As If You Never Left Me--Sunday Snog

Another Sunday--another excerpt. And since As If You Never Left Me comes out TOMORROW from Crimson Romance, this Sunday's snog will give you another glimpse at Rey and Joely's story.

The snowballs flew crazily for several frenzied minutes. She screeched and he hollered, she laughed and he let out great howls of mirth. She barely missed his head; he came within inches of hitting her square in the face with a slushy projectile. Finally, emboldened by laughter and adrenaline, she slipped out from behind her fort, then darted across the snow to sneak behind his fort and dump her last three snowballs down the back of his shirt.

He howled in protest and grabbed her, pinning her arms behind her. “I don’t even have a decent coat and you do that to me?”

Immobilized against his strong chest, she could do nothing but look up into his laughing face. “I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

“You’re right, I’m not.”

“Then neither am I,” he said, and kissed her.

His lips were icy cold but the inside of his mouth was warm, his tongue hot as it stroked against her lips. She opened to him, pressing hard into his heat. Snow and cold forgotten, she sought only that warmth, that union. His mouth on hers, soft and mobile, his tongue pressing softly against hers. He pulled her close, his hands sliding down her back.

She clutched at his coat, so absorbed it was a few long seconds before she registered the cold, the wet. As she pulled back, he ducked forward, his mouth still seeking hers even as she ended the kiss.

“You’re soaked,” she said. “We should get you inside.”

He dipped his head one more time toward her, and when he missed, he smiled a little and said, “Yeah. My shoes are full of snow and my jeans are soaked.”

“You’re going to catch pneumonia.” Fighting the reluctance of her entire body, she took a step back. Her hand sought his, unwilling to break the connection totally. “Come on. I’ll make you some hot cocoa.”

Sunday Snog--As If You Never Left Me

Today's Sunday Snog is from As If You Never Left Me, coming April 29th from Crimson Romance:

She paused, looking at him, then found herself walking back to the bed. She bent over him and caught his mouth with hers.

She thought she’d forgotten. But as her lips touched his, she was flooded with the taste of his mouth, not only in reality but in her memory. Her closed lips remembered the touch of his tongue, remembered surrendering, opening to let his mouth take hers utterly, but in the real moment, the kiss remained carefully chaste.

This was not an easy thing to do.

After what seemed an eternity of hovering on the edge of complete surrender, she drew back. Looking down into his soft smile, her face went hot. With desire or embarrassment, she wasn’t sure. At least he didn’t look smug.

She straightened, clearing her throat. “I’ll see you later.”

This time, she forced herself to leave.

Humpday Hump

Sharing an excerpt from my upcoming release from Crimson Romance: As If You Never Left Me for Marteeka Karland's Humpday Hump blog hop.

***********

With the Jeep in low gear, she trundled over the uneven, snowy ground until they were shielded by a stand of evergreens.

“Back seat?” he said, mischief in his eyes.

“Damn straight,” she answered, adjusting the driver’s seat as she spoke, moving it forward as far as it would go.

Braving the cold, they got out and climbed into the back seat. Before Joely had quite closed the door, Rey had caught hold of her, dragging her across the back seat, half into his lap. He kissed her, devouring her mouth while his hands slid down her back, cupped her ass. His tongue pressed in, tangling with hers.

Joely laughed. "What?" Rey said, almost as if in protest.

She shook her head, unable really to explain. It just struck her funny, that they were about to make love in the backseat of a car, like teenagers afraid of getting caught by their parents.

He grinned at her, eyes twinkling, and she sensed that he understood. She smiled back. That was the way they had always been—in synch, practically reading each other's minds. It felt good to have that back.

She grappled with the snap on his jeans, with the zipper, finding it quite difficult to get them unfastened while he was sitting. But she managed to get them open, and to work the jeans down his hips and partway down his thighs. He was already firmly erect, and as she worked the jeans down, he worried a rather bent condom package out of his pocket and laid it on the seat next to him.

She smiled up at him, not sure why that particular gesture touched her so much. Maybe because it proved he'd planned ahead, or maybe because it proved he was thinking about protecting her. Either way, it made her warm. Made her love him.

She maneuvered into an uncomfortable sitting position on the floor between the driver's seat and the back seat. She'd positioned the driver's seat to its farthest forward position, so there was some room, but it wasn’t quite enough. Still, she could make do. She adjusted until she was relatively comfortable, sitting between Rey's open knees. He looked down at her, heavy-lidded, lips slightly parted, and put his hand on her head, combing his fingers into her hair. He knew what was coming. Not forcing it, but obviously anticipating it.

She smiled. Tenting her fingertips against his knees, she traced them up his thighs, then back down. His eyes closed and he let his head settle back against the headrest with a soft sigh of contentment.

She slipped her fingers again along his thighs, up to his belly, dropped a fingertip into his navel, lifted it back out again, carefully circumnavigating even the dark curls of his pubic hair. Then, with no preamble, she bent and took him into her mouth. He jumped, gasped, and she chuckled, licking him.

He filled her mouth as well as he did her body, and the taste of his skin brought back memories of other back seats, other blowjobs, quickly going down on him behind bushes at dusk on the college quad. She took him in, deep, all the way to the back of her throat, smiling at the way he fit perfectly against the back of her palate. She had missed that. They fit together like puzzle pieces. His hands fisted gently in her hair and he began to pulse his hips. It felt good. He tasted good. Faster, deeper, and she brought up a hand to curl her fingers around him as he thrust, working his skin, feeling the hardness beneath it. Then, abruptly, he stopped, and drew her head up.

"Inside," he said. "I want to come inside you."

Excerpt--The Haunting of Rory Campbell

After last week's spate of new stories, this time we head for another blast from the past with a snippet from The Haunting of Rory Campbell, another novel from ImaJinn Books. Rory Campbell is a professional ghost whisperer, I suppose you could say, although I wrote this book before that term came into vogue. While investigating a haunted historical site in North Carolina, she encounters Lachlan MacGregor, a Scottish immigrant who died in the 18th century. Ghostly hijinks ensue.

