What’s happening on March 31st? DANGEROUS ANGEL is going to be released from Carina Press, and
it’s the final book in the four-part Earth Angels miniseries—woohoo! Last week, I posted the book’s opening scene
(and it’s one of my favorite openings EVER ^_^ ). Now it’s time for the second part of Chapter
One, which is seen from the point of view of the hero, Kyle. For those who have read the series, they have gotten glimpses Kyle’s slightly insane personality,
but he’s only been seen through internet chats and text messages. This is the first time readers will get the full
picture of who Kyle Beaudecker really is, and I'm hoping you like him as much as I do... even if he is a little crazy. (Readers 18 years and older only, please)*
The obnoxious odor of smoke and sweat clogged Kyle Beaudecker’s sinuses after ten seconds of breathing in The Toy Box’s poorly ventilated air. He hovered in the back of the low-ceilinged strip joint while his eyes adjusted to the blue-tinted gloom. As expected, the main room was dominated by a pole-studded catwalk skirted with garish silver tinsel, a shimmery mess that was echoed in the curtain at the catwalk’s staging area. The blue neon LED floor tiles would have classed the place up if it weren’t for a few tiles flickering bad enough to spark off a seizure. On the other side of the room the no-nonsense bar showed hard-liquor bottles and none of the decorative glass-and-bottle displays seen in many upscale nightclubs. In seedy little dives like this, fast times and getting drunk were the only two requirements the patrons needed.
Hidden in the shadows, Kyle
smiled. When he was in the mood for it, this was his kind of place.
His first cursory sweep of
the club didn’t get him excited, so he moved to an out-of-the-way table in the
corner of the room to wait things out. As he settled in, however, his attention
snagged on a familiar profile seated beside the catwalk. A massive young man waved
an enthusiastic farewell to a stethoscope-wearing stripper as if they were
long-lost friends.
Bingo.
The habits people indulged in
when they were on the run never failed to boggle Kyle’s mind. No matter how
crafty a fugitive was, there were still routines, material possessions or vices
to which they insisted on clinging. For some, it was family. For others, drugs
or alcohol.
For Jon-Jay Horowitz, it was
the easy scoring grounds of The Toy Box.
As music hummed a prelude for
the next titillating performance, Kyle tried to settle back and relax, but a
ripple of restlessness tugged at the edges of his consciousness. Grimly he
ignored it, as he’d been ignoring it for weeks now. That internal chaffing had
nothing to do with the small-fry in front of him now, or any of the other jobs
that had come across his path recently. No, this subtle but aggravating urgency
emanated from another source entirely, and he knew damn well what it was.
The secret side of him wanted
to do some demon-hunting.
The corners of his mouth
tightened while he kept his ass in the seat where it belonged. It didn’t make
sense, this crazy desire to go looking for trouble. He was a lover, not a
fighter, damn it. He didn’t even know for sure there was any demon left in the
world to hunt. Just the thought of it had tension pouring like molten steel
into his shoulders, and he rolled his head from side to side in an effort to
erase it. If he had half a brain, he’d stop thinking about demons and simply be
grateful he had ordinary scumbags to hunt down.
There was no doubt Jon-Jay
fit that description to a T. Though Kyle’s latest quarry was barely out of his
teens, he already had a dumpy belly and generous man-boobs that jiggled beneath
various childish graphic T-shirts. He was the epitome of the term Man-Baby, a
nickname his doting mother had tagged him with. But no matter how unsavory he
was on the outside, it was nothing compared to what he was on the inside.
The first hint of trouble
started when Jon-Jay stole his mother’s bingo winnings. Mama dropped the theft
charges when the police traced the crime back to her own son. This
understandable—but not well thought-out—act of mercy apparently gave Man-Baby
the go-ahead to pillage every relative within reach. In two years, over a dozen
burglaries had been brought to light and subsequently dropped.
The last straw had been
delivered in a truly cruel way. Man-Baby’s senile grandmother had held onto an
antique rose-gold watch as if it were a lifeline in a never-ending sea of emptiness.
She held it, kissed it and told everyone at the nursing home her wonderful
husband had chosen to forego vacations for a decade just so he could buy her
that watch.
Then one day, it went
missing.
The elderly woman died within
hours of its disappearance, fading into darkness without uttering another word.
The home’s surveillance video revealed Man-Baby had come to visit, and as he’d
pretended to adjust her pillows, he had slipped the watch right out of her
gnarled old hands. He then blew what money he’d gotten for that irreplaceable
memento on a new gaming system and a two-day bender at his new distraction, The
Toy Box.
