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An Excerpt From: HALF WILD

Copyright © RHYANNON BYRD AND MADISON HAYES, 2008

All Rights Reserved, Ellora's Cave Publishing, Inc.

“Four?” Sam blurted out. “Your name is Four?”

He turned and gave Sam a sharp, penetrating stare. “My name is Kar’four but Four will do. This is my brother, Kar’two.”

“Deuce,” his twin corrected him.

Kar’four’s gaze deepened as it roved down her body again, before slowly returning to her eyes. “You’re women, aren’t you? Real ones.”

Sam tried to stifle her surprised snort. “These two are really quick,” she muttered from the side of her mouth.

Jerri jabbed her in the ribs as she continued to smile determinedly up at Deuce. “I wasn’t going for brains when I picked mine,” she warned tightly. “I’m Jerri,” she said, nodding encouragingly as she introduced herself. “And this is my friend, Sam.”

Kar’four continued to stare down at Sam. “They’re women, Deuce.”

Without actually removing his eyes from Jerri’s face, the one named Deuce cut his companion a condescending smile. “I got that part figured out, Four. But what’s amazing is that they look like real women.”

Four snorted. “And what do you know of what real women look like?”

Deuce’s smile flashed wider, wicked and white within the deep tan of his face. “There’s no way in hell breasts like those could be fake,” he laughed gruffly, dropping his gaze to Jerri’s firm mounds, her nipples pressing against the thin fabric of her shirt in sharp little points that seemed to demand his immediate attention.

“Yeah, real breasts,” Four rasped, his voice sounding a bit huskier than before. “I never imagined they could look like that, though,” he added, staring hungrily at Sam’s abundant chest.

Deuce snorted. “You knew they’d be better on a real woman.”

“Yes but I didn’t expect them to be so different from the Synnies.”

“Before I ask what the hell a Synnie is,” Sam mumbled, cutting their strange conversation short as she took Four’s hand and began dragging him along behind her, “we need to get you two outta here, just like Jerri said. You’re attracting too much attention,” she muttered, glaring at the same leggy blonde in spiked heels who had just been in their stall. The woman had stopped a few feet away, her big blue eyes burning with sexual interest at the two duster-clothed males.

Jerri grabbed Deuce’s hand and pulled him along after Sam and Four. She expected to see his mouth hanging open with rampant lust as they passed the blonde beauty queen but when she turned, his expression was clearly dispassionate. Strangely, he didn’t even seem to notice the woman.

They reached the long row of opulent elevators and quickly pulled the men into an opening door, then Sam hit the close button before anyone else could enter. They had a long ride ahead of them, since their rooms were on the 160th floor and the elevator traveled at a leisurely pace, the high definition screens on the insides of the doors regaling them with a steady stream of suggestions as to how they should spend their money in New Las Vegas.

Studying the dark beauty standing at her side, Jerri’s eyes lingered on his mysterious silver mask, then flicked to the wide curve of his mouth for a brief moment before settling back on his warm gaze. “You didn’t even spare a glance for the blonde back there. Didn’t you think she was beautiful?” she questioned.

His mouth twisted. “She looks like a Synnie. I bet she even squeaks.”

“What exactly does a Synnie look like?” she asked, wondering if that was the name applied to women from their country…wherever their country was. They clearly weren’t from around there.

And she wasn’t even touching the “squeaking” comment. Ick.

“Tall, blonde, reed thin with bright white teeth and plastic faces.” He sighed, seeming bored with the idea.

Both women laughed softly. “Well,” Jerri said, smiling wryly, “no one can accuse us of looking like Barbie dolls.”

“Women,” the man beside Sam said. “You look like women.” The word seemed to roll off his tongue like a sumptuous treat, something meant to be savored slowly and sweetly with thorough satisfaction. “Like something out of a Titian or a Botticelli.”

Sam arched her brow at his knowledge of the old masters but before she could comment, Deuce lowered his face to the curve of Jerri’s throat and sniffed loudly, murmuring, “And you don’t smell.”

His voice came in a low, rough rumble of sound that stroked down Jerri’s spine like a sweet, meandering drop of warm oil, while Sam snickered softly.

The pure evocative huskiness of that male voice, with its odd cadence, made Jerri feel sticky and warm, her cheeks flushed while something down deep inside her seemed to melt and ease. It was a strange, somehow new feeling of discovery, of awakening, though she was hardly a virgin. No, she’d known men but then something told her that she’d never known anyone like this magnificent male standing before her. He was, quite simply, out of this world. “Um…it’s nice of you to notice. But what is it exactly that I don’t smell like?”

“Like our women,” he muttered, still rubbing his nose beneath her ear, breathing in long, deep breaths of her. “Like a Synnie.”

Her nose scrunched as she shot a wondering look at Sam, who stared at the two of them with a small grin curving her wide mouth. “I should be afraid to ask, but exactly what do your women smell like?”

“‘Cross between latex and hydraulic fluid.”

Ew.” She laughed, while Sam murmured, “Charming.”

“You’re softer too,” Four rasped, lifting his hand to rub the back of his knuckles across the curve of Sam’s cheekbone, then trailing his dark hand over her jaw, down the white line of her throat. “Softer than the priceless silks of Pantrark.”

“Yeah.” Deuce laughed softly, a low, provocative breath of sound that stroked against the fluttering pulse at the base of Jerri’s throat. “I bet they don’t even squeak when you ride them.”

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