The Sequel to Carson's Night – Beauty's Beasts – is Finished.

I’ve trotted out the jolly old New York gargoyle again (left) as a “cover”.  My erotic paranormal MMF vampire romance, that used to be called Beauty and the Beasts, and which I’ve now renamed Beauty’s Beasts, has now been officially submitted to Ellora’s Cave and I have all the ointments and charms out waiting to hear back if they will buy it, or not.

As today is Thursday, and I haven’t run an excerpt for ages and ages (it always feels a bit lazy to me, but I always get such good feedback from you guys), I thought I’d run an excerpt from Beauty, along with the blurb.  There’s a danger in that, of course.  If Ellora’s Cave don’t buy the book, I end up with egg all over my face and look very, very stupid out here in public where you can all see me.  It’s a calculated risk.   I have a good feeling about the book, and I’m willing to take the chance.  Oh yes, and it’s a book book — all 60K words of it.  I finally got to stretch out and write my socks off.  Damn, did it feel good, too!

Besides, I’ve already committed myself to looking silly.  There’s an excerpt from Beauty about to appear in NJ Walter’s interview on the first.  If you’re not already sign up for her newsletter, then you won’t get the earlier dirt on the story.

Here’s an excerpt from later in the story.  Unlike NJ’s excerpt, I’m not about to hold back here.   This won’t be PG rated, ladies and germs.  You’ve been warned!

______________

Riley Carson Connors is yanked out of Pittsburgh and coaxed to New York by two tall, sexy strangers.  Nicholas Sherwood and Damian are the only people in the world who know anything about her parents, and what they know is terrifying.  She must face a powerful enemy who killed both her parents, who were the best at what they did.

But while the truth about Riley’s family history is a powerful magnet, Damian and Nicholas prove to be even more compelling. Former lovers and brought together only because they gave their word to her mother, the two powerful vampires play erotic mind games with Riley, each with a hidden sexual agenda that Riley can’t begin to guess at, but seems to involve driving her out of her mind with the sort of pleasure only a centuries-old lover would know how to give.

—–

Excerpt

Chapter Two

Deal With It became Riley’s mantra, because once she agreed to go with them to New York, Nick and Damian dropped their human façade and let her see their true natures. They kept the shield in place only long enough to let Riley convince Sabrina that she wasn’t totally out of her mind to leave with them.

Sabrina took a considerable amount of persuasion before she unhappily accepted Riley’s departure, but Riley refused to just leave without Sabrina’s blessing. Sabrina was the closest Riley had to family in the world. She was her best friend and they had known each other for nearly ten years. They had met when Riley had graduated high school in St. Louis, Missouri, shrugged off the last set of foster parents and become officially independent. She had found a job at Starbucks for the minimum of low wages going and a second at McDonalds across the street. Sabrina had been working at both places as well and within two weeks they’d moved into an apartment together, and acquired two other roommates. They’d been sharing apartments and roommates ever since.

Sabrina had been won over by the same two facts that had forced Riley to agree to travel to New York with Damian and Nicholas herself: They knew things about Riley’s parents that Riley would give her eye teeth to know and when they guaranteed her safety there was a flat sincerity in their tone that was more convincing that a bonded warrantee. Sabrina had hugged Riley and bid her farewell with tears in her eyes…and had slipped her the can of mace she normally kept under her own pillow. The practical touch was both endearing and typically Sabrina.

Damian and Nicholas were both terrifying and fascinating at the same time. Riley’s first biggest shock was to learn the humbling fact that they considered her to be “merely” human and quite unintelligent. Both had assumed they would have to make allowances for her lack of processing ability.

As they stuffed Damian’s and her hastily packed bags into the trunk of Nicholas’s beautiful blood red S-type Jaguar, Damian offered her the passenger seat but Nicholas curtly told her to take the back seat. “You will need your sleep. You won’t sleep much once we arrive.”

“You just don’t want her sitting next to you,” Damian accused him as they settled into the car.

“I want her in prime condition for training when we get there.” Nicholas swerved the car into traffic with unconscious skill.

“You want her, is the primary condition,” Damian corrected.

