Fabulous author Roxanne St. Claire was kind enough to send us some excerpts before she left to go out of town. AKA she will not respond to this till she returns… I think… who know what the hell she and Kresley Cole are up too. Maybe we will get pictures *g*

Now You Die (The Bullet Catchers, Book 6) by Roxanne St. Claire

TLT: Author’s Pick, Favorite Scene #1:

Former Bullet Catcher and lone wolf investigator Jack Culver is on a mission. Thirty years ago, an innocent woman was convicted of murder. Jack believes he’s found the real killer — but to take down one of the highest legal authorities in the land, he needs access. Serious access. Unfortunately, the one person he knows with that kind of power is his ex-boss and ex-lover, the woman who still haunts his dreams.

Bullet Catchers owner Lucy Sharpe realizes she’s being used for her connections, and she intends to use Jack Culver right back. She’s determined to see justice served, even if that means partnering with the man who once found his way past her iron shields. This time, she’ll be strong enough to avoid Jack’s persuasive touch.

But when passion flares, and they become the killer’s target, Lucy and Jack don’t just break some rules — they shatter them. And that means risking everything: their jobs, their hearts…and their lives.

“You didn’t answer my question.” He tilted his head the other way, as if he were trying to decide which way the kiss would feel better.

Any way would work. “I forgot what you asked.”

“Why did you summon me in the middle of the night, Ms. Sharpe?”

“To see the scene of the crime,” she said.

“You’re lying. You want me to kiss you.”

“That’s quite an assumption.” It just happened to be true.

He grinned, his teeth white against olive skin and black whiskers, his eyes glinting with an evil, dangerous glimmer. “But I notice that this time when I have you up against a wall there’s no threat to kick my balls from here to kingdom come.” He inched closer. Warmer. Almost touching her from top to toe, exactly what she needed.

“The implied threat is always there.”

He laughed softly. “You do want me to kiss you.”

“What I want,” she said with remarkable control, “is for you to show me the precise spot where Wanda’s body was found, so I can figure out if it was even marginally possible to fire a gun from this angle and kill her.”

He hesitated, still studying her mouth, still considering his move. “I already checked. It isn’t, marginally or otherwise.”

“Yes it is.” She put her hands on his chest – rock hard and pumping with the same accelerated heartbeat as hers – and pushed him back, turning. “A twenty-five caliber Raven Arms could easily hit her from here.” She pointed to a spot directly across from the gate. “And it would look like the point black shot that killed her, especially to a jury predisposed to a guilty verdict.”

“It could, if that’s where her body was.”

He took her hand and guided her away from the wall, taking about ten steps to the other side of the gate, into an even darker corner of the graveyard. “That’s where her body was found.” He pointed into the alley to a spot about fifteen feet away from the original. “But that wasn’t in the official report submitted into evidence. No point blank range, by anyone’s definition. Remember, Lucy. Evidence was tampered with by the real killer.”

She considered that, lifting her finger to take aim, imagining the moment someone shot Wanda Sloane. “If that’s really where she died, then someone inside this graveyard couldn’t have fired the gun. But you can’t see the whole alley. Someone else could have been out there.”

“Someone named Higgins. Or did you forget what brought you to Charleston in the first place?”

She noted the edge in his voice, which reminded her of how personal this was to him.

“I’m just looking at the evidence, Jack. I haven’t convicted our target yet.”

Another bit of distant conversation floated over the wall that separated them from the alley, along with enough footsteps to tell them a much larger group was coming their way. He backed her into the wall and covered her, pressing his full body against hers.

The laughter and talk grew louder, but the sound took a back seat to the thrum of Lucy’s heartbeat, and the devil who put his lips to her ear and whispered, “Stay real quiet now.”

“In 1987, a local amateur photographer took a photo of that headstone right there…” The voice of the ghost tour guide bounced off the alley behind them and footsteps grew louder.

Against her stomach, she could feel the bulge of him growing hard, and the pressure of his chest against hers. He took her face in his hands, brushing her lips with both thumbs, angling her head as if he wanted it in exactly the right place to fit under his mouth.

“Kiss me now.” He breathed the command on her lips, so close she could almost taste him.

Behind them, the tour guide droned. “In that photograph, the translucent image of a mother and her child on the anniversary of that child’s death appeared before that headstone.”

The words walloped her, drawing a slight gasp that he mistook for a yes. Instantly, his mouth met hers and he tunneled his fingers deeper into her hair, moving, his lips open, hungry, hot, his tongue already taking ownership of hers.

Forget. Just forget. Let go.

She listened to that demanding inner voice, sucking on his tongue, drawing a low, soft moan from his chest and a rock of his hips against hers, his erection already hard enough to send a wicked thrill between her legs.

He still held her head in his large, warm hands, holding her like she was precious and he adored her, like the kiss mattered more than anything, and that was so perfect and sexy that Lucy let go, and forgot everything.

He closed his hands over her neck and throat, then raked them flat down her chest, his mouth following with a trail of kisses, his palms covering and closing over her breasts.

“Jack,” she breathed his name.

“Shhhh,” he murmured into the flesh of her neck and collarbone. “Don’t let them hear us. They’ll think we’re ghosts.”

He kneaded her gently, rolling his hard-on against her, pulling a soft moan of sheer delight from deep inside her.

“But the most famous moment in Philadelphia Alley history was on a hot August night in 1771, when two local businessmen dueled to the death on this very spot.”

Behind them, more death. More talk. She arched and offered herself in response.

He kissed her again, moving one hand around to cup her backside and the other sliding under her sweater, fingers on her stomach.

“I have to touch you,” he murmured. “Have to.” His little exhale of desperation shot fire between her legs as he caressed the satin of her bra, her head singing with blood and arousal.

“No pearls,” he mumbled. Nonsense. Blood-pounding, body-wrenching, juice-inducing nonsense. She matched his quickening rhythm against her, spurred by his hands and his hardness and how it made everything disappear. He curled his fingers over the peak, tweaking her into a nub, half chuckling and half groaning at her instant response. “One pearl.”

She had no idea what he was talking about, but it didn’t matter. She’d lost control at the first kiss, and right then, nothing mattered. She could come like this. She could absolutely lose it against this wall, body humping Jack hidden only by a wall and light fog. She could —

“What about the other murder that took place here?”

The woman’s voice sliced through Lucy’s conscious, the question jarring, the voice strident. His fingers froze. Her hips stilled. They both stopped breathing.

~~~~