Marvelous Monday Reads: One Hour Girl @LeTeishaNewton @AnchoredBooksPR
Happy Monday, folks! Today I have LeTeisha Newton on to talk about her new book One Hour Girl, coming on February 29, 2016. Take it away, LeTeisha!
What drove you to create One Hour Girl?
Because it was time. I think that One Hour Girl, for me, is a piece I created to speak to so many women out there that are victims of domestic or child abuse and how they survived it. It doesn’t have to be a public badge anyone wears, but it can fiddle with everyday life, the way you look at yourself, and how you deal with others. Celeste was a woman who used negative coping mechanisms to get through her past and it took an equally messed up man to help her. But he wasn’t all about making himself her source of happiness. He wanted her to love herself and see herself the same way he did, and that helped her heal. Isn’t that how life is? How love should be?
What is the Lost Series?
The point of the Lost Series was to create a series of stand-alone books that could be read completely separate, with no overlap, and no cliffhangers. They are tied by a common theme of lost souls, real people, finding love they way they have to. One Hour Girl is a gritty contemporary romance, and the flagship book. Scarred, Book 2, is more a dark romance with BDSM elements. Phenomenal, Book 2.5 is a MMA Fighter romance about an underdog fighter who has lost everything struggling to get to the top again, and the woman who is willing to help him get there. Each of the books, and the ensuing ones to come, wil satisfy different readers, and that’s what I was going for.
Totally get that. So how did you pick your hero and heroine?
I’m one of those authors that know my characters faces long before I write their stories. They are real to me. I know them, and I live them. Royce was drool worthy and I needed to give him an equally beautiful heroine. Because of the world they live in,their looks mattered quite a bit. Celeste moonlights as a high-dollar escort. Royce is L.A.’s most eligible bachelor. That contrasts with darker, rougher Ethan and River of Scarred, Book 2. They are equally scarred physically and mentally. Their look is much different. My characters look like their worlds.
So you already have the other books in the works?!
Oh yeah! Don’t want to leave my readers in a lurch LOL! One Hour Girl is out in February 2016, Scarred in May of 2016, and Phenomenal will be in a NOLA Boxed set with 8 other AMAZING authors, so we will keep that a bit under wraps, in August 2016!
He thinks I’m his forever girl, I saw it in his eyes. I wished I could have slapped the look off his face and hit him with the same jarring finality I’d learned I didn’t mean shit.
I’m not a forever sort of girl.
I’m not even his for the night.
He’ll be lucky if I’m his for the next hour if he doesn’t pay me for it.
And then Royce Mattherson stormed my defenses. Took all the poison inside of me and pushed it out through my pores. He tasted the taint on my skin and still decided to love me. He terrifies me. Exhilarates me. Frustrates me.
And he always gets what he wants.
Always…
Story Excerpt
I watched Celeste’s eyes widen and she tried to shift from under me, coming out of the daze as she looked over at the hustling waiter. I gripped her hips, pinning her beneath me.
“You aren’t going anywhere,” I assured her. “You seemed to have ruined my dinner, and I’m famished.”
I licked my lips, feeling desire and pride swell within me as her gaze tracked my movement and a warm flush appeared under her skin. I pressed my hips between her legs, hissing at the heat of her pussy against my cloth covered cock.
“I think I’ve found something to eat…right…here,” I told her, letting go of her hip to push my hand between us and cup her sex.
She moaned, head tossed back. I waited long enough for the waiter to run behind the counter and away before I claimed her mouth again. This was my place, my money, my rules. No one would disturb us, and I wanted to see how wild she could get. I wanted to control her.
I rubbed my fingers against her in a circular motion as I devoured her mouth. She gripped at my jacket, pushing it off my shoulders. It couldn’t fall to the floor because I wouldn’t stop caressing her, but it was out of her way enough that she went for my shirt next. Buttons popped as she ripped my shirt open and ran her nails down my chest.
Ground zero.
