Natalie Damschroder - Heavy Metal

Megan Hart deserves a massive thanks for taking time out of her own insane schedule to read a draft of this book and provide the cover quote. Smith, Simon, and Bix, thank you for listening to my rants and giddiness and making this journey so much fun, even when it’s frustrating. And thank you, Lisa Mondello, for slapping me upside the head with genuine affection whenever I start spiraling.

Every book I write also owes a great deal to my family. Jim, Dakota, and McKenna, thank you so much for your unwavering support and understanding when I’m lost in my fictional worlds or crazy on deadline. Thank you for celebrating every silly little victory with me, for telling everyone with pride that I’m an author, and for helping me live my dream. I love you.

Natalie J. Damschroder writes high-stakes romantic adventure, sometimes with a paranormal bent. Since 2000, she’s published ten novels, seven novellas, and fourteen short stories, many of them exploring magical abilities, but all with a romantic core. She currently lives in Pennsylvania with her perfect partner of a husband and two daughters who are so amazing, they’ve been dubbed “anti-teenagers.” Learn more about her at her website, www.nataliedamschroder.com, follow her on Twitter @NJDamschroder, or friend her on Facebook at /nataliedamschroder.

Turn the page for a flashback to

the first book in the Goddesses Rising series

Society views goddesses the same way they view psychics—

most people don’t believe in us, and since there are only about a hundred goddesses in the United States, skeptics rarely have occasion to be proven wrong. Some people have open minds but still no reason to seek to use a goddess’s talents. If you choose a public career as a goddess, you join in the responsibility for image maintenance.

Help us keep public opinion positive.

—The Society for Goddess Education and Defense,

Public Relations Handbook

When Quinn Caldwell’s cell phone rang, she assumed one of her clients needed an appointment or a Society member had a question about next week’s annual meeting. It took her a second to pull her attention from the paperwork on her desk, another three to register the name on the screen.

Nick Jarrett.

Her spark of joy at seeing his name quickly changed to concern. He wouldn’t be calling for anything good. Quinn plugged her ear against the noise from the bar outside her office door, held her breath, and flipped open the phone. “Nick?”

“Quinn.” The rumble of his vintage Charger’s engine harmonized with Nick’s voice. “Service isn’t good out here so just listen.”

She knew it. “What’s wrong?”

“We have a problem. I’m coming early. I’ll explain when I get there. I won’t have a very good cell signal most of the time. I’m at least a day away, so stay close to Sam, and don’t…” His voice cut in and out before disappearing altogether.

Quinn’s skin prickled. She closed the phone, frowning. Nick never came until at least the week before new moon, when she was most vulnerable. In the fifteen years of their relationship, he’d never come a whole week early.

Something big had to be happening.

Quinn was the only goddess whose power source was the full moon, which meant she was only fully able to use her abilities for the seven days around it. As the month waned, she grew more “normal” until the new-moon period, when she had no ability to tap the power. That was when Nick appeared. Never now.

“Who was that?” Sam’s solid, warm hand landed on her shoulder, and he dropped a pile of papers on the desk in front of her. Quinn blinked at the shift from the surreal nature of the phone call to the mundane clutter of her narrow office at the back of Under the Moon, the central-Ohio bar she’d inherited from her father. It was her main business, a connection to the parents who died within months of each other twelve years ago, leaving her without any real family. It also kept her connected to the public between power cycles. The goddesses who made a living with their abilities mostly relied on word of mouth to find clients, and Quinn’s bar, centrally located for locals and travelers, had enough people channeling through it to give her customers for both businesses.

“Nobody,” she said, still lost in thought. She shook off the fog. “I mean, Nick.”

Sam’s eyebrows disappeared under his dark, shaggy bangs. He crossed to his smaller but far more organized desk near the office door. His chair squeaked when he dropped into it. “Nick called you?”

“Yeah. He’s coming early.”

“Great.” Sam glowered and mumbled something under his breath. “Why? The moon is barely waning gibbous.”

“I don’t know. The signal dropped.” She worried her lower lip. Stay close to Sam . Why? The order was protective—and after all, Nick was her protector, so that was his default mode—but what did she need protection from? She rubbed her right forearm, the phantom ache a reminder of the first time Nick had been assigned to her, that “goddess” wasn’t a synonym for “invincible.”

Sam sighed. “When is he getting here?”

“I don’t know that, either.” She rested her head on her hand, her elbow on a pile of folders on her worn oak desktop. The full moon would completely wane by tomorrow, taking most of her power with it, so she’d worked steadily for the last week, using mostly telekinesis and her healing ability to help her clients. She hadn’t slept enough to balance the depletion of her normal energy, and her sluggish brain resisted the apprehension buzzing in her now.

“We’ll have to wait until he shows up, I guess.” She shook off the mental fuzzies and focused on Sam. He watched her, longing mixing with concern in his light brown eyes.

“How long did you sleep?” he asked.

She stifled a yawn. “Seven hours, six minutes.”

He shook his head. “That’s not enough.”

“Gonna have to be. It sounds like we have a full house tonight.”

“It’s busy for a Tuesday,” he acknowledged. Murmurs and laughter mixed with the jukebox music filtering in from the main room. It was still early, too.

“Bets and Katie are both sick, so they probably need us out there.” She stood and stretched, closing her eyes briefly and arching with her arms high. He didn’t answer. “Sam?” She caught him staring at the stretch of skin bared by her sweatshirt and tugged it over the waistband of her jeans. Heat seeped through her, dragging tingles in its wake. Did he notice her skin flush?

He gave himself a little shake and pulled his gaze away. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess.” But he scowled.

Quinn propped her hands on her hips. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” He sat up and shifted papers on his desk, but she knew it wasn’t “nothing.”

“Sam.”

He sighed. “We need to talk. You’ve put me off all week, and now we’ve got Nick…”

Shit. She had hoped Nick coming early would put an end to this debate. She dragged her cotton apron off the back of her chair and busied herself tying it. “I’d better get to work.”

But Sam didn’t get up. His voice was low and deep when he said, “Why didn’t you come to me?”

Her hands stilled, and she avoided his steady gaze by checking for her order pad and pen. “You know why.”

“I’m still here.” He stood and came around the desk, and she couldn’t help but look at him now. He dwarfed her, filling her vision, his scent flooding her senses, feeding the grinding need she’d battled for weeks. She kept her lids shuttered so he couldn’t see the inevitable dilation of her pupils and take the reaction the wrong way. Her moon lust knew what Sam could give her, her body giving a Pavlovian response to his nearness.