Caress
of Darkness
Dark
Pleasures #1
Julie
Kenner
Genre: PNR
Publisher: Evil Eye Concepts, Incorporated
Date of Publication: December 9, 2014
ISBN: 1940887232
ASIN: B00HFG6ENE
Number of pages: 80
Book Description:
From the first moment I saw him,
I knew that Rainer Engel was like no other man. Dangerously sexy and darkly
mysterious, he both enticed me and terrified me.
I wanted to run–to fight against
the heat that was building between us–but there was nowhere to go. I needed his
help as much as I needed his touch. And so help me, I knew that I would do
anything he asked in order to have both.
But even as our passion burned
hot, the secrets in Raine’s past reached out to destroy us … and we would both
have to make the greatest sacrifice to find a love that would last forever.
Excerpt:
Uncopyedited,
Uncorrected
But I can’t get
the words out, and I feel the tears snaking down my cheeks, and dammit, dammit,
dammit, I do not want to lose it in front of this man—this stranger who doesn’t
feel like a stranger.
And then his
grip on my shoulders tightens and he leans toward me.
And then—oh,
dear god—his lips are on mine and they are as warm and soft as I’d imagined and
he’s kissing me so gently and so sweetly that all my worries are just melting
away and I’m limp in his arms.
“Shhh. It’s okay.”
His voice washes over me, as gentle and calming as a summer rain. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
I breathe deep,
soothed by the warm sensuality of this stranger’s golden voice. Except he isn’t
a stranger. I may not have not met him before today, but somehow, here in his
arms, I know him.
And that, more
than anything, comforts me.
Calmer, I tilt
my head back and meet his eyes. It is a soft moment and a little sweet—but it
doesn’t stay that way. It changes in the space of a glance. In the instant of a heartbeat. And what started out as gentle comfort
transforms into fiery heat.
I don’t know
which of us moves first. All I know is
that I have to claim him and be claimed by him. That I have to taste
him—consume him. Because in some essential way that I don’t fully understand, I
know that only this man can quell the need burning inside me, and I lose myself
in the hot intensity of his mouth upon mine.
Of his tongue demanding entrance, and his lips, hard and demanding,
forcing me to give everything he wants to take.
I am limp
against him, felled by the onslaught of erotic sparks that his kisses have
scattered through me. I am lost in the sensation of his hands stroking my
back. Of his chest pressed against my
breasts.
But it isn’t
until I realize that he has pulled me into his lap and that I can feel the hard
demand of his erection against my rear that I force myself to escape this
sensual reality and scramble backward out of his embrace.
“I’m sorry,” I
say, my breath coming too hard.
“Callie—“ The
need I hear in his voice reflects my own, and I clench my hands into fists as I
fight against the instinct to move back into his arms.
“No.” I don’t understand what’s happening—this
instant heat, like a match striking gasoline. I’ve never reacted to a man this
way before. My skin feels prickly, as if
I’ve been caught in a lightning storm. His scent is all over me. And the taste of him lingers on my mouth.
And oh, dear
god, I’m wet, my body literally aching with need, with a primal desire for him
to just rip my clothes off and take me right there on the hard, dusty floor.
He’s triggered a
wildness in me that I don’t understand—and my reaction scares the hell out of
me.
“You need to
go,” I say, and I am astonished that my words are both measured and articulate,
as if I’m simply announcing that it is closing time to a customer.
He stays silent,
but I shake my head anyway, and hold up a finger as if in emphasis.
“No,” I say, in
response to nothing. “I don’t know
anything about this amulet. And now you
really need to leave. Please,” I add. “Please, Raine. I need you to go.”
For a moment he
only looks at me. Then he nods, a single
tilt of his head in acknowledgment. “All right,” he says very softly. “I’ll go.
But I’m not ever leaving you again.”
I stand frozen,
as if his inexplicable words have locked me in place. He turns slowly and strides out of the shop
without looking back. And when the door
clicks into place behind him and I am once again alone, I gulp in air and feel
the warm trickle of a tear as it snakes down my cheek.
I rub my hands
over my face, forgiving myself for this emotional miasma because of all the
shit that’s happened with my dad. Of
course I’m a wreck; what daughter wouldn’t be?
Determined to
get a grip, I follow his path to the door, then hold onto the knob. I’d come over intending to lock it. But now I
have to fight the urge to yank it open and beg him to return.
It’s an urge I
fight. It’s just my grief talking. My fear that I’m about to lose my father,
the one person in all the world who is close to me, and so I have clung to a
stranger in a desperate effort to hold fast to something.
