With Tempting Gabe, my readers met Gabe Hawke. He was one of Belle Jordan and Colt Collins friends invited to Victoria and Colt’s wedding from the House of Morgan series. Gabe’s family was targeted and someone tried to assassinate his family. So Gabe called the other former Marine friends from the unit, James Clancy, Conner Udine, and Harrison Hughes to help him protech his family.
James Clancy gets assigned to protect Scarlett Hawke. He’s told she’s spoiled, opinionated, a shop-a-holic with no common sense. He’s going to help because Gabe is one of his best friends and the day of the explosion in the desert meant depending on each other was all anyone of them could do to survive. So he leaves running the company he inherited to babysit this princess.
However when he meets Scarlett, she’s nothing like what her brother said an she wants nothing to do with billionaires.
Scarlett Hawke has never been able to prove her worth to her family. She studied chemistry in college. She’s started her own organic makeup company that’s really taking off and she refuses to take a dime of her father’s oil money to help her succeed. She’s also not interested in her brother’s computer company. Her makeup company is her own. So she’s going to a resort conference with other makeup executives, determined to find her next level of funding. However her familial reputation preceeds her and to prove she’s stable, she needs a husband, fast. The second she meets James Clancy, in his wrinkled t-shirt and jeans, she thinks he’s perfect for a temporary husband. However she has no idea he’s a billionaire and if she finds out, she’ll hate him, fast.
This story was just so much fun to write. Scarlett was one of those characters who just fills the pages without struggle because she’s extraverted and just fun. And familial relationships often remember what we were like when we were 16 instead of the adults we grow up to be. So her struggle was just fun. This book comes out in 2 weeks so I hope everyone enjoys!
Tempting James
Scarlett doesn’t want a billionaire. James refuses to mention he’s one. He’s there to protect her, not fall for her.
She’s on the run. He’s a distraction. They’re begging for trouble.
James Clancy made a promise, and he intends to keep it. But protecting his former Marine buddy’s sister proves to be more than he bargained for. He’s already been burned once. He’s not about to let that happen again.
The last thing Scarlett Hawke needs is a babysitter. What she needs is a husband, and a way out. When she meets James, she knows he oh-so-wrong for her, but resisting him might be the hardest thing she’s ever had to do… until she discovers who he really is and just how dangerous that can be.
Will Scarlett let love happen or will it only make her complicated life worse? Can she trust her heart to a man who was supposed to hate her?
While this story is a standalone novel that belongs to the Hawke Family Fortune, there are mentions of the Marshall Family Saga, the House of Morgan, the upcoming Brothers in Revenge novels, and even Princes of Avce characters and storylines are all intertwined in the same world.
I”m in Hawaii! Don’t hate me! It’s been on my bucket list for years! I’m on a “writers’ retreat”! Cough! Seriously, we have projects to plan and stories to write (in between the “research trips”).
I’m just poking my head in the door to let you know that I have three books coming very, very soon, and I’m hoping the descriptions below will tempt you into pre-ordering every one!
The covers for the two “Heart” books are placeholders I made. My sister’s my cover artist and she’s on this trip with me, so she won’t create the final, luscious covers until we’re home. Don’t let that discourage you. Read the descriptions. One’s a menage!
And Cochise? Ah, if you love a tall, dark and handsome hero with a long black ponytail, who’s quiet and intense… Yeah, well, it’s scheduled to release in June, but I’m hoping to get it ready for late May-early June. So, stay tuned! And pre-order, so you don’t miss it!
Enjoy! ~DD
True Heart
True Heart Coming May 15th!
Two men plus one woman equals three bodies on fire…
True Wyatt’s hands are going to be full enough keeping the herd alive through the dead of winter. The last thing he needs to hear is that his brother Lonny rented out their isolated hunting cabin to a reclusive writer—especially a sassy, disaster-prone brunette. Who has the time to babysit a city girl until Spring?
With a deadline looming, erotica writer Honey Cahill is looking forward to six distraction-free weeks to finish her next book. However, between Lonny’s flirty sensuality and True’s hard-edged intensity, the Wyatt brothers set the stage of her imagination for a winter of wicked delights.
However, the fire that destroys the cabin is as real as it gets. Forced to shelter under True and Lonny’s roof, the temptation to experiment—all in the name of research, of course—is overpowering.
Temptation this wicked has only one explanation—the devil has dimples!
When ex-rancher and rodeo cowboy, Lone Wyatt, saunters into a small Oklahoma town, he isn’t expecting much. After his brother married the woman they both loved, he’s been rethinking his life, opening himself to the possibility of finding his “one and only”—but he’s in no rush. Until he meets Charli Kudrow. One wary glance from her haunted eyes, and he’s ready to tear through every objection she offers. He knows there’s a hidden fire inside her just waiting to erupt.
