Lindsay Townsend - 'Voices in the Dark'. Romantic Suspense

To celebrate the re-issue of my romantic suspense, 'Voices in the Dark,' here is a romantic excerpt where the hero Roberto and heroine Julia go to Venice.

Excerpt.

Venice. Neither Julia nor Roberto had ever been to the floating city. Free of memories and ghosts, deserted by tourists in a day of freezing fog, Venice was theirs.
      Leaning out on the Rialto bridge, Julia spoke their united thought. 'Glad we came.' Time, their constant harrier, glided like the mist gilded streams under their feet as they regarded each other.
      They kissed on the bridge, the silver fog rising from the water hiding them and the city in a secret embrace.
     'I wish we could stay,' said Roberto, when they surfaced a little from the kiss. Julia turned a dreamy open face sidelong and ran her eyes over him. She wanted this rippling quiet, this day of misted sun glinting on the tops of suspended marble palaces, to go on for ever. No more struggle for success no more troubles. No more Scarpia.
     'I can't get used to you without that plaster cast,' she murmured, obliterating the world as she pressed her cheek against his chest. 'I like the suit.' Dark grey, classically cut, worn with eye-grabbing panache, the suit had been a revelation. She already had designs for borrowing the waistcoat. She hugged him tight. ‘You look great.'
     'And you are truly gorgeous.' Roberto stroked a hand down her back. 'Why do you hide those legs?'
     His hand, and even more his eyes were doing things to her.
     'Shall we?' he said.
     'Yes.'

      They took a gondola. Paying the gondolier not to sing, they settled against the heart-shaped backrest, Roberto giving Julia his cushion. Whilst he chatted to the gondolier about the latest football scores, Julia trailed her fingers through mist to cold, silken, softly grey-green waters. Both were too aware of each other to need more than the lightest touch of their bodies, side by side as they floated on the cradle of Venice's canals.
     Venice in a shimmering winter mist was as one of its more extravagant glass creations, cloudy and baroque at the base, its marble statues and wrought-iron house-grills looming through the mist like porcelain flowers stuck on Venetian chandeliers. Then halfway up the narrow buildings - just over the top of Roberto's brown spiky curls, Julia calculated - the mist thinned and sunshine dusted each white campanile.
     ‘We're here,' Roberto said softly. The gondola swayed against a painted landing post; a doorstep floated inches above the water. This was his surprise to her: a home, not a hotel, their own private place. He had booked it, along with a few extras, at Florence airport before they made their flight.
     He opened the front door. The gondolier, paid and tipped, was gossiping into his portable phone about having met Roberto Padovano. ' . . . and you know he's really normal . . . great bloke . . . asked about the big match, you know, Roma versus Inter-Milan . . .'
     Someone in the Romanesque palace opposite shook their shoes out of the balcony window. Hidden by a curve of buildings, muted by fog, two waterbuses honked as they passed on the Grand Canal.
     Julia rose circumspectly to her feet. The last thing she wanted to do was spoil the moment, shatter the delicious tension by an ungainly lurch off the boat. In jeans and trainers she would not have thought twice, but high heels and a fitted coat were a different matter.
     Roberto did not offer his hand but merely plucked her from the gondola, swinging her lightly off her feet into his arms. They entered the Venetian house that way, Roberto crossing the threshold carrying Julia. Closing the door on the grinning gondolier, he continued an unhurried advance to the bedroom.
     'Didn't I see a piano as we whisked through the living-room?' asked Julia. 'And a log fire and a Christmas hamper?'
     'You did,' answered Roberto, unbuttoning her coat, ‘This was once a composer's house. Now it's a luxury holiday home.' Slowly, he unfastened her shoes.
     Julia closed her eyes as his strong fingers brushed her ankles. ‘Which composer?' she asked softly, as her high heels went skating across the mosaic floor to the big sunlit window.
     'A German. He wrote many beautiful hymns - but then German is a spiritual language.' Spirit was not what Roberto was feeling at that moment. He swept her out of her coat onto the gold satin sheets.
     Julia helped him to shrug off his jacket and loosen his tie. 'What kind of language is English?' she asked, her nimble fingers undoing his waistcoat as his hands deftly slid into her dress, dispatching the fastenings. Her fingers brushed warm flesh as his thumbs circled the engorged nipples of her breasts.
     'Definitely pastoral.' Roberto's hands slipped gently between her thighs. 'Country matters.' As she gasped he kissed her.
     Off came the rest of the clothes, in silent, feverish haste. The pleasure of seeing each other naked was to be fully enjoyed in a later, less urgent moment; now it was contact, the mutual desire for possession. They burned in each other's arms.
     ‘What about French?' Julia murmured several long moments later, fingers teasing an intimate caress. He was so firm, so good to touch; she wanted all of him.    
     'Intellectual.' Her hand guided. Her body enfolded. It was better than anything he had known before. Sweating, rigid in delight, Roberto forced himself to be slow.
     Julia felt him moving deep inside her. The virtues of Spanish and Italian must keep. She kissed his throat. His arms tightened around her. The spikes of pleasure intensified as his hips ground against hers. She writhed beneath him. As he came he shouted her name. As she came she kissed him on the mouth.
     For both, it had been worth the wait.


