Today’s Sunday Shoutout goes to Lynn Turner, whose spectacular new ballet romance story Pas de Deux is now available from Amazon and other online retailers of romantic fiction. Take it away, Lynn!

They were never meant to be perfect…their pieces wouldn’t fit together that way.

It’s said the artist is born of a damaged soul…

Wilhelmina Allende is a prima ballerina. When tragedy turns her beloved Paris into a gilded cage, she jumps at the chance to work with one of the most prolific choreographers she’s ever seen. But Zack’s style is way out of her comfort zone. So is his teaching method. And his humor. And his everything. He’s a charming little connard. It’s hard not to like him. Merde. What has she gotten herself into?

Zachary Coen’s first musical is opening on Broadway. Much like his life, it’s anything but conventional, so hiring Mina is simply out of the question. She’s too…classical. Too perfect. She’s all wrong for the role. Then he meets her in person and sees her cracks. Her broken pieces. How unique and beautiful each one is. And he can’t help but notice how her edges seem to fit his…perfectly.

Just when teaming up seems to be working, the monsters they’ve kept hidden threaten to rip it all apart.

Story Excerpt

The warehouse in Brooklyn housed three massive dance floors crammed with hundreds of sweating bodies. The bouncers took one look at them and let them skip the line. Walking through the doors, Mina was hit with thick, sultry heat. It was dark. Very dark, but for flashes of strobe lights alighting on wall-to-wall bodies. They moved like they were in a trance, the bass thumping so hard, it shook the building and seemed to beat from within their ribs. Clutching at Zack’s arm, another nocturnal animal bumped into her, his eyes practically rolling to the back of his head in pure ecstasy.

She tugged Zack’s arm until his ear bent to her lips. “Are these people on drugs?”

His body shook with laughter. “Better than drugs, petite. This atmosphere is like a high. You forget about how you look or what you’re doing. The music goes right through you and you just move.”

She wasn’t sure how they were able to move—the floor was sticky. Watching a trio of dancers doing something that looked illegal, she tried not to think about the biological hazards stuck to the bottom of her Italian leather shoes.

She squinted against the purple and blue light. “This place should come with an epilepsy warning!”

A flash of purple lit his face, highlighting his freshly shaven jawline, the sensual curve of his lips, and she completely lost her train of thought. Her eyes trailed his body slowly, progressing a little more each time a strobe lit him up again. He looked sexy and dangerous in this light, like a demigod in all black.

“It’s great, isn’t it?” sexy demigod’s lips asked.

Her mouth suddenly went dry. “Not the word I’d use. I think I need a drink.”

“Uh-uh, no alcohol. This is homework. No cheating.”

“But I’m French!”

“Nothing I can do about that.” He shrugged his shoulder against her retaliatory slap and led them through the sea of bodies.

Stopping somewhere in the middle, where writhing bodies pressed against them on all sides, he brought his hands to her hips and pulled her to him. Instinctively, her arms went around his shoulders, holding onto him, she convinced herself, for fear of slipping into the human sea. Besides, it was the only way she could hear.

“Zack…”

“No mirrors, petite.” He gave her an encouraging squeeze. “No one’s looking at you but me.”

Then he looked at her.

Bon Dieu, did he look at her.

He studied her body like a map of the cosmos was hidden beneath her skin.

There was nothing lustful in his eyes, only wonder—a desire to be completely attuned with her and the way she moved. It was sensual by nature, in the way it made her feel stripped down to her being—her very existence—and only he could see. It made her feel sexy and fearless…and safe.

Staring into the shadows of his face, she lifted her arms above her head to do as they would. The bassline came at her from every direction, throbbing through her veins, exiting from the points of her fingers and toes. The darkness made her bold, and a new energy rose inside her. The atmosphere became heady, making her more drunk on it with every breath, until she moved her entire body like a boneless addict chasing the next beat.

For a full phrase, he continued to watch her, and there was something in his expression, in the intensity of his eyes, that made her lightheaded: she was the Mina he’d been waiting for, the one he’d seen in Paris beneath the façade of the makeup, the fancy dress and the grand chandeliers of the Palais Garnier…the one who had cried on his shoulder and come apart in his arms. Comfortable in her own skin.

Winding her body, she slinked her arms like reeds in a slow breeze, meeting his eyes with every flash of light. He rubbed his cheek along hers, following her movement with his hands, feeling every muscle beneath thin fabric and sensitized skin. He stroked her stomach with his palm, and she sucked it in hard.

“Sorry, petite…” He kissed her cheek, then seemed to indulge himself a moment, running his hands along her hips until they settled on her waist. “That’s not what this is, what we came here for.”

She melted at the sincerity in his voice, in the warmth of his touch. “What did we come here for?”

His grin spread against her cheek. “Trust falls.”

Where To Buy

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iBooks

About the Author

Lynn Turner is dedicated to writing inclusive stories that explore what it means to be imperfectly human. She is convinced she would have made a great Gilmore Girl, that writing about herself in third-person is weird, and that Colin Firth is the best Mr. Darcy (don’t fight her on this). When she isn’t writing and adulting, she’s tackling her monstrous TBR list, TV-binging, traveling, or watching old Samantha Brown travelogue videos and wishing she had her job. She and her husband share their home in California with their two extraordinary children and their sometimes cat, Bowie.