Page 51

Sherrie waggles her phone to show the time on the screen. “You’re on stage in five.”

Oh, god. I love writing monster romance, but the thought of going on stage in front of thousands of readers makes my stomach sink. I glance at the glamorous, made-over version of myself in the mirror. It’s not me doing this—it’s her, and she looks sparkly and pink and awesome.

I stand and yank the sequined monstrosity away from my crotch.

“Are you done doing that?” Sherrie asks, amusement filling her voice. “Get it out of your system now, because you cannot do that on stage.”

I shoot her a mock glare that only makes her grin harder and give the front of the catsuit one more good tug. Then I march for the door, my pink heels clicking on the polished concrete floor.

It’s a short walk down an industrial-looking hall to reach the backstage area. Sherrie strides along beside me, tapping away at her phone, much more confident in her heels than I am. “You remember your talking points, right?”

“Memorized my list.” I tap my temple. My phone’s back in the dressing room, where it won’t spoil the lines of the clingy catsuit.

“And if you get stuck on anything…”

“I’ll make a dick joke.” I grin over at her. “A monster dick joke.” I have a list of them, too.

“Perfect.” She smiles back and waves me to a stop right beside the curtain. “I’ll go tell Brokk to keep his shirt on.”

“Thank you.”

The second word is drowned out by the amplified voice of the interviewer. “Hello, Miami Monster Mash! Are you ladies ready to turn up the heat on this thing?”

A crowd of screams breaks out, and I gulp. Just how many people are out there? I’m not exactly the greatest in front of an audience.

“You know her for her Once You Do a Demon series, full of incubus heat. But you go absolutely feral for her new spicy orc romances in the How to Woo a Fae Orc series, starring the delicious Grinthar. Here she is, Lara Jade!”

My stomach does a flip, but I suck in a breath and march out onto the stage, squinting as a hundred camera flashes add to the brightness of the spotlights. I can’t see a damned thing.

The heel of one of my shoes catches on an obstruction, and I lurch forward with a gasp. I teeter for a second, pinwheeling my arms to try to regain my balance. I almost have it, but the unfamiliar heels throw me off.

Oh, no. No, no, no. Two seconds on stage, and I’ve already ruined one of the items on my list! That’s a new record, even for me.

I overcorrect and pitch backward, heart pounding—

Strong arms snatch me from the air and crush me to a solid wall of muscle.

I suck in a startled breath, breathing in the scent of male and leather and pine.

“Lara Jade.” A deep voice vibrates through my body where we’re pressed together in a tango dip. A voice that makes my heart skip.

Brokk’s voice.

I blink up at the most gorgeous face I’ve ever seen, the green and tusked face of an orc.

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ROMANCING THE ORC

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The alien shoved me forward, its grip impossibly strong. The damned thing really was a mountain, ready to roll right over me like a landslide. I’ll call you Mount Slug .

We rounded a stack of crates, and the end of the room came into view. A large metal door hinged upward, and a wide ramp descended to the ground outside. This was the cargo hold of a ship, just not my ship.

I staggered forward, too fascinated by the view outside to care that the alien had to almost drag me.

This was everything I’d dreamed about.

Sunlight poured from a pale-orange sky, bathing a busy street filled with aliens of all different types. The chaos and activity of the scene created a whirl of textures and colors. My eyes pinballed from one place to the next. There were so many things to look at I couldn’t focus.

At the bottom of the ramp, I stepped out onto soft, dusty beige dirt. The thin slippers that went with my white cryo onesie hadn’t offered much protection from the hard metal floors of the ship. The ground felt a lot better, and my toes instinctively dug in to steady me.

Wind tossed my straight black hair into my eyes, and I tucked it behind my ear. Humidity gave the air a thick quality as it coated my face, and a wild mixture of scents competed for attention—grilling meat, clashing perfumes, and the rich smell of greenery.

Ships stretched off in a line to the right and left, all of them small, like shuttles made to land on a planet. We stood on a pedestrian avenue, and only a few feet ahead, an open-air market started. Stalls sprang up everywhere, the setup kind of hodgepodge. Each sold something new to discover. I wanted to explore so damned badly I jolted forward. The gray alien’s grip jerked me to a halt.

The babble of numerous voices came from everywhere. None of them sounded like the same language, but people obviously understood one another.

Mount Slug dragged me across the road and up another ramp. This one led to a raised metal dais about four-feet high. When we got to the top, it spun in place, taking me with it so I faced all of the aliens walking past.

This is more like it! Maybe I could find allies or clues, anything that would help me figure out what the hell was going on.

There were more of the gray pyramid-shaped aliens here and there. Their large bodies really did act like mountains, forcing others to go around them.

A new type of alien came close, an upright-walking lizard. Golden eyes topped a snout filled with fangs. Bright yellow covered the chest, darkening to green everywhere else. It looked like a dinosaur made human-sized with normal-length arms. A bit taller than my 5-foot-six, it had at least twice the body mass, all muscle. A fat tail hung down the back of its legs to just above the ground. It didn’t wear clothes, but a couple of harnesses crossed its chest with things clipped to them. I dubbed it a dino.

Next came a bird alien a few inches taller than me. I was medium build, but this new alien was skinny, way thinner than any human. It had huge dark eyes and a beak instead of a nose and mouth. Pale-yellow feathers covered its body, short everywhere on the front, including its arms. I craned my neck as it passed. It had wings as long as it was tall tucked close to its back, and those feathers were a foot long. That kind could be called birdie.

A tall bipedal form with a huge head walked past, covered in a hooded red cloak that hid its body completely.

Then the crowd in front of me parted, and a new kind of alien strode through the gap.

I sucked in a shocked breath.

He looked the most human of anyone I’d seen, and yet he clearly wasn’t human. His face was a rich blue, shining with a beautiful iridescence in the sunlight. His inky-black hair looked like a true black, throwing off purple and blue highlights. Dark-purple horns crowned his head, one set pointing straight up while a second sat curved down around the sides. Black pants covered his long legs, and something like a long-sleeved T-shirt clung to the muscles of his wide chest and well-defined arms. The triangular tip of a narrow tail poked up above his shoulder, held close to his body.

He carried himself like a fighter, moving through the crowd with the kind of controlled strength you got from doing a martial art for years. The gun on each hip added to the feel. If anyone here could help me, it was him.

He was a dangerous blue demon made flesh—a space demon.

And sexy, like one of the aliens in smutty books who made you orgasm so hard you saw stars.

Yes, please. He looked better even than Klingons, who’d always been my fave sci-fi crush monsters. I almost choked on a laugh. Here I was, lost in space, and all I could think about was this?

The cryohangover was making me loopy. So loopy it was hard to do anything but stare at the new alien.

Space demons, here I come!

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