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RELEASE BLITZ ~ To Love a Wolf (SWAT #4) by Paige Tyler
To Love a Wolf
Series: SWAT, #4
Author: Paige Tyler
Pubdate: June 6th, 2016
ISBN: 9781492638742
HE’S FOUND THE ONE…
SWAT officer Landry Cooper is certain Everly Danu is The One. The problem is, she has no idea what Cooper really is. And as much as he wants to trust her, he’s not sure he can share his deepest secret…
When Everly’s family discovers Cooper’s a werewolf, her brothers will do anything to keep them apart—they’ll kill him if they have to. Everly is falling hard for the ridiculously handsome SWAT officer, and she’s not about to let her brothers tell her who she can love… Until Cooper’s secret is exposed and she discovers the man she thought she knew is a monster in disguise.
BUT CAN HE KEEP HER?
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Paige Tyler releases TO LOVE A WOLF, the fourth in her high-octane SWAT series, this June. To celebrate, we’re giving you the first SIX chapters to read FOR FREE!
Download the first six chapters here.
To get you started, we’ve included the first few pages below.
***
Outside Samarra City, Iraq, 2009
Staff Sergeant Landry Cooper moved carefully through the rubble covering the floor of the partially demolished building, inching his way closer to the target. The maze of shattered brick and broken pieces of wood weren’t the biggest reason he was moving slowly, though. That had more to do with the hundred-degree temperature and the seventy-five-pound Kevlar bomb suit he was wearing. He despised the army’s suit with a passion that few people outside the Explosive Ordnance Disposal community could understand.
It wasn’t simply that it was hot and heavy. No, what he hated most about the suit was the nearly complete sensory deprivation that came with wearing it. Inside the claustrophobic helmet surrounded by a neck gusset designed to keep your head from getting ripped off your body during an explosion, you couldn’t hear much of anything, your line of sight was distorted by the thick, curved face piece, and your peripheral vision was nonexistent. Having to make a manual approach—better known in EOD circles as the long walk—on a suspected improvised explosive device, or IED, was bad enough. Doing it when you had an armor-plated pillow wrapped around your head?
That sucked.
But he didn’t have a choice. Local construction workers had come in this morning and found a suspected IED half buried in the dirt between two buildings. Cooper and his team had been able to use a robot to drop a small demolition charge near the device, but his disposal charge, combined with a bang from the IED, had caused part of the surrounding buildings to collapse, pissing off the locals and making it impossible to get the robot back in to clear the area.
If there was one cardinal rule in EOD, it was that you never released an incident location back to the good guys without being one hundred percent sure all hazards had been cleared. That meant doing a manual approach in the bomb suit to make sure there weren’t any explosive materials or secondary devices around.
Cooper wasn’t too worried about walking up to the package he’d just blown in place. While the relationship between the city’s Sunni population and ruling Shiite government forces would never be described as anything other than tense, lately things had been better. IED responses were way down, and they hadn’t seen a secondary explosive device, typically planted to target police and other first responders, in months.
Still, he played everything by the book, keeping the protected front of his suit facing the spot where the IED had been, and using the building’s structure for protection as much as possible. At the same time, he kept his head on a swivel, looking for anything that seemed out of place.
“I’m about twenty feet from where we blew the IED,” he murmured over his suit’s radio to his team members waiting in the safe area three hundred yards away, and then remembered he was wasting his breath. The damn radio had stopped working about a month ago, and a replacement wasn’t due for weeks. He was on his own.
Sweat trickled down his nose as he stepped over a low wall and moved toward the crater where the IED had been. He automatically lifted a hand to wipe the sweat from his face and thumped against the plastic face piece.
“Shit, I hate this suit,” he muttered, forced to make due with wiggling his nose.
He reached the edge of the shallow crater and looked down. Two feet deep and six across, it looked like a big soup bowl. There were some rusty nails the bomb maker had added for fun, but the IED itself was long gone. Even better, his demo shot hadn’t exposed another one buried underneath.
Cooper pulled a sharpened fiberglass rod out of his pocket, then jumped into the crater. If there was anything here, the blast from the disposal shot would have uncovered it, but it didn’t hurt to check. Unfortunately, the heavy spine protector in the suit that helped keep an EOD tech’s back from being crushed if blown backward against something hard meant he had to squat down like a sumo wrestler to stick the probe into the dirt. He ignored the sweat and aggravation and made it work.
