Lexxie Couper's Blog, page 21

WINNER!

Drumroll….

The winner of the Misplaced Lines contest run by me and Mari is…..

 

Erica Venning

 

Erica, I will be in contact with you ASAP to send you your prize of an Aussie Outback opal, an Outback magazine, a packet of Tim Tams and an ecopy of Misplaced Princess, the first book in the Foreign Affairs series.

 

Thank you everyone who entered the contest. We hope you had fun searching for the lines.

 

Lexx and Mari

Misplaced Cowboy AVAILABLE NOW!

Sorry ’bout the shouting, but Misplaced Cowboy is OUT TODAY! Woot Woot! It’s the companion story to Misplaced Princess. We’ve read about Annie’s adventures in Australia. Now it’s time to find out how Dylan, the stockman, fared in New York City.

Foreign Affairs, Book Two

Flying halfway ’round the world to meet his potential soul mate sounds like a fine idea to Dylan Sullivan—until he discovers said soul mate, Annie, has gone looking for him. In Australia. Now Dylan’s adrift, a bloke from the Outback alone in the bloody big city. Until he’s rescued by Monet, a gorgeous local artist…and Annie’s best friend.

A dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker, Monet has never met anyone like Dylan. Taking temporary care of the sizzling-hot cowboy is easy; he’s friendly, funny and interesting. Keeping her hands off him is decidedly not easy. That horny accent, that killer grin…and as a successful artist, Monet is very much a hands-on sort of girl.

Dylan and Monet hold back until they learn Annie is engaged in her own foreign affair in Oz. Then all bets—and clothes—are off. But it can only be a fling. An Aussie cowboy doesn’t belong in New York any more than a city girl belongs in the Outback.

Now if only their hearts would listen.

Excerpt

Monet Carmichael knew she shouldn’t be laughing. Nor smiling. The poor cowboy in front of her truly looked like the definition of confusion. But oh boy, what a beautiful definition it was. Okay, not so much that he was confused, but just the way he looked in general. His strong lips and chiseled bone structure, the perfect growth of honey-brown stubble on his jaw and chin, the hat.

Every inch of him screamed MAN. Virile, potent man.

Having grown up a dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker, Monet was experiencing her first in-the-flesh cowboy—and what a cowboy.

Stockman, Monnie. He’s a stockman.

She caught her bottom lip with her teeth again, the junction of her thighs doing a funky little twisty thing she enjoyed very much.

Man was correct. A beautiful man. A goddamn gorgeous, sexy man. Complete with a goddamn gorgeous body his faded jeans and well-worn flannel shirt couldn’t hide at all.

If it wasn’t for the fact he’d flown from Australia to meet her best friend, Monet could quite happily stand there and undress him with her eyes. Render him naked and imagine all the things a woman could do to a male body like—

She caught the wildly inappropriate thought before it could form a wildly inappropriate image in her wildly visual mind.

Just.

“Let me get this straight,” the Australian cowboy said, his light green stare doing all sorts of wicked things to Monet’s resolve. Even his eyelashes were perfect. She could imagine drawing each one in charcoal. Imagine even better the way they would feel against her lips as she—

“Annie flew to meet me in Australia yesterday, despite the fact I flew to the U.S. to meet her?”

Monet nodded. “You sent her an IM with flight details. Well, some flight details. The day, the airline, the arrival time. Although you were wrong by an hour on that last one. Her flight didn’t touch down in Sydney until—”

“Wait, wait, wait.” The cowboy’s confused frown grew deeper, his Australian accent turning the word into a drawling song Monet found quite enjoyable to listen to. “I IM’ed her about a Qantas flight to New York. The one I was thinking of getting. And then the next day I emailed her the actual details of the flight I’d booked a seat on.”

Monet blinked. Annie hadn’t said anything about the email. In fact, Monet had been sitting right beside her best friend when she’d bought her airline ticket to Australia, a Qantas flight touching down in Sydney on the day her online Aussie cowboy…friend…had told her. Surely Annie would have known he was flying over here? How could they get their wires crossed so badly?

She opened her mouth—to say what to the man, she didn’t know. Damn, what was his name? Annie had said it enough times over the last few months, but Monet shut her mouth again when the doorman of their building suddenly appeared at the cowboy’s side.

“Everything okay, Ms. Carmichael?” Tommy’s gaze flicked back and forth between the Australian and Monet. “Mr. Sullivan’s not giving you—”

Dylan Sullivan!

The cowboy’s name popped into Monet’s head, along with an image of a clean-shaven man without a hat smiling somewhat nervously into a camera.

