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When the lights go down, who knows what danger...and unspoken desires lurk in the dark?
Three young people with a shared tragic past that left them burdened as well as blessed with supernatural talents are now the target of forces determined to harm them. But their fate rests with the strangers that help them—a nurse at a mental hospital, a detective and a small-town librarian—strangers who must suspend their own disbelief to protect them. In this enthralling trilogy, these fearless, damaged souls are ready to embrace the unfathomable but are wholly unprepared for the passion they find in the arms of a stranger.
Love blooms best when the night falls, doesn’t it? Don’t miss this scintillating collection of novellas from New York Times bestselling author Megan Hart!
Strangers of the Night
Touched by Passion
Passion in Disguise
Unexpected Passion
Megan Hart
www.millsandboon.co.uk
MEGAN HART is the award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of more than thirty novels, novellas and short stories. Her work has been published in almost every genre, including contemporary women’s fiction, historical romance, romantic suspense and erotica. Megan lives in the deep, dark woods of Pennsylvania with her husband and children. Visit her on the web at www.meganhart.com.
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This collection is dedicated to Jeffe Kennedy, who was there for me every time I struggled with the words.
Table of Contents
Cover
Back Cover Text
Title Page
About the Author
Dedication
Touched by Passion
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Passion in Disguise
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Unexpected Passion
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Copyright
Touched by Passion
Megan Hart
Prologue
Collins Creek
Jed doesn’t like the sound of the babies crying. He can hear them even from the other building, wailing inside his head. He’s too big to be one of them anymore. No more diapers. No more crib. No more giant room that always smells faintly of milk and poo. Now he has his own big bed in the dorm with the other kids, and although he misses his mothers, he knows better than to give in to tears. If you cry here in the dorm, you get a beating.
Instead, he clenches his fists tight at his sides and stares up at the ceiling. His cot is hard and lumpy. The blanket scratches his chin if he pulls it up too high, so he tucks it around his belly. The other kids are sleeping, but Jed can’t seem to manage. There’s too much noise, too much going on. If he gets up now, he could go to the monitor, who will give him some medicine to sleep, but it makes his head feel fuzzy and his belly hurt. He tries to fall asleep on his own.
Tomorrow is dedication day.
The fathers have been watching them all since they were babies in the nursery. They already know which ones are special. Who will be dedicated, who will be sent away.
This is Jed’s first dedication time, but he’s heard the other kids talking even when they’re not supposed to. Everyone’s scared about what happens when you’re sent away. The rumor is that you get put into the big fireplace in the barn and made into smoke, and Jed believes it. He’s been able to “feel” everyone at the farm for as long as he can remember. The kids who get taken away after each dedication, well...he doesn’t feel them anymore.
Before he’s even had time to sleep, the lights overhead come on. The other kids shift and squeal, crying out in excitement and fear when the doors to the dorm boom open and the fathers are there in their black robes, their white masks. It’s supposed to make them all equal, but it doesn’t matter to Jed that they all look the same. They all feel different.
The kids are up and in a line, marching into the hallway. One by one, they go into the meeting room. None of them come out. They won’t know until later who’s still left, though of course, Jed will know before everyone else. That’s what he tells the fathers waiting for him in the meeting room when they ask him. He tells them who he can still feel. Who he cannot. They stare at him from behind their white masks, nodding when he points to each and names them.
They feel happy, and that makes Jed feel happy, too. He won’t be burned up into smoke. He gets the special pudding for dessert that makes the world spin around in many colors. He gets to go back to the dorm and his lumpy bed, where he can only lie on his back, laughing and laughing at the funny way everything grows and shrinks.
He’s still laughing when the doors bang open again. More men in black. No white masks. Guns. They kick over the beds, the monitor’s desk. They shout. Most of them feel angry, though one or two feel more scared than anything else, and none of them feel nice.
They take all of the children.
Jed never sees Collins Creek again.
Chapter 1
Samantha Janecek had never liked hospitals in general, but she loathed this hospital in particular.
It wasn’t the smells of chemicals and despair, though those clung to her like some stinking perfume she could never quite scrub away. And it wasn’t the bright, unrelenting lights that forced everyone inside to adjust to some artificial internal clock, although they messed with her sleep so much that she hadn’t been able to get more than four hours at a time since she’d started here. More than anything else, it was this uniform.
