A sneak peak at my upcoming release, Feline Heat!

Available soon from: http://www.newconceptspublishing.com/madelainemontague.htm


Chapter One

"You're up next, Kate! Move it!" Marty growled.
Kate's belly instantly knotted into a tight ball of fear. Her heart rate shot up and her lungs began to labor to drag in air. Breathe, Kate, she commanded herself! Deep breath in, exhale slowly. Deep breath in, exhale.
Her mind was chaotic. It was a wonder she even managed to gather enough sense to focus on breathing slowly to keep from hyperventilating.
The man airbrushing the last of her 'costume' on, hurried to finish at Marty's prompting and finally stepped back. "You're ready."
Like hell!
She didn't voice the thought aloud. In the months since she'd 'agreed' to dance for Panas to work off her ex's gambling debts she'd learned it was a lot safer just to smile and nod like a good little slave and jump to do what she was told. If she looked sullen or moved too slowly she was liable to get slapped stupid. Voicing a complaint was just an invitation to get the shit beat out of her.
To the Russian mob that ran the operation, the Exotique`, the 'weaker sex' just meant easier control and they weren't the least bit bashful about using their superior strength to exert it.
Her knees felt like the bones and cartilage had melted to the consistency of jelly as she stood up from the bench where the man had been applying her 'costume' and surveyed the results in the tiny mirror above her make-up table. Her hair, which she'd always worn fairly long, had grown nearly to her waist, she saw with a touch of surprise, but it still fell short of concealing her nakedness. It had been lightened from her natural medium to dark brown with auburn highlights to a shade of red she'd hated since the first time she looked at it.
She was a feline tonight. God only knew what breed of cat she was supposed to be---Liger?-her skin was hyena with dark stripes here and there.
She decided she looked like a walking camo for a jungle setting rather than any kind of cat from the wild as she dropped weakly to the stool in front of her table and quickly darkened the tip of her nose, gripping her eyebrow pencil in a trembling hand to sketch a wobbly trio of 'whiskers' on either cheek.
She'd gotten used to standing bare assed naked on the stage in front of a roomful of hooting men-as used to it as she was ever going to get-but the special 'treat' the management had in mind for the night had threatened to turn her bowels to water.
She was supposed to 'make love' to her feline 'mates' on stage-an 'artistic' imitation of the act in dance, she'd been assured, not in actuality, but the 'props' weren't merely stuffed animals like those Panas typically used. He'd brought in two very much alive, great cats-drugged, he'd assure her, almost to the point of unconsciousness, chained, but still alive-and still dangerous because they were straight from the wild, not even close to tamed or trained beasts.
Of all the bizarre things that prick, Panas, had thought up, this one was light years ahead of anything else.
For the first time in her life, she wished she was drugged-too high to have any idea of what was going on.
They were bringing the beasts onto the stage when she arrived and positioned herself for the opening of her act. She thought for several horrifying moments that she was going to pee on herself, or worse, as she watched the keepers lead first an enormous Siberian Tiger and then an equally huge African Lion out on the stage and secure the chains threaded through their bejeweled collars to an eye bolt embedded in the floor on either side of the stage.
Both cats staggered drunkenly, their movements slow, awkward, as if they were swimming through water. It reassured her a little, gave rise to pity she hadn't anticipated.
The tiger dropped heavily onto his side once the three men half dragging, half pushing him managed to get him within reach of the bolt to secure his chain.
It also reassured her to see that they'd only left enough play in the chain to allow him to lay as he was. She doubted he'd be able to get to his feet.
He was absolutely enormous, though. She'd had no idea the things were so huge.
And muscled. She could see the muscles rippling beneath his beautiful coat.
As tall as the Russian thugs were, she'd be willing to bet he would top them by several feet if he stood on his hind legs.
A shot of knee weakening adrenaline spiked through her when she discovered the cat was watching her through narrowed golden eyes. As dulled as they were by the drugs pumped into him, she saw a gleam of both intelligence and interest in those golden depths as he surveyed her with unblinking intensity.
She hoped to hell they'd fed him before they brought him out!
Shivering, she dragged her gaze from the tiger and watched the men securing the lion. Like the tiger, he was a magnificent specimen. His coat sleek and healthy, his mane thick and luxuriant, he was nearly as big as the tiger. He was also almost as 'brawny'.
And, like the tiger, he seemed far more interested in her than he was in the men moving around him.
The men stepped off curtain, but they remained well within her view.
She wasn't reassured by the fact that they'd taken up the poles with loops on the ends she'd seen animal handlers use to catch and control animals.
Stinging prickles of dread rippled over her skin as she heard Panas, just on the other side of the curtain that still concealed her from the audience, trying to work the almost exclusively male audience into fever pitch anticipation.
The noise from the audience rose to a volume that literally vibrated the wood beneath her feet.
The cats stirred uneasily, dragging their focus from her to stare at the curtains, their ears flicking and turning on their uplifted heads like miniature radar tracking dishes.
She'd become the most popular dancer, a situation that mystified her and caused her no end of trouble with the other exotic dancers. She had two breasts and a pussy-just like they did. She thought she had a pretty good figure, but it was by no means the best-certainly not when 'best' seemed to be measured in the size of the breasts. She was older than all of the others, most of whom were barely twenty while she was breathing hard on thirty. And she was absolutely certain she didn't dance better. In fact, despite the fact that she'd gotten used to it, more or less, and generally managed to focus on the music instead of the men leering and hooting at her, she was still too shy of flaunting her nakedness to really relax, definitely too inhibited to fan her legs and expose her 'tonsils' like the others so often did. It took all she could do to keep her arms and legs moving, at all, and refrain from covering herself.
She strongly suspected it was the very fact that she looked so ill at ease and refused to show anything she could keep from showing that drove them up the wall.
She was so caught up in her thoughts, the curtains had already begun to part before she realized the moment was upon her. It was the music that actually caught her attention, however.
Drums. Jungle drums.
Her heart paced itself to match the beats, thudding heavily with each pat on the deep bass drum than accentuated the rhythm being played out on the lighter drums. She lifted her arms, beginning to gyrate slowly as the curtains swung wide and the spot lights, thankfully, half blinded her, making it almost impossible for her to see beyond the edge of the stage.