He’d moved almost all the way around the shot hole and was about to climb out to walk around the rest of the area when his probe hit something hard. He tensed, but then relaxed. He was still here, so it couldn’t be that bad. Dropping to one knee, he used his hand to slowly uncover what he’d found. When a horizontal, cylindrical pipe took shape, he assumed it was a water or sewer line.
They weren’t exactly common in structures as old as this one, but it could have been placed here to supply another building nearby. As he uncovered it, the pipe began to get smaller on one end. His gut clenched as realization dawned on him. He brushed off more dirt, revealing the nose of the 155-millimeter artillery round, as well as the metal electrical conduit extending out of it and running underground.
Fuck.
Cooper pushed himself to his feet and backpedaled toward the edge of the crater as fast as he could. An artillery round didn’t usually have a conduit sticking out the end. This one had been booby-trapped so the bomber could set it off manually whenever he wanted. The conduit was there so the IED wouldn’t cut the line if an EOD tech like him destroyed it. And with the conduit there, Cooper couldn’t cut the line either.
This device was an EOD killer put there because somebody knew a bomb tech would come down and look around before turning the site over to the local police.
His mind raced. A projectile this size carried fifteen pounds of high explosive. When it went off, even a bomb suit as good as the one he had on was unlikely to stop all the frag that came off it.
He reached the top of the crater and backed away as fast as he could. He would have been able to run faster if he turned around, but the weakest part of a bomb suit was the rear. If this thing went off when his back was to it, he’d have no chance.
Time slowed as a thousand thoughts zipped through his head. How he seriously didn’t want to die. How maybe the bomber on the other end of that firing line might have needed to go take a piss, and the 155 wouldn’t go off. How his parents and brothers were going to be crushed when they found out. How he should have gone to the prom with that cute girl in his math class back in high school. How one of the junior members on his team was going to be forced to step up and take over his job. How the new unit lieutenant was going to have to write a condolence letter on his first fucking day on the job.
Cooper pushed those thoughts away, yanking his hands inside the arms of the suit to keep them from getting ripped off in the blast as he focused his attention on moving backward as fast as he could.
Just get twenty feet away. Then you might have a chance.
He didn’t make it ten.
The blast threw him backward before his head even registered the flash of the projectile exploding. Luckily, he was so close that the wave took out the brick wall behind him before he could smash into it. But that luck ran out, and he slammed into the one behind it.
He felt a sharp stab in his back, then nothing from the middle of his chest down. The suit’s spine support had broken—and so had his back.
He hit the ground hard, tumbling like a kid’s toy until he came to a sudden stop against a pile of bricks. He felt pain—lots of it—at least from the chest up. He wasn’t sure how he was able to, but he lifted his head enough to look down, and saw long, jagged fragments from the 155 sticking out of him like he was a damn pincushion.
Cooper let his head drop to the ground and swore long and hard. He was so fucked.
A detached part of his mind noticed that pieces of the building were burning around him. That was interesting, considering how little flammable material was in the area. The flames weren’t too bad, but the smoke would probably choke him to death sooner or later. Not that he was likely to live long enough for that to happen. The frag had penetrated the bomb suit. He’d bleed out fast enough. He’d just be too numb to feel it.
Then someone was at his side, roughly prying up his face, telling him to hold on. That’s when he realized his ears weren’t working right. He could barely hear the person speaking. No shock there. The blast had blown out his eardrums.
He opened his eyes, expecting to see one of his junior teammates, and was shocked when he saw that it was Jim Wainwright, a fellow senior team leader and the best friend he’d ever had. Cooper hadn’t even known another team had arrived.
“Get the hell out of here!” Cooper shouted. Or at least he tried to. The words came out as nothing but a gurgling whisper. “Jim, you know this is stupid. There could be another device down here.”
Jim didn’t answer, but simply shoved his arms under the bomb suit, as if he thought he could pick up Cooper and carry him out of here. He didn’t bother to tell his friend how stupid that was. Besides all the frag sticking out of his body, making the task of picking him up akin to hugging a porcupine, Cooper and the bomb suit he wore weighed nearly three hundred pounds combined.
There was no way in hell Jim could pick him up.
“Go!” he ordered again. “You know I’m done anyway.”
Jim ignored him. Tears running down his face, he tried grabbing the heavy-duty rescue strap at the suit’s shoulder and dragged him across the rubble.
