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January, 2007
She's lost her touch. . . Superheroine Risa Remington once had the power to read thoughts and emotions with a stroke of her fingertips. Until a lab accident changed everything. Now Risa has to learn to live in the real world virgin territory for a girl who's never experienced life, love, or sex. He comes to her rescue. . . CIA agent Daniel MacAlister has orders to babysit gorgeous Risa. She can't fall into the wrong hands she knows too much. But when Risa falls into his bed one night soft, warm and naked he's forced to go on alert. Because his mere sexual touch seems to have triggered her superpowers. And if she finds out what's really on his mind, it's game over. Literally. Awards2008 Rita Finalist
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Book ReviewsRomance Junkies, Sarah W., "UNTOUCHED will not
leave you untouched. It's serious, loving, amusing, and suspenseful. Four stars!"
Romantic Times, Paige Traynor, "Great layers of characterization, sizzling sex, an innovative plot and surprises combine in Samantha Hunter's Untouched (4 1/2 Stars), a wonderfully emotional adventure. "
Cataromance, Debby Guyette, "Sinfully sensuous and full of suspenseful danger, Untouched by Samantha Hunter is sure to ignite your senses as it stirs your emotions. Untouched is not to be missed. Samantha Hunter has another winner on her hands.4 1/2 Stars!"
Harriet Klausner Reviews, Harriet Klausner, "This is a terrific romantic suspense thriller with a touch of the paranormal and starring a delightful lead pair. Samantha Hunter entertains readers with a wonderful tale."
Coffee Time Romance, Matilda, "Untouched is a steamy, romantic page-turner that includes a bit of the paranormal. Incredible characters and a great storyline are just two reasons to read this book. Nail biting thrills is another. Full of suspense and romance, Untouched will not disappoint."
Reader ReviewsMadeline, PA I think it's the best one you have written and definitely very different than your usual books. I promise that readers won't be disappointed.
Genie, email I just finished the book and I'm so glad I bought it!
Stacy, NY Your best one yet.
Michelle, Adwoff I'm reading Untouched right now and loving it. What a great read and I look forward to whatever is coming next. You've definitely got a fan in me
Janine, Canada Risa and Daniel totally rocked!
Debbie S, online WOW! Great Book. I cannot believe how great it was!
Nicole, Amazon A great read for those who enjoy general fiction, as well as romantic novels.
Linda D, email It was excellent to the point that I couldn't put it down!
Frieda H, online Has a science fiction, ala Feehan, touch to it. A very good read.
Excerpt from UntouchedFrom Untouched...Risa sighed, eyeing the Daiquiri glasses longingly, but picking up the coffee cup. Facing him squarely. "So do you want to tell me what you're doing here?" With Kristy out of earshot, Risa's request was matter of fact and openly suspicious as she crossed her arms over her chest and pinned him with that beautiful blue glare. "I'm just here to see how you're doing." "That's it? I thought. . . I was wondering if you'd. . . ." She stopped herself, looking down. "What did you think, Risa?" "I thought you might be here to tell me they wanted me back." He blinked, taken off guard by the vulnerability and the raw appeal in her eyes. Had she always been this beautiful? How could he not have noticed? Of course, she had too much alcohol in her system, so she wasn't as in control of herself as she'd normally be, but she was charming, all the same. She thought he was here to bring her back into service? Before he could think of a response, she spoke quickly, filling the silence. "I'd asked Dr. Laslow about retraining me for field work, you know, as a regular agent. He wouldn't hear of it. He said I'd been through enough and should just go enjoy life, but what is there to enjoy? I don't know how to do any of it. You know, normal things." "I'm sure that's not true." Daniel didn't know what he expected, but it wasn't this floodgate of emotion and questions. She'd wanted to stay with the agency, retrain? And Laslow had refused her? He supposed the doctor had his reasons, but if Risa had wanted to stay with the agency, wouldn't that have been a viable way of retaining her loyalty and avoiding the situation they were in now? He made a mental note to check out the reasons Risa's request was denied. "I hate it. Shopping, making friends, the things that other people do every day and we don't." We. She felt a connection with him, a link to the only world she'd known, one that had made sense to her. He could use that. She'd allowed him to see a weakness, an opening for him to get inside her life and find out what he needed to know. "I'm not here to rehire you, Risa," he ignored how the stricken