A half dozen dark skinned men, dressed in African garb, sat cross legged with the drums they were beating between their legs, three on either side of the stage.
She wondered if any of them had any idea that they were sitting directly in front of a lion and a tiger.
She somehow doubted it. They looked way too relaxed and focused on the music they were making with their drums.
Dead silence fell over the crowd as they spotted the two beasts and discovered the cats were watching them. The certainty that their attention was focused more on the cats than her drained some of the tension and stiffness from Kate as she moved slowly forward on the stage until she was positioned directly between the two cats. She went through the motions of 'offering' herself, wondering if the sweat popping from her pores and beginning to coat her body was enough to wet the paint that had dried on her skin and if she was smearing her stripes as she ran her hands over herself, cupping her breasts and massaging them.
The moment she did, she discovered the cats certainly didn't have their undivided attention. The steady beat of the drums drowned out most of the comments so that they blurred into an incomprehensible mumble, but she heard enough 'yeah, baby!' and 'bring it on, mama!' to assure her she'd recaptured their attention. She gyrated around to one side so that those on either side of the audience could get a better look at her assets, tucking her chin as if she was gazing down at herself and cutting her eyes at the tiger.
She had his full attention, too, she discovered, feeling her heart leap. His gaze was slumberous, but riveted on her nevertheless. Her heart was in her throat as she danced a little closer to him and pretended she was trying to entice him, moving sinuously while she felt herself up.
He studied her movements with an unblinking stare for many moments before he lifted his head and met her gaze. She tensed as he did, unable to prevent herself from meeting that golden stare, even though she had a bad feeling it was the wrong thing to do. Tearing her gaze from his after a moment, she turned away from him and moved slowly closer to the lion. As if she was trying to make up her mind of which to choose between the two, she turned from the lion after a few moments and moved back toward the tiger, inching a little closer each time. She'd made the circuit twice when she discovered Panas the Prick watching her from the wings-glaring at her actually, and motioning imperiously with his hand toward the animals.
Their fucking paws weren't nailed to the floor, she reflected with a burst of anger fed by fear-drugged and chained, or not, they hadn't shifted more than a hair, but both cats seemed way too mesmerized by her for Kate's peace of mind. By the time she'd danced to first one cat and then the other again, the audience was shouting directions she didn't want to understand and Panas looked like he was going to burst a blood vessel.
She slithered down to her knees that time, more because it felt like her knees would give out than because she wanted to comply with Panas' demands. Crawling toward the lion cautiously, she lifted a shaking hand and settled it on his side, hoping his reach wasn't long enough to knock her head off of her shoulders if he felt inclined to slap at her.
She felt a vibration filter through her palm as she stroked his fur from his belly to his hip. For several moments, her mind was so perfectly blank with terror, she couldn't figure out what the vibration was.
Then she realized he was purring.
It heartened her, but not by a hell of a lot.
Realizing her legs were too weak for her to actually regain her feet, she crawled across the stage to the other cat, approaching him warily. He tensed when she touched him and her heart tried to choke her. Almost as if he forced himself to relax, the muscles beneath her hand eased. She stroked her hand through his fur, feeling a rumbling purr begin from deep inside of him, but she couldn't work up the nerve to move closer.
She was supposed to rub herself on them.
She didn't think she could do that.
Trying to assure herself that Panas wouldn't beat her to death for deliberately ignoring his orders, she moved back to the lion and stroked him again. He began to purr again almost the moment she touched him, shifting almost restlessly, as if he wanted to turn to draw closer to her. Thankfully, the chain kept him from getting close enough to sniff her. She could see his nostrils flaring, though, knew he was 'tasting' the air for her scent.
Panas was making motions with his hands again when she dared a glance in his direction.
As she moved back to the tiger once more, the tiger watched her every move. The moment she reached out to begin stroking his belly and hip again, however, he lay down completely, settling his head against the floor and stretching his great body out as if inviting her to rub his belly.
Slightly reassured by the fact that his head, and those frightening jaws, weren't hovering over her, she inched a little closer and rubbed her face along his belly.
As quick as lightening, he hooked one great foreleg around her shoulders and dragged her full length against his belly. Before she could even remember her voice to scream, his huge head settled next to hers and she heard a rumbling, threatening growl directly in her ear.
* * * *
Sergei struggled against the effects of the drugs in his system, even though he'd learned by now that the fight was useless-worse than useless, actually. They'd brought him down with the drugs. When he'd wakened in a cage, he'd loosed his fury on the people who'd captured him, battering at the bars that imprisoned him until they'd raced to get more of the drug and used it to take his will to fight. He hadn't been lucid enough since that time to manage much more than eyeing them with deadly promise every time they came near his cage to feed him or drug him again.
He knew, though, that he was far, far from his home. Despite the drugs, he'd been aware of the passage of time in the elevation of the stench around him, the number of times he was fed and hosed down to cleanse the offal from his cage, which was barely big enough for him to turn around in much less to distance himself from his own excrement. The incessant heaving and rocking beneath him that made him too sick to attempt to fight even if not for the drugs had finally translated in his mind to 'ship' even though he'd never been on one before-had not traveled in any of the machines of man since he'd eschewed that side of his nature in favor of the wilds when he'd finally realized it was safer, both for him and for the man-children, for him to stay as far away from them as possible.
He was not of their kind, even though he had walked among them during much of his early years, nor yet of the beasts that was his other side. In truth, he belonged no where, but he preferred the honest savagery of his beast kindred to the brutal lies and deceptive nature of the man-children.
At least the beasts he lived among only killed for survival-to eat, to protect, for self-preservation-never merely for amusement or vindictiveness. They would not hunt him down and kill him only because he was different as they had his parents because they had been foolish enough to believe they could pass undetected among the man-children.
It had settled in his mind after a time that, if they hadn't killed him outright, they had a reason for allowing him to live. They had plans for him and that meant he still had the chance to live. All he had to do was bide his time. Sooner or later they'd slip up, become too confident, and when they did, they would pay for it with their lives and he would be free again, free to return to his life-such as it was.
The hunger to find another of his kind had eaten at him for years, the need for companionship, the need to mate. It had gone unfulfilled. In his beast form, he'd ranged far and wide and never sensed the presence of another like himself at all, let alone a female of his kind.