Jon-Jay Horowitz had bawled
as he’d been dragged away in cuffs. When bail had been set, it came as no
surprise when Man-Baby’s mother—“He doesn’t know any better, he’s just a baby!”—put
her tiny house in Coconut Grove up as collateral. The moment she’d been
distracted, Jon-Jay was out the door with his mother’s 1950 first-edition
hardback autographed copy of The Lion, the
Witch and the Wardrobe.
Stealing from his helpless
grandmother was horrific enough. Threatening his mother with homelessness was
equally heinous. But disrespecting Narnia was the last nail in Man-Baby’s
coffin, as far as Kyle was concerned.
In addition to the hefty bounty,
the family had matched it with a private reward, so the payoff wound up being a
cool fifty-grand. Every bounty hunter in Florida was on the scent, but another
sweep of the bar told Kyle that luck was with him. He was the only hunter who
knew Jon-Jay enjoyed the dubious delights hidden within The Toy Box. All he had
to do now was bide his time, wait for the perfect moment to drop the net, and
walk away fifty-thousand bucks richer, while also helping a blindly loving
mother out of a bind.
It might not be
demon-hunting, but it wasn’t too shabby.
“She’s the woman who makes
the grade.” The announcer’s nasal-whine of a voice almost drowned out the order
of a beer Kyle gave to a waitress, who tottered so precariously on her high
heels it sucked every ounce of sexiness from her corset uniform. “Step out of
line and she’ll tie you up in detention, but if you please her you might become
her pet. Gentlemen, if you’d ever had a teacher like this, you’d never have
ditched a day in your life. For your viewing pleasure, please welcome The Toy
Box’s very own Sex-Ed teacher, Ms. Sparkle Spanksalot!”
Outstanding. Kyle laughed as he took his beer, gave the waitress a generous
tip for the courage it took to work in this dive, and settled back to enjoy the
show. His quarry seemed to have the same idea, half out of his seat so he could
tug his wallet out in preparation to flash some cash. He’d let the stripper get
paid by the useless Man-Baby; it was the least he could do for having to put up
with a ridiculous stage name like Sparkle Spanksalot. But then it’d be curtains
for not-so-little Jon-Jay and his rampage of petty self-indulgence.
The heavy throb of “Hot for
Teacher” pulsed through the club. On cue, a woman erupted from the cheesy
tinsel curtain. Appreciation for how she took instant command of the stage
curled the corners of his mouth, and he couldn’t help but sit up straighter as
she paused, unmoving, to survey the room as if she owned both it and everyone
in it.
Hello.
There was an unyielding power
in her eyes hidden behind ugly horn-rimmed glasses, the kind of power that made
a man beg to be punished, as long as that punishment came from her hands. Her
dark hair—either brown or black, he couldn’t tell under the glare of the spotlights—was
pulled back into a tight bun. Kyle had no doubt that every man in the room
wanted to pull it loose to let it tumble through his fingers. Her body was long
and rangy, covered in a heavy gray tweed skirt suit that grudgingly showed a
bare minimum of wrist and calf.
She was a shrouded masterpiece
begging to be unveiled.
“Take it off!”
Kyle didn’t bother stifling a
disdainful scoff. It came as no surprise that Jon-Jay, a towering moron who
understood nothing but instant gratification, was the first to yell his head
off. That oaf had zero appreciation for savoring the almost-painful build-up of
anticipation, or delaying that moment of satisfaction until a strong man
screamed for sweet release.
Ms. Sparkle Spanksalot,
though, could probably write a book on the subject.
She had a ruler in her hand,
and she pointed it at Man-Baby before swatting her own tweed-covered ass with a
flash of polished wood. It wasn’t bad, as far as asses went, firmly packed into
a heavy costume that looked ridiculous in Miami, but he had to admit he was as
curious as Jon-Jay to see what was beneath the wrapping. Before he could think
better of it, Kyle let loose a whistle when she put the ruler in her mouth and
twirled around the nearest pole, one hand holding the thin bar while the other
ripped open the fastenings of the tweed coat and prim, high-collared shirt
beneath.
When NASA introduced the
world to Velcro, they probably had no idea of the gift they were giving to
strip joints everywhere.
