What he didn’t plan on is losing his heart to a man who is sworn to protect him. Battle scarred US Marshal Robert “Mac” Mackenzie has a job to do, and guaranteeing the safety of Noah Bradford is at the top of that list. Mac will do whatever it takes to keep Noah safe, even if it means walking away. Mac and Noah, brought together during extreme circumstances, have been separated by evil. It's been six years, give or take, and Noah is coming for vengeance against the men who killed his mother. He's on a collision course with Mac, who has no idea of the man Noah has become. Sparks fly and the heat sizzles when these two powerful men are reunited, but will they survive the passion the past created?

    Nothing in life was guaranteed-perfect, especially not guys... and most definitely not guys in the immediate vicinity of tiny O'Leary, New York. And then sexy Navy SEAL Ash Martin walked into Cal's bakery, and made him wonder if fate might have cooked up something sweet for him after all. Their connection was immediate, all-consuming, and definitely not vanilla... but could their perfect date last for more than just a night, or even a season? Note: This is a 23k word SHORT STORY that first appeared in the Heart2Heart anthology as “The Baker and the SEAL." It has been slightly expanded.

    He no longer has the energy to deal with mean classmates, inner doubt, and fear of familial rejection, so he takes a razor to his wrist. When he wakes up in the hospital, Shiloh meets Travis Kahn, the EMT who saved him and didn’t leave his side.Travis is handsome, smart, and funny—the type of guy Shiloh would never be brave enough to approach. But his near-death experience has an unusual side effect: the life that flashed before his eyes wasn’t the one he had already lived, but rather the one he could live. With visions of a future by Travis’s side, Shiloh will find the strength to confront his fears and build a life worth fighting for.Word Count: 18,388Edition: 2ndA story from the Dreamspinner Press 2013 Advent Calendar collection Heartwarming.

    Lloyd loves to make them. Wesley loves to break them. What happens when their roles are reversed? Find out in this rule-bending romp! * ~ * ~ * Gemini Rules Capricorn is a 4000 word sexy short story following Signs of Love #3 Complimentary copy available on the author's site.

    Cleaning up his father’s chaotic life was never on Adam’s bucket list. Worse, Adam finds himself inexplicably drawn to the elusive, terminally-clumsy, gorgeous, Micah Ryan. No way is he getting involved with someone from his hometown; he’s always insisted the best view of Skagit was in his rearview mirror. Micah Ryan has been coasting on auto-pilot since his family was killed in a car accident a decade earlier. He runs a web business and has an irritable cat. He hardly leaves his house, unless it is for his afternoon espresso. His world tips upside down when Adam Klay rolls into town. For the first time in years, he feels alive. Unfortunately, Micah’s return to the living has been noticed and is not appreciated. Someone has a secret. Someone is exploiting the vulnerable youth population in Skagit. Teenagers are disappearing, young women turning up dead, the dirty secrets of Skagit are surfacing.

    No collateral damage. No unvetted targets.These are the rules Hawes Madigan lives by. Rules that make being Fog City’s Prince of Killers bearable. Soon, he’ll be king—of an organization of assassins— and the crown has never felt heavier. Until the mysterious Dante Perry swaggers into his life.Dante looks like a rock god and carries himself like one too, all loose-limbed and casually confident. He also carries a concealed weapon, a private investigator’s license, and a message for the prince. Someone inside Hawes’s organization is out to kill the future king.In the chaos that follows the timely warning, Hawes comes to depend on Dante. On his skills as an investigator, on the steadiness he offers, and on their moments alone when Hawes lets Dante take control. As alliances are tested and traitors exposed, Hawes needs Dante at his back and in his bed. But if the PI ever learns Hawes’s darkest secret, Hawes is sure to get a knife to the heart—and a bullet to the brain—instead. There’s no shortage of twists and turns in this new romantic suspense trilogy from Layla Reyne. Prince of Killers is book one of three. Fair warning: buckle up, cliffhangers ahead!