Paperback
Ebook
Kindle

***

            A few hours later, suitcases unloaded, cameras and tape recorders strewn all over the living room, Rory sat at the kitchen table writing out a game plan.  Tomorrow she’d set up tape recorders in places most likely to yield results.  Based on the background information, she’d already ruled out the pink bedroom, but the kitchen and the library seemed promising.  Tonight she’d collate her notes on previous sightings, which would make a good first chapter to her book.

            Finally she stopped, eyes aching from looking at the computer terminal.  Time to wind down for bed.  But she had nothing whatsoever to do with herself.  The place had electricity, yes, but there was no TV, no radio, and she was tired of looking at the computer, even for entertainment’s sake.

            She’d almost decided just to go to bed and read when she remembered the big, deep, claw-footed porcelain tub in the upstairs bathroom.  The thought of a nice, warm bath made her realize just how long a day she’d had, and how much she needed the relaxation.

            The water sputtered a bit when she turned on the tap, blowing a nice spray of rust with it, so she let it run until the water was clear before she stuck her hand in to test the temperature.  She wondered how old the pipes were, and if they might have lead in them.  She’d have the water tested as soon as possible.

            The bathroom filled with steam as the tub filled with hot water.  Rory went back to the pink room to retrieve the paperback horror novel she’d picked up at the grocery store.  She found horror novels vastly entertaining.  Devoting her professional life to the paranormal had given her a perspective somewhat different from the average reading public’s, and she often laughed her way through the most gruesome tales of preternatural mayhem.  Stephen King could still scare the hell out of her on occasion, though. 

            Book chosen, tub full and steaming, Rory peeled off her clothes and settled down into the nearly too-hot water.  It would cool quickly enough, but right now it was warm enough to turn her pale, freckled skin an interesting lobsterish color.  She wished she had bubble bath, but unfortunately she hadn’t thought about it when she’d been at the store.

            She read for a while as the water cooled to comfortably warm.  The heat and the stress of the day combined to fill her body with lassitude.  As the mayhem in the book began in earnest, she found her eyes drifting shut.  Finally, after nearly dropping the book into the water, she laid it aside and closed her eyes.

            Warm steam caressed her face, and the warm water lapped softly against her thighs and breasts.  With her eyes closed, the dampness felt like a hand against her face, each bead of sweat seeming to pop as it rose on her upper lip.  She felt as if she were floating, though her body rested securely on the floor of the tub.  Giving herself up to the floaty sensation, she let it carry her away.

            She didn’t fall asleep.  Not quite.  She hung suspended between consciousness and slumber, thinking of nothing, only feeling.  Sensation filled her, until it seemed nothing existed outside the layers of her own skin.           

            The heat, which had lain soft and damp against her skin, shifted as her breathing deepened.  It was like the caress of hands, moving up and down her body, the imagined touch adding to the deep, pervasive lassitude which had completely filled her.  She smiled a little, sank deeper into the water, but her conscious self was unaware of the action.

            And heat grew within her.  Liquid still, like the heat of the water, but pooling within her body, sinking to lie between her thighs, until that place ached with heaviness.  Sticky and hot, she moved, her hips pulsing softly.  She didn’t know she did it.  She thought she dreamed.

            But the dream was all of heat and water, growing and moving as it passed over her body, molded firm around her breasts, slipped soft down her belly, feathered against the insides of her thighs . . .

            Rory woke with a start and sat gasping, still feeling the heat, her body teetering on the edge of completion.

            What the hell was that?

            It had to have been a dream.  Certainly the heat hadn’t been real--the bath water had turned almost icy around her.  She stood, shivering as she snagged the towel from the sink.  Her legs wobbled.  She scrubbed herself dry and shivered her way into her pajamas.

            She stared at the water as it swirled and glugged down the drain.  She’d had strangely intense emotional experiences at haunted sights before, but never anything like this.  It had to have been a dream, the result of fatigue and her understandable preoccupation with the possible haunting of the house.

            At least, she hoped that was all it was.  Anything else didn’t really bear thinking about.

One More Excerpt: Lord of the Screaming Tower

My third release for April is from Lord of the Screaming Tower, a fantasy novella from Etopia Press. This story has a long history. The story was inspired by the song "Wrapped Around My Finger" by the Police. I wrote a long short story originally, then later I decided it might work as a longer piece. I wrote some additional bits about the characters and the world but never quite managed to complete it as a full-length book. This time around, I took the original story and the bits and pieces and put them together and ended up with a novella.

In the world of this book, magic is performed with music, both vocal and instrumental. Sarangell, the protagonist, is a particularly talented young wizard faced with the ultimate choice--banish the older wizard he's been told is evil, or take into himself power beyond what any wizard has ever previously imagined possible.


***

Chapter One

The tower stood in a dark jumble of broken stones, ragged in the moonlight. And it was screaming.

Sarangell’s hand closed on nothing. For weeks, while he and the old wizard had planned, the screaming had haunted the edges of his dreams, howling into his heartbeat. On impulse, he touched the black rock that made up the tower’s outside wall. It lay cold and still under his fingers.

To his left a door grated open, and a boy put his head out. Sarangell jerked toward him, snatching his hand away from the stone.

“What do you want?” the boy asked. One side of his face drooped, making his words slur.

At the abrupt, disrespectful demand, Sarangell fought the urge to lash out, with magic or otherwise. This was only a boy, after all, and a broken one at that. “I wish to see your master.” His soft, careful voice moved like clean water.

The boy’s eyebrows rose at the sound of that voice, and he took a sharp step backward. “Wait here.” The door closed.

Sarangell eased his harp case off his shoulder and laid it down. The cold night air whipped through the folds of his white shirt. Sarangell shivered, then hummed warmth back into the air around him. It was a simple enough spell, one of the first the old wizard had taught him. A yellow glow rose from his feet, sending the biting wind into steam. Sarangell hummed a Sustaining pitch and smiled. With the harp, and the sixth octave the old wizard had given him last night, he could have filled the courtyard with flames.

The door grated back open, and the boy reappeared. He stared at Sarangell’s yellow aura then collected himself.

“My master will see you. Follow me.”