Smashwords and Kindle 2011
$0.99  

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Reviews from the original UK print edition:Birmingham Sunday Mercury:
Lindsay Townsend's mixture of arias and skullduggery turns into a highly readable thriller.

Yorkshire Post:
Confident debut.

Grimsby Evening Telegraph:
She obviously has a passion for writing. This is a book you will not be able to put down.

The Glorious Twelfth by Alan Calder

The Glorious Twelfth is my second novel, set mainly in my native Caithness with forays into France, Italy, Egypt and Poland. The genre is mystery/suspense with a thread of romance running through the story.

Genesis of the Glorious Twelfth

In The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown speculates that the Holy Grail lies buried in the filled in crypt of Rosslyn Chapel near Edinburgh. This mysterious church was built by the Sinclairs in the first half of the fifteenth century, by which time the clan was well established in Caithness where it still holds the Earldom. Caithness, then remote and inaccessible, would have provided a much better hiding place for the Grail than Rosslyn, especially after the Sinclairs began to build a series of heavily fortified castles round the Caithness coast. In Caithness, the Sinclairs also built several mausoleums where many generations of their upper echelons were laid to rest. One of these, an enchanting building with an ogive shaped roof, is built over the remains of an ancient chapel to St Martin and surrounded by a graveyard which once contained a class II Pictish stone, conferring great antiquity on the site.                                             

 

The Glorious Twelfth- Blurb

The Glorious Twelfth opens as archaeologist Ben Harris finds a Celtic stone and evidence of a medieval shipwreck on the Noster estate of Sir Ranald Sinclair. Careless talk by Ben at a conference in Paris sparks off a robbery at  Sir Ranald’s mausoleum, uncovering a treasure that has been hidden for centuries. The robbery follows the opening day of the grouse season, hence the title of the book. The chief villain, grail fanatic Russian Boris Zadarnov, also abducts Sir Ranald’s wayward daughter, Fran, who is already in love with Ben. American oilman Al Regan, a neighbour of Sir Ranald, leads a rescue party to Paris where Fran is freed and most of the treasure recovered, but the thieves escape with a ruby encrusted chalice.

     For a series of misdemeanours, including failing to spot that the Celtic stone was a fake, Ben is sacked from his university job. He finds consolation in the arms of Fran and moves north to continue treasure hunting, making the discovery of his life near one of the ancient Sinclair castles. Has he found the greatest archaeological prize in Christendom, the Holy Grail? Will he be able to protect it from the malevolent attention of Alexei, younger brother of the deceased Boris?

 The Glorious Twelfth- Opening Excerpt

Ben Harris was examining pottery fragments in the dig tent, already warming up under an August morning sun, when he heard the shout. It was from Angela in the trench on top of the hillock which the locals had always called, The Hill of Peace.

     “Ben, I’ve got something!”

It wasn’t normal to call the field archaeologist for routine finds such as pieces of pottery, so he picked up his trowel and brush and rushed up the path to the dig. In his haste he forgot to put on the wide brimmed kudu skin hat, which normally restrained his longish mop of fair hair and gave him protection from the sun. He was excited by the call, not least because this was his first dig as the boss and the site had certainly looked of interest on the geophysics survey, carried out at Easter by a colleague.