“Shit!” Cooper wailed in agony, white-hot fire shooting through his neck and shoulders. “Just fucking leave me alone and let me die!”
Jim disregarded that request too, grunting like a crazy man as he dragged Cooper over, around, and through the obstacles that separated them from the dilapidated building’s exit. Cooper was stunned his friend could actually move him at all. He’d heard of soldiers doing some insane shit in battle to save a buddy, but this had to be the craziest. Too bad he was already a goner. Cooper only hoped Jim would get a medal out of it. Then, at least, one good thing would come out of this day.
Cooper didn’t get much time to think about what the award write-up would sound like because the pain climbing up his neck like a wave of water drowned him until everything went black.
Paige Tyler is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of sexy, romantic fiction. Paige writes books about hunky alpha males and the kick-butt heroines they fall in love with. She lives with her very own military hero (a.k.a. her husband) and their adorable dog on the beautiful Florida coast.
Visit http://paigetylertheauthor.com/.
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NEW RELEASE SPOTLIGHT ~ TEST DRIVE (Body Shop Bad Boys #1) by Marie Harte
TEST DRIVE
(Body Shop Bad Boys #1)
by Marie Harte
A smokin’ hot new series from Marie Harte featuring tough-guy
mechanics and the women who jump-start their hearts.
GET TO KNOW THE BODY SHOP BAD BOYS
Johnny, Foley, Sam, and Lou are the rough and tumble mechanics of Webster’s Garage. These reformed bad boys are used to living fast, but it’s the women in their lives who take them from zero to sixty in a heartbeat.
JOHNNY
Johnny Devlin’s a charmer with a checkered past. He’s had his eye on scorching-hot bartender Lara Valley for ages, but she’s rejected him more than once. That doesn’t mean he won’t come to her aid when some dirtbag mauls her. When she asks him on a date as a no-strings-attached thank you, he can’t say no.
And then he’s saying nothing but hell, yes.
Excerpt:
When they left the car, the wind picked up, and she wished she’d brought a heavier jacket. So unnerved by his presence, she’d grabbed the first thing she’d found in the closet.
“Cold? Here. Let me help.” Johnny hugged her to him, and the subtle scent of his cologne, which had driven her crazy all evening, hit her hard. “Stay close to me, and I’ll keep you warm.”
She felt his smile against her hair. “Is that a line?”
“Why? Is it working?”
“Not yet. But if it gets any colder out here, it might.”
He laughed as they walked into the movie theater. After she purchased the horror film tickets, he grabbed her by the hand and squeezed. “Thank God. I thought for a minute there Alfred’s Three Loves might have swayed you.”
“No way. I’m not into period pieces.” She made a face. “But I can do horror.” She just had to say it. “I’m on a date with you, aren’t I?”
“Ha-ha. Very funny.” He swatted her on the ass, and she warmed all over. “After you.” He motioned for her to precede him.
To her surprise, she enjoyed the frightfest. She jumped at all the right parts and laughed when he did the same. Unlike most guys, he didn’t try to act macho. He had fun, made her laugh, and turned her on without trying. He was just so…Johnny.
They exited the theater amidst chatter about the excessive gore in the movie. “Wasn’t that great?” she gushed.
“A little over the top when the doll started bleeding from every orifice, don’t you think?”
“I thought that made her seem more real.”
He snorted. “Yeah. Dolls that bleed black and screech about demonic possession are so lifelike.”
“Exactly.”
He dragged her with him out of the way of a throng of theatergoers exiting from another movie. The multiplex had been packed, and she felt the crush as they moved toward the building’s exit.
“Thanks,” she said, breathless, as the wall of the corridor braced her back.
Then his mouth was on hers, a whisper of a kiss full of heat and desire. It was gone before she could blink, and she could only stare up at him, wanting more.
“I’ve been dying to do that all evening. And, well, a guy can only take so much temptation.”
“Temptation?” she echoed weakly.
“Yeah.” He sighed. “You loved a demonic doll. I mean, you hate baseball, but you loved Suzy Oozy—she of the hellish diapers and acidic eats-through-anything vomit.”
She nodded, still dazed. “I know, right? Great stuff.”
He chuckled and moved closer, away from the crowd pushing through the complex.
