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Did I mention that the Chantix worked and that I’ve been smoke-free for over a month now? Wish it were true for my dreams. Last night I had a nightmare. I found a cigarette on the ground, but didn’t have a lighter. The only thing I could find was a blowtorch, but I couldn’t get it close enough to my face to light the sucker. Gah!

Back to the book…

The Allure Authors are a group of my best writer friends. We produced two anthologies for Avon. This excerpt is from the second one, Alluring Tales 2: Hot Holiday Nights. This book was released in November 2008. My story, Indecent Exposure, is about a girl with a bad reputation for baring her assets in high school, who gets a second chance with her high school crush. Tell me whether you would have made the same choice as Harmony!

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From the authors of the bestselling ALLURING TALES: AWAKEN THE FANTASY comes a new erotic romance anthology featuring seven super-sexy holiday-themed short stories. Together, the Allure Authors offer more than just steamy romances—they introduce readers to an erotic world full of limitless possibilities

The holidays are heating up — with seven wickedly sensual stories guaranteed to spice up those chilly winter nights!

A psychology student goes online hoping to live out her steamiest fantasy — and ends up on a hot mystery date with a wickedly imaginative stud who brings out her inner pole-dancer…

A determined lady comes home, burning for her girlhood crush — a sexy lawman who totes a big gun…

A creative ad man’s passion is aroused when he sees his buttoned-up coworker in a revealing new light — dressed in sizzling red satin on a giant billboard…

A professional dominatrix wishes upon a star, and her fantasy appears — an insatiable alpha male in biker boots who’s literally out of this world…

A tall, dark, handsome warlock finds himself obsessed with his “familiar” — a sleek and sexy cat-woman who turns out to be the purr-fect lover…

She was always hot for big brother’s best friend — and now her erotic dream is here in the taut and tempting flesh…

A pair of fugitive lovers finds themselves warm and toasty in a sultry Caribbean paradise — and ready for some red-hot fun in the sun…

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Twelve years earlier…

Dalton McDonough, you don’t know it yet—hell, you don’t even know me—but one day your fine ass is gonna be mine!

A blush heated Harmony Wilkin’s cheeks at the crudeness of the thought, but there you had it. When it came to Dalton, all the rules she’d been taught about being a good girl flew out the window.

Lord, he was a temptation—an obsession she couldn’t shake. That she wasn’t alone in mooning over the handsome high school senior didn’t help one bit. There was something special about the strong curve of his jaw, the jut of his high cheekbones and the deep mysterious set of his brown eyes. Add those characteristics to the rest of the package—tall, lean frame and wavy dark hair—and every girl in a tri-county area between the age of five and ninety-five couldn’t help but sigh and wonder what it would be like to be the center of his undivided attention.

Only most girls didn’t do any more than that—sigh and wonder. Harmony, however, wasn’t the kind to leave matters to fate. Somehow, someday, Dalton would be hers. All she needed to move things along a little quicker was information. Being a studious sort, she’d decided that winning Dalton wasn’t any different than any other goal she’d achieved. She just needed to know more about him. Figure out his likes and dislikes.

Find the one thing that might spark his interest in her.

And studying up on Dalton meant she had to take a few risks, because what she needed to know couldn’t be found in any textbook or Cosmo magazine article. Which was why she was sneaking through the dark, risking her reputation and her parent’s trust. Then again, her parents probably wouldn’t care, they’d been shouting at each other so much lately.

Careful not to let the gate slam shut behind her, she crept silently into his backyard, skirting the flagstones surrounding the pool, keeping to the soft, manicured lawn to muffle her footfalls until she reached the French doors outside his bedroom.

Seeking the shadows hugging the side of his house, she hid behind the tall winterberry bush and peered inside. She brushed away the niggling guilt she felt for spying on the object of her affections. Suppressed the unease that any night now, someone would see her stealing out of her bedroom window. But a desperate longing filled Harmony with a sense of purpose that pretty much wiped out every lick o’ sense she’d inherited from her schoolteacher dad.