    I have other reasons—he still mourns his late husband, I’m way older, he’s a foot shorter, my tattoo shop is a front, he’s an assistant professor at UT. Still, I can’t help but think we’d be perfect for each other if I didn’t kill people (very, very bad people) for a living. Rafi: How the f*ck did I not realize how hot my best friend is? Yeah, grief, or whatever, but were my eyes not working? Silver fox, check. Tattooed hotness, check. Cuddles with me on Monday nights while we watch Australian melodramas, check. Says he’s not a good person but totally is, check. New goal: Get Everett to stop looking at me like a grieving widower and start seeing me as someone he’d like to pin against the wall. Now if I only knew what was behind the door marked Portal to Nowhere…Hard Target is a mercenary MM romance set in Austin and the Texas Hill Country. It features tattooed hotties, adorably complicated twinks, best friend antics, an illegally confiscated vineyard, and a team of killer do-gooders. This is the first book in the Wrecked: Guardians Series. Several characters from the Wrecked series make an appearance, but the Guardians books can be read as stand-alones.

    A lifetime of law-bending and living on the edge suited him just fine—until his baby sister died and he found himself raising her little girl.Staring down a family history of bad decisions and reaped consequences, Deacon cashes in everything he owns, purchases an auto shop in Half Moon Bay, and takes his niece, Zig, far away from the drug dens and murderous streets they grew up on. Zig deserves a better life than what he had, and Deacon is determined to give it to her.Lang Harris is stunned when Zig, a little girl in combat boots and a purple tutu blows into his bookstore, and then he’s left speechless when her uncle, Deacon Reid walks in, hot on her heels. Lang always played it safe but Deacon tempts him to step over the line… just a little bit.More than a little bit. And Lang is willing to be tempted.Unfortunately, Zig isn’t the only bit of chaos dropped into Half Moon Bay. Violence and death strikes leaving Deacon scrambling to fight off a killer before he loses not only Zig but Lang too.

    The tragic story of a missing man is a media sensation, and abruptly the writer and the cop falling in love is just a postscript to horrors neither could have imagined. Best Selling Horror writer Chris Lassiter struggles for inspiration and he’s close to never writing again. His life has become an endless loop of nothing but empty pages, personal appearances, and a marketing machine that is systematically destroying his muse. In a desperate attempt to force Chris to complete unfinished manuscripts his agent buys a remote cabin. All Chris has to do is hide away and write, but he’s lost his muse, and not even he can make stories appear from thin air.Sawyer Wiseman left town for Chicago, chasing the excitement and potential of being a big city cop, rising the ranks, and making his mark. A case gone horribly wrong draws him back to Lancaster Falls. Working for the tiny police department in the town he’d been running from, digging into cold cases and police corruption, he spends his day's healing, and his nights hoping the nightmares of his last case leave him alone. Word Count: 67,000

    The coffee's good, but it's not the rich flavor that lures him to drive blocks out of his way each morning, and it's not an addiction to caffeine either. He's half-embarrassed to admit it, but it's the man who keeps him coming back. The long-legged, painted-on-jeans-wearing, dark-haired, edgy sex god with the teasing eyes. He's everything Riley--who has a history of geekdom and being flustered around hot men--is not. Riley knows he should put a stop to the daily forays because nothing can ever come of it. Guys like that aren't interested in men like him. Yet every time the hunk meets his gaze across the crowded shop and aims a sizzling grin at him, Riley gives in and comes back to participate in the silent, sexy flirtation another day. Needless to say, the last thing he's expecting when he goes to question a witness about a murder at a local gay strip joint is to discover the witness is his coffeehouse hottie. Dane Scott works as a stripper strictly for fun. He doesn't need the money--he's got plenty in the bank from his other career. He just likes to have something to keep him busy a few nights a week. When one of his fellow dancers turns up murdered outside the strip club, the police detective who shows up on Dane's doorstep asking questions is none other than the sexy, blond cutie he's been flirting with at the coffeehouse for weeks. Riley Ellison's a fascinating contradiction--rugged, strong, serious-eyed hero and bashful boy next door. A combination Dane finds all too appealing and a refreshing change from the selfish, shallow men he's known and dated in the past. From the moment Riley flashes his badge, Dane's determined to show the skittish cop they can make magic together. The heat between them quickly soars to the boiling point and not even a murder investigation can cool the passion they share. That is, until new information on Riley's case implies Dane may not be all he seems... Genres: Gay / Contemporary

