Intimate Knowledge Part 1 (5 page)

Her Keeper
  Detective & Desires Series#2

The feud between Detective Rick Andrews and Sara Michaels is legendary and no one ever wants to stand in the line of fire when they go at it.

Rick
can’t deny the chemistry between him and Sara.  Hell, just the thought of her makes him hard.  Her intelligence and her spirit intrigue him and, for some unfathomable reason, the need to protect her consumes much of his waking hours and a few of his dreams as well.  But she’s too high maintenance.  Especially as she holds a long time grudge and knows just how to push his buttons.  No way does he want an argument with his woman every time he turns around, no matter how beautiful her face and adorable her ass.

Sara Michaels has never forgiven Rick Andrews for humiliating her during her freshman week in college.  Now eight years later, their ongoing feud is reaching combustion level, in no small part because of the throbbing his angry, alpha male hotness creates between her thighs.  If only he
wouldn’t frame his advice in ‘do as I say’ commands, she might be inclined to listen now and then.  His dominant attitude just makes her go for the knee-jerk response every time  Only, now Sara has crossed the line and Rick is determined to use the power her transgression grants him to lay down the law in a way she can't escape.

This the first part in a series that will unfold over multiple volumes ranging from 10,000 to 20,000 words each.  Her Keeper is an erotic romance with explicit sexual content with strong elements of BDSM.
  It has a hot cop (two actually), sexy frisking, spanking, cuffing, a crazy, hot proposition yet to come and two people who are stubbornly in love.

Haunted Spaces
  Detective & Desires Series#3

Excerpt

She is hauntingly lovely.

Luke Kincaid doesn’t often depart from the down to earth and straight and narrow – but she plucks at him and draws him from the mundane.   Not that murder could ever be mundane, but the paperwork is another matter.   She seems familiar, but he knows he’s never seen her before.  Despite her beauty, nobody pays her any attention and she makes no claims on anyone in the bustling detective room.  Here, tragedy is commonplace and victims invisible, so it is no big deal that no one appears to notice her.

Luke is
pretty much entranced.

She
doesn’t notice his looking.  Her attention is fixed elsewhere.  She is expectant, waiting, hovering.  He’s seen that look before.  His gut clenches because in this room that look never ends well.  There is someone she is hoping to see, someone who may not want to see her or who is past that capability.  He goes back to his paperwork.

Minutes pass and he looks up and she is still there.  Time passes.  He imagines it flitting around them in stop motion sequence from an indie movie or TV show.  Everyone a moving, colored blur around the two of
them; him intent at his desk looking across at her standing with that suspended tautness, waiting for the one she needs.  Deep in the pit of his stomach, he wishes it was him just so he can erase that troubled look.  Don’t engage he tells himself.  Too late.  Already done.

He pushes away from his desk and walks over.  Her gaze never wavers; she
doesn’t seem to notice his advance or she thinks he doesn’t notice her.  He reaches her and stands beside her.  He is too close; too much in her private space, but she stays put, no flinching or stepping back.

“Hey.”  He asks in a soft drawl.  “Is there something I can help you with?”

She starts as if his voice reverberates from a disembodied void, instead of oozing richly out of him like honey, a sound sexy enough on its own, but when it is supported by his 6’1” 200lbs of ripped, solid masculinity is just plain sinful.  He is a man most women consider pretty fine.  A bit rough around the edges maybe, but fine.  She’s clearly not most women.  She ignores him and then when he stays she turns and says.

“Oh, you mean me.  You’re talking to me.”  Neither sentence is a question; they are statements, incredulous ones. 
Like she is surprised he means her, as if she doesn’t expect to be noticed.  Like his seeing her is out of the ordinary.  It is, because he’s breaking protocol.  You’re not supposed to engage with victims or suspects that you’re not directly attached to, and those are the only non-law enforcement personnel that ever enter this room.

“Yeah, gorgeous.
I mean you.”  He is already out of bounds, but he decides she’s needs shaking up.  The honey drawled endearment will either arouse or incense her.  Either way he reckons he’ll get to see those turquoise eyes catch fire.  He’s wrong.  They darken into deep, dark navy pools; it is the rosy, fleshy moistness of her parted lips that that starts the fire in him.

