Category Archives: Excerpt
BLOG TOUR ~ PLAY DIRTY by Jessie K
A full length standalone.
One kiss set the stage.
I knew my acting partner was too young for me, but I didn’t care.
One unforgettable night in my bed was the performance of a lifetime.
Now I can’t get the memories out of my head.
When she shows up in my life again in the worst possible place,
I have to think we’re as doomed as Romeo and Juliet.
“Tell me you don’t love me anymore, and I will walk out this door. I’ll walk out of this town and never steal sight of you again, Fiona.” He rose and took her by the shoulders. Under the bright stage lights, she looked like an angel. “Say it. Tell me you don’t fucking love me anymore.”
“I don’t fucking love you anymore!” Lynn grabbed the collar of his shirt and pressed her sweet mouth to his. Matthew lifted her up to his waist, holding her tight and letting her devour him. This surpassed a stage kiss, this was magic wrapped around the tongue of a gorgeous girl. He lost himself in her, forgetting the stage and Vance and Fiona.
Lynn rocketed him to a place where it was just the two of them, where the floors spun and an erection was begging to burst from the prison within his jeans.
He could do this every day. Oh God, could he do this every goddamn day.
She finally broke it off, leaving Matthew slightly shocked from the absence of her. He helped her slide down him, taking care to lift her off of him and set her down gently before she could get too close to the bulge in his jeans.
They stood side by side and bowed their heads slightly, completely in sync with one another.
“Thank you.” The headless voice floated out from the seats.
They exited on the opposite side of the stage and were funneled into section with the others who went before them. Man-bun high-fived him as he took a seat. Somehow during their crabwalk across the tight aisles, he lost her. Matthew looked around but Lynn was gone.
He tried to push down the disappointment chewing up his chest. This was just an audition, their time together was finished. Expecting her to stick with him was silly and he had always parted ways with his scene partners in the past.
But this time, he couldn’t shake his attachment to the brunette whose kiss made him pitch a tent in the middle of a crowded theater with his potential employer.
Matthew stretched out in the chair and tried instead to focus on his competition. He had missed several auditions while running lines with Lynn in the hall, but there were plenty of others to whittle down. He knew for certain he was better than a solid seventy-five percent of the males auditioning for Vance.
He didn’t just perform the role, he was the role. So many of these guys were choppy and robotic or bland; they lacked the soul needed for a man as complicated as Vance Gray.
How would the blond in skinny jeans handle the role when he went spiraling down the drug trip? He didn’t look like he could dominate a woman the way he dominated Fiona in that scene.
Just like that, his mind shifted from sizing up performances to undressing Lynn and throwing her onto his bed, exploring every inch of that nubile girl, owning her with his lips and tongue. She was like snake venom, tearing up his system and shutting everything else down. A girl hadn’t been able to take ownership of his mind like this in years.
Not since Nadia.
Not since his last show.
He gritted his teeth and pulled his focus back to the stage. In some ways, Nadia was a lifetime ago, but she had taught him an invaluable lesson: don’t let love interfere with your craft. What started off as the best sex of his life turned into a nightmare rapidly spinning out of control. She slept with directors, stagehands, his fellow actors, anyone she could to further her career in New York City. She’d just neglected to share this information with him while sharing his bed.
Matthew became a goddamn laughing stock and had to leave his last company. His career went down the shitter because of a girl with fake tits and faker commitment. As innocent as Lynn looked, he hadn’t expected Nadia to screw him over, either.
“Never trust a starving actress.” That was what his old mentor told him during his MFA program. Words he needed to heed this time and forever, even if he could be missing out on the best pair of tits he’d seen in a long time.
This was his career on the line. His dick could mind its own business until after callbacks.
Jessie K is a high school teacher by day, romance writer by night.
Facebook / Twitter / Goodreads
Share this:
BLOG TOUR ~ Sweet Soul by Tillie Cole
Title: Sweet Soul
Series: Sweet Home #4
Author: Tillie Cole
Age group: New adult
Genre: Contemporary romance
Release date: 15th December 2015
BLURB
One shy lost soul.
One silent lonely heart.
One love to save them both.
Life has never been easy for twenty-year-old Levi Carillo. The youngest of the Carillo boys, Levi is nothing like his older brothers. He isn’t dark in looks or intimidating to everyone he meets. In fact, he’s quite the opposite. Haunted by a crippling shyness and the tragic events of his past, Levi spends his days with his head buried in his books, or training hard for his college football team. Too timid to talk to girls, Levi stays as far away as possible and completely on his own… until he saves the life of a troubled pretty blonde, a troubled pretty blonde that might just be the exception to his rule.
Elsie Hall is homeless. Or at least that’s all anyone ever sees. Everyday is a fight for survival on the cold streets of Seattle, everyday a struggle to find food and keep warm. Alone in life—a life that’s dangerous and cruel—her will to keep going is an ever-losing battle. In her world of silence, Elsie has given up hope that her life will contain anything but constant struggle and pain… until the beautiful boy she has severely wronged comes to her rescue at precisely the right time.
New Adult novel—contains sexual situations and mature topics. Suited for ages 18 and up.
