Today Red Sage Auhtor,
Lilly Cain has dropped by to share and give a pdf copy of "
DARK HARMONY" for one lucky commenter. To enter leave Lilly a comment including your email. Giveaway is open to all and runs until Jan 31, 20010. Good luck to everyone!
Title: DARK HARMONY
Author: Lilly Cain
Publisher: Red Sage
Genre: Paranormal Erotic romance
Release: January 2010
Format: eBook
Buy Now!
Description: Running from a lover that has twisted her very nature, Lena Townsend hunts on her own.
Lena has been the object of many desires. Now she is all too aware that being an obsession can be deadly. Her mildly adventurous sexual life reached its pinnacle, and its end, when she met sexually dominant vampire Darien. He stole her life, and used her sensual nature to bend her to his will. In making her his own, he placed her in a position where she must constantly submit to him, yet be dominant to his pack. It’s a conflict that pulls her apart.
In leaving the pack, Lena strives for independence, but her vampire instincts push her to find more – to find a new pack, a new family. Alone, she cannot share what makes her vampire, and she cannot find a lover she can trust enough to reveal her submissive nature.
In her escape Lena discovers a power that could save her – the ability to read and influence emotion. With this talent she might survive the loneliness.
Unfortunately, her old pack wants her back, no matter what.
Richard Heron has given up everything for his daughter since the murder of his wife, but what he misses most is the chance to explore his deeply sensual side once again. Once the owner of a popular S&M club, and its favored dom, he left everything he was to shelter his family. Lena could offer him more than he ever expected, a level of sensuality he never knew existed and a love that could never die, but he must reconcile the danger she brings with his need to shield his family – especially when what killed his wife was certainly not human.
In a flight that leads her thousands of miles from her territory and into the province of a dragon, independence is not what Lena expected. But if she can finally learn to trust, she can find harmony with her submissive and vampiric natures, and join with Richard into a new blend of family – a Dark Harmony.
To My Readers: I’m really excited to bring you Lena and Richard’s story! In a world where nightmares sometimes sneak up on us, it’s wonderful to find a place where the good guys still win – even if they do have fangs.
Read excerpt!
Learn more about the Author of the Day.
Interview with romance author, Lilly Cain
CSM: Please help me welcome Red Sage Publishing Erotic Romance author, Lilly Cain to Erotic Romantic Crush Junkies. Lilly, my readers and I are so psyched that have dropped by to spend time with us. Thanks so much!
LC: Thank you for inviting me! I’m glad to be her and to talk about my debut book, Dark Harmony.
CSM: Tell us more about yourself.
LC: I’ve been writing for about six years now, more seriously for the last two years. Somewhere in there my style changed – a lot. I used to write lighter romance, until a visiting editor to our local RWA chapter asked me “So what makes you think you are funny?” Apparently only my synopsis was light, the actual book grew darker as I went. So I abandoned that project and moved on to darker, sexier work. ;)
I’m divorced, but have two awesome daughters. They are as different as night and day – one studious, one sporty, both lovable! Took keep active I take Kobujutsu – the art of ancient Japanese weaponry. It’s fun and the weapons, belts and certificates look suitably scary on my wall – I am getting ready for the inevitable first dates that will arrive at my house in a few years, LOL. I have a psycho cat – an evil little monster that I have a true love/hate relationship with. ;-)
CSM: Besides being a total book junkie I’m also a music junkie. When I’m writing I have a sound track playing either in my mind or in my cd player. What’s your sound track? What type of music is on it?
LC: I have one of those tiny ipod Shuffles that came out a while ago and an amazing set of Monster headphones that you plug the Shuffle directly in to the ear – no wires at all! I use music when I am freethinking or brainstorming but not so much when I am writing. I use the tunes to get into the mood, then I work with the tone of my writing to sustain it. For Dark Harmony I listened to Evanescence and some tunes by Nickelback. But for other stories, other tunes. I love pop and rock for the most part.
CSM: How would readers find out more about you?
LC: To find out more about me, check out my website at www.lillycain.com or become a friend on Facebook or Twitter. Just look for my name and there I am! On my website I have a Journal page that I usually update on Wednesdays with thoughts, research, writing tips etc. I also have a News page that lets you know where I will be or what is happening.
CSM: When did you write your first book?
LC: I wrote my first book in Junior High School, LOL. I actually wrote it for my sister who was terrible in English, but a whiz in math. She got an A. ;-) After that it was a while until I got back to writing. I wrote my second book about 5 years ago. It’s still sitting under my bed. ;-) Dark Harmony is my first published book and I began it about two years ago.
CSM: Where and when do you write?
LC: I write in the evenings and on weekends as I do have a full time job. My ex takes my kids on a regular basis and that is when I do the majority of my work. I have a big office that takes up most of my living room. I often write there, or I join a friend and write at Starbucks :-)
CSM: What is your must-have book for writing?