It was the need that had finally driven him back to the villages of man-children to walk among them, the hope that he'd find another of his kind there, living among them as he and his parents once had, but that hope had not only soured, it had gotten him captured.
He could only bear the constraints of his human skin for short periods before the itch to roam the wilds became nearly unbearable and it was his proximity to the man-children that had caught the notice of the hunters, he knew.
The irony was that those who'd captured him had brought him closer to another of his kind than he'd been since the deaths of his parents.
The South African was closer than he'd come before, at any rate. He was man-beast. He was feline-unfortunately not tiger, but it had given rise to renewed hope that he might know where others of their kind were.
He would find out when he found a way to free himself-for they had no way to communicate when they did not dare take their human forms-and if the lion knew of others, maybe he'd help him escape, as well.
And if he did not-maybe he would anyway.
He'd curbed his fury after a while, once it had finally settled in his thick skull that fighting them was not only useless, it encouraged them to keep him too drugged to use his wits. They still gave him far too much to have much mind about him, but at least he was awake part of the time now. At least he could see what was going on around him. At least his rambling thoughts connected from time to time.
As they had when he'd been brought to this place.
He was to be sold to a zoo, he'd discovered, but they hadn't found a buyer yet. They'd decided to make him 'earn his keep' by entertaining in their club/casino.
The first discovery had increased his rage to the point where he'd had difficulty pretending he was still too drugged to hold his head up, let alone alert enough to try to fight them.
The second discovery had made him glad he'd managed to contain his fury.
They were going to take him out of his cage.
When they did, he would have his first real opportunity to escape-if he was lucky.
He'd underestimated their wariness of him. Despite the fact that he'd pretended to be more than half asleep, they'd taken no chances. They'd shot him up with more of the hated drugs, waiting until they were certain the drugs were pumping through him before they'd opened the cage.
He'd tried to gather himself to launch an attack anyway, but had discovered he could barely stand. Reality had blurred around him as they fixed the collar around his neck and half dragged him from the cage, poking and prodding him until he'd stumbled to his feet. He'd had to splay his legs wide to remain standing once he'd gotten up and the drug had skewed his perceptions, making it almost impossible to walk. It had required absolute concentration to put one foot in front of the other and move when they'd started dragging on the chain and choking him with the collar around his neck.
Impotent rage had risen to life inside of him, but deeply, too deeply to summon it to his aid.
And then he'd seen her.
From the moment he'd spied her his entire focus had shifted to her. A hunger he barely recognized rose instantly and began gnawing at his gut, flooded his already drugged mind with a drug far more potent. He'd thought she wasn't real at first, tried to shake the image, tried to convince himself he was seeing things, and then he'd caught her scent and that had only confused him more. The drugs, he wondered? She looked like a she-beast, but she smelled human. Was she both, as he was? Or only human?
He struggled to recall the scents of his parents, to remember if they carried the smell of both man and beast, but he couldn't seem to remember. It seemed possible, though, that she would have the scent of man-child when she was in half-shift.
He didn't know, but he discovered he didn't care. Hunger pervaded him as he stared at her. Need surged through his body, setting it on fire. His man side wanted her with a feverish need that had him fairly quivering with the restraint he had to struggle to hold on to. His beast side decided he would have her.
The lion-man, he realized fairly quickly, wanted her, too. He could see the hunger in the other beast-man's eyes-smell it on him.
Savage possessiveness moved through him. He wanted her and he would have her. If he had to tear the lion-man's throat out and crawl over his bloody carcass to get her, he would!
She made it easy for him. After teasing him until it was all he could do to remain perfectly still and wait for his chance, driving him more mindless by the moment with the promise of her undulating body, her scent, and tentative touch, she made the mistake of moving within his reach.
He caught her, dragging her close enough he could finally wallow in her scent, immerse himself in it, the scent that had been driving him steadily closer and closer to madness. He could feel the warmth and softness of her and the instant he did, he lost his hold on his last tenuous thread of reason.

A sneak peak at my upcoming release, Hunger of the Wolf!

Available soon from: http://www.newconceptspublishing.com/madelainemontague.htm


Chapter One
The bastard was brazen, he’d give him that, Dante Belue thought angrily as he shadowed the alpha of the rogue pack that had been encroaching on his territory for months. They’d been more subtle to begin with, slipping in and out again before any of his pack mates could lay one of them by the heels and, so far, they’d managed to elude every attempt to track them back to their lair. They didn’t try to hide the fact that they’d encroached. They made damned sure they left a calling card when they came. They’d simply been playing at cat and mouse, more of an annoyance to begin with than anything else.
The incursions had been steadily escalating, however, both in frequency and violence until there was no longer any doubt in his mind that the pack alpha wanted a territorial war or, more accurately, he supposed, the son-of-a-bitch was after his ranking in the pack.
He was prime alpha over the entire territory. There were more than a dozen other packs beneath his own that were under his jurisdiction. If the rogue had wanted nothing more than to move into the territory, he would have sought him out and requested acceptance and then he could have challenged anyone for pack ranking.
He’d been thumbing his nose at Dante, however, by breaking pack protocol. He was well within his rights to attack without any further provocation, without warning, without any challenge at all, and dispose of the rogue in whatever manner he saw fit, up to and including killing him outright. He wasn’t even required to consider it a bona fide challenge and meet the man honorably. He could send any one of his pack brothers out, or the whole lot of them, and simply slaughter the rogue pack.
He would have the full support of his pack and the other packs within his territory if he chose to do so. He would have the full support of the head council, for that matter.
On a personal level, though, it went against the grain. He had absolute faith in his own abilities and blindsiding the rogue, whatever the provocation, just smacked of cowardice and underhandedness in his book. He didn’t need to play that way, and he had no intention of doing so, although the bastard was really starting to piss him off. For his own comfort, he’d decided he was either going to have to catch him in the act—in which case all bets were off—or he was going to have to figure out a way to force the rogue to meet him in a fair fight.
Waiting for the rogue to make his move wasn’t getting him anywhere fast. He’d been expecting the son-of-a-bitch to come forward and challenge him for weeks. If he was going to, though, he figured the rogue would’ve by now.
So, he was either waiting for something, or he just didn’t have the balls to actually face Dante without a prod in that direction.