Sarangell had expected as much. His Natural voice had gotten him easily into other wizards’ towers. All he had to do was say “hello,” and he was ushered into the inner sanctums. It had been that way twelve years ago when he’d fallen at the old wizard’s doorstep, nearly dead from the wrath of his father. It should be no different here. Inside it was dark but warm. Sarangell hummed a Counterpitch, shedding his warmth, and sang up a light. The boy gaped at him yet again.

“Your voice… It’s Natural, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

The boy shook his head, eyes still wide. Sarangell smiled.

The corridor twisted between black, broken walls. At one time, the tower had been a single piece of obsidian stone, constructed with magic no one but its lord understood. Now there were chips, holes, and cracks that ran down the walls to the floor. The damage, Sarangell knew, was the remnants of the old wizard’s last assault on the tower. Afterward the tower had been silent for years.

Then the screaming had begun.

They reached a staircase that took them to a landing lit by magical wisps and mundane torches. The boy opened a door.

“He’s waiting.”

Sarangell stepped forward, tempted to sing a note that would lead him right where he wanted to go without needing to depend upon the wavering lights and the boy’s dubious guidance. It would have been rude though, and he didn’t want to offend the master of the tower. Not yet. Certainly he’d be offended later, when Sarangell killed him.

Beyond the door, a short, dim corridor led to a large room. A desk sat in the middle, next to it a tall standing harp of honeywood. Book-laden shelves lined the walls.

He crossed the room, eyes on the harp. It was a beautiful instrument, its curves perfect, the strings fairly humming with the movement of the air in the room. Sarangell looked toward the bookshelves. They held standard wizard texts where he had hoped for rare tomes of eccentric power. His mouth twisted with disappointment.

“I’ve always thought it was a rather pleasant room.”

Sarangell spun. The voice was a wizard’s, a bit deeper than training usually aimed for, but with the clarity of Natural intonations. Its owner stood in the shadow behind the desk, where Sarangell should have seen him and yet hadn’t, his tall, slim body draped in purple. A neat beard darkened his craggy face. His eyes were pale green, and he looked thirty years younger than he should have.

“It is a pleasant room,” Sarangell said. “A bit dark though.”

The wizard stepped forward and touched the harp. The lights brightened. Sarangell’s hands shifted on his own harp case as the wizard’s eyes found the gold-rimmed insignia on Sarangell’s left breast.

“You bear the mark of Kandrell,” the wizard said.

Sarangell nodded to the wizard’s own black and purple badge. “And you bear the mark of Menesh.”

Teeth flashed ivory in the dark beard. “I am Menesh.”

“I know.”

Menesh nodded, the smile still playing across his lips. “You have a Natural voice. I didn’t believe the boy when he told me, but he was right. He’s tone deaf and simple, or I wouldn’t keep him here, but he can hear the grit in the Trained voices. How many of your octaves are natural?”

“Three. A little over.”

“Do you have the eighth octave?”

“No. Only six.”

Menesh rounded the desk and perched on the edge of it. “May I see your harp?”

Sarangell hesitated, then handed the instrument over. Menesh opened the case. The light in the room seemed to catch fire in the brilliant red wood. Menesh’s blunt hands touched the strings gently, playing harmless notes, music rather than magic. After a time, he handed it back.

“It’s a good harp. Why don’t you sit down?”

Sarangell obediently sat in the chair next to the desk. The desk had papers on it, most filled with music. Some were outlines of spells Sarangell recognized, but with minor changes here and there. Others appeared to be pieces of more complex magic, while still others Sarangell recognized as simply music. The notations ran through ten octaves, with harp augmentation up to eight. Sarangell passed a neutral glance over them.

“What’s your name?” Menesh asked.

“Sarangell.”

“You’ve been studying with Kandrell for how long?”

“Twelve years.”

“And before that?”

“My voice disappeared when I was thirteen. When it came back after two weeks, I couldn’t say hello without breaking crockery or setting the walls on fire. So my father beat me, and I found my way to Kandrell.” It wasn’t the whole story, of course, but it was more than Menesh needed to know.

Menesh nodded, eyes narrowing. It wasn’t so unusual a story, Sarangell knew. Magic was not only feared but despised in the towns, which was why the wizards congregated in towers in the rugged countryside. Which was also why Sarangell’s father had crushed his wife’s magic-laden hands into uselessness, finally managing to kill her in her thirteenth trip to childbed. These days Natural voices were practically nonexistent, with the wizards searching more and more for apprentices in the southern countries. There older gods reigned, wizardry was still considered an honored profession, and children with borderline voices were often sent to towers with their parents’ blessings to be trained.

So Sarangell understood the gleam in Menesh’s eyes as he considered Sarangell’s potential. “And you’ve augmented three times since then?”

“Yes. And I want more. I’ve been to tower after tower, and the wizards are all the same—slow and careful. They won’t teach me what I want to know. Maybe you will.”

Menesh toyed with his beard. “Kandrell tried to kill me once, you know.”

Sarangell knew perfectly well. And Sarangell’s arrival here was Kandrell’s second attempt. “No, I didn’t.”

Menesh made a wide gesture. “You’ve seen the broken walls. Kandrell did that. He destroyed a great deal of important work.”

“What has that to do with me?”

Menesh’s robe rustled as he slid down from the desk. “Possibly nothing. But if I find that you maintain loyalty to him, I’ll kill you.”

Sarangell tried to match the other wizard’s quiet gaze, but couldn’t. “My Lord,” he murmured. Menesh smiled. His hand touched the golden harpstrings, and he disappeared.

Excerpt Week Continues: Accidental Evenings

"Accidental Evenings" is my first venture with Still Moments Publishing. It's one of three stories in the anthology Unleashed Hearts, which features stories about couples who are brought together by their dogs. As a dog lover, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to contribute. My story was accepted (yays!) and here we are!

Mandy is a homebody, much like myself in that she'd rather stay home and cuddle with her dog than try to find a new boyfriend. Her dog, though, has other ideas, and when Chloe keeps digging under the fence and ending up on the next door neighbor's back porch, Mandy has no choice but to meet the neighbor. The hunky neighbor. Who seems to like her...