For the first time since she lost her childhood sweetheart, widow Charli Kudrow feels a spark of attraction for the young cowboy who seems set on seducing her. Thinking she’ll never see him again, she succumbs to temptation, only to discover that little “spark” was more of raging wildfire. When her foreman hires Lonny, there’s no escaping his wicked, flirty ways.
Cochise Montana Bounty Hunters, Book #4 Coming June 26th, but I hope sooner!
Former Army sniper, Cochise Mercier, left Denver SWAT under a cloud of controversy, which was why he ended up back home in Montana, and where he heard about the Montana Bounty Hunters. The “cloud” didn’t seem to bother his new boss, so he’s “all in” and finding he enjoys hunting down fugitives for bounties, encumbered by fewer rules.
Sammy McCallister is a by-the-book sheriff’s deputy, who has a beef with bounty hunters. Forced to stand by with her gun in her holster, while hunters take down scumbags, she’s particularly irked by the new guy in town. Cochise, with his long black hair and thousand-yard-stare makes her uncomfortable, itchy in ways she’s never felt before. When she finds herself needing his help late one night, the reason for her irritation becomes all too clear. She wants him. But first, they have to make it out of the mountains alive…
DJ, my heroine in All Those Miles I Walked, is a woman I like and understand. We both like to travel, we both are open and hungry for everything that’s new and different. She’s way more sociable than me, but she’s still a person I feel close to. And now that she’s with Scott, we share one more common trouble—the Anxious Man.
Let me tell you a bit about him.
The anxious man is a highly intelligent, self-made, strong man who got where he is by sheer work. Maybe exactly because he’s used to controlling his own universe, he’s also someone who needs reassurances on your well-being whenever he decides to check on you, with no regard whatsoever for what you might be doing.
Let’s say at any given time of the day a thought (“Is she all right?”) crosses his mind. He acts upon that thought, and he texts or calls you.
From that moment, you have from 5 to 20 seconds to reply/answer.
Problem is, maybe you can’t because you’re, I don’t know, using the restroom, or cleaning the ceiling with a long-handled brush, or trying to get your son out from the lake-size puddle of mud the last rain created in front of your house.
Maybe you forgot to turn on the ringtone, and you’re peacefully filing your nails oblivious of the poopy about to hit the fan.
After an average of 10 minutes from the first text (and at that point you’ll have an average of 150 of them and at least 300 calls) (yes, the Anxious Man can defy time and squeeze all those messages and calls in just a few minutes) the police, fire department, an ambulance, and possibly the FBI and the National Guard will barrel down through your door.
Poopy. Fan. There you have it.
I’ve been with my husband for 18 years, and let me tell ya, that cool, self-controlled man can go bat-shit crazy if I don’t answer the phone in .3 nanoseconds. So does Scott in the story.
And you know what? I get it (mostly because of the almost 20-year-experience in the front line), and now I’ll tell you why.
The Anxious Man doesn’t do that out of a need to control you. There’s no jealousy or will to tell you what you can or can’t do. He’s not throwing you any alpha crap or Neanderthal-like claim.
Literally, he only needs to know you’re well. He doesn’t have time or inclination to hear about your shopping day or whatever else you’re doing. Nope. No need to keep it long; a simple thumb-up emoticon would do.
The fact is, he might be busy, his head might often be somewhere work-related, and he probably will forget some anniversary but the Anxious Man loves, and loves deep. So deep, he needs to know the most important thing in his life, more important than work, more important than his wellbeing: not that you love him, miss him, think about him, but that you’re alive.
Which means you can’t get mad. Or overly mad, at least. Sometimes I do get annoyed (okay, pissed).
So, because I learned from personal experience that people like me and DJ will never be reliable with our phones, I have a word of advice for all the people like Marco and Scott, and the relationships that follow.
Buy an iWatch or any device like it.
Tired of the constant heart attacks, my husband gave me one for our anniversary few years back, and now I never lose a call or text. I can reply anywhere with the littlest time and effort. It’s pretty, and it gives him peace of mind, and me the freedom from checking the phone or (the horror) having to turn on the ringtone.
You’re welcome.
All Those Mile I Walked
At eighteen, DJ had to make a choice–her heart or her dreams. Neither was wrong, yet either would break her heart. She chose the world. Over a decade later, she returns to Crescent Creek and to the one regret she’s ever had—Scott. Scott’s always been steady as a rocky reef. He’d loved once and when she’d left, his strong heart had crumbled like a sandcastle. Now DJ is back, and Scott wants nothing to do with her. The problem? They share Eva, a close friend of both, and now Eva needs their help. Because of her, he’s stuck with DJ and he’d be damned, the woman still gets under his skin. DJ is a free spirit who needs the road under her feet. Scott is a family man who wants to groom his roots. With danger on their doorstep and a baby to keep safe, how much are they willing to compromise for love?
