My blog-posting day snuck up on me this month, and I’m completely
burned out with a day job editorial project that’s been encroaching into the
evening hours for the past week. (Writing a manual on how to use new office
templates to communicate effectively is terribly exciting work, I must say.) Meanwhile, as Book 3 in Sisters in Sin inches closer to the climax, I’m lucky
to get in 500 words a day on it. And my cursed 1,000-year-old Viking is starting to get twitchy. Will my heroine free him from the curse or won't she? And will he get to punch Nazis? So many questions remain unanswered.
Needless to say, I’m drawing a blank on coming up with a
topic for this post. So instead, I’m making this an impromptu cover reveal for
Book 2, Bewitching the Dragon, due out in May.
One Night
with a Dragon...
Ione Carlisle worked hard to be accepted by the Sedona
Covent, but now everything is falling apart. Especially when she lets loose for
a wild night on the town and ends up with the one man she should be avoiding at
all costs—the man who came to Sedona to fire her. He ignites in her a carnal
need that she can’t and won’t ignore...
Buttoned-up assayer Dev Gideon’s loyalty to the Leadership
Council should be reason enough to resist Ione. Never mind that she stirs the
ancient demon secretly bound within him. But their blood connection is
undeniable. And now Dev must risk his reputation, and his soul, to save Ione
from a vigilante intent on destroying her and the entire Covent, even if it
means unleashing the monster inside.
Available for pre-order now at the following vendors:
If you’ve read Book 1, Waking the Serpent, you may find the heroine in the excerpt below unrecognizable as Phoebe’s big sister
Ione. Which is just how she likes it.
Excerpt:
She set her motorcycle helmet on the stool beside her. It
kept guys from hitting on her unless she wanted them to. Sitting at the end of
the bar took care of the other side. She could have used a repelling spell, but
too much magic in one night made her feel even worse than drinking too much.
“Is that your Nighthawk outside?” The cultured, Hugh
Grant-esque British accent sent a tingling vibration through her that
completely missed her spine and went straight for the genitals. God, was she
really this hard up that a fancy accent was all it took?
Maintaining cool disinterest in the man standing beside her
helmet’s stool, Ione took a sip of her drink before turning her head slightly
in his direction. Giving him the once-over out of the corner of her eye did
nothing to dispel the disconcerting vibration. A pair of golden-brown eyes to
match her glass of Balcones looked back at her, pieces of tiger’s-eye quartz
rimmed in dark lashes against the warm teakwood hue of his skin. Thick black
hair, impeccably styled, with a charming streak of gray at the temples,
completed the picture. And the expensive suit said business tourist—but the
kind of business that didn’t require sitting behind a desk in an office.
She was a sucker for a sharp-dressed man. And a posh accent,
apparently. But ogling hot guys in expensive suits wasn’t what she was here
for. She tried to assess whether he could be part of the network of what one of
Phoebe’s clients in the Public Defender’s Office had referred to as “a bunch of
power-tripping dicks.”
Ione realized he was waiting for her answer. “Maybe.”
“Sorry, that wasn’t a line.” He leaned against the bar as if
he had no intention of moving on and gave her a crooked smile that made the
tiger’s eyes shimmer. “I just haven’t seen one of those in a while. You’ve kept
it in excellent shape.”
Ione gave him a dismissive shrug. “You never know what’s
under the chassis. Maybe I just keep it looking pretty and ride it into the
ground.” She went back to her drink, deciding he seemed a bit too straitlaced
to fit the profile she was looking for, but he didn’t take the hint.
“I doubt that. The bike shows signs of being well loved.” He
moved to the open seat beside the helmet and ordered a beer.
“Do you ride?” Ione hadn’t intended to talk to him, but her
vibrating pussy apparently had a different agenda.
He shook his head. “I’ve ridden on the back of a friend’s
bike, but my parents would never let me ride myself.”
The corner of Ione’s mouth twitched. “You live with your
parents?”
“What?” Her companion choked a bit on his beer and set the
bottle down. “Oh. No, no. You’ve misunderstood me. I meant growing up. Of
course, even now, my mum would probably kill me before I could get myself
killed on one if I even so much as…” His voice trailed off and he looked
chagrined. “I just made it worse, didn’t I? Let me try this again. I’m Dev.” He
held out his hand and Ione stared at it for a moment before he let it fall. “I’m
just in town for a few days. Don’t really know anyone here—and I am really sounding like an arse.”
A little smile slipped out before she caught herself.
The bartender threw Dev a challenging look. “This guy
bothering you?”
