The Monster, an all-new emotional and angst filled standalone romance from USA Today and #1 Amazon bestselling author L.J. Shen is available now!
The most important thing I’d ever read was scribbled on the door of a portable restroom, engraved into plastic at a carnival on the outskirts of Boston.
Lust lingers, love stays.
Lust is impatient, love waits.
Lust burns, love warms.
Lust destroys, but love? Love kills.
Maybe it was always my destiny to fall in love with a monster.
When other kids stayed awake at night fearing the pointy-toothed beast hiding in their closet, I longed to see mine.
I wanted to feed it, domesticate it, understand it.
Sam and I were only allowed to love each other in the dark.
Once our story unfolded, and the truth came to light, I was the one to cut the cord.
My name is Aisling Fitzpatrick, and I have a confession to make.
Sam Brennan is not the only monster in this story.
Grab your copy today or read FREE on Kindle Unlimited!
Amazon: https://amzn.to/3mppmqP
Amazon Worldwide: http://mybook.to/TheMonster
Add The Monster to Goodreads: https://bit.ly/3urVU6f
Excerpt
Haunted mansions were my playground.
I lived in one, after all—my house held the secrets of seven generations of Fitzpatricks—and I’d always been drawn to ghosts and monsters.
I took my place in line, shifting from foot to foot as I checked my phone. My mother and brothers were all looking for me.
Cillian: Where are you, Aisling? Call me back immediately.
Hunter: Yo, sis. You okay? Sounds like you were involved in some heavy shit. Sending hugz from Cali.
Mother: I heard what happened. Quite terrible, dear. Please come home so we can discuss this. So dreadful that you saw this.
Mother: You know how bad my anxiety gets when I can’t get hold of you. You need to come back home, Ash.
Mother: Oh, Aisling, what am I to do? You didn’t even make my herbal tea before you left. I’m a wreck over here!
That was my mother. Self-centered even when it was my world imploding into miniscule pieces. Always worried for her own well-being before mine.
I tucked my phone back in my pocket and craned my neck to look at the carts as they slid back from the jaws of an evil, laughing clown. Muffled screams bled from the inside of the ride. The people who came out stepped out of the carts with wobbly knees, buzzing with excitement.
When I was finally put in one of the wagons—it looked like a rickety pod with red paint smeared all over it to symbolize blood—I was alone, even though there was enough space for two people.
I knew nothing would happen to me on a fair ride.
Still, I felt lost, fragile, and unbearably lonely tonight. Like someone had peeled away my skin in one go and left me to carry my bones and veins and muscles in a messy heap.
I’d just lost my best friend. The only one that counted.
I grabbed onto the shirtsleeve of the guy manning the ride, tugging.
“I want to get off.”
He gave me a slow once-over, his gaze lingering a second too long on my bare thighs.
“Hell, sugar, I’d like to get you off, too. But you’ll have to wait till the end of my shift. I need the money,” he slurred, sounding stoned.
I clutched onto his Hurley hoodie sleeve, throwing fourteen years of etiquette lessons out the window in one moment of desperation. “No! I want to get off the ride. Unless you can put someone in the cart with me?” Hope trickled into my voice.
“Bro, it’s, like, a ride anyone four feet or over can get on.” He shook my touch off, frowning. “You’ll make it out alive.”
“I know. It’s not that I’m scared. I just—”
“Look…” he raised a hand to stop my stream of words “…if I don’t press that red button over there every three minutes, I lose my job. You getting out or sucking it up?”
I was about to answer that it was fine, that I was just being silly, when someone stepped forward, cutting the entire line behind them.
“She’ll suck it up, Sir Smokes-a-Lot.”
A curtain of unshed tears blocked my vision, and I knew if I blinked it away, everyone would see I was crying. I was so embarrassed I wanted to die. Blurry Stoner Guy pushed the metal rail open obediently, muttering a quick hello to the stranger approaching us, ducking his head down.
The person slid into my cart, pulling the metal bar against our waists, flicking a cigarette sideways, an umbrella of smoke cocooning us together.
I wiped my eyes, mouthing a mortified thank you. When I looked up, our gazes collided, and my insides crushed like a glass ceiling shattered by a supernova.
Him.
I didn’t know him, but I dreamed of him.
I’d dreamed of this man every night since I was nine.
Since I’d started reading kissing books under the covers about brave knights and the princesses who loved them.
Beautiful and princely, with eyes that could see through your soul.
He looked to be in his early twenties. With tawny, wind-swept hair tousled in untidy sexiness. His eyes were two silver moons—the kind that change color in different lights. His skin glowed, like he’d been dipped in gold, and he was so tall his knees poked out of the cart. He wore a black V-neck that clung onto his muscular chest and biceps and black jeans ripped at the knees.
A Saint Anthony charm was wrapped around his neck, held by a tattered leather string.
“I—I’m Aisling.” I stuck my hand out to him. Our cart jerked forward and whined as two girls my age jumped into the pod behind us, gossiping hotly about a girl named Emmabelle who used to go to school with them and apparently had sex with half the football team then sucked off the other half.
