that get me every time. They have this sexy little line down the back and I can’t help but stare at her legs…constantly. And you’d think she’d be all over me like every other female in the Seattle area. I’m young, good looking, and one day I’ll be Alpha Male of my family’s Pack. But Professor Irene Conridge acts like I don’t even exist. How is that possible? Now she’s got enemies coming out of the woodwork and I have to protect her. Why? Because that’s the kind of man I am. Yes, I am that amazing. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that while I work to secure her safety, she’ll be hanging out at my house. That’s hours…days even that I’ve got Irene Conridge right where I want her.

Cynthia Eden - Wicked Ways

I’m too dangerous for her. I know it, but I can’t get my sexy new neighbor out of my head. When I hear her scream one night, the absolute last thing I expect to see is Miranda Shaw—star of my hottest fantasies—being attacked by a vampire. Now the undead jerk is after her, and I’m the only thing standing between the beautiful lady and a killer who just won’t stop. Well, too bad for him, because that vamp has just made the worst mistake of his afterlife—he’s tangled with a shifter. And Miranda, well, she’s so busy watching out for him that she won’t see me closing in on her—not until it’s too late—and I’m about to show her just how wild I can get…

Read an Excerpt

Shelly Laurenston - Miss Congeniality

“Where do you get those stockings from, doc?” Niles Van Holtz, Van to his friends and family, growled. Those stockings were like something out of a 1940s movie with that one sexy line up the back of each leg. He bet she wore garters too. Man, the woman drove him absolutely crazy and she didn’t even notice.

Cold, brutally pale blue eyes turned and locked on Van. “Ah, yes,” she sighed out. “Niles Van Holtz. My night at these charity functions wouldn’t be complete without your biting wit and continual obsession over my underclothes.”

“Why else do you think I’d drag myself to the science building, of all places, except to see you?”

Van had known a lot of mean women in his time. Coming from a wealthy background filled with lethal predators, he was more surprised to find a nice female than a mean one. But Dr. Irene Conridge, PhD several times over and Rhode Scholar by the time she was fifteen, made mincemeat of them all.

Irene Conridge was what one would call a child prodigy. At least she was. But at a luscious twenty-five she’d left her “child” anything long behind.

From the time Irene had walked onto the university campus, Van had locked onto her scent and had hunted her relentlessly ever since. She’d been eighteen at the time and Van twenty. He thought she was just another freshman. Or, as his buds liked to call them, freshmeat. But he found out quick enough-when she’d coldly laid in to him, leaving him standing speechless in the middle of the Square-that she was actually a guest professor. And a big deal. Ivy League universities all over the country and Europe had fought for her. But, for some unknown reason, she’d taken the job at this small but elite university on the border of Seattle, Washington. She’d turned down Harvard, Yale, M.I.T., Berkley, Oxford…all of them.

No one understood it, but Van did. Why go to a big university with a bunch of other former prodigies, when you can go to a smaller one and be Head Shit in Charge? Because Irene went “small”, she ruled. They denied her nothing, gave her whatever she needed, and strove hard to keep her happy. In return, Irene kept the university’s name alive in academic circles, had students begging to get into the school so they could enroll in her class-until they actually had to get through one of her classes-and kept the money flowing in. The woman wasn’t charming but somehow she dragged money from some of the richest families in the Northwest. His included.

“Besides, I’m only obsessed with your underclothes, doc.” He knew she hated when he called her that. “Tell me, do you wear garters under those clothes?”

“Yes,” she replied plainly. “I don’t like pantyhose. I find them too binding.”

Van couldn’t help himself, he growled again. Enough so that she turned and looked at him directly. “Did you just growl at me?”

“It was much more of a purr.”

“Fascinating.”

“Am I?”

“No. You’re not. But the fact that a grown man would growl over garter belts is fascinating. I’m sure the psychology department would find you a fascinating test study.”

“Sweet talker.”

She frowned and it wasn’t a frown of annoyance or concern, but one of deep thought. “Am I? I’ve been told I’m cold and quite removed.”

Van had to try really hard not to laugh. To be honest, he didn’t know a colder woman on the planet. Female cavewomen who had been frozen in blocks of ice for millions of years were warmer than Irene. And yet…he simply couldn’t leave her alone.