My cock was hard and pulsing in my pants. I moved my hand from between us and ground against her. She cried out, rolling her hips against me. I liked that. I fucking loved how she gave into her passion. She didn’t fight it, she didn’t apologize for it. The way she responded to me made me feel like a god.
I sucked my way down the side of her neck, paying attention to any hitch of breath, and shift of her body. I noticed that her nails dug when I nipped over her pulse. She sucked in a breath when I traced her cleavage with my tongue. Her breath rushed out in a whoosh when I pulled the neck of her dress down far enough to suck her nipple into my mouth, bra and all.
I noted it all, and logged it to memory. She was mine. So what if it didn’t make sense? So what if I was fighting an uphill battle against a woman who didn’t believe in giving herself. We weren’t talking about love. We were talking about enjoying a spark with another person that we’d never feel again.
I could give her everything she needed, but the emotions. She just needed to learn that people like us? That’s all we needed. I let her nipple go long enough to pull her into my arms and force the dress up and over her head. I tossed the dress over my shoulder as I used my other hand to pop her bra. By the time she lay back on the table she only had her delicate black thong and heels on.
Beautiful.
Her breasts were slightly rosy with desire. It was such a pretty color against her bronze flesh. I captured her slightly darker nipple in my mouth, grinding my hips against her. Her fingers tunneled through my hair as she held me to her. Rolling her nipple with my tongue just to hear her cry out again, I traced the inside of her thighs.
“So pretty. How good will you taste?” I asked her. I kissed my way down over her stomach, stopping long enough to dip my tongue in her navel. Her body shook under my hands. Or maybe it was my hands. I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. The most important thing for me was to drink her down. To hear her scream my name.
I nuzzled her groin. It was bare, and the skin there was smooth. I nipped the sensitive flesh and then licked away the sting. Her skin was like spun honey, sticky and moist, and so fucking amazing. The crease on the inside of her thigh where it met her groin demanded attention and I followed the line down with my tongue.
I took a moment to sit back and grab my chair. I sat back down and looked at her pussy. My breath came out hard and raspy as I admired the tight lips and nub peeking out from its hood. Moisture leaked out of her, making her shine. All for me. I’d done that. Gripping the backs of her thighs, I pushed her legs up and out.
“Royce—” she started by I popped her ass to shut her up.
“You chose this, and it’s what I want. Has anyone, ever, just pleased you? Have you ever had someone who couldn’t think of their own pleasure because it was intrinsically combined with yours?”
She stared at me, so I popped her ass again.
“Answer me.”
“No,” she said finally. “Never.”
“You won’t be able to say that after tonight,” I promised her.
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About LeTeisha Newton
Writing professionally since 2008, LeTeisha has spanned from Fantasy to Interracial Romance on her road to getting the jumping characters out of her head. Most days she’s pretty color blind, unless it’s a great shade of red (then she can’t ignore it). Other times she’s plotting her next twenty books and then remembering that the computer can’t read her thoughts and doesn’t type at lightning speed. Either way, she just can’t seem to get enough of quill to paper…or eh…keyboard strokes, apparently.
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Money Making Methods for the Modern Erotic Romance Author
Or me, in other words. I love writing, love my books, ADORE my readers to bits, and I’m very glad that my income is going up every year. But it’s still not what I would call a living wage, and so I subsidize my writing income with my other love — making stuff. Usually jewelry, but that also includes knitted and crocheted items, character dolls, and pretty much anything else that comes together on my workbench.
That jewelry that I usually offer on release days and FB parties? The stuff from Belaurient Arts? Yeah, that’s mine, and rather proud of it I am, too. And to ward off any complaints of, “Why are you making jewelry or knitting stuff when you should be writing?” be aware that doing this other stuff is actually part of my writing practice because while I’m beading a necklace or wire wrapping a cabochon or knitting a shawl I’m also telling myself stories to keep myself entertained, which then gets used when I sit at the keyboard.