He ignored my outstretched hand. I swallowed, withdrawing my hand and dumping it in my lap.
“Bad night?” His eyes lingered on my puffy eyes.
“The worst.” I didn’t even have the good manners to smile politely.
“I highly doubt that.”
“Oh, I’ll bet you anything my night is going worse than anyone else’s in this carnival.”
He offered me an arched eyebrow, showing me his handsomeness had a devilish quality to it, the kind I suspected very few women could resist.
“I wouldn’t bet with me.”
“Oh? Why’s that?”
“I always win.”
About LJ Shen
L.J. Shen is a USA Today, Washington Post and Amazon #1 best-selling author of contemporary, New Adult and YA romance. Her books have been sold to nineteen different countries.
She lives in California with her husband, son, cat and eccentric fashion choices, and enjoys good wine, bad reality TV shows and catching sun rays with her lazy cat.
Connect with L.J. Shen
Facebook: http://bit.ly/2OhSvp1
Twitter: http://bit.ly/36ELHZc
Pinterest: http://bit.ly/2oMbFsu
Instagram: http://bit.ly/2AIOiTo
Stay up to date with L.J. Shen by signing up for her mailing list:
http://bit.ly/36MnmAQ
Website: http://www.authorljshen.com/
Fae and vampires never fall in love. Except when they do.
Vampire Guardian, a dark and sexy paranormal romance from award-winning author Joey W. Hill is available now!
Adan has come to Club Atlantis to do a job. The BDSM club is to become part of the portal network for magic users. A born vampire with the blood of a Cherokee shaman and an Irish Seer, Adan is apprenticed to a Light Guardian helping him hone his skills to become a full sorcerer. Perhaps even a Guardian himself one day.
But Club Atlantis is a haven for a Fae female, an unwelcome distraction. His hatred for her kind means even her scent can set off his bloodlust.
Catriona is a Fae unsettled in her own world, and physiologically unable to be in the human one without extraordinary protections in place. She can’t put down roots anywhere. For a tree nymph, that’s a serious problem. One that calls for a solution that will appall the Fae world.
History says a vampire and a Fae who fall in love are destined for tragedy. But love has a way of refusing to be ignored. No matter the consequences…
Grab your copy now!
Amazon: https://amzn.to/3a24Wz7
Amazon Worldwide: https://mybook.to/VampireGuardian
Apple Books: https://apple.co/3d9EVjv
Kobo: https://bit.ly/3samT4M
Nook: https://bit.ly/3mCIlyg
Google Play: https://bit.ly/2Rmf4MF
Add Vampire Guardian to Goodreads: https://bit.ly/3d8wAMT
Excerpt
Catriona approached the St. Andrew’s cross. Her feet were delicate, lacking the calluses he would have expected from her shoeless preference. If vampires didn’t get gray hairs, it made sense that Fae—at least of her tree nymph variety—didn’t acquire calluses.
She laid her cheek on the cross piece between the upper arms. The piece of BDSM equipment was adjusted for a taller person, so she had to stretch to do it. It made her backside tighten and tilt upward. A similar reaction happened in his groin. Was she doing it on purpose?
“What magical abilities do you possess?” Adan asked coolly.
As she turned her head, a light smile touched her lips. “What intelligent being would reveal that to someone who has not decided whether he is friend or foe?”
“Don’t play with me.”
Her smile vanished, her body going rigid as she pivoted back to the cross. “If my company offends you, my lord, you can return to your studies.”
Why the hell was he testing these waters? But he already knew the answer.
Dom, sub. Same room. Dungeon equipment.
Let poor judgment reign.
“Tell me what you’re trying to figure out, about the cross,” he said.
Her shoulders tensed. “How it works,” she said stiffly.
When he closed the distance between them, she flipped around to face him, so fast non-human speed got a checkbox on her list of skills. He logged her rabbiting pulse, her dilated eyes. Flight and defense reactions. But when his gaze dropped to her hands, he saw half-curled fists. Fight reaction.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said gruffly. “I’m going to show you. All right?”
She pressed her lips together, gave him a short nod. He could tell her to step onto the cross’s foot platforms, facing him, but he didn’t. He slid an arm around her waist and lifted her. Her willow lean body was surprisingly resilient, and way too female. All the trigger points went off, designed by the smirking, sadistic gods to make him respond to a woman’s proximity.
Keeping a steadying hand at her waist, he gripped her wrist and lifted it, aligning her right arm with that arm of the cross. “Leave your knuckles pressed to the wood.”
He brought down the adjustable handle, guided her fingers beneath it and did the same to the other hand. “Grip those, and don’t let go of them.”
The Dom woodworker had been inspired by a medieval rack, only for far better purpose. Adan slid both handles back up, bringing her up on her toes again. While his vampire senses could calculate precise reach, his experience as a Master told him where that extra inch was, past which a sub had to strain for him.
It lifted her chest, pressed it against his torso. He spread his hands over her wrists, and noted her knuckles were white where they gripped the handles. That, and the quiver of her breasts, told him she wasn’t calm.
