by Michelle M Pillow & Mandy M Roth

As Dmitri pulled his jeep out of the Trolly Cheese parking lot, she felt his grey eyes glance over at her and did her best not to blush.  She could still taste and feel him on her mouth, even after the mediocre pizza.  His suit jacket smelled of him.  She’d been chilled and he’d lifted it from the backseat for her to use as the jeep heated up.  Being a lycan, Michelle guessed Dmitri was never cold.  Every time he touched her, his body seemed to be on fire.

            “You’re quiet tonight,” said Dmitri.

“I’m always quiet.  But, usually Mandy’s around to distract people from that fact,” answered Michelle.  She pulled his jacket nervously closer.  She glanced at Dmitri.  His eyes were on the road.  It had not escaped her attention that they were still a little red from the pepper spray.  “Look, I don’t think I ever really apologized for nearly blinding you.”

 “No,” he said, turning the wheel as he entered heavy traffic, “you didn’t.”

Michelle paled.  Dmitri shot her a quick smile that made her heart flutter.  “Well, I am sorry.  I guess I panicked.  I’ve never been in a bar fight before.  Although, I’ve never been surrounded by a pack of snarling lycans before either.”

Dmitri’s hand gripped the wheel tighter.  A slight frown marred his brow as he turned onto the freeway.  “That really bothers you, doesn’t it?  The fact that I’m a lycan.”

Michelle opened her mouth to protest but a loud musical ring cut her off.  She looked at Dmitri’s jacket and pulled out his cell phone.  She moved to hand it to him.

            “Who is it?” he asked.

            “Ah, says the Raven.”

            “Could you get it?” asked Dmitri.  “Traffic’s pretty bad.”

            “Sure.”  Michelle flipped open the phone and said tentatively, “Hello?  Dmitri’s phone.”

“Oh my…thank God I got a hold of someone!”

“Jaycee?  It’s Michelle,” she said frowning.  “What’s wrong?  Are you all right?”

“Oh my…oh, hey, Michelle, how’s the date going?”

Michelle glanced over at Dmitri.  He was frowning at traffic.  She didn’t know how to answer that.  Luckily, she was saved with Jaycee again talking in a frantic rush.

“I am so sorry to interrupt your date, but I can’t get a hold of Armando and this place is going…oh, I know there is going to be a fight!  A huge group of lycans just came in and they look like trouble.  I think they're about to start a fight.  They don’t look happy.  Anyway, I ran into the office to call for backup as soon as I saw them come in.  The guys Armando left to help me tend bar are useless….” 

Jaycee kept going, her voice growing with panic after each sentence.  Michelle pulled the phone slightly away from her ear.  “It’s Jaycee Clark.  She needs you back at the bar.  Something about there being some trouble with a group of lycans.”

“Tell her I’m busy.  Have her call Armando,” said Dmitri.  His grey eyes glanced over at her.  For a moment they softened.  Only the panicked sound of Jaycee yelling into the phone stopped her from getting lost in Dmitri’s seductive gaze.

“She says she can’t get a hold of him,” said Michelle.  “It sounds pretty bad.  I really don’t mind.  I know how important work is.  Besides, my car’s there and I can see myself home later if it’s bad.”

Dmitri turned to Jaycee and frowned, irritated about being called in for a false alarm.  She looked sheepishly at the floor and was glad when someone came up to the bar demanding a drink.

Michelle watched Jaycee walk off and tried to smile.  It was pretty clear that the date was most likely over.

“I’m sorry about this distraction,” said Dmitri, turning to her.  “I didn’t intend for us to end up back here.”

Oh, and Trolly Cheese was so much better, thought Michelle before she could help it.  Being back at the Raven with Dmitri just reminded her who he really was.  He was the handsome, flirty, part club-owner who boldly claimed he was going to ‘shag’ Mandy’s friend Michelle.  She’d of have to have been deaf not to hear the way the other male staff spoke to him and about him.  Dmitri was a player with a legendary track record a lot longer than her short human life.

“Ah, don’t worry about it,” said Michelle with a shrug.  “We were bound to come back here anyway for my car.”

Dmitri couldn’t help his small mischievous grin.  “What?  Are you saying you’re not coming home with me tonight?”

Considering she’d just been thinking of Dmitri’s legendary prowess with women, Michelle turned red.

Dmitri chuckled softly, a low sound that sent chills all the way over her body.  He slid closer to where she leaned against the bar.  His finger lifted to lightly touch her arm.  His eyes moved down to her lips, beckoning her to initiate another kiss.  “Or maybe you’ll invite me back to your place so we can be alone.”

“Hey, Dmitri, I thought that was you!” said Brandon, coming from the senator’s table.

Michelle blinked in surprise, glad to have her date’s attention off of her as she quickly tried to recover from the shock of his bold stare.

“Who’s this?”

The question broke into her frantic thoughts and she turned to the handsome lycan. 

“This is my—”

“Michelle,” she hastened, interrupting Dmitri before he could finish.  “I’m a novelist and a writer for the art section of the Nocturnal Journal.”

“You don’t say,” laughed Brandon.  “Then we were just talking about you.”

Michelle paled, worried.  She glanced at Dmitri, who was looking at her with a blank expression on his hard face.  “You were?”

“Yeah, a mutual friend of ours, Jaci Burton said she was going to try and call you tomorrow before she left town.”

“Wait, Jaci’s here?  I haven’t seen her in ages!”

“Yeah,” Brandon flashed Michelle a sexy smile of appreciation.  His eyes dipped over her slender frame. His hand began to lift for her, as if he would take up her arm.

Dmitri frowned, a low growl sounding in warning in the back of his throat as he laid his hand on the bar behind Michelle’s back.  Brandon couldn’t miss the amber glow of possessiveness shining in Dmitri’s gaze.

Michelle blinked, confused.  Feeling Dmitri move closer, she glanced up and back at him.  His gaze was a cool grey and he said nothing, didn’t even smile.

“Jaci is one hot writer,” said Michelle conversationally, stepping away from Dmitri, who was suddenly acting very odd.  “I loved the advance copy I got of her new book, Running Mate.  I know it’s going to do great for her.”

"Wonderful,” said Brandon, offering his elbow with a challenging smirk at Dmitri.  “Come on, I’ll introduce you to my cousin, Jason.  She claims he was the inspiration for the book.  I told her that if she wanted to be inspired she should write about me.”

Michelle began to laugh as Brandon audaciously winked with meaning.  The sound was cut off before it even left her lips, as Dmitri hooked his bicep onto her arm.

Before she could protest, he said to her, “Yeah, Zaychik moy, let’s go over.  I want to say hi anyway.”

Brandon smirked again, his eyes full of mischief and humor.  He turned, leading the way to the table.

Jaci Burton was a tall red head surrounded by a pack of handsome lycan companions.  She didn’t look to be at all ill at ease around the formidable men.  Seeing Michelle, she grinned in excitement.

“Hey! We were just talking about you!” cried Jaci, jumping to her feet.  Michelle grinned to see the tight black corset with white fur poking out of the top along the cleavage.

“So I’ve heard,” answered Michelle.  “You look great!”

“Don’t I know it!” laughed Jaci.  “I told these guys that we were going to a club and they showed up wearing suits and ties.  Gawd!  When I say club, I mean a party!  I think they were expecting a dinner club at a five star!”

Michelle laughed, “Where’s Charlie?  Is he with you?”

“No, he’s with his playmates.”

“You don’t care?” laughed Michelle.

“Honey, would you care what your husband was doing if you were being escorted around by this sexy, oh-I-want-to-take-them-all-to-bed-at-once lot of hot male flesh?  No, I don’t think so!  Speaking of hot male flesh,” said Jaci, turning her attention over Michelle’s shoulder to Dmitri.  “Who’s your boyfriend?  And when did you start dating supernatural?”

“Oh,” Michelle hid her flush as she turned to glance over her shoulder to where Dmitri leaned over the table to shake the senator’s hand.  A wide smile crossed his handsome features, making her feel faint.  She wished he would look at her like that more.  “Who?  Dmitri?”

“You had to be so stoked the Jack-In-Irons beat out the Pouk-leddens tonight,” the senator was saying.

“This man,” added Brandon to the table at large, lifting his beer glass high in a one-man toast towards Dmitri, “lives for the Jack-In-Irons!  Die hard fan!”

“Ah, could you believe that last play!” said Jason.  The entire table began laughing and talking at once in manly excitement.

Michelle didn’t understand the sport, so didn’t understand half of what they were saying as they called out the plays.

“Oh, man,” growled Brandon.  “I would have given my left testicle to have those box seats you got for tonight’s supernatural bowl!”  The lycan turned to the table and clarified, “Dmitri here had to camp outside the ticket office for three days before they went on sale.  Ever since they established the fair-gaming ticket sale policy you can’t just throw money at the agency anymore, you have to actually wait in line like everyone else!  Hey, didn’t it snow on you?”

“Yeah,” answered Dmitri with a small grin. 

Michelle’s heart fluttered again.  Man, he was handsome!  And that dark grey shirt really brought out his eyes.  And when he smiled…oh, she wanted to melt.  Feeling the heat in her stomach, she thought that maybe she was melting.

“So was it great?  You have to tell us!” said one of Jason’s brothers.

“Actually, I didn’t get to go,” said Dmitri, quietly.  “Something else came up.”

The table exploded into manly curses and exclamations of disbelief.  Someone shouted, “It was the game of the century—better than 1912, so much better than the legendary 1876 massacre!  You’ll never see a game like that again—not for the rest of your eternity!” 

Michelle felt sick.  She was the something else that had come up.  He’d given up the lycan chance of an eternity, all because he was roped into taking her to Trolly Cheese.  No wonder he’d looked so put out when they’d left.  Her heart sank into her stomach and she was sure she was going to cry.  She blinked back the tears just as Dmitri’s steady gaze met hers.  His eyes were hard, staring at her briefly before having his attention called back by one of the men.  His expression gave away nothing.

“Dmitri who, indeed,” said Jaci, with a good-natured chuckle when Michelle didn’t immediately turn back around.  “Uh, come on.  I just got them to shut up about the supernatural what-have-you and I don’t have the strength to do it again.  Let’s go out and dance, the floor is hoppin’ tonight!”

“I don’t really feel like dancing,” said Michelle.  “How ‘bout I buy you a drink?”

“Ah, even better!”  Jaci linked her arm through Michelle’s and walked her over to the bar.  Seeing the bartender, she yelled, “Two rum and cokes and two shots of tequila!”

“Make those one!” called Michelle.

“Make them two!”  Jaci chuckled, “I wasn’t ordering for you, honey!  Those lycans have been drinking all evening watching that stupid game.  I’m about to play catch up!”

“So,” said Michelle, as they waited for the bartender to come back.  “Brandon tells me he’s the inspiration for your next book.”

“He’s been hinting every since he found out I wrote one about Jason,” said Jaci, with a toss of her flaming red hair.  Her green eyes sparkled in merriment.  “I keep telling him that he doesn’t inspire me—he’s such the lady’s man, you know.  And oh, what an ego!  But, truth is, I’ve already written half his damned book.  Just flowed out of me like a madwoman one night.  I haven’t told him yet.  Don’t want him getting a big head—well, bigger head.  Don’t get me wrong though, Brandon is a sweetheart—deep, deep inside, once you get past his to-die-for charm.  Now, Jason’s brothers want their own stories, too.  I love writing the paranormal stuff.  It gives me the chance to really free my mind.  I think I am going to turn the Running Mate into the first of a new series.”

“Oh, you so have to!” said Michelle.  “That first one was so good.  I was almost embarrassed to see Jason in the flesh, so to speak.  I wanted to gush at him and ask him for an autograph.”

“Yeah, I imagine he’ll get that a lot once the book is released.  Though, I am glad Jason doesn’t have to hide the fact that he’s a lycan in real life like in the book.”  Jaci chuckled with a knowing wink.  She took the first shot of tequila and gasped.  “I tell you, there is just something about those lycans that gets my blood to boiling!  I think it’s their animalistic nature, or maybe it’s their strong, sexy bodies.  I have yet to meet a fat lycan.  They’re metabolism is so high…mm.  Has Dmitri shown you what he can do yet?  I mean, have you seen him shift?”

“No.”  Michelle’s eyes were drawn across the floor to where Dmitri now sat with his friends.  She swore she still heard them teasing him about missing his game.  There was no way she could have felt worse.

“So are you two serious?” asked Jaci, studying her glass of rum and coke.

“We’re not dating,” said Michelle quickly.  “We’re just friends.”

“Mmmm,” Jaci said into her drink a little too knowingly.  “Well, if you ever have the opportunity to take that friendship to the next level, make sure to jump on the chance—or more correctly to jump on him.  Lycans are a very dominant species and you’ll have to conquer them first if you want them to behave.  They like their sex wild and fierce.  It must be the wolf in them that does it.  But, let me tell you, they are the absolute best lay you will ever find!  Nothing, and I do mean nothing, is considered forbidden with them.  If you ever wanted to try anything kinky, or different, you’ll never find a better volunteer than a lycan male.  If I wasn’t already married—oh baby!  You could ask them to do anything to you in bed and they wouldn’t even flinch.  Hell, most of them would probably be fulfilling the request before it ever got out of your mouth.”

Michelle paled even more.  That would explain Dmitri’s over-confidence.  She knew Jaci was just making conversation, but her words unnerved her.  Now, more than ever, the idea of Dmitri being interested in her was a laughable joke.  Even if he were the tiniest bit interested, he’d only be disappointed when the time came.    

“I just assumed you wrote your lycans like that for your books,” said Michelle, trying to remain calm, though her heart pounded in her chest at a frantic beat.  Dmitri’s eyes lifted instantly to her as the organ sped up.  She thought his gaze narrowed, but she couldn’t be sure.  She turned her back, facing the bar.  “Jaycee, can I get some water please?”

“Come’n right up!”

“Nope, it’s all true.  I’ve been friends with these boys long enough to know it for a fact.  We’ve got no secrets.  Besides, if you haven’t noticed, their kind tends to be bold outside the bedroom too.  It’s only natural that they would be bolder in private.  And I’ve had a lot of girlfriends who have dated lycans.”  Jaci finished her first rum and coke and leaned over to take her last shot.  She gasped and smiled.  Jaycee came back with the water and quickly went back to work.  The bar was filling up fast.

Michelle picked up her water.  “Well, I should go.  I have some work in the back office I want to finish up first, and then I should probably head home.”

“Oh, okay!  Well, it was so good to see you!” said Jaci.

“Yeah, it was great seeing you too.  Definitely, give me a call tomorrow if you can get away.  We can go have dinner.”

“Let’s make if for six.  I’ll get with you tomorrow with the details.” Jaci took her rum and coke and shot a mischievous smile at Michelle.  “Bring the lycan…friend…if you want.”

Q: Which would you be a vampire or a lycan, why?

 A: Lycan. Love those sexy shapeshifters. Something primal about them that gets my blood boiling.I think it’s their animalistic nature that gets me going.

 Q: What is your favorite color M&M?

 A: Blue ones

 Q: Could you tell us a bit about your latest release?

 A:  Running Mate –

 Senator Jason Devlin has big plans for his career in Washington, D.C. As long as he’s able to keep who and what he is a secret from the ever-present press. Kelsey Harper is a reporter for one of D.C.’s biggest papers, and eager to drag skeletons out of politicians’ closets.

 When these two meet in a passionate encounter, it’s strange bedfellows indeed. Kelsey uncovers a secret that could blast the lid right off the Devlin dynasty. But she’s torn between what she knows and her growing feelings for the enigmatic senator. Jason hopes that his love for Kelsey is enough to contain the dark secret he’s been trying to hide.

 Q: What’s your favorite genre to write in?

 A:  I love paranormal. Really gives me the chance to free my imagination and go wild with magical elements.

Q:  Can you tell us a little about your current WIP’s?

 A:  A Storm For All Seasons is a series about 4 siblings in New Orleans who control weather elements. The first book released was Summer Heat. I have 3 more coming up, including a crossover between one of the Storm clan and one of the Devlin clan from the Devlin Dynasty series.

 Fiery Fate is the second Kismet story, a fantasy about faeries and elves. Five sisters, faerie princesses, are all betrothed to marry kings. Some will embrace their destiny, others will defy it.

 I have a contemporary series available about a hedonistic resort in the Caribbean entitled Passion In Paradise.

 A:  I’ve written as long as I can remember. Short stories, poems, I even dabbled in scriptwriting when I was 12. My cousin and I would swap scripts about our favorite television show. I fell in love reading romance when I was 17 and wrote on and off for years before Ellora’s Cave published my first book last year.

 Q:  How do you come up with character names?

 A:  You know it’s really funny. Character names will either come to me immediately as I’m plotting a story, or I’ll spend weeks researching until I find one that fits the characters. I can’t explain why some are easy and others more difficult. Kind of like books, I think. Some come easier than others.

 Q:  What authors inspired you growing up?

 A:  I don’t remember much of the children’s books I read. I remember reading Dark Shadows serial books when I was in 6^th grade, and read my first romance novel when I was 17. That was The Flame and The Flower by Kathleen Woodiwiss, who remains to this day one of my favorite romance authors.

 Q: How do balance family and writing?

 A:  It’s difficult, because I could sit at my desk and write constantly. I also love to spend time with my husband, but he usually has to drag me away from the pc because I lose track of time. Scheduling priorities helps.

 Q:  Why do you like writing romance/erotica?

 A:  It’s so freeing. I can write whatever I want, in any genre, and let my creativity soar. I can also carry a love scene through the point of conclusion without having to resort to flowery euphemisms to describe the act of lovemaking. I love it!

 Q:  What would you do if you weren’t a writer?