There was a black scrolling tattoo
running down her spine that was familiar, but as the dark gold of her skin
brought his brain to its proverbial knees, he wasn’t interested in figuring out
why it struck a chord. All he wanted now was for her to swing around in his
direction so he could see what the acres of tweed had been hiding.
The coat and blouse were
tossed away as her stilettos touched the catwalk. Briefly he pondered how a
real teacher’s feet would be turned to hamburger in those shoes by the end of
the school day. Then that wayward thought sank under a rush of desire-spiked
male appreciation as she turned his way once more. The woman was a goddess. Her
breasts were covered in a spangled white bikini top, and just full enough to
have a hint of shadowed cleavage. Willowy arms honed with fine muscles moved
gracefully as she toyed with the fastenings of the school-marmish skirt. A
charm in her navel flashed, bringing attention to a lush stretch of honey-hued
skin. Her torso was long and lean, and the ridge of rib cage showing with each
sweet gyration hinted at a fragility that made his hands itch to explore.
Holy hell, he wanted to touch
her.
The heavy calf-length skirt
loosened. With a move akin to drying off one’s backside, the stripper stood
right in front of Kyle’s target and shook her tweed-veiled ass until Man-Baby
erupted with a raucous hoot. Satisfied, she tossed the skirt aside, and revealed
a heavily spangled white bikini bottom. It wasn’t the dental floss G-string
he’d been expecting, but nevertheless it was a sight that turned his mouth into
a desert and his blood into a wild flow of molten lava. The liquid heat pooled
in his lower regions until he had to shift, the raw hunger pulsing through him
so feverishly he didn’t have to look down to know he’d grown hard.
Mystery solved as to why
Jon-Jay Horowitz was such a fan of The Toy Box. If this was the caliber of
talent employed at this unassuming establishment, then Kyle really had no
choice but to become a repeat customer himself.
With a half-smile that would
have seduced a ninety-year-old monk, the woman onstage repositioned the ruler
in her ruby-red mouth so that it stuck straight out. Then she sank with a
ballerina’s grace to her knees and offered the opposite end of it to Man-Baby.
Damn it, not him. He’s not worthy of you.
Kyle glared at the lummox’s expansive
back while Man-Baby upended his chair in his haste to accept the woman’s
challenge, and the ruler passed from her mouth to his. Then, still on her
knees, she sat back until she was resting on her heels, her head tilting all
the way back as she slid her hand down the center of her lean torso. And down. And
down. And down…
A harsh sound grated out of Kyle’s
clenched throat when her fingers slid boldly under the edge of the spangled
panties. Her hips arched and rocked, a fluid sex-motion that he could picture
her doing as she rode a man until he cried out for mercy. As he watched, so
mesmerized by the unrepentant vision of sensuality, he didn’t realize he’d
reached for the bulge behind his zipper until he groaned at the pressure of his
squeezing fingers.
She was the embodiment of carnal
pleasure, a fantasy men wove in the darkest part of night when sleep was
impossible and the bed was empty. It almost crushed him when she withdrew her
hand, as her ecstasy hadn’t yet been reached…and pulled out a shiny pair of
handcuffs.
Oh, hot fucking damn, YES.
The other patrons seemed to
agree. The noise level trebled as she swung them tantalizingly in front of
Jon-Jay. He let out another whoop and gave her a fistful of money before he
offered up his wrists. A strange, out-of-place expression flashed across her
face for a split second. It looked almost like…like…
Triumph.
“Wait a minute.” But even as
suspicion slammed into Kyle with all the force of a sledgehammer, she slapped
the cuffs on Jon-Jay and hopped off the stage in a no-nonsense manner, pulling
a badge out of one of the spangled bra cups of her bikini top as she went. Then,
when she flashed it in front of Man-Baby’s disbelieving eyes, took off the big,
ugly glasses and shook out the long waterfall of wavy dark hair, Kyle wished to
any powers listening that he had the flexibility to kick himself in the ass.
“Damn you, Nikita.” And, to
add insult to injury, Kyle found he didn’t have the strength to peel his hand
away from his rock-hard dick.
*
Just nine weeks to go before DANGEROUS ANGEL is out! Until then, check out the three books leading
up to it—NOBODY’S
ANGEL, SAVAGE
ANGEL, and WOUNDED
ANGEL, all from Carina Press. Also, don’t forget to keep an eye on
this blog for Throwback Thursday, where I’ll post favorite scenes from the
previous Earth Angels books. :)
Buy
links for pre-ordering DANGEROUS ANGEL:
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