Book Two in Ever After Series
Genre: Steamy
Paranormal Romance
Publisher: Wandering
Impulse Press
Buy Links: Amazon
E-book Edition – $3.99 (Limited Time Introductory Price – $0.99)
B&N | Kobo
| ARe | Smashwords
He can’t lose her…
Arie Cush wanted Holly from the very first moment
he met her. A night at the Hellfire Club (HFC) is filled with old friends and
new danger. The long-standing feud between the faeries that run the Chicago
Crew and a lethal toxin puts Holly and other fledgling vampires in danger. Can
they stop a vampire-fae war that’s been brewing for nearly a century?
when danger strikes again.
Holly Ellis is still adjusting to their
relationship and her new supernatural gifts. She never figured on another
battle and she certainly didn’t count on a war. Despite the synthetic threat
that could hurt their kind, Holly has been waiting for answers her entire life.
She finally gets them when her godmother helps her discover even more about the
family she never knew. But is there more to Arie’s past? And who exactly is the
mysterious T anyway?
“Brimming with emotion and sensuality, it’ll keep
you up far too late reading and craving her next book.”
—Kathy
Kulig, Ellora’s Cave Award Winning Author
Excerpt:
NOTE: The sneak peek below is a
very early look at a scene from Fallen Ever After prior to copy/line edits.
Worry reflected in her eyes. She wore a purple shirt
with a silver swirling pattern, her blonde curls darting out in various
directions and again her ethereal face was unmarred despite that she’d just
turned forty, she reminded me of a well-preserved Madonna. Her silver bracelets
jingled as she grabbed her purse from under a counter.
“Of course but are you ready?”
I gulped. “I think so.”
She nodded but I was sure she could tell I was lying.
I didn’t know what to think or expect. I only knew that I shouldn’t get my
hopes up and I should keep my expectations low. My grandmother might not want
to get to know me, might not want anything to do with me after all this time.
If she’d wanted to know me, if she’d wanted me at all then she would have taken
me in but I figured her grief over losing a daughter made her incapable of
loving the child that had stolen hers.
“Let’s go,” I said. “We can take my car.”
Rue turned to the cashier and placed a key on top of
the glass case. “If I’m not back, can you close up for me?”
“Sure. No problem.”
She turned and followed me toward the front of the
shop. The bell chimed again as we exited and made our way over to my BMW. Rue
slid into the passenger seat while I rounded the front of the car and took the
wheel. We drove a few blocks and I tapped the side of the steering wheel at a
stop light. I sighed. It would be a long three hour drive. Rue told me that my
grandmother lived out by Lake Springfield. The light turned green and I accidentally
burned rubber when I hit the gas and pulled onto a highway heading out of the
city toward Springfield. Rue looked over, her concern for me clear in her
expression.
“Whatever happens is meant to be,” Rue said.
I glanced at her. The concern was quickly replaced by
a serene look that almost seemed too calm considering the occasion but then
again that was Rue. She returned her attention to the highway.
“Try to relax. Watch the road. There’s no sense in
worrying about what might happen,” she said, trying to reassure
me.
“I know. It’s just…”
“You’re nervous.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s to be expected.”
“I know that but what if she slams the door in my
face?”
My voice almost broke.
“She won’t.”
“How do you know? What did she say when you called
her?”
Rue paused and looked out the window again before
turning back to me.
“Nothing.”
“What do you mean nothing? You told her that her
granddaughter who she’s never met wants to meet her and she said nothing.”
I could hear my voice rising as panic surged and I considered
pulling the car over.
“I couldn’t reach her.”
“So she’s not expecting us. Wouldn’t it be better to
wait until she calls you back rather than us just showing up on her doorstep?
You left a message, didn’t you? I don’t want to do this. This is a bad idea.
Not if she doesn’t know we’re coming.”
I was shaking my head, my hands clenching the steering
wheel.
“It doesn’t matter when we go. She won’t know we’re
coming. Her number was disconnected and she’s not listed in the phone book.”
What?
“This is a waste of time.”
I didn’t mean to sound bitter. I needed answers and
her number being disconnected made me feel deflated. Numbers don’t get
disconnected without a reason. What if she moved? But really I was afraid that
it was too late.What if she’s dead? I’d never get the chance to
meet her and I’d never know why she never tried to be a part of my life.
“Then how do we even know that she’s still alive?”
“She’s alive.”
Rue said it with such certainty that I felt my throat
tighten but I didn’t want to get my hopes up. I couldn’t get my hopes up.
“How can you be so sure?”
“Your grandmother gave me a book a long time ago. It
used to be hers. I used it to do a locator spell and the pendulum circled
around the location of her house on a map. The same house your mother and I
played in as children. She’s still there.”
It’s not that I didn’t believe in magic but you could
never count on it to be entirely accurate. No, I’d found that magic could be
just an unpredictable as everything else. I wouldn’t let her conviction give me
false hope and be crushed when it turned out it wasn’t true. But I didn’t want
to sound like a cynical, bitter unbeliever.
I loosened my grip on the steering wheel. “Well, I
guess there’s only one way to find out.”
Rue put her hand on my shoulder. “You’ve come this
far. I’ll be here every step of the way. It’s going to be okay. I promise.”
She released my shoulder and we drove in relative
silence until we reached Lake Springfield. Occasionally, Rue would break the
silence to take my mind off it but it didn’t really work. As we circled around
the lake and I saw the houses my jaw clenched and my teeth ground together. I
had no idea how much the houses cost but I could tell from the looks of it that
it was a lot. The further we drove and the closer we got, the angrier I became.
If she lived in a community like this that meant she
had to have money. She definitely had the financial means to take care of me. I
hadn’t even met her yet but the big houses with their swimming pools and
manicured lawns pissed me off. We turned onto North Cotton Hill Road and passed
a long driveway that led to a house on the edge of the lake. The area was
wooded and we passed the back of a cookie-cutter development.
“Slow down and turn,” Rue said, as she pointed.
I’d almost driven past a dirt road that seemed
incongruent with everything else. I slammed on the breaks and almost had to
back up but I cut the wheel to the left and headed down the unpaved trail. The
space went from being wide open to being edged by trees that became thicker the
further we went until we passed under power lines and reached an old two story
house.
“We’re here,” Rue said.
About the Author
A.C.
James—author of erotic paranormal romance and erotica featuring bdsm. Author of
the EVER AFTER series. Wife,
mother, and storyteller extraordinaire. She resides in northeast Pennsylvania
drinking large vats of coffee while taming two toddlers by day and writing by
night. Recovering video game beta tester and tech geek who grew-up going to
cons and watching SmackDown. There's probably some cosplay pictures around
somewhere of her dressed up as Bloodberry from Saber Marionette J. Just don't
tell anyone.
Web/Blog: http://www.acjames.com/
Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/ApQ7z
Blog Tour Stops can be found at
1 comment:
Thanks for having me :)
Post a Comment