disappointment on her face plucked at him as he continued, "But I am here to help. Jack White asked me to see how you were adjusting. To do what I could to help, while I'm here visiting my family." "So that woman, the pregnant woman, she really was--" "My sister? Yes. The youngest of five of us." She turned away, and Daniel didn't move, but waited for her to process what she'd been told. The sounds of the bar in the building behind them fell to the background. "I don't know what to do. I'm making a mess of it. I don't belong anywhere." The way she spoke the words in a voice coarse with sadness, he had no choice but to think she was being sincere, maybe even more so with her inhibitions lowered. Either way, Jack was right; they had a problem. In this psychological condition, Risa would be ripe for the picking if someone came along and offered her something to hold on to. It might as well be him. "Let me help, Risa. I know the area, I know people here. They were wrong, Laslow, the rest of them, to just throw you out into the world and expect you to adjust." "I don't think I can. I feel cut off from everything, nothing is right." Tears spilled on to her cheeks, and he suspected the Risa Remington he'd stood by out in the field would be completely mortified by that show of weakness if she were sober, but at the moment, she let them fall without even raising a hand. He reached over, rubbing one from her cheek with the pad of his thumb. Her skin was like satin, and he had a hard time pulling his hand away. "Believe me, sweetheart, people have a hard time in this world every day, even when they've lived in it their whole lives. You're not as different as you think you are. We all screw it up. Everyday." The noises in the bar fell to the background as he studied her face, the seductive curiosity in her eyes. "Is that what you did? Screwed up?" "What do you mean?" "When you kissed me today." "Do you want an apology?" She looked at him closely. "No. I want. . . ." He was almost afraid to ask. "What?" Her eyelashes were impossibly thick, and seemed to brush the soft skin of her cheek when she looked down, then up again. "I think I'd like you to do it again." He took a deep breath, more affected than he wanted to be by her words. "You're drunk." "Less than I was an hour ago. I know what I'm saying. Don't treat me like a child." She rose abruptly and walked toward the door, and he barely had time to throw some bills on the table and follow her before she was already in the parking lot. "Risa, wait," he followed her to the car he'd seen her drive away in with Kristy, and grabbed her wrist. "It's cold — don't you have a jacket?" The icy glare she shot in his direction stopped him short. Maybe he did sound like he was treating her like a child, though he hadn't meant to. "Here, take mine," He slipped the leather jacket off of his shoulders and handed it to her. After a moment, she took it and slipped it on — it dwarfed her, making her look smaller, more vulnerable. Good. That's perhaps what he needed to keep temptation at bay. It would be so easy to take her up on her offer, but it would also be wrong. She was vulnerable and she was inebriated, and Daniel didn't take advantage of women in that state. Not sexually, anyway. However, if he could use this to get inside her apartment, that was a different matter. "Let me take you back to your place." A flirty look replaced her miff, and she stepped closer, running her hand lightly down the front of his chest. "Don't you want to know why I want you to kiss me, Daniel? I haven't liked anyone touching me since the accident, but you're different." In spite of his best efforts, she'd hooked him. "Why?" "When I touch people now, I feel nothing, see nothing. It's like everything around me is dead, and I feel disconnected from the world. Unsafe, alone." She stepped closer yet, and continued. "But when you touched me, when you kissed me, I didn't feel that way. It was. . .different." "Different how?" Did he really want to wander down this path of questions? Too late. "Warm, safe. For the first time in months, I felt connected to someone. Like I could almost feel what was going on inside of you, too." "Do you mean you could read me? Are your powers working?" His mind froze, and he grabbed her shoulders. But she shook her head. "No, no. Not like that. It was just. . .there was something. I could feel things, though your kiss. Not literally, like before, but in a different way." She reached up, feathering her fingers over his lips, and he tried to reason. She couldn't read him, he realized with no small bit of relief — if she could, there was no way she'd be getting this close to him right now. She was sexually inexperienced — kissing him was just another way for her to connect with her old life, who she was. It made her feel like she was connecting with someone. "It