During the past week of her stealth campaign, she’d learned some pretty interesting things about the quiet, intensely private boy.

Like Dalton slept in the nude.

She knew because Tuesday she’d peeked through the glass and seen a pale buttock exposed beneath the edge of the blue sheet tangled around his legs. She wasn’t sure how useful that piece of information might be, but she’d learned how long she could go without breathing and not pass out.

She’d studied the odd items strewn around his room and discovered he was a Spurs fan. On Wednesday, she’d begged her mother to buy her a Spurs t-shirt which she wore on Spirit Day at school. Check.

The numchucks hanging from a peg on the wall and the poster of Chuck Norris tacked to his closet door indicated an interest in martial arts. She’d enrolled in a karate class just yesterday afternoon. Check.

Yet, he’d passed her in the hall this morning, giving her bright silver and black tee and Akido Academy sports bag barely a passing glance. That Dalton still didn’t seem to know she existed didn’t discourage her.

If Harmony was anything, she was persistent.

As she eased over to peek into his bedroom, she blinked, surprised to find light beaming from the hallway and his bed empty. She’d double-checked the driveway as she’d snuck past to make sure his daddy’s patrol car wasn’t parked outside. Dalton was still awake, which was odd. All the football players had a curfew and followed Coach Hess’s rules to a ‘T’. None more religiously than their starring quarterback.

After all, Friday night football was God in Satisfaction, Texas.

Then she heard the faint giggle coming from deep inside the house. A high-pitched whinny she’d recognize anywhere. Cindy Niedermeyer. A cheerleader whose coltish long legs and sprouting breasts made her the “The Girl Most Likely to Score.”

Damn. With her stomach knotting, Harmony bit her lip and tried to stem her disappointment, reminding herself Cindy tended to string several boys along at the same time. Her being here didn’t mean she’d set her sights for very long on Dalton.

Just when Harmony had decided to slip away, Cindy entered the bedroom, walking backwards with Dalton pressed so close one leg slipped between hers, rubbing dangerously high. His hands clutched her jeans-clad bottom so hard, his knuckles whitened as they kneaded and rocked her hips against his.

Harmony froze, knowing what was going to happen next. She’d aced Health class and read enough of her mama’s romance novels to know exactly where this was heading. She might be the only 18-year-old virgin left in the state of Texas, but it wasn’t because she wasn’t curious or hadn’t ever experienced desire.

Now, she had a choice to make. Do the decent thing and leave them to their play in private…or stay and possibly learn a little something more than she’d anticipated.

As she watched them grope each other’s bodies, a twisting, desperate longing burned the back of her throat and tensed her belly. She didn’t really understand what she was feeling, only knew she needed something only Dalton could provide. So there she stood, hiding in the darkness, watching him hold another girl in his arms.

When Cindy pushed away and began to tear at Dalton’s clothes, any reluctance to stay and watch melted away.

Harmony’s gaze clung hungrily to Dalton’s lean, muscled chest and ridged abdomen.

When Cindy’s fingers walked south, Dalton’s breath hissed out and Harmony’s caught and held. Cindy’s pink-tipped nails flicked the button at the waistband of his jeans then slowly slid down the zipper.

The expression on Dalton’s face when her long slender fingers dipped inside his pants fascinated Harmony. The painful longing reflected there matched her feelings exactly.

Dalton muttered and pressed Cindy further into his room, and they turned toward the bed. That was when Harmony got a good look at exactly what Cindy held. Her fingers smoothed up and down a long column of satiny flesh.

Now, Harmony knew a man’s private part expanded quite a bit as he grew excited. She’d read all about it, seen pictures of it, and had even seen Bobby Camacho’s shorts tented when the girls’ track team ran circles around the football field. Still, she wasn’t prepared for the sight of what made Dalton most assuredly male.

