In the Hir series—“Captured”, “Taken” and the newest release
“Stolen”, written under my pen name, Willow Danes—the heroines are all human,
from current day, and through their eyes we get to experience the g’hir
culture. Hir’s female population has been decimated in a brutal war and by
accident the g’hir warriors have discovered Earth.
These warriors are a different species—taller, stronger,
faster than any human, they are hunters with glowing eyes and fangs.
Fangs that can bare in anger or flash in a boyish grin . . .
The g’hir purr too, a deep, rumbling purr, when they’re aroused,
but these warriors are more than a little dangerous—and there’s nothing like a
flash of sharp, gleaming fang to remind you of that.
There’s something about fangs,
about the promise of the dark lover, about Paranormal Romance’s otherworldliness
itself that draws us all—writers and readers alike—toward it. The shiver of danger, the shifting shadows
ahead that whisper promises of the forbidden, the draw toward the beast who is
deadly to everyone but us.
But those gleaming fangs offer more than sensual delight, they
provide the opportunity to explore our own depths. This is the heroine’s
journey of empowerment—the tale of the wayward, headstrong girl who, against the
strict warnings of the elders, ventures alone into the dark forest. The woman
who, through her own will or misadventure, comes face to face with her fanged
beast—vampire, shapeshifter or g’hir warrior—and tames him, evoking his
transformation, and her own, through erotic love.
When we read Paranormal Romance we’re all standing at the
edge of that forest, feeling the tingle of its threat, seeing the faint gleam
of those wicked fangs in the dimness.
He’s there, our dark love, just beyond the point we know it’s
safe to venture, waiting for us.
And he’s irresistible . . .
Captured
Warriors of Hir
Book One
Willow Danes
Genre: Science Fiction Romance/
Paranormal Erotica
Publisher: Here Be Dragons
Date of Publication: August 8, 2014
ISBN: 0692271813
ISBN: 978-0692271810
ASIN: B00MH65BDG
Number of pages: 218
Word Count: 55,000
Cover Artist: Steven James Catizone
Book Description:
Jenna McNally is tending to the heartrending task of clearing out her grandfather’s cabin when she’s knocked off her feet by the impact of a nearby plane crash. She races into the snowy North Carolina woods to help and discovers that this is no plane that’s crashed.
Ra’kur’s people have been brought to the brink of extinction by war. After years spent searching for a compatible mate to bond with, an enemy attack lands him on a backward, primitive planet and right to the very female he has been seeking. And a Hir warrior’s first task in claiming a mate is to capture her . . .
Available at Amazon
Excerpt
Captured
The screaming
came from overhead, like metal ripping through the sky.
In the next
instant Jenna stumbled, falling onto her hands and knees as the cabin itself
seemed to be lifted up a bit before being slammed back down in a puff of dust,
the books and boxes and Pap’s many doohickeys rattling around her.
She was gasping,
her ears still ringing as the cabin settled into quiet again. Shaking, Jenna
eased back onto her haunches, her hand going to the little golden bird charm
that hung on a chain around her neck.
Earthquake?
Quakes were rare
in this part of North Carolina, and besides, she’d felt that tremble, that
rumbling, beneath her feet a few times out west and this was nothing like that.
Jenna’s glance
darted about the room—the half-packed boxes, the groupings she’d made as she
sorted her grandfather’s things into piles of stuff to keep or give away or
throw out. Through the cabin’s front window, she caught sight of a far-off
spray of snow thrown high into the air and now falling rapidly to the
ground.
When she’d
fallen, she’d dropped the framed photo of her and Pap standing in front of The
Sweet Tooth on opening day. Thankfully it hadn’t broken, but the faded oval rag
rug had done little to protect her knees from the fall and her palms felt raw
and scraped.
Shakily Jenna
placed the picture on the coffee table, put a hand on the worn red and black
plaid sofa, and, wincing, got to her feet. Her right knee was likely going to
sport a nasty bruise tomorrow but the couple steps across the living room to
the window assured her that would be the worst of it. She frowned out at the
sunny, snow-covered landscape, her breath fogging up the windowpane.
Plane crash, maybe?
There was a tiny
airport not far from here. Recently built and meant for small craft—a few of
the new, wealthy residents of Brittle Bridge used it when they didn’t want to
go to Six Oaks—it was little more than a runway and a couple hangars.