***
 

Standing on the porch, Mandy wondered if she should have brought a housewarming gift. A bottle of wine, maybe, or a houseplant. But the only wine she had in her house was in a half empty bottle in the fridge, and all her houseplants were dead. The neighbors would have to settle for, “Hi, how are you? May I have my stupid dog back, please?”

Gathering her courage, Mandy rang the doorbell.

For a few minutes, everything was silent behind the door. Maybe nobody was home? But the porch light was on, as was the light in the garage, and she could see a car through the high garage windows. Not that she was snooping or anything.

She was about to ring the bell again when something stirred inside the house. A minute later, the door opened.

Mandy forgot to breathe for a minute. The man on the other side of the glass-and-screen door was about six foot three, with black hair, blue eyes, and shoulders that nearly filled the doorframe. She also noticed, with a reflex she’d developed over the last five years for no really good reason, that there was no ring on his left hand. He was wearing suit pants and a collared shirt, unbuttoned at the throat as if he’d recently removed a tie.

“Good evening?” He had an accent. She couldn’t quite peg it because her ears were ringing, but good God, just when she thought he couldn’t get any hotter.

“Um…hi?” Mandy managed. “I’m your next-door neighbor and—”

“Oh!” His face lit up and he held out a hand. “It’s so nice to meet you. I’ve been meaning to come over and introduce myself.”

“Um…” She couldn’t come up with any additional words, so she shook his hand. It was big and warm. The accent, she decided, was Eastern European. Not Russian, but close. Russian-ish. “Mandy,” she managed as he clasped her hand then let go. It was a good handshake.

“Tómas,” he said. “Won’t you come in?”

Come in? That wasn’t where she’d expected this to go. “I don’t want to impose. It’s just…my dog—”

“Oh, no imposition. Please. Come in and tell me all about your dog.”

It seemed she didn’t have much choice. He wanted her to come in and so she was going to come in, dragged bodily over the threshold by the sheer power of his amazingly blue eyes.

She figured she’d just tell him what was up with Cleo and get the socializing over with, and then run back to her comfortable living room where she could watch television and eat a pint of double-chocolate, mint chip ice cream, and pretend this Tómas thing of gorgeousness didn’t exist. It would be a much easier life than acknowledging he was here and wondering if he could see past the weird little flip on her bedroom curtains when she was undressing.

“Can I offer you tea? Coffee? A soft drink?” Good God, but he was friendly.

“Um…the dog…”

“Yes. The dog. I’ll bring you tea, and then we can talk about the dog.”

Friendly and bossy. And decisive. She thought about telling him she didn’t like tea, but that was a lie. And it wasn’t like she was any real hurry. Cleo was probably still lying stubbornly on his back porch with her feathery tail over her nose.

“Have a seat,” said Tómas.

Mandy had a seat. The living room was nicely furnished, with chairs that looked strangely modern and antique at the same time. She ran a hand over the red and gold upholstery on the arm of the chair she’d chosen.

“My dog…her name’s Cleo…” Mandy began, raising her voice so Tómas could hopefully hear her in the kitchen. It was around the corner from where she sat, and she could hear him puttering, the clink of porcelain and the soft glug of water pouring out of a kettle. “She’s normally really well behaved, but the last three nights she’s gotten out of the yard and—”

Tómas reappeared, carrying two cups of steaming tea. He handed one to her, kept the other for himself and settled into the chair across from hers.

“She’s gotten out?” he said. “Do you need help to find her? I’m sorry, I should have let you tell me earlier—”

“No, no.” Mandy waved off his impending apology. “I don’t need help finding her. The thing is, she’s on your back porch.”

Tómas’s black brows rose and he regarded her almost comically. “She is? She’s on my back porch?”

“Yeah. She dug a hole under the fence, and when I went to look, she was back there just…hanging out. She wouldn’t come when I called.”

“Goodness.” Tómas set his teacup carefully on the side table. “I wonder why she would do that? Let’s go let her in, shall we?”

He stood and Mandy followed suit, rubbing her tea-warmed hands down the fronts of her thighs. “You don’t have to let her in the house. I mean, she sheds and she’s been digging, so she might be muddy—”

“Oh, psssh.” It was an odd sound, accompanied by a flip of his hand that made it clear he wasn’t concerned about either muddy paws or the horrors of Labrador hair. “Is she friendly? She sounds like she must be.”

He was on his way to the back door already, leading Mandy through his kitchen. It looked as if he’d just been finishing up dinner when she’d arrived—there was an empty plate and a half-empty glass of wine on the table, the bottle sitting next to it.

“Yeah. She’s friendly.”

“Her name?”

“Cleo.”

Tómas opened the back door. “Oh, my goodness! Look what it is. A dog on my back porch. Come in, Cleo, and say hello to your mama.”

I hope you'll check out Unleashed Hearts, with "Accidental Evenings" as well as "Dog Day Afternoons" by Darlene Henderson and "Snow White and the Seven Dogs" by Denise Moncreif. 

Excerpt: Dealing With David--Out Today from Samhain

Being sick and having a ton of work and lots of other things can really throw you off your blogging game... I'll be working on getting myself back into a regular gear over the next few weeks. As a result, this week you'll be getting not one but THREE excerpts! Why? Because I just had three stories--a short story, a novella and a full-length novel--release over the last week.

Today's contribution is from Dealing With David, available NOW from Samhain. Take a look, and if you grab the book and read it, a review would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

On to the excerpt... Hope you enjoy!

*****

Stranded in the mountains after a freak spring snowstorm, our intrepid heroine finds herself in David's guest bedroom trying to get to sleep. But there's something about the former high school geek that has her in knots...

The bed was cozy, with clean-smelling sheets and a heavy comforter. Tony crawled in and flipped off the light.

The absolute darkness startled her. After so long living in town, she’d forgotten the deep, dark of night in the mountains. With snow and stars obscured by snow clouds, the only light in the room came from the hall light seeping faintly in under the door. She buried herself to her neck in the blankets and stared into the darkness.

This was not how she’d planned to spend her weekend. Of course, it wasn’t what David had planned, either. She really just wanted to go home, to her own bed, get herself mentally ready for her new temp assignment, eat chocolate, watch some shows off her DVR, go shopping, maybe buy some new shoes. None of that was going to happen. Instead, apparently, she was going to lie here in David’s guest bedroom and brood.

