Harlequin Nocturne March 2016 Box Set Read online

  Do you harbor passionate otherworldly desires where the normal and paranormal collide? Let Harlequin® Nocturne bring you into dark and dangerous territory where your senses will be awakened.

  Harlequin® Nocturne features two new full-length paranormal romances every month!

  BOUND BY THE NIGHT

  by Megan Hart

  Things that go bump in the night, from the inexplicable to the irresistible… New York Times bestselling author Megan Hart captivates readers with this gripping collection of novellas.

  Monica Blackship hunts down creatures that shouldn’t exist. Stephanie Adams has the power to shape nocturnal visions. And if it’s weird, Jase Davis is on it. They’re all members of the Crew, an international consortium devoted to explaining the unexplainable. In this enthralling trilogy, these intrepid investigators face a daunting array of paranormal dangers, from deadly cryptids to dream thieves. They’re ready for ghosts, monsters and other strange phenomena. But is their greatest challenge distinguishing reality from fantasy, or separating work from pleasure?

  BAYOU SHADOW HUNTER

  by Debbie Herbert

  Bent on revenge, Native American Shadow Hunter Tombi Silver could turn to only one woman, the “witch” Annie Matthews, for help. Her ability to hear auras had allowed her to discover Tombi’s friend mystically trapped by forces that could destroy them all. The accompanying message of a traitor in their midst meant Tombi could trust no one. Dare he bring Annie along on his quest to fight shadow spirits? Putting his faith in someone outside his tribe, especially one who pulled at his tightly controlled desires, could prove just as dangerous as his mission...

  Look for 2 new paranormal stories every month from Harlequin® Nocturne!

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  Harlequin Nocturne March 2016 Box Set

  Bound by the Night

  Bayou Shadow Hunter

  Megan Hart

  Debbie Herbert

  Table of Contents

  Bound by the Night

  By Megan Hart

  Bayou Shadow Hunter

  By Debbie Herbert

  Things that go bump in the night, from the inexplicable to the irresistible... New York Times bestselling author Megan Hart captivates readers with this gripping collection of novellas.

  Monica Blackship hunts down creatures that shouldn’t exist. Stephanie Adams has the power to shape nocturnal visions. And if it’s weird, Jase Davis is on it. They’re all members of the Crew, an international consortium devoted to explaining the unexplainable. In this enthralling trilogy, these intrepid investigators face a daunting array of paranormal dangers, from deadly cryptids to dream thieves. They’re ready for ghosts, monsters and other strange phenomena. But is their greatest challenge distinguishing reality from fantasy, or separating work from pleasure?

  Praise for the novels of New York Times

  bestselling author Megan Hart

  “Hart excels at creating female leads who know exactly what they want and don’t make excuses for their lifestyle. Following this heroine’s journey is exciting.”

  —RT Book Reviews on Vanilla

  “Meticulously sensual details and steamy interludes make this an achingly erotic read.”

  —RT Book Reviews on Flying

  “Naked is a great story, steeped in emotion. Hart has a wonderful way with her characters.... She conveys their thoughts and actions in a manner that brings them to life. And the erotic scenes provide a sizzling read.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “You won’t ever be disappointed with Megan Hart!”

  —Under the Covers on Out of the Dark

  Megan Hart is an award-winning and New York Times bestelling author of more than thirty novels, novellas and short stories. Her work has been published in almost every genre, including contemporary women’s fiction, historical romance, romantic suspense and erotica. Megan lives in the deep, dark woods of Pennsylvania with her husband and children. You can contact Megan through her website at MeganHart.com.

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  BOUND BY THE NIGHT

  Megan Hart

  Dear Reader,

  Things that go bump in the night...or the daylight...monsters and ghouls and scary dreams, oh my!

  Yeah, I love writing the scary things. Also the sexy, romantic things. Put them together and you have the recipe for some of my favorite types of stories!

  In this collection, you’ll find brooding, moody heroes, heroines who kick butt, and a world in which dreams have their own reality. Meet the Crew, an international group dedicated to dispatching with the odd, the strange, the unexplained. Think a little bit The X-Files crossed with Supernatural and a dash of Kolchak: the Night Stalker.

  You’ll read about the Ephemeros, the dream world, where people with the right talents can control and influence their environment, and about a computer program that makes rough drafts turn into scary reality, as well as a swamp creature with a taste for exotic animals. Oh, and also three couples discovering passion and love even while they fight and flee!

  I hope you enjoy these three stories as much as I liked writing them! Thanks so much for reading. And remember...sometimes the monster in the closet is real.

  Happy reading!

  Megan Hart

  Table of Contents

  DARK HEAT

  DARK DREAMS

  DARK FANTASY

  These stories are for everyone who knows to keep their toes under the blankets so the Bogeyman can’t tickle them.

  DARK HEAT

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  PROLOGUE

  Everything had gone dark.