      Angela was on her knees in the metre deep trench, bounded by the foundations of a simple rectangular building, gradually revealed over the previous two weeks. She was carefully prising the compressed soil from a flat stone surface, in the middle of the floor of the building.

     “It’s incised; look there’s a curved line. I don’t think it’s a plough mark.”

     “Not a metre down. I’ll start recording and fetch the laptop just in case.” If it was an important find, he wanted to record the moment as it happened and not have to stage a reconstruction.

     “There’s more, it’s a fish, I’ve got the tail,” she shouted, as he returned with the laptop.

     “Wow, we have got something here.” Looking over her shoulder, Ben could see the fan of the salmon’s tail materialise from the dust. It was about half life-size and pleased him infinitely more than any of the real wild ones he’d caught with rod and line. “Let me check the geophysics.” His mind was racing at the prospect of an undiscovered Pictish stone. 

     “Is it that big anomaly we saw?” Angela asked.

     “Spot on. That’s it.” He perched the laptop on the edge of the trench, allowing her to see the dark shadow on the trace.

     “So, there’s a lot more of it to uncover.”

     As they bent down over the stone again, a shadow covered Ben. He looked up to see the tall slender figure of Fran, daughter of Sir Ranald Sinclair, the proprietor and dig sponsor, on the other side of the trench, blocking out the sun.  She was standing with her arms folded below her breasts, tapping a sandal-covered foot on the edge of the trench, causing a mini-collapse of soil.

     From Ben’s low position in the trench, his first sight was the silhouette of her long legs showing through the thin fabric of her dress. Scanning up further, the sun was neatly eclipsed by her head and sparkled through the outer frizz of her lustrous deep copper coloured hair. It gave her a goddess-like halo, accentuated by the refraction of light through the prisms of her long dangling ear-rings. Her challenging presence made him think of Boudicca, the early Iceni  Queen who took on the Romans.

      Ben narrowed his focus on her face. He got a fleeting impression of self-satisfaction as her eyes left the stone and met his briefly, with the faintest of smiles. She turned sharply on her heel and disappeared into the light without uttering a word. Her departure left him looking into the sun, temporarily blinded, but with the optical memory of her shape still imprinted behind his eyes. Ben shook his head to restore his sight and push her image to the back of his mind. The other students and volunteers on the dig began to assemble round the periphery of the trench, attracted by the allure of the square foot or so of exposed stone.

     “What was that all about?” asked Angela.

     “She seems very interested in the stone,” said Ben.

     “I think she fancies the archaeologist,” said Angela with a hint of menace.

      Ben did not rise to Angela’s bait. He suspected a personal sub-text on her part. She was being very nice to him and always seemed to be hovering within easy reach.

     “I could lift it out for you with the JCB,” said Jay Fuller, an American based on the main platform of the Caithness Shelf oilfield, a few miles offshore. Jay volunteered on his rest days,  a break from the tedium of the production schedule. The other students sniggered at his unprofessional enthusiasm.

     “All in good time, Jay; but you’re right; we will need the JCB for this one.”  Ben gave Fuller a break. He didn’t want to exploit his minor gaffe. He also realised that he would have to rethink the digging plan in the light of the discovery.

     “Is it tea time?” asked the beaming Angela.

     “Okay, let’s take an early tea break and think about what we need to do next.”

     Over the tea break they discussed a new plan to focus on trench three. Ben  would join Angela on the stone and the others would work on fully digging out the rest of the trench. He also called Sir Ranald Sinclair, owner of the Noster Estate to tell him about the find and it was agreed that the proprietor would visit the dig at five p.m.

 

Links

https://museituppublishing.com/bookstore2/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=531&category_id=69&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=1&vmcchk=1&Itemid=1

 www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00BG04SS8

www.amazon.com/dp/B00BG04SS8

 Best wishes to all

Alan Calder

 

Free Reads!

Yes, this blogpost is about stories that are Free and where to find them. I've started it off with my romantic suspense, Night of the Storm. This full length novel is now Free at Smashwords, Diesel, Sony and Apple.

Please share your own Free Reads and where to find them in the comments section of this blog.