She couldn’t figure out why she felt so strange. Just being in David’s presence seemed to drag up all the yuck she’d tried to shove under the carpet when she finally ended her marriage. Why was it rolling up its ugly underbelly again when she found herself with someone who was acting like he might be interested in her?

And what was all this nonsense about him being infatuated with her in high school? She’d never been aware of any particular interest on his part, much less a crush or infatuation. Surely she would’ve noticed.

Then again, she hadn’t paid much attention to him. She’d used him once to help her get through an algebra exam. She couldn’t characterize the interaction any more charitably; she’d been nice to him while he been tutoring her, then, when the exams were over, had snubbed him. A minor sin, maybe, but it gave her a twinge of guilt when she thought about it now. Especially when he was being nice to her.

A half hour of brooding broodiness later, Tony looked at the clock and discovered only five minutes had passed. With an exasperated sigh, she sat up and turned on the light. After a moment’s thought, she slipped out of bed and opened the bedroom door.

A soft murmur of music drifted down the hallway. David’s bedroom door was partly open, and a light burned beyond it. Tony padded to the door and peered around it.

Yet another computer occupied a desk in a corner of the bedroom. David sat in front of it, his back to the door. Hesitantly, she knocked.

He turned to face her. He wore glasses now, lightweight wire frames with thin lenses. They made him look bookish but not at all unattractive. Tony became suddenly, acutely aware of where she was and tried very hard not to look at the bed.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing really.” His quilt was maroon and black, she noticed, a geometric pattern that complemented the one in the guest room. “I just can’t sleep.”

David grinned and reached over to pull some paper out of the printer tray. His sweatshirt rode up when he bent over, and Tony had a hard time convincing herself she shouldn’t look at his bare skin. The shirt settled back into place as he straightened.

“Here you go,” he said, handing her the paper and a pen.

Tony shook her head, not willing to admit he’d given her exactly what she needed. But she’d always sketched when she was nervous, even in high school. He’d kidded her about it more than once.

She should just leave now, she thought, but before she could stop herself, she said, “Do you, um…wear contacts now, or did you have Lasik?”

He smiled. “Lasik. I only wear glasses now at night, when my eyes are tired, or when I’ve been on the computer a long time. It was totally worth it.”

“I’ll bet. So what are you working on? Another game?”

He rolled his chair to one side so she could see the screen. Crudely rendered stick figures stood posed in battle in front of a background of color blocks.

“Dark Princes III,” he said. “It’s a really early version. We still don’t have the artwork hashed out, so we’re just blocking out some of the major action sequences. Rich and I wrote up the plot along with one of our other programmers. The other programmer wasn’t happy about the predominately male characters in the first two games, so we took her advice, and now Dark Princes III is about Prince Aelfwyn’s sister Aethelfried.”

“Well, that’s a nice change of pace, anyway. Those adventure games always seem so sexist.” Belatedly, Tony noticed her clipped tone.

David only grinned. “Touché. Actually, I’d always intended to move into some more gender-flexible games, but the Dark Princes plot didn’t lend itself too well to that, and games with male leads are proven to sell better.”

“Why is that?” asked Tony.

“Supposedly women don’t have a problem playing games where they’re presenting themselves as a male character, but men aren’t so happy pretending they’re a female character. A few games have bucked the standard, but with Dark Princes being a new franchise, I decided to play it safe.”

“I see.” Tony paused, evaluating her tone. Had she sounded too snippy? “I guess video games are a man’s world too.” Just like everything else. Yeah, that had sounded a little snippy. She needed to work on that.

David didn’t seem offended. He turned back toward the computer and touched a button. The stick figures came to life, moving into confrontation. “The world is what you make of it.”

Maybe for you. Tony managed to quash that thought before she voiced it aloud. Some people turned everything they touched to gold. Others turned it to mud.

She started to back out of the room, then paused, watching the little stick figures bash each other with stick-figure swords. Their movements were jerky, unrefined, but even at this stage, she could tell the choreography of the battle had been carefully thought out. They just needed clothes. And skin and muscles and, well, faces would be good too. Pictures started to form in her mind of what they might look like, pictures that made the tips of her fingers long to hold a pencil, to work it all out where she could see it.

“What got you interested in this line of work?” she heard herself asking.

He glanced back over his shoulder. “I spent a lot of time in front of video game consoles in high school and college. It seemed like a natural progression.”

“I guess you always were good at math.” Lame, Tony. She really didn’t know what developing computer games involved, though, other than the obvious programming skills.

He chuckled. Even her lamest lameness didn’t seem to faze him much. “I am that. And I can barf up C++ code with both hands tied behind my back, typing with my nose.”

It was an interesting image on numerous levels. “I’d like to see that.”

“I bet you would.” He swiveled his chair so that he faced her more directly. Her eyes caught on the line of his throat, the curve of it as it disappeared behind his collar. His heartbeat pulsed in the groove along the side of his neck, and there was a small spot just under his chin where he hadn’t shaved quite cleanly. “Anyway, I studied computer science in college, where I met Rich, and we decided to take the jump and start marketing our own games.”

“Rich programs too?”

“Yeah, and he has a better eye for art than I do, so he recruited our initial graphic artists. Now we have a department for that, and he runs it. Good artists are hard to find.” His gaze seemed to narrow on her little, as if he were trying to tell her something. She didn’t know what that might be. She certainly didn’t know anything about art for computer games. Sure, she knew her way around Photoshop, but she was going to be an accountant, so it wasn’t really relevant knowledge. Uncomfortable under his attention, she lifted the hand that held the paper.

“Thanks for the paper.”

“Any time.” His smile was warm. She wanted to get away—wanted to move closer. She could almost feel his touch again, the casual, not-quite-accidental tracery of his fingers against her thigh. God, she really needed to get out of here. His gaze weighed heavy on her as she turned and headed back to the guest room.

The bed had grown chilly in her absence, and it took a few minutes for Tony’s body heat to soak the sheets again. With the pile of paper propped in her lap—not exactly steady but steady enough for her use—she began to sketch.