“Problem is I really liked Suzy. Now I’m going to have to hide my niece’s baby-cries-a lot doll the next time I see it. Talk about super creepy.” She rubbed her lips, staring at his, still reeling from that kiss.
“You say creepy, then you touch your mouth where I kissed you. I’m sensing a correlation.”
“Big word for a self-proclaimed knuckle-dragger—wasn’t that what you called your friends at Ray’s the other night?”
“Well, them, sure. But I’m more advanced than that. I can even spell correlation.” He paused. “With a dictionary.”
She was enthralled with him, despite being on her guard not to be. “How are you so much fun? Is this part of your shtick?”
He frowned. “My what?”
“Your shtick. Your routine. Do you get your dates laughing so hard that they don’t notice when you have them half-undressed?”
“Now, Lara. They always know when they’re getting naked with me. How could you think otherwise? I have standards, you know.”
He looked wounded, and she laughed and let him pull her along with the crowd. He kept his hand around hers, even when they left the theater, and she didn’t pull away.
“So, batting cages?” he asked hopefully as they found the car.
She groaned. “No thank you.”
He shrugged. “Your loss.”
“Thanks, Kareem.”
He looked pained. “That’s basketball.”
“Whatever. I’m not a fan of either sport.”
“Obviously. Kareem?”
She laughed at him. “I was kidding. Kareem Abdul Jabbar played for the Lakers from ’79 to ’85. Do you know what pro team he started with?”
“Do you?” He opened the car door for her, then circled to the driver side.
“The Milwaukee Bucks in 1969.”
“Okay, I’m impressed. That almost makes up for not liking baseball.”
She got into the car with him and confessed, “I only know that because my dad used to force me to watch old games with him when I was a kid. The basketball I could tolerate, but show me a Mets game, and I want to throw up. I think my head might spin too, worse than Suzy’s did for sure.” She sat with him in the quiet of the moment, wondering if she’d gone too far. Vomit wasn’t exactly sexy. “Um, not that sitting in absolute silence with you isn’t awkward or anything—”
“Glad to hear it.”
“—but if we’re not going to do the baseball thing, what did you have in mind? And don’t even think of suggesting we go back to your place.” She liked that neither of them had yet mentioned just ending the date. It was only a little after ten on a Friday night. Early by anyone’s standards.
“Well then. Take the wind out of my sails, why don’t you?” He blew out a breath. “Fine. We’ll go to yours.”
“My place?”
He started the car and drove out of the lot. “Exactly. Great minds think alike.”
Her heart pounded. “Exactly what are we thinking?”
“That we’ll hang out at your place, where you’ll practice more nursing on me. You can examine my pitiful bruised cheek, you know, the one I got rescuing a damsel in distress?”
“Going to milk that for all it’s worth, aren’t you?”
“Hell yeah. I figure if I remind you enough, you might take pity on me and let me kiss you again.”
BLP REVIEW ~ Tracy
I loved the McCauley Brothers series by Marie Harte and when she announced that she was releasing a spin-off series I was delighted!
We had come across the mechanics that are gonna be the main characters in the Body Shop Bad Boys books as they work for Del and her dad – Del being the leading lady in the last McCB story.
I really liked TEST DRIVE. Both main characters were fun and likable.
Johnny comes across as a bit of a player who never has to chase the ladies but Lara has spurned his advances for more than a while and this makes him more interested in her.
Lara is working at night in the bar the guys frequent and by day she’s studying to become a nurse. She has her eyes firmly fixed on her future and no hot, full of himself mechanic is gonna mess with the schedule….. or so she thinks!!
As they begin to spend time together we see that there’s more to both characters than we originally saw. Johnny is bright, interesting, sweet, loyal and fun but unsure of how to deal with a relationship.
Lara was independent, strong willed, focused and caring – especially when it came to family and those who mattered to her.
The build up of their relationship made for good reading and together they were hot as hell!!
The relationship between the guys at the garage was a fair part of the story too, and while they rib each other mercilessly at times, they are a family and have each others backs. no matter what. Some of their antics are laugh out loud funny and I can’t wait to find out more about each of them!!
Test Drive was a great start to this new series and a 5* read for me!!
About Marie Harte:
Caffeine addict, boy referee, and romance aficionado, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author MARIE HARTE is a confessed bibliophile and devotee of action movies. Whether hiking or biking around town, or hanging at the local tea shop, she’s constantly plotting to give everyone a happily ever after. She lives in in Central Oregon.