LC: I actually have a couple of favorites – Save the Cat by Blake Snyder (all about script writing but easily applicable to any story), The Elements of Style by Strunk & White (intensely boring but an evil necessity when it comes to grammar), and Scene and Structure by Jack Bickham.
CSM: What is your advice for aspiring writers?
LC: You may have heard this quote before - “Write each day, even if it’s just a few paragraphs. And when a rejection comes, grit your teeth and write more.” Cynthia Eden. So that’s my advice as well. Read, write, attend workshops, repeat.
CSM: What genre(s) do you write?
LC: I write paranormal erotic romance, paranormal romance and paranormal YA.
CSM: Among that you’ve written which is your favorite book and why?
LC: Every book is my favorite – when I am writing it. It is also my least favorite when I am editing it! LOL I really do love Dark Harmony. It is full of action, emotion and sex. It was hot to write, and I put a lot of my emotion about my divorce in there as well, so it has personal meaning to me.
CSM: Tell us more about your recent Red Sage Publishing release, “
Dark Harmony”.
LC: Dark Harmony is a story about choice. Choice of personal freedom verses the freedom that can be found in belonging. It’s about loss, love, freedom and surrender. Here’s an excerpt:
The bar was hopping, full of people, lights and sound. Helena Townsend grinned before she took the last sip of her drink and laid it on the bar counter. It had definitely been worth coming out tonight, her last night in London before she returned to her job in the United States. This place is alive. Her nose wrinkled at the tang of pot that hung in the air and she moved away from it and toward the dance floor, a few steps lower than the bar floor level.
The dancers rocked and twisted to the music. She looked out over them, enjoying the scene before she joined in. Across the floor she noticed him, tall, blond, drop-dead fantastic. Standing apart from the crowd, just as she was, his eyes met hers and a slow sizzle began low in Helena’s belly. She licked suddenly dry lips as he walked toward her through the packed dancers. People moved aside to let him pass, but she found she couldn’t move.
“I’m Darien. Dance with me.” The pounding music swirled around him like fog, parting for the deep timbre of his voice.
The tune changed from a fast rock beat to something slower. He smiled and she shivered as the heat in her body surged, pooling in her breasts and pussy with a force that had her gasping. He held his hand out to her and she took it, breathless, as the power ballad had him leading her to the center of the dance floor. With his long blonde hair and piercing eyes, he looked like he could be one of the singers, a heavy metal god.
They danced for hours, moving together each time a slower song soared through the heavy air. Helena laughed and then pressed closer to her dancing partner. Every curve of her body that touched his sent quivers of desire through her. Darien danced slowly, swaying his tall, muscular frame against hers, his hands caressing her back through her thin cotton blouse.
‘Loving you Sunday Morning’ floated out on the speakers, encouraging the dancers to cuddle their partners closer. Couples crowded the small dance floor as The Scorpions and their persuasive guitars invited the crowd to consider sweet, slow-paced sex. God knew Helena was considering it.
The aroma of exotic spice rose from his skin. She laid her face against his chest to draw his scent deeper into her body. While she didn’t usually go for blondes, Darien’s height and his velvety bass voice caught her attention as no man had in some time.
The song drew to a close and he held her, looking down into her face. His eyes were dark, his pupils huge despite the flashing dance lights. His lips held a soft smile.
“Let’s go for a walk.” His deep voice vibrated through her, starting a resonance low in her belly.
She shivered. She never went anywhere with strangers, and this man, Darien, was that. She’d only known him this one night, these few hours of dancing. But good Lord he was sexy. And it had been a while since she had been this turned on. A long while, maybe never. She could admit it to herself, her fantasies had been better than any man for a long time.
“Don’t be afraid, Helena. I simply want to be with you, to taste those full lips.”
“O..Okay,” she stuttered. Her voice sounded ridiculously soft to her ears in the noise of the latest guitar solo, but whether he heard her or saw it in her eyes he immediately began to lead her from the floor and toward the bar’s side exit. She used to love to come here and dance. It had been months since her mother’s death and in all that time she hadn’t returned to a bar until tonight. She didn’t need the press of people to remind her she was alone in the world now.
Her clothes brushed against the throng of other dancers as they wound through the mass of people in the bar.
Perhaps she had been avoiding people. Dancer’s crowded the bar. It almost seemed as though they were tugging on her blouse, catching fingers in the soft ripped edges of her jean skirt. Each touch made her more aware of her growing arousal, her tightly peaked nipples and the heat that radiated from her pussy. Music roared from the stage, now some new raw heavy metal band pumping out sound. The drums pounded a heavy beat that echoed her heart and the blood pulsing through her veins.
Finally, they reached the door and pushed past the bouncer. Cool night air slid fingers around her neck and beneath the thick mass of her long black hair. For a moment she felt hesitant, then Darien was pulling her to the sidewalk and hailing a cab.
