Blog Tour: Now I Rise by Kiersten White | Excerpt | Giveaway

Welcome to our stop on the Now I Rise tour for Kiersten White. This tour is hosted by Rockstar Book Tour.

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Now I Rise
The Conqueror's Saga #2
Author: Kiersten White
Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Released: June 27th 2017
Review Source: Delacorte Press

Lada Dracul has no allies. No throne. All she has is what she’s always had: herself. After failing to secure the Wallachian throne, Lada is out to punish anyone who dares to cross her blood-strewn path. Filled with a white-hot rage, she storms the countryside with her men, accompanied by her childhood friend Bogdan, terrorizing the land. But brute force isn’t getting Lada what she wants. And thinking of Mehmed brings little comfort to her thorny heart. There’s no time to wonder whether he still thinks about her, even loves her. She left him before he could leave her.

What Lada needs is her younger brother Radu’s subtlety and skill. But Mehmed has sent him to Constantinople—and it’s no diplomatic mission. Mehmed wants control of the city, and Radu has earned an unwanted place as a double-crossing spy behind enemy lines. Radu longs for his sister’s fierce confidence—but for the first time in his life, he rejects her unexpected plea for help. Torn between loyalties to faith, to the Ottomans, and to Mehmed, he knows he owes Lada nothing. If she dies, he could never forgive himself—but if he fails in Constantinople, will Mehmed ever forgive him?

As nations fall around them, the Dracul siblings must decide: what will they sacrifice to fulfill their destinies? Empires will topple, thrones will be won . . . and souls will be lost.

Excerpt 

“I cannot breathe in this thing.” Lada tried to lift her arms, but the sleeves were not made for her broad shoulders or thick arms. She could barely move. “This weights more than my chain mail.” Lada tugged at the layers of material that made up the skirts.
“Think of it as armor.”
Lada’s lip curled up in a sneer. “What could this possibly protect me from?”
“Mockery. Ridicule. Your men are used to you, but this is a court. You have to do things a certain way. Do not mess this up.” Oana yanked one of Lada’s curls as she tucked it back into the elaborate style. 
“Radu should be here.” Lada stared down in despair. “I do not know how to talk to these people.”
“He was always better at that. How did he fare when you left? I worried for him. I thought they would kill you, and break Radu’s heart.” There was a wistful tenderness in Oana’s voice.
Lada took a deep breath. Or tried to—she could not manage it in this abomination of a dress. She and her nurse had not really spoken of Radu since Oana had asked where he was. The truth was as cold and brittle as the ice in her water bowl. “He grew into a new man. Smart. Sly. Too handsome. And, eventually, into a stranger to me.” She had had no word from Radu, no news. She wanted to tell Oana that Radu was coming, but it had been so long. What if he was not? “When I left, he chose the Ottomans. So you were wrong. I survived, and Radu grew a new heart.”
“Did you have nothing in common then?”
A strangled laugh escaped the prison of her bodice. “Well, one thing.” Lada wondered, yet again, whether her absence had granted Radu the portion of Mehmed’s attention and love that he so desperately craved.
And, yet again, she forced herself not to think on it.
Lada tugged at the bodice. She missed her Ottoman finery. At least those draped layers of tunics and robes were comfortable. “I am going to give the wrong impression, wearing this.”
“You mean a good impression?”
“Yes, exactly.”
Oana surveyed her with a critical eye, then threw her hands up in surrender. “This is the best we can hope for, at least as far as your looks. As far as everything else, tonight, pretend you are Radu.”
A small pang hit just above Lada’s heart. Did Oana wish that it were Radu and not Lada she had been reunited with? Everyone always loved Radu best. Well. Lada could be Radu for one night. She grimaced, then smiled broadly and opened her large eyes as wide as she could. It was her best imitation of him.
Oana recoiled. “That is terrifying, girl. I was wrong. Be yourself.”
Lada let her hooded eyelids drop low. She had never been able to be anyone else.

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Kiersten White is the NYT bestselling author of the Paranormalcy trilogy, the Mind Games series, Illusions of Fate, The Chaos of Stars, In the Shadows with artist Jim Di Bartolo, and the upcoming historical reimagining, And I Darken. She has one tall husband and three small children and lives near the ocean, where her life is perfectly normal. Visit her at www.kierstenwhite.com.