Jenna scanned
the woods, looking for smoke, but even the snow had settled now and the
mountain seemed peaceful as ever. It took her a moment to realize that the TV
that she’d had on to keep her company while she tended to the heartrending task
of packing up Pap’s things had gone dark. A quick look at the blinking red
light showed the Wi-Fi was out too.
No satellite, no
Internet.
“Great,” she
muttered, rubbing her forehead with her fingertips. Thinking she could get by
fine with just her cell she’d made the mistake of having the landline cut off
last week before she realized her fancy—and expensive—new phone didn’t work
inside the cabin. Outside, sure. Go twenty feet or sit in the SUV and the
damned thing worked perfectly.
Jenna chewed the
inside of her cheek. She hadn’t seen anything except the now-resettled spray of
snow but if it were a downed plane then someone could be hurt out there. It got
dark around five this time of year so there were a few hours of daylight left
at least and she knew these woods better than anyone—excepting her grandfather,
of course.
She grabbed her
cell off the coffee table and in a few moments had her white down jacket
zipped, the hood yanked up, and her gloves on. She was already wearing her
sheepskin boots; the cabin floor sometimes felt cold to her even in the summer
and now in January it was bitterly so.
Jenna drew in
the bracing smell of snow and pine as she stepped onto the porch and shut the
front door behind her. She was careful going down the cabin’s front steps;
she’d slipped often enough on them over the years to remember to hold the
handrail in winter. The soft powdery snow crunched under her boots as she
walked and, as expected, three steps past her SUV the cell had reception again.
She scrolled
through the numbers to the right one and hit “Dial” as she headed in the
direction where she’d seen the snow spray.
“Sheriff’s
Department.”
“Sarah Jane?
It’s Jenna McNally.”
“Hey there,
Jenna, you okay?” Sarah Jane had once been a model, or so Pap had said. Got her
heart broke by a famous artist in New York and fled to Brittle Bridge to escape
it all.
But then again, he’d
made up stories about everyone with Jenna—the mayor was in the witness
protection program, her teacher was a secret agent. She’d been labeled a
“sensitive child” by the social worker who had handled the transfer of custody
to him. Of course to Pap “sensitive” meant “creative” so he’d gone all out in
encouraging her in all of it—the arts and music, crafting, baking—anything she
wanted to try, and he was proud as punch to let her.
But if Sarah
Jane had been a model, it was thirty-five years ago or more now and twenty
since she joined the sheriff’s department. “You up at Pap’s still?”
Her
grandfather’s name was William James McNally. But it had probably been since
before Sarah Jane’s supposed model-artist affair days that he had been called
anything other than “Pap” in the vicinity of Brittle Bridge—at least never in
the twenty-six years Jenna had known him.
Well, excepting
that social worker.
“Yeah, I’ll be
here for a couple more days,” Jenna said, already past the clearing around the
house and into the forest. “Listen, I think a plane crashed up here on our”—she
swallowed hard—“my land.”
“A plane?” Sarah
Jane’s voice went from neighborly to official. “Where did it come down?”
“Not sure.”
Jenna ducked under a branch as she headed deeper into the woods. “I heard
something real loud and then it was like ‘bam,’ something hitting the ground
hard. Shook the whole place.”
“Can you see
smoke from where you are now?”
“No,” Jenna
admitted, trotting along as fast as the snow would allow her. Some of the
drifts were deep and she had to mind where she stepped. She wouldn’t be doing
anyone any good if she broke her ankle. “I’m heading out to take a look now.”
“But you saw the
plane go down?”
“Uh, no.” Sarah
Jane’s too-patient tone was starting to make her feel a little embarrassed for
calling when she hadn’t actually seen anything. Maybe it was something else: a
really big tree falling or a damn meteorite or something.
“Huh,” Sarah
Jane said. “Lemme call around and see if anybody’s gone missing. But you call
me straight off if you find anything, ’kay?”
“Sure thing.”
Jenna ended the call and slipped the phone into her jacket pocket. Whatever
crashed couldn’t be far from where she’d seen the snow spray up.