Anyway, where was I going with this? Oh, yeah — a few days ago a friend of mine sent me a large wodge of jewelry odds and ends from his late mother’s belongings. (I love it when people do that. So far I’ve have three friends say, “I’ve got a buttload of beads and stuff that I’ll never use — you want them?” Why, yes, yes I do, thank you very much.) This particular treasure trove delivered some adorably kitschy items, one graduated bead necklace that I think is jade (it passes most of the surface tests but I’ll need to do a density test for sure), some nice 70’s style vintage earrings, and a bunch of odds and ends that have been tucked away in my racks of jewelry bits for future use. I was really, REALLY happy when I found these silver filigree clip-on earrings. Their rhinestones were long gone, but luckily my favorite rock and gem store have a very nice selection of rhinestones and I was able to reset them with capri blue square stones that look fabulous against the silver.
The other set that I was very pleased with was a pair of horn Celtic knots. They’d been wired with dull goldish beads through the knotholes, but the wire was steel and didn’t go with the warm tones of the horn at all. So I cut those off, drilled four holes in each necklace for gold eye pins (let me take a moment to thank Dremel for their awesome products which make this jewelry designer’s life a lot easier), wired up six 6mm tiger’s eye beads with fancy head pins and gold spacer beads, added those to the eye pins, hung everything on gold French ear wires, et voila — awesome earrings for people who like Celtic or tribal jewelry, natural materials, tiger’s eye, or any combination thereof. These would be perfect for someone who goes to Burning Man, I suspect.
So after putting a bunch of new pretties up at the Etsy site, I was rewarded with two sales of a combined five items, the payment for which goes into my How Nicola Is Going To Pay For RT Fund. And I still have to put a sterling silver and 14K gold tree of life pendant and a really nifty blue and bronze beaded necklace up tomorrow, as well. And then figure out where I’m going to get the stuff I need for a density test. And work on Cross Current, of course.
Speaking of the HNIGTPFRT Fund, Empress of Storms racked up a total of $514 dollars as of this evening, and if the current pattern holds true I may make $1K on it by the end of its first quarter. Not too shabby for a self-pubbed book in a genre I’d never tackled before, eh? Now if I could only sell the movie rights to Peter Jackson…
So far January is turning out to be rather nice
I’m happy to say that the first week of 2016 has been enjoyable around Casa Cameron. Ramón is still looking for work, which is a bit of a fly in the ointment, but he’s ridiculously talented and I have faith he’ll have a job toot sweet. He’s keeping busy with various electronics stuff in his Fortress of Solitude, and we’ve received shipments of arcane computing gear that have had him grinning in anticipation. I can’t tell if he’s building a quantum computer, a transporter, or a new machine for dispensing kitty kibble, but he’s busy and that’s all that matters.
In personal news, my buds Karl and Colby came to town on Monday and we wound up having beer and hard cider at Whole Foods (we were supposed to have lunch at Tallywackers but it’s closed on Mondays and the WF down the street had a mini bar area in their beer and wine section) with their friend and Colby’s traveling companion Oliver. Two hours of listening to details of Colby and Oliver’s new religion, Karl talking about his plans to make a documentary about women who like gay porn, M/M romance, and the like, and laughing like drains was wonderful.
On the writing front Empress of Storms continues to sell well, I’m back at work on Cross Current and Behind the Iron Cross, and I’m mulling over the plot for an Empress sequel. I have also purchased an absolutely ridiculous amount of yarn and have four projects going in the living room alone. Expect pictures of socks, shawls, and fingerless gloves in the very near future.
And to those fellow Eastern Orthodox folks who celebrate, Merry Christmas!
Welp, that’s it
Empress of Storms is officially in the black. As of today I’ve made $297.55, which pays off the production and promotion costs (which were $297.56, but I just made another sale according to Amazon so I figure that penny is covered).
And sales have been really picking up since December 5, as well — don’t know if that’s due to advertising, word of mouth, or what, but I’m damn grateful for it. According to Amazon, All Romance eBooks and Smashwords I’ve sold 204 units so far (won’t get reports from Smashwords’s associates for another quarter). The only way this could get any better would be if people left reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, etc. but that’s out of my hands (and it’s been a really busy month for a lot of people, too. Hopefully they’ll have more time in January).