   

Giveaway

3 Winners will receive a finished copy of NOW I RISE, US Only..

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Tour Schedule:

Week Two:
6/26/2017- Dazzled by Books- Review
6/27/2017- Books and Things- Review
6/28/2017- Rattle the Stars- Review
6/29/2017- YABC- Review
6/30/2017- Once Upon A Twilight- Excerpt

Week Three:
7/3/2017- Adventures of a Book Junkie- Interview
7/4/2017- Seeing Double In Neverland- Review
7/5/2017- Fiction Fare- Review
7/6/2017- YA and Wine- Review
7/7/2017- Little Red's Reviews- Review

Blog Tour: The Infinity of You & Me by J.Q. Coyle + Excerpt

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The Infinity of You & Me
Author: J.Q. Coyle
Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Released: November 8th 2016
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin

What if every life-altering choice you made could split your world into infinite worlds?

Almost fifteen, Alicia is smart and funny with a deep connection to the poet Sylvia Plath, but she’s ultimately failing at life. With a laundry list of diagnoses, she hallucinates different worlds—strange, decaying, otherworldly yet undeniably real worlds that are completely unlike her own with her single mom and one true friend. In one particularly vivid hallucination, Alicia is drawn to a boy her own age named Jax who’s trapped in a dying universe. Days later, her long-lost father shows up at her birthday party, telling her that the hallucinations aren’t hallucinations, but real worlds; she and Jax are bound by a strange past and intertwining present. This leads her on a journey to find out who she is while trying to save the people and worlds she loves. J.Q. Coyle’s The Infinity of You & Me is a wild ride through unruly hearts and vivid worlds guaranteed to captivate.

Excerpt

The beginning is always a surprise. (The endings are, too.)
I never quite know what I look like. I’m myself, yes, but differ- ent. Never tall and leggy, but my hair might be long and tied back or cut in a short bob. Sometimes I’m in jeans and sneakers. Once or twice, a dress.
I’ve been alone in a field of snow.
I’ve woken up in the backseat of a fast car at night, my father driving down a dark road.
I’ve been standing in the corner at a party where none of the faces are familiar.
This time, noise comes first. A clanging deep inside the hull of a ship—a cruise ship. I’m running down a corridor of soaked red carpet.
The ship lurches.
Someone’s yelling over the crackling PA speakers—I can’t understand the words over the rush of water. Alarms roar over- head.

2
   
J. Q. COY LE
   

 I shoulder my way down another corridor, fighting the flood of people running in the opposite direction, screaming to each other.
Some part of my brain says, Me? On a cruise ship? Never. But if I was so lucky, it’d be a sinking one.
The rest of my brain is sure this isn’t real, no matter how real it feels.
I run my hand down the wall, the cold water now  pushing against my legs. I’m wearing a pair of skinny jeans I don’t own. I know someone’s after me—I just don’t know who. I look back over my shoulder, trying to see if anyone else is moving against the crowd like I am.
No one is.
Where’s my mother? She’s never here when I go off in my head like this.
A man grabs me roughly by the shirt. My ribs tighten. Is this who I’m running from?
No. He’s old, his eyes bloodshot and wild with fear. He says something in Russian, like the guys in the deli at Berezka’s, not too far from my house in Southie. I shouldn’t be able to understand him, but I do. “Run! This way. Do you want to die, girl?” I don’t speak Rus- sian. I’m failing Spanish II.
But then I answer, partly in Russian. “I’m fine. Thank you. Spasiba.” The words feel stiff in my mouth. I can barely hear myself over the screaming, the water rushing up the corridor, and the groaning ship.
The man keeps yelling, won’t let go of me, so I rip myself loose and run.
A glimpse of gray through a porthole, only a sliver of land and heavy dark sky.
I see myself in the porthole’s dark reflection—my hair chin length, my bangs choppy, just a bit of faded red lipstick.

3
   
THE INFINITY OF YOU & ME
   

 We’re on the Dnieper River. It’s like this: I know things I shouldn’t. I don’t know how.
A woman falls. I reach down and help her up. Her head is gashed, her face smeared with blood. She nods a thank-you and keeps march- ing against the current, soaked.
I wonder if she’ll make it. Will I?
I’m looking for my father. I want to call out for him, but I shouldn’t. The people chasing me are really after him—I know this too, the way you know things in a dream.
The ship lists, hard, and my right shoulder drives into a wall. Stateroom doors swing open. The sound of water surging into the hull is impossibly loud.
And then my father appears up ahead—shaggy, unshaven, his knuckles bloody. I love seeing him in these hallucinations. (That’s what my therapist calls them.) It’s the only time I ever see him. I even love seeing him when he looks like hell, and older than I re- member him, more worn-down. But he always has this energy— like his strength is coiled and tensed.
“Alicia!” he shouts. “Down!”
I fall to my knees. The water is up to my neck and so cold it shocks my bones.
My father raises a gun and fires. Some men fire back.
I put my head underwater, and the world is muted. I hold my breath, can only hear my heart pounding in my ears. My face burns with the cold, my back tight, lungs pinched. I swim toward the blurry yellow glow of an emergency light.
When I lift my head, a tall and angular man slides down a wall and goes under, leaving a swirl of blood. My father shot him. This should shock me, but it doesn’t. My father, who’s really a stranger to me, is always on the run and often armed.