Please come and have a look and a browse, too - lots of excellent stories here!

Happy Reading!

Lindsay Townsend

Mickie Sherwood: 'Cutie and the Cowboy Trucker'

Blurb:

Widow Veronica Torres needs something desperately—invisibility. Escaping the clutches of her conniving brother-in-law and traveling incognito in the RV she traded for online sets her on a collision course with her new destiny, and a barreling fiery red 18-wheeler.

Trucker Mike Masterson steams at the close call. First, he nearly sideswipes her. Now, she ends up at the same rest stop with mechanical trouble. Maybe, she deserves to sweat it out in the June heat since she has the attention span the size of a pea. But, the child in her company deserves better. What else can Mike do besides cart them to his garage for repairs?

Will their burgeoning relationship ignite more fireworks than the upcoming Fourth of July celebration? Or will the sparks of six nights and seven days of summertime sizzle—fizzle to an end?

Available September 12, 2012

Pre-Order/Buy: http://www.bookstrand.com/cutie-and-the-cowboy-trucker

Excerpt:

Veronica approached the door and immediately remembered the rattletrap sounds from earlier. She decided to steal a look at the situation.

But first, she kneeled in front of her son for an eye-to-eye chat. “Sammy, Mama’s got to check the roof.” She stepped into the RV for something to hold his and Bingo’s attention for a while, and came out with a big red ball. Strapping the dog leash around his wrist, she instructed, “I want you and Bingo to stay right here and play. Can you do that for me?”

“Where are you going?”

She recognized the tremor in his voice. “I’ll never leave you alone, Sam.” A humongous substantiating hug brought a smile to his face. Veronica kissed him until his giggles chimed on the wind, signifying his acceptance of what she’d said. “Stay where I can see you. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Veronica monitored the scene, checking to see if they’d garnered any unwarranted interest, before climbing up the side ladder to the roof. Looking down on him from the top rung, she reminded Sam, “Stay put.” His acknowledgment sent her on her hands and knees along the hot metal roof, to the troublesome area.

The lid moved easily at the touch of her hand. Screws hung in their holes, giving her the idea of tightening them with her fingers. That worked only so well, not well enough to make a tight seal. Only one thing to do. She maneuvered her way back to the ladder, peered over the edge, and almost had a heart attack.

“Sam!” She screamed his name, and he looked straight at her, then to the man sitting at the picnic table. She looked at the man, too. Veronica scrambled to grab the ladder for a fast descent. A couple of erratic steps nearly cost her dearly as she slammed hard against the side of the motor home when the ladder moved.

She readjusted her grip. “Get over here, Samuel!” she demanded between spastic heaves.

If she thought things couldn’t get any worse, she had another think coming.

A metallic noise captured her attention while she was suspended midway between heaven and Earth. Her eyes widened as she pinpointed the problem. It was the fasteners at the top of the ladder. They popped loose with a scraping sound—one at a time—while she watched.

The feeling of floating washed over Veronica as she steeled herself for impact. At the same time, she thought of her baby boy below, witnessing the scene. Several seconds passed without any pain inflicted on her body, causing her eyes to open. She still clung to the ladder although in a horizontal position, staring up at the deep blue sky, hands glued in place, rear end sagging, and her sandaled toes hooked backward over the rungs.

She scoped out the distance left to tumble to the hard ground, finding a wonderful sight to behold. The bottom of the ladder had stayed anchored even as the metal above bent perpendicular to the RV. Veronica let go and thudded the two feet or so to the grass. She craned her neck as her concern returned to Sam, who, by that time, stood next to her with tears in his eyes. Bingo showed appreciation for the unrehearsed stunt by showering her with kisses.

Veronica laughed nervously.

“Okay, okay, Bingo.”

What caught the breath in her throat as she attempted to regroup were the man-size reptile-skin boots poised behind Sam and planted widely on either side of his little sandals.

“Need help?”

Veronica noticed the cocoa-brown hands clamped on Sam’s shoulders. They bore the pinkish spotted discoloration of healed burn scars. That in itself was an insignificant matter. The sight of his grip arrested any relief she felt at overcoming her close call. Struggling to free herself from her caged position, she scraped to her feet, grinding grass stains into the knees of her jeans, desperate to come to the rescue.