He wasn’t sure what the hell the bastard might be waiting for—but he was waiting for something. Dante was sure of that.
What confused the hell out of him about the little game of espionage they were currently playing was why the alpha had broken his pack up and sent everyone off in different directions. It weakened them—his pack, too—because he’d had to break his own pack up and send them to tail the members of the rogue pack. If it was a battle strategy, it was the worst one he’d ever run across.
Unless he thought he could whittle Dante’s pack down one-on-one? Divide and conquer?
That wasn’t as stupid as he’d first thought. Not that it had a chance in hell of working, but it would’ve had merit if they hadn’t been up against his pack. The rogue pack was smaller than his. From what they’d been able to determine, they also had a number of members that were young and looked to be relatively inexperienced—which, of course, also meant they weren’t dependable in a pitched battle.
Dante paused behind the broad trunk of a live oak as he saw the lycan he’d been tailing stop and lift his head, sniffing the air.
Dante’s dark brows descended. He was down wind. He hadn’t been so preoccupied with his thoughts, he knew, that he’d let the bastard catch his scent. Unconsciously, he lifted his own head to test the air, sorting the scents that came to him and trying to determine what had had the effect of making the other lycan slink into the shadows.
Not surprisingly, he detected a hodgepodge bouquet of human scents. It was a park, after all, the largest in the city and frequented by tourists and locals alike. He caught the scent of the lycan, as well, since he was downwind of him.
What he didn’t catch was a scent to explain the behavior of the alpha male in front of him—nothing of threat to any lycan.
The light breeze was still wafting in his direction, however, and after a moment, he decided to move a little closer to see if he could see what it was the rogue was studying with so much fascination that he’d abandoned his caution about being followed.
Sloppy, he thought derisively, very sloppy.
A tantalizing scent drifted to him as he reached the copse of trees he’d targeted as his goal. It distracted him. If the rogue hadn’t been so focused on the source of that enticing scent himself, he might have realized he’d been discovered. Dante was too distracted even to realize he’d blown his surveillance. The hairs on the base his skull prickled as the delectable scent coiled inside of him. His beast stirred, shifting his instincts to the forefront.
And his instincts were in total riot.
The scent was female—human—and something else completely outside his experience, and whatever that something else was it shot his concentration to hell. Desire stirred within him, so potent he felt dizzy with it.
Belatedly, he slunk into the shadows, but his focus was no longer on the rogue. His entire being was straining for another taste of that luscious scent. He sniffed the air until he was more dizzy still from the rapid intake of air. The smell faded in and out, drifting on the currents of air, driving him crazy because it teased his senses and he couldn’t quite get as firm a grip on it was he wanted to.
His quarry was moving, he finally realized—the female—coming closer.
As his predator instincts took over, his focus switched back to the rogue.
Dimly, he realized the rogue had come here, to this place, with the female as his goal all along. He had moved with purpose, steadily, in this direction even though he’d taken a cautiously circuitous route to reach it. This was where he had planned to come all along.
Because of the female. Abruptly, Dante was absolutely certain the entire ruse, as strange as it had seemed to him, was all about this woman.
A sense of fierce possessiveness moved through him that he hardly recognized.
He tried to shake it off, tried to force his man’s mind to the forefront to examine the situation with cool headed logic so that he could understand it. This was no lycan female giving off the pheromones indicating she was in heat, or about to go into heat. In any case, this was his territory. He knew all of the females—and all of them were well guarded during their mating cycles.
Control was essential when they had so few females. The females, once in heat, had no discrimination. Their need to be bred overrode reason. It was up to him to ensure that the strongest of the males got first breeding opportunity to insure healthy off-spring for the whole pack.
Ordinarily, that would have included the prime alpha’s pack, would have put them at the top of the list. Unfortunately, none the females available had met his standards—meaning none of them were females he was willing to tie himself to, or any of his lieutenants for that matter, because they were still members of the prime alpha’s pack and could assert their rights above the others if they’d wanted to. Not that there was anything wrong with their females. They were all pretty and intelligent—good stock—mostly likeable, just not lovable in a mating sense as far he was concerned.
He didn’t actually have to bind to one to mate, he knew. He could have asserted his rights and taken which ever one took his fancy. He had, in point of fact, bedded most of them at one time or another—he was a healthy, red-blooded male after all. He’d just been careful to do it when there was no chance of actually breeding them. The breeding created a bond that he didn’t want—however lose a bond it might be. If and when he got around to breeding a female, it was going to be one that he wanted to be bound to, permanently, or one he was at least willing to form a parental bond with.
He had, in point of fact, begun to wonder if was at all likely that he was ever going to run across a female that appealed so strongly to his breeding instincts that logical decision didn’t enter into the equation—because it was for damned sure he wasn’t going to take the leap unless he did.
It disturbed him to discover those particular thoughts circulating in his mind under the current circumstances—which sure as hell had nothing to do with a breedable female.
If his cock hadn’t been as hard as a rock, he would’ve thought the rogue had gone completely off the deep end to be stalking a human female at all.
Lust, though, that was a different matter. If she could do this to him when she hadn’t come within sight of him yet, he could completely understand the rogue’s determination to have her. But why risk his entire pack for one female? And a human female, at that? Why risk all on the turn of one card?
Maybe the rogue was insane and he was trying to attribute rational behavior to someone who wasn’t rational?
He didn’t believe that, he decided. Everything the bastard had done so far had been carefully calculated and carefully executed. He also didn’t believe that this was just a jaunt to snatch a particularly appealing piece of ass because he didn’t believe for a moment that the rogue was content to merely eek out an existence on the outskirts of his territory. He intended to take over Dante’s territory. If he had wanted to merge his pack with Dante’s, he would have approached him in the accepted manner. His behavior was a clear indication that he intended to go straight for the top—him—and try to wrest the position from Dante.
Somehow, the woman had to figure into his plans, regardless of how unlikely it seemed to him at the moment.
He shook those distracting thoughts off as his ears detected a breath of sound. Running footsteps—No, jogging. There was no scent of fear, only a faint whiff of uneasiness. He lifted his head, breathing in the scent, identifying that elusive ‘something’ that made the blood boil in his veins, but this time anger joined the lust.
The fool of a woman was out exercising in the park at dusk?
