Between Darkness and Daylight (53 page)

"
Guardian Seductress
is a chill-tingling fantastic read. Genesis has strong characteristics throughout as she keeps Alex in her care at all costs, and Alex is interesting as he tries to come to terms with the crisis landed in his lap. Ms. McKeever pens a fabulous tale. When Alex was confronted with the woman with hazel eyes, I think I was just as frightened as he was. I kept looking for claw like fingers to jump from the pages. Ms. McKeever fashions a gripping story that this reader enjoyed very much and look for the others in the series.
4 Cups
" —

Cherokee,
Coffee Time Romance

"
Guardian Seductress
is a shape-shifting, paranormal, fantasy thrill ride that will keep readers on the edge of their seats. Genesis is different in so many ways and all the things she can do will shock and amaze you. She is attracted to Alex and tries to fight it, but as usual that never lasts long. Alex can’t believe what Genesis tells him and thinks she’s nuts, until he experiences first hand just what she can do.

He has no clue about his past or what happened with his mother and Genesis is there to make sure he finds out. I have read several books by Gracie McKeever and each one has its own appeal. Her writing is creative and readers will love her flair for intrigue.
4 Blue Ribbons
" —

Angel,
Romance Junkies

"Welcome to the world of Emsharra, a world set in a parallel universe where the warring Inanna and Sebitu races, both of whom live off of human energy, have formed an uneasy truce due to the depletion of their human food supply. Ms. McKeever has created a vividly

imaginative world, complete with its own language and culture, and
Guardian Seductress
is an impressive introduction into that new world.

This story truly provokes the thought of what if there was life out there besides us and we were the prey rather than the hunter. While this reviewer would have liked to see certain portions of the book developed a little further, especially the back story surrounding Alex’s conception and the somewhat contrived instantaneous acceptance of Alex by his royal grandmother, this brief but powerful tale took this reviewer on a wild ride through a fantastical tale that will resonate long after the last page is turned. Genesis is strength personified and Alex proves to be her match in all ways. This story is hot, hot, hot and any reader that likes fantasy and doesn’t mind explicit language and sex will absolutely love this tale as much as this reviewer did!
4

Hearts
"
—Leah,
LoveRomancesandMore.com

STORY EXCERPT

PREDATOR’S SALVATION

Sisters of Emsharra, Book 2

By Gracie C. McKeever

Copyright © 2006

Mateo couldn’t help feeling as if he was being led down a dark and lonely path he really didn’t want to pursue or explore.

He paused at the passenger side door of Alex’s car and waited for Alex to disengage the power locks. His heartbeat sped when he caught the sudden, spicy-sweet scent of cinnamon on the air, as if someone were baking a cake nearby with the ingredient generously sprinkled in. The hair on the back of his neck stood up, and an icy-hot liquid sensation of lust settled in his groin in response to the enticing aroma.

Mateo sniffed the air more thoroughly, looked at Alex to confirm that he had smelled the scent too and saw Alex frown as if confused.

Mateo had an instant to glance up right before something swooped down towards them from the indigo, star-dappled sky, something large enough to be a person, but with wings spanning five feet across from either side of its back.

Definitely not human, but definitely a female.

Mateo thought it right before the woman dive-bombed towards him, arms outstretched in front of her as if she were some sort of super-heroine.

He had a moment to step away from the car and hear Alex’s warning cry of “Look out, Matt! Duck!” before the woman hooked her arms beneath his armpits, scooped him up, and took off for the sky again.

“Oh, shit…Mateo! Matt!”

Okay, this could
not
be happening! He wasn’t soaring a hundred yards off the ground with Alex yelling through cupped hands and chasing after him from the parking lot of McDougall’s. A woman with humongous wings had not just swooped out of the sky and grabbed him. No, siree!

Mateo glanced up at his abductor, but she didn’t look at him, just kept her eyes straight ahead as she flapped those big bat-like wings and acted as if he wasn’t suspended below her.

