Exclusive Excerpt from Book 1: Hard as Stone:
Excerpt #1 (from HARD AS STONE) (explicit content):Tiernan nodded. “It’s what we are, you and I. Soulshares. Scair-anam. The Pattern I passed through to get here tore my soul in two, and sent half of it off. To be embodied… somewhere. In someone. When it happened, I had no way of knowing who, or when, or where.” His gut twisted, as if he were again truechained and trying to channel magick. Saying it made it real, made it true. “It was you.”
The human didn’t look nearly as stunned as Tiernan had expected. Maybe, given that Kevin had been half-souled his whole life, there was something in him waiting for this. Certainly he didn’t have any reason to dread it, the way Tiernan did. Kevin had always been human, with no invulnerability to lose. And surely he had no vow to put at risk.
Kevin had no one to betray, with a heart that had never known how to love.
“I can’t really tell you much more than that.” Tiernan coughed, trying to ease the harshness of his voice, turning his head to the side as he did so, to avoid the accusation that had to be in those eyes. “I don’t know what it’s like to be born half-souled, or what it felt like, to you, when we Shared – ”
“Half-souled? Interesting concept.” Kevin frowned, pensive, then put up an eyebrow, as if in response to a thought. “Is it going to be that mind-blowing every time we have sex from now on?”
That startled a laugh from Tiernan. “I have no way of knowing. But if sex with you is half as good as the sex I had without you was awful, it’s going to be epic.”
It was as if every line and plane in Kevin’s face turned to stone. Oh, shit. Tiernan replayed the other male’s last utterance in his mind, and groaned inwardly. He was letting you know you were welcome back, and you threw a week’s worth of debauchery back in his face. He struggled not to grimace. Although it’s probably best he knows there’s no happily ever after in store. Not with you.
He started at the touch of Kevin’s hand on his cheek. The human’s closed expression was gone, replaced by a half-smile. “So, we’ve established you’re not an angel?” A thumb ran along his cheekbone, and if the gaze meeting his was fractionally cooler than it had been, it was also accepting. “I’m not asking you why you ran. The way I was feeling… hell, if it hadn’t been my house, I might have been the one heading out the door.”
“Bullshit.”
Kevin shook his head. Tiernan noticed, really noticed for the first time, the dark stubble on the other male’s cheeks, the circles under his eyes. As if he, too, had been unable to find any kind of rest or respite. “I don’t know what you felt. But I know for damned sure it’s never felt that way for me before. Not even in the most erotic dreams I’ve ever had. It was…” He shook his head again. “’Epic’ doesn’t begin to do it justice. And if it’s going to be like that every time… damn.”
There was a low tremor in the human’s voice that reached inside Tiernan, stroking like a glove of softest leather, coaxing, demanding. His body responded, surging forward where he straddled those fine woolen trousers and what they concealed. He groaned, his head dropping forward, his hair curtaining the face that turned up to his, closing out the rest of the club. There were only the two of them, gazes locked as the music hammered, mouths close enough to let each breathe the other’s breath, taste the soft curses the other whispered as hardness found hardness, rocking together in rhythm.
Tiernan found it hard to breathe, as the waves of pleasure rode up his spine. His mouth came down hard on Kevin’s, and that sensation, too, drew a moan from him; there had been no one in this last hellish week he had had the slightest interest in kissing, and his human’s kisses alone were better than any of the sex he’d had. He forced his tongue in, caressed Kevin’s with it as his hands went around to the small of a well-muscled back and pulled him closer. Shit, this was good. No, better than good. “Fucking perfect,” he growled against the other male’s lips.
Kevin moaned softly and increased his tempo, and a familiar hot heaviness blossomed at the Fae’s groin. Familiar, yet not; he ground down into his lover, groaning with every movement and not knowing or caring who heard, almost afraid of what was bearing down on him. Kevin’s thrusts nearly lifted him from the leather surface –
His cry was low and intense and guttural as the hot flood pulsed from him. His fingers hooked into claws in the small of Kevin’s back, and his pleasure redoubled as he felt his human’s cock throbbing against his own. Pleasure, triumph…
Joy. Pure, fucking, white-light, blissed-out joy.
Shit, this could be habit-forming.
Kevin, he finally noticed, was laughing softly, his head dropped back against the back of the loveseat. Lustseat. Whatever. “You’re definitely not an angel.”
“Hell, no.” Tiernan grinned. “I’m a Fae.”
Kevin’s head came up at this, the light in his deep brown eyes dancing with sudden amusement. “This is going to sound incredibly politically incorrect.” His downward glance took in his own ruined trousers, as well as Tiernan’s stained jeans. “Are you telling me… you’re a fairy?”
