Dawn's Reading Nook: Book Spotlight/Giveaway: The Stone Series by Kitty Berry

Siblings In the third novel of The Stone Series, Tate Taylor will discover new talent in a young Sebastian Morrison and his band, Dominate. Sebastian is a musician who gets more than he bargained for when he sends a demo to the famous Tate Taylor at Taylor Studios Inc. After listening to the demo Tate flies to Sin City with his cousin, Damian in tow to see Sebastian perform with his band. When Sebastian takes the stage the resemblance is uncanny, Sebastian’s talent is obviously not the only thing he and Tate have in common, Sebastian is the brother Damian never knew he had. As Damian watches him perform he suspects he and Sebastian share more than just blood. After signing a contract with Taylor Studios Inc., Sebastian and his band head to New York City with Tate and Damian. While in New York and struggling to write his own material, Sebastian finds a muse in Skyler, a beautiful model at Hot Stones, Damian’s agency. Skyler’s inspiration helps Sebastian launch his career but that's not all he wants or needs from her.

Stoned If you want to watch as Brook and Tate’s relationship continues look for the second novel in The Stone Series. In Stoned we will meet the charming Damian Stone, the quintessentially intense urban male, sexual Dominant and Tate’s younger cousin. He is wealthy, powerful, successful and painfully gorgeous; Damian dominates over everyone and everything both in his work and in his pleasures. Each semester for the past seven years he’s trained a young college girl to submit to his every sexual desire at the sex club he owns. Damian can have any woman he wants and for seven years that is what he has had. But the sexy, confident, and commanding Dominant is growing tired of the same old game. Shortly after telling his best friend that he is done with the life of submissives, Sydney Cooper falls at his feet. She is a strong, young interior designer despite her traumatic sexual past but Damian immediately senses her submissive tendencies. After meeting Sydney, Damian realizes that he only thought he had everything he wanted; now that he’s met Sydney he realizes that what he wants, what he needs is her. Damian seduces Sydney into a life of BDSM and finds himself falling in love for the first time. However, Sydney’s past is not all that stands in the way of their happiness, Damian’s past connects them in a way that may destroy them forever.

Sliding In the first book of The Stone Series, Sliding, Brooklynn Adams is all grown up, married to her adolescent crush, Tate Taylor and living the high life. Tate is a wealthy and powerful music executive in New York City and Brook is a famous choreographer who works alongside Tate and his best friend at their entertainment company, Taylor Studios Inc. To the outside world Tate and Brook have it all, love, money, friendship, and power but looks can be deceiving. After Brook’s miscarriage that he blames himself for Tate flees to the West Coast with his best friend and business partner, Bobby, under the disguise of business. On the fateful morning Brook is scheduled to fly to meet her estranged husband of six months she finds herself looking into her mirror. She is faced with a decision, should she answer her phone and miss her flight to California or run like hell and head to Tate? Brook must decide the path her life is going to take and the focal point of the novel explores her options while she walks through each “door” to see where it will lead her. It’s the parallel tracking of two possible destinies, essentially the what-if scenario. Little moments in time when we question which decision is right and which is wrong, both can change your life forever, leading you down different avenues, times like these that are impossible to go back and change. We watch as Brook enters into the center of two significantly different trajectories.

I reside in the suburbs of Fairfield County, Connecticut with my husband and three sons. I am the only woman in a house of men! During any given evening you can find me curled up in bed reading while in the next room my men scream at a sporting event on the TV. I am an only child who never wished for a sibling and I openly admit to being a spoiled brat. To this day the word “no” does not go over well with me. I am the daughter of an avid reader, the “real” Kitty Berry. I decided to write under the pen name, Kitty Berry in honor of my late mother who passed away in 1998 from breast cancer. It was my late mother’s desire of becoming a writer that prompted me to create the characters that I place in worlds of wealth, power, seduction, dominance and submission. My love for reading and discussing literature didn’t come to me until my late twenties. Angst-ridden romances, from the moment a man meets a woman and they fall into an unstoppable infatuation with each other, always mesmerized me and fast-paced entertaining mysteries as well as witty “chick lit” contributed to my desire to not only be a reader but also a writer. I recently found myself at a time in life when the busy balance of career and family made me crave an escape into the world of romance, but this time with an erotic twist.

