Welcome to Carrie Ann’s Birthday Hop!

     It’s Carrie Ann’s birthday! A kabillion people here on Earth are celebrating. And nearly everyone’s walking away with a prize. That’s my kind of world-wide party! Check out the birthday excerpt, throw down a comment about your favorite chocolate along with your e-mail address. I’ll put your e-mail address in a contest drawing to win an e-book of my high-action, high-sizzle adventures with sexy, daredevil heroes you’ll not soon forget. There’s even a free read at the end of this excerpt, so hang in there to the end. Let's see if I can interest you along the way.

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     Carrie Ann, dahlink, I wish you a thrilling day infused with minor, harmless wickedness and great memories that last a lifetime.

     How old is our blog hop mistress, you ask? (I heard you ask.)

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      And a beautiful 21, I must add.

     Here’s a birthday scream for the Birthday Girl. Please join me.

An authentic birthday scream, generated at my surprise birthday party.
1995, I think. Somewhere around there.

     In honor of the lovely and talented Carrie Ann--twenty-one years old, I swear--I present to you a birthday excerpt from my gritty, sexy, roller coaster Sci-Fi Romance Luminous Nights. LN was a Golden Quill Contest finalist! Find out why. The reviewers consistently swore they’d never forget the chocolate love scenes. Can’t figure out why they stuck in the mind. What’s so compelling about an artist painting his heroine’s body with seductive alien chocolate? Do I have any chocolate in the house? It's time to search my hiding places.

     Isn’t it great when someone gives you the exact gift you need in the best possible timing? What if it was the most expensive the giver ever gave? What if it cost him everything?

Beware avenging angels.

Cop or convict?
How many faces can one man own?

     An assassin wearing a holographic mask and a prison tattoo boards Rachel’s freighter during a prison riot, intent on collecting gadgets capable of changing a man’s identity from the black-market gang who'd stolen them. Rachel’s never sure of Jack's identity nor his goal, but he claims to be an Alliance I-Marshal. Cop or convict? The clues never stop contradicting. She's horrified to find the bright holographic mask conceals the gruesome face of a monster. And the badge doesn’t slow him from murdering people right before her eyes.

     When Rachel learns Jack will trade innocent lives for the digital miracles, she determines to make the mercenary grow a heart.  How could a stone-cold killer kiss her so hotly? How could she kiss such a dangerous deceiver?

     Jack has done years in prison to learn who’d stolen the remaining Gemini ticks, 3-D magic. Nothing will keep him from gaining extreme technology capable of unleashing galaxy-wide chaos. Forget feelings for Rachel. She can’t stop him from killing everyone involved.

A super review of Luminous Nights here.

     Here’s your birthday bite.

     Jack’s a mystery to Rachel, a hot, cold mystery. She believes the only things on his mind are vengeance and lust and trickery. She’s wrong about that. In this scene, he gives her an unusual birthday present:

***

     The boy led Rachel, symptom list and diagnostic wand in hand, into the hallway leading to Jack’s new prison cell. 

     All business, she stalked into the library to find Jack sitting in a big chair before a roaring fire, studying a book of odd drawings. Triad detainment light-bars were positioned around his chair and table, restricting his movement. The collar preventing his passage over the light-bars blinked under his chin. The remote control punishment-torture switch lay on a faraway table, tempting when she thought of the trouble Jack had given her.

     “Luminous,” she addressed him, halting before him on the safe side of the glowing bars…and loathing to call him by his fake identity.

     He looked up from his book and gave her his soul-stripping azure eyes, inflicting a rash of goose bumps and a flush of her cheeks. For a second, she went weak. His butchered and chaotic blond spikes of hair made his eyes more powerful. Oh, Gawd, every time she looked at him, he stole her mind, and she had to take it back again. She should never have submitted to his hypnotic chocolate kiss. Now she had to guard her heart and soul against his skillful manipulation.

