I’ve got a free story for you — a paranormal romance with a thrum of lust, a touch of magic, and an action-packed ending. I’ve never written anything this short before (3000 words), and the characters I chose to write about are not the usual vamps, shifters, and witches.
FIRST DATE
Homicide Detective Joe Brennan is sure he knows who’s making the snuff videos that have recently surfaced online–his dreams point him toward the killer. But he needs proof that will hold up in court. When he asks for help with an undercover operation, he has no idea that the woman he lusts after will be his new partner.
Kallista Ophiades is a member of the Guard, the police force for the supernatural community. When Joe unknowingly targets a monster, Kalli persuades the Captain to include her, so she can determine whether the Guard should intervene. But when the operation goes south, Kalli must choose between protecting Joe and keeping her own dark secret.
EXCERPT
Homicide Detective Joe Brennan watched the woman of his dreams float into the room. The Captain’s secretary dressed like a librarian: calf-length skirts, tailored shirts buttoned to the neck, wavy black hair twisted into a knot and skewered with a pointed wooden stick. She spoke in prim, quiet tones, and she even wore those old-fashioned wire-rimmed librarian glasses.
But Kallista Ophiades didn’t walk like a librarian. She moved with the sinuous grace of a belly dancer, the smallest shift of her hips enough to send the blood meant for his brain on a detour to his groin. He couldn’t help remembering how she’d looked in his dreams, her hair writhing free over her shoulders as she rode him, her eyes gleaming with ecstasy, and her nails digging into his chest. He’d never seen her naked, but his subconscious insisted that he dream her with a tiny emerald snake tattoo coiled around her navel.
That’s the only way I’ll ever be with Kallista. In my dreams.
Oblivious to his distress, she crossed the room, nodding politely at each person she passed without breaking the demure eyes-down manner she maintained. In another woman, it would have seemed pretentious, but on her it came across as polite.
He waited next to her desk, file in hand, mentally rehearsing what he was going to say. When’s the Captain due back? But it was impossible to focus on the words when his brain superimposed sexy dream-Kalli over the real Kalli. Every time he tried to talk to her, his thoughts evaporated, his mouth went dry, and he blurted out something stupid.
Like, “I need a date.”
This story is in Round 2 of the ARE “Just One Bite” contest. You can read the rest here: http://www.allromanceebooks.com/contest.html
If you like it, would you please vote for it?
Otherworldly Passions 