Visit Marie’s website and fall in love.
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SPOTLIGHT & GIVEAWAY ~ Vampires Never Cry Wolf by Sara Humphreys
Title: Vampires Never Cry Wolf
Author: Sara Humphreys
Release Date: March 3, 2015
Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Summary
Vampires are nothing but trouble…
As far as beautiful vampire Sadie Pemberton is concerned, werewolves shouldn’t be sticking their noses into New York’s supernatural politics. They don’t know jack about running a city—not even that hot-as-sin new vampire-werewolf liaison who’s just arrived in town.
Werewolves are too sexy for their own good…
The last thing Killian Bane wanted was to end up in New York City playing nice with vampires. Unfortunately, he’s on a mission, and when he encounters the sexiest, most stubborn female vamp he’s ever met, he’s going to have to turn on a little of that wolfish charm…and Sadie’s going to learn a thing or two about what it means to have a wild side…
Excerpt
Sadie forced herself to look Killian in the face, and the instant she did, she knew it was a colossal mistake. His eyes looked like pools of liquid gold, and she could swear he saw straight through to her very soul. A growl rumbled in his chest and Sadie gasped. His eyes flickered and shifted into the glowing amber eyes of his wolf. The sudden and instinctive change was a glaring reminder of who he was…who they both were.
In a remarkably steady voice, Sadie whispered, “Last night should never have happened.”
“The only thing about last night that shouldn’t have happened was the way it ended,” Killian rasped.
Sadie stilled when his large hand cradled her cheek. Despite her best efforts to resist him, her body quivered uncontrollably as he surrounded her in every way a person could be surrounded. When the heat of his palm seared against her skin, a needy moan escaped her lips. Desire curled inside her like smoke, and regardless of the litany of warnings that ran through her head, Sadie’s hands found their way to the front of Killian’s shirt. She grasped the fabric, still warm from the heat of his body, and pulled him closer. Sweet Jesus, the man had a body that looked like it had been hand carved by the gods themselves.
“Is that so?” Sadie pulled his shirt loose from his jeans and slipped her fingers underneath before trailing them along the hard planes of his stomach. Arching one eyebrow, she held his heavy-lidded gaze. “How do you suppose it should have ended?”
“The same way it should end every night from now on,” he growled. Killian slid both hands into her long hair. Sadie shivered when his fingertips grazed her scalp. He pressed his hips against her before slipping his thigh between her legs. Sadie gasped with pleasure as he put pressure on just the right spot, and when a moan escaped her parted lips, a cocky grin emerged on his. Killian tightened his grip on her hair and leaned in so his mouth was just a breath away. “Every single night should end with me buried deep inside you.”
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Vampires and werewolves together in a well written story is parawhore heaven – Sara Humphreys has delivered a book with steamy chemistry between our main couple, tension and intrigue, a cast of primary & secondary characters that leave you wanting more of each and every one and, of course, my favourite of all book boyfriends, an arrogant alpha wolf shifter (excuse me while I drool….).
I adore paranormal and shifters are my first love so I’m always ready to read these stories.
Killian is a werewolf shifter prince, reluctant heir to the throne and arrogant through and through yet a gentleman, which is quite the contrast! Sophie is a 200 year old vampire who owns and runs a nightclub, The Coven in NY, which is a vampire city, so the arrival of the wolves is greeted with suspicion and the interest of Killian in Sophie is far from the norm. The world building is quite impressive but even though this is book 3 and I am new to both the author and series I was not lost or confused at any point. Their chemistry is steamy as I mentioned, the dance between them was enjoyable and my only moan would be that I needed a little more action and a little less “why we can’t” – the push and pull between them was the main focus and for the most part romped along well, I just needed a tad less repetitive monologue and a bit more steam & action which is why four stars and not five.
The banter between all characters was funny, sassy & witty and so totally enjoyable and there are a few secondary characters I would like to see a lot more of in an interesting world Ms Humphreys is creating. An easy read that for the most part romps along, I liked it, enjoyed it and would read more from this author.
Author Biography 
Sara Humphreys has been attracted to the fantasies of science fiction, paranormal, and romance since her adolescence when she had a mad crush on Captain Kirk. An actress and public speaker, Sara lives in Bronxville, New York with her husband, who is very considerate of her double life, and four amazing boys.
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