Samhain Publishing

Breaking Chance came about as part of a challenge.
Set a story in space, give it a dark and dangerous hero, lots of naughtiness and a high body count. Really, how could I resist?

Blurb
What a girl wants and what a girl needs are sometimes two different things…

For Melissa “Lucky” Chance, another stretch in Ganymede’s ice prison is nothing new. The flash-freeze that’s supposed to destroy her will only leaves her with an insatiable desire for the first hot body she lays eyes on. Except this time, she faces a death sentence. Her only hope of escape lies with the man known as The Butcher.

John Ramius understands the logic behind his conviction as a criminally insane mass murderer. No man should have been able to slaughter over fifty men in as many minutes, but no one sees the underlying curse that compels him to sense—and fulfill—someone’s deepest need. Chance’s skill will free him to kill the Sun-King; he will find no rest until he does.

As they run from the forces of the Jovian colonies, Ramius finds himself temporarily sidetracked, not only by Chance’s relentless desire, but by her underlying, unspoken need. Ignoring it—or his own compulsion to do every wicked thing imaginable to her—is not an option.

Only after all their defenses are stripped away do they discover that their meeting wasn’t by chance. Someone is manipulating them both, and the only way out is the path to their destruction…

Product Warnings
This book contains explicit sex, thieves, murderers, a sentient ship and a hero who will give you exactly what you need. Not responsible for reader’s sudden compulsion to jump significant other’s bones.

There’s an excerpt here and a slightly naughtier one on my blog here
And you can buy it from MBaM here

Easy part of his day? Resurrecting the dead. Hard part? Keeping them alive.

Kaede is a witch whose family has been bound to a powerful House for over a thousand years. And he hates it. Despite the fact that his lord, Tarou, murdered his mother, Kaede is sworn never to harm the man who could kill him with just seven words. Now he’s been commanded to use his unique powers to resurrect Tarou’s wife from the dead, and he has no choice but to comply. Things go horribly wrong when he accidentally pulls the wrong soul back. Now it’s not just his own life he must try to save.

Vara’s day couldn’t get much more bizarre. One moment she’s a captain in the Temple Guard. The next, she finds herself transported into a world of magic and witches—and stuffed into the body of a lord’s wife. Unwillingly plunged into middle of a deadly power struggle, the only one Vara can turn to is Kaede, the witch responsible for dragging her into this alien world. A witch she finds far too attractive…

Warning: This book contains the following; magic, witches and more body-swapping than is safely sane.

Excerpt

The corpse’s heart juddered and then began to pump fresh, slow blood through its decaying veins.

“Not decaying any more,” Kaede murmured.

“What was that, witch?”

Kaede ignored his lord’s question. His eyes stayed with the body on the altar, watching as the blood flushed the exposed skin not covered by its simple white funeral shift. “Nothing, lord.” His fingers dipped into the liquid gold, sweeping intricate symbols over her face and neck. The symbols writhed and Kaede snatched his fingers away. He winced. These were the final rushes of power. She was almost there, almost returned to bright life. Almost. He risked a look to the arched entrance of the ancient cavern. Light edged over the sky in a soft pale grey. It was only dawn. That knowledge had tiredness eating into his bones.

Had he only been bonded to her for a few hours? It felt like forever.

For the hours of darkness, he had stood over the Lord Tarou’s dead wife and worked his skill. A skill he shouldn’t have, and certainly not one his lord should know about. The shadows cast by the twisting patterns covering the woman’s skin danced over the cavern wall. Kaede kept his gaze fixed on his gold-smeared fingers. Tarou knew what he was and that scared him more than bringing a dead woman back to life.

How had his lord known?

Kaede’s jaw tightened. He knew his mother had to have talked in her final hours. Tarou had presided over her interrogation, obviously wrung secrets from her. The old soured anger swelled again, tasting bitter on his tongue, but he cut out those thoughts. They had no place in his head. He had a job to do.

He forced his gaze back to the woman’s face—her features calm and delicate even as she fought her way back to life. He hoped the Lord Tarou knew what he was doing. His wife couldn’t be that vital to him. The rumours ran that she was only a bartered woman from a wealthy Northern family. She had no connections, no special talents. To risk a resurrection was insane. Kaede said a silent prayer for his own soul.

Her lips parted. Dry. Cracked. With a cry, her spine arched away from the cold slab of the altar, her limbs twisting. Kaede grabbed at her arms, and held her down as her soul clawed its way back into her body. The witch willed all of his strength into keeping her still. Her soul had to settle. That fact the scrolls had stressed, stressed in blood and bone.

“Witch, what is happening?”

Kaede gritted his teeth. “She is almost back with us, lord.”