No scrubs for the nursing staff here at Wyrmwood. Nope, the women had to wear white, starched dresses with Peter Pan collars and a weird belt thing that hit her too high on the ribs to be comfortable. Thick white support stockings, crepe-soled granny shoes. Worst of all, the mesh cap she had to pin into the thickness of her blond hair, which refused to ever stay neatly in the required bun. The uniform was straight out of the late sixties—fitting, she supposed, since the rest of Wyrmwood seemed to have been arrested in that same era. Including the fact there were no male nurses here, only orderlies. They also wore all white, but at least they got to wear pants.
“Morning, miss,” said Nathan through the glass as she showed him her ID card and pressed her fingertip to the panel at the side of the door.
When the green light clicked on, she pushed through the heavy door that slid behind her with a hushed whirr. “Hi, Nathan. How’s it going?”
“Same old, same old.” Nathan shrugged. “Quiet tonight.”
Of course it was quiet. Not only were all the patients on the fourth floor secured in their individual rooms behind soundproof walls, but most of them barely spoke aloud. Some by choice, an elective muteness. Some because they’d lost the capability for speech somewhere along the way. It might’ve been different on other floors, but as she’d never worked on any of them, Samantha couldn’t say.
“Have a good one,” Samantha said as she signed in using the electronic keypad at Nathan’s station.
She paused for the automatic snapshot that would be added to her file, another level of proof that she was who she said she was. That she was here when she ought to be. She’d often considered pulling a funny face during the picture taking, but had never quite dared. Humor was not encouraged here.
She didn’t speak to the armed guards posted at the elevator entrance to the floor. One or both of them might be on her team, but she never knew. Never would know, not unless it was necessary. Vadim made sure of that.
Samantha had been working at the Wyrmwood job for the past eighteen months. She’d never asked what strings had been pulled to make sure she was assigned to the fourth floor. She simply followed the rules she’d agreed to when she took the job. The money from the Crew kept coming in, deposited into an account in no way connected to the one she used for her Wyrmwood salary, and which she checked only once a month, using an encrypted burner phone she then tossed immediately. Money she couldn’t spend until she was no longer needed here.
The question was, when would she decide that she was finished with this assignment? How much longer could she stand it here before she lost more than a little bit of her own mind? Working in near silence all day long, taking the vitals of men and women who were often little more than chilly mannequins. Forcing her body into an artificial day/night cycle that fucked up her social life, not just her mental state. She was not the first person Vadim had ever assigned to this task. Sooner or later, all of those who’d come before her had ended up leaving, some of their own accord and others because they’d stopped toeing the Wyrmwood line. She’d never found out how many of them had ended up as patients themselves. Stopping for a moment in front of a closed door with nothing more than a small viewport in it, she allowed herself the briefest second to touch the cold metal. A little longer, she told herself. Surely she could last a little longer.
At the desk, positioned between the two corridors of the L-shaped building, she managed some banal chitchat with the nurse leaving her shift. Patty was nice enough. She did yoga. Had a bland husband, several unremarkable children and a couple of dogs she referred to as “fur babies” in a way that made Samantha supremely uncomfortable. She and Patty would never be friends—Wyrmwood employees were discouraged from socializing outside of work, anyway, even if they’d had anything in common beyond the job. Samantha knew, though, that no matter how normal Patty seemed, the fact she worked here at Wyrmwood meant she had the highest security clearance possible. It meant that, like Samantha, Patty was capable of killing you with a ballpoint pen or her bare hands. Not only capable, but willing.
“Quiet tonight,” Patty said in an echo of Nathan’s earlier statement. “You shouldn’t have any trouble.”
“Never do,” Samantha said with the bright, sterile smile she’d cultivated over the years as part of her armor against the “normal” world. It had worked well for this stint in Wyrmwood, that was for sure. That smile, she was convinced, was what had finally earned her the job. “Have a good night. Give the pups a squeeze from me.”
“Will do!” Patty gathered her things and signed out of the computer, pausing for another of those snapshots, and left.
Alone at the desk, Samantha released a pent-up sigh and allowed her face to fall into an expression that didn’t even come close to a smile. She was still being watched, of course. She knew that. But she didn’t have to pretend she was here for a party. If anything, the two performance reviews she’d had since taking the assignment had made note of her “professional demeanor” and “consistent attitude.”