Although I did get that five star review and top pick from Night Owl Reviews, bless them.
So yeah, 2015 is going out on a high note. Let’s see what 2016 has.
News about Breaker Zone and Empress of Storms
As of tonight, Breaker Zone is in the lead for Book of the Year at The TBR Pile (if you haven’t voted yet, there’s still time). For it to win 2015 Book of the Year would be utterly awesome, and I want to send a HUGE thank you to everyone who voted for it — you people rock so hard, you make AC/DC look like a garage band.
Now, switching gears: according to the three online vendors to which I have reporting access, Empress of Storms has earned back 100% of production costs and 95% of promotion costs (in less than two months, to boot). If I sell three copies tomorrow, it’s in the clear and everything after that goes into savings for RT in April.
So another thank you goes out to EVERYONE who’s bought a copy, left reviews, or asked me when the sequel is coming out (right now, that looks like summer 2016. I’m still noodling about the title, but remember that clever and dangerous prince from Illium that Flavia was pushing as a possible husband? He’s going to show up in Hellas with his sarcastic manservant and throw himself on Danaë’s mercy after one of his older brothers drops dead. Meanwhile, the Pauwels are continuing to make life difficult for Matthias, mainly by trying to get him to declare Luna as his heir since Danaë isn’t pregnant yet. And hijinks ensue!).
And of course I need to work on Cross Current (Olympic Cove 4), and there’s the Trickster sequel to finish, and I really want to do another story with Rory and Dmitri, and I wouldn’t mind doing a Bully Boys novel either.
But all that will happen in 2016. For now, you are all in the will, and I adore you to bitty pieces. MWAH!
Breaker Zone up for Book of the Year at The TBR Pile!
Calling all Breaker Zone fans! I just found out that book Two in the Olympic Cove series is up for Book of the Year over at The TBR Pile!
This is where you come in — I need you to go and vote for me. No registration is required, just a click of your mouse button. (Plus you would earn my undying gratitude by voting for me because the second half of this year has been sort of crap on the personal front and wining Book of the Year would do wonders for my peace of mind). So please go and vote for Breaker Zone, and I thank you for your support!
P.S. Empress of Storms has now paid off 100% of its production costs and 70% of its promotion costs. I may well break even before the end of the year — woohoo!
A look at the numbers behind Empress of Storms
As I sit here taking a break from Christmas preparations (today’s arts and crafts section included making 22 wired ribbon bows for the tree with on-sale Christmas ribbon, floral wire, hot glue, and the not really needed assistance of my cat Jemma. Still, 22 tree ribbons for $7.60 — BOOYAH), I decided to take a look at the sales figures for Empress. I’m very happy to note that it’s made sales every day, and it’s sold in the US, the UK, Canada, Germany, and Australia so far, which means my legion of readers is growing, muwahahahaha.
Then I got down to business and crunched numbers. My entire production cost for the ebook and print book was $120, and advertising, giveaways, tchotchkes et al racked up another $177.56. So far based on the numbers I’ve gotten from Amazon, All Romance eBooks and Smashwords (I can’t see numbers from Smashwords’s partners and won’t get those figures until February at the earliest) income from the book has completely paid for production and 42% of the marketing budget. Considering that I’ve never written high fantasy before in my life, Empress is an MF book so my MM readers probably aren’t going to be interested, and this is the first Nicola M. Cameron outing so those who don’t know me are taking a chance on a “new” author, I’m kinda pleased with this. Yes, it’s not a huge amount of money, but frankly Empress was, as Ramón put it, supposed to be a quota quickie, 
something I just did to win a challenge. It turned out to be way more popular than I expected, and more and more people are asking for sequels so I should be making more money once Book Two and Three are out in 2016.