“Take your hands off my son!” She attacked, reaching to snatch Sam away from his clutch.

His top lip curled under the full, neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper mustache he sported.

She backed up a few steps, never wavering under his gaze shielded by mirrored shades and a soft-looking crushable Stetson. Her own disheveled reflection in his lenses broadcast alarm, but not the uncertainty swirling in the center of her abdomen. Her butterscotch complexion deepened as she stared him down. Or better yet, up and down, for even at her five-nine height, he was still head and shoulders taller.

“I’ll take that as a no,” he intoned with a rumble, turned on his booted heels, and stomped away.

Read the entire first chapter at Mickie's Muttterings.

Bio:

I'm a cruise-loving, people-watching, picture-snapping baby boomer with time on her hands. So, I write sweet and spicy relationship-based mainstream contemporary romantic love stories.

Find me at:

Mickie's Manor     Mickie's Mutterings     Blurbs in Bloom

Twitter - @MickieSherwood

Mickie Sherwood

~~Sweet, spicy romance – a heartbeat away~~

Best Pick – 'Torc of Moonlight' by Linda Acaster

It’s great to have our writing appreciated, and a decent review can make our day. A fan letter from a reader can make our week.

So imagine my delight when I opened an email to discover that a reader had not only taken the time to nominate my supernatural thriller Torc of Moonlight for consideration as Indie Book of the Day, but that it had jumped the hurdles and had won the award. Ya-hee!!

Set in the UK, Torc of Moonlight is a gritty paranormal romance dealing with the resurrection of a Celtic water goddess. It features Nick, a college student whose bright-eyed take on life, love and reality receives a serious knock when he meets studious Alice. Is she leading him into a downward spiral of paranoia? Or are they unconsciously linking into a wayward pre-Roman time-line where a man he terms ‘The Other’ is reliving his life through Nick’s actions? One of them is in danger, but is it Alice or is it Nick?

 

In keeping with Celtic lore and the power of three, the novel is the first in a trilogy set in university cities in northern England. Every place, every building, every road mentioned actually exists. Don’t venture there in the dark. Those who do tend to leave 5 star reviews.

Excerpt:

 He’d seduced her, Nick realised. That’s what had happened. Hawkins had seduced Alice, seduced her and used her and thrown her aside.

The bastard. No wonder she didn’t want anything to do with him. No wonder her only outlet was her work and her books. The bastard.

He picked up his glass again, but it was empty. No one was serving. Nick looked round the pine tables, wondering where the barman had gone. His brain seemed to be floating free of his skull. What was the matter with him? He’d only had two.

Outside the door to the McCarthy people swirled about him, clattering up and down the stone steps. He stood a moment in the maelstrom listening to the ebb and flow of their happy chatter. He’d been happy once. Alice would have been happy. Once.

The steps led up to the canteen, offices, and the Sanctuary bar. He ignored them all. Down the long corridor, far down the corridor, Alice’s poster was tacked to the wall. One tug had it free, the single red drawing pin spinning away to the tiled floor. The next moment he was pushing through the door of the HullFire office.

The girl behind the computer screen looked up with a smile that faded to a suspicious frown. Nick slapped the poster across her keyboard.

‘Hawkins,’ he snapped. ‘Who is he?’

The girl blinked, and pushed herself back on her wheeled chair. ‘What?’

‘Hawkins,’ Nick repeated, stabbing a finger at the blacked-out name on the poster beneath Alice’s head. ‘Who is he and where can I find him?’

Her gaze followed his hand, and then took in the poster as a whole. ‘Oh,’ she said.

Nick leant over her desk. ‘Who is he?’

The girl stood, pushing her face towards his, matching his aggression. ‘What’s your problem? Never heard of please and thank you?’ Her eyes flashed. ‘Our lecherous lecturer laid your girlfriend, has he?’

Nick straightened, catching his breath. The girl eased her stance in return.

‘Figures,’ she said. ‘We thought this little interlude was too good to be true. Helen is the one you need to speak to. She did an exposé a couple of years back. Nearly had him turfed out.’

‘Where is he?’

‘Forget it, or you’ll end up turfed out. And that prat isn’t worth your future.’