His sister, who currently floated around the party avoiding anyone who annoyed her, didn’t understand his obsession over that “plain girl” as she often called Irene. He’d heard it before. Irene called “plain” or, his personal favorite, “not hideous.” But Van didn’t know what they were talking about. The woman was absolutely adorable. Black, shoulder-length hair which had an out-of-control curl thing going that made him, for some unknown reason, think constantly of sweaty rough sex. Full lips he’d seen in more than one wet dream over the years and a regal nose. A long, curvy body she constantly hid behind boring prim and proper power suits in the dullest colors but she always wore those sexy stockings and killer shoes. But it was the eyes that did him in. He saw eyes like hers on arctic wolves. So pale blue he didn’t really even think of them as blue at all. He’d heard more than a few people call her eyes freakish or disturbing, but he could stare into those eyes forever.

“I bet you’re not really cold, doc. Not underneath it all.”

“Actually, I am. Oh. And Jackie and I have a bet going.” She motioned to her roommate, Jaqueline Jean-Louis and former child music prodigy. The two women had known each other for years and Jean-Louis taught in the prestigious music department of the university. What Van found fascinating about the whole relationship was the fact that Jean-Louis was a shifter. A jackal, specifically. He always wondered if Irene knew. If she did, she absolutely never showed it. But it wouldn’t be unusual for her not to know. Many shifters went through their entire lives successfully hiding who they really were from the full-humans close to them. It was important to their kind to hide who they were. In fact, hard choices were sometimes made in order to keep their secret.

“Is that right?” he asked, taking a glass of champagne from the tray passing by.

“Yes. I’m convinced you believe I’m a virgin and all this time you’ve been hoping to defile me.”

No matter what he did, he couldn’t stop from choking that champagne right back up.

Cynthia Eden - Wicked Ways

“You don’t have to thank me.” A deep rumble of sound, almost like a growl.

The man had the deepest, roughest voice she’d ever heard. One that made her toes curl and her thighs quiver.

Down, girl.

Her hormones were going crazy and her mind was turning into mush. Had to be the excitement of the night.

“I did what any man would have done.”

She shook her head at that. “Uh, no.” Miranda could still see the men locked in brutal combat. “I don’t know many guys who would have kicked down a door to save me.”

He caught her hand. Brought her fingers to his lips and pressed a kiss to the knuckles. “Then you don’t know the right kind of men.”

Oh, damn. Now her knees were shaking. And was he staring at her with hunger in those golden eyes?

He kissed her hand again, and for a second, she felt the warm brush of his tongue against her fingers. Miranda tensed. “I-I should be going to bed.” Alone. Because while her hormones might be jumping on the adrenaline party, she wasn’t about to go falling into bed with her neighbor. Even if he had quite probably saved her life.

And even if he was sexy as all hell.

And even if just the sight of him did have her whole body tightening with arousal.

She pulled her hand away from Cain’s warm grasp. Stepped toward the guest bedroom he’d shown her earlier.

“If that’s what you want…” The words were soft.

For an instant, she imagined him. Following her into that dark room and stripping.

Miranda swallowed, felt the faint sting along her throat. “Thank you, Cain. Really.” Her fingers wrapped around the door frame.

He gave a faint nod.

Miranda turned away from him, stepped over the threshold.

“Just got one quick question for you, baby,” he murmured, and the floor squeaked beneath his feet.

Glancing back over her shoulder, she waited.

His dark brows pulled down low over his eyes. “Why the hell were you out with a vampire?”

* * *

She was coming to him.

He’d tossed and turned for hours thinking of her, caught in a world of fantasies and feverish dreams and she was coming to him.

His eyes opened. He could see her perfectly even in the darkness of the room. She stood silhouetted in the doorway, clad in one of his oversized white tee shirts. Her legs were bare.

That would make things infinitely easier.

“Cain…” A whisper, the sound hesitant and…afraid?

He sat up slowly, drawing in more of her scent with a deep breath.

“I have to…” A step closer. “I have to know…” More slow movements across the floor.

The bedsheets were around his hips. Hiding his arousal, for the moment.

Cain reached over, flipped on the bedside light. For her benefit, not his.

She blinked, hesitated a moment at the flood of light. Then she inched toward him, stopping at the side of the bed. Her wide eyes gazed down at him. “When you first came into my house, you–you looked different.”

Hell. He’d known this would come, sooner or later. Cain had just been hoping for much, much later because when she learned the full truth about him, his fantasies would die a quick death.

An animal. Women like her don’t go for animals. The vampire had been right about that one.

“I didn’t imagine it, did I?” Not as much hesitation now, more determination. “Your eyes–they glowed. Your teeth were sharper.” She reached for his hand, fumbled a bit, then caught his fingers. “And you–you had claws.”

The shock had worn off. While he’d been lusting, she’d obviously been in there replaying the whole night and coming to the conclusion that he–

She released his hand. “You’re not a human, are you, Cain Lawson?”

No sense in lying. He stared up at her, and let the beast glow from his eyes. “No, baby, I’m not.”