Forced by the
lack of schools and friends for his young granddaughter, Pap had kept the house
in Asheville, but they’d come to Brittle Bridge at every opportunity. Pap’s
heart was here and she’d happily spent the summer days running barefooted in
these woods clad in overalls, her chestnut hair in pigtails at first, then tied
back in a ponytail as she got older.
Her stride
faltered and she steadied herself against a pine, the rough trunk pulling on
her knitted glove. Pap’s beloved woods were quiet and bright around her but
Jenna suddenly had a strong urge to run back to the cabin.
She set her jaw
and pressed on. Pap hadn’t raised her to be a coward and this was her land now.
He’d left her five hundred acres and anyone on it without her say-so was
trespassing, even if it was about to go up for sale.
Still, she
wished she’d thought to grab Pap’s revolver or rifle or even his hunting knife
before she’d come racing down here.
I’ll go as far
as the creek and if I don’t find anything I’ll head on back.
But all was
quiet at the creek too, the crystal clear water moving placidly between the
banks—
Jenna stopped
short. There was tang to the air, a burned smell that wrinkled her nose. It
reminded her a little bit of the inside of a mechanic’s garage, out of place in
such pristine woods.
It smelled
wrong. Not only that…
There’s no snow
here.
There was snow
all around, covering the ground, hanging heavy in the tree limbs above, but
here there was just a long patch of mud and broken sticks.
The sudden sick
feeling of being watched raised the tiny hairs on the back of her neck. With a
shock of awareness she realized just how very vulnerable she was out here,
alone and unarmed.
Pap hadn’t
raised her to be an idiot either. With trembling fingers she pulled her phone
out and hit redial to the Sheriff’s office.
In horrified
disbelief she watched the screen flash “Connection failed.”
She took a step
back and searched the silent, still forest.
All I have to do
is make it back up to the house. I can get the gun, get my car keys, call for
help, get the hell out of here!
Her quickened
breath was visible as she headed uphill back toward the cabin, the drifts and
her fear slowing her down. She couldn’t remember if the ammunition was still in
the kitchen cabinet or if she’d moved it to—
Something off to
her right gave a soft, deep growl . . .
Taken
Warriors of Hir
Book Two
Willow Danes
Genre: Science Fiction Romance /
Paranormal Erotica
Publisher: Here Be Dragons
Date of Publication: February 1, 2015
ISBN-10: 0692377735
ISBN-13: 978-0692377734
ASIN: B00T0VFO8S
Number of pages: 271
Word Count: 69,000
Cover Artist: Steven James Catizone
Book Description:
Hope MacGowan is a city girl but reeling from a break-up on top of a layoff has her determined to have a weekend away in the North Carolina mountains—even if all her friends have bailed at the last minute. Hope’s life is one big train-wreck and getting kidnapped by a tall, blond alien—even a gorgeous one—sure isn’t helping.
R’har crossed the galaxy to seek a mate on this newly discovered world and this delicate red-haired female is everything he’s dreamed of—except happy to find herself mated to him. R’har knows in his heart he’s her true mate, even if he’s not human. But taking her doesn’t mean he can keep her and somehow he has to convince Hope to choose him before time runs out . . .
Available at Amazon
Excerpt
Taken:
Coldness snaked
through Hope’s belly as Keri’s silence dragged on.
“Did you know?”
Hope asked again. Her cell pressed hard to her ear, her heart in her throat as
she waited for her friend’s answer, she had a sudden urge to open the car
window and hurl the damned thing into the road before Keri could reply. “Did
you know about Brian and Megan?”
Through the
phone she heard Keri sigh and Hope’s grip tightened on the steering wheel, the
center diamond of her engagement ring sparkling in the sunlight.
Parked in front
of the diner where she was to pick up the rental’s keys, Hope blinked out at
Brittle Bridge, North Carolina’s quaint Main Street. Outside her car, people
strolled about on their Friday morning errands, enjoying the May sunshine and
the sweet mountain air, chatting and laughing.
Inside the car,
Hope’s breath had the quick shallow pant of an animal caught in a trap.
“Look,” Keri
began, a little impatiently. “It wasn’t my job to tell you. Megan—Brian
really—should have.”
“You’re my
friend. You went with me to look at venues, at wedding gowns. You bought a
bridesmaid’s dress.” Hope’s throat tightened. “Megan bought a maid of honor
dress!”