Signing in, adding another profile picture to the files, she settled into her seat to scroll through the notes left behind by the last shift. Patty preferred crossword puzzles to extensive note taking, which was fine with Samantha, since there was rarely anything important to note. Fourth floor had twenty patients who required varying levels of care, and all of them were her responsibility.
But she was there, really, to take care of only one.
Chapter 2
If there was something about warm, smooth skin and bristly beard stubble that wasn’t meant to send a girl straight to heaven, Persephone Collins didn’t want to hear about it. The man in the bed beside her had muscles in all the most important places, eyes as dark as midnight, hair like the sweetest Australian black licorice and, more important, a mouth made for kissing that he hardly ever used to talk. Silence was one of a man’s best qualities, according to Persephone.
Well, silence and a nice cock.
It didn’t have to be huge, she thought as she rolled over to let her hand trail down his firm, hairless pecs to the bit of fur on his belly. Just proportional. A little lower, and her fingers brushed soft flesh. He stirred, thickening under her stroking touch. His groan made her smile.
He put a hand over hers. “Again?”
“Again,” she whispered and lowered her mouth to taste him. Warm, sweet skin. Tangy. She closed her eyes to savor his unique flavor.
“Please,” he said. “I don’t think I can.”
She looked at him. “Oh, I think you can.”
“We’ve done it five times, babe.” His voice dipped low, almost into a growl that became a drawn-out groan when she again dipped her head to take him between her lips.
She ran her hands over her body, knowing exactly what he would see. High, huge breasts tipped with cherry nipples. Flat belly. Wide, curving hips. And also...
“You don’t want this sweetness?” She let her fingertips travel over the thatch of soft strawberry hair between her thighs. The hair was really hers.
Not much else was.
The guy on the bed—damn, what was his name, exactly? It began with an M. Mark? Marcus? Marcellus? Whoever he was said, “Of course I do, darlin’, but you’ve about wore me out.”
Her fingers curved around his shaft again. Stroking gently. Up over the head and around, until he arched. Cock stiff. The sound of his moan rippled through her.
Oh, how she loved fucking.
Especially men built like working out was their job. Oh, right, she thought as he continued to respond to her touch. It was his job. She’d met him at the gym. He was a personal trainer.
It surprised her when he sat up to put one big hand on the back of her neck to pull her close for a kiss. She managed to turn her face at the last second so their lips slid against each other quickly, barely connecting. She urged his mouth along the line of her jaw and down her throat. Lower, to her breasts. He licked and sucked at one nipple, then the other, and although this body that he was worshipping was mostly illusory, it still felt good. More than good. Fantastic.
Desire rose within her, trickling through her veins. Filling her. It swept away everything except the urge for mindless ecstasy.
“Come up here.” Strong hands urged her upward to straddle his face.
His tongue slid against her, effortlessly finding her clit. His hands kneaded her ass cheeks—plumper than her own. Softer. Her real body was tight, lean, hard with muscles she’s built at the gym where they’d met. The gym where he’d never paid a second of attention to her before today, when her rising need had made her focus on him.
Persephone shook away these thoughts. She needed to come, to lose herself in exploding pleasure. To be swept away by fantasy, not reality. She looked down at his face, his eyes closed as his mouth worked on her.
“There,” she murmured, rocking against him. Letting the sensations swirl inside her from deep in her belly. “Oh, yeah. Right there. Right there.”
She’d intended to ride his cock one more time before using his shower, helping herself to whatever was in his fridge, perhaps lifting the contents of his wallet before leaving him sleeping in the tangled, sweaty sheets left behind after their marathon fuck session. However, she wasn’t going to turn down the delight of his lips and tongue against her. It was better, in fact. Taking this pleasure from him without having to focus on his.
He muttered something against her. The vibrations sent another surge of pleasure, up, up, twisting tight and coiling. She cried out as her thighs trembled. Her cunt clenched, throbbing. His tongue swirled on her clit, sending her over the edge at last.
She rode it, shaking and crying out. The climax eased. She rolled off him and limply fell back on the bed.
Silence.
