Shock & Awe

"Part One: TakenJessie Coford had a plan: work hard, save money, open her own restaurant. She sacrificed her relationship with the man of her dreams to get it. Then, in the blink of an eye, she lost her job and her apartment and her life crashed around her. Until a letter taking her to Fort Mavis, Texas, and an unexpected windfall.Part Two: TamedShea Prescott was astonished when million Cruz Castillo chose her to design his new home on his ranch. They hardly traveled in the same circles. But Cruz had been hot for Shea since he first saw her and at their first meeting the chemistry between them ignited. Cruz coaxed her deeper and deeper into a whirlpool of erotic sex, awakening latent sexual desires and bringing her orgasms beyond her wildest imaginings. Her body screamed yes at his every touch, but will she say yes to the most important question?USA Today best-selling and award-winning author Desiree Holt writes everything from romantic suspense and paranormal to erotic. and has been referred to by USA Today as the Nora Roberts of erotic romance, and is a winner of the EPIC E-Book Award, the Holt Medallion and a Romantic Times Reviewers Choice nominee. She has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning and in The Village Voice, The Daily Beast, USA Today, The (London) Daily Mail, The New Delhi Times and numerous other national and international publications.Taken by Surprise is created by Desiree Holt, an EGlobal Creative Publishing signed author."

When the mission ends, the real war begins. Captain Jack McCormack has lost everything that mattered. His partner, Lieutenant Michelle Richards, was killed during a covert operation in Iraq—her death a brutal reminder that even the best can fall. Months later, his ASIO team—friends, family in all but name—were systematically executed during a routine bonding session at a suburban paintball park. It wasn’t an accident. It was a message. Now isolated and hollowed out by grief, Jack tries to disappear into the shadows. But when a dangerous new synthetic drug called Supernatural starts flooding the city streets, he’s forced back into action. Jack knows this drug. He’s seen what it can do—what it did before, in a mission buried so deep it was meant to stay forgotten. With ASIO compromised and political forces tying his hands, Jack turns to the only people he can trust—his retired SAS brothers, elite operators with scars of their own. Together, they launch a black-ops investigation to uncover who’s behind Supernatural… and why the same shadows keep reaching into their past. But some ghosts aren’t just memories. Some are still alive.

"Pepper Pace's interracial fairytale is the story of Beast, a Marine with a destroyed face; and a plus-sized beauty who has identity issues. A lesson learned is that beauty is not just what is shown on the outside. In this romance taken from the Beauty and the Beast fairytale, Pepper makes you question: ""Who is the beauty and who is the beast?"" This story contains sexually explicit content and language.Beast is created by Pepper Pace, an EGlobal Creative Publishing signed author."

"You whore!" A masculine voice. "You philanderer!" A feminine voice. "I'll kill you in this house!" He bellowed as he charged straight to the woman and started beating her up. The little boy stood at the door and watched his parents go about their daily routine, tears spilled from his eyes. He stood in the shadows, just watching and crying. If he speaks out loud, they'll remember him and his father will beat him also. No one remembers him. Not unless they want to beat him too. Then he saw the blow, heard the awful sound. The blow that made a difference. The blow that made that day stand out from every other day. His mom stopped screaming, she laid there on the floor, staring into nothingness. Dead. "Gia." His dad paused mid-beating. No answer. "Gianna!" He patted her white arms turned red from being beaten. Terror filled the little boy's system, a sound escaped his mouth, drawing the man's attention. "Oops. I've forgotten about you." He said to the little boy. "Mom's dead..." The little boy said in a tiny voice. The man looked down at the lifeless white woman, "Seems like it." He looked at the boy with an eye filled with menace. "You'll pretend you didn't see a thing. You'll......" The siren rang outside. The police had arrived. A neighbour had alerted them when he heard the noise. He watched as the policemen pointed their guns at his father. He watched as they took his father away. He remained hidden, his blue eyes returning to the woman who laid on the floor, with eyes as blue as his. She was staring right at him. Finally, she sees him. Only in death, did she really see him. Something died in that little boy that day. Replaced with bitterness.

-Who are you?" Finally, he stopped the silence. His words were strong, angry, and loud. "-What?" I felt so confused still couldn’t let my eyes from his new look. And his actions of killing without any emotions made my voice trembling. "-I...TOLD...YOU...WHO... THE FUCK... ARE... YOU...?" With stiff teeth he seemed to lose his patience, slowly and frighteningly, he asked, no, ordered to me, without lifting his eyes from me, with every word he took a step closer to me until I could smell the sweat, dirt smell of his ammunition from him. His hard chest-like rock was so close that it barely touched my body. I was shivering he was so scary and I still wanted him badly. "-Are you joking with me? How to understand, who am I?" I whispered... I stopped our deep gaze, even though it wasn't easy. -"What's happening here? Where are we? Why are you...." I couldn't finish one of my hundreds of questions when my husband turned his eyes away from me to his men. -"Take that strange ‘pause from his lips, his eyes traveled from the top of my head to my legs" bitch, to the cell, that little mouth soon will be open for me. And she will talk as well too."

In 1982, Anne Stewart and Jack Miller successfully rocked America with their song Terrifying. Anne and Jack had incredible popularity as artists. They were like a magnet as well as a money field for businessmen in the entertainment world. Unfortunately, a tragic incident occurred, Anne and Jack committed suicide in the middle of the last concert on New Year's Eve. A big riot occurred as a result of that. Hundreds of spectators died from crowding and trampling each other when they wanted to get out of the area to save themselves. Not to stop with these conditions, the next day the three states where Anne and Jack performed concerts experienced a major hurricane disaster. Many people died and hundreds of major public facilities were badly damaged. People began to associate the song Terrifying with a curse. They assumed that Anne and Jack were involved in the illuminati sect and worshiped Lucifer. As a result, the authorities banned the song's circulation in all media and destroyed millions of copies. Since then, Terrifying has never been heard from again, and Anne and Jack's names have sunk to the bottom of the deepest trough. -*- In October 2023, a group of teenagers broke into an old house to live stream on TikTok. They found a cassette tape containing the song Terrifying. And without realizing it, they've brought back a long-lost terror!