4
   
J. Q. COY LE
   

 Another man, thick necked and yelling, returns fire from a cabin doorway.
My father disappears around the corner up ahead, then lays cover for me. “Get up!” he shouts. “Move now!”
I push through the icy water, wishing my legs were stronger and tougher, feeling small and easily kicked off-balance.
“Just up ahead,” he says, “—stairs.”
But then a little boy with a buzz cut doggy-paddles out of a cabin. The water’s too deep for him.
I reach out, and he grabs my hand, clinging to my shirt. “Alicia, get down!” my father yells.
Instinctively, I shield the kid. A gunshot.
I feel a shattering jolt in my shoulder blade. I can’t breathe, can’t scream.
The boy cries out, but he hasn’t been shot. I have. The pain is stabbing. “He shot me!” I shout, shocked. I can only state the obvi- ous, my voice so rough and ragged I don’t even recognize it.
My father pulls me and the boy into a tight circular stairwell, the water whirling around us, chest deep. As he lifts the little boy high up the stairs, I glimpse the edge of a tattoo and skin rough with small dark scars and fresh nicks on his wrists. “Keep climbing!” he says to the little boy.
Wide-eyed with fear, the boy does what he’s told.
The water is rising up the stairs, fast, but my father props me up with his shoulder, and we keep climbing. I try to remember what it was like before he left my mom and me. Did he carry me to bed, up the stairs, down the hallway, and tuck me in?
“We’re going to get out,” my father says. “We can jump.” “We can’t jump,” I say. Off the ship?
“Trust me,” my father says.

5
   
THE INFINITY OF YOU & ME
   

 I’ve never trusted my father, never had the chance. After he left, he wasn’t allowed within five hundred feet of me or my mother. “What the hell am I doing here?” I ask.
My father stares at me. “Is it you? Really you?” “Yes, it’s me,” I say. Of course it’s me!
My father looks stunned and scared and relieved somehow all at the same time. “You’re finally here.”
“Finally where?”
“Things have gotten too dangerous,” he says quickly. He reaches into his pocket, and in his hand I glimpse what looks like a strangely shaped shiny wooden cross about the width of his palm, but it’s not a cross, not exactly. “You’ve got to get lost and stay lost.”
I am lost, I want to tell him, but the pain in my back is so sharp it takes my breath.
As the water pushes us up the stairwell, my blood swirls around me like a cape. I can’t die here.
I look up into cloudy daylight.
The ship’s listing so hard now it seems to be jackknifing. Sud- denly I’m terrified we’re all going to drown.
I expect to see the little boy’s face at the top of the stairs, but he’s gone. Instead, there’s a group of men with guns trained on my father and me.
“Ellington Maxwell.” The man who speaks is the one who shot me. In the hazy glare off the water I see a jagged scar on his cheek. “Welcome to our world. This time we hope you stay awhile.”
I look up at the sky again and abruptly it swells with sun. My right hand hurts and I know this signals an ending . . . Bright, blaz- ing, obliterating light.
And I’m gone.

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J.Q. COYLE is the joint pen name of Julianna Baggott and Quinn Dalton. Quinn is an acclaimed writer who has published two short story collections and two novels. Julianna is the author of over twenty novels, including Pure, a New York Times Notable (2012).

Blog Tour: Gilt Hollow by Lorie Langdon | Excerpt | Giveaway

Welcome to our stop on the Gilt Hollow tour for Lorie Langdon. This tour is hosted by Jean Book Nerd.

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Gilt Hollow
Author: Lorie Langdon
Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Mystery
Released: September 27th 2016
Publisher: Blink

Willow Lamott’s best friend is a murderer, and no one in the small town of Gilt Hollow will let her forget it. For four long years, she’s tried to fade into the background—but none of that matters when Ashton Keller comes striding into school, fresh out of juvie and fueled by revenge. The moment their eyes meet, Willow no longer feels invisible. Drawn to the vulnerability behind Ashton’s mask of rage, she sinks deeper into his sinister world and begins to question whether he’s a villain, a savior, or both.