She is tiny; only comes to the middle of his chest.  A hot rush of lust invades him, along with a desperate need to pick her right up off her feet, to draw every inch of her softness hard and fast into his firm body. 
To curl her securely next to his solid chest, cupping those lush buttocks tightly so that her hot pussy is flush against his hard arousal.  He will take his time, nibbling, sucking and easing in and out of the voluptuous plumpness of those blush pink lips, as he slowly conquers that soft, disbelieving, little mouth.  Then he will just as slowly conquer the rest of her, especially the wet folds of her lush, lowers lips.  He imagines parting those, slipping and thrusting his tongue full inside, sucking her clit and tasting her juices, just before he…

Get a grip, Kincaid.
 

He remembers where he is and is grudgingly grateful that he has only imagined the scene not enacted it. 
What’s the matter with him?  He can’t remember ever getting this hot for a woman this fast.  Except. 
Fuck!
  That’s why she looks familiar.  They must be related.   Now he takes a real good look at her, he sees the likeness is so marked, he feels like an idiot not to have seen it right away.  It is the lighter hair and eye color that fooled him.

Luke can hardly remember a time when he
didn’t lust after his training officer and ex-partner from vice, Raisa Gordon.  From the first moment, he arrived from the Academy, that convoluted combination of badass and fragile beauty floored him.  He’d given up on meeting a woman who affected him as strongly.  He figured she had ruined him and just accepted it as an unavoidable fact of life, the same way he accepted the crimes he worked on each day.

He never acted on his feelings.  She was thirteen years older than him and his superior while a rookie.  They were colleagues, eventually partners and although she flirted now and then, she showed no signs of sharing his intensity.  She made it know that she
didn’t do relationships and never hooked up with anyone she might really like.  He was glad when he was promoted to homicide and it took him away from her on a daily basis.  There were other woman of course, but none that took.  Certainly none who made him want to toss her over his shoulder and carry her off every time he saw her.  None, that is, until today.

He wants to do that to her now.  Pick her up and get her out of here, away from whatever tragedy she is on a collision course towards.  Carry her off and find somewhere to enact that scene in his head for real.  Instead, he does the next best thing; he offers to buy her a cup of coffee.

Haunted Spaces will be released in installments early 2014 as it is set slightly later and contains spoilers for the other two in the Detective & Desires Series.  It is a sexually explicit erotic romance, as well as a murder mystery with paranormal elements.

The Plan – Chances & Choices
Prequel  Choices Book 1   by Helen Karol

Falling in love again just
isn't part of the plan.

It has been a rough year for Julian West and Claire Fitzpatrick. They are both struggling with the loss of a loved one.

When Andrea Saunders, a Los Angeles socialite, convinces Julian to escort Claire to the Spring Charity Ball, it begins an enduring friendship.  A friendship where both comfortably forget the sizzling attraction that flared between them in the first few moments of meeting.

In time, that attraction re-emerges and Julian must face emotions he has spent years repressing. 
A 6000 word short story prequel to
Chances & Choices
.

Buy at Amazon

Chances & Choices Julian and Claire Book 1 Choices Series   by Helen Karol

After three years in New York and a failed relationship behind her, Claire Fitzpatrick can hardly wait to get back to L.A. to her new job as senior feature writer at
Choices L.A.
, but most of all to the security and comfort of her best friend Julian West.  To her, he is the nice guy she can turn to for advice and comfort – the uncomplicated friend she can count on.

Julian West has fooled Claire Fitzpatrick for years playing the platonic friend. 
But on her first night home, he blows his cover and suddenly Claire sees him in a whole new light.  Now Julian must face emotions he has spent too long repressing.

“
The most romantic book I have ever read
.” Ibooks  5 STARS

“
Get ready for fun. Oh my this is great
   Reading Renee 5 STARS

Buy at Amazon

Coming in 2014 in the Choices Series

A Calculated Choice – Stella and Aidan Book 2  Choices Series

Stella Abbot has spent the past ten years clawing her way to the top.  As editor of the new L.A. edition of the magazine
Choices
, she has finally made it. When Aidan Carmichael arrives from the New York office to audit
Choices LA
’s finances, Stella finds herself both exasperated and seductively charmed by the gauche young accountant.

Small town boy Aidan soon finds himself fighting his unexpected attraction for the classy city editor.  What he
can’t fight is his longing to thaw her carefully constructed icy fortress and uncover the soft centre he’s convinced she’s hiding. 

As they work together closely on the audit they find it harder and harder to ignore the heat between them.   When his financial inquiries start to uncover some unsavory concerns that put Stella’s career at risk, Aidan finds he has to make some calculated choices.

Excerpt