Eden Myles's Blog, page 14
April 22, 2013
Why you deserve to buy yourself an ebook…
Because:
You’re the first one up on Monday morning.
You feed and dress all your children (including your husband).
You’re the cook.
You’re the maid.
You’re the dishwasher.
You’re the chauffeur.
You’re the dog groomer and fur-mom.
You’re the bread-winner.
You’re going to find a pair of dirty socks when you move that sofa.
You’re the laundress.
You’re the medic.
You stayed up late last night to bake your daughter cupcakes for the school bake sale.
Today you’ll have a conversation that begins, “Mom, don’t get mad, but…”
You’ll cook dinner tonight, clean the kitchen, and your kids will still manage to mess it up before you go to bed.
Your dishpan will collect dirty dishes from out of the void.
Your kid will forget his lunch at least once this week, making you an extra road trip.
Someone will cut you off today.
The cashier will crush your loaf of bread.
You’re going to get your daughter’s cell phone bill this week.
An apparently zombie apocalypse will hit your son’s room, rendering it unrecognizable.
Someone will make a pop reference today that will make you feel old.
You’ll find yourself singing along with an ABBA song in Wal-mart and realize you are old.
You’ll get in a hot tub only to have someone ring the doorbell.
Your mother will bring up an embarrassing teenage incident in front of your husband today.
Your husband will want more details of this incident later today, probably before bed.
You’ll get into bed only to find the dog in your spot.
And that’s why you deserve an ebook today.
April 20, 2013
The Dollhouse Society: Margo by Eden Myles
Happy weekend, my lovelies! Today we return to the Dollhouse with a new book, a new “gentleman,” and a brand new look to our books. We hope you enjoy meeting and getting to know Margo, the first lady to join the Dollhouse!
Title: The Dollhouse Society: Margo
Author: Eden Myles
Secretive. Seductive.
Discover the secret behind the mysterious Dollhouse Society, an exclusive collection of powerful men and women and the modern-day courtesans and courtiers who service them…
Margo Faulkner is a lady–not just in name but in rank. She’s the first female “gentleman” to gain full membership in the mysterious and secretive Dollhouse Society. But when she sets her sights on her partner, Robert Burkett, with an intention toward turning the sexy, mysterious attorney into her own personal courtier and sex slave, she finds that she isn’t the only one harboring secrets.
The Dollhouse Society: Margo includes:
The Rules of Conduct Inside the Dollhouse
Margo by Eden Myles
Bonus Story: All I Want for Christmas by Jay Ellison
Previews & Excerpts
Excerpt:
“You seem a little down this Monday morning, my pet,” my partner Robert Burkett said as he joined me in the employee lounge for a coffee—or, in his case, tea. Even having been in America for the past twenty years, I still couldn’t break him of his English habits.
“Well, it is Monday,” I argued as I poured a black cup of joe for myself, then added one Earl Grey tea bag and a cream to his mug of hot water before handing it over. The mug was his favorite; I’d given it to him for Christmas the year before and it read Trust Me, I’m a Lawyer and had a great white shark on it, dressed in a necktie and carrying a briefcase. Robert thought it was hilarious, but felt his public image required he keep it in the employee lounge rather than letting our high-profile clients in the entertainment business see it.
“Monday, bloody Monday,” Robert said as he used a spoon to stir his tea. Every Monday morning I gave him a cup of tea and every Monday morning he stood at the coffee counter and stirred it with great concentration. Sometimes he regaled me with stories of growing up in rural Wales, waiting for the milkman to arrive at the farmhouse where he and his mother, father, and seven siblings lived. After five years of working together, it had become our ritual. He told me detailed stories of his “smallholdings,” the tiny llama ranch his father owned in Snowdonia, and I would tell him what I’d been up to during the weekend.
“I remember we had this stocking vendor who would come up the hill on Mondays. My mother used to send me down with a few shillings when she had the money…”
And just like that, he was off with one of his stories. I leaned against the counter, listening to and just admiring the man who had taken me onboard as an equal partner in his firm in what was normally the very competitive and male-oriented field of entertainment law. I wasn’t meeting with my first client of the day until ten o’clock. That gave me an hour to kill, and there was no better way of killing an hour than by listening to one of Robert’s stories in his deep, whispery soft voice and country Wenglish accent.
Robert was well into his fifties now, though you wouldn’t know it to look at him. I’d seen pictures of him in college, back in his early twenties, a muscular giant of a man who’d been big on rugby but still graceful enough for cricket. He hadn’t changed much over the years. He was still big, well-chiseled but elegant, and his bright grey eyes had never lost their gleam. But the years and the loss of his wife of twenty-six years had left their mark on him as well. I saw it in the lines in his face and the way his thick dark hair had turned all silver almost overnight. He was still handsome as hell, and his mind was sharper than all the young, ambitious sharks at Burkett Associates combined, but sometimes I wondered what he’d been like in those younger years, if he’d always been this confident, wise and cynical, or if that was something he’d had to work up to.
I’d always gotten along better with men than with women, and I liked joking that we were soul mates. We were both very much at ease with one other, and more than one junior associate at the firm thought we were romantically involved, but that was marginalizing what we had between us. In many ways, Robert and I were best friend. I was there for him when Joanne had her stroke and slowly went downhill from there, and he’d taken me out drinking when my marriage to Brent fell apart.
“Did you see your friends this weekend?” Robert finally asked when he’d finished his childhood story.