“Unlike you, Damian, I rose above petty distractions long ago.”

“Tally wasn’t a petty distraction and you were just as devastated by her death as I was.”

“Hey, you do remember I’m sitting right here, don’t you?” Riley thumped the back of their seats.

Neither of them replied.

“You both sound like a couple of school girls,” she told them. “You’re not going to fire potshots at each other all the way to New York, are you?”

After a long pause, Nicholas said, “Just go to sleep, Riley.”

“And what happens at sunrise?” she asked.

“Why?”

“I just want to know if I have to tuck you guys in or something.”

She saw Nicholas’ blue eyes in the rear view mirror look at her finally. She couldn’t tell if he was amused or not. “That’s just in stories,” he said softly. “Daylight weakens us, slows us down. We prefer to relax and rest. But we don’t burst into flames at the touch of sunlight.”

“Bet you don’t sparkle, either.”

Damian laughed. It sounded like it was derisive.

Nicholas was still looking at her in the mirror, glancing away from the highway they were now on with the assured confidence of a rally driver. “But we do have the keen sense of smell,” he said. “And I can smell you, Riley Connor.”

In one in-drawn breath she grew aware of every sensation. Of the leather under her fingers as she gripped the edges of the seat on either side of her knees, of the slight smell of pine coming from the carpets in the floors and walls of the car, of the scent of musk and male from the two big men sitting in the seats before her—this surprised her the most, for she had thought it took a heartbeat and pulse and body heat to create human-type scents. Her body tightened, the tips of her breasts seemed to swell and she could feel them chaffing gently against her bra.

Riley lay down on the seat and pretended to sleep, while her overloaded brain danced and her body zinged with new-found awareness. She wanted them. She wasn’t sure which of them she wanted the most.

Since she was about thirteen or so, she had been aware that she was what the world considered “a beauty” and that most men would do almost anything in their power to have her. But “having” her meant only taking her sexually. Men never thought beyond that, and they didn’t care what she thought about the idea. Usually, they had no permanent plans beyond the initial one of fucking her. It was enough to get their cock inside her.

If she had been as dumb as a box of rocks, they would have liked it better, she suspected. It would have made their job so much easier.

Fact was, though, Riley had a brain. In the thirteen years or so that she had been—euphemistically speaking—trying to date men, not a single man had noticed or taken an interest in the fact that Riley was actually intelligent. They saw only her beauty and were caught up in the determination to fuck her so that they could say they’d had her. It was like a fever, and she had learned to spot it in their eyes and faces.

Neither Damian nor Nicholas had even so much as glanced at her that way. Damian had spoken of Nicholas wanting her, but in a tone that implied she was simply a desirable human. There was nothing of the fevered determination that drove so many men to the lying, the beatings, the schemes, the semi-rapes that she had suffered through in the past.

Damian’s implication also answered another question she’d had. Clearly vampires could and did have sex with humans, and both Damian and Nicholas were bisexual…if such distinctions were even a consideration in their world.

Their almost-indifference to her was a goad, she knew that. She was “merely” human, barely intelligent and only the daughter of the great Natalia Connor, not Tally herself. They were going through these motions only because they swore an oath to her mother, otherwise it appeared they could barely stand to be in the same room with each other. It made her want them with a power that she’d never felt before. After a lifetime of having men begging at her feet, the novelty of wanting someone—two someones—who seemed disinterested made her squirm on the seat.

“If it would help you relax and sleep, Damian or I could crawl back there and…help out,” Nicholas said.

Riley grew very still, even holding her breath. Her heart accelerated.

“Why do you say that?” Damian said softly.

“She’s aroused. Powerfully so.”

Riley heard Damian take a breath, sniffing. Her cheeks heated. She turned her face into the arm of her coat, humiliated beyond reason.

“Ah, yes,” Damian agreed.

Riley scrunched her face up inside the protecting crook of her arm and blew out the breath she had been holding. She kept very still for another few minutes, but when neither of them made a move, she relaxed again.

Somewhere around Somerset her sleep grew genuine and she woke to find her head pillowed on an smooth shoulder and chest, her face pressed against a strong neck and her whole body resting against firm torso. There was a cocked knee behind her back and a hand soothing her temple.