     All her mind thought of was his chocolate kiss when she wasn’t focused on something else. Luckily, she had a thought-stealing problem.

   “These children are dying, Jack. I need the ship’s medical computer.”

     He lifted his wrist, mashed the appropriate button on the communications watch he’d stolen from her, and spoke to the ship, “Evie, allow Rachel access to all medical databanks.”

     “Yes, Jack,” the Caprice replied in the feminine voice simmering with want he’d programmed in his takeover of her ship, but Rachel was too tired to give him the jealousy he wanted. She still fantasized of taking back that communicator, fruitless brain work when he was very tall, full of muscle, half again her size in every direction. She didn’t have a chance against him.

     Then he unstrapped the bulky watch, tossed it through the barrier to her, and she caught the watch with ease. No protest, no defiance. No ridiculously high price would he demand for what she needed. She'd expected more of a fight. She’d already pre-approved begging and tears for this purpose. He could have gotten anything from her. Even what he wanted. Funny that he hadn’t sensed that. He hadn’t even put a selfish proposal on the negotiating table.

     She sat on the couch beside a wonderful churning fireplace crafted from marble, unscorched by the raze Quattro had given most of the buildings. Jack quietly spectated from his cell as she uploaded the diagnostic blood test report and entered the list of the children’s symptoms.

     In a few short seconds, the medical computers confirmed a hyperactive death of protein in the patients’ cells and recommended several common antibacterials, many of which she’d recently purchased to replace expired stock. If she’d been in a rush to shelve the shipment, it would not have been left on the counter. Luckily, it all had been swept into the medical bag she’d brought with her. It was her first instance of procrastination paying off in a big way.

      Jack didn’t launch a challenge or say a word.

     When she formed a battle plan against this bug with the computer’s help, she signed off and placed the communicator on his side table. There was no use in keeping the comm watch. He’d locked her out of nearly everything else on the Caprice.

     But he’d enabled her to do the one thing she really needed, help the sick children. His swift capitulation made her believe, if she needed the medical computer again, he’d hand the wrist communicator back to her, despite her capture of him and the ongoing battle between them.

     She owed him, even though he’d put no debt to his concession. Hundreds of sickened children would recover because of his mercy this moment.

     Rachel cast her sight to his light eyes, and she could watch the flames of the hearth reflected there, boiling, tempestuous. She loved watching fire in his eyes. She was divided on whether she should apologize to him for taking him captive, but what good could it do? She wouldn’t release him. He wasn’t trustworthy.

     “Thank you,” she said genuinely, then she turned and headed for the door to put the cure into play.

     “Happy birthday, Rachel Marie,” she heard Jack say. “Sorry your gift was late.”

     She paused at his words. On her birthday, they’d been on Desmonda Station running from crooked police in an all-out fire fight through the port. Jack had killed a half dozen men or more. They’d narrowly escaped.

     She could barely believe he’d set no price on access to the med comps he controlled, had handed it to her without strings. He’d immediately given up territory in the war between them when she’d needed him to. He didn’t have to cede the power he held. He could have made it cost her much. He must possess some kind of heart working with the cold mind of a government assassin. And, unfortunately for her waning resistance, the kiss of an angel, the hands of a demon.

     “It was a generous gift perfectly timed, Jack,” she replied, grateful for his mercy for the children. “It was exactly what I wanted.”

     Then she paced out the door.

* * * *

     Watching the door close behind her, Jack rose from the chair, dragged himself to the side table, and stared at the communicator. Then he cast his sight to amber eyes peering from the darkness at him. Jet, the big black dog nearly invisible in a shadowed corner, watched him. He’d forgotten the security canine guarding him was in the room when Rachel strolled in with her everything-Jack-wanted.

     “I remember the exact moment she’d mentioned her birthday. I’d been busy saving our lives at the time. I’d promised her a nice gift. I hope she likes it.”