She started doodling; then that mysterious something took over, and she found the lines shaping a horse, a woman on its back, dressed in war gear. She slid out of the warm bed to kneel next to the nightstand, spreading papers out under the light of the lamp. With the wider, harder surface, the picture became more intricate until she had produced something that looked more like a professionally finished product than a doodle.

She moved to another sheet and started another—a dragon in flight against a backdrop of snowcapped mountains. Discussing David’s game must have triggered something in her subconscious. She hadn’t drawn a dragon in years.

Tony finished that picture and moved to another. She could lose everything in the act of drawing: tension, insecurity, insomnia. She felt alive when she drew, as if her soul found its true purpose in the point where pen met paper.

Every time she drew, she wondered why she kept pushing this need away. It made her feel so…herself. The doubts and insecurities, the fluttery tension that made her day-to-day living so twitchy at times, disappeared when she let herself draw.

The pen moved across the paper in a flat arc, then moved downward. Along the same theme as the wedding, as the dragon, she drew a man in armor, a big, two-handed sword balanced between his hands, its tip resting on the ground. It wasn’t until she had sketched in the eyes and started to outline the long, strong nose that she realized she was drawing someone who looked very much like David.

Excerpt: Vampire Apocalypse: Revelations

With Vampire Apocalypse: Revelations, we get to the last books I originally published with Dreams Unlimited. The Vampire Apocalypse series was originally envisioned as a series of novellas. The first two, Julian and Nicholas, were published under separate cover, and I was working on the third, Lucien, when DU went out of business.

I decided to stick to the original plan of connected novellas, but finished Lucien and wrote one more, Lorelei, and sold them as a package to ImaJinn. Then Book Two: Apotheosis, followed with four more connected novellas: Lilith, Rafael, Tara, and Julian--Redux. Both books are still in print through ImaJinn. Overall, it's one of those worlds I keep thinking about revisiting, but I'm not sure if I should.

From Vampire Apocalypse Book One: Revelations--Julian

Lorelei Fletcher was in over her head. She should have followed her instincts from the beginning. Too late for that now—she just hoped she could get the hell out of here somehow.

On any other night but Halloween, she never would have followed Dina east of Tompkins Square Park, dance club or no dance club. But Halloween and her vampire costume made her feel invincible, so she’d agreed.

They’d never made it to the dance club. Instead, following directions given Dina by her latest boyfriend, they’d ended up here, in a bizarre tenement building where all the rooms seemed to be connected, and where no hallway seemed to be the same shape from moment to moment. Lorelei was beginning to wonder if the weird smell in the place was some kind of hallucinogen.

It would, at least, be a logical explanation for why everyone was so weird. Everybody in the place was dressed like a vampire. It hadn’t seemed strange at first. It was Halloween, after all. Lorelei herself made a stunning vampiress, or so she thought, with her black hair and naturally milky complexion. But, unlike the weirdoes at this party, she only played vampire one day a year.

She had to admit the image of the vampire intrigued her, sometimes to the point of obsession. She could spend days watching every vampire movie she could find, tracing dim, elusive memories. In twenty years, she hadn’t found a mirror to the scene she remembered from childhood. But compared to these nuts, she was a paragon of sanity.

She’d been accosted half a dozen times by guys with razor blades, and, looking for the bathroom, she’d stumbled into a couple of leather-clad women sucking each other’s wrists with an enthusiasm Lorelei reserved for sex or good chocolate. She’d heard about things like this, but she’d never really believed people could be so freaky. So much for unbridled optimism.

She wished she knew where Dina was. Lorelei had lost track of her about an hour ago, when they’d split up to find the front door. They were supposed to meet at a designated bathroom fifteen minutes later, but Lorelei hadn’t seen Dina since. Nor had she seen the front door.

Somewhere a clock began to strike. Lorelei looked at her watch. Midnight. A woman in a bright red cape brushed by her, a coppery smell of blood drifting in her wake.

“Excuse me,” Lorelei said, but the woman only cast a grin over her shoulder and kept walking.

“Thank you so much.” Lorelei came to a halt and crossed her arms. This was ridiculous. She could swear she’d been down this stretch of hallway at least twice. Where the hell had the front door gone? She thought a minute. If she went this way, she should end up back at the bathroom...

The voice, faint but frantic, seemed to come from around a bend in the hall.“No! Stop it, Nicky!”

“Dina!” Lorelei broke into a run.

“Get your hands off me, you bastard!”

“Dina!” Lorelei ran full-tilt into the closed door. She was certain it was the bathroom—or a bathroom—and behind it Dina’s voice rose, frantic.

“No! Nicky, no!” >The voice sobbed now, in terror. >

Lorelei slammed herself into the door. >“Dina! Dina, hang on

Hang on to what? Lorelei had no idea what was going on. Her breath tore in her throat, heaving toward panic. Visions of razor blades and blood swam in her vision. >She smashed herself again and again into the door until she thought her shoulder would shatter. Suddenly the door came open with the sickening sound of splintering wood.

There was Dina. There were no razor blades, but there was blood.

A big, dark-haired man had her pinned against the wall, face buried in the bend of her throat. Of course, Lorelei thought fleetingly. If they thought they were vampires, of course they’d go for the throat. Shallow cuts, probably, like the wrist cuts.

“Get away from her, you freak!” Lorelei grabbed the man by the shoulder and dragged at him, trying to haul him off Dina. But he was heavy, and stronger than she could have imagined...

Panic clawed up her throat. This wasn’t like the wrist-sucking girls in the bathroom. Something more was going on here. >The room reeked of blood. From this angle, Lorelei could see it, winding in a thick, red line down Dina’s bare shoulder, down the length of her arm, dripping steadily from the end of her index finger. Dina’s head was thrown back, the man’s mouth fastened to her throat...

He was killing her.

Lorelei struck him again, fruitlessly. Then, so deep into panic she had no awareness of it anymore, she grabbed a handful of his silky black hair and jerked as hard as she could.

The man’s head snapped back. Blood sprayed everywhere. He turned toward Lorelei as Dina’s body slumped down to the floor, filling the small room with a rhythmic spray of blood that suddenly subsided.

