Midnight Fantasy. Ann Major

      Rusty’s hand traced the shape of her mouth.

      She opened her eyes. With a deceptive smile, she bravely met his feral blue stare. His tongue lolled as he unzipped his jeans and moved in for the kill. Quick as a turtle, she bit his filthy, thick finger.

      On a yelp of pain, he jumped back.

      She screamed and ran.

      The skinny one jumped her and knocked her to the ground. Her head struck a brick. Stars spun in a white sky above the palm trees. They fell on top of her, grabbed her wrists, pinning her body with knees that dug hard into her belly. The last thing she saw was those overbright white eyes. The last thing she felt was the pain in her head, in her neck, in her shoulders. The last thing she heard was their voices, telling her how much she wanted them.

      Dimly she heard her silk sheath ripping, then their belt buckles unsnapping, leather sliding through denim loops. But when they knelt over her again, there was a monstrous roar from the other end of the alley. Fantails of white shell and powdery dust spewed above her.

      “Rusty! Hank! She’s mine!” thundered a deep male voice from the end of the alley.

      Loverboy? she wondered woozily.

      “Holy damn! It’s him!”

      “Frenchy’s murderer!” Hank spat. A switchblade snapped, flashing silver.

      “Get, before I send you to hell along with Frenchy!” A black barrel flashed. She saw a dark hand. Then the black hole at the end of an automatic. “Get—out of my town—permanently.”

      She saw flame, heard a pop.

      “You heard me. Get off her. She’s mine.”

      Pop. Pop. Pop. Loose shells pinged when the bullets hit dirt. Miraculously, she wasn’t hurt. The cruel hands on her body loosened.

      She opened her eyes and saw two figures furtively scuffling past her on bloody hands and knees, their lank hair falling forward. Car doors slammed as the other man’s shadow fell over her.

      “This ain’t a free peep show. Get!”

      The pair cursed, started their engine, and roared away, leaving her alone—with him.

      Maybe she should’ve felt afraid. But she was too numb.

      All was silent save for the palm trees rustling above her. She swallowed. Vaguely she tasted shell dust and that awful tobacco-stained finger.

      Shell crunched under a man’s heavy boots. Then his low, hard voice cracked. “You gonna get up? Or are you really out for a good time?”

      Her eyes snapped open and shot fire.

      Wide-spread black boots were planted mere inches from her face. Her gaze climbed a virile, masculine body packed into denim so tight the cloth looked painted on.

      He had a lean waist, a shapely torso, and a line-backer’s squared-off, wide shoulders. A bright halo backlighted a well-shaped ebony head. His untamed hair was longish, and like a pirate, he sported a silver earring. They must’ve hurt him because he was pressing a white handkerchief against his cheek, sopping blood.

      She couldn’t see the fierce face that went with this diabolical individual, but his bold, stripping gaze made her shiver.

      Was this over-sexed caveman with the massive biceps a figment of her maddeningly-fertile imagination? She shut her eyes, willing him to disappear. When she opened them, the scuffed black boots were an inch closer.

      The biker jammed the black automatic into his waistband, his bloody handkerchief into his pocket and kneeled down.

      “They…they called you a murderer.”

      “You gonna believe scum…or the man who just saved you?”

      She didn’t know how to answer this beast.

      “Do you know how to say thank you, pretty lady?”

      His hard gaze knocked the breath out of her.

      “Because you owe me—big time,” he murmured, “and I can think of any number of ways for a woman like you to thank a man like me. The night is young—”

      A woman like you? “You have some nerve.”

      “So do you…running around at this hour…in that car. In that body. Where were you going? What were you looking for?” He laughed derisively. “I know your type.”

      “I don’t want to know yours!”

      His blazing eyes settled on her face, moved lower with an overabundance of feral sensuality. “You wanna bet?”

      “Just go!”

      “You’re too weak to get up, too rude to say thank you, too much of a liar to admit what you are…. You have a flat tire which you probably don’t know how to change. You’re half-naked and lying flat on your good-looking tush in a most seductive pose—” There was no mistaking the sexually-charged innuendo in his low tone. “I don’t blame you for wanting something wild. I was on the prowl for the same thing myself.”

      “Half-naked?” Her brain stalled. Alarm bells jangled. “What—?”

      She shut up when the biker wrapped his arms around her in the darkness. When he touched her, she got the sexual charge she’d been waiting for her whole life.

      From him.

      She was too shocked to resist as he began to check for bruises and other injuries. His fingers on her skin just got hotter and hotter.

      Instantaneous man-woman combustion.

      Waves of erotic heat lapped her like a turbulent wake.

      He tensed.

      She froze.

      “See! I was right about you,” he said.

      “Take your hands off me!”

      He laughed and then jerked her unceremoniously from the ground. Strands of her torn white silk skirt tickled her bare thighs as he pulled her to her feet. When she collapsed against him, his large, sure hands caught her.

      More dizzying heat.

      Blood from the cut on his cheek smeared the right half of his face. There was a dark stain on his white T-shirt, too. He had gotten hurt because of her. Her expression softened as she studied his rich black hair, his mouth, and then the cut.

      “It’s a scratch,” he muttered.

      “Maybe you should put something on it.”

      His eyes went dark with dislike. “Don’t act like you give a damn.”

      “Are you always this rude? Or are you just showing off for me?”

      His brows slanted. He studied her and then suddenly he laughed again.

      She smiled. That broke the ice a bit. Then the air between them began to thicken again a little like sauce left to simmer over a fire. He was gorgeous, if a girl went for all male…and lethal. Which she certainly didn’t.

      Nonetheless, she couldn’t stop looking at him. And that made her blush.

      “Who are you?” she whispered, trying to push him away even though some part of her wanted to be locked in those warm muscular arms forever.

      “You don’t care who I am.”

      “Were you friends…with them?”

      “No.” He didn’t explain.

      “I hit my head when I fell,” she said. “I’m a little woozy. Not…not myself. This feels like a bad dream.”

      His hands combed tangled, golden hair and found the blood-crusted bump on the back of her head.

      She jerked away. “Ouch!”

      “You have a lump the