Invitation to Seduction: Open Invitation, Book 1 (18 page)

If you enjoyed this excerpt, here’s where you can find
Revenge Sex
, West Coast, Book 1,
Submitting to the Boss
, Book 2,
and
The Boss’s Daughter
, Book 3
.

More Erotic Romance by Jasmine Haynes:

Kinky Neighbors

Kinky Neighbors Two

Double the Pleasure
, Prescott Twins, Book 1

Skin Deep
, Prescott Twins, Book 2

Anthology: Beauty or the Bitch & Free Fall

Take Your Pleasure

Take Your Pick

Past Midnight

What Happens After Dark

The Principal’s Office

Yours for the Night

Hers for the Evening

Mine Until Morning

The Fortune Hunter

Show and Tell

Fair Game

Unlaced

Laced with Desire

More Than a Night

Books by
Jennifer Skully
:

She’s Gotta Be Mine
,
Cottonmouth Book 1

Fool’s Gold
, Cottonmouth Book 2

Baby, I’ll Find You

Drop Dead Gorgeous

Sheer Dynamite

It Must Be Magic

Try a sample of Jasmine Haynes’s
Max Starr
Series, an erotic paranormal mystery/romance.

Thirty-something, down-on-her-luck accountant Max Starr has the unfortunate gift of being psychic, a newly-discovered wrinkle in her already messed-up life. Her husband, Cameron, is dead, killed in a botched 7-11 robbery two years ago. She’s cut herself off from friends, moved out of her San Francisco home in favor of a studio apartment, and dumped her flourishing career as a CPA to do temp work.

And now Max has developed an annoying penchant for attracting the spirits of murdered women. Okay, they possess her. And to exorcize them, Max must unmask their killers. But how?! By stepping into the void their deaths created, taking their jobs, befriending the loved ones they left behind. Max goes wherever she has to go and does whatever she has to do, with a lot of help from the ghost of her late husband Cameron and hunky and very enticing Detective Witt Long.

Dead to the Max
, Book 1

Copyright 2010 Jasmine Haynes

Cover design by Rosemary Gunn

Excerpt

She’d dressed in a long, black skirt and white blouse, flawlessly pressed. She was perfect. The perfect daughter, perfect wife, and perfect employee.

Tonight she longed to be the perfect lover. They’d stolen quick, furtive moments together, but this was the first time she would have all night with her lover. Her body hummed, with anticipation, with guilt, with fear.

She’d parked her silver Maxima in the farthest corner of the San Francisco International Airport long-term lot, then caught the shuttle bus to the terminal building. She’d done everything he asked. Except wait outside the terminal. She wasn’t supposed to pace in front of the arrivals monitor, trying to decide if she liked the anxiety, the foreboding.

She slipped her wedding band and sapphire engagement ring into the inside pocket of her leather purse. His plane was five minutes late. Checking the arrival time for his flight one last time, she crumpled the bit of green paper with the flight information he’d given her, threw it on top of an already full trash can, then walked to the lounge area to take a seat.

His gaze swept her as he stepped off the escalator outside security, and her heart sank to the toes of her sensible pumps. The glare he shot made her tremble. Was he pissed? Had she ruined everything?

Two confused, blank-eyed children clung to his big hands.

His estranged wife met them, ready to take his kids from him.

He neither kissed nor touched the pretty, plump blonde. Her sole purpose was to pick up the children after they’d returned from a visit with his parents.

His hands now empty and his bag slung over his shoulder, he walked several steps behind them. His wife chattered at the children and ignored him. Clusters of travelers engulfed them until they disappeared in the throng surrounding the baggage carousel.

She lingered in the waiting area another ten minutes, then rose, dragging her leather purse up her arm to her shoulder, and headed for the front doors, a lump in her throat. Once outside, she stood at the curb for the next long-term bus. He was at the other end of the island, the way they’d arranged. His wife had unknowingly played into the scheme, telling him she’d pick up the kids but
he’d
have to take a taxi.

She wondered why he and his wife still played this silly game.

The night had cooled. Her silk blouse was thin, but the heat from rumbling buses swept beneath her skirt and set her on fire. She could feel the hot lick of his gaze as if twenty feet didn’t separate them, his anger and desire a potent combination.

Need, hunger, dread, and excitement formed a squirming package in her stomach. Butterflies. Spontaneous combustion.

He sat in the back of the bus, she in the front. They neither spoke nor looked at each other. The ride to long-term was the longest ten minutes she’d ever known. Finally they turned down her aisle. She couldn’t believe she was doing this, couldn’t imagine stopping it now. Wouldn’t stop it even if her life depended on it.

She exited from the front of the shuttle, he from the rear, the overnight bag now in his hand. Pulling out her keys, she pressed the remote alarm.

The bus pulled away. Her heart hammered.

His bag was on the ground beside them and his hands were up her skirt before she had the car door open.