    His idea of the perfect partner, like so many other people’s, is a tall, dark, and handsome man. Preferably alive and breathing. Surely that’s not asking too much? Then an uninvited guest—a ghost, of all things—forces Alex to question what he’s always looked for in a lover and his definition of what makes a person so beautiful.

    Jules has always been attracted to men who are his polar opposite, so burly Gareth is Jules’s fantasy man.At the weekend, Jules gets into a tough situation with another bloke in a gay club and Gareth comes to his aid. Gareth rejects Jules’s subsequent advances but leaves him with the hope that his attraction isn’t completely one-sided. Fantasy could become reality.With Gareth’s work at the salon nearly done, he’ll soon disappear from Jules’s life for good. Time is running out. Jules needs to prove to Gareth that he’s tougher than he looks and that his feelings run deeper than gratitude.13,000 words approxNB: This story is a spin off to Top Me Maybe? where Jules appears as a minor character. Both stories are standalones and don’t need to be read in order.

    Desperate to try and save the life of his unborn child, he makes one last attempt to get to the omega clinic, but his old car has other ideas.Gabe Johnson, exhausted from being on call as a veterinarian and depressed at the thought of another lonely Christmas, nearly gets run off the road by a driver who loses control of his car. When he finds that the driver is actually a young omega about to give birth all his protective instincts rush in and as he battles frantically to save their lives, he realizes all he wants is to take the little family home and claim them for his own.Bo has never had the Christmas he’s always wanted. Gabe gave up on the holidays a long time ago. But just as they both think that it’s their turn to experience the season of miracles, Bo’s old alpha finds them, and unless Gabe can manage the impossible, all their Christmas dreams will melt like snow.

     Ari had a game plan for life. Shoot people. Get money. Hang out with fellow criminal friends. He saw absolutely no reason to change that plan until one dark night in Memphis, when a little girl reached out to him with pocket change and a desperate plea for him to help her. Adopting an abused little girl off the streets was, needless to say, not part of the plan. Ari had no idea what he was doing with an eight year old. He especially didn’t know how to juggle taking contracts and raising a little girl. Things get more complicated when the mercenary, Carter Harrison, approaches him with a job. He needs Ari’s expertise to get into the very high-security museum, Knowles, and steal back Monet’s Water Lily Pond. The job isn’t an easy one. He’d need more than the two of them to make it happen. It’s further complicated because Ari’s not sure what to do with his new daughter while working this job. And for that matter, how’s he supposed to handle the sexy mercenary? Tags: Not child safe but child approved, children know best, Remi approves this book, idiots in love, but Remi loves them anyway, criminals make the best uncles, family of choice, Ari acknowledges Remi as the smarter one, Carter admits his own insanity, nothing blows up, Ivan is very disappointed by this, Kyou has PLANS for Remi, licking solves all problems, bedsheets, lifeskills, children should come with warning labels, it’s not stealing if you’re stealing it BACK, right?, the author once again regrets nothing Editor: Katie Griffin

    Other than that, he's a pretty normal guy, like how he's got a little thing for the blond guy in 39D. Just a normal guy with a normal crush, until one of Marc's enemies tries to get the drop on him in the elevator and then it's the blonde cutie to the rescue: Dillon Carter, from 39D, sacrifices his potted plant to save him.Instantly, Marc and Dillon develop a strong sexual connection. As the months go by, while they steal time together, it develops into something more. But Marc doesn’t really do relationships, and Dillon worries Marc will never be able to love him back the way he needs.Also, when you’re a paid assassin, not everybody is rooting for your happy ever after.