Showing results by narrator "Michael Norman Johnson" in All Categories

All it takes is one glance and I know Jordan is going to be mine. Her sweet smile and infectious energy make me feel alive again. She chases away the shadows, giving me a reason to continue on. But just as I’m beginning to win the elusive beauty over trouble comes for my family. I may be a veteran with PTSD and a member of a notorious motorcycle club, but both have given me skills that allow me to address any threat and win. I refuse to let my past dictate my future, and convincing Jordan to trust me is a matter of life and death.

Nate just wants to be left in peace to study without his brother Harrison’s hockey teammates hanging around and getting on his nerves. Until he sees a familiar tattoo on a gay dating app belonging to the hockey team’s tough guy Jesse. When Harrison asks him to tutor Jesse for a class he is failing, maybe Nate can discover if it really is Jesse on that app? Jesse is used to being called dumb, but being tutored by his captain’s younger brother in a subject he doesn’t even study is humiliating.

There’s nothing more important than family. It’s what I live for, what I’ve always lived for. So, when I’m forced to step back from the one girl I’m dying to claim as my own, it wrecks me. But when family asks you to keep a secret, you do it. No questions asked. I only hope that when the truth comes to light, the woman I can’t get out of my head gives me another chance. A chance to show her I could be her knight in beat-up leather if only she’d let me.

Infuriating, sexy and seemingly everywhere, Penn Barnett is far too sexy for his own good. It seems like every woman in Rockhead Point has had a taste of the mountain man, and I can definitely see the appeal. When I literally fall into his orbit, he tells me I'm his the moment our eyes meet. But my life is anything but simple, and right now I just don't have the time or energy for another complication in my world no matter how hot he is. Only he isn't prepared to take no for an answer and he's determined to make me his.

I had love once and lost it. Never again. That’s why I told myself she’s off limits—forbidden. It doesn’t matter that she’s as sexy and courageous as she is unexpected. Or that I can’t get her out of my mind. I’m not her happily ever after. So, I’ll help her investigate why people are going missing in the desert. But I’ll keep my hands—and my heart—to myself.

It only took one look to know I was a goner. I’d never be able to forget the sweet smile and sinful curves I’d only glimpsed before she’d been ripped away. The girl in the desert was a prisoner, and I was going to set her free. All it would take was infiltrating a dangerous cult. No big deal, right? Except I’d be going in alone. Without my motorcycle club brothers riding at my back, it was up to me to get her out. Getting into the cult will be easy. Convincing her to trust me will be something else entirely…

Fool's Play is the first book in a new series in the System Apocalypse universe. Written by David R. Packer in Tao Wong's bestselling post-apocalyptic LitRPG universe, System Apocalypse: Kismet follows a different path through a post-apocalyptic world, one of hope, redemption, and second chances.

He would kill to steal her heart. I would die to protect it. It isn’t the woman at my feet, her heart ripped from her chest and her lifeless eyes staring up at me that knocks the air from my lungs when I’m called to café Mon Félicité. It’s her. Gorgeous, successful, sharp-tongued Danielle Walsh. The only witness to this brutal crime makes my blood pump hotter and faster every time I see her. And when it becomes clear she’s more than just a witness, I’ll do whatever it takes to keep her safe.

It's scary how much life can change in an instant. One minute I'm preparing for a new school year in my San Diego town, and the next I'm being ripped from my childhood home. Making the cut from my father's death two years ago that much deeper. Not only am I being forced to leave a place that reminds me so much of him, but I'm being forced to move hundreds of miles across the country to a city I've only learned about through Mom and social media.

I’m tired. My life has been filled with disappointments, sadness, and pain. I’m hated by everyone besides my best friend. Until the captain of the hockey team falls on top of me. His eyes are as blue as the ice he plays on, and his smile fills me with warmth I’ve never felt before. Shane Hawkins. The man everyone’s friends with, now has me in his sights and he’s not showing any signs of letting me go. Even through my anxiety and messed up mind, he’s still there. And I don’t understand why.

For Fool and Jackal, the System Apocalypse was a chance to start again. A chance to rise, and be who they were meant to be. Now, they're trying to offer others the same opportunities as part of a secret organization helping humanity survive the System. Today's mission? Nothing big, just your typical save-the-princess quest. But when you're the Acolyte of a Trickster god, typical is the last thing you should expect. Just ask Fool's cat.

These stories and more are featured in the third short story anthology for the System Apocalypse, continuing the saga of survival in a world transformed by the arrival of the System. Humanity has adapted to a new reality filled with Classes, magic and monsters, but the struggle for life, love and purpose never ends. This anthology brings together gripping tales from returning authors and two new short stories by Tao Wong.

Darkness always works overtime. It thrives in the depravity of grown men. Hardening hearts and leaving them empty. It destroys everything and everyone it touches. Now it's coming for our innocent beacon of light. Stronger than she knows, but still so fragile. In the fight of her life, all I can do is watch. There's no outlaw justice for what she's facing. No protection from the cold realities of life and death. But there's also no limit to what I would do for her.

Death before dishonor. It's the most important rule and the easiest to break. Riding with the Knightdale Charter isn't my first choice. But home is where you go when you leave your heart in a pine box. Grief is like a magnet, and I'm surrounded by shadows. Living life among the darkness, just like her. She's buried an even bigger piece of herself than I have. And all she wants is to finally find the light.

Greed. Power. Sin. It all comes with the gavel. Blurs the lines between church and state. But the Knightdale Charter of the Satan's Knights MC is my life. And I'd do anything for this club. Like letting the best woman I ever had slip through my fingertips. A sinfully beautiful spitfire, she's my better half in every way. My twin flame. My everything. My biggest regret. But there's no making things right between us.

I fell in love with Charles “Double-D” Brothers when I was just 16 years old. He was 19 and had just patched into the Aces High MC in Charleston, SC. The falling in love part didn’t matter though, because our life - our love - wasn’t destined to be an easy one. In the beginning - I was too young, he was too wild, and my family was able to send me away to keep us apart. Later, when I was 20 and he was 23 our paths crossed again. This time he was the one ready for me, but I wasn’t quite there yet.

Arianne Capizola is her father’s daughter. Humble. Hardworking. Honest. She’d rather spend her days helping at the local shelter than brushing shoulders with her vain and entitled classmates. Niccolò Marchetti is his father’s son. Dark. Dangerous. Deceitful. He’d rather spend his days getting bloody in the ring than attending class and keeping up pretenses.

I'm a vampire hunter, a legacy meant only to care about killing monsters. But all I've ever cared about is Sebastian. I'm enamored... obsessed. Stalking him and manipulating fate to keep us together. We were assigned to Visamar Academy, where a group of powerful vampires gorge on the rich. I failed him as a partner and he paid the ultimate pricethe worst thing that can happen to a hunter.

All Ambrose Drake wants is a quiet life. Too bad he’s the most notorious sorcerer in the Hallowed World—with a demon queen from the Seventh Hunger stuck in his head. Once a top operative for the Crown, the secret society policing magic and the horrors beneath our world, Ambrose took a wrong turn into the underworld and picked up an unwelcome hitchhiker. Now, the demon queen wants out, the Crown wants him leashed, and supernatural nightmares keep landing at his doorstep.

Arianne Capizola is living a lie. Angry. Abandoned. Afraid. She'd rather spend her days locked away on her father's estate than with the guy who stole her innocence: her fiancé. Niccolò Marchetti is living a nightmare. Broken. Banished. Betrayed. He'd do anything to save the girl he loves, even if it means paying the ultimate price.