‘I’ve never heard of him. Lecturer in what?’

‘Forget it. Acting the jilted lover isn’t going to score you any points around here.’

‘Helen, then. Where will I find this Helen?’

‘Right here.’

Behind him the door swung gently on its hinges to reveal an angular woman in her late twenties wearing a mauve silk jacket and a short black skirt. In her heels she was taller than Nick. At sight of the poster she raised a darkly pencilled eyebrow.

‘Mother Earth Society, eh? Not a devotee, are you, desperately trying to be one with nature?’ Her gaze washed over his scarred face. ‘I guess not. Hardly the bardic type.’

‘He’s looking for Harkin,’ the girl told her.

‘Hawkins,’ Nick corrected.

The woman shook her head. ‘Leonard Harkin, our celebrated hippie that never was, chief practitioner of free love and peace, man.’ She swayed, giving an imitation of being stoned. ‘Except he wraps it up with candles and secret invocations.’

The girl shot her a warning look. ‘Helen...’

‘But not everyone,’ Helen continued, ‘only the impressionable ones, the ones he wants to shag. Your girlfriend. Presumably.’

‘Where will I find him?’

‘Now? Pass. His studio’s in Loten. You could try there. Of course, at this hour he could be scraping his reptiles on Cranbrook.’ She looked beyond his shoulder to the girl behind the desk. ‘Time to call it a day, Jenny.’

Nick frowned. ‘This Harkin lectures in…?’

Helen unhooked a coat from the back of the door and passed it over the desk. Jenny flicked the switch on the computer and its incessant hum fell silent in the tiny office.

‘You’re not listening,’ Helen told him. ‘Loten. Studio. You’ll find it if you want to. Can hardly miss it really.’ She gestured towards the corridor. ‘Would you like to go ahead of us so we can lock up?’

Nick stepped by her and kept on walking. Helen followed him out of the office, watching his determined stride with interest as Jenny turned the key.

‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ Jenny said. ‘If he flattens Harkin he’ll get thrown out. If he mentions your name you’ll get thrown out. They’ll bring up that harassment claim he made against you.’

Helen smiled, unperturbed. ‘I hope he does flatten Harkin. I hope he beats the shit out of him. Justice has been a long time coming.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘Besides, you never can tell. A scapegoat might come in handy.’

Available in both pb and ebook:

Kindle US: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004FEFCKK 

Kindle UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004FEFCKK 

All other e-formats: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/29377

Jane Richardson: 'A Different Kind of Honesty'

Always the one who ends relationships before they’ve barely begun, it’s way out of character for Maggie Lawless to take a risk with a man she hardly knows…the man she meets in a seedy New York City diner has a truth about him, a sincerity like no one she’s ever met before. Tony Valentino is an FBI agent fresh from a long-term undercover operation that’s left his life in tatters. His marriage over, separated from his children and with nowhere to call home, he’s frustrated and angry. All that keeps him going is the sweet memory of a brief encounter with a beautiful woman, though it wakes him from crazy dreams that leave his mouth dry and his sheets soaked with sweat. When he meets her again, it’s obvious the fire that burned so briefly between them never really went out...but as their affair rekindles, both Tony and Maggie find the very people they thought they could trust are the first to turn against them.

Excerpt:

“I don't want to lose you, Maggie. Really I don't!”

Detective Sergeant Danny Chang shuffled along the corridor on his knees, his hands clasped over his heart in a frenzy of unbridled passion.

“Please! You want me to beg? Look at me—I’m begging.”

Maggie sighed. “Aw, come on, Danny. You know how much I love you. No matter what happens, we'll still be friends.”

“Ha! You say that now, but when you've finished with me you'll crumple me up and toss me aside like a used tissue. You're just like all the others!” Danny threw himself face down on the floor and sobbed, his shoulders heaving in distress. Maggie stepped over his prostrate form and leaned against the swing doors at the end of the corridor.

“You're a nut, Chang.” She shoved a door open with her shoulder and walked through backwards, laughing.

Danny picked himself up and brushed the dust from his already grubby jeans. Pushing the door open further, he stood aside to let a young female constable pass, eyeing her curvaceous bottom appreciatively as she scuttled by in too-tight uniform trousers. Maggie folded her arms and watched his undisguised lust with an amused smile.

