Breaking Down Her Walls

By Erin Zak

Leaving is what Julia Finch does best.

When a meeting with her birth parents goes horribly wrong, Julia escapes on a hastily planned road trip and winds up breaking down in a Colorado town so small the cows outnumber the people. Completely out of her element, she takes a temporary job as a ranch hand at Bennett Ranch. She only has to survive long enough to get her car fixed, and then she’s out of there for good. 

Her bad luck continues when she meets the ranch owner, Elena Bennett. Elena is unhappy, abrasive, and annoyingly breathtaking. But the longer Julia stays, the more the ranch starts to feel like home, and her feelings for Elena become impossible to ignore. She’s spent years building her defenses high and running from her past. Could a love worth staying for be the key to breaking down her walls?

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Clinical Trials

By Radclyffe

A Radclyffe Short Story

When a graduate student volunteers for a clinical trial, she soon discovers the study is all about arousal—hers, to be exact, in the most intimate of settings. When she can't help but fantasize about the gorgeous female scientist, every lustful twinge shows up on the record. Three stories in one—from the first encounter to the explosive final experiment.

 

Previously published in Change of Pace: Erotic Interludes (Bold Strokes Books, 2004); republished in Radical Encounters (Bold Strokes Books, 2009).

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Friends Without Benefits

By Dena Blake

Friends & Community
Second Chance at Love
Weddings
Food
Big City
Holidays |

Dex Putnam has been in love with her best friend Grace Standish since the fifth grade. Grace is smart, beautiful, and most unfortunately, straight. Life would’ve been perfect if Grace had only loved her back, but when Grace gets married, Dex knows it’s time to move on. Then Dex meets Emma Lawson, and her life takes a whole new direction. Only trouble is, she never expected to have to choose between her best friend and her new love. 

Emma Lawson is successful and happy except when it comes to love. She’s been alone for a year and has no intention of giving love another chance, until falling for Dex changes everything. When Grace comes between them, Emma refuses to be second best. Can Emma show Dex what true love really looks like?

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Invalid Evidence

By Stevie Mikayne

International Setting
Disability
Vacation
Private Investigator
Marriage of Convenience/Fake Relationship

Just when she is most needed at home, private investigator Jil Kidd is sent to the island of St. Eméline to investigate the death of an Orca trainer at a sea aquarium. Once there, she discovers that the death might not have been the fault of the killer whale who’s getting the blame. As the investigation heats up, she discovers a toxic work environment, corporate fraud, and a whole whack of motive for murder. Not to mention her very attractive employer, who doesn’t bother to hide her interest in Jil.

Back at home, Jil’s partner Jessica copes with major life changes in the form of an unexpected death and an illness that forces the end of her career as a high school principal. Can Jil and Jess find a way to come back together and endure the waves of this tsunami?

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Pursuit of Happiness

By Carsen Taite

Friends & Community
Lawyers
Big City
Political Thriller

Senator Meredith Mitchell has been groomed from young adulthood for a future run for president, and as scion of a political dynasty, every public and private move she makes is carefully calculated. But Meredith’s focus on the right causes, the right people, and the right timing evaporates when she meets Stevie Palmer, a dashing public defender with a hard knock past. A firebrand like Stevie is the last person she should be associating with, especially when Meredith's political future turns into right now, and her party urges her to enter the presidential race.

Attorney Stevie Palmer refuses to be limited by the low expectations of others or by taking the politically safe route. Cautious, media-perfect presidential candidate Meredith Mitchell is the last woman she expected to fall for, but Stevie has never hesitated to pursue her passions. When her client reveals a Mitchell family scandal that could derail Meredith's career, everything Meredith and Stevie value hangs in the balance, including Meredith's shot at the presidency and their chance at love.

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Seascape

By Karis Walsh

Homecoming
Small Town Romances
Friends to Lovers Romance

Marine biologist Tess Hansen has left her high-tech lab at Evergreen College and returned to Washington’s northern coast to take care of her aging parents. Although her new job studying orcas in the Pacific excites her, she finds life in the small town where she grew up to be stifling and boring. Until she meets Brittany James.

Chemist Britt James has made the move from a hectic city to the rural coast as well, but she embraces the isolation. She’s looking for a way to reconnect with the environment and make amends for the damage her chemical company has done, and Tess’s center for orca research is a top contender for her endowment. 

Change has become an unwelcome part of Tess’s life and a desperate hope for Britt. Can these two women find a place of refuge with each other?

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Second In Command

By VK Powell

A Fairview Station Novel | Book 2
Age Gap
Women in Uniform
Police / Cops
First Responders
Children / Families
Friends to Lovers Romance

Lieutenant Jazz Perry finds a young girl wandering the downtown streets alone late at night. As the child becomes attached to her, Jazz is reminded of her own experiences in foster care and takes a personal interest even when she knows she should maintain professional distance. 