“I thought we were going for a walk,” she asked him.
He glanced back at her, and amusement rode his voice as he spoke. “Helena, you don’t want to do this in an alley, do you?”
Her heart pounded wildly. There was no mistaking what he meant. “Not really.”
The cab ride was swift, most of it lost to his kisses. His lips pressed to hers with heat and his hands wandered. As his tongue invaded her mouth with a quick thrust she opened her lips further for him and let the sensation wash over her, cascades of sparks dancing down her body until they pulsed at her hot clit. When had she become so wanton? She wondered at her behavior even as she allowed his hand to slide up her skirt.
“I never do this sort of thing,” she gasped.
“I know.”
God, the way he smelled, like spicy cloves mixed with saffron and musk. She wriggled closer to him. His fingertips grazed the lips of her pussy. She could have ripped off her clothes then and there but the cabbie spoke up, telling them they had arrived.
The local Hilton had never looked so inviting.
“I’ve got a room.” His voice rang deeper than ever, its low peal humming down her spine.
They dashed to the elevator, his steps as eager as hers. The instant the sliding doors closed, he pulled her to him, his long fingered hands cupping her ass through her skirt and his mouth devouring hers again. She stroked his back, the lean muscle taut under her touch. She couldn’t think. She groaned aloud in need as his mouth left hers to kiss and lick a path to her throat. He nipped at her neck and the quick, slight pain brought a gasp to her lips and desire flooding her senses.
The elevator doors opened with a chime and they stepped out as one, their bodies pressed as tightly together as possible while still managing to rush toward his room. Only a few steps down the hall they stopped at a room door. Helena’s mind was reeling. She staggered off-balance as he let go for a moment to unlock and open the door. Why was she so dizzy? She put a hand to her throat and felt wetness. When she looked down at her hand she saw blood.
“I’m bleeding…” Her voice caught in disbelief.
He had the door open and grabbed her arm, wrenching her inside the door and into the dark room. Faster than she thought possible, the door slammed tight and the lock clicked shut.
“I’m bleeding!” she said again, louder, panicked.
“I know.” He pulled her hand to his mouth and she felt him lick at the blood on her fingers, his tongue rasping and sucking every drop. She wanted to scream, but couldn’t. The heat of his mouth on her, and the sound of his soft moan froze her in his arms as the room whirled around them.
Her heart pounded again and not from lust. It was so damn dark in the room she could barely see a thing. Only a crack of light from the bathroom door and the faint glow from the half-draped window allowed her to glimpse his face. His eyes were so cold. They caught the tiny amount of light and glittered with it. She felt odd, sick. She tried to pull her arm away, throwing the weight of her body away from him, but he didn’t budge.
Her attempts to pull away from him and the awful licking were useless. His height and strength, so arousing earlier were terrifying now. Worse, as she scanned the shadowy room for some weapon or way to escape she caught a movement. They weren’t alone.
CSM: Any new projects, works in progress?
LC: I have a second series coming out with Red Sage in a few months that was amazing to write as well – the first book is entitles Building Magic and I loved the scenery in it as well as the internal and external conflict that the hero goes through (it is also a dragon shapechanger novel and I think he is one sexy beast!). Want a sneak peak?
“You are one sick puppy, Tina Moreland,” Maryanne teased as she slammed the lid on her lunchbox and stood to leave.
“It’s harmless, Maryanne. I’m not hurting anyone.” Tina set the binoculars down for a moment to focus on her only friend on the construction site.
“You need a real man, not some figment of your imagination.”
“Oh he’s no figment. He’s right there, in flesh and blood. Besides, it isn’t like I’ve done all that well with the real men around here. They take one look at me in my hardhat and run, or they hear about my degrees and run faster. Real men don’t want flat chested, freckled redheads with ghost eyes, a master’s degree and an interest in welding.”
“Sweetheart, don’t put yourself down. There’s a real man out there for you, but watching a stranger through your binoculars isn’t going to help you find him.” She gave Tina her warmest smile and then laughed at her sour response.
Tina ignored her and the laughter trailing away as her one friend began the short-stepping gait everyone used on the high-rise ironworks. They were working the fifth floor now - high enough up in construction that a fall would likely kill you, but Tina and Maryanne had both been in construction long enough that the height and the walk that came with it were natural. Maryanne was the only other woman on the job this summer.
Ironworking was hard work for women and it came with a lot of flack from the men in the Irondogs, as they were known in New York construction circles.
Tina sat on the newly constructed platform floor that covered the skeleton of ironworks. The platform now extended about half-way down the level but the side-rails hadn’t been installed – it was a great place to hang your feet over the edge and have lunch, and of course, enjoy the view.
