Furry, Fluffy & Wild is a wolf shifter anthology available through Liquid Silver Books and includes my novella Blue Moon Rising which actually kicks off the “Shifting Bonds” series. This is the story where I first fell in love with Jayda Kynslan, a veterinarian who hasn’t yet met the shifter within…

Please enjoy this excerpt:

Chapter One

Jayda Kynslan sauntered into the Whip and Bull Tavern wanting only two things: a cold beer and a hot c**k. The first she hoped would ease the heavy ache in her chest. The second would be attached to a good-looking man who would replace the images of the jackass who’d broken her heart. This whole road trip to the high mountains of Montana had been a knee-jerk reaction to the asshole’s selfishness. Jayda shook her head, clearing away thoughts of the friggin’ pig of a manwhore. She didn’t want to go there tonight. This night was about getting a little buzz and a lot of sex.

Her first objective was only as far away as the bar on the other side of the room. But weaving her way through the handful of empty tables, her red cowboy boots crunching on the peanut shells strewn on the marred floor, Jayda realized finding someone to fulfill the second thing on her wish list wasn’t going to be as easy. She’d picked a bad night to go cruising for male flesh in a nearly empty bar that seemed to cater to the college crowd.

Plunking her voluptuous ass on one of the padded barstools, Jayda lifted her hand to the bartender. Some might consider Jayda fat, but she liked to think of her size-sixteen frame as curving in all the right places. Why men would go for the little waifs with nothing to hold on to, like the petite blonde behind the bar, was beyond her understanding.

“Bud Lite,” she said to the female bartender, who looked only slightly less bored than she felt at the moment. Except for football season, which had already passed, Jayda figured Monday nights, even in a cowboy town like Lonesome Fork, weren’t really big tavern nights for most people.

The woman’s ponytail swayed as she set down the bottle, offered a glass, which Jayda refused, and slid over the bowl of peanuts. Jayda hadn’t eaten since lunch–just before leaving the clinic. Anticipation had kept her driving through the mountains, but now her stomach rumbled, reminding her she hadn’t bothered to fix herself dinner before leaving the cabin, either. Grabbing a handful of nuts, she scanned the reflections of the patrons in the mirror behind the bar, searching for possible targets.

Tonight, she decided, would be her last go-around with the opposite sex–unadulterated, uncomplicated coitus with a complete stranger. A nice memory to hold onto in the quiet of the night when she was alone in her bed. She didn’t want to need a man. She was a successful vet in a big practice–it should be enough.

After tonight, she’d spend the week in solitude at her friend’s mountain cabin, mending her shredded heart, and planting her feet solidly on the path to celibacy. Obviously, two weeks drowning her sorrows with tears hadn’t helped. Men, she’d come to believe, were nothing but scumbags of trouble on the garbage heap of misery. The sooner she cleared them from her mind, the happier she’d be.

Jayda had chosen this evening’s outfit to accent her best features. Her ass was swaddled in her favorite pair of soft Levi’s, and her cleavage was displayed quite nicely in the white cashmere sweater. Her clothes definitely announced, “I’m yours for the taking.”

She hadn’t wanted to mess with the corkscrew curls of her hair while traveling the ninety minutes from her condo in Blackfish Springs to the cabin in Lonesome Fork, so she’d pulled the whole mess into a long French braid. The thick tail of black curled over her shoulder and draped invitingly over her breast.

Unable to make out faces in the murky light of the tavern, Jayda gave up on her sly inspection of the clientele and kicked the stool a half turn. Leaning one elbow on the padded edge of the bar, she casually sipped her beer, assessing her chances of getting laid.