Strangers of the Night Read online

  When the lights go down, who knows what danger...and unspoken desires lurk in the dark?

  Three young people with a shared tragic past that left them burdened as well as blessed with supernatural talents are now the target of forces determined to harm them. But their fate rests with the strangers that help them—a nurse at a mental hospital, a detective and a small-town librarian—strangers who must suspend their own disbelief to protect them. In this enthralling trilogy, these fearless, damaged souls are ready to embrace the unfathomable but are wholly unprepared for the passion they find in the arms of a stranger.

  Love blooms best when the night falls, doesn’t it? Don’t miss this scintillating collection of novellas from New York Times bestselling author Megan Hart!

  Dear Reader,

  Strangers in the night exchanging...bullets, not glances. In this collection of novellas, you’ll discover—or return to, if you’ve been here before—the world of The Crew, a group of people with the desire to research, protect or capture paranormal...things.

  Three young people with a shared tragic past that left them burdened as well as blessed with individually extraordinary talents find themselves each the target of forces determined to harm them. Each of them end up on the run, helped by strangers equally as invested in protecting them.

  Thanks for reading my sexy paranormal stories about passion and pleasure that goes bump in the night!

  Xoxo,

  Megan Hart

  STRANGERS

  OF THE NIGHT

  Megan Hart

  Table of Contents

  Touched by Passion

  Passion in Disguise

  Unexpected Passion

  Excerpt from Protector Wolf by Linda O. Johnston

  Megan Hart is the award-winning and New York Times bestelling author of more than thirty novels, novellas and short stories. Her work has been published in almost every genre, including contemporary women’s fiction, historical romance, romantic suspense and erotica. Megan lives in the deep, dark woods of Pennsylvania with her husband and children. Visit her on the web at meganhart.com.

  Books by Megan Hart

  Harlequin Nocturne

  Bound by the Night

  Strangers of the Night

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles

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  This collection is dedicated to Jeffe Kennedy, who was there for me every time I struggled with the words.

  Touched by Passion

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Prologue

  Collins Creek

  Jed doesn’t like the sound of the babies crying. He can hear them even from the other building, wailing inside his head. He’s too big to be one of them anymore. No more diapers. No more crib. No more giant room that always smells faintly of milk and poo. Now he has his own big bed in the dorm with the other kids, and although he misses his mothers, he knows better than to give in to tears. If you cry here in the dorm, you get a beating.

  Instead, he clenches his fists tight at his sides and stares up at the ceiling. His cot is hard and lumpy. The blanket scratches his chin if he pulls it up too high, so he tucks it around his belly. The other kids are sleeping, but Jed can’t seem to manage. There’s too much noise, too much going on. If he gets up now, he could go to the monitor, who will give him some medicine to sleep, but it makes his head feel fuzzy and his belly hurt. He tries to fall asleep on his own.

  Tomorrow is dedication day.

  The fathers have been watching them all since they were babies in the nursery. They already know which ones are special. Who will be dedicated, who will be sent away.

  This is Jed’s first dedication time, but he’s heard the other kids talking even when they’re not supposed to. Everyone’s scared about what happens when you’re sent away. The rumor is that you get put into the big fireplace in the barn and made into smoke, and Jed believes it. He’s been able to “feel” everyone at the farm for as long as he can remember. The kids who get taken away after each dedication, well...he doesn’t feel them anymore.

  Before he’s even had time to sleep, the lights overhead come on. The other kids shift and squeal, crying out in excitement and fear when the doors to the dorm boom open and the fathers are there in their black robes, their white masks. It’s supposed to make them all equal, but it doesn’t matter to Jed that they all look the same. They all feel different.

  The kids are up and in a line, marching into the hallway. One by one, they go into the meeting room. None of them come out. They won’t know until later who’s still left, though of course, Jed will know before everyone else. That’s what he tells the fathers waiting for him in the meeting room when they ask him. He tells them who he can still feel. Who he cannot. They stare at him from behind their white masks, nodding when he points to each and names them.

  They feel happy, and that makes Jed feel happy, too. He won’t be burned up into smoke. He gets the special pudding for dessert that makes the world spin around in many colors. He gets to go back to the dorm and his lumpy bed, where he can only lie on his back, laughing and laughing at the funny way everything grows and shrinks.

  He’s still laughing when the doors bang open again. More men in black. No white masks. Guns. They kick over the beds, the monitor’s desk. They shout. Most of them feel angry, though one or two feel more scared than anything else, and none of them feel nice.

  They take all of the children.

  Jed never sees Collins Creek again.

  Chapter 1

  Samantha Janecek had never liked hospitals in general, but she loathed this hospital in particular.

  It wasn’t the smells of chemicals and despair, though those clung to her like some stinking perfume she could never quite scrub away. And it wasn’t the bright, unrelenting lights that forced everyone inside to adjust to some artificial internal clock, although they messed with her sleep so much that she hadn’t been able to get more than four hours at a time since she’d started here. More than anything else, it was this uniform.

  No scrubs for the nursing staff here at Wyrmwood. Nope, the women had to wear white, starched dresses with Peter Pan collars and a weird belt thing that hit her too high on the ribs to be comfortable. Thick white support stockings, crepe-soled granny shoes. Worst of all, the mesh cap she had to pin into the thickness of her blond hair, which refused to ever stay neatly in the required bun. The uniform was straight out of the late sixties—fitting, she supposed, since the rest of Wyrmwood seemed to have been arrested in that same era. Including the fact there were no male nurses here, only orderlies. They also wore all white, but at least they got to wear pants.

  “Morning, miss,” said Nathan through the glass as she showed him her ID card and pressed her f