He dragged her into the back seat. She spread her legs over him, straddling his thighs. The roof of the car scuffed her hair. Tugging on his zipper, she took him in her hand. He sucked in a breath; in the past, he’d always initiated. There wasn’t time to fish the condoms out of her purse. When she slid down onto him, he groaned, but he didn’t take his eyes off her face.

She’d never been so wet, so vocal, or come so willingly in her life.

Three power-thrusts later, he came.

She screamed.

* * * * *

She screamed out her orgasm. Tears gummed her lashes and rolled down her cheeks. Hands circled her throat. From the floor of the car, the rumpled bit of green notepaper, the one she’d thrown away, taunted her, and the empty condom wrapper shouted her shame. How had it come to this?

In that moment, before fear gripped her, before instinct took over, when her guilt was strongest, she welcomed Death. Welcomed it as the life was choked from her, welcomed it until her eyeballs ached and colors exploded behind her lids. Until blood from her bitten tongue leaked down her raw, bruised throat. And then her body fought for survival.

She tore at the fingers, shrieked, twisted, kicked, scratched, and punched. And still she couldn’t drag in a breath. Terror fisted around her heart and squeezed. Fear of death. Fear of life. Fear like she’d never known. Not even the night someone put a bullet in Cameron’s head.

Max Starr woke clawing at her throat, Cameron’s name breaking the thrall of the dream. Blood drummed in her ears. Her heart pounded against the wall of her chest.

But she could breathe. Oh God, she could breathe, sweet, clean air smelling of early morning, green leaves, and hope. She was here, in her bedroom, where she belonged. Safe.

“Are you all right?” Cameron’s voice, not spoken but inside her head, comforting, familiar, the way a dead husband’s voice should be, the only way a crazy, grieving widow should hear her husband’s ghost. But she’d have given anything to feel his arms around her right now. For real, not just in the erotic dreams he brought her.

Sometimes fantasies weren’t enough.

Like now, when her throat still ached. She lightly caressed the flesh, her fingers cool, her skin tender with residual effects of the nightmare.

“It was a dream,” she murmured for both their benefits. Maybe her worst nightmare--except for that night two years ago when Cameron was killed--but still just a dream. After a deep inhale, then a long sigh, the tension dribbled out her fingertips and the soles of her feet.

Physical, reality-based sensation returned--sheets tangled around her legs, her back stuck to the cotton. She pushed the bedclothes aside to let cool air from the open window blow across her naked body. In the elm outside her window, the stray black cat gave a pathetic mewl. She shouldn’t have fed it yesterday, but knew she’d do the same thing today. Her racing heart eased into a steady, normal beat.

“That was a vision, Max, not a dream.” Cameron’s voice again, always with her, inside her.

It had been his name that woke her. It wasn’t part of the dream, vision, whatever it was; his name was something she’d interjected into a reality that didn’t belong to her. Even now she sensed remnants of another’s strong emotions inextricably linked with her own.

In the dark corner across the room, dear departed Cameron’s eyes flashed. Despite the two years since his death, those glittering points of light, all she ever really saw of him, still gave her a little jolt, part excitement, part fright. The red tip of his spectral cigarette glowed. He’d loved them when he was alive. They’d been the death of him in the end, not by cancer, but by gunshot at the corner 7-Eleven where he’d gone to buy his last pack.

If you enjoyed this excerpt, look for all the
Max Starr
mysteries by Jasmine Haynes:

Dead to the Max
, Max Starr, Book 1

Evil to the Max
, Max Starr, Book 2

Desperate to the Max
, Max Starr, Book 3

Power to the Max
, Max Starr, Book 4

Vengeance to the Max
, Max Starr, Book 5

Max Starr is also available in Print on Demand

Connect with Jasmine Haynes & Jennifer Skully online

Jasmine’s Website:
www.jasminehaynes.com

Jennifer’s Website:
www.jenniferskully.com

Max Starr Website:
www.jbskully.com

Blog:
www.jasminehaynes.blogspot.com

Facebook:
www.facebook.com/jasminehaynesauthor

Twitter:
http://twitter.com/#!/jasminehaynes1

About the Author

Jasmine Haynes
, Rita Finalist for
Somebody’s Lover
, plus two-time Holt Medallion and National Readers Choice Award winner, is the author of over 30 classy, erotic romance tales. Look for the final book in her popular DeKnight series,
The Principal's Office
. In 2013, she'll be starting a sexy new series for Berkley Heat, and there will be more in the
West Coast
series and her
Reincarnation Tales
. Of course, she’s also the author of the award-winning
Max Starr
psychic mystery series. And don’t miss her writing as
Jennifer Skully
, KOD Daphne award-winning author of contemporary romance, bringing you poignant tales peopled with hilarious characters that will make you laugh and make you cry. Visit her website at
www.jasminehaynes.com
and her blog at
www.jasminehaynes.blogspot.com