Maryanne’s jokes made light of Tina’s latest hobby, but she was getting tired of the taunts from the guys. She deserved respect. Not only was she a woman doing a man’s job, but she’d completed her Masters in Architecture and was now a PhD student studying buildings from the inside out. But add that to her red curly hair and her pale grey eyes and freckles and she was a natural target for her less than tolerant tough guy co-workers. They looked for reasons to make fun of her. Now that she had taken to using her binoculars on her lunch hours, she’d been dubbed a Peeping Tom.
The worst of it was they were right. Initially the binoculars had come in handy as she studied the architecture of the nearby buildings, the details that had been built long ago high into the walls and roofs of the structures surrounding the one she now worked on. Her hi-rise was going to be taller, but the old buildings had style.
Two weeks ago she’d been studying the elaborate stonework of the offices directly across from where she now sat when she’d seen him.
From her vantage point on the ironworks, Tina could see right into the fifth floor corner office, but binoculars made it so much clearer. Her heart beat faster as she raised them to her eyes again. Are you in today, you gorgeous man? The tall windows let in so much light. He seemed to enjoy that, and in the afternoons, on a bright day like today, he took a break from his bean-counting job, locked his office door, and stripped.
A shudder of excitement slipped down Tina’s back as she looked for him and found his lean body doing exactly what she had hoped for, slowly shedding his clothes. Oh baby! You are so hot; yes…take off that shirt…. The naughtiness she felt watching a stranger added to the thrill. He didn’t know she was out here, didn’t know he was being watched. His casual sexiness was real, not practiced. If she could watch him from the privacy of her own home she’d have been naked too by now.
“Tina-Tom! Let’s go little lady, quit being a perv and get to work,” A laughing male voice called to her.
Without looking away, she shouted back. “I’m on lunch asshole, and I’ve got seven minutes left.”
Slowly, almost as if he were stripping just for her, the bean-counter let his pants slide down his narrow hips. Tina reached blindly for her water bottle. Watching his long lean body did amazing things to hers. Her mouth felt so dry, her skin feverish. An electric current seemed to be zinging its way from her taut nipples to her wet pussy. She fine tuned her focus, shutting out the noise of construction around her. Crisp dark hair sprinkled across his chest - matching his short hairstyle and pointing an arrow through his six-pack abs and straight toward the object of her desire.
Come on man, that’s it. Show it all to me…the litany ran through her mind. Yes! The pants had hit the floor. As usual he wore no underpants. Tina swallowed hard. This was the best view she’d had yet and she was nearly creaming in her panties. She didn’t have a great history with men, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t desire a well made one. This view would be fodder for her fantasy love life for weeks to come.
“Yer minutes are up, Tina-Tom. Get back to work.” The smoke roughened voice of her supervisor cut into her wet daydreams. She lowered the binoculars and closed her eyes for a minute. Why again did I take this job? Oh yeah, the dream of building something spectacular, from design to nails to sliding glass doors. She sighed and gathered her lunch before standing up on the platform. Regulations said she should be having her lunch on the ground but she, like most of the Irondogs, occasionally ignored the rules for expedience and love of the heights.
She made her way to the corner of the platform and stepped onto the bare rail. She would have to re-secure her safety straps here, no one avoided that rule for long. For the Hell of it, she raised her binoculars to have another look at the studly bean-counter before she had to stash her stuff and get back to welding on the seventh level. By now he’ll be stretching out his glorious muscles, or perhaps, just perhaps today he’ll give in to a little hedonism and stroke his majestic cock for me.
Instead, she frowned as she focused on something strange. It took her a moment to recognize it. Fire! The man’s office is on fire! Then she realized that wasn’t quite what she was seeing. It wasn’t natural. The fire seemed to be following his gestures, moving with him, no, she realized, it was flowing from his fingertips. He was drawing a rectangle in the air with flames. He finished the last corner. She couldn’t help it - she couldn’t look away. Inside the rectangle a picture was forming.
“Holy shit!” she said aloud. Her mind reeled. As she watched, he reached into the burning picture and pulled…something…through. “What is that?” she breathed. All awareness of where she was and what she was doing fled from her mind. He’s a fucking Harry Potter. She leaned forward, tried to focus, and finally took a step closer. Unfortunately, there was nothing to step on.
I am currently writing the next book in the Dark Seduction series. A Sequel to Dark Harmony, it takes up Evan’s story, and brings the secretive Drake into focus with the introduction of a new character, Ilyana. This threesome is not a typical triad to be sure. Expect some fantastic erotic fantasy in this one!
CSM: I want to take this time to thank Lilly Cain for stopping by and sharing with my readers and myself a little bit about yourself. This sure has been loads of fun. I hope you enjoyed being here as much as we enjoyed having you.
LC: Thank you again Christine for having me here! I’d like to thank your readers as well, so please feel free to leave a comment on the interview and I will randomly pick a reader for a free electronic copy of Dark Harmony.;-)
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