Category Archives: Excerpt
SPOTLIGHT ~ More than a Phoenix by Ashlyn Chase
What do you get when you take
Two phoenix shifter brothers
Throw in one powerful witch
And one…monkey shifter?
Mallory Summers is losing it. She’s discovered she can talk to dead people—and she might be able to shift to monkey form. Firefighter Dante Fierro knows the quirky beauty isn’t crazy—just supernatural. But what would she think if she knew his secret?
Hothead Noah Fierro has his own sparks flying with gorgeous ER doctor Kizzy Samuels. While the attraction is mutual, so are the supernatural secrets. With this much sizzle going on, how do you not get burned?
Fighting fires is easy… Finding love is the hard part.
Amazon: https://amzn.to/2KKIiAO
Apple: https://apple.co/2KOJgw9
Excerpt:
Mallory Summers was trying to chat with a nice young man about the weather, but couldn’t help being distracted by two old biddies sitting on the bus bench, peaking at her from under their umbrellas.
One old woman leaned toward the other and whispered loudly, “Tsk. Tsk. Such a sweet young thing…”
“It’s a shame,” said the other one.
Shame? Should I be ashamed for chatting up a nice-looking guy and offering to share my umbrella? Just to make sure the gossips knew how unashamed she was, she turned back to the young man and spoke louder. “Yeah, I saw the weather report this morning. It’s supposed to rain until about noon.”
The guy just nodded. He was a little hard to engage in conversation.
Still, she persisted. “That will probably keep people at home, so my work at the mall will be slow.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted one of the women waddling up to a guy in uniform. They were farther away, so she couldn’t hear what they were saying.
A few moments later, he approached her slowly. He was a handsome devil. She could only imagine what the interfering old woman had said. Probably warned him not to be taken in by the young lady’s flirtatious ways.
“Uh, hi,” the guy said, smiling. He had stunning brown eyes, with thick, dark lashes most women would envy. One of the patches on his uniform looked just like the one on her uncle’s Boston Fire Department uniform.
She suddenly realized he looked familiar. “Hi. Do I know you?”
The young man paused. His smile turned into a grin, lighting up his handsome face. “I know you. You’re Mallory Summers.”
“Right—and you are…”
“Dante Fierro, and I’m wondering who you’re talking to.”
“Huh?” Well, that’s rude. Why should anybody care? She was about to say as much when she turned back to the guy in question to apologize for everyone else’s bad manners—but he was gone.
“Where did he go?” she asked.
“Where did who go?”
“The man… I don’t know his name. And—wait a minute… You’re the Dante Fierro from high school?”
“Yup. So you do remember me.”
“Of course.”
“Do you always hold conversations with blank air?”
“What the heck are you talking about?”
“Mallory, these ladies have seen you at this bus stop three times, talking to yourself. They won’t call the cops, because you’re not doing anything illegal, and they don’t want to call an ambulance, which would be expensive, but they’re worried about you.”
Mallory jammed her hands on her hips and strode over to the two old ladies. “You should be minding your own business.”
They leaned away from her as if they might catch an airborne virus.
“Mallory…” Dante gentled his voice. “I don’t live far from here. Why don’t you come over for coffee and we can talk.”
“Because I have to go to work. I take two buses to get to my job at the Union Mall.”
“I can drive you.”
The weather didn’t look like it was going to let up, and a nice warm car sounded good. She shrugged. “I don’t want to put you out. You look like you’re on your way to work too.”
“I’m on my way home, actually. Come on. It’s no trouble.”
She smiled. “Well, now that I realize who you are, it would probably be okay to accept a ride. After all, it’s not like you’re a complete stranger.”
“Good.” He stuck out his elbow like he was escorting her to a fancy ball. “Let’s go.”
She slipped her hand into the crook of his arm and gave the old busybodies a glare as they passed.
He lived around the corner in a nice two-family house on L Street, a stone’s throw from the main drag, which bordered the beach.
“I shouldn’t stay for coffee. I can get coffee at the mall. Is that your car?” She nodded toward a black Camaro with bright-red racing stripes down the side.