She shrieked, the cry piercing Kaede’s heart. That hadn’t been in the scrolls. A soul was supposed to crave the touch of its body. But he couldn’t panic. Not now.

She fell limp to the stone in a sudden rush. Kaede fell forward, pushing hard against her arms. She groaned. He released his tight grip and took support from the raised lip of the stone dais.

Her breathing was slow, even and there was a slight, living flush to her cheeks. The Lady Annaliese was the most beautiful woman in the king’s court. Kaede’s eyes flicked to the hovering lord. He stood taut, grim, his stark face intent in the candlelight. Tarou wanted more than just his pretty wife. It was there in his narrowed, black gaze, the whitened fingers that gripped the dagger at his hip.
Kaede stared back at Annaliese, watched as her eyelashes struggled to release the oil clogging them. He’d assumed that she was just the vacuous smile gracing Lord Tarou’s arm. He’d seen nothing special in her. Nothing at all.

Kaede rubbed gently at the muck and oil the ceremony required, erasing it from her skin in the reverse of how he had drawn it. With a final Word, the ash circle protecting them both swirled into the air and vanished.

Her eyes flickered open. They were a dark blue—evidence of her Northern Clan. There was no focus, just wild fear. Kaede blinked. He had never seen that before, none of the lords’ wives showed any emotion other than perfect serenity and happiness.

“Lady?” Kaede whispered, bending to catch sound from her parched mouth. His hand gripped the dais, helping to support his exhausted body.

Her lips moved and there was a rush of nonsensical syllables. She searched his face for understanding and her panic grew.

Pulling in his control, Kaede pressed his thumb into her forehead and forced out tired Words, grimacing at the pull of them in his flesh. He murmured a silent prayer, needing his final spell to work. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe—

“What is this place? Who are you? Why…” She reached up to tug at his thin, silver robe. Kaede lurched over her as she caught him by surprise. He stared at her as her voice faded away. A knot tightened in his stomach. What had he done? He’d failed. That failure would see her dead again. And him right along with her.

“Is she well, witch?” Tarou demanded, pushing forward to stand beside his silent wife. Annaliese simply stared at her moving fingers, examined her palm, ignoring her husband.

“Yes, lord.” Kaede pushed back the hood of his robe and held the woman’s staring eyes. “The resurrection was successful.” The lie soured his mouth.

Thanks for reading

Samhain author link

Kim Knox
…darkness and romance…
www.kim-knox.co.uk / www.darknessandromance.wordpress.com

*Phew * made it here, lol Sometimes it’s good to live in another time zone. Anyway, 7% and Rising releases today…and if I thought I had problems with time, they’re nothing compared to Cahn’s…

7% and Rising by Kim Knox

Genre: Romantic SciFi-Futuristic
ISBN: 1-59998-695-7
Length: Novella
Price: 3.50
Publication Date: November 27, 2007
Cover art by Dawn Seewer

He used her. She can’t trust him. But the fire burns between them hotter than ever.

For Level Seven Observer Cahn Dal, her mission is simple—on the surface. Travel 700 years into the past, alter a complicated equation that will assure the continuation of this timeline, and slip out unnoticed. Except someone else got there first, and he’s waiting for her. Alexander Roen. The man she has loved since she was a teenager, and, to her disgust, finds she still desires as hot and as hard as ever.

Roen, former Level One Observer, known traitor to the Foundation, and hampered by an old injury, needs Cahn’s help to find out who’s behind a massive conspiracy to alter the timeline. His body isn’t too broken, though, to forget his long-denied passion for Cahn.

Cahn reluctantly agrees to help find the one piece of evidence that will solve Roen’s puzzle. But when she finds it, barely escaping with her life, they find it isn’t the end.

It’s just the beginning of a deeper nightmare, one filled with monsters of unimaginable horror.

Excerpt

Cahn squinted against the hot wash of light. Her hand tightened around the Staff and she caught herself from slipping on the smooth marble steps. A few even breaths let the euphoric rush ease from her body.

She stared up at the clean marble columns and her breath caught at the sight of the painted panels high above her…but the one of Orestes? “I’m outside. You’re worse than—”

“Thirty-second century signature: two Observers detected.”

Cahn stared at the Staff. Heat ran through her and she held back the urge to panic and run. “Others are here? Where?”

“Two hundred— Correction. One hundred and— Correction—”

“Me? Are they heading towards me?”

“Possibility: 88% and rising.”

“Then get me out of here!” No rush of air. No swirling cold. Nothing. “What are you waiting for?”

“Something is suppressing my function. It is increasing the closer—”

Cahn was already running. Great. She was on a plateau. She couldn’t outrun them. “Yet another stupid idea of mine,” she muttered, skidding out of the path of a loaded cart. She risked a glance behind her. There was something there. Invisible…but she could sense the time anomaly surrounding them.