Long enough that Cindy could have used both hands and still left an inch or two of tawny flesh exposed, Dalton’s “manhood” was capped with a round blunt head that looked oddly soft and vulnerable. When Cindy laughed and sank slowly to her knees, Harmony’s eyes widened.

“Yes. Oh God, yes,” Dalton murmured. His fingers threaded through Cindy’s long blonde hair as he centered her between his legs and pulsed his hips forward then back, slipping his sex between her lips and thrusting so deep Harmony was sure the girl would choke.

Instead, Cindy only moaned and started to bob her head, her lips stretching around his shaft, shadows deepening the hollows of her cheeks as she used her mouth to pleasure him—oh, and pleasure him she did!

Dalton’s eyes burned as he watched Cindy. His hard-edged cheeks reddened and his body tightened as he stroked in and out. The heat in his expression told Harmony just how incredibly wonderful he felt at that moment.

The beauty of his pleasure warmed her to her toes, and a tingling heat started in her breasts. She couldn’t be jealous of Cindy at the moment, couldn’t resent the slutty blonde’s presence in Dalton’s room, because, at last, Harmony had found the key to unlock Dalton’s interest, if not his heart.

She wasn’t sure how she’d do it, but she was going to study up. Become the absolute best at giving Dalton that toe-curling pleasure.

In the meantime, Cindy drew off and shook her hair behind her, then sat back on her heels and tugged her shirt over her head.

Dalton’s eyes narrowed as he stared at her breasts, and something a little frightening, and devastatingly more intense, entered his expression. He reached down, gripped Cindy beneath her arms and pulled her up. His kiss devoured her mouth and once again, he was walking her backward until her knees met the edge of his bed.

Harmony’s breaths grew shallow and heat pooled between her legs.

Cindy broke the kiss, sat and unbuttoned her jeans.

Dalton grabbed the bottom hem and stripped the jeans down her long legs. Then he pressed her to lie back. What he did next, shocked Harmony to her toes, and her body reacted with a flush of heat and a rush of moisture that taught her another lesson about what desire can do to a woman’s body.

Lord, it was hot! Sweat beaded on her upper lip, and she sucked it into her mouth as she strained to get a better look at Dalton bent over the juncture of Cindy’s thighs. She bit her lip and eased over a little more, lifting one leg to rest her foot on the water spigot beside the door for balance.

Suddenly, Dalton hauled himself up and over Cindy who welcomed him with an eager embrace. Harmony watched, enraptured by the play of muscle along Dalton’s broad shoulders and back as he crawled over the other girl. Dalton rose on his arms and all the muscles from his back to his hips tensed.

Harmony couldn’t breathe…had to get a better look. She leaned closer to the glass not wanting to miss a thing, enthralled with the flex of his round buttocks exposed just above the edge of the jeans he hadn’t bothered removing.

She stepped harder on the spigot to follow the couple’s journey into a rapture she was quickly getting a glimmer of, when her foot slipped. The spigot spat water in a noisy, harsh gurgle.

Harmony froze as Dalton’s head jerked back and his glance sliced to the French doors. She ducked to the side and silently cursed. In the distance, she heard something else—the low squalling whine of a siren.

Like a deer in the headlights, Harmony’s eyes blinked wide while her heart thudded hard against her chest. He hadn’t seen her. The siren couldn’t have a thing to do with her.

Dalton cursed, hauled himself off a dazed Cindy and zipped his pants as he stomped toward the door.

Harmony backed away, her mind racing. What would Dalton think about her now? If he found her peeping through his door, she’d definitely have his attention.

And holy hell, that siren seemed a lot closer now. Lord, how would she explain this to her parents? She’d be grounded for a month and her whole senior year would be tainted with the humiliation. Half her class would think she was a perv, the other—the female half—would probably get why she did what she did, but the whispers would never stop.

With a wild-eyed glance around the dark yard, Harmony did the only thing a girl about to be exposed as moon-eyed fool could do. She took her destiny in her hands and twisted it deftly in another direction.

She ripped her t-shirt over her head, dropped her shorts, and dove naked into the pool.