“Yup. My brother Noah calls it my wife.”
“Your wife? Why?”
“Because I named her Joanna, and I take good care of her. He says it’s because she eats up half my paycheck.”
She giggled. “Okay. Well, nice to meet you, Joanna.” As they approached the passenger’s side, she realized how talking to an inanimate object might also make her look like a crazy person—and he’d already caught her talking to, what…a dead guy? Maybe someone who stepped in front of a bus many years ago… She still wasn’t sure what was going on. Could two old ladies be punking her?
He just smiled, dug the key fob out of his pocket, and opened the door for her.
She settled herself on the comfortable leather seat and looked around. His car was indeed in pristine condition. It didn’t have that new car smell, but it looked as if it could have.
He jumped into the driver’s seat and pulled out of the driveway. “Where to?”
“I work at the mall in Somerville. I thought I already said so.”
He drove in the general direction of the expressway, but stayed quiet for a few moments. At last, he asked, “Mallory, are you sure you should be going to work?”
She reared back and stared at him. What was he saying? And did she want to know? “Yeah. Why wouldn’t I?”
He glanced over at her. “It’s just that… Well, you… I mean…”
“Just say it, Dante. You think I’m nuts.”
“No, not nuts. I wouldn’t put it that way, but maybe…I don’t know, stressed?”
“Nope. I’m an artist, and having a creative outlet decreases stress. To pay the bills, I take professional portraits at the mall. Kids’ photos mostly. But I like kids, so that’s not very stressful either.”
“Please don’t be offended, but…are you on drugs?”
She burst out laughing. “No. Are you?”
About the Author
Ashlyn Chase was a registered nurse for twenty years. During those years she wrote articles for professional journals and a thesis, but eventually, thank goodness, discovered the joy and freedom of writing fiction.
Ashlyn considers herself lucky. Her degree in behavioral sciences is a combination of psychology and sociology, so she has studied people most of her life. She doesn’t have to write out exhaustive character sketches to understand her characters or predict how they will behave. That doesn’t mean they don’t surprise her. Sometimes they take her on grand unexpected journeys.
Ashlyn has learned to go with the flow. To enjoy the journey is not only one of her writing goals, but also a challenge in life. She tries to follow where the story takes her. Her identified theme involves characters who reinvent themselves. And why not? She has reinvented herself numerous times—from artist, to nurse, to hypnotherapist, to author, and she has lived in seventeen different places. At last, she’s all settled down and comfy in New England.
Is there a grand design or do we decide our own fates? Perhaps if the powers-that-be have a plot, then they also give us the right to revise it.
10 Surprising Facts About Romance Novels
Ashlyn’s Take on the Value of Romance Novels
Author Social Media links:
Twitter
Facebook
Goodreads
Instagram
Share this:
BLOG TOUR – Craved by her Cougar (Cougar Creek Mates #4) by Felicity Heaton
New York Times best-selling paranormal romance author Felicity Heaton is here today for the book tour of her new shifter romance release, Craved by her Cougar, the fourth and final book in her brand new Cougar Creek Mates Series.
Set in her popular Eternal Mates world, Cougar Creek Mates takes you into the deep Canadian wilderness to a secret place that’s home to a cougar shifter pride led by four sexy brothers, each guaranteed to steal your heart and set it racing!
All four books in the series are out now, meaning it’s complete and ready for a good binge-read! Who doesn’t love a series binge-read? Every book has a happily forever after and there are no cliff-hangers, because there’s nothing worse than a cliff-hanger!
Check out the book, download it with your Kindle Unlimited subscription if you have one, and be sure to enter the awesome grand giveaway happening at her website!
Craved by her Cougar
(Cougar Creek Mates Shifter Romance Series Book 4)
Felicity Heaton
For the last twenty years, Cobalt has burned with a need of one female, a beautiful raven-haired cougar who captured his heart the moment he set eyes on her. His position as pride protector has been a blessing at past mating gatherings, keeping females away, but this time it feels like the worst of curses, because the female who has bewitched him so thoroughly is taking part for the first time and all he can do is watch as males battle for her.