A tourist, he wondered? She hadn’t heard about the attacks? Or was she just one of those fools who believed nothing could actually touch her?
* * * *
Shilo McKenzie noticed the gathering gloom with a touch of dismay. She’d been certain she had plenty of time to make a circuit of the park and get back to her hotel room—or at least out of the park and back into the crowded city streets—before it was dark. She hadn’t considered, though, that the huge, spreading oaks that dotted the park and made it such a pleasant place during the day also created a premature dusk beneath their canopy. The sun had barely set and already the shadows were deepening, creating, with the aid of the shrubs that abounded within the park, dark little alcoves for predators to hide.
By her best mental calculations, she was still a good fifteen minutes from the gates of the park, too.
She picked up her pace a little, although she was already a bit winded.
She’d wanted a challenge to ease the stiffness from too much time indoors, but she had underestimated the length of the trail she’d decided to follow and overestimated her general fitness level.
She didn’t actually get worried, however, until her ‘spidey’ senses began to tingle. It wasn’t much of a ‘gift’. She wasn’t even certain it was a gift. Reason could have well produced the sense that something just wasn’t right—after all, it was almost dark, and the area was deserted—but she’d learned over the years not to ignore that sense.
Doubt instantly threaded through her. She hadn’t seen another soul in at least fifteen or twenty minutes. Run faster? Turn around and head the other way?
The urge hit her to turn and run as fast as she could. On the other hand, she was a lot closer to the gates of the park if she kept going as she was.
She was already out of breath, though. If she put on a burst of speed, could she outrun whoever, or whatever, it was that she sensed?
Sucking in a deep breath, she made her decision unconsciously and switched from a jog to a full out run.
Something huge and dark and menacing leapt from the patch of bushes she’d suspected held a predator, landing on the path before her. She skidded to a halt, too breathless to scream.
It was too late, she realized, to do anything but stand her ground. If she’d turned around when she’d first thought about it, she might have had a prayer of outrunning the lycan beastman blocking her path. Now, she didn’t. Sucking in a deep breath, she did the only thing she could as the lycan uttered a low, challenging snarl and charged her. She focused every ounce of her being into her hands and lifted them, praying her true gift wouldn’t desert her now in the hour of her need.
She felt it sizzle along her arms, felt her heart rate triple as she strained to gather everything she had for one burst strong enough to stun the thing. She almost waited too long to discharge.
With a blood curdling snarl, the half-man, half-beast launched himself at her. Even as she hurtled the burst of energy at him, however, she heard a second, challenging snarl and realized she was fucked.
There were two of them!

A Look at my recent release, Breeding Ground

Breeding Ground, available now from: http://www.newconceptspublishing.com/madelainemontague.htm

Chapter One

He awakened slowly, reluctantly, uncertain at first what had sent ripples through his psyche to disturb his slumber. He had been drifting so long that awareness of his surroundings had slowly but surely eroded until only some event of magnitude, he knew, would have penetrated the deep, dreamless sleep that he’d sought. It was that realization that encouraged him to shake off the temptation to ignore the ripples, and he roused himself to see what it was.
People, he thought, surprised, not pleased, but it was not merely ‘the people’, he discovered, those he had once walked among, called brother—come to despise. Others were among them, pale skinned, pale eyed. This tribe he had no familiarity with.
He wavered, torn between curiosity about these others and the hate that had sent him into his slumberous state long, long ago, so long ago that the hate had become little more than apathy.
Rising finally, he stretched, expanding his psyche outward, and then he walked among them, studying the others, watching them. They were digging, he discovered, for what he could not determine, but it answered the question. This had caused the ripple, the disturbance that had shaken him from his rest.
His curiosity waned. He had no idea what they were about, but he had no real interest either.
Then he saw her.
Intrigued, he settled to watch her and he discovered that the longer he watched her, the more absorbed he was. This one was different.
* * * *
“Look out!”
“Rock slide!”
“Run!”
The ominous sound of colliding, rolling, bouncing rocks rapidly built from a warning rumble to a deafening roar punctuated by the shouts that first drew her attention and the screams of fear and pain that quickly followed the first shouts. Gabrielle LaPlante lifted her head like an animal sensing danger at the first rumble, freezing as her gaze swept the dig site and finally focused on the threat. Her eyes widened as she saw the wave of dirt and rocks racing down the mountain side like a black tide, but everything inside of her seized, even her breath in her lungs.
It was over almost before anyone had realized what was happening. Through the cloud of dust that rose from the foot of the mountain where the debris settled, Gabrielle saw a twisted human arm jutting skyward. Coated with dirt from the soil dislodged by the falling rocks, she stared at it for many moments before her brain finally registered that it actually was an arm, not a bizarre, twisted tree root that resembled a human arm.
Released finally from the shock that had rooted her to the spot, she surged forward, launched into a run as the workers that had scattered halted and turned to race back. She was among the last to reach the downed worker, but it wouldn’t have mattered, she saw, if she’d been the first. The man hadn’t suffocated. A rock twice the size of his head had crushed his skull.
As short as she was, the native South Americans that made up the bulk of the laborers for the dig were as short, or shorter, and she had no trouble seeing over the men that clustered in front of her. She was sorry that was the case. The image seemed to burn itself inside her mind. Nausea rolled over her. She stumbled back, turned, looked numbly around the dig site for several moments and fled to the tent that had been assigned to her as her temporary home away from home.
A forensic anthropologist on loan from the Dade Museum of Human History to investigate the first, and only, skeletal remains found at the scene, which turned out to be the body of a two hundred year old Indian who’d died while hunting not an ancient settler of the area, she had never considered herself superstitious. She’d learned to appreciate and respect the customs and beliefs of various cultures and ancient civilizations, but she didn’t believe.
She’d been uneasy ever since she’d arrived at the dig, however.
She’d dismissed it. This was her first field operation and a certain amount of trepidation was to be understood, particularly considering the remote location. They were miles and miles from the nearest speck of civilization, and even that couldn’t be truly categorized as civilization, not in her book, anyway. The village was a throw back, virtually untouched by modern civilization.
She’d regretted taking the assignment almost as soon as she’d agreed to it. She regretted it even more as they left the tiny airstrip and set off in ancient vehicles down narrow twisting roads, traveling deeper and deeper into thick, twisted jungle filled with more poisonous creeping, slithering reptiles and insects than any other part of the world.