  And oh, there was pain, great slashing waves of it washing over her as though she’d fallen into an ocean of agony and was being swept away to drown. Blindly, Monica raked the air in front of her and found nothing but emptiness. Hot and stinking breath assaulted her. Then the ground came up to slam into the back of her head and the darkness became sprinkled with the sharp white points of painstars behind her eyes.

  She rolled onto her hands and knees, already pushing upward. She had to get to her feet or it would open her throat with teeth and claws like razors. And this rancid cave, this pit, was not the place where Monica intended to die.

  She’d lost her knife but swept the ground to look for it and found it with her fingertips. The slice of pain was brief but would ache and burn later. If she was lucky enough to survive being mauled, she’d take those scars gratefully. She found the hilt and grabbed it up as she got to her feet. She turned, slashing outward, nothing but blackness in front of her.

  She hit something solid, the blade sinking deep, and Monica didn’t wait but pulled it out and stabbed again. Sticky heat flooded her hands. She kept going. Something shoved her again, at the same time grabbing with thick, scaly fingers so she couldn’t fall. Couldn’t get awa
y.

  Teeth on her throat.

  Her own voice, screaming.

  Then, the blood.

  CHAPTER 1

  Monica Blackship woke with a gasp, her hands slashing at the air in front of her before she realized she wasn’t in the cave but in her own bed. Alone, thank God. Though in the next moment as the sob wrenched out of her throat, she desperately wished she had someone to cling to.

  Brad was gone. A whole month, by now. She didn’t blame him, not really. He’d stayed longer than she would have if the situation were reversed. But that was the kind of man he was. The good guy, the hero. He’d tried to save her, but she was past saving. It had been too much for him, in the end.

  Still, the bed was vast and empty without him, and though she wasn’t afraid of darkness, it was so much easier to bear with someone else beside her. She gave in to tears. They leaked from the corners of her eyes and slid down to fill her ears, which was annoying as hell and effectively stopped her from totally surrendering to the indulgence of her misery.

  She wouldn’t be able to sleep again. The dream always meant the end of the night for her, no matter what time it occurred. Monica rolled to look at the clock, relieved to see that at least it would be morning soon. She wouldn’t have chosen to be awake at this hour, but at least she could get up without feeling as though the entire night had been wasted. She could maybe even be a little productive—she’d pay for it later in the day when she couldn’t keep her eyes open, but there was nothing to be done about it now.

  She swung her legs over the edge of the bed, unable to stop herself, as always, from hesitating just that little bit as her feet hit the floor. Monsters were real, though she’d never encountered one that lived under the bed. It never stopped her from imagining the bite of talons severing her Achilles tendon, of writhing tentacles dragging her under the bed. She settled her feet firmly onto the hardwood planks and used her toes to find the soft edges of the braided rag rug her grandmother had given her.

  She didn’t turn on the lamp. She knew her way to the bathroom without it, and she’d learned long ago that anything that was afraid of the light was small enough to be dealt with in the dark. Monica shucked off her pajamas and turned on the shower, giving it a few minutes to get hot while she brushed her teeth to clear away the final sour taste of her nightmare. Once under the scalding spray, she pressed her hands to the tile wall. Willing away the bad dreams. Willing away the loneliness.

  Monica had already learned there was only one surefire way to push the thoughts away. A good, hard old-fashioned hair-pulling, ass-slapping fuckfest. Brad had not quite been the man to give it to her—even after nearly four months of steady dating, he’d often been too timid with her. Afraid of hurting her. He’d wanted candlelight dinners, stuff like that. Monica had been honest with him from the start—she wasn’t looking for that. At first he’d been happy to fuck her in the middle of the night when she woke up, sweating and gasping, reaching for him, but then things had changed.

  “There’s more to me than being your cock on command,” Brad had complained.

  Monica hadn’t tried to dissuade him from the notion that was how she thought of him. Yes, Brad made a stellar cup of coffee and remembered to put the toilet-seat lid down, and yes, he knew how to match his belt to his shoes. For a lot of women he’d have been a perfect boyfriend, but she was so far from being any kind of perfect anything it would’ve been unfair of her to try to convince him to stay. Even if it did mean now she stood in a steaming-hot shower with her own fingers sliding between her thighs so she could find some sort of release. Some way to wipe away the horror that crept so regularly into her dreams.

  Her fingertips stroked, moving faster. There was nothing of romance in this. Nothing of love. She knew her body well enough to push it into pleasure fast and hard and sharp, just the way she wanted it. Ecstasy spiraled upward, urging her to cry out. Shuddering, Monica climaxed. The pleasure didn’t linger. In another few seconds she was simply shivering under the spatter of water, feeling empty inside.

  At least the dream had been pushed away.