Monet shook her head, unable to take her gaze from Dylan’s still troubled face. “Everything’s fine, Tommy,” she assured him, even as she compared the beautiful hat-wearing male before her, his stubble as sexy as his accent, his accent as mesmerizing as his eyes, to the clean-cut man in the photo on Annie’s laptop.

“Are you sure?”

She flicked Dylan a quick look, her pulse beating far too fast for her peace of mind. “I’m sure.”

“’Cause he was asking about Ms. Prince—”

“It’s okay.” She cut him off with a smile. “I know Dylan. We were just going to catch a cab to the gallery.”

Dylan blinked.

“Oh.” Tommy nodded. “In that case…” He stepped one foot off the curb and let out a sharp whistle.

Before anyone could say a thing, a taxi pulled to a quick halt on the road beside them.

Monet gave the doorman another smile. “Thanks, Tommy.” She opened the back passenger door of the cab and extended an arm toward the grimy interior. “After you, Mr. Sullivan.”

The brim of his hat cast his eyes in shadow, and for a brief moment Monet thought he was going to refuse. And then he gave her a loose, lopsided grin that made her want to grin back. “I take it the lovers sit between us?”

She nodded. “The lovers do.”

“It’s probably better you climb in first then, love.”

Her pulse fluttered, and for the first time ever, Monet found herself totally flustered by a man. Love. Who would have thought she’d get excited over an almost antiquated term. She despised pet names—no babes or hons or sweethearts allowed, thank you very much. But the term “love” coming from Dylan’s lips…

Her reaction to it was unnerving. The whole situation was unnerving. Annie on the other side of the world. Dylan here in New York. Her unexpected response to the man.

She dove into the cab before Dylan Sullivan, her best friend’s would-be Aussie cowboy, could see the flush painting her cheeks pink.

Oh boy, this was…inconvenient.

Misplaced Cowboy is available at Ellora’s Cave, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.

Five for Friday – Savage Retribution

What’s Five for Friday? It’s the first five pages of a past release. It’s whetting your appetite. It’s a blast from the past. It’s something a group of authors are doing now. Five for Friday is cool.

Prologue

Dublin—Four Months Ago

The stink of sex, sin and death seeped into Declan O’Connell’s nostrils, over-ripe and acrid all at once. His lips curled into a silent snarl and he stepped deeper into the dank, dim building, the hair on his nape prickling.

This is not right.

The thought sent a ripple of tension through his already tight muscles. It wasn’t right. The whole night hadn’t been right; the anonymous tip about his sister’s killer, the insistence he be here—at this place—at this time, the derelict, abandoned condition of the building. It didn’t add up.

McCoy’s not here, Dec. Shit, he’s never been here. You can’t even smell him on the air. Face it—this was a set up. And you’ve just walked right into it.

The snarl on his lips turned into a low growl and he felt the muscles in his body begin to coil tighter. Stretch. Grow.

Change.

Teeth grinding, Declan forced back the beast, denying it control of his body. He didn’t know who had brought him here under false pretence—more than one person wanted him dead, and not all of them knew what he truly was. Better to walk out of the situation, not lope out on all fours.

A soft sound—barely louder than the snap of a dry blade of grass—shattered the silence of the derelict brothel and Declan froze.

He wasn’t alone. Someone was—

The dark blur hit him from the left. Hard.

Something large and heavy crashed him to the ground. Teeth, long, sharp and slick with saliva, snapped at his face. He was barreled across the debris-strewn floor, chunks of concrete and shards of broken glass grinding into his knees and elbows, biting into his flesh even through the leather of his jacket. His favorite Levis tore but he didn’t give a rat’s ass. Not with a fucking huge, black wolf trying to tear his throat out.

The animal lashed out, razor-sharp teeth missing his neck by a hair’s width. Declan felt hot saliva splatter his cheek. He struggled on his back, pinned to the crap-covered floor by the wolf’s writhing, savage weight. The stench of urine attacked his breath, invaded his senses with the mark of an animal Declan had tasted before.

His eyes snapped wide open, locked on the burning, iridescent gold stare of the wolf attacking him.

You!

The word formed in Declan’s head. Cold. Furious.

Seconds before the beast in his own blood roared into existence and he changed. Human muscle into canine. Man into wolf.

He bucked the animal off him, snapping at its soft underbelly as it flipped and twisted to the side. Warm, coppery blood filled his mouth and throat. He leapt onto all fours, staring at the black loup garou, smelling apprehension and pain leech from it in thick, sickly waves.

Baring his teeth, he held its gold stare, his growl low. You’ve fucked with the wrong wolf, asshole.

“Gotcha.”