Ashton thought he wanted vengeance, until Willow reminded him what he’d been missing. Now he longs to clear his name and become the person she sees in him. But the closer they get to uncovering the truth, the darker the secrets become, and Ashton fears his return to Gilt Hollow will destroy everyone he loves, especially the girl he left behind.

Excerpt

Willow despised crowds—the stink of too many bodies clustered in one place, people touching her she didn’t know …

Who scheduled a pep rally in the middle of the week anyway? As the cheerleaders began their first routine, Willow glanced around trying to find Lisa’s bright curls but instead saw Ashton two rows behind, his dark head melding with Penelope’s platinum blonde as he whispered something in her ear. Willow whipped around, heat bursting into her cheeks, her rib cage squeezing her insides until she thought she might gag. It had to be at least a hundred degrees in there. Whatever Willow thought was between her and Ashton, the magnetic energy she felt when she was with him, must be one-sided. Obviously he preferred the beautiful, flighty type.

The band joined the cheerleaders in the school fight song, and people raised their fists to chant all around her. A buzz vibrated in Willow’s pocket. Praying it was Lisa texting to rescue her, she whipped out her cell and swiped in the code. But it was another SnapMail notification. Unable to resist, she pressed the icon.

If you don’t stop helping Keller, what happens to you will be worse than this . . .

The next message was a picture of Cory Martin, lying flat, arms at his sides—dead in his casket.

The room spun in a hard circle, and Willow felt herself sway. Her heart pumped so fast it hurt. She gripped her chest, the room narrowing to a shadowy tunnel as the football players ran out onto the floor. It was too hot. Too close. Her lungs constricted until it felt like she was sucking every breath through a tube. She had to get out of there.

Turning, she pushed past the kids in her row, stepping on book bags and feet, stumbling into people as she swayed. But their protests were jumbled in her brain. If she didn’t get air soon, she would suffocate.

Finally out of her row, she made it down two sets of stairs before a wave of dizziness turned the room on its side and she fell forward. Her arms flailed as she tried to catch herself. She smacked hard on her hands and knees, the angle of the stairs and the momentum of her bag knocking her flat on her face. Silence spread through the room like a wave.

Then someone yelled out, “Is she drunk?” Followed by laughter and “We’ve got a stoner here!”

“Wait! I think she’s sick.”

“Somebody call 911!”

Taken from Gilt Hollow by Lorie Langdon Copyright © 2016. Used by permission of Blink. www.BlinkYABooks.com

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Lorie Langdon has longed to write her own novels since she was a wee girl reading every Judy Blume book she could get her hands on. So a few years ago, she left her thriving corporate career to satisfy the voices in her head. Now as a full-time author, she spends her days tucked into her cozy office, Havanese puppy by her side, working to translate her effusive imagination into the written word.
Lorie has been interviewed on Entertainment Weekly.com and several NPR radio programs, including Lisa Loeb’s national Kid Lit show. The DOON series has been featured on such high profile sites as USAToday.com, Hypable.com and BroadwayWorld.com.
Lorie’s first solo novel, GILT HOLLOW, a YA romantic thriller, releases September 27th 2016!

--Giveaway is open to International. | Must be 13+ to Enter

-ONE winner will get a chance to have a 10-15 minute Skype call or Google Hangout (Winner's Choice) with Lorie and a Signed Copy of Gilt Hollow.

-ONE winner will receive a signed copy of Gilt Hollow.

-THREE winners will receive a copy of Gilt Hollow.

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Blog Tour: Stalking Jack the Ripper by Kerri Maniscalco

Welcome to our stop on Stalking Jack the Ripper  tour for Kerri Maniscalco. This tour is hosted by The Fantastic Flying Book Club Tours.

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Stalking Jack the Ripper
Stalking Jack the Ripper #1
Author: Kerri Maniscalco
Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Historical Fiction
Release Date: September 20th 2016
Publisher: Jimmy Patterson

He’s the infamous killer no man has ever been able to find.

Now it’s a girl’s turn.

Groomed to be the perfect highborn Victorian young lady, Audrey Rose Wadsworth has a decidedly different plan for herself. After the loss of her beloved mother, she is determined to understand the nature of death and its workings. Trading in her embroidery needle for an autopsy scalpel, Audrey secretly apprentices in forensics. She soon gets drawn into the investigation of serial killer Jack the Ripper, but to her horror, the search for clues brings her far closer to her sheltered world than she ever thought possible.