Yes, there will be sequels. Yes, I’ll be finishing the Olympic Cove series as well. No, I’m not going to stop writing MM, just expand my horizon a little. And hey, I may even be writing some non-erotic SF novels in 2016 as well! Because sleep is for the weak, muwahahahahaha…
Okay, back to the decorating, tra la…
Wicked Wednesday Reads: Cupid #holiday #christmas #erotica #romance #shifter #paranormal #pnr
Whee, it’s Wednesday and Christmas is right around the corner! Let’s celebrate this with Lucy Felthouse and her delightful new holiday romance, Cupid, now available from Evernight Publishing and other online retailers of fine erotic romance. Take it away, Lucy!
As a postman by day, and one of Santa’s reindeer on a single very special night, Cassius Cupid eats, sleeps, and breathes deliveries. He doesn’t mind, but sometimes wishes that someone would send him something more exciting than bills and junk mail.
One cold January morning, Cassius gets his wish. A young woman arrives with a parcel. Turns out it’s for his housemate – but Cassius doesn’t care. All he’s interested in is Carina – the beautiful female courier.
Has Cupid finally met his match?
Story Excerpt
Cassius Cupid woke with a start, and then sat bolt upright in his bed. Shit, I’m going to be late! was his first thought.
Milliseconds later his brain switched on, and he remembered. He was on holiday. Flopping back onto the warm mattress and pillows with a contented sigh, he smiled. No work for fourteen whole days—it was going to be utter bliss. He stretched, relishing the feeling it created in his sleep-softened muscles. Ahhh…this is the life.
He knew he wouldn’t go back to sleep—hell, it was eight o’clock, which was practically the middle of the day for someone in his profession—so Cassius fell to thinking about how he was going to spend his day, not to mention the several others in front of him. God knew he deserved to relax and have some fun. He’d just emerged from the busiest part of his year, and he was more than ready to do some chilling out.
He enjoyed his job as a postman—he really did—but the Christmas period was a total killer. He idly wondered how many cards and presents he’d delivered over the past few weeks. It didn’t bear thinking about. Once you factored in the festive period itself, the weird few days between Christmas and New Year, and then the flurry of mail that got sent when everyone went back to work properly at the beginning of January, he’d racked up some serious deliveries. And that was before you even thought about his other job—which was for just one day a year, but was arguably more important than the other 364 put together.
Cassius—or Cupid, as he was known to his boss and colleagues in his second, but most important job—was not only a regular postman for the Royal Mail, but also a reindeer. For a single day of the year, Cassius had the supernatural power to transform into one of Santa’s faithful steeds and help pull that famous magical sleigh, delivering presents to excited children the world over.
Therefore, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that Cassius really did eat, sleep and breathe deliveries, but not for the next fourteen days. All he planned to do was watch some TV, read some books, maybe go out hiking, meet some friends… basically anything that wasn’t delivering something to someone. Hey, he might even receive something through the post himself—preferably not the usual crap; bills and junk mail. He didn’t hold out much hope.
He lounged in bed for another ten minutes before realising he was lying there just for the sake of it. Being on holiday didn’t have to equal staying in bed all day—and certainly not for someone as active as him. He reached over to his bedside table, grabbed his glasses and put them on. Throwing off his thick duvet, he walked to his bedroom window and peeked out through the curtains, immediately glad of the effective central heating he and his housemate had forked out to have installed the previous year.
The outside world was covered in a thick layer of snow, and Cassius was mightily glad that he wasn’t out delivering letters and parcels. The stuff was treacherous enough without having to carry a heavy bag up and down driveways, paths, and pavements — most of which either hadn’t been cleared, or had been cleared badly, leaving incredibly slippery patches of ground for an unsuspecting postie to come across. God knows he’d gone down enough times, but, much to his relief, nobody had ever seen him do it. He’d always been relatively unharmed—excerpt for his pride, of course—and had been able to scramble back to his feet and carry on.