Social worker Emory Blake is good at her job helping children in challenging situations. She believes in the system and knows it works if you let it. When Jazz starts interfering in the case and bypassing the rules, Emory is torn between her responsibilities and an unwelcome attraction she can’t deny.

When on the job responsibilities collide with desires of the heart, becoming personally involved is the only choice.

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Taking Chances

By Erin McKenzie

Second Chance at Love
Children / Families
Multicultural 

Children's librarian Valerie Cruz has worked hard to make a comfortable life for herself since aging out of the foster care system. She loves her job but avoids intimate connections—life has taught her that she can only count on herself. When she gets the opportunity to become a foster parent, Val decides to take the leap. If she can help kids, she'll do it, even if it means reentering the system.

Foster care case worker Paige Wellington is passionate about her work, and she's been a foster parent herself. When she meets the beautiful Valerie Cruz, she is drawn to her in a way she can't explain, even though Valerie seems to want nothing to do with her. But when they clash over what is in the best interest of the children in Valerie's care, the children may be the ones who teach them that it's worth taking chances for love.

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Unexpected Partners

By Michelle Larkin

Police Procedural 
Bodyguard/Protection Romances
Police / Cops
Animals 
Psychological Thriller

After she’s abducted and barely escapes with her life, Dr. Chloe Maddox joins the Boston Police Department as a behavioral profiler. Her sole objective is to solve her own case. The only thing standing in her way is she has no memory of what happened. When she locks eyes with the man who murdered her lover and left her for dead, the past comes flooding back.

Detective Dana Blake is still mourning the death of her wife. When she discovers Chloe’s abductor is the same serial killer who took her wife’s life, she insists on protecting her. Both women are caught off guard by their developing attraction as they build their case, on the run from a clever sociopath. Danger lurks behind every corner, and a killer is intent on recapturing his prey. Except this time, he has his eye on Dana, too.

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All of Me

By Emily Smith

Medical Romance
Workplace Romance
Big City

Dr. Galen Burgess has a reputation for keeping it casual. She likes women close—but not too close. Nothing is more important to her than her budding surgical career as chief surgical resident at Boston City Hospital. After spending years trying, and failing, to please her father, Galen knows getting close enough to care is a recipe for heartbreak. 

Everything in her carefully structured life begins to change when she meets her newest intern, the disconcertingly beautiful Dr. Rowan Duncan. Sheltered doesn’t even begin to describe Rowan’s comfortable, quiet life before moving to Boston. When Rowan starts to fall for Galen, everything Rowan's ever known comes into question, including her relationship with high school sweetheart Brian. 

With her own heart on the line, will Rowan have the courage to make the cut, or risk losing Galen forever?

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As the Crow Flies

By Karen F. Williams

Coming Out
Age Gap
Ghosts
Virgins/First Love
Small Town Romances
Animals 
Friends & Community
Children / Families

Samantha Weller, a forensic scientist turned paranormal novelist, owes her life and writing career to a crow that saved her from certain death. When she buys an old bookend that looks like her avian muse, her world begins to resemble the plots of her novels. 

Determined to find the mate to her bookend, Samantha and her antiquarian sidekick, Liz, go on a search leading them to the beautiful and wealthy Gwen Laraway. Samantha is instantly smitten, but the age difference has Gwen second-guessing Samantha’s interest. 

Meanwhile, Liz is crushing on Gwen’s niece, Isabel. As clueless as she is sensuous, Isabel hasn’t had a date since her high school prom ten years ago, and she’s petrified to act on her sudden attraction to Liz.

Romance seems to be blooming all around, but problems arise when a restless ghost emerges from the ether to roam the dark corners of this haunting tale that explores the quantum mechanics of immortality.

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Both Ways

By Ileandra Young

The S. P. E. A. R. Mission Files | Book 1
People of Color
Political Thriller
Vampires

Danika Karson, field agent of the Supernatural Prohibition, Extermination, and Arrest Regiment (SPEAR), has the highest capture and kill rate on record. That is, until the mayor of Angbec makes her an offer she can’t refuse. Moonlighting as a rogue private investigator, Danika must find the mayor’s son, presumed kidnapped by vampires. 

Determined to solve the case, Danika’s only lead is Rayne, a vampire whose power and beauty mask a kind and gentle heart. They race against time to find the missing boy, dodging vampires, evading SPEAR agents, and fighting the attraction that sparks between them. When the stakes rise ever higher, Danika is forced to put her life in Rayne’s hands, but can she really trust a vampire?