“I didn’t
actually buy the dress,” Keri mumbled. “I called the boutique after we left and
asked them to cancel my order.”
But that was
back in March!
“How long?” Hope
asked, her voice high and tight. “How long has it been going on? How long have
you known?”
Keri sighed
again. “I went to Gable’s with some people from work back in January and I saw
Brian and Megan in a booth in the back and they were—It’s probably been going
on longer though.”
“January? But—”
Hope began, her tone pleading now as if she could argue this away, as if to
point out the faulty logic of it would cast a spell and make everything right
again. “But we got engaged on Valentine’s Day! He asked me to marry him on
Valentine’s Day. If he and Megan were—” Her eyes stung. “He broke our
engagement by text, you know. He sent me a text today to tell me that he and
Megan were together and how very, very sorry he was. Megan texted to say she’s
sorry too—Oh, and since she’s not coming for the weekend she’s not going to pay
her third for the rental.”
“Oh, that is
shitty,” Keri said.
Shitty as
letting me plan a wedding when you knew all along Megan was fucking my fiancé?
But the great
burden of red hair was everyone expected you to have a bad temper and a sharp
tongue. Hope had spent most of her twenty-seven years showing the world how
even-keeled she was, how she could handle anything with a cool head, not raging
or weeping even in the face of heartbreak and grief, not letting anyone know
how bad she hurt.
Those walls went
up when she was eight and were so thick now that nothing—not the death of her
parents, not the humiliation of her fiancé screwing her maid of honor—was going
to bring them down.
“Yeah, it is,”
Hope said instead. “So when were you going to get around to telling me that you
aren’t coming for the weekend either?”
“Look, I just
thought if you and Megan were alone—maybe the truth would finally come out.
Being with the two of you and pretending I didn’t know sucked.”
“Wow.” Hope
nodded even though Keri couldn’t see her. Even a determined redhead had her
limits. “That must have been really rough on you.”
Keri went silent
again.
Hope put her
hand over her eyes, blocking out the cheerful spring sunlight. “I lost my job
this morning.”
“What?” Keri sounded
startled for the first time during their conversation.
“They made the
announcement today. They sold the company to the Hindle Group last week and
they had one too many graphic designers so they let me go. They made me drive
all the way to Asheville to give me the news. My fiancé ends it in a text but
my company had to tell me in person.”
“Jesus . . .”
“They gave me
three months’ severance. And they shook my hand too. Apparently someone in the
D.C. office did me the favor of clearing out my stuff while I was driving to
Asheville yesterday so I’m all packed up. They’ll have everything delivered to
my apartment by the end of the day.”
“So you’re
driving back to D.C. tonight?”
“What for?” Hope
asked bleakly. “Brian and Megan are at his place, making the most of the
romantic curtained bed I bought. I don’t have work on Monday. No fiancé, no
best friend, no job. My apartment lease is up in ten days and now I won’t be
moving in with Brian. Maybe I’ll just move up here to the mountains. Take up
wood crafting or something.”
“Call me when
you get back,” Keri urged. “I’ll take you out and get you drunk. We’ll find you
someone new.”
“No. I’m
cursed.” Hope shut her eyes. “No one on the planet has worse luck with men than
I do.”
Keri was smart
enough not to argue that point. “I really am sorry.”
“Yeah, me too,”
Hope said and hung up.
She turned off
the car and sat there, the cell cradled in her lap. The invitations hadn’t gone
out yet so she didn’t need to work through the guest list; with her parents
both dead and no siblings there was no one left to call.
No one at all.
Stolen
Warriors of Hir
Book Three
Willow Danes
Genre: Science Fiction Romance /
Paranormal Erotica
Publisher: Here Be Dragons
Date of Publication: July 28, 2015
ISBN-10: 0692500820
ISBN-13: 978-0692500828
ASIN: B012UW5YKG
Number of pages: 265
Word Count: 68,000
Cover Artist: Steven James Catizone
Book Trailer:
Book Description:
Kidnapped from Earth by an alien warrior when she visits her uncle, Summer Mills is terrified she will never be able to return home. Her alien captors are using human females as breeding stock and her only chance to return to Earth is Ke’lar, the one Hir warrior willing to stand between her and his own kind.