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Kerri Maniscalco grew up in a semi-haunted house outside NYC where her fascination with gothic settings began. In her spare time she reads everything she can get her hands on, cooks all kinds of food with her family and friends, and drinks entirely too much tea while discussing life’s finer points with her cats. Stalking Jack the Ripper is her debut novel. It incorporates her love of forensic science and unsolved history, and is the first in a new series of gothic thrillers.

It will be available everywhere September 20, 2016.

Blog Tour: Poison Blade by Kate Elliott | Guest Post | Giveaway

Welcome to our stop on the Poison Blade tour for Kate Elliott. 

This tour is hosted by Rockstar Book Tour.

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Poison Blade
Court of Fives #2
Author: Kate Elliott
Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Released: August 16th 2016
Review Source: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Jessamy is moving up the ranks of the Fives—the complex athletic contest favored by the lowliest Commoners and the loftiest Patrons in her embattled kingdom. Pitted against far more formidable adversaries, success is Jes's only option, as her prize money is essential to keeping her hidden family alive. She leaps at the chance to tour the countryside and face more competitors, but then a fatal attack on Jes's traveling party puts her at the center of the war that Lord Kalliarkos—the prince she still loves—is fighting against their country's enemies. With a sinister overlord watching her every move and Kal's life on the line, Jes must now become more than a Fives champion...She must become a warrior.

Being the Best: Jessamy in Court of Fives

When I was in high school a friend of mine confessed that she deliberately scored poorly on tests. She didn’t want to do better than the boys, she said, because boys didn’t like girls who out-performed them and would therefore never ask them out on a date (this was back in the days when the custom was that boys had to ask girls out on a date, never a mutual ask or a girl asking a boy).

Her comment stuck with me. I was smart and competitive; I got excellent grades and I played sports and did pretty well; and, yes, I didn’t “get a date” then. Don’t worry. It’s not necessary to get a date in high school to have the life you want afterward. It worked out for me.

As I grew older and read more I saw how often, both in narrative and in society, girls and women could be good at things as long as they weren’t better than boys and men. As long as, in the unlikely event that they were better, they stayed modest about it. Or hid their light under a bushel. Or gracefully allowed themselves to be surpassed as the boy or man came into his true power. A woman who was too good had to be alone, or she had to choose between career and family, or she had to be described as "as good as a man" as if excellence is a male virtue and a male calling.

Thankfully times have changed. These assumptions are no longer considered “how it is.” However, elements of those old attitudes still drift along the edges of many fictional works (as well as in real life, where too much “attention” to girls and woman being successful can cause backlash among some people concerned that boys are now being neglected). This is why stories about girls becoming the best they can be still feel revolutionary to me, because of that long twilight in which girls were told they ought not to be so unfeminine as to be excellent, that assertiveness isn’t womanly, that they ought not want to compete at all.

When I wrote Court of Fives I deliberately chose to push right at that tender spot. I wanted to write about a girl who is an athlete, who wants to win, who wants never to lose. A girl who isn’t afraid to harness that energy, who is willing to train and work hard, who will never let up. Those qualities allow her to become good at running a game called the Fives, but they also serve her well when she has to navigate obstacles off the court.

Writing the main character, Jes, in this way wasn’t the only part of the equation. When she meets Lord Kalliarkos, it opens up the whole relationship of how and when girls get to be successful. So often the boy or man plays a mentor relationship to the girl or woman whose story is about becoming her true self or finding a sense of worth or realizing her potential through the intervention of a man. I love those stories about becoming and worth and potential too, and I’ve written versions of them.

But in this case I wanted to write about a boy who respects her skill, who admires her competitiveness, who talks to her for the first time because he thinks she can help him improve. How interesting would it be, I thought, to write a confident male character who notices a girl for the first time not because she is pretty or beautiful, not because of her sexy body or how she dresses and acts toward men, not because she is a innately magical girl or a chosen one who is therefore desirable, but because she is skilled and successful through her own efforts. Because she's better than he is at something he wants to succeed at.

As it happens, the story in Court of Fives doesn’t play out as a flipped version of that trope (girl mentors boy), but it still (I think) pushes against it. Jes is *already good* and the skills she has worked so hard to gain are crucial as she’s plunged into a terrible, disastrous situation and needs all her determination and fierceness to survive. Kalliarkos brings a different set of knowledge and skills that turn out to be equally crucial.