The trip alone had been enough of a jolt to her system to account for her jitteriness—paddling for miles and miles in canoes that sat barely above water level and watching snakes and crocodiles slither past. It had comforted her somewhat when she’d arrived to find the dig well in progress. The jungle had been cut back. The dig site was populated with a dozen scientists and students and about twice or three times that many native workers. A tent village had dotted the periphery of the site—but the tents were the best money could buy and filled with every modern convenience that could be lugged this deeply into the jungle.
The conditions were still ungodly primitive, and she didn’t especially like the speculative gazes of the dark eyed natives—apparently fair women fascinated them. Not that she qualified as a ‘real blond’ in the real world. Her hair had darkened as she’d matured to a color closer to brown than blond, but she still had the blue eyes, pale skin, and freckles of a true blond and that seemed sufficient to the brown skinned pigmies that made up the bulk of the tent village to earn her more hungry male glances in the few weeks she’d been there than she’d had in her entire life before.
Loathe to encourage them to believe she might welcome their sexual overtures—and she didn’t think she was imagining that they looked her over like a particularly choice piece of ass—she spent most of her time pretending they were invisible, which was another thing that made her uncomfortable. She’d been accused of being frank to the point of bluntness—which no one seemed to consider a virtue—but part of that frankness was the tendency to meet everyone eye to eye. She’d been taught that ‘shifty eyed’ was a trait that spelled untrustworthy. She wasn’t a liar, a cheat, or a fraud, and she was as good as, if no better than, anyone. It made her feel dishonest to avoid eye contact.
Beyond the physical discomforts, though, beyond the uneasiness at having short, dark men staring at her as if she was Venus incarnate, beyond the very real dangers that lurked beneath every leaf, shrub, and tree limb, there was something about the ancient city they’d uncovered that was just plain otherworldly creepy.
She’d tried to convince herself it was nothing more than the real threats she sensed around her that was playing havoc with her imagination, but the fine hairs on her body—those primal sensors of danger—prickled as if the dormant animal inside of her knew something her conscious mind couldn’t detect.
The natives were uneasy, too. Her Spanish wasn’t all that great, but she didn’t need to understand the language to assess the behavior.
They were superstitious, though. They believed the tales of ghosts they scared themselves with.
She didn’t believe in ghosts, or spirits, or ancient gods that were going to be displeased about having their temples violated.
She hadn’t before she’d arrived at the grave site of the ancient, unnamed city. Now, she was trying to convince herself she still didn’t.
And yet the death toll was rising. More than a dozen workers had died since the dig had begun, eleven before her arrival, two since, and three of the original party of scientists and archeology students had come down with a mysterious ailment that had required them to be shipped back stateside.
They’d unearthed great segments of what promised to be a huge city that predated anything found before by at least a thousand years. And they still hadn’t found the remains of a single occupant of that city.
That was almost the creepiest part of it. They should have found something by now that would warrant her presence here.
If they didn’t find something damned soon, she thought angrily, she was going to high tail it back to her museum!
“What happened, Gaby? Who got hurt?” Sheila Lyndon demanded as Gabrielle neared the tent they shared.
Gaby simply stared at her blankly for several moments. “Got dead today, you mean? I didn’t know his name.” She didn’t know any of the natives’ names. She wasn’t certain she would have recognized the guy.
A wave of shock crossed Sheila’s features. “Somebody got killed?”
“There’s a shock,” Gaby said tightly, snatching open the tent flap and diving inside. “Someone getting killed on this dig.”
“Hey! Accidents happen,” Sheila said, following her inside as Gaby threaded her way around obstructions and flopped onto the cot assigned to her without even thinking about checking the bedding for crawlies first.
Gaby looked at the younger woman in outraged disbelief. “That’s callous, even for you.”
Sheila glared at her. “I didn’t mean it that way, and you know it!”
Right, Gaby thought, but she didn’t say it. She wasn’t up to an argument at the moment. She realized she might has well have voiced her opinion, though, because Sheila read it in her expression.
“Don’t tell me you’re starting to believe that voodoo crap the natives are always whining about?”
Gaby felt her face reddening in spite of all she could do. Since there was no hiding her reaction, she glared at Shelia, trying to pass off embarrassment for anger.
Not that she wasn’t angry!
“This isn’t Africa,” she said tightly, “or even the Caribbean. They don’t believe in voodoo around here.”
“Whatever witchcraft mumbo jumbo they call it.”
Gaby gave Shelia a once over, taking in the young woman’s better than average figure. “What did you say you were majoring in?”
Sheila’s eyes narrowed. “I happen to be in the upper ten percentile of my class!” she snapped.
“Yeah, but was it your brain that got you there? That’s the question!”
Sheila’s eyes glittered. “Well, nobody could be in any doubt that it was your brains that got you your position!” she snarled through clenched teeth.
“Now I’m going to cry!” Gaby shot back at her. “I’ll bet my brains stay sharp a lot longer than your tits and ass!”
“You’d lose,” Sheila snapped, her expression abruptly going from fury to complacency. “Daddy’s got plenty of money to keep everything right where it is. You should check it out Ms LaPlante. What are you, thirty five now? Forty? Honey, it’s already hanging low! There’s just so much they can do, you know? You should take out a loan on your car or something.”
Gaby glared at the woman’s back as she spun on her heel and sashayed out of the tent again. Ok, so Sheila wasn’t exactly stupid! She had plenty of ammunition to fight dirty. Cold blooded, self-centered, materialistic and, to Gaby’s way of thinking, probably a sociopath, but she wasn’t the bimbo her bleached blond hair and wide doe eyes implied.
She didn’t hate Sheila just because she’d been fortunate enough to be born within a wealthy family, nor because she was better than average in looks, had straight, white teeth, a great figure, was probably ten years younger, and knew how to use all those assets.
She hated Sheila because she was a bitch.
Actually, hate was probably a little strong. Ordinarily, she just felt contempt or irritation. The tent was supposed to be big enough to accommodate two people in reasonable comfort, but Sheila had hauled half of all she owned with her and it was next to impossible to move inside the tent.
They were in serious trouble if they ever had to exit it quickly!