Returning this human female home won’t be easy and Ke’lar knows by this act of defiance he is throwing his own chances at a lifemate away. Both his family’s enemies and his own clan have pledged to reclaim the woman he has stolen, the only woman he will ever love . . .
Available at Amazon
Excerpt
Stolen:
The alien
warrior, naked beside her, gave a soft snore, his thickly muscled arm thrown
over Summer, keeping her close as he slumbered.
When he had
first captured her on Earth, she had only seen beast—his full mouth, his
gleaming fangs, his inhuman ridged forehead and heavy brow. Now, lying beside
him, his bare tan skin smooth and warm against her own, his eerie glowing amber
eyes shut, she knew how very intelligent he was, this wild creature who had
brought her to his planet. He, like all the males of his kind—the g’hir—was
tall, powerfully built, fast as quicksilver.
Summer wet her
lips. She could see the movement of his eyes behind his lids.
Dreaming.
She’d never get
a better chance.
Escaping a
seven-foot-tall alien warrior who’s claimed you as his mate and taken you
halfway across the galaxy is impossible.
But when it’s
your only chance in hell of ever seeing home again, you just tell “impossible”
to fuck off.
Six days after
her abduction, her heart hammering so hard she feared the sound of it would
wake the warrior at her side, Summer eased out from under his heavily muscled
arm and slid from his bed.
He stirred,
reaching for her. She froze, crouching beside the bed, praying his vibrant eyes
stayed shut, his face slack with slumber. His long, silky, red-brown hair was
spread across the white pillow, his swarthy coloring a stark contrast to her
own pale complexion.
When she’d first
awoken to find herself captive on his ship he’d looked her over with his
unnervingly brilliant alien gaze. He’d taken a lock of her pale blond hair
between his large fingers, frowned at her skin, and asked if such pallor in a
human meant she was sickly. Trembling before the huge warrior, thinking he’d
kill her if he thought her ill, not even understanding how she was processing
those growls of his as language—Summer swore she was completely healthy. He’d
given a satisfied fanged smile; pleased, she knew now, that she’d be able to
produce the robust, healthy offspring he wanted.
The
warrior—Ar’ar—gave another soft snore and Summer straightened to standing.
Clad only in a
whisper-thin nightgown, the polished tiles cold under her feet, she padded
silently through his luxurious quarters. Sweet spring air drifted through the
open balcony doors, the fine silk curtains fluttering in the breeze as she
passed them.
The balcony of
Ar’ar’s rooms—the opulent living quarters of a clanfather’s heir—overlooked his
family’s vast holdings, and the three moons of his world—Hir—lit her way. The
wind stirred her long hair, momentarily blocking her vision, and impatiently
Summer tucked the bright strands behind her ears to keep them out of her eyes.
She had one
chance at this.
If they caught
her she’d be watched constantly no matter what concessions Ar’ar—her new alien
“mate”—made to his female’s pleas. He was confident enough, and proud enough,
that he had dismissed the honor guards his father, Mirak, tried to attach to
her. Ar’ar gave a huffing, indulgent laugh as he’d waved them off at her
request. After all, compared to him, Summer, even at five foot nine, was just a
slip of thing.
A weak,
harmless, helpless human female . . .
Using the
building to help her balance, she climbed up to stand on the balcony’s wall.
Eight stories
above the ground of an alien world.
Summer swallowed
hard. There was a reason she always insisted on having a room on the first
floor of a hotel. Just glancing out the glass-wall window of her high-rise
office back home left her woozy.
But there was
only one way out into the hallway—and ultimately to Earth—that wouldn’t wake
the glowing-eyed fanged warrior snoozing back there. She had to get from these
quarters over to the unoccupied rooms beside them. That door she could open
without fear of waking him, then get the hell out of this monstrously large
building they called a clanhall and run for freedom.
It wasn’t even
very far over. Twelve feet, maybe.
All she had to
do was get to the next balcony.
Never mind that
the only way there was a small decorative outcropping on the side of the
building barely as wide as her foot . . .
About the Author:
Willow Danes is the pen name of author Ariel MacArran, creator of the Tellaran Series. She is an Amazon bestselling author, currently at work on book four of the Tellaran Series, The Princess.
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1 comment:
The books look fantastic!!
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