Rowena Cherry - Forced Mate.pdf - Rowena Cherry - SilverWitch

The truth could wait. She had given him an idea…

Sex was a serious matter, a grim pleasure, or so he’d always thought. It had never been an occasion for

laughter or irreverent conversation—until Djinni accused him of fishy mating habits, and since then he

hadn’t taken sex seriously at all.

Lovemaking had never been such fun. Much as he’d longed for her to know and accept the truth about

him, he didn’t want this blissful intimacy to end.

The truth could wait. She had given him an idea. A very wicked idea. A perfect excuse for the remaining

rut-raged days and nights of debauchery and deception to come.

“I want to do it all,” he breathed. “I want to make love to you according to the ways of every sexually

reproducing species in all the Communicating Worlds. Every one. From frogs to Great Djinn. After that,

we’ll work up to thrusting Tantric sex.”

“Oh, Stars,” she gasped.

“And I take that as informed consent.”

What Reviewers are saying about Forced Mate…

I've read this book and it's AWESOME! A total hoot! I couldn't put it down.

~ Linnea Sinclair, award winning SF romance author of Finders Keepers

A great story...beautifully written, wonderfully funny and sexy.

~Leslie Kelly, New York Times best-selling author of Night Whispers

Forced Mate is the ultimate 'Beauty and the Beast' story. Tarrant-Arragon is pure alpha-wolf, living in a

world whose motto is 'by stealth if possible, by force if necessary', ruled by his senses and the dictates of

primal biology. He has chosen Djinni as his mate, and wants her to be happy, but for that to happen, she

must 'civilize' him. He's willing to act civilized, if it means he gets Djinni, but it's a much harder road to

actually become civilized. Readers who love alpha males will drool over Tarrant-Arragon, a paragon of

alpha-ness. And everyone will enjoy this validation of the transformational power of love.

~Jennifer Dunne, triple EPPIE winning author of Shadow Prince

Have you ever started a book and wished it would never end? That was the way FORCED MATE

affected me.

~Gini Wilson, author of All That Glitters

Forced Mate

Rowena Beaumont Cherry

NovelBooks, Inc.

Douglas, Massachusetts

This is a work of fiction. While reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the

characters, incidents, and dialogs are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual

persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and

review. For information, address NovelBooks, Inc., P.O. Box 661, Douglas, MA 01516 or email

publisher@novelbooksinc.com.

NBI

Published by

NovelBooks, Inc.

P.O. Box 661

Douglas, MA 01516

NovelBooks Inc. publishes books online and in trade paperback. For more information, check our

website: www.novelbooksinc.com or email publisher@novelbooksinc.com.

Produced in the United States of America.

Edited by Terri Schaefer

ISBN 1-59105-013-8 for electronic version

ISBN 1-59105-038-3 for trade paperback

Dedication

I'd like to thank…

Sensei Sally Eaton and Sensei Lyn Ross of the Warrior Training Center (Clawson) who choreographed

all my fight scenes; Dr. James Kryvicky for his advice about violence and the human body; the

deliberately anonymous Bloomfield Township Police sharpshooter who knows who he is; Wayne L.

Knowles of Target Sports who taught me more than I need to know about guns, ammo and the speeding

bullet; the Bloomfield Township Writers' Rendezvous Group (and the supremely helpful librarians), the

Greater Detroit Romance Writers chapter of the RWA, and all my long distance friends who have

encouraged and supported me; Kyla, my daughter, who for the first six years of her delightful existence

has informed my pregnancy and childhood-backstory scenes.

Thank you all!

Prologue

The Cambridge Road, England.

“The more powerful he is, the more terrible he’ll be...in bed, and as a husband. Especially if he enjoys

his ‘god’s Right’ all over the galaxy. Grandmama, after all the dreadful stories you’ve told me about the

god-Emperors of Tigron—”

“By all the Lechers of Antiquity!” Tarrant-Arragon swore. Impossible that the unseen mate of his dreams

had been caught on tape speculating that he was a brute and a bore in bed, though he hadn’t had the

pleasure of her. Yet. Impossible that she could be talking about anyone else.

“My dear, your qualms would be forgivable if you were being forced to marry the wicked Prince

Tarrant-Arragon,” a regally venomous voice sizzled from the car’s speakers.

“Stop the tape.”

“Sorry about that, Your Highness.” The human driver silenced the stereo system, while maintaining the

stretch limousine’s speed on the deserted, dark motorway. “As we backward Earthlings say,

eavesdroppers seldom overhear praise of themselves.”

His reluctant mate’s opinion of his sexual prowess would be the talk of his Star Forces. As would his

reaction. As the next god-Emperor of Tigron, he’d be expected to say something depraved.