The voice—low, smug and female—sounded to Declan’s left at the exact second something sharp, pointed and icy sank into his neck, right at the spot where vein became jugular. Intense cold, like the breath of Death itself, consumed him. His muscles contracted, his heart seemed to swell and, wracked in pain, he collapsed to the floor.

Incapable of movement.

Trapped. And utterly vulnerable.

 

Chapter One

Sydney, Australia.

Regan Thomas hated the dark. The dark kept secrets. Hideous secrets. Secrets of pain and torture and human brutality. The dark allowed man to commit all sorts of horrendous acts in the name of progress. In the name of science. The dark allowed rich men to get richer on the corpses of creatures unable to defend themselves.

Men like Nathan Epoc.

Turning the narrow beam of her flashlight on the solid, steel door before her, Regan felt her hackles rise. Of all the arrogant men of power in this country, Epoc was the worst. Every day his labs in Sydney discarded close to a hundred animal corpses—all maimed, sliced, injected and tortured to death.

A snarl curled Regan’s lip. Science. To this day, she still could not decipher what Nathan Epoc produced in the name of science, apart from dead animals. Despite only arriving in the country two years ago, he was now one of the wealthiest men in Australia. No one, however, seemed to know what the hell he actually did. Mystery shrouded what went on behind the electrified fences and impenetrable walls of his windowless buildings, out here in the southern suburbs of Sydney.

Regan placed her black-gloved fingers on the door’s security panel—flashlight beam a narrow point of illumination in the pitch black of the corridor—and keyed in a five-digit sequence. It had taken five tedious dinners with Epoc Industries’s Chief of Security to procure the password: one night of bad food, bad personal hygiene and very bad wandering hands for each digit.

A chill of revulsion shot up Regan’s spine at the memory but she shoved it aside. What was on the other side of the door was worth it. Seeing the animals running free from Epoc’s building was worth it. Seeing the bastard’s normally smug and composed face twisted with rage tomorrow night on the six o’clock news was worth it. Completely.

A soft click sounded and the door’s locking mechanism deactivated, followed by a faint hiss of escaped, artificial air—rank with animal faeces and disinfectant.

Regan’s lips spread into a grim smile. Bingo.

Muscles and nerves coiled, she gave the door a gentle and oh-so-minute push. So far, her “romance” of the security guard had landed her all the codes and schedules required to get to the main lab undetected, but she wasn’t stupid. Being stupid led to being caught. Or shot.

She stood frozen, on the balls of her feet, ready to run. Or fight.

Nothing.

Except the low and mournful whimpers of animals locked in cages awaiting a slow and agonizing death.

“Not anymore.”

Her voice was barely a breath. She pushed the door wider and stepped into the guts of Epoc Industries’s Scientific Division, flashlight seeking those she had come to rescue.

The animals.

“Oh, shit.”

A German Shepherd cowered in a cage before her, tail tucked between its bent hind legs. The sharp outlines of its ribs jutted out beside the hollow pit of its gut, the raw pink skin of its shaved neck and chest festered with weeping sores. It turned a sunken brown stare on her, its misery and pain clear in the liquid depths. Various tubes punctured its neck and chest, feeding something in and out of the emaciated dog.

“Epoc.” Regan shook her head. “You bastard.”

Stomach heavy, she took another step into the lab, moving her flashlight from one poor animal to another, throwing each into stark illumination as she did so. Here a bank of nine white cats, strapped into a device rendering them incapable of movement, eyelids wired open, a murky orange liquid dripping in slow, even drops onto the exposed eyeballs of each. Here a chimpanzee in a small cage, wires protruding from four stitched incisions on its spine, connecting the primate to what appeared to be a Geiger counter. Over there another bank of cats—these ones with their mouths braced shut around fat tubes filled with a black, viscous fluid.

Regan’s stomach rolled and her grip on the flashlight grew hard. Fury surged through her. Fury and burning helplessness.

It didn’t take a Zoology degree to see the animals in this lab would never run anywhere again.

Their eyes—their miserable, beseeching, dying eyes—held her. And asked for help.

Regan swallowed down the sudden lump in her throat and she thought of the small vial of Rimadyl in her backpack. It wasn’t enough. Nothing would save these animals from their pain. Nothing. Epoc. You inhuman bas—

A low groan to her far right cut the dark thought short. Fear and adrenaline scorching through her veins like electricity, Regan swung around. “Holy shit!”

The wolf was massive. Bigger than any Regan had ever seen. At least half the size of a buffalo, it stood on all fours in a heavily barred cage, bound by multiple leather straps completely restricting its movement. Two clear tubes jutted from a neat, little cut high on the base of its neck—one pumping in a thick, black liquid, the other empty, as if waiting for its use to commence.