The eerie silence outside was broken by the rumble of an engine, and Cassius turned his head to look up the street—he lived in a cul-de-sac, so he knew that’s where the vehicle would come from—and watched as a delivery van made its way slowly and carefully down the road. He hoped the driver was sensible enough to try and steer over the thickest parts of the snow—the more people went over and over the same patches, packing it down, the more the road surface resembled an ice rink. And since the cul-de-sac was on a slight hill, it was easy enough to get stuck. He’d seen it so many times—even going outside one time last winter to suggest the driver go down to the bottom of the road, turn around and try reversing up the hill—an almost foolproof plan for vans with rear-wheel drive. He’d gotten a big thumbs-up for that suggestion as the driver finally got to the junction where the road became flat, and went on his merry way.
As the van drew closer to his house, he saw that the driver was a woman. That would explain her cautious driving—he’d never admit it to one of his drinking buddies, but women were far superior when it came to driving in adverse weather conditions. He even thought he’d seen some survey containing statistics that proved it.
Where to Buy
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ut Lucy Felthouse
Lucy Felthouse is a very busy woman! She writes erotica and erotic romance in a variety of subgenres and pairings, and has over 140 publications to her name, with many more in the pipeline. These include several editions of Best Bondage Erotica, Best Women’s Erotica 2013 and Best Erotic Romance 2014. Another string to her bow is editing, and she has edited and co-edited a number of anthologies, and also edits for a small publishing house. She owns Erotica For All, is book editor for Cliterati, and is one eighth of The Brit Babes. Find out more at http://www.lucyfelthouse.co.uk. Join her on Facebook and Twitter, and subscribe to her newsletter at: http://eepurl.com/gMQb9.
Christmas Prep, The Force Awakens, and why I need clonazepam
What the To Do list looks like so far:
- Finish manuscript editing for two friends – in progress.
- Finish video editing for another friend – in progress.
- Haul all the laundry upstairs and put it away – in progress.
- Clean the house from top to bottom – front rooms are clean, I’m doing the guest room and downstairs bath today, living room tomorrow, and kitchen on Wednesday. Upstairs will just have to wait.
- Put up Christmas decorations – tonight.
- Finish Behind the Iron Cross, get off to agent – obviously not this year.
- Finish Cross Current, get off to Evernight – ditto.
- Do ebook/paperback cover for client, format book interior – probably this weekend.
- Update website for another client – nights this week.
- Rake leaves in front yard – hahahahahahahaha…
In other news, folks in Australia have just started buying Empress of Storms. So whoever that is, thank you and recommend it to your friends, please.
In other OTHER news, yes, I saw SW:TFA. No, I’m not going to invoke shitty karma by giving you spoilers. All I will say is that Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaacs, and Adam Driver were superb casting choices, Daniel Craig does a good American accent, I cheered and gasped at all the right places, and J.J. Abrams has issues with scale on a planetary level. You’ll know what I mean when you watch the movie.
And I suppose I don’t need clonazepam. It would just be nice to have some right now. The bills are all paid, I still have money in my checking account, and Ramón got a honest-to-Cthulhu Christmas miracle and got a final bonus from his ex-employer so we’ll be okay through January. Things could be a hell of a lot worse right now. I’m just tired of trying to clean the house by myself, stop the daily cat fights, keep Ramón’s spirits up while he job hunts, sell enough jewelry to clear off the Amex bill, and be a good friend and listen to other people vent. There isn’t going to be any Christmas spirit here this year, but if I get through it in one piece that will be good enough.
Marvelous Monday Reads: Dragon’s Honor #freeARC
Happy Monday, folks! Today I have Michaela Kendrick on to talk about her new book Dragon’s Honor, now available from Amazon. For a FREE review copy of Dragon’s Honor, email Michaela at mkendrickauthor@gmail.com.
Set in a far-distant future, the Dragon Corps Series follows the members of the Human Alliance’s most feared fighting unit. Across the vast distances of space, the Dragons maintain justice and peace.
But the cost is high. Cade Williams, a soldier with the potential to become a living legend, left the Corps after a mission that claimed not only the life of his target, a slave trader, but also the lives of every slave on the man’s ship. Vowing never again to kill, Cade has spent the last two years trying to put his past behind him. But when he finally runs out of options, it’s Talon Rift, his former commanding officer who finds him in the slums – and offers him a nice, easy job guarding Aryn Beranek, one of society’s richest woman.