The man grabbed Lorelei’s hair on either side of her face, holding her riveted. She’d thought the paleness of his skin was makeup, skillfully applied. >Now she saw it was only his skin, smooth, seamless, painfully white. He opened his blood-filled mouth and she saw white again, slender fangs.

He struck. ***

Julian Cavanaugh had been sitting in the alley for hours, chain smoking and smelling blood. He came here every Halloween, to remind himself of what he'd been, and what he'd become.

Sometimes he wondered why he did it. With the blood-smell in his nostrils the craving became almost unbearable even with the aid of the cigarettes, which weren’t exactly over-the-counter Marlboros. But if he could sit here from dusk until dawn, smelling the blood and not giving into the need, he knew he could make it another year.

As of tonight, it would be two hundred and thirty-six.

Sometimes he thought it was a waste of time, namely the hours he invested every week making the cigarettes. The tobacco he could buy at the mall, nicely dried and prepared, but three of the other ingredients were herbs which, as far as he knew, had been extinct on this planet for a millennium. Except for the few plants preserved by a Native American shaman, given to him by a god of blood, then passed on to Julian two hundred and thirty-six years ago.

Deep, throaty laughter came from a second-story window. Julian recognized the voice. >Nicholas had been made a vampire three years ago tonight, during the annual Halloween bloodbash. Vivian had made him. As Julian recalled, she’d found him in a bar and brought him home for the party. It was strange to Julian how many humans were willing to come, to slash their wrists and lap each others’ blood, pretending to be something they couldn’t begin to imagine.

Julian lit another cigarette from the tip of the butt in his mouth and listened to Nicholas’ voice. A woman answered him, first laughing seductively, then, suddenly, in fear.

“No. Stop it, Nicky.” He heard scuffling. “Get your hands off me, you bastard!” Then she screamed, “No!”

Julian closed his eyes tight and sucked hard on the cigarette. He’d promised himself a long time ago to stay out of the business of other vampires. >But he hated to hear the taking of an unwilling victim.

He should get up and walk away. Inside, the voices rose. Another woman’s voice screamed from the other side of the door. >Julian snubbed the cigarette against the brick wall and put the butt in his jacket pocket. Gathering himself, he leapt, catching the sill and levering himself up on it. The cigarettes had stilled the need for blood, but hadn’t affected his strength.

The victim’s head lolled against the partly-open window. All Julian could see was a mass of gold-brown hair and Nicholas’ face pressed into her neck. Julian grabbed the window and shoved upward. >He should have moved faster. Now it was too late to save her.

Suddenly the bathroom door burst inward and another woman half-fell into the room. With an astonishing show of strength, she tore Nicholas away from the dying blonde woman. And Nicholas, predictably, turned on her.

Julian launched himself through the window and onto Nicholas’ back, breaking him loose from his victim and knocking him to the floor. >The woman fell in a heap to the ground, all pale skin and black hair, unconscious, not from blood loss, but from the beginning of the vampire’s trance. Her throat had been pricked, but not penetrated.

Nicholas, interrupted at the beginning of a new feed, stumbled. Julian grabbed his shoulder and shoved him down. The younger vampire glared up at him, eyes glinting black.

“You,” he said, his voice still wet with blood from the first girl.

“How observant,” said Julian dryly.

Nicholas leaped at him. Julian hadn’t expected that and he threw up an arm to ward Nicholas off, but he landed hard against him, threw a punch that smashed Julian’s lip against his teeth. The taste of his own blood made Julian momentarily dizzy.

“Stop,” he said, his voice pitched low and deep. >

Nicholas stopped. He was young, his three years no match for Julian’s eight centuries. >He gaped at Julian, then struggled to formed words. “There’s a Call out for you, man.”

Julian stared. There had been no Call put out for a vampire for nearly two centuries. >But under the compulsion, Nicholas had no choice but to tell the truth.

“Sleep,” Julian said finally, and Nicholas slumped to the floor.

Julian turned to the dark-haired woman. She was alive. He could still help her. It was far too late for the other woman. All he could do was get away from the smell of her blood as quickly as possible. Gently, he lifted the living woman from the floor.

Earthchild: Excerpt

Earthchild is a follow-up to Starchild. It also appeared first at Dreams Unlimited, then went to Samhain. (I think LTD went out of business before I managed to arrange a reprint there.) Anyway. This one makes my mom cry.

Taken in as an infant and raised by the primitive, non-human natives of the colony planet Denahault, Noisy Girl has always known she was different. Human settlers initiating peaceful contact confirm it—her true home is a planet called Earth, millions of miles away among the stars.

Her search for her heritage leads her to the home of Harrison Fairfax and Trieka Cavendish, and their guest Jeff Anderson, Trieka’s former second-in-command.

For Jeff, Trieka’s offer to captain the legendary ship Starchild is a lifelong dream fulfilled. Then he meets Noisy Girl, an entrancing young woman who speaks only in sign language. She captures his imagination like no other woman ever has, and his efforts to teach her English deepens a relationship he never thought was possible for him.

But the claustrophobic, technology-laden atmosphere of Earth traumatizes the gentle Noisy Girl, and suddenly Jeff’s choices aren’t quite so clear.

If he accepts permanent command of Starchild, all hope of happiness with this beguiling woman will be destroyed. Unless a compromise can be found…

From Chapter One:

The Loud-Talking People had cut down trees and made houses from them. To Noisy Girl, who’d lived her whole life in the shelter of a natural cave, this seemed both bizarre and fascinating.

 

But even more bizarre and fascinating were the Loud-Talking People themselves. The noise seemed incessant, as they opened their mouths and made peculiar rhythmic sounds. Noisy Girl thought they looked strange as well, until she remembered they looked just like her. They had smooth, almost hairless skin, ranging in color from pinkish, like her own, to a black-brown nearly as dark as the skin of the White Fur People. Over it they wore garments amazingly constructed of woven cloth finer than anything she had ever seen. They were strange and beautiful and very, very noisy. They were her people, and they frightened her.

