Showing results by author "Cara McKenna" in All Categories

Merry's lost a lot recently - first her mother, then close to a hundred pounds. Feeling adrift, she strikes out in search of perspective. A three-week hike through the Scottish Highlands was supposed to challenge her new body and refocus her priorities, but when disaster strikes, she's forced to seek refuge in the remote home of a brooding, handsome stranger. Rob exiled himself to the Highlands years ago, desperate to escape his own self-destruction. Haunted by regrets, he avoids human contact at all costs...

Erin Coffey has been a nurse for years, but nothing's prepared her for the demands of her new position. Needing to move closer to her dysfunctional family, she takes a dangerous job at Larkhaven Psychiatric Hospital, where she quickly learns that she needs protection - and she meets the strong, over-confident coworker who's more than willing to provide it. Kelly Robak is the type of guy that Erin has sworn she'd never get involved with.

For the past couple years Laurel’s been coasting, hiding in the backseat while her life drifts off course. Then one summer afternoon a tall, built bruiser named Flynn strides in and steers her straight into an infatuation she never saw coming. Flynn introduces Laurel to things she’s never imagined—to the violent but exciting realm of the underground boxing circuit, to rough sex and even rougher role-playing, and to an attraction she craves even as it intimidates her.

Eight months ago, Laurel walked into an underground boxing gym and found herself mesmerized by a stranger named Flynn—a man who fights hard and loves harder. Since then he’s taken her places where fear and curiosity clash in exquisite pleasure, where trust is the price of ecstasy, and in time their brutal games have become her kink as much as his. But when real life intrudes and hard decisions demand action, will these two whose bond is rooted in fantasy take shelter in each other’s arms, or discover that lust is no substitute for a lasting commitment?

Caroly Evardt never expected to find herself patronizing a prostitute. Then again, she never expected to be weeks from her thirtieth birthday and still a virgin. When a friend mentions that a gorgeous male model in Paris sells his body as well as his image, Caroly’s intrigued. Finally, a chance to sample the gifts of a beautiful man—no strings, no stakes, no fear of rejection. But she soon discovers that Didier Pedra amounts to more than a striking face and a talented body.

June has come to Paris. But while his neighbors are shedding layers and going out in search of spring sunshine, Didier Pedra prefers the quiet sanctuary of his garret, content to watch the city’s bustle from the safety of his windows. He’s shaped his life around venturing inside of things—inside clocks and other brass curiosities to pass a lonely afternoon, and, once the sun sinks, inside the bodies and minds of the women who pay for the privilege of sampling his other skills. But one visitor is unlike the rest.

Imagine nursing a pint in a cozy, authentic country pub, far from Cork's busy city pulse. Getting here took you a plane, bus, taxi and...um, bicycle. But just as you're resigning yourself to drinking beside grey-haired farmers, you see him - a man with the looks and charm to soothe any heartbroken girl. He's your bartender. Your really, really gorgeous bartender. For American Jamie Webb - recently dumped and housesitting for two weeks - Connor Kelleher is like a six-course feast after a 23-year starvation diet.

Caroly Evardt never expected to find herself patronizing a male prostitute. Then again, she never expected to be weeks from her thirtieth birthday and still a virgin. When a friend mentions that a gorgeous male model in Paris sells his body as well as his image, Caroly's intrigued. Finally, a chance to sample the gifts of a beautiful man—no strings, no stakes, no fear of rejection.

Bar owner Raina Harper can't say for sure what Duncan Welch is to her. With her small Nevada town under siege by a ruthless casino development and still reeling from a spate of murders, she knows that trusting the public face of the corporate invaders is risky to say the least. Though damn, it's one fine-looking face.

"Backbreaking days, wild nights, and the hard hum of steel between your thighs..." That's a life well lived, according to the Desert Dogs - four friends who call Fortuity, Nevada, their badlands home. Vince Grossier is the self-crowned outlaw king around here. But when Fortuity's slick new mayor invites a shady casino development to town, the invaders' cutthroat takeover tactics quickly turn deadly. With police turning a suspiciously blind eye, it's up to the locals to fight back, and Vince is on the front line.