As much as she hates the way her mother controls everything in her life, Ember is thankful for it as she constantly turns away suitors, unaware of the pain she’s sparing Ember from with every male she rejects. Every male who isn’t the gorgeous blond with darkness in his eyes and an easy smile she burns for with an intensity that scares her, awakens feelings in her that have her verging on doing something reckless. Damaged goods he might be, dangerous and unpredictable, but with every contest over her that pulls her closer to her doom, she grows more determined to follow her heart, no matter the consequences.
With every fight over the right to Ember, the tethers on Cobalt’s feelings twist and threaten to snap, a torment he cannot bear and one that has him willing to risk it all, because a single kiss would make even the harshest punishment worth it. He would die for one moment with her: his fated mate.
Read it with your Kindle Unlimited Subscription or buy now from…
Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.ca | Amazon.com.au
Enter the grand tour-wide giveaway to win one of a $75, $50 or $25 Amazon Gift Card at the Craved by her Cougar book page.
This giveaway is international and open to everyone, and ends at midnight on October 14th. Enter now:
http://www.felicityheaton.com/craved-by-her-cougar-shifter-romance-book.php
Cobalt shoved his hands through his platinum-blond wild hair and growled as he clawed at it, pivoted and began pacing back along the clearing in front of his cabin, faster now as his emotions started to get the better of him again.
He needed to fight. His muscles felt too tight, clamped on his bones, his entire body pulled as taut as a bowstring and, fuck, he was in danger of snapping.
His claws lengthened, his fangs sharpening as frustration mounted, an explosive mix of anger, shame and bitter disappointment. He snarled, lips peeling back off his teeth, and wheeled to pace back the way he had come, his strides clipped as the need to fight merged with an ache to shift.
Gods, he wanted to surrender to that soul-deep ache.
He wanted to purge every damned feeling that was boiling inside him, twisting him and pulling him apart, and let instinct take over. Shifting into his cougar form would give him that release and the relief from it all he so desperately needed.
His animal form dampened his emotions because it couldn’t process them as easily as his human side so it suppressed them instead. His messy feelings would fade into the background if he remained as a cougar for long enough as his instincts rose to swamp him.
In that form, he obeyed a more basic and uncomplicated set of needs.
Fight. Feed. Fuck. Survive.
It was all that mattered when he was running as a cougar, and it was tempting to let it sweep over him, but it was dangerous too.
Those instincts were liable to send him straight to Ember.
He wanted to fight for her, as the other males could, and, sweet gods almighty, he needed to ease her needs, ached to give her the relief he could feel she desperately needed. Whenever he was close to her, it drummed in his blood and drove him to do something, whatever it took to ensure that she found the release from her instincts, from the mating heat that had brought her to Cougar Creek.
Cobalt tried to push her out of his head, but need flared inside him, made him want to claw his own damned skin off as he twitched restlessly, body primed for the delicate, beautiful female who had caught his eye two decades ago and had been on his mind ever since.
In his heart.
The sun crept higher, breaking the tops of the mountains as he turned away from the creek and paced back towards the other side of his small territory. It chased the crisp coolness from the morning air and from his arms, making him aware of how cold he had gotten in just his black t-shirt and jeans.
Cobalt slowed his step to bask in the light, letting it warm him and wash over him, wishing it would carry away all his troubles as it used to whenever he had bathed in it when he was a kid.
The mist swirled as the air heated, rippling over the surface of the shallow broad river to his right and snaking around his ankles.
He stared at the horizon and drew down a slow, deep breath of the cold air. Narrowed his focus to that distant point where jagged snow-capped mountains met the sky and let everything else fall away from his shoulders, until they felt lighter again.
He couldn’t let this go on any longer.
He would go mad if he did.
With Ember’s presence pushing at his restraint, cranking him tight with emotions that were tearing him apart and instincts that were making him volatile, he needed all of his focus to control himself around her and the other males. He didn’t need to be distracted by what had happened.