Series:
SoulShares
Book
Names: Hard As Stone
Author
Name: Rory Ni Coileain
Author
Bio: Rory Ni Coileain majored in creative writing, back
when Respectable Colleges didn't offer such a major, so she designed it herself
- being careful to ensure that she never had to take a class before nine in the
morning or take a Hemingway survey course. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa at the
age of nineteen, sent off her first short story to an anthology being assembled
by an author she idolized, got shot down in flames, and found other things to
do, such as nightclub singing, for the next thirty years or so, until her stories
started whispering to her. Now she's a lawyer, a legal editor, a sopraltenor in
her church choir, the mother of a budding video game designer, and amanuensis
to a host of fantastic creatures who are all anxious to tell their stories, and
sometimes even wait their turns.
Author
Links: www.facebook.com/rory.nicoileain,
www.facebook.com/Soulshares
Twitter:
RoryNi
Cover
Artist: Allan Penn
Publisher: Ravenous Romance
Blurb(s):
Tiernan Guaire is a Fae in exile.
Forced from the Realm into the human world for the unimaginable crime of a
brother’s murder, he lives by a century-old vow, to trust no one, and never to
allow himself to love or be loved.
Kevin Almstead has just lost his
future, to a vote of the partners at his law firm. Trying to escape for an
evening, he ventures into Purgatory, the hottest all-male nightclub in
Washington, D.C., where he allows himself to be seduced by a stranger with long
blond hair and ice-blue eyes.
Drawn into a Soulshare bond with his
intended one-night stand, Tiernan soon learns that the most ancient and evil
enemy of the Fae still walks the human world, and it will stop at nothing –
certainly not Kevin Almstead – to possess the magick of a Noble Fae.
Excerpt:
Hard As Stone:
Tiernan stirred, muttered under his breath, the first signs of distress he’d
shown since falling asleep. Passing out. Whatever. Kevin sighed, resting a hand
lightly on the blond’s smooth chest; in short order, he found himself running
his fingertips lightly over his lover’s chest, tracing the lines of the
muscles, and then down, a fingertip traveling along the intricate tattoo over
his hip. Tiernan wasn’t buff, not like some men were and Kevin himself tried to
be. Lean, hard-bodied, almost impossibly fit. And with that long, unruly blond
hair, and his crystalline blue eyes, Tiernan would turn heads in rooms full of
men or women. And no doubt had.
Mine.
The Fae rolled onto his side, away from Kevin; chuckling softly, Kevin settled
himself behind his lover, glancing over the shoulder in front of him at the
bedside clock. He could still get almost three hours of sleep if he was lucky.
He wrapped an arm around Tiernan, nuzzled into the curve where neck met
shoulder, breathed in the scent of wild hair and sated male body and honey, and
closed his eyes. So this is what magic
smells like.
Sales Links:
Hard as Stone
at Ravenous Romance's Web site -
- http://www.ravenousromance.com/fantastica/hard-as-stone.php
- http://www.ravenousromance.com/fantastica/hard-as-stone.php
GALE
FORCE:
BLURB:
Conall Dary is the most powerful mage
born to the Fae race since the Realm was parted from the human world, over two
thousand years ago. But that very power condemns him to a lifetime of celibacy,
because sex calls to power, and he has power enough to drain a world. When he
refuses to use his talents for a Noble lady’s petty revenge, he finds himself
shanghaied to the human world, his soul torn in half and his magick blocked.
Josh
LaFontaine is the beautifully inked owner of Raging Art-On, a Washington, D.C.
tattoo and piercing parlor. While taking part in New York City’s Pride march
with a former lover’s dance company, his world changes forever when the man of
his dreams materializes out of nowhere at his feet. Josh’s sensual and loving
touch, the first Conall has ever known, may be enough to give him back the
magick he’s lost. But before they can complete their Soulshare, a terrible
accident leaves Conall bodiless, lost, and invisible, to everyone except –
maybe – the human with whom he shares a soul. But Josh will need to find him
before the ancient evil of the Marfach does or everything they have – and more
– will be lost.
GALE
FORCE EXCERPT:
The sense of relief as he got out of the taxi was
like nothing he’d ever felt before, and even knowing most of it wasn’t his own
didn’t make it any less overwhelming. Only the presence of the foot traffic in
and out of Purgatory kept him from falling to his knees in gratitude, maybe
doing some pavement-kissing.
Well,
that and a sense of haste only slightly less urgent than a cattle prod. He
fumbled the keys off the hook at his belt and unlocked the deadbolt, then keyed
in the combination on the touchpad, wincing as the tiny crystalline tones tried
to pierce his eardrums.
Are you sure you can do this, lanan? There might be another way. Just let me
think, now that I can.
Josh
shook his head. Letting himself into the small client lounge in the front, he
locked the door behind himself and made straight for the tattoo studio. “No
time. Every minute you’re disembodied makes it less likely you’ll ever get
back, you said so yourself. And me…” He paused, his hand on the doorknob of his
studio. “I’m not sure how much longer I can stand this.”