Cold turkey is what Shane's after. He's been with his lover Gabriel for a year now—a year of hot sex and obsessive attraction that's left him with a death grip on the tattered remains of his heterosexuality and too many sleepless nights. Desperate for a clean break, Shane hopes hiding out at Natalie's for a week or two will do the trick. She sure as hell owes him one fine rebound. But Shane quickly discovers that banishing Gabriel from his heart and his head is easier said than done. His cold-turkey recovery is headed straight for an epic relapse, and Shane's going to have to make a choice.

In her head, Robin wants to marry her boyfriend. Everything about her relationship with Jay makes sense—makes her happy—but she can't bring herself to accept his proposal. Her body has unfinished business with Patrick, the man who saved her life six years ago. For a long time she assumed her potent feelings for Patrick were born of fear, wrapped up in the night she was attacked, but now she's realizing it's far simpler than that. She wants him. Always has, always will.

Hot on the heels of a nasty break-up, Natalie’s truck dies and strands her deep in Louisiana’s sweltering backwoods. A glow beyond the trees and a haunting melody lead her to what she hopes is salvation. The Shivaree is more than a bar. It’s a mysterious oasis where people go to escape into a cold drink and lose themselves against a warm body on the dance floor. Gabriel is its resident musician, gifted with unnerving talent and intoxicating sexual charisma.

Shane thinks he's simply auditioning a new musician for his bar, but when Gabriel saunters into the Shivaree it becomes clear the man has more to offer than just his talent. Gabriel's got sexual charisma potent enough to make a straight man such as Shane lose his senses, lose sleep, lose himself to dark desires and not want to find his way back to reality.

In the spring, Caroly arrived on Didier Pedra’s doorstep in Paris as so many women have—ready to buy an evening’s pleasure with a gorgeous man skilled in the craft of seduction. She was a trembling virgin then, but so much has changed. It’s summer now, and she no longer pays for his company…nor suffers from the delusion that he’s as perfect as he seems. He’s a shut-in with a crippling fear of the outdoors, but he’s also the most kind and passionate man she’s ever known.

Caroly has waited forever to fall in love. An American now living in Paris, she’s finally found what she craved all those lonely years—a passionate, sensitive man, more gorgeous than she’d ever dreamed, and just as beautiful on the inside. The only issue? Well, that small matter of him being a prostitute.

Didier Pedra wouldn’t consider himself a normal man, but an unexpected romance has changed him nonetheless. A severe agoraphobe, he left his flat for the first time in years to prove himself worthy of the woman he loves. A long-enabled prostitute, he’s now given up the clients who’ve warmed his bed, padded his bank account and coddled his disorder, ensuring he need never venture outside the safety of his home.

Didier Pedra can read a woman’s body like a book, sense her deepest needs and satisfy her every craving. It’s his job, after all. But drop him in the center of Paris, the only city he’s ever known, and he’s lost, reduced to a trembling wreck by agoraphobia. When the world feels too frightening, he eagerly escapes into sex, that realm he could navigate blindfolded. Except one of his lovers—Caroly, the only woman who doesn’t pay for the pleasure of his gifts—insists she prefers the real Didier to the capable, seductive façade.

Stung ego or not, Caitlin’s relieved her fizzling relationship is over, even if she’s just been unceremoniously dumped between the copier and a dead ficus tree. At least she has an excuse to ditch the lousy office Christmas party in time to catch the last subway home…to her cat, and early-onset spinsterhood. Instead of a lonely, chilly ride, she gets an unexpected holiday treat in the form of a nearly familiar face—a handsome stranger she encountered last week at the blood drive.

At thirty-two, Abby's pretty much got her shit together. She has a good job, a cozy home, a supportive family...and a biological clock that's starting to feel more like a time bomb. Turned off the by the cold science of artificial insemination but wary of the complications that might come from enlisting a close male friend, Abby settles on a happy medium. She places an ad in a newspaper and goes in search of men willing to help her conceive the good old-fashioned way.