Multidimensional characters such as powerful dominant males who seek a woman who is submissive in their bed but who offers them a challenge in their life, spurred on my creative spark to write about seduction. I love dark chocolate, music inspires my writing and the theater is a place I wish I could go to each and every night. I plan on enjoying all of those things with my husband and friends as soon as I’m done driving carpools, attending youth basketball games and coordinating the social life of my three adolescent children who have way better social lives than I do.

Sliding

We come to this secluded area of beach where I notice a large kind of hut with fire torches and fairy lights. Tate leads me to the hut and inside there are two massage tables, one for each of us side by side touching each other. There is also a king sized bed just beyond the tables and on each side of the room there are bamboo screens. As we step inside two women dressed all in white step in behind us and zip the front panel of the hut closed. They instruct us to each go behind a screen and remove our clothes, telling us there are robes waiting behind the screens. We do as we are told and meet back each on a table. We slide under the covers and remove our robes so we’re lying naked with a sheet over us.

Tate smirks and quietly asks me, “Is this all right? The girls? There is no way I can relax with some dude rubbing me or worse…you.”

“Yes, it’s fine” I respond.

“I asked for a hot stone massage for you, I know it’s your favorite but if you want something different they can do anything you like” Tate informs me.

“No, I’m good with the hot stones, it is my favorite. This is amazing Tate, really you can be so romantic when you want to be” I say.

As my gaze is drawn upwards I notice that instead of a ceiling of material I am treated to a ceiling of stars as the hut is open to the California night sky. The masseuse begins to spread oil on my body and I hear the first cords of “I Won’t Give Up” by Jason Mraz begin to play. Tate reaches out and finds my hand. I feel the hot rocks as they are slid under my back one at a time. Tate squeezes my hand again on the last words of the song and I hear him sigh. I’m not sure if it’s caused by his masseuse or the words from the song he chose to play for me. There is no doubt that Tate has made yet another playlist to speak his words for him.

I drift off for a bit while the front of my legs, arms and chest are being massaged and when the masseuse starts on my face and head I rouse a little and hear Nelly Furtado’s “Try” playing. I wonder if Tate really means that he’s ready to try, ready to try to give me the one thing that has been missing in our lives. I glance over at him to find him looking at me with tears in his eyes and I know it’s true; when I hear “You’ll be Blessed” by Elton John.

I climb off the table not caring in the least that I am naked in front of two strange women; I lay on top of my husband and plant kisses all over his face. He wraps his arms around me, and kisses me gently on the lips.

“We need to talk about a lot of things first Brook…starting tomorrow. I think we need counseling but I want to try. I’m going to need a little time to process all of this but I promise we’ll make this work… you and I. I love you, Brooklynn Taylor” Tate chokes out through tears that are forming and threatening to fall from his eyes.

The Masseuses aren’t sure if they should stay or leave at this point and they keep alternating between looking at Tate and looking at the ground, they are very careful to avert their eyes from my naked body that is still lying atop my husband’s. I decide to climb back onto my table to finish my massage. I lay on my stomach and I hold Tate’s hand while my back, neck, head and feet are rubbed with hot rocks and oil. They are smooth as silk and the more I think about it this experience is actually very erotic. I’m being rubbed by another woman in front of Tate while yet another woman rubs him. All of a sudden I decide I don’t really like the idea of him getting any kind of pleasure from another woman rubbing him. When I turn to look at him he’s staring at me. He smiles, knowing exactly what I’m thinking about and he mouths, “Only you baby… forever.” It’s enough to get me through to the end of our massages and I have to admit I am a bit aroused.