“Hey! Hey…you!” What exactly was he going to say? ‘Put me down’

didn’t seem like such a good idea when she was soaring over rooftops as if she had a hang glider attached to her back.

“Silence, human. We will be at our destination shortly.”

What the hell was that? A line out of a Shakespearean play he hadn’t read? She certainly spoke in the same stilted accent.

Christ, he hated heights!

Here’s a hint, Matt. Don’t look down.

He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth to try to make the sick feeling in his stomach go away.

Mateo opened his eyes, couldn’t help himself, as they glided over a deserted area of the city in Lower Manhattan. From what he could make out by the light of the moon, it looked like some place in TriBeCa with converted lofts and narrow streets dominating the immediate area.

She aimed for the roof of one of the warehouses and smoothly landed.

As soon as his feet touched the rooftop pavement, Mateo tried to make a run for it but was stopped in his tracks by a green force field that completely encircled him after he’d taken only two steps forward.

He scowled at his kidnapper through the bubble prison as she circled him, hands clasped behind her back. He thought there was something oddly familiar about her, about the way she looked at him.

He pummeled the capsule with his fists, and she smiled at him like an indulgent parent watching her baby throw a fit of temper in his crib.

“Let me out of here!”

She raised a fist in front of her as if in a Black Panther salute and twisted it back and forth a couple of times, her movements unhurried and strangely erotic. “You will sleep now,” she murmured.

They were the last words Mateo heard before he passed out.

ADULT EXCERPT

PREDATOR’S SALVATION

Sisters of Emsharra, Book 2

By Gracie C. McKeever

Copyright © 2006

Mateo stared at her back as she walked away from him to the stainless steel kitchen in the distance. He tried to see if he could spot the wings she had used to fly away with him, but there was nothing except the mahogany smoothness of her well-muscled back.

His fingers itched with the memory of how that smooth skin felt beneath them, as if he had been with her before, inside her, too many times to count, and craved to do it all again.

He let his gaze lazily drift down her six-foot tall, hour-glass figure from the gentle slope of her bare back to the slim curve of her waist and finally to her endless legs encased in painted-on burgundy leather pants and matching knee-high boots.

Despite his precarious state, Mateo felt his cock hardening in his boxer briefs, fantasized about putting his dick in her slick, hot cunt. What was
wrong
with him?

She turned back to him then, hazel eyes glinting with insight, leering as she stalked across the burnished parquet floor.

She sat at his bedside. “I am LaMia Enlil, and there is nothing at all wrong with you except that you are a healthy, red-blooded male.”

What was this? Formal introductions before she killed him? And damn, he wished she would stop dipping inside his head like that!

He used to think it was cute as well as advantageous to know other people’s feelings, especially girls he was involved with as a late teen. He had, however, gotten over his psychic voyeurism years ago when, at twenty, he’d experienced his then girlfriend’s severe menstrual cramps.

He’d snooped because they’d argued earlier in the day and he had thought she was just using her period as an excuse to get out of having sex with him. He had been sorry for his mistrust ever since.

LaMia was more outright and rude with her snooping than he had ever been though, and he didn’t like it one bit. He didn’t like someone like her tooling around in his brain and knowing every little thing he was thinking.

“Contrary to your assumptions, I am not rude. I am merely availing myself of any and all opportunities to get to know my submissive better.

And you will call me Mistress or Mistress LaMia, by the way,” she said then firmly placed her hand on his forehead.

Mateo grimaced.

Who the hell is this woman?

He closed his eyes and braced himself as her subtle, yet heady, cinnamon-and-female scent washed over him. He felt the tug on his brain as if she had reached inside his head to gently peel back the layers of his past.

Mateo’s heart pounded a vicious beat in his chest, obliterating all miniscule sounds in the loft as he wondered if his heart would explode.

She held her palm against his forehead for several long moments, ransacking his mind, melding with his memories until she became a part of them.

He knew this woman! Knew her too intimately to deny her or forget what he had been doing with her for the last several months—but more importantly, he knew her too intimately to deny what she had done to his family so many years ago.

