OUT OF TIME
By Treva Harte
www.changelingpress.com

Are you all right? Damn it, Marisha, you are all right, aren't you?" 

"Timmy boy." Marisha kept her eyes shut but the voice was familiar. Thank God. Her hallucination was over. Not that Lord Stephan wasn't gorgeous. But so was Tim, and Tim appeared to be carrying her, too. "It's you." 

"Yes." 

"What happened after I smashed that one guy in the face?" 

"Well, it looks like you broke his nose. Don't worry, sweetie. I finished up the job as well as I could before the police came." 

"Idiot. They could've had guns." She should have thought about that before she called him. But Tim seemed indestructible. After all, he stood six-foot-three in his bare feet and still looked the football player he'd been. 

"Naw. Just knives. Don't worry. There was no problem." There was a certain satisfaction in Tim's voice. 

"My head still hurts." Marisha decided to open one eye. Things were a little blurry but she could see Tim looked as big and powerful as ever. There might be a bruise or two, but that could be her eyesight. He looked good. He always did. Too bad they were just pals. Too bad he was just a baby. A big, gorgeous, powerful baby, mind you, but too young for her. 

"That's why I'm taking you to the emergency room." 

"No. No money for the deductible. I just want to go home." 

"Bad idea, Marisha." 

"I wanna go home!" Marisha felt her stomach threaten to empty after that shout. She shut her one eye tightly. "Please, Tim." 

"Aw, damn, Marisha. I always give in when women do that." 

"I know. Please." 

"You'll tell me if you start to feel worse, won't you? I can trust you to do that?" She could see how hard he was trying to make the question seem casual. 

"Sure." She wasn't sure if she could feel worse. Then again, the last time she'd thought that she'd been badly wrong. "I'll call. If not you, then my mom." 

"Right. You're not calling anyone." 

Marisha realized she'd probably gone too far with that last statement. Tim knew exactly how she felt about asking her mom for anything, especially now that Mother had remarried. All the old mother-daughter closeness had evaporated once Marisha and her new "dad" had started to clash. 

Damn it, why did she think she could lie to someone who had known her forever? 

"I'm going to stay at your place with you tonight, babe. I'll give you that much time, but if things don't look good soon I'm taking you to a doctor." He placed her head, very gently, on a car seat headrest. 

Marisha felt a little bit like crying. Tim was almost like Mom used to be, tucking her in at night when she was a kid with a cold. "Aren't you going out with someone tonight?" 

"Nope." 

"Liar." 

Tim always had someone to go out with at night. Especially for Valentine's Day. 

She felt him smooth her hair off her head. 

"I'm staying in with someone tonight, babe. You." 

* * * * *

When she opened her eyes again, she was in the dark. Literally. She could barely see anything. Marisha disliked that ordinarily, but with her head throbbing, the blackness felt soothing. She heard something move near her. 

"Lord!" She gasped. Who the hell had followed her this time? 

Wait. No need to panic. Tim had promised to be there. She was home in bed, probably. 

"Yes, Marisha. 'Tis I." That wouldn't be Tim. He wasn't a 'tis kind of guy. 

She heard Lord Stephan rustling in the room. At least she hoped it was Lord Stephan. She had a feeling this wasn't a tidy, pest-free castle. "I thought I wouldn't be here when I woke up." Marisha sighed. 

Light from a torch flared high up in the air. The man looked down at her, his face eerie in the flickering light of the flame. He looked big and grim and ferocious. He looked like a warrior who would be perfectly willing to kill. Marisha swallowed. That was exactly what a medieval nobleman was. 

Why was she finding that sexy? 

"Marisha, there is something odd about you. I cannot describe it, but I know I have not seen your like before." The man's voice hardened. "Are you a Saracen?" 

Saracen. Marisha tried to remember the romance books she read as a teenager that had knights and ladies and...Saracens. A Saracen was good or bad? If she could just think clearly! She sat up, holding her head. So far, she was lucky. It didn't fall off. In fact, except for a strange, floating feeling, she felt all right. 

Saxons and Saracens. Saxons were good. So...Saracens were bad. They got beheaded and things, didn't they? 

"Definitely not." She must be hallucinating or whatever you did when you had a concussion. But just to play it safe, she didn't want her head really taken off before she recovered. 

"But you are foreign. Your accent, your choice of words, everything is odd." His hand gripped her shoulder, tightened for a moment. He pulled her to her feet without missing a beat. "I take threats to my keep very seriously, wench. Why are you here?" 

"I don't know!" Marisha wailed. "I don't want to be here." 

The grip on her shoulder gentled. His hand rubbed her back. "Stop that weeping, wench. I cannot bear for women to cry. Not even serf women." 

"Not even foreign wenches?" 