“Bitch!” she muttered, resisting the urge to drag out a mirror and check her reflection. She didn’t need to to know she looked like hell. What would the mirror do besides depress the shit out of her?
She was thirty five. There was nothing wrong with it, or with looking one’s age! In fact most people seemed to think she looked as if she was in her twenties … late twenties, granted, but still twenty something.
The snide Ms thing irked the shit out of her, too.
She’d chosen to be single, damn Miss Hot Twat!
It wasn’t like she hadn’t had opportunities to get married. She’d had a couple.
Sighing, she rubbed her eyes and shifted to lay down on the cot. Remembering abruptly that she hadn’t checked the cot for scorpions or spiders, she sprang up and examined the bedding carefully before she settled again.
She was hot, drained, and upset about the man’s death, but aside from venting her frustrations on Sheila, she couldn’t seem to let go of the tension pent up inside of her. As she lay staring up at the ceiling of the tent, trying to block out the distant sounds of the accident site, she found herself reflecting on the reason she’d decided not to marry, not to even look. What was the point? The ‘accident’ and subsequent infection she’d had before she even reached puberty had eliminated any chance of ever having children.
Theses days there was some hope for women like her, of course. Despite the scaring on her fallopian tubes, she could probably get help from a fertility specialist, but that took money, a lot of money. And there were no guarantees with something like that. She could spend years, and every dime she’d worked so hard to put up for her retirement years, and still have nothing to show for it but heartbreak.
She was reasonably content with her life. Why turn her life inside out over something she didn’t need to go through to feel fulfilled?
Besides, as Miss Bitch had pointed out, she was beyond the prime age for child bearing. Women could, and often did, have children well into their thirties, even into their forties, but every year after thirty the odds got better for disaster and worse for a happy conclusion. She might spend most of her time studiously ignoring her biological clock, but she didn’t go around with her head in the sand. Here and there, she picked up little tidbits of information that encouraged her to just keep ignoring the tick tock of the clock.
Morbid, she thought, sitting up abruptly, dropping her legs over the side of the cot and covering her face with her hands. It was the deaths. She had spent most of her life either with her nose in a book, or surrounded by objects of antiquity. She had no close friends, no close family, having been reared in an orphanage. It was easy to cocoon herself from the passing years, unmarked by painful losses that would have made it impossible to ignore the fact that life was just passing her by.
Why else was she thinking, now, that she was going to live her entire life and pass completely unremarked by anyone? Why else was she thinking about being old and alone? She was alone now! It had never bothered her before.
Not really.
Dropping her hands, she huffed out an irritated breath and left the tent. The dead man had been borne off by the other workers. The archeology team was the only people at the dig site now. The students who’d been brought along were half-heartedly digging in the new area that Dr. Sheffield was certain concealed the temple that should have been the center of the community.
Had the workers left for good, she wondered? Or only left to carry out whatever burial ritual their people observed?
Drs. Sheffield and Oldman were kneeling in the pit, studying something she couldn’t make out from the distance that separated them.
Or maybe they were only studying Sheila?
She was on her knees, as well, bent over as if she was studying whatever it was they’d found, but more likely just so she could give both the professors a gratuitous view of her ample bosom, which was hanging half out of the shirt she was wearing tied at her waist.
Gaby didn’t especially want to be anywhere near Sheila at the moment, but she didn’t want to be alone with her thoughts either. After a momentary hesitation, she decided to join the students and help with the digging. Shoveling and sifting and carting dirt was hard work. She needed something physical to work off her tension if she didn’t want her thoughts plaguing her tonight when she was supposed to be sleeping.

A look at my first book, Nocturnal

Available now at: http://www.newconceptspublishing.com/madelainemontague.htm

Chapter One

Pain and fury filled Raphael as he raced through the dense brush in a mindless quest for freedom. Adrenaline drove him, else the pain from his wounds might have overwhelmed him. Fear ate at his mind, as well, but it was a distant voice, drowned by the frustration and anger because the fear wasn't for himself. It was fear of failing.
He had almost had the bastard!
For months he had tracked the ring leader of the men that had killed his woman and their unborn child. Patience was not one of his virtues, but his rage had grown cold in the year since Concepcion's death. His determination had hardened in the weeks he had lain fighting for his own life and the months after that that he had spent regaining his strength with an agonizing slowness that had been maddening while he chaffed at his quarry's trail growing colder and colder.
He had tracked him, though, halfway across two continents.
His stupidity had nearly gotten him killed, but he had wanted the bastard to look in his eyes and know that he was going to die because of Concepcion. He hadn't wanted to send the son-of-a-bitch to hell wondering.
He hadn't expected to be interrupted, but he should have anticipated the possibility.
If they hadn't taken him completely off guard, he could've finished the bastard before he left. Now he was wounded again, pretty fucking badly, he thought, if the blood he was losing was any indication.
He couldn't stop to examine it, though, because he could still hear them following, could still hear a random shot from time to time as the trigger happy morons spied something they thought might be him and fired at it. The darkness and the thickness of the woods were his only allies and he had a feeling he was running out of allies.
Almost on the thought he bounded from the woods and onto a narrow, two rut track. Tall weeds sprouted from the soil on either side and along the narrow center strip, but he was exposed and he bounded across the track and into the woods on the other side.
He paused there to catch his breath because he couldn't do anything else. The adrenaline that had kept him going thus far was rapidly draining away from him now and he could feel weakness seeping into every muscle in his body. Panting for breath, he tipped his head back to look up at the trees for cover.
He tamped the impulse. He would be too exposed. If he had been stronger, it wouldn't be such a bad idea. It would give him a vantage to watch for the hunters. It would give him a strategic advantage if he was able to fight back, but he had a bad feeling he would come out the loser in his current state.
Twisting his head to look back in the direction from which he'd come, he listened intently. Sure enough, within a few moments, he heard the hunters trampling through the brush in pursuit.
Uttering a mental curse, he looked at the track again.
It might just lead back to the compound, but he didn't think so. He'd studied the area pretty thoroughly over the past few weeks and he was fairly certain that this track belonged to the woman he'd spotted a few times in his surveillance.
He didn't trust the impulse that assailed him to seek her out, but he was pretty much out of options unless he wanted to just lie down and let them finish him off.
A year ago, he would've almost welcomed it. Hell, even six months ago.