“Are you clear yet?”

“No,” rapped the Staff. “I will transport us the second…”

Cahn stopped listening and concentrated on not catching her feet on the cleared ground. Her chest burned and sweat coated her skin. “Should be used to this,” she rasped. “Damn you, Roen.”

Pounding over flat rock with her eyes on the workers, she realised that she was heading west and that the ramp down into the city was the other way. Something blurred in the air.

“Thirty-second century—”

“I know!” That exit was blocked. “Shit.”

Her lungs ached, her mouth dry with dust. The muscles in her legs burned, but still she ran on. Skirting the edge of the site that would be the Proplaea. If they caught her, she was dead. No one defied the Foundation and lived. Everyone who had helped Roen had proven that. Almost at the outcrop of rock on which the temple to Athena Nike would stand. Damn it, she was running out of ground and she could still feel the itch of her pursuers.

“Damn you, Roen!”

Cahn accelerated. She was tortured, dead. Dead if they caught her. Not thinking. Her feet pounded. The Staff roared, but she ignored it. Definitely not thinking.

The endless blue of the Attic sky shone above her. The gleam of marble caught in the fresh sunlight. There was only the promise of the hard, rocky earth far, far below.

Falling. Falling. Air rushed from her lungs. Her heart screamed—

And she crashed into the thick softness of a rug.

“What do you think you’re doing!”

Roen’s voice cut into her. But Cahn didn’t care. Her fingers curled into a deep weave, felt the rug against her spine. She was alive. Cahn let out a slow breath. “Someone knows you’re here, Roen.” She opened her eyes and found the man glaring down at her. “I just ran off the Acropolis to escape them.”

“You what?”

“They could jam the Staff,” she said, realising then that her hand still had a death grip on it. It seethed fury. “I had to risk getting far enough away.”

“You are insane!” the device finally spluttered. “If I had not managed to break free, I would have been splintered into tiny fragments.”

Cahn sat up. “Personality improvement: 100%.”

Roen scrubbed at his face. “I wanted you to have more experience with the Staff, but this changes everything. You head to the Citadel now. The Staff has the coordinates.”

Cahn stared at him. “Weren’t you listening? I just jumped off the Acropolis. My heart’s still lodged somewhere behind my left ear.”

Roen pulled her up, smacking some of the dust from her shoulders. “They’re closing in. You don’t go now and you’re dead. For real.” His mouth twisted into a sharp smile. “And if they tracked you to the Acropolis, then you’ve already made the trip.”

“Effect precedes cause. I hate time, I really do,” Cahn grated. She straightened. “And if we set this right, I plan to kill you.”

“If we set this right, we might never meet.”

“I can only hope.” Cahn forced back the rush of fear. She met Roen’s gaze, finding the familiar hard darkness. “Ready.”

“You have one hour. The Haze will fail after that.”

She stared at the hand that slid onto her shoulder, watched the fingers tighten briefly. Cahn shrugged off his touch. She’d had enough of his falseness. “Understood.”

A back step separated her farther from him and she held the Staff out. Trails of cool mist spun out, wrapping around her legs, winding, spiraling around her body. With one deep breath and a burst of light, she was gone.

To Summon a Demon has rattled around in my brain for a good long while. I’m glad it’s finally free as Conde is now one of my favourite heroines. * grin *

To Summon a Demon

Kim Knox

Muscles and mind straining, Inaeus hurled the sword. Spell-thick steel buried itself deep into the monster’s spine. The Demon screamed down the night in its pain…

That should have been the end of it. It wasn’t.

The Demon is once again on the loose, and this time it possesses a powerful crystal that has it leaving even more death in its wake. With the approach of the full moon, Inaeus must kill the demon and destroy its crystal before it can call more of its brethren from hell.

Inaeus knows who summoned the Demon. Conde. His former colleague, his former friend. The one woman he can’t have. Conde has no loyalty to the League he serves, and broke his trust long ago. But now she is back and offering to help him defeat her creature.

Why?

Come hell or howling Harpies, Inaeus is determined to get the truth out of Conde. If they live long enough.

Excerpt

Almost full moon.

The Demon would be waiting.

Inaeus stirred the steaming pot, pushing his mind away from thoughts of the confrontation. Conde settled beside him, staring off into the darkness of the forest.

Could he believe her?

Conde had no reason to lie to him. Never had. She was already an Outcast, shunned by the League. She couldn’t damn herself any further. And Conde was the one person he trusted implicitly.

“Inaeus, shut up. I’m trying to sleep.” Conde twisted over in her blankets. “I’d forgotten how annoying that habit of yours was.”

“The Witches were silent?”

“The Witches didn’t trust me either.”

