Burning Up

welcome.
    Raniero entered in a slow, luscious slide, groaning in delight. “Red God’s Balls, you’re tight,” he panted.
    And he felt so deliciously thick, a tunneling pleasure that seemed to reach halfway to her waist. His withdrawal was just as careful, a sweet, silken delight. Dazzled, she looked up at him as he braced his arms to either side of her shoulders, biting his lip as if he fought to control himself. His dark eyes seemed to glow with feral need as he thrust in and out.
    A need for something more than sex. A need she felt just as powerfully.
    Hypnotized by that need, she stared up into his eyes, admiring the flush riding his high cheekbones, the sensual curve of his mouth, the white tips of his fangs showing between his parted lips.
    Raniero picked up the pace, nostrils flaring like a racing stallion’s. Each long thrust jolted her closer and closer to explosion. Gasping, she hooked her heels over his thighs and ground upward, meeting him with rolling hips.
    The climax exploded in her core like a blast of magic, primal and savage. As she threw back her head to scream, he bent his arms, lowering himself over her, his black eyes wild and hungry. His lifted upper lip displayed the length of his teeth.
    Knowing what he wanted, what he needed, she angled her head to offer him her throat. “Now, oh, now!”
    The touch of his hot lips and the cool slice of his teeth kicked her climax even higher. Thrusting heavily, he began to drink. She fisted her hands in the silk of his hair, gasping with the feral intensity of her pleasure.
     
    T hey lay together in the aftermath, panting, sweat sheening their skin in the moonlight that poured through the window. Amaris stroked his strong back slowly, feeling a sweet contentment she’d never known.
    Until he raised his wrist to his mouth and sliced his fangs across the skin. Blood welled as he met her gaze, an odd vulnerability in his eyes. “Will you drink from me?”
    Amaris blinked at him in dumbfounded surprise. She’d heard of this in the Garden, but she’d never expected a vampire to make such an offer.
    For a vampire to share his blood with his Rose linked them in magic, heart to heart, soul to soul.
    “Oh, yes,” Amaris breathed, joy blazing through her like sunlight.
    He tasted like love, and she smiled against his skin, knowing neither of them would ever be alone again.

SHIFTING SEA
    Virginia Kantra
    This one is for Kristen, to read in a hammock.
And to my wonderful readers—thank you!

ONE
    Scotland, 1813
     
    M ajor John Harris squinted between his horse’s ears, willing himself to ignore the throbbing in his knee and the pounding like hoofbeats in his head.
    He had survived the bloody siege of Ciudad Rodrigo. He would not die of a hangover now that he was home.
    Now that he had a home.
    And all his limbs.
    He had not expected either outcome. He was a man used to dealing with life’s harsher realities. But he could not be sorry that life, for once, had frustrated his worst expectations.
    He lifted his face, letting the wind tatter the remnants of his nightmare and blow his hangover out to sea. The air smelled of earth and sea, brush and brine. Neptune jingled his bridle, bobbing his massive head in approval. The rawboned gray had carried Jack unflinchingly on the winter retreat from Corunna and through the long, blistering march to Talavera, but the Peninsular war against Napoleon had left the big horse scarred and past his prime.
    Like his rider, Jack admitted ruefully. At least Neptune seemed to be taking the transition to civilian life in stride.
    Lucky beast.
    In the weeks since his cousin’s lawyers had found him in a stinking Lisbon hospital, Jack had learned to walk again without a cane and to sleep again in a room with four walls. But he was as ignorant as the rawest ensign when it came to managing his unexpected inheritance.
    He was a soldier, not a farmer, determined to carry out his duty to the best of his ability, grimly aware that his tenants’ lives depended on his decisions as surely as his troops’ had. He only hoped his best would be good enough.
    The rutted road meandered over hills as worn as his bones. The land—his land, now—swept in a ragged curve around the harbor, anchored at one end by the peaked roofs and chimneys of Arden Hall and on the other by furrowed cliffs. Fishing boats bobbed in the shining flat water. A bleak, spare church, an unprofitable inn, and a score of small dark houses clung like mussels to the