One woman he implicitly trusted with his body and soul. The other had taken too much from him for Mateo to trust her at all.

How could they be one in the same?

Her touch was insidious, seductive, seeping into him like the mist in his dreams, and then he realized she
was
the mist in his dreams.

He could see how his brother and father had succumb to her allure, how his father had allowed her to come between him and Mom and how his brother had allowed her to drain the life right out of him. The promise of the ultimate climax and release was too powerful to resist.

But resist he would…this time.

Suddenly, LaMia jerked back her hand and gasped.

Good! He wasn’t the only one so overwhelmed by what she’d just done.

“It
is
you! At first I was not certain, did not believe it was possible that fate would actually send you to me...” She reached for a corner of the tape and viciously stripped it off his mouth.

“Shit!”

“Do not make me regret doing that.”

Like he wasn’t regretting it already, Mateo thought as he flexed his jaws in concert with his fists clenching and unclenching in the cuffs above his head.

“Speak!”

“I’m not a dog!” Mateo shot back and silently gauged her reaction. He noticed the slight upward tilt of her lips, an expression of admiration and amusement that just barely reached her hazel eyes.

So, she was enjoying this, enjoying him. Hell, he’d give her something to really admire and smile about once he was free. “What do you want me to say, Mia?” he asked, thinking two could play the game as he let the moniker slide off his tongue and saw her blink at his audacity. “You accuse me as if I tried to defraud you.
You
abducted
me
.
I thought you knew who I w—”

“Silence!” She slashed the air with her hand as she leaped from the bed.

Mateo had a flash of her in Julian’s bedroom the last time he had seen his brother alive.

He saw the woman’s glowing yellow gaze when she glared at him over a shoulder, bared her teeth and hissed.

Mateo had a second to react as she finished draining Julian of his life-force—or whatever the phosphorescent red light that was arcing from his brother’s body into the woman’s was called—before she turned on him.

He charged across the threshold and hurled his body through the air, intending to knock her off Julian. He got within a couple of feet of the bed before she raised her arms in front of her and rasped,
“Kundalini”
right before zapping him with a green bolt of lightning from her fingers.

His body heated now with the memory. Lust raged through him, making his cock jut upward like a repugnant invitation.

Get a grip, Matt. Forget how much you want to drive your dick into
her and make her scream like she made your brother scream. Just
concentrate on now. Here and
now.

“You killed him.”

“Julian’s death was an unfortunate consequence of our coupling.”

He reacted without thinking, violently kicking out with his shackled legs.

She drew back and stared at him as if he were a dangerous animal that had to be watched carefully.

Her reaction was instant and infinitesimal, just enough to let him know that he wasn’t the only one affected by their encounter.

Mateo closed his eyes, tuned into her body’s responses, felt the shimmering fire inside her, felt her vaginal muscles spasming and…was that regret hovering just on the outside of her consciousness? Regret for what had happened to his brother?

Good, he would take these and run with them.

He opened his eyes and smiled. “Why did you take me?”

“I took you for the same reasons I took your brother. I took you because…” She slashed the air with her hand again and sat back down on the bed, a tightly wound ball of energy.

Mateo’s body immediately reacted to her closeness, that energy. If he had been free, there were all sorts of ways he could have helped her unleash that energy but she wasn’t giving him a choice. Not yet. “Why?”

he demanded.

“It matters not why I did it, and beginning now you will learn it is unwise to question my actions or my motives. As of this moment, you are a human with no rights and no say over what I do to you here.”

The hell he was. Human, yeah, but with no rights and no say? Where the hell did she come off? This was still America, wasn’t it?

“The quicker you learn to deal with that, Mateo, the better.”

He didn’t know what angered him more, the familiarity with which she addressed him or the fact that hearing his Christian name flow from her lips made him hotter than had she put her hand on his cock and caressed him. In fact, the more she spoke, the angrier and hotter he got.