Now she had the confused, little-bit-dazed look a submissive new to it did. He’d scented a hint of her arousal when she approached the cross. That bouquet had gone from fragrant, barely there, to a full-on, heady perfume of want.
He should suggest they play, right here and now. If she wanted to learn, there was nothing like hands-on experience. He dipped his head, intending to test those waters by brushing his lips up along the shell of her ear. Except that shell narrowed to a point, and when he followed that track, he saw her wings, framed inside the V-top of the cross and fluttering in uncertain agitation.
It brought him back to his senses. He’d cut his dick off before he’d put it inside a Fae.
Unfortunately, that part of his body didn’t care. His fingers itched to tease her heated wetness, his mouth wanted to taste. He wanted to slide into her so deep he’d reach all her mysteries, open up whatever magic she was spinning on his senses.
Her waiting on him so obediently, while her need grew, didn’t help. She’d kept her hands where he’d ordered them, her body on display, an unconscious invitation, and it made him angry. But he managed to speak in an even tone.
"The Dom straps your wrists up like this. Your ankles to the bottom pieces. He can choose to keep you facing him, or turn you around, depending on what he wants to access.”
Her breath flitted across his mouth like the brush of a feather. "What does he do, once he restrains me?"
"Whatever he wants."
Her grey-green eyes became even softer, the color of down. "What would you do to me, my lord?"
He stepped back, releasing her so suddenly one of her feet left the platform. Her hands slipped away from the handles and she gripped the frame to steady herself. Emotions flipped across her face. Surprise. Hurt. Thoughtfulness. She straightened, linking her hands together, knotted fingers pressed to her abdomen.
"One moment, you look at me with desire,” she said. “Interest. Hunger. The next moment, what’s in your eyes becomes hatred. So much it hurts."
"Hurts who?"
"Me. You. Everything." The break in her voice betrayed her emotions. "It coats everything around you in reds and oranges, the colors of rage.”
He stared at her. "Put your arms and feet back where I had them."
“Why?” She set her jaw, her fingers digging against her stomach. She was having trouble standing against his will. Knowing why only made him sink deeper into trouble.
“Because I told you to.” He touched her chin to bring her eyes from his throat up to his face. “I still won’t hurt you.”
He hadn’t said the words with any kind of gentleness, but he meant them. Even though the volatile reaction boiling in his gut told him he couldn’t do this much longer.
Since the handles were still where he’d moved them, she reached up with a graceful arch of her body, another unconscious sexual offering, especially with her thighs spread along the bottom legs of the cross.
Red and orange were the colors for passion as well. And rage and passion could get along well enough.
He closed the distance, bringing them almost nose to nose. She had a sweet one, small and straight, nostrils flared from her agitation. When he put his hands over her slim wrists, her lips parted. It made him want to unsheathe his fangs.
"I can hate what you are and have you all the same,” he said, low. “Make you beg for more. You'll cherish my hatred, what I can summon from those fires to turn your body to flame."
She trembled. Her eyes, so big and filled with the colors of earth, beckoned him to tumble into their depths. Into the heart of the earth itself, which was flame, too. A different kind of flame.
Her head turned, and she started. Her reaction pulled him out of his turmoil, such that he followed her gaze.
Whatever influence he'd had on her mind and emotions had resulted in a resurrection of the wood. The cross now had several cracks in its veneer, tiny shoots coming forth, green leaves unfurling.
“Life doesn’t respond to hate, my lord,” she said softly.
About Joey W. Hill
Joey W. Hill writes about vampires, mermaids, boardroom executives, cops, witches, angels, simple housemaids . . . pretty much wherever inspiration takes her. She's penned over forty acclaimed titles and six award-winning series, and been awarded the RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award for Erotica. But she's especially proud and humbled to have won the support and enthusiasm of a wonderful, widely diverse readership.
So why erotic romance? “Writing great erotic romance is all about exploring the true face of who we are – the best and worst - which typically comes out in the most vulnerable moments of sexual intimacy.” She has earned a reputation for writing BDSM romance that not only wins her fans of that genre, but readers who would “never” read BDSM romance. She believes that's because strong, compelling characters are the most important part of her books.
“Whatever genre you’re writing, if the characters are captivating and sympathetic, the readers are going to want to see what happens to them. That was the defining element of the romances I loved most and which shaped my own writing. Bringing characters together who have numerous emotional obstacles standing in their way, watching them reach a soul-deep understanding of one another through the expression of their darkest sexual needs, and then growing from that understanding into love - that's the kind of story I love to write."
Take the plunge with her, and don't hesitate to let her know what you think of her work, good or bad. She thrives on feedback!
Connect with Joey
Facebook: http://bit.ly/35j1DPf
Amazon: https://amzn.to/2O4tvB7
Bookbub: http://bit.ly/2XwfCyF
Twitter: http://bit.ly/2r95sIg
Pinterest: http://bit.ly/2remXqk
YouTube: http://bit.ly/3460lqQ
Goodreads: http://bit.ly/34hMr44
Stay up to date with Joey by joining her mailing list: http://bit.ly/35ispHX
Website: https://storywitch.com
No comments:
Post a Comment