Regan took a step forward, moving her flashlight over the wolf’s muscled form.

It was sick. Possibly dying—the rapid, shallow breath, the dullness of its steel grey coat told her the animal was suffering. Big time. Yet even unwell, it still exuded primitive strength—a wild power almost frightening to behold. Regan’s heart pounded in her chest and she slid the flashlight’s beam to its head, careful to avoid shining the narrow but powerful light directly in the animal’s eyes.

The wolf snarled silently, long teeth glistening, the twin silver discs of its eyes fixed on her.

Silver?

A slight frown pulled at Regan’s eyebrows and her apprehension vanished immediately. A canine’s eyes reflected green light in the dark, not silver, regardless of the genus. She shook her head, despair making her heart ache. “You poor thing,” she whispered, throat tight. “What has Epoc done to you?”

The wolf’s strange eyes stared at her. Seemed to delve into her soul. She pulled in a long, slow breath, unable to look away. Wolf? Is it really a wolf?

The wolf watched her from its cage, radiating power and rage.

And pain.

Regan blinked, shaking herself. What the hell was she doing standing around? God, did she want to get caught?

Buy the ebook now from Samhain Publishing, Amazon Kindle, Barnes and Noble Nook.

Also available on print from Amazon, Barnes and Noble.

Want more first five pages? Check out these sites!

Mari Carr

Jambrea Jo Jones

Bianca D’Arc

Lila Dubois

Rhian Cahill

You Are Cordially Invited to the Wedding of the Year

The Countdown to Another Foreign Affair…

[image error]So it’s only nine days to go until Misplaced Cowboy is released. That means you’ve got NINE chances to get in the draw to win an awesome release celebration prize.

What’s the prize? A packet of Tim Tams, a beautiful glossy “Outback” magazine that illustrates the life of an Aussie stockman in vivid colour, PLUS a copy of Misplaced Princess , the first book in the Foreign Affairs series AAAAND a beautiful 1.7 carat opal from the Australian Outback.

How do you go in the draw for such a prize?

Easy. Every day for the next nine, my writer-in-crime Mari Carr and I will post a single sentence from Misplaced Cowboy somewhere on our sites. Collect all EIGHTEEN, email them to me in the order you think is correct by Tuesday 14th and you’re in the draw.

On Wednesday 15th August, the winner’s name will be announced here on my blog and on Mari’s.

Easy peasy.

Ready? The first sentence is hiding somewhere on our sites now. Here’s the link to Mari’s site. Go looking. There’s EIGHTEEN sentences to be found….

Good luck

Five for Friday – Death, The Vamp and his Brother

What’s Five for Friday? It’s the first five pages of a past release. It’s whetting your appetite. It’s a blast from the past. It’s something a group of authors are doing now. Five for Friday is cool.

My husband has been spending quite a lot of time working on the Jeep he bought earlier this year. He’s preparing it for the upcoming zombie apocalypse *grin* So that made me think of Death, the Vamp and his Brother, which is about lust, love and the threat of THE Apocalypse. Enjoy.

Prologue

The Realm

It’s not easy getting a date when you’re the Grim Reaper.

Looking at herself in the bathroom mirror, Death sighed. It was way too long since she’d last had sex and she was horny.

She flicked a critical eye over her naked body. High, round breasts, a narrow waist and smoothly curved hips. Long legs and firmly toned arms. Not a dot of cellulite in sight, not even on her inner thighs, the one place an immortal female Entity was likely to experience such a mortal affliction.

She looked good. Damn good. Not that anyone noticed. Millennia of traipsing around the world of man, severing life threads in a long, body-concealing, head-covering cloak did little for her reputation as a hot babe. About the only entities that had any idea what she really looked like were her fellow Horsemen and, despite her escalating sexual frustration, the idea of a physical relationship with any of them made her shudder. It’d be like sleeping with her brother, or in Famine’s case, her sister. Eww.

Death, or as she preferred to call herself in this millennium, Fred—she’d been a fan of The Flintstones since 1960—sighed again and turned from the mirror. She couldn’t stand around moping about her lack of a sex life for the rest of eternity. She had work to do.

In an instant, the iconic black cloak so immortalized by popular culture covered her body from head to foot.

She scowled and wrinkled her nose. The robe vanished, a pair of faded Levis, a snug Ramones t-shirt, six-inch stiletto boots and a New York Yankees cap replacing it in a shimmering instant of light and color. Fred nodded her head with a grin. She didn’t feel like conforming to the dress code today. If the Powers had a problem with that They could stick it in Their metaphysical ears. Her first claim was in Sydney, Australia, and she’d be damned if she was going to stalk around in the Aussie summer sun in a stifling cloak, whether the living could see her or not.