DJ fished her cellphone from the bag, turned it on thinking nothing of it. 12 unanswered calls and 6 messages appeared.
Fear raced through her good mood. Something had happened to Eva? To her parents? She checked the call list. Scott. From all of the calls and texts.
Well, unexpected. From zero interaction to a gazillion? She called his number; he picked up probably before it even rang.
“Where in the fucking hell are you?” he said quietly, anger vibrating in his voice more than a guitar string.
“Okay. Not really prepared for that, but okay. We’re across the road, at the beach.”
“Damn it, DJ, you’re supposed to text me when you leave.” She had to move the phone closer to her ear to hear his words.
“I know. We’re just across the road.”
“Are you in the house?” he asked. Still very much pissed, but at least he’d gone back to a human tone, one she actually heard.
“It’s basically the same.”
“It is not.”
“Okay, my bad. Besides, I didn’t realize I’d agreed to a middle of the morning text. When did it happen, by the way?”
“Damn it, DJ.”
Oh god, back to hissing. “You said it already. A few times, in fact.”
She brushed sand off from Henry’s legs, blew the boy a kiss that made him smile. Then heard a voice in the background of the call, then Scott saying to someone, “They’re fine, they’re at the beach.”
“Who is with you?”
“Charlie.”
“You called the sheriff? Where are you?”
“At Eva’s, ready to bust the fucking door down.”
“That seems extreme.”
“You don’t text me, don’t call me, and don’t pick up the damned phone,” he said, anger making his quiet words a bit breathless. “What am I supposed to do?
“Calm down would be the first thing, I guess.” DJ had always thought he might have a stroke, at some point. All control freaks like him did. Maybe today was the day, who knew? “You saw us at 8 this morning, two hours ago. You could have waited until, let’s say, lunchtime before freaking out this big.”
“I could kill you right now,” he said, so evenly it might actually have been truer than truth.
“You might want to be careful with what you say while Sheriff Charlie is there with you. By the way, tell her I say hi. Actually, can you give her the phone? We planned a spa day for next week but I’ll have to postpone it until Eva comes home.”
Hi Delilah Fans! Thanks for stopping by my guest post today. For the last month or so, I’ve been reading Regency romance novels. This isn’t my standard fare. I lean more to the erotic end of things in my novels and short stories. But Regency has something to offer anyone who enjoys romance.
Despite the (mostly) lack of torrid sex scenes and descriptive words for body parts like, well, you know, Regency stories set 200 years ago tend to be long on sexual attraction and desire. Which, as we all know, is a lot of the fun in romance. Just as in any contemporary romance, these ‘bodice-rippers’ feature tall muscular men who are unbelievably handsome and who, despite all odds, take one look at the female in question and fall completely in love.
Of course, he doesn’t know it yet. They’re star-crossed lovers who can’t possible have a future because—well, he’s a duke and she a mere seamstress. Or she’s lost her reputation due to some gossip about the ‘ton,’ as London life is called. Or because she’s from a titled family and he’s not, although this is rare because the happy ending usually involves his vast mansions with herds of servants and all the money they could ever want or need—without having to work.
What’s remarkable to me is the frequent reminder in these stories of how far we’ve come, ladies. Seriously, have you lately stopped to think that a mere 200 years ago, in a tradition going back as far as history, women were the property of men without the right to own property in her own right or to divorce her husband? Even 100 years ago, women were still under the thumb of a father and then a husband, although at least by then laws had pretty much curtailed the husband’s right to beat his wife.
Even fifty years ago, being a virgin until marriage was considered the norm and only ‘fast’ girls ran the risk of a scandalous premarital pregnancy. When birth control pills were introduced in the 1960s, everything changed.
Really, things started to change when women gained the right to vote in 1920. Women tended to support social change that not only benefitted themselves but also men in issues such as labor laws that eliminated child labor and created new ideas like weekends, a forty-hour week, and workplace safety regulations. But it would take until even later than birth control pills before publishers started to put sexy romance stories into the mainstream.
When I read Regency romance—which I enjoy because it’s a complete vacation from the real world and hey, what’s reading romance about anyway if not to escape reality for a few hours?—I’m often bemused by the arcane details of life in those times. Multiple layers of clothing including corsets for women and yards of pristine neck cloth for men—among other things—would be absurd in today’s world where both sexes routinely swim or jog in form-fitted Spandex that leaves pretty much nothing to the imagination.
What would one of those folks think now? I look around me at romance novels which explore bondage or menage and have to smile. We’ve definitely come a long way, baby.
If you’d like to explore Regency, here are a couple of authors I’ve been enjoying. And don’t forget to check out my newly revised Cannon Cousins series. Book I, HERS TO CHOOSE, is now FREE at your favorite ebook retailer. Visit https://www.amazon.com/dp/1490513906.