 

Advance praise from Publishers Weekly: "[T]his sleek paranormal romance introduces Danika Karson, the best vampire hunter on the city’s payroll....High points of this fast-paced novel include Danika’s relationships with her mother and sister, the smoldering attraction that starts between Danika and Rayne, and detailed worldbuilding. This captivating story draws readers in immediately and keeps them hooked." (starred review)

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Calendar Girl

By Georgia Beers

Financial gap/Class disparity
Workplace Romance

For Addison Fairchild, success is a guarantee. Groomed since childhood to run a division of Fairchild Enterprises, she takes her birthright seriously. Maybe a little too seriously if you ask her friends. But work is so much easier than the rest of her life. Her employees hate her, her best friend is worried about her, and her last date was hide-in-the-restroom awkward. If all that wasn't bad enough, she's stuck with a new cheerful-happy-annoyingly-morning-person assistant just when the head of FE is about to choose a successor—a job Addison wants so badly, she can taste it. 

For Katie Cooper, money has never been important. That is, until her father gets dementia and needs full-time care. As the bills start to pile up, Katie takes a second job as a temporary personal assistant. Two minutes and one spilled cup of coffee later, she's sure she's not ready for Addison Fairchild—her hard head, her know-it-all attitude, or her gorgeous face.

Forced to work together, Addison and Kate discover that opposites really do attract.

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Lovebirds

By Lisa Moreau

California
Financial gap/Class disparity
Friends to Lovers Romance

Emily Wellington loves birds. Sydney Cooper loves pole dancing. The last thing they expect is to fall in love with each other. 

An exclusive exposé on the Madagascar lovebird and its mysterious migration to the small town of Ojai, California, might be the only thing keeping Emily’s magazine, The Tweet, from going under.  

Sydney doesn’t care what other people think; pole dancing gave her confidence and strength when she needed it most. Now penniless and unemployed, she needs to ace her pole dancing audition to become an instructor at LA’s hottest fitness studio. 

Emily and Sydney couldn’t be more different, but they need each other to achieve their goals. When their unlikely friendship blossoms into romance, will the secret Sydney has been keeping destroy Emily’s chance to save her magazine and their chance at true happiness?

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Media Darling

By Fiona Riley

Celebrity
Actors/Artists
California

Hayley Carpenter has always dreamed of being a famous screenwriter, but dreams don’t pay bills and LA living isn’t cheap. So when a temp position at a celebrity gossip magazine becomes available, she goes after it.

Emerson Sterling has been acting since she was little, but a rough patch as a teenager has given her a bad rap in Hollywood. Just when she thinks her dream role can turn around the public’s image of her, a conflict with her co-star and America’s Sweetheart, Rachel Blanche, puts her on the front cover of every magazine, the villain once again.

Rumors swirl that the starlets’ feud started in the bedroom, and Hayley accidentally overhears a conversation between Emerson and Rachel that could lead to the biggest scoop of her career. Will Hayley follow the story, or will her irresistible attraction to Emerson and the secrets Emerson is desperate to keep buried ruin both their careers...and their chance at love?

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Stroke of Fate

By Renee Roman

Federal Agents
Second Chance at Love
Actors/Artists
Bodyguard/Protection Romances
Workplace Romance

Sean Moore is a dedicated agent for the Secret Service until a political scandal forces her into the private sector, making her question the values she has always held true. Jade Rivers has only ever wanted to be a writer. A breakout success catapults her into the mainstream literary world and she couldn’t be happier, but fame comes with a high price. 

When an religious fanatic becomes a stalker and threatens her life, Jade hires Sean to be her personal bodyguard. Neither expects the instant attraction that sizzles between them. Will the perfect working relationship end in disaster when Sean's true feelings for Jade are revealed? And can Sean protect Jade before the stalker ends any chance they have of finding the kind of love that's always been missing from their lives?

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Tapped Out

By Radclyffe

A Radclyffe Short Story

A chance meeting and instant attraction between two women at an airport leads to an all-out seduction on the mat at a martial arts competition. When the winner calls the game, sex turns out to be the no-holds-barred variety.

 

Previously published in Erotic Interludes 5: Road Games, edited by Radclyffe and Stacia Seaman (Bold Strokes Books, 2007).

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The Rise of the Resistance

By Jackie D

Dystopian
Bodyguard/Protection Romances
Women in Uniform

The year is 2088 and the bones of American democracy have been left sweltering in the ashes of a hostile takeover. Sixty-five years before, four carefully chosen individuals in the Phoenix Program were cryogenically frozen until the time was right for them to combine forces and restore the government. That time is now. 

Arrow Steele has trained her whole life to bring the Phoenix Program to fruition, but no amount of training could have prepared her for Phoenix One herself, Kaelyn Trapp, or the attraction neither one of them can deny. 

Kaelyn's destiny is to navigate the new world and bring America back to some semblance of a country the Founding Fathers had envisioned. That is, if Arrow can get them to safety. The only thing that stands in their way is thousands of miles and a militarized government.

Arrow and Kaelyn carry the fate of their country on their shoulders. Love couldn’t possibly have come at a more inconvenient time, but with their mission and their lives in jeopardy, love may be what matters most.

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