He wasn't ready to quit now, though. If he died, he meant to take that bastard with him to hell.
Turning without even realizing he had made a decision, he began to head along the edge of the track as quickly as he could. He didn't trust the woman, not enough to go to her for help, but she had several out buildings on her property. If he could just make it to one of them, he would have the chance to rest and see about his wounds.
The wound on his shoulder seemed to have stopped bleeding. He was fairly certain that had been no more than a crease, deep enough to hurt like a son-of-bitch, and bleed like hell, but he was pretty sure the bullet had done no more than plow a furrow through him and out the other side.
He was equally certain that he did have a bullet in his hip. He'd been favoring the leg, trying his best to keep from jolting it anymore than necessary, but each time he put even a little weight on that leg, agonizing pain ground through him and the leg threatened to buckle.
Hobbling now that the adrenaline had abandoned him and the pain and weakness was threatening to lay him out for the kill, he gritted his teeth and kept moving as quickly as he could, hoping he could make it to the woman's house and hide before he passed out.
Her image rose in his mind and as it did he felt his heart rate speed up just a little. A flicker of desire burgeoned despite all reason, his body beginning to hum with warmth.
Wryly, he concluded that he was still a ways from death if she could get any kind of rise out of him at the moment.
But then again, he had wanted her from the first moment he spied her and no amount of reasoning with himself had banished that.
She was as different from Concepcion as night from day.
It didn't matter.
More importantly, she was not one of the people.
But that didn't make any difference either. He'd tried to tell himself it did, but he knew better.
Every time he looked at her cool, white skin, her light blond hair, her pale blue eyes, he thought of ice, hard, cold.
And still he thirsted for a taste of her.
He hadn't stopped mourning for Concepcion and the babe. He still carried an ache that nothing could eradicate, not even his revenge. Having them wrenched from his life so abruptly and with such finality had been like having a part of himself torn away and he could never get that back, never get them back.
He would see that they had justice, though, blood for blood, if it was the last thing he ever did.
He had not intended that it be the last thing he ever did, though, because he had realized when he saw the woman that there was a reason to live, something to live for besides fulfilling the need for revenge.
He didn't trust her. She wasn't one of the people, and she lived too damned close to his enemy for his comfort in an area that was so remote that the next neighbors were miles away.
He couldn't completely rid himself of the suspicion that it was more than a coincidence that her land bordered his, that her neat little house and farm was little more than two miles from his compound as the crow flew.
But that didn't matter either.
In the back of his mind he knew that he had already decided that, once he had done what he had come to do, he fully intended to have her.
* * * *
The first gun shot woke Alaina. Still groggy with sleep, she lay still on the couch trying to figure out what the noise was. As it came closer it became clear what the loud popping noise was. Her heart skipped several beats. She glanced sharply at the clock on top of her TV set.
"My god! It's two in the morning! What the hell would they be hunting at this time of night?"
Rolling off the couch, she scrambled on her hands and knees toward the phone, grabbed it up and dialed the sheriff's office. It seemed to ring forever and finally switched over. He'd forwarded his calls.
He was probably at home in bed!
"Sheriff Wilson," said a voice on the line just about the time she'd given up.
"Hank, it's me, Alaina. They're out shooting up the woods again."
There was a momentary silence. "What the hell are they hunting at this time of night?"
"Well, god knows, I don't," Alaina said sharply, "but it sounds like they're moving in my direction. I'd just as soon not have any more bullet holes in my damned house!"
"I'm about fifteen minutes from you. Stay on the floor."
As if she had any intention of getting up!
The thought had barely formed in her mind when her wall exploded and then the couch as a stray bullet pierced the wall of the living room. Tufts of stuffing flew up in the air and drifted downward.
Alaina gaped at it in stunned disbelief for a split second feeling cold wash over her as she realized she'd been lying within inches of that bullet only a few moments earlier. Adrenaline surged through her then and, instinctively she began to scramble on her belly toward the back of the house. "Shit! Oh shit!" she muttered, with no clear destination in mind beyond trying to get out of range.
She'd never had a bullet actually enter the house! She'd heard shotgun pellets rain down on her roof like hail. She'd even found a couple of places on the outside walls where a spent bullet had cracked the siding, but she had never really believed she was in danger of actually getting shot in her own living room!
She'd already gone out the back door and made a dash for the storage shed in the rear before it occurred to her that they might decide she was a deer or whatever it was they were hunting.
They were on the front side of the house, though, which was why she'd thought of the shed to begin with, afraid that if they were close enough that a bullet had gone through the siding and into the house, that the interior walls weren't substantial enough to protect her.
In the distance, she heard Hank's siren.
She heard another gunshot as she grabbed the door of the shed, however, and she yanked it open and dove inside, wondering if they were going to shoot the poor sheriff. The shed was black as pitch inside, but she crouched behind her washing machine, which was right beside the door, trying to reassure herself that it was substantial enough to stop a bullet even if they came right up to the house. "Those crazy bastards!" she gasped, wondering if they were drunk or stoned out of their minds.
She'd complained about them trespassing at least a half a dozen times, but in the entire time she'd been living in the house, the hunters had never gotten nearly this close.
Trying to catch her breath and calm the frantic pounding of her heart, she listened as the siren drew nearer. After a few moments, she heard the engine of the car, the crunch of gravel beneath the wheels and then the sounds began to fade as the sheriff's car passed her place, headed down the track.
Tipping her head up, she listened for anything that might indicate that they were just crazy enough to shoot at the sheriff, wondering if it was safe to leave the shed.
"I'm going to sue the bastard if Hank doesn't arrest his sorry ass this time," she muttered.
She was shaking all over. She realized after a few moments that part of it, maybe, was due to the fact that she was sitting on cold concrete in her panties.
She'd forgotten she'd stripped down to her panties and t-shirt when she'd sprawled on the couch to watch the movie she'd dozed off in the middle of.
It was quiet outside now. She didn't hear the sirens, the car engine, no shooting. She thought she could hear a low hum of voices, but the sound was too indistinct to tell for sure.
Dragging in a shuddering breath, she was on the point of pushing herself upright when she saw something that froze her mid-motion.
There was a pair of glowing yellow eyes staring straight at her from the darkness of the shed less than two yards from where she was sitting.