Every time we write a story we, as authors, are engaged in a conversation with our own expectations about how people interact, how they behave with each other, and how society believes they should, or shouldn’t, act. Many of the most exciting elements of writing target received wisdom, and say, “let’s see what happens if we turn this assumption on its head, if we look at it another way.”

Jes is my tribute to the ambitious girls and women who don’t let up and who never stop striving to be the best.

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Kate Elliott has been writing stories since she was nine years old, which has led her to believe that writing, like breathing, keeps her alive. As a child in rural Oregon, she made up stories because she longed to escape to a world of lurid adventure fiction. She now writes fantasy, steampunk, science fiction, and YA, including recent works Black Wolves, Court of Fives, and Cold Magic.

It should come as no surprise that she met her future husband in a sword fight. When he gave up police work to study archaeology, they and their three children fell into an entirely new set of adventures amid dusty Mexican ruins and mouthwatering European pastry shops. Eventually her spouse’s work forced them to move to Hawaii, where she took up outrigger canoe paddling. With the three children out of the house, they now spoil the schnauzer.

3 winners will receive a finished copy of POISONED BLADE, US Only.

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Follow the TOUR

8/19/2016- Just Commonly- Review

Blog Tour: Man of Honor by Diana Gardin + Excerpt

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Man of Honor
Battle Scars #3
Author: Diana Gardin
Reading Level: New Adult
Genre: Contemporary Romance

  

The best rules are the ones worth breaking . . .

After his mother's funeral, ex-Army Ranger Drake Sullivan wants only to disappear and drown his sorrows in whiskey. Then he sees her: Mea Jones. An untamed, sexy-as-hell whirlwind of energy. A few years ago, she showed him the best-and hottest-night of his life, then walked away without a backward glance. But he's never stopped wanting more.

When it comes to guys, Mea has rules. One night. No dating. Whatever it takes to have control and keep it. With Drake, it's all heat and hurt and hunger, and pretty much the opposite of control. And that makes him dangerous as hell. Mea has her own demons, and falling in love-or even in lust-is strictly a no-go proposition. But she soon finds out Drake is incredibly single-minded when it comes to getting what he wants. And he's determined to be the exception to all her rules.

Reader advisory: The heroine's past deals with dark elements some readers may find disturbing. Recommended for mature audiences only.

Excerpt

Her voice voice has gone all low and husky, and my dick instantly jerks to attention like it’s responding to a signal that only she knows. “Yeah?” The thudding of my heart is heavy, harsh, and violent.

She breathes out. “Yeah.”

She lifts her eyes, big, warm, and beautiful to meet mine. I’m hypnotized for a minute, just staring into them while she stares right back. With an uncontrollable surge of need, my body moves into autopilot and I just react.

I tug her wrist, pulling her off the back of the bike. When she’s standing beside me, a quick gasp escapes her as I pull her to straddle my lap.

And then she’s mine.

Her lips are mine, her mouth belongs to me.

And I pillage.

And I plunder.

At the insistent urge of my tongue, she opens to me with a moan. I pull back for a second.

“Sexiest sound I ever heard, baby.” I don’t want to scare her, but I can’t do much more than growl at this moment.

Claiming her lips again, I taste her and she’s perfect. Fucking perfect. She presses against me, forcing me to go deeper, to kiss her harder. When she grinds her hips against my rock-hard cock, I can’t take it anymore. Her hands sift through my hair. Rough, rough, rough.

I wrench away from her devilish mouth and grab her ass. The fact that any other rider could come along at any moment only amps me up, not slows me down. I lift her up, and when I plunge her back down on top of me she clamps down on her bottom lip with her teeth and drops her head into my shoulder.

“Drake,” she whispers. Harsh, harsh, harsh.

Then she bites down hard on my shoulder.

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About the Author:

Diana Gardin was born and raised combing the coasts of Southeastern Virginia.  She is now a happy resident of South Carolina as she married into an enormous Carolina-rooted family.  She loves the beach, and even more than that she loves to read while sitting on the beach.

While writing was always a passion of Diana’s, she enrolled in college to become an elementary-school teacher.  After eight years of teaching in both Virginia and South Carolina, she decided to stay at home with her first child.  This decision is what opened her eyes to the fact that she still very much loved to write, and her first novel was born.  Diana is the author of several works of New Adult Romance, including The Ashes Series, The Nelson Island Series, and the Battle Scars Series.