But Rath was always caught up in Ivy, his beautiful mate, and it pained Cobalt to see them together, so happy and swept up in each other. He couldn’t even talk to Storm because his younger brother was away in England looking into his mate’s half-brother’s background, trying to determine whether he really had been working alone and not with Archangel, a hunter organisation that had attacked his pride almost four decades ago.
An organisation that had taken their parents from them and had come close to taking Storm too.
Just thinking about that night had the need to fight rising again, a wild and feral urge to bloody his claws and fangs in order to protect his brothers.
Cobalt focused on the sunrise again, using it to calm that urge. It was slow to leave him, his fatigue and another night of worrying leaving him worn down and weak to it.
When it had finally flowed out of him, he looked down at his hands.
At his extended claws.
He stared at them, willing them to go away, but they refused.
Fuck.
He needed to speak with Rath.
It needed to be today.
Before he became a liability, a male not on the edge but firmly over it, one who was likely to fight over the slightest thing.
And he knew with a sickening sense of certainty that if he fought, it wouldn’t end there.
He would kill.
Cold went through him, his blood icy sludge in his veins, and his stomach churned.
He growled at himself. He had let this go on long enough, couldn’t put it off any longer or he would be a danger to the pride.
Cobalt twisted on his heel and marched along the riverbank, heading away from the sunrise and towards the area where most of the cabins at Cougar Creek were situated.
Ember’s family’s one included.
His pulse jacked up as he spotted it through the trees nearest the river. The lodgepole pines and spruces sheltered it, providing some cover for it where it stood just ten metres from the riverbank, facing onto the large swath of green that formed the main area of the creek.
Smoke curled lazily from the chimney, signalling someone was up.
His step slowed and he couldn’t stop himself from glancing across at the front of the L-shaped cabin as he entered the clearing and started up the two-hundred metre stretch of grass to where his brother’s cabin stood at the top of it, nestled beneath the trees.
The curtains were drawn across the small windows that flanked the door of her cabin, blocking him out. An ache started inside him, throbbed deep in his bones and had his step slowing further, until he almost stopped and surrendered to it.
He wanted to see her.
That yearning burned inside him, a need he found hard to deny. His instincts pushed him to step up onto her deck and knock on her door, to go to her. Fuck, they more than pushed him.
They demanded it.
She was his.
He knew that.
Gods, he knew it.
It blazed inside him like an eternal flame that was only growing fiercer, burned so hot he felt as if it was going to devour him sometimes, utterly destroy him unless he found a way to calm the raging flames.
There was only one way that was going to happen, and while his position as pride protector had been a blessing before, keeping the females away from him because his duty meant he couldn’t participate in the gathering, it was the worst of fucking curses now that Ember was taking part for the first time.
And he couldn’t.
He had never hated his duty before, but he hated it with a vengeance now.
When he and his brothers had taken it on in the wake of the Archangel attack over thirty years ago, a brutal assault that had left the pride shaken and had forced them to move to a new territory, he hadn’t cared. But then, shortly after they had settled at Cougar Creek, he had set eyes on Ember for the first time.
She had been a long way off maturity, a cherub-cheeked young female who would have looked like a teen nearing twenty to any passing humans.
He had watched over her whenever she had been at the creek, and had used his position as pride protector to keep the females away from him during every gathering, and damn, she had grown into a stunning female with supple curves that set him on fire every time he looked at her.
Idiot that he was, he had wanted to give her time to reach maturity before approaching her, figuring she would make an appearance at the creek at some point and he would be there when it happened since Rath kept him up to speed on who was visiting.
He just hadn’t thought her first appearance after maturing would be a damned spring gathering.
Now he was stuck on the side lines, acting as security for the pride while they were caught up in the mating heat and overseeing all the fights for dominance over females that were breaking out.
Females like Ember.
But she was his, and he needed her.
He needed to knock on that door that separated them. He needed her to open it and look at him with soft eyes, ones that told him he wasn’t alone, that she ached for him too, craved him with the same ferocity as he craved her.
And he needed her to open her arms to him, because what he really needed most right now was to rest his head on her shoulder, wrap his arms around her and just hold her until he felt he was back on solid ground, everything put back in place and right again.