Gale Force for
Kindle (US)
Gale Force,
Kobo -- http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Gale-Force/book-Lcg0U_igUUyXOsufiKIvPQ/page1.html?s=GakQctslHkqvHH3JsFY8JQ&r=3
Gale Force,
Ravenous Romance -- http://www.ravenousromance.com/fantastica/gale-force.php
DEEP PLUNGE:
DEEP
PLUNGE BLURB:
For the last six hundred years or so,
the only things reminding Lochlann Doran he’s a Fae have been his faceted
aquamarine eyes and the fact that he can’t die. He’s been a wanderer for so
long in the human world – over two thousand years – that he’s lost his magick,
including the gift of healing that goes along with being a Fae of the Demesne
of Water. Finding his SoulShare might get it back for him. But it might kill
him, too.
Garrett Templar has been living on
borrowed time, in a sense, since he was eighteen, when one of the johns he
entertained to pay the bills while he danced at Purgatory infected him with
HIV. It was always supposed to be a “manageable” disease, though, at least
until a cure was found. Except he’s just found out that the virus in his system
has inexplicably mutated into full-blown AIDS, and no known drug cocktail can
even slow it down.
And when Lochlann and Garrett find
each other at last, on Purgatory’s dance floor, the only thing as urgent as
their need for one another is the hunger of an ancient evil to do whatever is
necessary to possess Lochlann’s magick…
DEEP PLUNGE
EXCERPT:
Shit.
His grip tightened on the strap of his bag, ready to swing it -- or ditch it,
if it looked like that would help him escape . And for one sick, sweaty,
gut-wrenching moment, he was ten years old again, hearing the kids closing in
behind him, knowing there was no way in hell he was going to get away without
another split lip, ruined shirt, blackened eye. Almost hearing his mother’s
voice again.
Garrett Lee Templar, I swear, you find more trouble than any ten other boys ever dreamed of. Do you think I can just make new clothes appear out of thin air?
Garrett Lee Templar, I swear, you find more trouble than any ten other boys ever dreamed of. Do you think I can just make new clothes appear out of thin air?
“Garrett?”
He
recognized that voice from somewhere. Slowly, he turned. And stared up into
eyes that gleamed blue even in the crappy light from the streetlight on the
corner.
“Lochlann?”
He hadn’t had to rent his ass out for a while now, but the idea of a john
following him home from the club still made his skin crawl. Yet there was
something about those eyes, something different.
No.
Fuck that shit. You get hurt the worst
when you let yourself hope.
Deep Plunge,
Ravenous Romance -- http://www.ravenousromance.com/fantastica/deep-plunge-soulshares-number-iii.php
FIRESTORM
FIRESTORM
BLURB:
Rian Sheridan is a foundling, a
Northern Irish Catholic corner boy whose world was destroyed in fire, and
reborn the same way, beside an Orangemen’s bonfire last July the Twelfth. A
consuming, dimly-remembered pain in his past calls to him, taunting him, daring
him to find it and lose himself to it in the S&M underground of Belfast.
Cuinn an Dearmad is the last surviving
Fae Loremaster, and he’s just seen the beginning of the death of the Realm, the
haven of the Fae race. The only hope of stopping it starts with him finding the
Prince Royal of Fire he stole from the cradle, and lost in the human world,
many years ago. He has a few guesses about where that hope ends, and he doesn’t
like any of them.
Rian and Cuinn are an impossible
pairing, two SoulShared Fae. Any two Fae will strike sparks, but these two Fae
are a conflagration. Unable to stand one another, yet drawn into an escalating
series of sexual collisions, their passion will either save a world or destroy
it.
FIRESTORM
EXCERPT:
He gave up on trying to sleep, rolling onto his back
and lying sprawled out in the great bed fit for a king. Or a Prince. Shite. He didn’t want to be a fecking
Royal. Whatever that meant. But if there was one thing he could say he’d
learned in life, it was that what he wanted had fuck all to do with what
happened to him.
Though
ever since the Twalf, last summer, there was one thing he nearly always got,
when he wanted it. The thrill. They’d thought to break him that night, and
perhaps they had, but after the breaking he’d been made anew. Into a man who
craved what the bastards sought to shame him with, and who used them, in the
end, more cruelly than they had used him. After all, he could use them, and
others like them, any time he liked.
Addicted?
Hell, no. Victorious.
Firestorm Sales
Links:
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July
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August
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Tour
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August 12: Scattered Thoughts & Rogue Words, My Fiction Nook
August 19: Prism Book Alliance, Book Reviews and More by Kathy
August 26: The Blogger Girls, Amanda C. Stone
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I'd love to read this series
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