     Strapping the comm watch on his wrist, he went back to his seat and dropped down wearily.

     “She’ll never know just how damned expensive that gift is, what it’ll cost me personally, professionally, and spiritually. She just got the best of this deal, and probably doesn’t know it yet.”

     Jet gave a mournful moan for his plight, and Jack raked a hand through his spiked hair.

     “If I ride out the hostage game with Rachel, I’ll be postponing, maybe surrendering the one thing I’ve wanted all my life, the thing I’ve trained for, my hardwired goal. To kill a man who should’ve died twenty-three years ago. How many people have suffered these past twenty-three years since that kid missed the shot?”

    Jet moaned an answer, but he didn't know. No one knew how many lives might have been saved.

     Jack stared into the fire, his too-vivid memory of missing the shot when he’d been twelve, looped and repeating in his head, until he became cognizant of a furry chin on his knee. He hadn’t noticed Jet rise to his side, settle at his feet, and offer his sympathy. He scrubbed the Dane’s big-boned head, thankful for the company of another soul.

     “Everything changed somewhere along the way, buddy. I think it was the moment I stepped onto the Caprice. I’ve found something I want more than I want vengeance. Bigger than my demands on justice.”

     Jack wanted Rachel and the freedom of soul he still didn’t possess, though he’d left prison bars behind weeks ago.

     Jet couldn’t speak to him, but the canine could communicate. In the ear-flicker sign language taught the canine officers, Jet told Jack to hold his cards, play his game.

     Hold your cards, play your game.

     Jack decided he’d do just that. Play his game.

     Rachel’s going to gasp when she sees his full hand. She didn’t have a chance to win this game. The deck was stacked when she drew her cards. He wanted her, and it wasn’t about five years in prison without a woman. He’d mastered the mental and physical training to deal with that. This magnetism he felt with Rachel was something much stronger than physical things. It was about life, breathing in beautiful moments with her in his arms, living through the bad times holding her hand.

     He was going to have her. He’d make her love the idea. He had plenty of magic chocolate to change her point of view.

     “It’s your fault, you know…”

     Jet put his knobby paws over his head and issued a bay.

     “You should feel guilty…I’m here because of you, you troublemaker. And I’m still killing Quattro and his men. She can’t stop that. Nothing can stop that.”

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     C’mon, read more. Jack has more tricks up his sleeve to melt Rachel’s ice. I didn't mention chocolate love scenes earlier, did I? Does anyone have any chocolate? Not that my mind is easily redirected....

Find out why Luminous Nights finaled in
the Golden Quill Contest for Best Sci-Fi/Futuristic/Fantasy.
Explore steamy, peril-packed excerpts and a tense first chapter,
check out awesome reviews, watch a kick-ass book trailer:
http://www.michelehart.com/b15-book.htm

 Buy Link: http://www.BookStrand.com/luminous-nights
ISBN#: e-book 1-60601-884-1 * Print 1-60601-885-X
Available @ BookStrand, Amazon Books, Barnes & Noble,
nearly everywhere exciting adventures await you.

CONTEST!   CONTEST!   CONTEST!

     Drop your e-mail address in the comment section of this entry, tell me your favorite kind of chocolate, the brand, variety, (dark or milk?). Any chocolate stories you'd like to tell? Bring on your chocolate porn, ladies! :-), and you’ll be entered in a drawing for my butt-kickin’, angels & demons/Sci-Fi Romantic Adventure Gangbusters, the third book in my trilogy I-Marshal Stories.

      Check out Gangbusters here: http://www.MicheleHart.com/b28-book.htm

     Here, have a free read:   http://www.MicheleHart.com/b22-book.htm

     Everyone, have fun on Carrie Ann’s Big Day!

Love, passion, and peace on Earth.
Michele Hart

     Here are more authors around the world celebrating Carrie Ann’s Big Day. Hop around, explore new authors. Pick up a book or two, and live new adventures you’ll never forget.