"So you are foreign..." His voice hesitated. Marisha found herself rubbing her back against that hand, and not just for the relaxation it was providing her tight muscles. In fact, she was getting tenser by the moment. The man sighed. "Especially not foreign wenches. I had no idea of my hidden weakness for them."

His mouth against hers should have been a surprise. Instead, Marisha found herself moving into the kiss, pushing her tongue against the lips that opened when she demanded it, touching her tongue to his. She felt him shiver. He pulled his mouth from hers for a half second. 

"What are you doing?" He sounded more stunned than disapproving. "Most women are not so bold—" 

"Am I most women?" She eased back into their kiss, slipping her tongue against his, and he stopped talking. He shivered again. His hand slid up under her shift, and his thumb scraped against her taut nipple. Marisha shivered then. She was naked under her shapeless dress. Very, very naked. Achingly naked. 

She stood on tiptoe, reaching for what she craved. Damn, he was hard as steel and she didn't mean his armor. But he was too tall. His cock was jutting forward but hit her too high to let her rub against him where she wanted to. Oh, she wanted to desperately. 

She dug her fingers into his shoulders this time and began to inch up his legs, like someone might try to climb up a pole. She heard him grunt, once, and then his hand reached under her rear and pushed her up further. Her legs encircled his waist at last, his strong hands steadying her exactly where she wanted. 

Who said they were from the Dark Ages? This guy was bright. Bright enough to figure out exactly what she wanted and take care of things. She was feeling something really hard. Marisha slid her hungry clitoris against a thickening shaft. Thank God he wasn't wearing mail. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That was just hard man. A great deal of man.

DAWN OF THE ALPHA
By Lacey Savage
http://www.loose-id.com/detail.aspx?ID=404

"What's her name?"

He hadn't taken his gaze off the woman, but he'd directed the question at Faye. The servant opened her mouth, looking like she was about to answer, then slammed it closed, apparently having reconsidered replying without having been directly addressed. She narrowed her eyes at him, obviously displeased at being talked about as though she wasn't in the room.

A pleasure servant with an insubordinate streak? This was getting more interesting by the minute.

Faye chuckled. "Go ahead, sweetheart. Tell him."

The woman lifted her chin another fraction of an inch before replying, unmistakable pride glistening in her depthless eyes. "Rhyanne."

"Rhyanne," Quinn repeated, taking a step forward. Might as well get right to the point. Quinn had never been a man who hinted at what he wanted. "Why do you keep looking at me as though you've never seen a naked man before?"

She paled slightly, the rosy tint fading from her cheeks. To her credit, she held his gaze.

"Let me assure you, I've seen many naked men." She straightened her shoulders and placed both hands on her hips, the motion making her teeter dangerously on her heels. "Some much better endowed than you."

From her corner of the couch, Faye cackled, a sharp, stinging sound that resonated through the room. For his part, Quinn could only stare, mouth agape. What kind of pleasure servant was she? Faye had regularly employed people with her unique skill set, and he'd grown accustomed to their subservient, demure attitudes.

Fire burned inside his cock. Instead of being turned off by her straightforward quip, his body responded by heating up further. If she was half as uninhibited while performing her duties as she was outspoken, he was in for a hell of a ride.

He advanced on her ferociously, with no intention of slowing. When he was almost upon her, she took a step backward, then another, losing her balance at the last moment and slamming into the wall.

Quinn placed both palms against the wall on either side of her head, trapping her with his body. He pressed his erection into her stomach, knowing she could feel how hot his dick pulsed for her.

"Is that so?" he whispered in her ear. His teeth closed around her earlobe and he sucked it into his mouth, drawing a groan from her lips.

Quinn's hand skimmed over her arm and curved toward her breast. He felt her sharp intake of breath as he reached for her nipple, tweaking the hard bud between thumb and forefinger. Her groan turned into a whimper.

He released her earlobe and drew back to look into her eyes. "Then show me what you've been trained to do, little servant. Suck my cock into that skilled mouth of yours."

Rhyanne glanced over his shoulder at Faye, who must have given her assent, because a moment later she flattened her palms against his chest. "As you wish," she whispered.

She bent her knees and began to lower her body to the ground, but her teeth dug into her lower lip and it jutted out slightly, much too tempting for Quinn to resist. In an instant, he'd pulled her back up to him and slammed his mouth down on hers. A soft sound escaped a throat that was too filled with breathy wonder to be anything but genuine.

He barely had time to marvel at her reaction before savage desire took over. He probed her soft, moist lips with his tongue, urging her to open to him. She did, a little hesitantly at first, but he gave her no time to reconsider. His tongue found hers and scraped against it, seeking, tasting, exploring.

She clung to his shoulders as though she were drowning and he was her only lifeline, her fingernails digging into his flesh. And then she did something few pleasure servants did.