A low chuckle turned her toward him. Persephone pushed herself up on her elbow to look into his face. “Thanks.”
Marcus or Marco or whoever he was smiled. Yawned. “You’re welcome.”
She glanced down at his cock, no longer hard. “You sure you don’t want...?”
“Oh, I want.” He rolled to face her and put a hand on her hip. “Just can’t right now. Surprised I was able to so many times already, girl. Something about you...”
Well, yeah. There was that. She smiled and touched his face. For the briefest moment she thought about letting the pretense drop. Instead, she let her fingers press the spot between his eyes. Gently. Softly.
His eyes closed. He began to snore. She studied him a moment longer, thinking how much nicer he’d been than she expected. Of course, she wasn’t going to be around in the morning to find out if she was wrong about him. And the next time she saw him, he wasn’t going to recognize her, so it wasn’t as though she’d even have to worry about either an awkward conversation or getting the blow-off.
“Good night,” Persephone whispered into his ear.
He didn’t stir. She got off the bed. Long slim legs and big boobs wavered and shifted. When she looked in the full-length mirror, her real, true image stared back at her. Five foot two. A-cup breasts. Thick, muscled thighs and biceps. Her body was strong and fit, and never let her down, no matter if she was running from the cops, breaking and entering or letting some rando with a hard cock have his way with her. This body, she thought as she cupped her breasts and flicked her nipples erect, was no wonderland. It was the real deal.
Without a glance behind her, she got dressed. She did raid the fridge, snagging a piece of cold pizza and a soda, along with a couple bananas from the counter for later. She did not, however, take his wallet. Didn’t even sneak a couple twenties from it. He’d been a good lay but more than that, seemed like a pretty decent guy...
Clearly, she was slipping.
Pushing that thought from her head, Persephone kept her head down once she reached the street and headed for home. Light was tingeing the sky when she got back to her place. Maybe she’d be able to sleep now.
The sound of feet scuffling behind her as she stopped to pull her mail from the box didn’t make her turn. She knew who it was without looking. She said nothing as Kane Dennis moved beside her to check his own mail.
“Morning.”
She pursed her lips. “Mmm.”
He laughed, the sound of it low and rich and rippling through her in a way she hated because of how much she liked it. She pulled out a sheaf of junk mail, the only kind she ever got. Pretended it was something important, like she was a real person who paid bills or got postcards from friends. She shot a sideways glance at him.
Six feet of lean, long legs. Broad shoulders. Taut stomach. Faded jeans, form-fitting Henley under a plaid shirt, unbuttoned but rolled up to his elbows to expose his finely muscled forearms. She was such a sucker for forearms, and his completely slayed her.
“Still having a problem with the hot water,” Kane said conversationally. “Not trying to be a pain in the ass about it, but if you could take a look?”
“Now?” Persephone tucked the mail into her bag.
“It would be great if I could grab a hot shower before bed,” he told her.
She tucked the inside of her cheek against her teeth at the thought of Kane beneath a spray of hot water, sluicing over the perfect body... She shook it off. “Sure. I can come up now.”
“Great,” Kane said with a smile that tried to get its way inside her, despite her every effort not to let it. “See you in a few?”
“Yeah, sure,” Persephone said without returning the smile. “See you in a few.”
Chapter 3
There were twenty patients on the fourth floor of Wyrmwood, ten in each wing. Samantha had never been told she had to take care of them in any certain order, but she almost always started at the far end of A wing and worked her way down toward the end of B wing. Dispensing meds. Taking vitals. Her role as a nurse was very limited, which was a good thing, since she’d never had any kind of actual medical training. Her degrees had been fabricated the same as the rest of her history. Still, none of her required tasks were difficult, and she’d been trained to call on other staff if anything did get out of control. It made her wonder, more than once, what the Wyrmwood powers above truly intended her function, and that of the other nurses, to be.
Glorified babysitters, she thought as she loaded the tray with necessary pills and vials of liquids for each room and pocketed her stethoscope and thermometer. Or more likely, part of the experiment, whatever it was. The cameras everywhere, the security. The out-of-date uniforms and strict rules that controlled after-hours behavior. The deathly quiet working atmosphere, no cell phones allowed. No outside reading material. It all seemed designed to drive the staff to madness right along with the patients, that was for sure.