was my first one, you know." "First what?" He'd lost track. He was an experienced CIA operative, he'd been in hundreds of life and death situations, taken on missions that made action movies look like comic books, and yet here he stood, completely undone by the touch of a woman's hand. "First kiss. When you kissed me in the store, that was the first time anyone's kissed me since my parents were alive. It was the absolute first time a man has kissed me." Her sad confession was also an invitation, and one he found hard to resist; he closed his hand around hers and pulled her closer. "Dammit, Risa." He shook his head, knowing it was wrong, but knowing he had to do it anyway. "That wasn't nearly special enough to qualify as a first kiss." "It wasn't?" "No. It was just for show, to shut you up before you got yourself in more trouble. So let's try again." He went in slow this time, studying her features in the dim light from the bar's neon sign, how it gave her an almost otherworldly glow. Her hair was like silk, and he closed his eyes for a second at the erotic softness of it as he pushed it back from her face, observing the gentle slope of her jaw as he traced his hand along its line. Her lips were parted, and short, expectant breaths asked him to hurry, but he wasn't going to hurry. Not this time. This wasn't a put-on for whoever was watching, not a cover for his mission. It was just him, Daniel MacAlister, standing under a sky devoid of moonlight, kissing a woman who had never been properly kissed before, and wanting to do it right. When he finally took her mouth, she still tasted of strawberries, and lime. . .and sheer, female lust. It was intoxicating, and she leaned into him again in that soft, pliable way that made him instantly hard. He couldn't remember ever having such a hair-trigger reaction to a woman. He reminded himself to take care, to go slow, but the delighted moan that she let go into his mouth made it difficult. Her kiss drove him to imagine what she'd be like naked, underneath him, and the desire was so sharp to find out that he groaned with it. "Open more for me, Risa. Let me in," he whispered against her lips, and she did as he requested, her head falling recklessly back onto the arm he'd wrapped around her shoulders as he loosened a few strands of control and tasted the sweeter, darker secrets of her mouth. Teeth clashed, tongues swept over each other as they explored and tasted. She was a quick study, kissing him back with fervent desire, open need. It was his turn to groan, the sound of desire pulled from the deepest parts of him, echoing between them as he lost himself in the kiss, barely noticing how tightly her hands gripped his waist. He didn't care if he ever breathed again, and the realization of how lost he was, how deeply effected the kiss left him, made him pull back abruptly, breaking the contact with startling quickness. She stumbled, falling against him lightly. He steadied her, trying to catch his breath, looking around, trying to excuse his less than suave behavior. "I thought I heard someone come out." She was at least as affected as he was, her face flushed, her eyes wide and dark in the absence of light. He couldn't stop himself from reaching forward one more time, and cupped her cheek, trying to reassert his calm. Risa was dangerous. Maybe not in the way the CIA feared, but she was like a drug. He licked his lips watching hers, and wanted nothing more than to taste her again. "Hey — is everything okay? Risa?" Kristy's voice broke the spell, and they stepped apart as she and Ben approached. It helped clear Daniel's mind, and he reminded himself to do much more thorough background checks on both of them. He also needed to check out the surveillance Risa had mentioned — what was she up to back in that apartment of hers? And how much did Kristy really know? "I'm fine," he heard Risa reassure her friend, and was amazed that she'd recovered more quickly than he did, sounding perfectly normal. "Risa, I was kind of hoping, if you two are good, that maybe Daniel could give you a ride home? Ben's asked me to a party." Before Risa could speak, Daniel reassured Kristy and Ben that was fine — he was happy to take Risa back to her place. To Kristy's credit, she waited until she had a solid okay from Risa, too. Daniel's mind clicked back into work mode as they walked to his car. Taking Risa home would give him a chance to check out her apartment, at the very least — not to be seduced by Risa, but to find out if she posed a significant threat or not. After that, he had to stay away from her, because one thing was for sure: whether Risa was dangerous in her capacity as a former superhero and government agent, one thing he knew for sure was that getting too close to Risa the woman posed a serious threat to him. |   | |
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