She kissed him back.

ELEMENTAL ELVES 1: HORSE PLAY
By Mary Winter
Published by Changeling Press
Release Date 01/04/2007
Urban Fantasy (elf) Erotic Romance Novella
Copyright 2007. All rights reserved.
 

The pink fiberglass cast on Clarice’s arm reminded Flynn of his folly. She slept in an oversized T-shirt with a fat horse on it and little else. She lay on her side, her broken arm flung out of the way, her other hand tucked beneath her chin like a child. Next to her, a fat orange tabby cat with a fluffy white belly slept, and on the floor between the bed and the door lay a German Shepherd.

From outside her window, Flynn watched. In the dark of the night he had two options -- stay in his stall or go to Clarice. On this night his choice came as easily as it had every night before. At least here, watching Clarice through the window, he could keep an eye on her and protect her in a way he couldn’t on that fateful afternoon three weeks ago when he’d dashed her hopes.

She’d told him about it as she groomed his horse form or petted his muzzle, telling him she didn’t blame him for her accident. Of course he didn’t quite believe her. He’d have blamed himself had their situations been reversed. After all, his moment’s inattention and reveling in the joy of exuberant expression had gotten her hurt. A broken arm, two cracked ribs, a concussion, and no riding for at least six weeks. He knew the diagnosis like an accusing litany.

In sleep her lips parted. Rosy red, full, lush, perfect for wrapping around his cock and sucking him deep and hard. She rolled to the side, flinging her other arm against the edge of the bed. With her legs spread she looked like an offering, ripe and ready to be devoured. The thin shirt pressed against the rounded globes of her breasts, her nipples tight against the fabric.

The sheets fell away, revealing her long, tanned legs with their toned and muscled curves. It took all his willpower not to try the front door and see if he could enter her house, her body. He could, however, enter her dreams.

Flynn smiled. He hadn’t tried before. He really hadn’t felt the need. However, no sooner had Clarice broken her arm than she was back struggling to work twelve-hour days, driving herself to exhaustion each night. Right now, he doubted fun even entered into her vocabulary. And that, in his opinion, was a crying shame.

Flynn sat beneath the window with his legs crossed and his hands resting on his knees. He inhaled the lush, damp smell of a humid Virginia night. Insects filled the air with an undercurrent of noise. He focused on the woman lying inside, on the steady rise and fall of her chest with each breath, on the patterns of her mind. Even in sleep she didn’t relax, her mind abuzz with subconscious thoughts. Reminders to order feed, to reschedule her doctor’s appointment, to find someone to help her with her riding therapy calls, her mental to do list grew and grew.

On the bed, she shifted restlessly. Flynn. His name was in her thoughts, though she saw him only in his equine form. Her admiration for his form, his grace, his beauty filled her mind. By falling off and breaking her arm, she thought she’d failed him. She thought she needed his forgiveness, not the other way around.

“Oh, Clarice,” he whispered, sliding easily into her thoughts. Her need to apologize touched him. The Elven Council cared nothing for thoughts and feelings, not when their goals were on the line. Even his parents fit the aloof image the Council projected. His father worked hard on the Council and tried to mold his only son into the perfect image of Elven obedience. His father saw only how Flynn’s reckless behavior impeded his goals. He didn’t know what it would take to bring his mother out of the dream-like world in which she lived. No, no one had ever cared for his feelings before.

He appeared in her dream in his Elven form with his hair bound in a leather thong, his pointed ears clearly visible. He knew he looked like Legolas come to life with his green cat-like eyes, his green vest and his tight leather pants.

Clarice raised her hand from his equine form’s neck and stared at him. Her gaze lingered on his ears, then on his trousers, and the hard bulge of his cock against the butter soft leather. “Who are you?” In the dream realm her voice held a mystical quality. Hearing her speak here, in the veiled place between the worlds, he knew why he’d been sent.

Clarice held power. The power to change lives, shaping them for the better. Her work with disabled children molded their lives into something better, and those she brought into her operation needed the same kind of healing touch the children did. What she didn’t realize was that she too needed healing, and that was why he was here. To help her heal, not physically but emotionally, from the wounds that drove her day after day.

Shock hit him like a two-by-four to the solar plexus. Clarice possessed magic of the kind long thought to be gone from the human realm.

“Think of me as your guardian angel.” He stifled a chuckle at his foolishness. He’d known a few angels, and a more arrogant, vain creature he had yet to find. Yet, Clarice would understand his intentions if he called himself her “guardian angel” and so long as he fulfilled his mission, what harm could misnaming himself be.

“You look like an Elf.” Clarice grinned. “Like my very own Legolas.” She licked her lips. “Is there a reason why you’ve come into my dreams?” She patted the horse on the neck as it, being part of him, stood completely still.