Gods, he needed to hold her until this pain went away, just wanted one moment with her without anyone seeing them, or judging him.
He needed her to hold him together, to lend him her strength and give him courage and hope.
Hope that she would be his and hope that his life could only get better from this point.
He scrubbed his hand over his mussed blond hair, did it so much these days he was surprised he had any left, and huffed as he pushed away from her home and forced himself to head towards Rath’s one-and-a-half storey log cabin at the top of the sloping green.
He trudged up the gentle hill, the growing distance between him and Ember tearing at him, and wanted to growl when a dark-haired male emerged from the woods to his right and he caught the male looking towards the river.
Towards Ember’s cabin.
The hunger in the male’s pale golden eyes had Cobalt looking over his shoulder, seeking the one he was looking at.
Ember stood on the deck, dressed in dark blue jeans and a thick black sweater that hugged her curvy figure, her damp ebony hair blending into the wool as it tumbled around her shoulders. She nursed a steaming mug, gently blowing on it, her profile to him and the other male.
A male who was still staring at her.
Cobalt itched with a need to change course and close the distance between him and the male to drive him away and make it clear that Ember belonged to him. The gods only knew how he managed to stay his course, finding the strength to keep moving towards Rath’s cabin instead.
He glanced at the male again before taking the step up onto the deck that stretched the length of the gable end of the log cabin, finding him still watching Ember. Maybe he could just shoo the male away before rousing his brother. It probably wouldn’t take much. A flash of fangs and a growl might be enough.
If it wasn’t?
He was liable to take things further in order to make sure he left, and he wasn’t sure he had the strength to restrain himself and stop himself from going all out on the male. Hell, the state he was in right now, frayed and close to the end of his tether, there was a danger he would skip the flashing fangs and growling and go straight to beating the shit out of the male.
So he forced himself to rap his knuckles on Rath’s door instead.
Because if Ember saw that side of him, if she witnessed the darkness he held within him, she would never want him.
He eased back on the deck and glanced up at the triangular window that sat beneath the eaves of the roof as he waited. A shadow moved across them, and then the door in front of him creaked open to reveal his older brother dressed in only a loosely buttoned pair of faded blue jeans.
Rath rubbed sleep from his grey eyes and yawned.
“What’s up?” his brother murmured quietly and his eyes narrowed on him as he finally lowered his hand to press it against the doorframe.”You look like hell. You alright?”
Cobalt blew out his breath. “Can we talk?”
Read it with your Kindle Unlimited Subscription or buy now from…
Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.ca | Amazon.com.au
Binge-read the complete series !!!
Book 1: Claimed by her Cougar – Available in Kindle Unlimited!
Book 2: Captured by her Cougar – Available in Kindle Unlimited!
Book 3: Courted by her Cougar – Available in Kindle Unlimited!
Book 4: Craved by her Cougar – Available in Kindle Unlimited!
Felicity Heaton is a New York Times and USA Today international best-selling author writing passionate paranormal romance books. In her books, she creates detailed worlds, twisting plots, mind-blowing action, intense emotion and heart-stopping romances with leading men that vary from dark deadly vampires to sexy shape-shifters and wicked werewolves, to sinful angels and hot demons! If you’re a fan of paranormal romance authors Lara Adrian, J R Ward, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Gena Showalter and Christine Feehan then you will enjoy her books too.
If you love your angels a little dark and wicked, the best-selling Her Angel series is for you. If you like strong, powerful, and dark vampires then try the Vampires Realm series or any of her stand-alone vampire romance books. If you’re looking for vampire romances that are sinful, passionate and erotic then try the best-selling Vampire Erotic Theatre series. Or if you prefer huge detailed worlds filled with hot-blooded alpha males in every species, from elves to demons to dragons to shifters and angels, then take a look at the new Eternal Mates series.
If you want to know more about Felicity, or want to get in touch, you can find her at the following places:
WEBSITE | BLOG | FACEBOOK | TWITTER | GOODREADS | INSTAGRAM
![Real Kind of Love (Books & Brews Series Book 1) by [Rider, Sara]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51pD2Unr6pL._SY346_.jpg)
