Snippet from Sky Daughter, a contemporary paranormal with a new cover that finally has the right image for the hero on its cover. He wasn't easy to come by as the hero, Reuben, has a Jewish mother and Puerto Rican father. He also is supposed to be so handsome that the ongoing joke is he looks like a model for a magazine ad. I have the right guy with Vikkas Bhardwaj:
“A living head, huh?”
“Cutting off enemy heads and
displaying them--which the warriors did after and before battles--sounds
ruthless, but they didn’t do it to be cruel. They thought the head had power.”
“I’m going to assume your grandmother
didn’t take her Celtic lore to that extreme,” Reuben said with a wary smile.
“She wasn’t going to battle. If she had,
who knows. Celtic women can be fierce warriors.”
“I do know that,” he said. “Fierce
warriors and maybe…” He bent and kissed her, his lips as firm and tender as she
had remembered. His tongue traced her lips, sending a quiver through her that
seemed to radiate throughout her body. She reached up, wanting more. She felt a growing passion that demanded she acknowledge that connection between
them.
The kiss again seemed to pull her into
him, to hold her there by something more than his arms. His hands stroked down
her back. She realized how little she and he wore and where all this would lead
in another moment, and she pulled back.
Breathing heavily, she rose from the
sofa and walked a safe distance away before she looked back at him. He was
sitting where she’d left him, his hands at his side, and a bemused expression
on his face. “You are like a flame,” he said after a moment. “Hot, burning,
then gone, nothing left but the coals.”
She managed a smile. “We needed a time
out.” She recognized the power in him. It wasn’t just in the sinewy, muscular
body; it was within the soul of him, something that called out to her, that
revealed in her own self a place she had no desire to know better.It
was as though too many things were coming at once, secrets her grandmother had
found a way to reach out from the grave to leave for her. Then this man who
seemed to be setting her soul and body on fire. Yes, she had a Celtic heritage,
but she had carefully kept that part of herself controlled. She had to keep it controlled
“We
did?” he asked quietly.
“It’s just not right for us,” she said
finally.
Going
against everything he’d just told himself only hours before, he asked, “What’s the harm in doing whatever
comes naturally? Men and women do that all the time.”
“I don’t.”
He didn’t know why he was going to
stir up an argument with her but he did it anyway. “Holding out for the wedding
ring?”
“You are taking a lot for granted,”
she retorted.
“I am?”
“That I’d want to wear any man’s ring.” He
just smiled at her.“Good
night, she snapped, sharply turning on her heels and heading out of the room.
She couldn’t resist one more rejoinder. “Next time you have a nightmare, you
can suffer with it.”