“I don’t usually take any notice of virginal fears—” he drawled for the Tigrons sharing the driver’s

compartment, although he spoke in surveillance English. “However, I may improve my chances of a

happy mating if I pay attention to hers. I wonder which ‘dreadful stories’ she’s heard.”

It was reprehensible of him to encourage lewd speculation, but he did not want his people to notice what

his grandfather’s long-lost second Empress had just implied.

“Happy mating? Is that important to you, Sir?”

Sarcasm. Tarrant-Arragon raised an eyebrow. Presumably the driver had no idea how dangerous it was

to annoy a Great Djinn.

“Mating is. A god-Emperor’s heir does not concern himself with his mate’s happiness.” The girl belonged

by “god’s Right” and by necessity to the last legitimate Great Djinn. Himself. To admit that he wanted her

happy would be out of keeping with his very nasty reputation.

“That’s why we’re taking her to a certain romantic hot-spot.”

The driver had all but called him a liar to his face. No one had ever dared question his motives or his

veracity. Or his virility. This human insolence was...fascinating.

“Whatever it takes,” Tarrant-Arragon conceded, amused. “I’ve staked the fate of an Empire on my

success with her. As long as she is fertile, I have no objection to making her happy.”

“Big of you, Sir. But you’re quite right not to want to hear any more. It only gets worse.”

Tarrant-Arragon saw an assessing flicker of the driver’s light blue eyes in the rearview mirror. What was

on the tape that the driver didn’t want him to hear? Protocol be damned, he wanted to know the worst.

“I wouldn’t miss it for ten worlds’ tribute. Rewind. Play it from where my girl alleges that I’m—ah—

terrible in bed.”

Why not? The driver was a very temporary member of the abduction party. The two Tigrons could be

managed.

Machinery whirred. The girl restated her ill-informed fears. Hers was a voice of contradictions, an exotic

siren’s breath from the lips of a nineteen-year-old, an English upper-class accent with a nervous crack in

it when she mentioned “bed”, “husband” and “god’s Right”. She had reason to be nervous if she publicly

attacked his royal sexual prerogatives.

Tarrant-Arragon never discussed his infamous “Right”—or the fact that he had never exerted it.

“... the wicked Prince Tarrant-Arragon.”

He had not misheard the old Empress. “Grandmama” had stressed his name as if trying to make a milder

suitor seem less alarming.

Who the Carnality could the girl have spoken of in such terms if not himself? Impossible that an unknown

Djinn prince—and potential usurper—might exist. On the other hand, his war-Lords had told him he’d

never find a fertile Djinn virgin. They’d been wrong about her. Or so he hoped.

According to his spies, she was the daughter of a rogue Djinn—reportedly assassinated—and a

clairvoyant Englishwoman who had died in childbed. With her, he might not only save the Great Djinn

from extinction, but also restore lost psychic power to the Imperial bloodline. She was almost too

perfect.

He hadn’t crossed galaxies to carry off a feminine impostor, or to saunter into an elaborate ambush.

Nevertheless, by coming to Earth, he might have entered an attractively baited trap.

He’d take the bait. If abducting her meant war, so be it. Psychic or not, if she were truly his half-Djinn

second cousin, it was worth any risk to have her. If.

The minutiae hadn’t seemed important until now.

“One moment, driver. How did we obtain this tape?”

“Sheer luck, Sir. We couldn’t get a tap on her phone. Not without the local authorities’ help, and they’d

take a dim view of our activities if they knew you aliens from outer space existed—”

While the driver discoursed in a fragmented and roundabout style in keeping with the state of British

roads, Tarrant-Arragon picked up a file which he’d tossed onto the seat beside him and extracted

surveillance photographs of his quarry.

This time, he studied them closely, looking for a Djinn-tall protector or for any sign that she knew she

was being watched.

She swerved through Cambridge’s crenellated cloisters on a man’s bicycle, a white-striped, navy

Homerton College scarf across her face, wearing camouflage fatigues and high heels. Alone.

She fought with a rapier, face mesh-masked, her body padded and buttoned-up, her long, long legs

sheathed in skin-tight, sword-fighting white. Again, she wore heels. Why? Her opponent was

light-worlder lean, of similar height. Human.

She practised martial arts, her loose white garments fastened with a knotted black belt, a shapely foot—

bare for once—nanoseconds from a man’s throat. The man was shorter.

A Great Djinn would never allow her out of his sight. She wouldn’t be out and about on her own, kicking

other males’ throats and endangering a pregnancy by teetering on high heels.

Rowena Cherry - Forced Mate.pdf

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: