Nothing Like the Sun Read online

  He waved his hand dismissively. “No worries, love. It’s true.”

  She got up on one elbow to look at him. “But what are you doing here?”

  He twirled a lock of her hair around his finger. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you. About Shakespeare and Wilde. About chocolate bars. I’ve met a lot of women, Georgie, but none like you.”

  “Ah.” Georgie nodded, then ducked her head a bit. “It was all an act, though. That’s not me.”

  Julian sat up suddenly, looking shocked. “What? Not you?” He looked so shocked she had to laugh again. “Who was it then?”

  “Hush,” she scolded. “That’s not what I meant.”

  He pulled her to him for another kiss. “Why don’t you let me figure out who you are then?”

  It was tempting, but Georgie wasn’t so sure she was ready for that. “Julian—”

  “Cassie told me about him. The ass-crack, Comatose Joe, she called him. I don’t blame you for being wary. And if you were just out for a night of good fun, Georgie, I understand. Believe me, I do.”

  He gave her a rueful smile. “And if what just happened was nothing more than an extension of that fun night, well, I guess I understand that, too. But if you’ve a mind toward it, I’d like to see you again.”

  Georgie sat up, pushing her hair behind her ears. “I’m sorry, Julian, it’s not that I don’t want to.”

  “I understand,” he said, reaching for her hand. He squeezed it gently, then brought it to his lips to kiss her knuckles. “But do you believe me when I tell you that instead of sitting somewhere in a posh hotel sipping champagne, I chose to drive my sorry arse from Ohio to here, and I’ll have to drive to New York tomorrow to catch the next gig? And that I did that because I couldn’t stop thinking about you?”

  He was here, which meant that was true. “I believe you.”

  “We’re playing the East Coast for the next three months,” he told her. “And my daughter’s birthday is in two weeks. She and her mother live in Virginia. I’ll be back and forth for three months, Georgie, never more than a few hours drive or a short flight away from you. All I’m asking is that you consider letting me see you. If, at the end of three months, you’ve decided you can’t stand the sight of me, well, I’m off to Asia anyway and you’ll be shut of me.”

  “And if I don’t decide that?” she asked quietly, studying him. He looked sincere.

  Julian’s grin sent a tingle all the way down to her toes. “Then I’d say there’s always phone sex, love, and the food in Japan’s fucking fabulous.”

  Georgie laughed. “Has anyone ever been able to resist you?”

  “Sadly, yes,” he told her seriously. “But I’m hoping you won’t.”

  Georgie looked down at their clasped hands. She’d meant to have only one night. But nothing said things couldn’t change, right?

  She leaned forward to kiss him. “All right. Let’s give it a shot. Cassie’ll kill me, but okay.”

  Julian laughed. “Cassie’s got her own business to concern her, I think.”

  That was true, too.

  She kissed him again, then touched the mark she’d left on his shoulder in much the same place she’d done the first time they’d been together. “Sorry about that.”

  “Oh, that,” Julian scoffed. “Bloody vampire, you are.”

  “I heard you liked vampires,” Georgie teased, and ducked away from him as he made to grab her.

  “I’ll show you what I like, and it does deal with sucking,” he told her. “But not blood.”

  Laughing, she let him pin her. He kissed her, but softly, the looked into her eyes.

  “Nothing like the sun,” he murmured. “Will Shakespeare knew what he was talking about, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” Georgie said. “But I told you before, I like Oscar Wilde.”

  “Well, then,” said Julian. “Let’s see what I can do about helping you get a little wild.”

  She groaned at his pun, but a moment later groaned, when his fingers found her clit and began to circle it just the way she liked.

  “Didn’t Wilde say each man kills the thing he loves? I think you’re going to kill me, Julian.”

  “Well,” said Julian sliding lower, “it’d be a bloody fucktastic way to go.”

  Then they stopped talking for a while, and made poetry of a different sort.

  About the Author

  I was born and then I lived awhile. Then I did some stuff and other things. Now, I mostly write books. Some of them use a lot of bad words, but most of the other words are okay.

  I can’t live without music, the internet, or the ocean, but I have kicked the Coke Zero habit. I can’t stand the feeling of corduroy or velvet, and modern art leaves me cold. I write a little bit of everything from horror to romance, and I don’t answer to the name “Meg.”

  * * *

  Megan Hart is a USA Today, Publisher’s Weekly and New York Times bestselling author who writes in many genres including mainstream fiction, erotic fiction, science fiction, romance, fantasy and horror. Learn more about her by visiting her website, MeganHart.com. Find her on Twitter at twitter.com/megan_hart and on Facebook at facebook.com/megan.hart. If you liked The Resurrected, please tell all of your friends to buy it. If you hated it, please tell all your enemies to buy it. If you’d like to tell the author about it, drop her a line at [email protected], but remember that your mom told you if you don’t have anything nice to say, it’s best to say nothing at all.

  Lost Our Forever

  Natalie J. Damschroder

  “No frickin’ way.”

  “Why?” Georgie turned plaintive eyes on Cassie, who did her best to ignore them.

  “Because it’s a very bad idea, that’s why.” For the first time in six months, she craved a cigarette. Images flashed into and out of her mind so fast she couldn’t have described them, but they left behind a sensation of the past, how it had felt to be in the midst of that world. A world where she had smoked. And done and been a hundred other things she wanted no part of now.

  But Georgie was her best friend. Had been in high school, and was again now, despite the years in between. She’d forgiven Cassie for abandoning her along with Pennsylvania, and they’d picked up where they left off a little more than a year ago, when Cassie returned to their hometown. She’d helped Cassie find her center, just by being her.

  And she was so fucking sweetly persistent Cassie knew, no matter what she said, Georgie wouldn’t give up.

  “They’re not coming anywhere near here.”

  “Ha!” Georgie crowed, pointing at Cassie. “I knew it! Pleeease. They’re doing Columbus. They could easily come here first. You’re still in touch with Seth, aren’t you? You know the tour schedule. You’ve got to want to see them.”

  “I really don’t.” She studied her friend. Georgie had made some big changes recently, with a trendier haircut and contacts, and a hipper wardrobe, but it was still obvious to anyone looking at them that they were extreme opposites. Georgie was a good girl, a librarian who’d taken care of her injured fiancé and been unceremoniously dumped as soon as he was well enough. Despite that, she still was sweet to the core, and looked it.

  Cassie was well aware she looked exactly like what her life had made her. Hard. Damaged. Vibrant in a way that attracted and excited, but would hurt like touching a live electrical wire. She, too, had made changes. But she was sour to the core, and looked it. Revisiting the life that had set her on that path was not something she aspired to.

  “Why do you want to see them?” she asked Georgie, just for amusement. She didn’t need to hear the answer—that lost night, when Arliss had gotten them tickets to the concert of British band Blue Silver, complete with backstage passes. The Silverettes, as they’d called their little fan club, had been crushed by the missed dream, courtesy of a broken-down limo. It represented, to Georgie, all the other dreams she’d lost, and the new beginning she so desperately wanted.

  “Cassie, be honest.” Georgie wound down from the passi