Jacquelyn Frank - Seduce Me in Dreams

By all that is cursed and holy! he swore, suddenly rushing to her and falling to his knees behind her. Ravenna, what in the Great Beings name happened? Why did he even ask? He already knew, even before he brushed her hair away with both hands as gingerly as he could. The strands, delicate as they were, clung to the wounds, stuck to the dried blood on her back. She had been whipped. There was no mistaking such wounds. No mistaking the ragged tearing of her silken gown down its back.

Please, dont she whispered.

Bronse could not grant her the request. In their short, vague acquaintance, he had come to know her as a proud beauty who knew her mind and how to express her convictions. She was gentle by nature in spite of that. She was not the type to give anyone cause to do such a thing, not that anyone ever deserved it. He knew it hurt her to be seen like this by him, to be shamed and weakened before him, and he felt his throat closing with fury and sympathetic pain for her because he would feel exactly the same way. He, too, would have tried to push her away, had the situation been reversed. Yet he would have secretly welcomed what he was about to do for her.

Hush, he soothed her gently, reaching to cup her chin in his fingers, his thumb stroking her cheek from his position behind her. There is no shame between friends, Ravenna. No shame when we are abused in ways we do not deserve.

By Jacquelyn Frank

T HREE W ORLDS
Seduce Me in Dreams

N IGHTWALKERS
Jacob
Gideon
Elijah
Damien
Noah

S HADOWDWELLERS
Ecstasy
Rapture
Pleasure

Seduce Me in Dreams is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

A Ballantine Books Mass Market Original

Copyright 2011 by Jacquelyn Frank
Excerpt from Seduce Me in Flames copyright 2011 by Jacquelyn Frank
Excerpt from Supernatural copyright 2011 by Jacquelyn Frank

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

B ALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

This book contains excerpts from the forthcoming books Seduce Me in Flames and Supernatural by Jacquelyn Frank. These excerpts has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming editions.

eISBN: 978-0-345-51770-8

www.ballantinebooks.com

Cover illustration: Craig White
Cover design: Lynn Andreozzi

v3.1

For Kate,
My fairy godmother

For my team at Random House/Ballantine.

You make me feel special

and thats worth a thousand words.

(Well, more like a hundred thousand!)

It pissed him off royally, but Commander Bronse Chapel couldnt help stumbling once again as the sand shifted from under his fast-paced footing. He corrected himself with a hard, jolting body movement in order to keep his balance, and the jerking motion elicited a soft, barely discernable groan from the burden on his back.

How goes it, Chief? he asked, pausing in his stride to request the answer and to allow his fellow soldier a few beats to grit out the agony that had to be washing through him by then.

Just waiting on my encore, sir, Chief Trick Hwenk responded with the traditional gung-ho attitude of an ETF officer, his young voice sounding suddenly much younger and far weaker than it had two miles back.

Chapel hesitated and then shifted the weight of his human burden up a little higher against his spine and shoulders, wishing that the grip Trick had on him was not getting so obviously lax. Bronse could smell the injured soldiers blood just as easily as he could feel it soaking through his gear where the man was slumped over his back. The commander had a well-powered grip around the younger mans thighs and knees as the soldier rode piggyback. But if the kid couldnt hold on to his shoulders, theyd be in deep shit, and Bronse felt that fact clear to his straining bones.

All right, Chief. Just hang by your grip for three more miles and well be in the nest. Of course, that means youll have to listen to the medics bitch at you for a few days, Bronse noted, using the jovial reminder as a cover for restarting their staggering progress across the ever-shifting sand. Bronse narrowed his eyes behind his goggles, peering at the west sandline. The wind was getting antsy, but he couldnt yet see a cloud forming on the line. That was a blessing, at least. Provided it stayed that way. The last thing they needed to contend with was a sand hurricane.

Bronse went back to concentrating on where he was putting his feet, and how fast he could risk going without jostling his precious burden too dangerously. His every muscle burned from the exertion, but he welcomed it. He preferred being soaked in sweat, working himself to the limit of his endurance and pounding out whatever was necessary to see a certain goal achieved. Hed always felt the most in control when he had that kind of dedicated focus, and he supposed that was what had gotten him the command position on the First Active squad of the ETF in the first place.

Then again, he had wanted to be an Interplanetary Militia soldier since

Well, his matra would swear it was since they cut the cord, and his patra would have proudly boasted that it was set down in his very genes, but Bronse remembered the first time he had seen a BioVid of the history of the Interplanetary Militias ETF when he was six years old. The IM was an intra/interplanetary peacekeeping and defensive military outfit, and it had existed for well over a century. The IM had been created as a joint military effort among the three inhabited planets in the system: Tari, Ulrike, and Ebbany. It had more or less succeeded in its charter of keeping the treatises of coexistence among the three entities, as well as managing missions of peace and humanity on and among the individual planets.

The IM had several specialized branches, but nothing compared to the Special Operations sector known as the Extreme Tactics Force. To a six-year-old the ETF had sounded deadly, dangerous, and exciting as all hell. Watching the BioVid had only confirmed what Bronse had already dreamed of. Being in the ETF was a good way to get an adrenaline rush and have an opportunity to do things with nothing but your balls and your skills to get you out of hellish situations. Not to mention that it was an excellent way to get important body parts blown off.

Unfazed, Bronse had known right then that he was destined to be one of those elite soldiers, and nothing would stop him. Learning that kind of goal setting and determination at that young an age had served him well. Now, here he was, commander of the crack team of the First Active ETF soldiers. First Active meant they were the lead team and were always called first for an assignment, and it meant that his team was the best of the best. They were the ones who went to do the impossible in the worst situations, maintaining a no fear/no fail/no fatality motto that was rarely betrayed.

That motto was balanced on Bronses back at the moment, losing blood too fast for what remained of a three-mile hike. But Bronse was doing his damndest to make them the fastest miles ever to be hiked on sand. Hed never lost a team member in the field, and he wasnt about to start with a rookie communications officer who had balls the size of jumbo adder crystals. The kid had more than proved his grit today. Trick might be their newest and youngest member, but Bronse had known the minute hed laid eyes on him that he was the perfect fifth for his group. Theyd been searching for a communications officer for a whipsnouts age, going through three washouts before Trick had sauntered onto the base, fresh out of the grueling ETF training program.