Tempting the Fire (42 page)

He nodded. “No small feat,” he admitted. And wasn’t that the truth.

“Those bastards have been ruining more and more of our missions.” Truly, it had been a miracle that Itor had been able to pull off something as huge as the crystal robbery without ACRO’s interference. “It’s time to go on the offensive with them. We need to take them out. Let me do it. Let me have Devlin.”

“Why, Phoebe,” Alek murmured into his glass, “you’re talking about killing your own brother.” He grinned. “Your ruthlessness makes me proud.”

She stood, knowing she’d just gotten herself out of some horrendous punishment. Melanie wouldn’t be so lucky. Smiling, she clinked glasses with him.

“I learned from the best,” she said, already savoring the taste of bloodlust on her tongue. “Like father, like daughter.”

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About the Author

SYDNEY CROFT is a pseudonym for two authors, who each also write under their own names. This is their fifth novel together. Visit their website at

www.sydneycroft.com.

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Don’t miss any of Sydney Croft’s sizzling series

featuring the bad boys and girls of the Agency for
Covert Rare Operatives

Riding the Storm

ACRO Series Book 1

A storm’s rage. A woman’s desire.

A man with the power to set them both free.

He can summon lightning at will. Emerge unscathed from the center of a tornado.

Strip a woman down to her barest defenses through the sheer force of his sexuality. He’s gorgeous, dangerous, and the target of parameteorologist Haley Holmes’s latest mission.

Haley has been dispatched to the Louisiana bayou to investigate the phenomenon known as Remy Begnaud—a man with a gift he never wanted: the ability to control a storm’s 241

fury. But even a woman trained in bizarre weather phenomena has no defense against the electrifying power of the ex–Navy SEAL … a power his enemies would kill to control.

With her agency monitoring their every move, Haley’s job is to seduce Remy, gain his trust—and help him harness his extraordinary gift. But who will protect her from this voracious lover who’s introducing her to a new world of erotic thrills—a man who grows increasingly insatiable with each new weather event? Haley knows a big storm is approaching—and with it will come unexpected delights. But so, too, will the storm unleash her greatest fears: an enemy bent on destroying Remy. And her worst fear of all

—falling in love with this magnificent man, then having to betray him …

“Riding the Storm will ride your every fantasy … a power punch of erotic heat, emotion and adventure. Remy takes you on an adventure you won’t soon forget.”

—LORA LEIGH, USA Today bestselling author

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Unleashing the Storm

ACRO Series Book 2

Feel the heat. Hear the roar.

The fever has begun.

There’s a storm rising. Electricity crackles in the air. For Kira Donovan, it’s that time of year again: when the need floods her flesh, when almost any man—the bigger and the stronger the better—will do. For Kira, an animal psychic, the heat is a matter of life and death, and this year it has come at just the right time. Tom Knight, a natural-born predator, has arrived at her isolated Idaho farm—for reasons all his own.

At first Kira isn’t interested in Knight’s motives. She just needs him—his body, his hands, his scent. But soon, through a daze of desire and distrust, Kira discovers Knight’s world—the world of a covert operative, one man among dozens of secret agents waging an astonishing global war. Knight’s mission is to bring Kira—kicking and screaming if necessary—into the Agency for Covert Rare Operatives and harness her extraordinary gift. He never expected the powerful emotions she would ignite in him, or 243

the fierce desire to keep her safe from harm. For as darkness gathers around them, Kira is feeling the heat once again, leading them both on a wild ride of delicious thrills … and terror beyond imagining.

“Red-hot romance and paranormal thrills from the first page to the last! Sydney Croft writes the kinds of books I love to read!”

—LARA ADRIAN, New York Times bestselling author

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Seduced by the Storm

ACRO Series Book 3

Danger is the ultimate aphrodisiac.

They met in a steamy Florida bar—then spent a night of mind-bending passion.

Two secret agents who each possess unique telekinetic gifts—and whose combined sexual powers leave neither of them unscathed. For ex–Navy SEAL Wyatt Kennedy, assigned by the Agency for Covert Rare Operatives to the most treacherous mission of his career, the woman in black leather and lace has just become more than a one-night stand. Because Faith Black is the sole barrier to the success of his mission—and not even Wyatt’s legendary seduction skills can penetrate her deep cover.

Faith’s psychic gifts make her one of the world’s most dangerous women—but she hides a secret pain she shares with no one. Until Wyatt. And Faith has an agenda of her own: using her unique powers to save someone close to her—a move that pits her against a man she thought she’d never see again. For as a deadly hurricane is unleashed across the eastern seaboard, desire reignites between Faith and Wyatt, exposing secrets 245

that thrust them both into harm’s way. With the hurricane sweeping closer—and their erotic hunger for each other growing—these two wary hearts must come together to heal, to trust … and to harness the power of a storm that could consume everything in its path.

“If you like intrigue, espionage, danger and sexy secret agents with psychic abilities, you will love this book—especially when one agent has to disperse a hurricane with sexual energy! Croft’s realistic characters have real, flawed motives that keep the action suspenseful and the sex extra hot.”

—Romantic Times

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Taming the Fire

ACRO Series Book 4

Pleasure. Power. Danger. It doesn’t get any hotter than this.

He came to the underground London club for a night of extreme sex play with the enigmatic “Mistress Rik.” But the special agent known as Trance is really on a search-and-rescue mission to keep her alive. Part predator, Ulrika “Rik” Jaegar possesses feral powers that make her a danger to others—and to herself. That’s why the Agency for Covert Rare Operatives wants to recruit her to their side. To do so, Trance will have to pull off the impossible: capture and control Rik, both woman and beast.

On the run from the deadly agency that changed her into a pleasure-seeking shape shifter, Rik uses sex to rein in her own raging desires. Operating on pure instinct, she trusts no one … especially not the magnificent alpha male with the power to seduce her into submission. An undercover agent with unique hypnotic gifts, Trance is surprised by his instinct to hold Rik and keep her safe—but he has a job to do. And as he hunts her down, as Rik and Trance are thrust into the ultimate game of domination and submission, they’ll enter a place where surrender is their sole hope of survival—and the only thing 247

that can tame the wild beast in both of them.

“Totally outstanding. This is [a] sizzling hot series that has never failed to keep my undivided attention. The collaboration of Sydney Croft is nothing short of brilliant.”

—Fresh Fiction

And stay tuned

for the newest ACRO novel,

coming from Bantam Books in 2011….

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Tempting the Fire is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Bantam Books Trade Paperback Original

Copyright © 2010 by Larissa Ione and Stephanie Tyler

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

BANTAM B OOKS and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Croft, Sydney.

Tempting the fire / Sydney Croft.

p. cm.

eISBN: 978-0-553-90759-9

1. United States. Navy. SEALs—Fiction. 2. Animal communicators—Fiction.

3. Rain forests—Fiction. 4. Brazil—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3603. R6356 T46 2010

813’.6—dc22

2010006267

http://www.bantamdell.com

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