Killing the light, she left the bathroom, throwing her scythe a quick look where it sat propped against the head of her bed.

After a brief consideration, she shook her head. Nope. Not today.

A pair of sunglasses materialized in her hand—large, black and bug-like with two small diamond scythes embedded in each temple.

Fred grinned again and slipped them onto her face. She maybe sexually deprived and as horny as hell but she looked good. And really, when a girl was going to work in a demanding job, looking good was vital.

Even for the Grim Reaper.

 

Chapter One

“I. Don’t. Care.” Turning from the sea-spray-crusted window, Patrick “Wato” Watkins ground his teeth. He clenched his cell phone in his right hand, frustration making his blood boil. If his brother wasn’t already dead, he’d kill him. “I’m not coming home, Ven. I have a job to do and I’m not leaving the beach just because you’ve got a bee in your bonnet.”

Ven, aka Steven, aka annoying-as-hell older brother, ground his teeth in return. Patrick could hear his sibling’s molars connect and press together through the phone.

“When are you going to listen to me, brother?” Ven asked, his normally deep voice unnaturally deeper. Whether from anger, worry or the high position of the sun, Patrick didn’t know. Ven was usually asleep at midday. Being awake and in an argument probably brought the demon lurking in his blood closer to the surface than usual.

“It feels wrong. Let the other guards babysit the tourists. You’re the boss. Delegate.”

“Yes, Ven. I am the boss.” Patrick turned back to the window, studying the thousands of swimmers—tourists and locals alike—enjoy a gorgeous summer’s day at Bondi Beach. “Which means I can’t just bugger off.”

Out there in the crystal blue waves lurked danger. Sharks. Rips. Undertows. Blue-bottles…all waiting to catch a swimmer unaware. To bring pain, suffering, maybe even death. He’d be damned if he was leaving those swimmers’ fates to chance. His team was good. God knows, Bluey had been swimming since birth. The senior lifeguard’s rescue rate was the second highest in the country after his own, but—like Ven—Patrick had an uneasy itch in his gut. Unlike Ven, his sense of disquiet had nothing to do with a supposed attack from an unknown “thing” and everything to do with the large number of people enjoying the famous stretch of beach. On a day like today, there were close to forty-thousand souls on the sand and in the water. That equaled roughly forty-thousand possible drownings, shark-attack victims, blue-bottle stings…

Patrick’s gut itched again. No matter what threat his brother imagined in his paranoid imagination, he couldn’t leave.

But he’s not being paranoid, is he? You know exactly what threat—

Shutting down the unwanted thought, Patrick scanned the surf, focusing on a group of Japanese tourists bobbing ignorantly close to Backpacker’s Express. If the beach’s notorious rip took them into its embrace, they’d be out to sea and two miles south before they even realized they were no longer in Bondi waters. It would take at least four lifeguards to round them up, leaving seven to keep the rest of the beach’s visitors safe. Seven men to deal with any emergency on the mile-long stretch. His team couldn’t do that without their boss, no matter how good they were.

He bit back a frustrated sigh. Just a typical day at work. Danger and death lurking everywhere. He couldn’t pack it all in just because his brother thought he was in danger. Besides, it was the middle of the day. What type of paranormal nasty attacked in the middle of the bloody day? And on a busy beach, no less?

The kind in a black suit, maybe?

He ignored the silent question, turning his attention to the packed surf instead. It was a glorious summer day on Australia’s most famous beach. Perfect, in fact. Blue, cloudless sky, clean five-foot waves, warm seventy-one degree water. If said unseen paranormal attack was going to happen, it sure as hell wasn’t going to be today. What Patrick would more likely be confronted with on a day like today, what the itch in his gut was probably warning him about, was the possibility of a careless, overconfident tourist taking their life in their hands by not swimming between the flags. That, he could deal with on his own. He didn’t need his vampire big brother to save a drowning person. When it came down to it, Ven wasn’t up to swimming these days anyway, not during sunlight at least. He was known to pick up his old board for a midnight surf or two…when he wasn’t trying to protect Patrick from God alone only knows, that was.

Shaking his head, Patrick lifted his phone’s mouthpiece closer to his face. “Sorry, Ven. I’m staying put. Either come and get me or go back to sleep.”

“Ha, ha, brother. Really funny. Will you bloody well listen to reason for a—”

“I gotta go, mate.” Patrick cut him off. “I’ll call you when I get home.”