“You never miss a shot, do you?”

“Life's too short,” he answered, flicking his over-long fringe out of his eyes. His sleek, glossy hair gleamed with the black-blue sheen of a crow's back. He watched the WPC’s retreating form as it disappeared around a corner. “So anyway—what's all this crap about you leaving?”

Maggie shrugged and turned away. “I never said I was actually going.” She loosened the belt of her damp raincoat and shook her hair out of the collar as she walked down the corridor. “All I said was I feel like a change. That's all. You know, try something different.”

Danny fell into step with her, slipping off his battered leather pilot jacket to reveal a T-shirt that might have once been white, but had long ago washed out to rain-cloud grey. A ladder of rips ran down the left leg of his jeans. One of the tears gaped open, revealing a knee with every step he took.

“Don't do it, Maggie,” he pleaded. “It won't be the same without you. I'll really miss you if you go.”

“Danny, you haven't seen me in six months.”

“Ah, but I thought about you every day and most nights. Dreaming of running my fingers through your soft auburn hair, losing myself in those beautiful baby blues. What do you think kept me going, up there in Miserable Manchester?”

“You really are a loony, you know. What are you now, thirty-two, thirty-three? You're the youngest dirty old man I know.”

Maggie was only pretending to be serious. She and Danny Chang had been friends since day one at Police College. They'd laughed, cried, and got roaring drunk with each

other, more often than not all on the same night. But never anything more, not even so much as a drunken snog, never mind a chaste kiss. If asked, Danny would have said their friendship was too valuable to spoil. Maggie would have said she’d trust him about as far as she could throw him with the wind behind her. Either way, they were best friends who told each other everything.

Most things, anyway.

Their pace slowed as they turned the corner, where two rows of doors faced each other across the corridor. A particularly evil variety of one hundred percent nylon carpeting covered the floor. After walking across it, you had to be certain to neutralize yourself on a wooden surface before touching another living soul for fear of zapping them half-dead with static shock.

Maggie rapped her knuckles on a mock-teak door with a black plastic nameplate announcing in white letters the lair of Detective Inspector Rachel Arden.

“I wonder what she wants?” Maggie whispered. “She only just caught me, too. I was trying to sneak off early. I haven't had a free weekend in ages.”

“Yeah,” Danny agreed. “And it's Poet's Day.”

“Poet’s Day?”

“Yeah, Poet’s Day. You know. Piss Off Early, Tomorrow's Saturday.”

Buy from MuseItUp

Edinburgh Fog
A Different Kind of Honesty

http://janerichardsonhome.blogspot.com/

'Asking Too Much,' Lindsay Townsend. Erotic Romance

My new erotic romance, 'Asking Too Much,' is now available as a pre-order with money off at Siren-Bookstrand.

Categories: Erotic Romance, Futuristic
Word Count: 34,505
Heat Level: SIZZLING

Published by: Siren-BookStrand, Inc.

PRE-ORDER HERE! 

http://www.bookstrand.com/asking-too-much

AVAILABLE: Wednesday, September 5th

This title is offered at a 10% discount. Offer ends midnight CST, September 12th.

offered at a 10% discount. Offer ends midnight CST, September 12th.

[Siren Classic: Erotic Futuristic Romance, light consensual BDSM, spanking, HEA]

In New Athens in 2061, men and women can sell themselves into slavery. Sofia Buccharis, golden, beautiful, and grieving, faced with an uncertain future, offers herself to the man she has admired for years, the former tyrant of New Athens, Theo Leventis. In a daring proposal, she goes further and suggests that they marry. She will be his slave bride—his virgin slave bride.

Intrigued, Theo, a man who has cloaked his emotions in mastery since a devastating divorce, seeks the gentle beauty out again after she has left him to consider her idea. He rescues Sofia from her bullying father and takes her to his private island. Theo courts Sofia, teaching her what lovemaking can be, and she teaches him about emotional intimacy.

In a month's time they will marry—and will Sofia's gamble pay off? Will Theo be a loving master and husband, or has she asked too much of the tyrant of New Athens?

A Siren Erotic Romance

Lindsay Townsend http://www.lindsaytownsend.net