With her mother, she watched the village from a nearby ridge. They were close enough to see details of the houses and the people, close enough to hear the odd sounds that came from the Loud-Talkers’ mouths, but hidden by the forest growth that dominated the overhanging ridge. It would have been a good site from which to attack the little settlement, had they been so inclined. Noisy Girl shook her head as the thought passed through her mind, negating it. It wasn’t the kind of thing that usually occurred to her.

“They sound like tree-climbers,” Noisy Girl signed to her mother, thinking of the furry creatures who hung by their tails from the tree branches, chattering incessantly to each other. 

“They have fine houses,” Walks Crooked replied. She pointed. “Look. Children.”

One of the women below squatted as a small boy ran to her. A horrible noise came from his small mouth, an unarticulated sound of distress. The woman gathered him into her arms and brushed her mouth against his head, crooning against his sun-colored hair.

Something too vague to be a memory stirred in Noisy Girl’s heart. She pressed her fingers against her lips as the boy’s howling faded. Within a few moments, he laughed and ran away.

“They can be kind,” she said.

Her mother smiled. “They can be unkind, as well. But I think they will not be so to you.”

Noisy Girl frowned. “Will you come with me?”

“I will.”

The woman who caught sight of them as they slid down the ridge knew only a few words of the White Fur People’s language, but she tried. She smiled, made a great deal of noise, touched Noisy Girl as if she couldn’t believe Noisy Girl was real.

“No talk well,” she’d said, obviously uncomfortable with the hand gestures. “She talk well. Find her. You wait.”

“She wants us to wait,” Walks Crooked said, then her mouth twitched into a smile. “At least, I think that’s what she said.”

Noisy Girl recognized the nervousness behind Walks Crooked’s smile. She herself swallowed to calm the jumpy nausea caused by her own nerves.

“I don’t want to go,” she said suddenly, a desperate sound straining at the back of her throat. The Loud-Talking woman turned and looked at her, concern on her face. What did that sound mean to these people who used sounds as a matter of course?

“These are your people,” Walks Crooked said.

“You are my people.”

Walks Crooked cupped Noisy Girl’s face in a white-furred hand. “Learn about them. You can always change your mind later, if things don’t go well.”

Noisy Girl nodded, blinking back tears. She couldn’t help the sounds in the back of her throat. Until this moment, she hadn’t been certain the White Fur People would want her back. She’d been loved and cared for among them, but she couldn’t help the doubt—the fear that they’d jumped on the chance to introduce her to her own people so her strangeness would no longer disturb their world. She’d lived with that fear all her life.

“Thank you,” Noisy Girl said.

Several hours later, with the sun now past its zenith, they still waited.

Noisy Girl couldn’t fault the Loud-Talkers’ hospitality, though. They’d provided comfortable places to sit, on wooden constructs unlike anything Noisy Girl had ever seen, in a small room of one of the remarkable wooden houses. The woman brought them warm sweet drinks and hot bread with fruit spread. She sat with them and they all tried very hard to converse. The visitors didn’t get much beyond asking for more drinks and indicating appreciation of the food, but it gave Noisy Girl hope. If she could feel some measure of acceptance already, maybe she could find a place among these people that she’d never quite been able to make among the White Fur People. But everything here was so different. The sounds they made fascinated her. Could she learn to do that?

All her life, she’d been defined by the sounds she could make. In this world, those sounds would become commonplace. That realization suddenly clarified the enormity of the changes she faced.

A shift in the voices in the next room told her something had changed. Their companion, the woman who’d met them on the ridge, quickly left the room, following the sounds.

Noisy Girl sat straighter. Next to her, Walks Crooked laid a hand on her knee. She laid her hand on top of her mother’s and clutched at it, grasping at any link to familiarity. Her other hand fingered the string of amber beads she always wore. The texture of the smoothly polished stones had always calmed her. They helped now, but at the same time felt alien and strange. What would these people think of her?

From the other room came two more people, a man and a woman, accompanied by the woman who’d kept them company over the past few hours. The man was tall and slim, the hair on his head a dark brown touched with red. The woman was small, her hair a shocking orange.

The woman smiled, and her hands danced.

“Hello. My name is Fire Hair, and this is my mate, called Long Nose by the People Who Live at the Edge of the Mountain. We were asked to come here to talk to you.”

Noisy Girl glanced at her mother, shocked by the small woman’s identity. The stories of Fire Hair and Long Nose, who’d made possible the present interaction between the Loud-Talking People and the White Fur People, had traveled even to Noisy Girl’s isolated village. Those stories, in fact, were why she had come here.

Walks Crooked lifted her hands. “I am Walks Crooked, from the People by the Shores of the West Sea. This is my daughter, Noisy Girl. She came to our tribe as a very small child. When we heard of you and the peace that had begun between your people and ours, we knew we should come here so Noisy Girl might learn of her true people.”

Fire Hair nodded. “From the West Sea to here is a journey of many miles and much danger. You have come alone?”

“The dangers are not great for those who know these forests. Our village is small, and now is the best time for fish, so no one else could be spared for this journey.” Walks Crooked didn’t mention the other reasons. There’d been great debate about whether the journey was worth the risk. The West Sea tribe was distant and isolated, and fear still reigned when it came to dealing with the strange Loud-Talkers.

“May I speak to your daughter and call her by her name?”

“You may.”

Fire Hair’s attention turned to Noisy Girl, and her apprehension grew again. It was tempered, though, by Fire Hair’s attitude—her respect for Walks Crooked and her obvious knowledge of the customs of the White Fur People.

“Noisy Girl, I greet you with happiness. You are welcome to come with us and visit the tribe of the Loud-Talking People. If you wish to learn more of us, we will gladly teach you.”

“I’ve never been away from my village,” said Noisy Girl, feeling strangely at ease with this new acquaintance. “All of this is so strange.”

Behind Fire Hair, the man—Long Nose—joined the conversation with equally flawless gestures. “Perhaps your mother would wish to come and stay for a time, until you decide if you wish to remain with us or return to your village.”

“Yes,” said Walks Crooked. “I would do that, if it would be accepted.”

“It is accepted,” said Fire Hair. “You both may come and be welcome among us.”

And so it began.