She tried to sit up.

“We are ninety minutes from New York. Relax.” Damian’s voice. In her ear. Rumbling against her shoulder.

Her heart was pistoning. She was lying on top of Damian and he wanted her to relax?

The hand stroking her temple dropped to her hip. “You have unpleasant nightmares.”

“I do?”

“You were not aware of this?”

“I know I don’t sleep well,” she muttered. Then she frowned. “I’ve been asleep for four hours?”

“More like six, actually,” Nicholas said, from the front seat. “I had to stop for petrol once and there was road work near Allentown. It’s sunrise in about thirty minutes.”

She tried to sit up again and this time Damian let her. “You let me sleep on you for six hours?”

“You were not sleeping well,” he said, sitting up. He’d taken off his coat and the rounded caps of muscles of his shoulders gleamed in the low light of the car. “Your dreams were not being kind to you. We thought the touch of another might help you.”

She bit her lip, frowning.

Damian lifted a brow. She could just see the movement in the growing light. “What?”

“I’ve never slept for six hours straight.”

“You’ve never slept with a man before, have you?” Nicholas asked.

Riley could feel her cheeks burning again. “I’m not a virgin,” she said stiffly.

“In this day and age, I would be astonished if you were. That’s not what I’m asking.” His blue eyes caught her gaze in the mirror. “I mean you’ve never had a man stay the night in your bed. You’ve literally never slept with a man in your bed.”

Riley shook her head.

“Therefore, you’ve never had anyone around to point out your nightmares to you,” Nicholas finished.

She rubbed her arms, suddenly cold. “I’ve never remembered them, either. I just figured I was one of those people who don’t sleep.”

Damian lifted her chin with his long finger and turned her face to look at him. “Apparently you’re one of those people who sleeps better with someone.” His smile showed even white teeth. “That is something we can arrange.”

Her whole body rippled with the warm promise in his voice.

“Now who’s getting distracted?” Nicholas said, his voice a low warning rumble.

Damian glared at the back of Nicholas’ head. Then he smiled at Riley. “Have you been to New York before, that you remember?”

She shook her head. “Although, I guess, I must have been at some time.”

“You were born there,” Damian confirmed. He waved toward the empty front passenger seat. “Why don’t you sit up front? Enjoy the view. Let Nicholas prove he’s above petty distractions.”

Riley hesitated. She didn’t want to get between these two. But Damian gently pushed her between the seats, so Riley settled herself into the luxurious passenger seat and buckled the seat belt.

Nicholas glanced at her. “You look refreshed, at least.”

She felt it. She would never have thought sleeping in a moving car could have been so relaxing, especially a car driven by a predatory creature design to hunt humans for sustenance, while she slept soundly upon the top of another of them.

“Did you glamour me or something, back in the apartment, Nicholas?”

“More fiction.” He shook his head.

“You engender trust, you and Damian. I don’t hop into cars for interstate adventures with just anyone.”

“You don’t trust anyone enough to spend the night with them even after sex,” Nicholas replied. “I know exactly how much trust you have placed in us. You want to know about your parents. We dangled powerful carrots.”

“You dangled carrots that no one could possibly know about unless they had been there. And for all you both pretend humans are just sheep you herd for food, I saw the look on both your faces when you spoke about my mother. Both of you loved her in different ways. I don’t care who did what, or what happened back then. You loved her. Deal with it, Nicholas.”

He stared straight ahead through the screen. “Emotions are useless, grit in the grease. Look at where they got Damian.”

“Fuck you, Nicholas.” The bitterness in Damian’s voice was deep.

Nicholas shook his head. “Vampires have no need of emotions. They just get in the way. They’re a hangover from a human psychology they no longer have, a habit that can be discarded.”

“Who are you trying to convince, Nick?” Riley asked. “Because it seems to me that after centuries of being a vampire, you still haven’t kicked the habit.”

Damian pushed his head between the seats. “I like this one,” he told Nicholas. “If she keeps slapping you around like this, I’m going to keep her.”

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