Starving and desperate, Cade takes the job – and realizes the moment he sees Aryn that he’s made a terrible mistake. Not only does he want her more than he’s ever wanted anyone, her husband is the arms trafficker supplying the legendary despot known only as the Warlord of Ymir. And when the truth about her husband comes out, Aryn’s search for justice will force Cade to confront the one man he fears the most: himself.
From the slums of New Arizona to the mines of Ymir, Dragon’s Honor follows the journey of a man determined to save the only woman he has ever loved – a woman who has already decided to sacrifice herself to kill the Warlord.
Story Excerpt
“Cade Williams?”
The words came through the haze of smoke and drunkenness like a hallucination. Cade knew that voice. He was never, ever going to be able to forget that voice, and it had to be a hallucination because there was no way in hell the owner of that voice had chased him across three systems only to walk into a dive bar on the lower streets of New Arizona. So he went back to his drink.
He picked up the glass and stared at it. It was a scotch he’d been nursing for about three hours now, and not just because “scotch” seemed to be a loose term for colored grain alcohol. When he finished his drink, he had nowhere to go. And in the ever-drifting snow of New Arizona—he’d never figured out if the name was born of ignorance or irony—he needed to stay indoors as long as possible. The cold was fierce, and whatever acid was in the water on this planet, it would burn his skin raw in less than a night.
And if he didn’t get ten thousand credits to Osiris within a week, he was a dead man. But one thing at a time. Cade shook his head and let the moment slide away from him, a tiny drift into memory and nothing more.
“Williams,” the voice said again.
That was definitely not a hallucination. Cade’s eyes traveled along the arm that had come down on one side of him. Callused fingertips, last joint of the right index finger missing, the hint of a tattoo poking out from under a blue cuff. The arm underneath the suit jacket was well muscled, leading to broad shoulders and a clean-shaven jaw, and with a sinking feeling of dread, Cade looked up at one of his worst nightmares.
“Lieutenant Rift.”
“Actually, it’s Major now.” Talon’s face was expressionless, as it almost always was. He watched as Cade’s eyes traveled over the understated suit, across the planes of the handsome face. At last, sensing the question Cade would never ask, he flipped over the hand on his resting arm. There, glimmering in the faint light, were blood-red cufflinks.
A Dragon always wore red.
Talon absorbed Cade’s bitter smile in silence.
“You look surprisingly well.” Cade looked down into his scotch and considered drinking the rest in one gulp. The pours in this bar were generous, and with the alcohol being of dubious provenance, a gulp might well kill him. Right now, that wasn’t seeming so bad. It was all coming back to him—without warning, as it always did. He’d known the moment he heard the voice that this was going to be a bad night, even worse than he’d thought—and he’d already thought it would be pretty bad. There was screaming at the corner of his mind, the flashing of the lights in the bar taking on a reddish hue, the emergency exit sign too clear a reminder.
He closed his eyes, clenching his jaw until he thought his teeth would give way. He had to keep breathing, or the memories would take him, and the world would devolve into the chaotic mess he so feared, every face reminding him of the pods, the children pounding on the glass—
He was going to be sick. His stomach heaved.
“Should I go?”
“No.” Cade’s answer surprised even him. He opened his eyes and looked down into his drink again. He could force the world back into its neat shapes if he tried hard enough. In the vacuum of space, in the long silences of a courier’s job, he’d learned to face his fear and press it away.
He could face this, too.
“Okay.” Talon sat, pulled reflexively at both cuffs, and looked over at the bartender. “What won’t kill me here?”
“Don’t try the scotch.”
“Noted.”
Where to Buy
About Michaela Kendrick
Raised on the Dragon Riders of Pern, Star Wars, Star Trek, and a whole bunch of historical romances, Michaela grew up adoring the adventure of Science Fiction and the passion of a good love story. Filled with double crossing, grand romantic gestures, sarcasm, and plenty of heat, Michaela’s books are just the sort of thing she wants to read herself!
Nicola Cameron Writes 