“But—”

He pulled the phone from his ear, flipped it shut and threw it on the counter before him with a shake of his head and a wry chuckle. Ven had spent the last thirty-six years thinking he needed to protect Patrick from some unknown entity, and Patrick had spent the last eighteen of those years arguing with Ven the entire thing was unnecessary. Nothing was after Patrick. Nothing. Nothing could convince Ven differently however. Thank bloody God the bloke spent his days “sleeping”, otherwise Patrick would probably go crazy and shove a stake in his chest just to get some unsupervised personal space.

Who in the hell would be coming after him anyway? A simple lifeguard in Australia?

You know who, Patrick. You just have to—

“You see that group in Backpacker’s, Wato?” a slightly raspy voice sounded to his left, cutting the dark thought dead.

Grateful for the interruption, Patrick gave his second in charge a quick nod. “Yeah, I see them.”

Bluey handed him a pair of binoculars, concern creasing the sides of his pale blue eyes. “One of them’s flounderin’.”

Patrick took the offered glasses. “Tourist?”

Bluey shook his head. “Don’t think so. Not Japanese, at least. Too big. Too blonde. Forty, forty-five years old, I’m guessin’. Take a look.”

Lifting the binoculars to his eyes, Patrick focused in on the group of swimmers bobbing in the surf’s choppy southern swell. Five people moved up and down with the rolling waves, their heads breaching the deceptive water, sinking below the surface and emerging again. Five people thinking they were safe when they were in dangerous territory. Five people who would need to be rounded up ASAP. Five people—

A man burst upward from the water, thinning blonde hair plastered to a domed skull, sunburnt face distorted in abject fear. He struggled to stay above the inescapable waves, the sea pouring into his open mouth every time he shouted for help. One flabby arm clawed above the surface to wave, once, twice, before he sank below the surface with terrifying speed. Gone.

“Fuck.” Patrick threw aside the binoculars. “He’s under.”

He moved without thought, the act of rescuing a drowning swimmer second nature to him. He’d spent the last fifteen years doing it every day. Ordering Bluey to contact the two guards patrolling the southern end of the beach, he charged from the patrol tower. He snatched up a rescue tube and his board and sprinted across the sand, dodging sunbathers and beach volleyballers on his way to the water. It would take approximately six minutes to get to the man in Backpacker’s Express. By Patrick’s reckoning, five minutes too long.

Death, The Vamp and his Brother is available at Samhain Publishing, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, The Book Depository (29% off, free shipping world wide!!) and all other good book stores.

Want more first five pages? Check out these sites!

Mari Carr

Jambrea Jo Jones

Bianca D’Arc

Lila Dubois

Rhian Cahill

I Just Hit “Send”

Muscle for Hire, Aslin Rhodes’ story, is on its way to my Samhain editor. My very first romantic suspense. Yay!

Coming Soon from Samhain.

Aslin Rhodes was once an elite SAS Commando for the Royal United Kingdom Special Forces. After becoming disenchanted with his government’s stance on hostile invasion, he finished his tour of duty and became a bodyguard to an up-and-coming rock musician, Nick Blackthorne. That was over sixteen years ago. Now Aslin finds himself adrift as Nick settles into a sedate family life away from the public eye. What’s a bodyguard to do when he has no one to guard?

Stay tuned for more details (and a sneak-peek)

Monday’s Movie Trailer – Oz the Great and Powerful

I have no idea if this will be any good, but damn, I can’t wait to see it based on this trailer.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Random Blast from the Past Time – Savage Retribution

I’ve been writing for ever. Most of you who have been reading me forever know this (and to those that have been reading me since my first release, I love you dearly). Today, I received a package in the mail with some author copies of a few of my older titles. I picked up one of them, opened it to a random page and read. And thought, Damn! Did I really write that? That’s not half bad.

So here is the totally random page I read from Savage Retribution, my first ever release with Samhain Publishing.

WARNING: It’s a naughty one.

Enjoy.

***

He wriggled both fingers and Regan bucked again, thrashing against his hand. “Fuck. Fuck, yes.”

“Tell me how much you like that, Regan,” Declan murmured, his cock an inferno of burning hunger between his thighs. He rubbed his thumb and fingers against each other through the membrane of her sex and her cunt convulsed, fresh liquid seeping from her cleft. The distinct scent of sexual bliss filled the room and Declan’s blood turned even hotter, his every fiber imbued with the powerful musk of Regan’s pleasure.

Her breath burst from her in ragged, shallow pants. “It’s good. It’s so good.”

He dipped his head a little and blew a fine stream of air onto her sodden, pulsating sex. “Shall I stop?”

For an answer, she bucked her hips harder into his hand and thrashed her head from side to side.