Taking Vengeance, my most recent release, is an enemies-to-lovers cyborg romance. The hero, Vengeance, is a human-hating cyborg. The heroine, Astrid, is a cyborg-hating human.
Astrid tries to kill Vengeance…multiple times. He attempts to capture her, seeking to use her to expel all humans from his home planet.
Yet they can’t keep their hands off each other. Sparks fly…literally. All of that pent-up hate flows to red hot passion. They fight and then kiss, shoot each other, and then rip clothes off.
I LOVE enemies-to-lovers romances for this reason. There is so much emotion, raw and real, heated and urgent. There’s also delicious conflict. Vengeance and Astrid have very real reasons for hating each other. They both had loved ones killed by the “enemy.” That pain can’t be eased without struggle.
There are a gazillion wonderful enemies-to-lovers romances in Romanceland. They span every subgenre from Historical Romances to Romances set in the distant future.
The most famous is likely Jane Austen’s Pride And Prejudice, a Romance classic. Mr. Darcy and Lizzie hate each other at first sight. He insults her at a ball, saying, “She is tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me.” She eventually zings him with “I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.” Yes, ouch.
But when they fall in love, wowsers. It is magical. They realize they have more in common than they first believed. They both have very strong personalities. That’s one example and there are many more. Lizzie and Mr. Darcy are perfect for each other. They simply didn’t know it at first.
That’s part of the fun. As readers, we can see the characters are truly meant for each other but they are so wrapped up in their hate; they can’t see it. We wait for that moment when they discover their attraction is more powerful than their dislike.
What are your favorited enemies-to-lovers romances?
Taking Vengeance
The only force stronger than their hate is their love.
Vengeance hates all humans. They killed every being he ever cared about. When the huge C Model cyborg is told he’s genetically compatible with the enemy, he makes it his mission to capture the female and use her to expel all humans from his home planet. That should be disappointingly easy. She’s a weak, fragile human.
Then she blows up his ship, blasting to bits his preconceived notions about the enemy.
Astrid, aka the Buoir Berserker, hates all cyborgs. They killed her entire clan, including her baby sister. The warrior female has vowed to hunt down and destroy the enemy. When a savage cyborg arrogantly puts his hard, sexy body within her reach, she does the only thing a female can do—she peppers his muscular physique with projectiles.
The more passionately they fight, the stronger their attraction becomes. Neither of them will relent on their missions, yet they can’t keep their hands off each other. Their battle will either end in love to last an eternity or in death.
Taking Vengeance is Book 12 in the Cyborg Sizzle series and is a STAND-ALONE story.
It is also an enemies-to-lovers Cyborg SciFi Romance set in a dark, gritty, often violent universe.
USA Today bestselling author Cynthia Sax writes contemporary, SciFi and paranormal erotic romances. Her stories have been featured in Star Magazine, Real Time With Bill Maher, and numerous best of erotic romance top ten lists.
Sign up for her dirty-joke-filled release day newsletter and visit her on the web at www.CynthiaSax.com.
Hint, hint! Guess where I’m going? Beach… State of origin of the artist who sings my favorite version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”… Still clueless?
Yes, Hawaii!!! Tomorrow morning at O-dark-thirty, I’ll be heading to the airport. I should be in Honolulu sometime mid-afternoon after losing hours due to the time zone changes. I dread the flights. But I’m sooo looking forward to the trip. It’s part business, part pleasure. I’ll sight-see while I’m there, but I’m also participating in a writer’s retreat, along with my sister, Elle James, Susan Stoker, and J. M. Madden. We’re planning on getting some serious words under our belts while we’re there.
Yeah. That’s the plan, anyway. We’ll see whether that beach just outside our window proves too much of a distraction. 🙂
While I’m away, I have writers scheduled to keep you entertained. Be sure to stop in and say hi! And I’ll post photos from Hawaii on my Facebook page!
While I’m away, remember, I have two complete cowboy series I recently released. If you haven’t read them, now’s the time… Just click on the covers!
Anxious for a career change, Katrina Locklear applies for the position of assistant to Decimal Accounting Services Financial Officer, Miller Greenfield. Miller is both intrigued and aroused by the beauty who has thrown his emotions off-kilter. Can Katrina and Miller keep things professional, or will they risk it all by mixing business with pleasure?
Author Taisha Demay is a New York native, but resides in North Carolina. She is the author of the Love Truth and Consequence series and Through the Fire and Taste of Intrigue: Food Fight Mysteries. Not being content with writing strictly in the non-fiction arena, she began to expand her portfolio by becoming a Blogger. Taisha is currently signed to Rhys World Publishing and working on her fifth release.
She is a passionate author who has dedicated several years of her career to building an influential showcase of reading material for her audience. She is an active member of the Erotic Authors Guild, Erotic Readers and Writers Association, and the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Taisha Demay enjoys bringing complex and interesting characters to life for her readers to enjoy.