That, at least,
is what my shrink would say. You’re
fabricating a connection in order to fill a void. It’s what you do, Callie. It’s what you’ve always done when lonely
and afraid.
I nod, telling
myself I agree with the voice in my head.
And I do.
Because I am
lonely.
And I am afraid
of losing my dad.
But that’s not
the whole of it. Because there’s something else that I’m afraid of, too, though
I cannot put my finger on it. A strange
sense of something coming. Something dark. Something bad.
And what scares
me most is the ridiculous, unreasonable fear that I have just pushed away the
one person I need to survive whatever is waiting for me out there in the dark.
***
He wanted her.
When you got
right down to it, that was the bottom line.
Raine wanted Callie Sinclair.
Craved her. Hungered for
her.
Hell, he fucking
yearned for her, and that was simply not a feeling he was used to having. Hadn’t been for a very, very long time.
Oh, sure, he’d
gotten off often enough. Lost himself in
a women. In the feel of her body against
his. There was power in the claiming of a willing female, in that hard, rough
ride that erased the world, at least for those few singular moments as the
sensation built and climax approached.
And when the
inevitable explosion came, he’d lose himself in the sharp oblivion that
mimicked the death he sought again and again, and yet this death was forged in
pleasure and not pain.
But that was all
he wanted or needed—just that physical connection to remind him that no matter
how dead he might feel on the inside—no matter how hard he chased that escape
and no matter how many times he burned—this body still functioned and he still
had a job to do.
Because if he
could fuck, then he could fucking well survive another day, another year,
another century.
Shit.
He ran his
fingers over his close-cropped hair and told himself to get a grip. An ironic
lecture since he stood like a criminal in the shadows across the street from
Sinclair’s Antiques, his eyes trained on the now-locked door.
Thank goodness
he’d dismissed Dennis, Phoenix Security’s driver, telling him to go ahead and
simply be on call in case Raine needed him later. He hardly wanted to explain
to the eager twenty-three year old why the hell he was standing like an idiot,
waiting for just another glimpse of this women who’d gotten so deep under his
skin.
Christ, he was pathetic. For millennia he’d
not been distracted by a woman. Not since he’d lost Livia, his mate.
Oh, he’d fucked
plenty, but that was to escape. Because
even after all these centuries he still craved what he’d lost when she’d been
ripped from him.
He’d loved her
beyond all reckoning, and never once had he believed that he would ever feel
that same connection with another female.
And yet this
woman — Sinclair’s daughter — not only caught his attention, but sparked his
awareness.
He told himself
that he was simply attracted to her beauty.
That he hadn’t brought a woman into his bed for over a year. A short time for a man such as him, but still
too damn long.
He told himself
that he just wanted to fuck her—but that wasn’t true at all.
He wanted to
know her. He wanted to protect her.
He wanted have
her.
And that’s why
he was standing here in the dark.
That’s why he
was watching her door.
And that’s why
the moment she left the building, he was going to follow her—all the way to
wherever the hell that might lead.
About
the Author:
J. Kenner (aka Julie Kenner) is
the New York Times, USA Today, Publishers Weekly, Wall Street Journal and International
bestselling author of over seventy novels, novellas and short stories in a
variety of genres.
Though known primarily for her
award-winning and international bestselling erotic romances (including the
Stark and Most Wanted series) that have reached as high as #2 on the New York
Times bestseller list, JK has been writing full time for over a decade in a
variety of genres including paranormal and contemporary romance, “chicklit”
suspense, urban fantasy, Victorian-era thrillers (coming soon), and paranormal
mommy lit.
Her foray into the latter, Carpe
Demon: Adventures of a Demon-Hunting Soccer Mom by Julie Kenner, has been
consistently in development in Hollywood since prior to publication. Most recently, it has been optioned by Warner
Brothers Television for development as series on the CW Network with Alloy
Entertainment producing.
JK has been praised by Publishers
Weekly as an author with a “flair for dialogue and eccentric characterizations”
and by RT Bookclub for having “cornered the market on sinfully attractive,
dominant antiheroes and the women who swopn for him.” A three time finalist for
Romance Writers of America’s prestigious RITA award, JK took home the first
RITA trophy awarded in the category of erotic romance in 2014 for her novel,
Claim Me (book 2 of her Stark Trilogy).
Her books have sold well over a
million copies and are published in over over twenty countries.
In her previous career as an
attorney, JK worked as a clerk on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and
practiced primarily civil, entertainment and First Amendment litigation in Los
Angeles and Irvine, California, as well as in Austin, Texas. She currently lives in Central Texas, with
her husband, two daughters, and two rather spastic cats.
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