EXCERPT
Elsie grabbed her pen and paper; I took her hand. I walked her out of the pool house to the kitchen door. I opened the door, and Elsie walked through. When she glanced over her shoulder, I said, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Elsie smiled and walked up the stairs to her room. Just as I was about to shut the door, Lexi appeared from the darkened dining room, a sleeping Dante in her arms.
I opened my mouth to say something when Lexi beat me to it. “Dante woke up for a feed a while ago. I was in the dining room when I saw Elsie run by and leave. I panicked at first thinking she was running away, then I saw you by your pool house. Saw you let her inside.”
My face was on fire as Lexi spoke, rocking my nephew in her arms. I didn’t say anything, but I clearly didn’t need to. “You like her. A lot,” Lexi stated. Unable to lie to my brother’s wife, I nodded my head.
Lexi moved closer. “You’re taking her out tomorrow?”
“Yeah.”
Lexi nodded, then went to walk back up the stairs. Before she did, she turned round, and looked like she wanted to say something, but stopped herself. Needing to know what it was, I questioned, “What?”
Lexi looked in the direction of the stairs, in the direction Elsie went, and she said, “I think she’s been through more than we can understand, Lev. I’ve tried to talk to her every day, but she avoids conversation completely.” Lexi sighed and added, “I think she’s really broken inside. Severely. I think there’s something dark in her past that’s haunting her.”
My heart ached, and just as I turned to go back to my room, I whispered, “Then we’re the same. That’s what makes her so special to me.”
“Lev…” I heard Lexi hush out softly, but I was out of the door and into the pool house before she could react.
My mind raced with what Lexi said, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t already see. Elsie didn’t speak, she was too timid and shy. She’d lost her mamma, like I had lost mine. And I could see she was lonely, just like me.
Taking off my jacket, I walked to the table to clear away the mugs, when I saw a piece of paper was lying on the top. I wondered what it was. Suddenly I recognized Elsie’s handwriting.
Moving round the table, I dropped to the seat. The paper was folded in two, my name written across the top.
My heartbeat picked up speed as I opened the paper. At first I was confused by the centralized column of words, then my heart burst apart when I read a poem that Elsie had written:
Alone and lost, appeared this saint,
With pretty gray eyes, darkness can’t taint.
He stole her from cold, from blustering storm,
Kind and gentle, he took her from harm.
Fearful of dark, he created her light,
A jar of gold, chasing demons of night.
Telling stories of love, he brought to her life,
A moment by his side: no pain, no strife.
He gifted her poems, a gesture on whim,
With every word read, she could see only him.
She counted the days until he returned home,
The boy with his light, the girl not alone.
Invisible to all, a shade wandering in dark,
He brought back her faith, with his pure kind heart.
I love poetry, Levi.
Thank you for the book.
Elsie x
AUTHOR BIO
Amazon & USA Today Best Selling Author, Tillie Cole, is a Northern girl through and through. She originates from a place called Teesside on that little but awesomely sunny (okay I exaggerate) Isle called Great Britain. She was brought up surrounded by her English rose mother — a farmer’s daughter, her crazy Scottish father, a savagely sarcastic sister and a multitude of rescue animals and horses.
Being a scary blend of Scottish and English, Tillie embraces both cultures; her English heritage through her love of HP sauce and freshly made Yorkshire Puddings, and her Scottish which is mostly demonstrated by her frighteningly foul-mouthed episodes of pure rage and her much loved dirty jokes.
Having been born and raised as a Teesside Smoggie, Tillie, at age nineteen, moved forty miles north to the ‘Toon’, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, where she attended Newcastle University and graduat-ed with a Bachelor of Arts honours degree in Religious Studies. She returned two years later to complete a Post-Graduate Certificate in Teaching High School Social Studies. Tillie, regards New-castle to be a home from home and enjoyed the Newcastle Geordie way of life for seven ‘proper mint’ and ‘lush’ years.
One summers day, after finishing reading her thousandth book on her much loved and treasured Kindle, Tillie turned to her husband and declared, “D’you know, I have a great idea for a story. I could write a book.” Several months later, after repeating the same tired line at the close of another completed story, she was scolded by her husband to shut up talking about writing a novel and “just bloody do it!” For the first time in eleven years, Tillie actually took his advice (he is still trying to get over the shock) and immediately set off on a crazy journey, delving deep into her fertile imagina-tion.
Tillie, ever since, has written from the heart. She combines her passion for anything camp and glit-tery with her love of humour and dark brooding men (most often muscled and tattooed – they’re her weakness!). She also has a serious side (believe it or not!) and loves to immerse herself in the complex study of World Religions, History and Cultural Studies and creates fantasy stories that en-able her to thread serious issues and topics into her writing — yep, there’s more to this girl than pro-fanity and sparkles!
After six years of teaching high school Social Studies and following her Professional Rugby Player husband around Europe, they have finally given up their nomadic way of life and settled in Calgary, Alberta where Tillie spends most of her days (and many a late night) lost in a writing euphoria or pursuing a dazzling career as a barrel-racing, tasselled-chap wearing, Stetson-sporting cowgirl… Ye-haw!
SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS
Website
Twitter
Facebook
Goodreads
GIVEAWAY
Tillie is giving away a Kindle Fire
Rafflecopter giveaway
Book Loving Pixies 