“I trust you, Conde.”

“Yes,” her laugh was bitter, “of course you do.” She presented her back to him. Firelight burned over her red hair and he itched to stroke its smoothness. However, his fingers curled in his palm. “Still can’t do it, can you, Inaeus?” She pulled the furs and blankets tight around her body. “Night.”

“Our status has always stood between us. Even now.”

The fire cracked and spat in the silence. Inaeus closed his eyes. He was an idiot. They probably had only hours left to live and he still couldn’t break through the walls he had built around himself.

“Honouring the League comes first with you. I always knew that.” She paused. Inaeus thought he heard a sigh. “Accepted it.” She thumped the pile of furs and resettled her head. “Never understood it, though. Bunch of rancid old men never had my loyalty.”

“I’m sure they never noticed.”

Her spluttered laughter made him grin. She turned her head back to him. “D’you think I might have been too subtle?”
Light flickered over her sleek features, her golden eyes sparking with fire. How had he resisted this woman for so many years?

“I’m an idiot,” he murmured.

“No argument from me.”

“Conde.” His finger pressed against her surprised mouth. “Shut up.” She grinned and her teeth snapped at his fingertip. Blood started to move south and he shoved her blankets to one side.

“If that’s how you want to play it.”

Her grin was feral. “You have no idea, Inaeus.”

He pinned her arms above her head and felt her body arch in response. “I think I might.”

“Not so rough. My bones—”

He weakened his hold instinctively and the damned woman flipped him. She straddled his hips.
“—aren’t that fragile.”

Irritation burned…but then she pressed, took a slow, slow slide along his erection and nothing else mattered. He dug his fingers into her hips, letting her think she was in control. He grinned and his fingers moved, sliding over the flatness of her stomach, until his thumb rubbed up against the soft hide of her breeches, just there…

Conde gasped and returned his grin. “You’re not playing fair.”

“Oh I am. If I wasn’t, I’d do this…” In one fluid movement, she was flat on her back again. Inaeus pinned her to the furs with his body. “Now, Conde.” His face was only inches from hers, her warm breath brushing his face. Her darkly golden eyes blazed. “We play my way.” His smile was sharp and the slow shift of his hips made her bite at her lip. Oh, he liked besting her. “Or we don’t play at all.”

“You’re enjoying this.”

Inaeus smirked. “Isn’t that the point?”

Smelling like an overcooked pig was only the start of a bad day…

Nimue enters the shining city of Camelot with her order plain: seduce Merlin or lose her family.

She knows his magic, how he can slip under a woman’s skin and work his charm. It’s there in the shine of his dark eyes, eyes that see through to her soul. Merlin knows what she is.

In the searing light beneath the Round Room, Merlin discovers that the Lady Nimue is the same as him: a Seer. Now he must resist their attraction to save his own sanity. But a new enemy threatens Camelot with a weapon so destructive, he is forced to join with her and reach into the far future to save Camelot.

Merlin has always known that knowledge has a high price. But will Nimue be willing to pay hers?

Excerpt
© 2007 Kim Knox

“Nimue. Finally. You’re awake.”

The door creaked back. Merlin. Alive. Very much alive.

She threw herself into his arms before thinking took over. Her hands dug into the thickness of his tunic, felt the strength and heat of his body beneath. Her mouth found his neck. The rhythm of his pulse beat hard under her lips. The tip of her tongue tasted him, a slow slide that made her sigh.

She felt his groan. His fingers tightened into her arms with a painful strength. “Nimue…” Her name was a growl and a flick of pleasure to her senses. “Don’t…”

“What?”

Her breath brushed over damp skin and he hissed.

“This?”

Teeth nipping, her hands tugged at his tunic, desperate to get to the warmth of his bare skin. “One kiss, Merlin. Where’s the harm?”
He put her forcibly from him. His eyes gleamed fire. “No games, Nimue.”

Blood pounded in her skull and her mouth was dry. She swallowed. “I thought I was dead. I thought you were dead.” Her arm wrenched free of his harsh grip. She curved her hand against the hard plane of his jaw, wanting to soothe away the tightness. “I thought I’d lost you, Merlin.”

Her fingertips traced the smooth, recently shaved skin, catching on missed bristles, skirting the nicks. Not his usual precise and perfect shave. “That I’d never have the chance to touch you, taste you…”

A muscle jumped in his jaw. His whole body coiled tight, she could feel it.

“You swore on the lives of your sisters.” Bitten-out words, anger…and something else…flared in the darkness of his eyes.

Pain shot through her. She had sworn. But to save them, to save him, she had to break that vow. Her finger edged his lip, following the perfect shape. “Just once, Merlin. One kiss.” She couldn’t help the smile curling her mouth. “But I promise, no tongues.”