Her absolute surrender to the pleasure in her body detonated a carnal lust deep in Declan’s being. He sucked in another musk-heavy breath and, heart pounding, balls throbbing, lowered his mouth to her cunt once again. Needing to taste her pleasure as well as feel it drench his hand.

Her muscles constricted. Sucked at his fingers as surely as he sucked at her clit. His balls rose up and he squeezed his cock painfully, struggling for control. The scent of her sex, the clamping of her pussy and rectum, the sounds of her rapturous desire were pushing him so close to the edge he felt his scrotum swell.

Regan’s hands fisted in his hair. “I’m going to come, Declan. Oh, my God, I’m going to come.”

Declan’s cock throbbed eagerly at the panted exclamation. He drove his thumb harder into her cunt, his finger deeper into her ass, wriggling and twisting them, seeking the sweetest of spots that would release the building, mounting pressure of her orgasm and flood her pussy with creamy juice. His tongue flicked and rolled and tortured her clit. He didn’t want her to come. He wanted her to erupt.

***

Savage Retribution

An animal rights activist is about to get a crash course in werewolves. One she may not survive.

Lone Irish werewolf Declan O’Connell has lost everything—his family, his clan, even his freedom—to his arch-rival, Nathan Epoc. The head of an underground werewolf clan and a brilliant scientist, Epoc plans to use Declan to create a super-wolf, a creature capable of shifting the balance of power in the lycanthrope world. But Epoc’s plans are about to be thwarted.

Regan Thomas, a determined animal rights activist, rescues what she thinks is an ordinary wolf from his notorious animal testing facility in Sydney, Australia. She gets more than she bargained for when the wolf turns into an extremely hunky, extremely naked man who immediately drags her into a world where the clash between two opposing werewolf clans could spell the end of humankind.

Declan has survived without a clan for more years than he cares to remember, but sexy Regan stirs up all his fierce, alpha-wolf instincts. Now Declan has one last chance at revenge. But can he keep Regan alive, and resist the overwhelming attraction between them, long enough to stop Epoc?

Summer in Australia has never been this hot… or this dangerous.

Product Warnings: Warning, this title contains the following: explicit sex, graphic language, graphic violence, violent sex, high-speed car-chases, wild werewolf action and Australian sarcasm.

 

You can purchase Savage Retribution all over the place. To start, check out more of the book here

Click here to view the embedded video.

Wednesday’s Wicked Excerpt – Crooked Triangle

Writing a BDSM novella was the most wicked fun I’ve ever had. Suprising my editor with it was almost as much fun. Crooked Triangle came out of the blue. I still don’t know what my muse was doing the day I wrote this. I suspect he’d gone on a unscheduled holiday and the muse in my mind at the time was a very naughty temp.

“This is a fast-paced, sexually charged story that grabs you from the very beginning. I did not stop reading from the moment I started until the end, then I screamed and read it again. I loved it and cannot recommend it enough to those that like hot and raw. The ending made the entire book for me. Ms. Couper is a delight, I love her sense of humor which comes through in this book, as well as an ability to write some seriously wicked sex.”  – Jenn, Coffee Time Romance

 

Sam and Nicky White are a typical contemporary power couple. She’s a ball-busting vice president at the country’s leading bank, he’s the trophy husband she wears on her arm at executive dinners.

Except when they are in the bedroom. In the bedroom, their “games” of sexual domination have Sam firmly in the position of power. Nicky, however, is ready to bring the game to an end but Sam has other ideas.

During a night of domination and submission in their isolated country cottage, an unexpected guest drops in on the couple. A dangerous guest. And for Sam and Nicky, nothing will ever be the same again.

Excerpt

Content Warning: Contains graphic sexual content that may offend some readers.

 

Goddamn, his wife’s ass was hot.

Sam watched intently as she bent over before him, sheer black-stockinged legs straight, stiletto-clad feet spread wide. Burnished copper-tipped fingers wrapped slowly around her ankles as she folded her body further over, her glorious mane of midnight-black hair brushing the floor as she gazed up through the V of her legs. Deep sapphire eyes flirted with him from behind lowered lids. “I’ve been a bad girl,” she said, voice like honeyed velvet. “I need to be spanked.”

Bam! Just like that his cock was a throbbing steel shaft of hot-to-trot hunger.

The material of his boxers rubbed against his straining erection, tenting the front of his work trousers. His balls felt heavy and swollen, like they’d been pumped full of liquid metal. Stepping forward, he pulled at his belt buckle, the snick of the fine leather whipping through the loops of his trousers sending a shiver through him. Dominating his wife was the biggest turn-on he could imagine. Dominating her with leather was like lust incarnate. Wicked and intoxicating. And wow, what a power rush! What a fucking shame she only let him do it once in a blue moon.