  Dripping, Monica wrapped her hair in a towel and then grabbed another to use on her body. She caught a flash of her reflection in the mirror. You couldn’t miss the scars, several long slashes sweeping over her belly. She could look at them impassively now. She put her hand over them, aligning her fingers with the marks. The official report had been a bear attack. The wounds didn’t match anything familiar or animal; she’d spent a few nights in the psych ward before giving up her insistence that she hadn’t been hurt by a bear. A beast had torn her open, but Monica had done her own work on her wrists and that sort of thing had a tendency to make people give you the side eye about everything else.

  She touched those marks, too. The one on the right was precise. The one on the left, ragged. Four inches long, lengthwise, not across. She’d been serious about wanting to die.

  “But not anymore,” she whispered to herself, just to be sure the face in the mirror was really hers.

  She would put on some comfy clothes and make herself some coffee and eggs and toast, she decided firmly. She would not text Brad to see if they could get together—he’d made noises about the two of them staying “friends,” but she knew well enough how that would work. As in, it wouldn’t.

  She’d barely started the eggs frying when her phone rang. At this hour it could only be Vadim, which could only mean one thing. Monica thumbed the screen of her phone, not bothering with a hello.

  “This is the job,” Vadim said without a greeting of his own, and suddenly Monica wasn’t sleepy any longer.

  CHAPTER 2

  Jordan Leone had no patience for rich fucks who thought a hefty bank account equaled free rein to buy and sell any other creature’s life. Paul DiNero wasn’t usually that sort. The guy genuinely cared for his animals, though his hard-on for the exotics meant he had quite a number of pets that weren’t the cuddly kind. It was how the guy acquired the animals that lit a slow fire under Jordan’s skin.

  DiNero wanted what he wanted and he had the money to get it, even when legal channels failed him. Maybe especially when that happened, since that was often the only way he could procure the pets he wanted. He had contacts all over the world, from legitimate and licensed breeders to poachers to other collectors who were looking to sell off their animals or their offspring. Sure, the guy had a bunch of documentation proving his backyard menagerie was a private zoo used for “educational” purposes, but the fact was, DiNero’s collection was for his own private pleasure and nothing else, and when he wanted something, that meant he was willing to put up with the sort of arrogant douche bags Jordan hated.

  Today it was some guy with a weird accent that sounded French but wasn’t. His greasy black mustache glistened from the bison burger he’d scarfed down while sitting on DiNero’s terrace. His beady eyes narrowed while his mouth stretched into a grin Jordan wouldn’t have trusted on a great white. He waved a languid hand.

  “The price,” he said, “is nonnegotiable.”

  “You understand I’ll need to have my man here give the animal a full health check,” DiNero warned, though he didn’t look concerned. He’d dealt with this dickblister before.

  Jordan hadn’t eaten a burger, even though the smell of it had flooded his mouth with greedy, ravenous saliva. His stomach clenched, not so much in physical hunger as in simple longing. He’d restricted his meat eating for over fifteen years, and though his vegetarian diet was self-imposed, he’d never quite managed to convince his body he wasn’t missing out. He took a long drink of his beer instead, savoring the hoppy flavor.

  “Of course, of course. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Not for one of my best customers.” The guy, whose name was something like Algiers or Algernon or maybe it was Addison, flicked his gaze at Jordan and gave him another smarmy smile.

  DiNero nodded
at Jordan and bit into his own burger. Juice squirted. Jordan had to look away.

  “Go make sure my new girl is healthy, Jordan, while Mr. Efforteson and I chat about some things,” DiNero said.

  It was a dismissal, but Jordan didn’t mind. With barely a nod at Efforteson, he headed for the stone stairs off the terrace, toward the driveway and the truck parked there. Unmarked, without even ventilation, the inside would be pitch-black and stinking of frightened animals, but Jordan had seen worse conditions. Sometimes when he’d had to travel to pick up a new pet, the sights he’d witnessed were so horrible they’d left him shaking and furious. Violent.

  With a nod at the armed bodyguard, Jordan yanked on the truck’s rolling door in the back and hopped into the bed. Inside were rows of cages, all empty but for the one at the back. In it, a cowering female silver Russian fox yipped and rolled her eyes as he approached. He soothed her with a low murmur and put out a hand for her to sniff, his fingers against the bars of the cage. The foxes had been bred for generations in Russia as an experiment at domestication, and now the animals were more like dogs than their ancestors had been. They’d gained in popularity as exotic pets, expensive and limited in where they could be legally kept, rare only because of how difficult it could be to acquire one. This pretty girl was a replacement for one DiNero had lost.

  “Hey there, pretty girl. Sweet girl,” Jordan soothed, settling close to the cage so the fox could get used to him. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  Not like the other one, he thought with a hard swallow of anger. He’d fucking warned DiNero about fixing the barriers between the zoo and the bayou, but the man had been more concerned about keeping away nosy neighbors or thieves than anything else. Gators couldn’t climb brick walls or smash them, either, but something had scaled the ten-foot wall. The barbed wire on the top had been torn and tossed aside like candy floss. This last time, the intruder had left behind a pen full of dead foxes.