Ione shrugged. “Nah, he’s fine. Thanks, Gus. I think maybe
he just needs something a little…stiffer.” She tipped her glass toward him. “Get
him one of these.”
“I’m really quite fine with the beer, actually.”
“Are you?” Ione looked him up and down. “Quite?”
His dark brows drew together. “Sorry…are you making fun of
my speech?”
“Absolutely not. There is absolutely nothing funny about
your speech.”
Gus brought the Balcones and Dev started to object, but Ione
interrupted. “It’s on me.”
With a shrug, Dev lifted his glass to Ione and nodded before
taking a drink. “So, do you come here often?” He grimaced as the words left his
mouth. “God, that sounded like another line. I mean a line. The first one wasn’t a line. Neither was this—I mean…there
were no lines. Oh, hell.” He concentrated on the drink and Ione laughed and
shook her head. “What I meant,” said Dev, “was that it seems you come here
often enough for the bartender to know you.” He paused for a moment as if he’d
just heard himself and rolled his eyes. “I seem to be determined to keep
digging this hole deeper.” Downing his drink, he slipped off the stool and
straightened his suit. “It was lovely meeting you. Thank you so much for the
beverage.”
Ione strangled the urge to laugh at the word “beverage.” “You
don’t get out much, do you?”
Dev paused in the act of turning away. “Sorry, do you mean
me?”
She threw him a sidelong glance. “I’m pretty sure Gus’s job
gives him plenty of opportunities to hit on women. So, yes, I meant you.”
The warm hue of his skin became even warmer. “I really wasn’t
hitting on you—”
Ione turned on her stool and leaned back with her elbows
propped against the bar. “My God, you’re adorably awkward—Dev, was it? Do they
make them all like you across the pond?”
She seemed to have rendered him speechless.
Dev glanced around as if trying to find the actual person
she was talking to before laughing at himself and shaking his head, the tension
of his stiff posture finally easing. “I don’t think they make any more like me
anywhere, thankfully. I am rather dreadful at this, aren’t I?”
Ione gave him a wry smile. “So you admit you were hitting on
me.”
Dev looked down at his feet with a smile, rubbing the back
of his neck. “I might have done. Just a bit.” That little vibration inside her
began to quiver once more, like a tuning fork buzzing with a faint, pleasant
note.
Ione swiveled around toward the bar and raised a finger as
Gus glanced in her direction from the other end where he was ringing someone
up. “One more over here, Gus, when you get the chance.” She looked back at Dev,
still standing there regarding her with a quizzical smile. Those eyes were
really unfair. No one needed eyes that incredible. “Well? You in?”
Dev eased himself back onto the stool and smoothed back the
gray curls at his temples with a grin. “I’m not sure what I’m in for, precisely, but I believe that I am,
in fact, ‘in.’”
Ione finished off her Balcones. “The ride, of course.”
Dev paused with his hand on the glass Gus had set in front
of him. “I’m not sure it’s the wisest idea to be riding a motorbike after
imbibing alcohol.”
She rolled her eyes and Dev’s cheeks went scarlet. He
lowered his head over his drink and paid great attention to it as he sipped.
With her elbow on the bar and her chin propped in her hand, Ione studied him.
It probably wasn’t the wisest idea to be contemplating what she was
contemplating, either. He was not
what she was here for. But that vibration was only getting stronger.
She couldn’t take him home, though. She’d nursed her drink
over the course of an hour and she had a sobriety elixir that allowed her to
ride safely regardless, but she couldn’t exactly explain the elixir to this
charming, awkward stranger who had her halfway to climaxing without even
touching her. Or even knowing he was doing it. Which was what made her want to
get to the other half so damn bad. She had a feeling his witting participation
in getting to that goal would be toe-curlingly, ass-numbingly incredible.
“Do you have a car?” She’d blurted the words before her
non-lizard brain could stop her. And of course he had a car. Did she think he’d
walked all the way here?
Dev wiped sweat from his upper lip with a sensual gesture he
probably wasn’t even conscious of as he glanced up at her. “I probably shouldn’t
be driving at the moment, either.”
“You’re assuming I’d even let you drive.” Ione picked an ice
cube out of her emptied glass and sucked on it. It was now or never. She crunched
the ice between her teeth and slipped off the stool, pulling out her wallet to
leave Gus a generous tip. “It’s kind of loud in here. I thought we could talk
outside.”
She headed for the door without waiting to see what his
reaction was. If he didn’t follow, she’d just take the sobriety elixir and get
the hell out of there. And if he did, well…