His eyes roamed over her perfect, jutting ass, following the black line of her leather crotch-less thong as it disappeared between the crease of her cheeks, down the seam of those black stockings, to her smouldering eyes. “Please,” she mouthed, her full lips glossed.

With a fluid arc he raised his folded-over belt and brought it down. Right on that firm, smooth and oh-so-perfect butt.

Her squeal of pain sent molten heat straight to his balls and cock. If he thought he was hard before, he was out of his mind. He stared at the new red welt marring Nicky’s flesh. Holy fuck! I think I’m going to shoot my load here and now!

With another swift down-stroke, his belt slapped flesh. Harder.

With another squeal, Nicky squirmed, rolling her hips so her ass wiggled. “Yes, Sam! Spank me harder!”

It was too much. With a growl, Sam lunged, hooking Nicky around the waist and throwing her onto their bed.

She landed on her back, legs splayed, glistening cunt exposed. Breasts that were more than perfect jiggled as the bed shook, the dusky peaks of her nipples tight and puckered already. Before she could move, he was upon her, straddling her hips and pinning her to the bed. He stared down into her luminous-sapphire eyes, grinding his burning, rigid cock against her mons. “Tell me what I’m going to do to you,” he ordered, pressing her wrists to the bed beside her head. “Tell me how I’m going to make you scream and cum until you can’t move or think anymore.”

A whimper slipped past his wife’s parted lips. Sam could not tell if it was from excitement or trepidation, and didn’t care either way. His cock was too damn hard, his balls too damn swollen. Rising onto his knees he reached down between their bodies with one hand, plunging his middle finger deep into her cunt and wiggling its tip against the highly sensitive spot he knew would make her arch and squirm and beg for more.

“Oh, God,” Nicky moaned, throwing her head back as he buried another seeking finger, and another, into her clenching, creamy channel. “Sam!”

He withdrew his hand – a little – pinching at the tiny pink nub of flesh hidden between the folds of her sex. “Tell me!” he ordered again, dipping back into her cunt, taunting and teasing with what he knew she wanted. With what only he could give.

Scalding blood rushed into his cock, pumping him harder than ever.

“You’re going to fuck me,” Nicky gasped, rolling her head from side to side. “You’re going to stick your big, hard cock in my cunt and my ass.”

“More,” he demanded, driving his fingers back into her sodden slit. The sound of her juices slurping around his fingers was aural ambrosia. He had made her that wet. Him! “Tell me what else I’m going to do.”

Another soft cry fell from Nicky’s lips and she turned her head to the side, eyes closed. “You’re going to fuck my mouth as I suck you off.” Her chest heaved, round heavy breasts rising and falling as she gasped and panted in rhythm with his plundering fingers. “You’re going to pump your load into my mouth and I’m going to swallow it.”

Sam’s balls grew tight and his cock strained even more against his boxers, seeking, needing, the damp heat of her sex. Goddamn, he was so fucking horny! He stared down into Nicky’s face, noting the sheen of perspiration that slicked her cheeks and forehead, noticing the way her tongue touched her lower lip every time his fingers touched the walls of her cunt. Ribbons of molten lust coursed through his veins.

“Fuck me, Sam!” Nicky cried. “Please, Sam, please!”

Her pleas were like fire on his flesh. Fevered, he dropped his head to her breasts, drawing the pink tip into his mouth in a greedy suck as he plunged his fingers back into her cunt. Her juices slicked his flesh, her musky scent filled his nose. She arched her back, pushing her hips higher, her cunt harder against his hand. “Please, oh God, Sam. Please!” Her hands tangled in his hair, pulling on the strands she gripped in painful tugs that sent hot pleasure straight to his cock. “Give me more, Sam. More!”

He lifted his head, his breath short. “Oh, I’ll give you more,” he growled. Without withdrawing his fingers from her sodden, pulsing cunt, Sam reached for the bedside drawer, fumbling in its depths even as his other hand twisted and wiggled in his wife’s depths. Ah, there it is!

A grin stretched his lips as he pulled what he sought from the drawer. Oh, yes. He ran his grasp up and down the long, thick glass dildo, its chilly surface blisteringly cold against the fevered flesh of his palm. “You want more, Wife?” He held the dildo before her face, watching as her eyes focussed on its shiny, transparent shape. “Here’s more.” And before she could even gasp, he dragged its cold tip down over her ribcage and buried it up to the hilt in her cunt.

***

Hmmm, this really is much more naughty than I normally write, isn’t it. See? Told you so

You can check out Crooked Triangle here at Changeling Press.