“You mean Malcolm and his friends? No, I stayed in to work on the accounts.”
Robert sipped his tea and raised an eyebrow at that. “Is there a problem?”
“I’m not sure, to be honest. I’d like to do a bit more work before I bring anything to you.”
Robert didn’t push. He knew that if it was important enough, I would tell him. “Very well. Lunch at one?” he said, consulting his watch. He and I usually enjoyed a long lunch on Monday to discuss our clients and our goals for the week.
“One sounds good,” I told him. “How does the Sakura sound?”
The Sakura was one of the more elegant Japanese restaurants in Lower Manhattan, but it sold food you could actually eat.
“It sounds like you, my pet,” Robert told me, setting his mug down to take my hand and brush a brief kiss just below my knuckles. “Down to earth and elegant.” He gave me a very Japanese bow before skirting off to his office.
Available from:
AMAZON US – AMAZON UK – AMAZON CA – AMAZON DE – NOOK – KOBO – SMASHWORDS – ALL ROMANCE EBOOKS – BOOKSTRAND
March 31, 2013
Happy Easter, my lovelies!
What did the Easter Bunny leave you?
March 28, 2013
50 Shades of Fairy Tales: Courtesan Press Collection No. 2
Title: 50 Shades of Fairy Tales: Courtesan Press Collection No. 2
Author: Alex Crossman
A collection of naughty fairy tales like you’ve never seen them before from author Alex Crossman. This collection includes:
The Beauty of the Beast
When handsome veterinarian Ben Bellerose is called out to the luxury ranch of retired lion tamer Karl Richter to look at a number of sick ligers, he isn’t prepared for what he finds: a powerful animal attraction, a jaded man whose face is hideously scarred, and a ten-year-old murder mystery. Soon Ben must decide if what he feels for Karl is love or lust, and if beauty alone is enough to tame the savage beast.
Rumpelstiltskin
Mexican mafia princess Sierra Vasquez is kidnapped away from the alter on her wedding day by small-time hood Valentino Perez. Perez’s main goal is to discover the whereabouts of the mysterious Golden Hand, a fabled treasure worth billions, and he knows that Sierra knows where it is. Too bad Sierra doesn’t! Locking her away in his summer home and threatening her life doesn’t help, but it does produce a mind-blowing sexual friction between the captor and his beautiful captive princess that will forever change both their lives.
Cinderfella
A 50 Shades of Fairy Tales / Dollhouse Society crossover! When bachelor and super-slob Ash Bennett is hired on as uber-billionaire Christian Chase’s courtier, no one is more surprised than Ash himself. After all, he has nothing going for him, and he’s the first to admit to it. But it’s said that Chase can sense greatness in people and has an indelible taste in sexual companions. A debutante ball at the Dollhouse and a mysterious pair of shoes are all that’s required to reveal the true magic of the evening.
Beauty’s Sleep
An ugly divorce leaves Fern wounded and seeking, with an empty heart and a new apartment to fill. She thinks buying the big, medieval bed from the mysterious furniture emporium will cheer her up, unaware that the bed has its own agenda. No sooner does she fall asleep on it than she discovers herself whisked away to an alternative universe full of dragons, ogres…and handsome, seductive princes who know exactly what a girl like Fern is missing.
Available from:
ALL ROMANCE EBOOKS
And don’t forget to pick up other books in the 50 Shades of Fairy Tales Collections:
March 27, 2013
Beauty’s Sleep (50 Shades of Fairy Tales) by Alex Crossman
Title: Beauty’s Sleep (50 Shades of Fairy Tales)
Author: Alex Crossman
An ugly divorce leaves Fern wounded and seeking, with an empty heart and a new apartment to fill. She thinks buying the big, medieval bed from the mysterious furniture emporium will cheer her up, unaware that the bed has its own agenda. No sooner does she fall asleep on it than she discovers herself whisked away to an alternative universe full of dragons, ogres…and handsome, seductive princes who know exactly what a girl like Fern is missing.
Excerpt:
Usually, when a gal’s divorce papers first come through, she does something wild and spontaneous. Cuts and dyes her hair fuchsia, buys that chic little cocktail dress she never would have worn in any other life, takes a long-anticipated cruise. Unfortunately, I was neither wild nor spontaneous, and my best friends Sierra and Juanita were the first to complain about that.
“You never get out, Fern,” they’d berate me. “You never live, chica!” “You don’t have the salsa, gringo-girl!” This last was said with a great big grin on my friend Sierra’s pretty face, who was, herself, half “gringo”.
Of our little trio, I was the practical one, the one who had gone to medical school and had studied hard, who was dedicated to my job as an EMT First Responder. I had originally wanted to be a doctor, a pediatrician, but I soon learned that I loved the high energy of emergency work. I loved working over a cardiac arrest victim, or the victim of a shooting or drug overdose, and watching the hope in their faces when they realized that because of me, they were still breathing, still alive. For me, that was excitement, fulfillment and joy all wrapped up in one package.
My marriage was another matter. At first I blamed myself, telling myself over and over that the long hours and swing shifts driving an ambulance were driving Chuck crazy, that he was a good man who lived with a crazy wife who worked a crazy job. It was hard not to feel guilty. In some ways, I felt I was putting work before my marriage, something my conservative mother didn’t approve of and complained about constantly.
When Chuck’s drinking started, I felt even guiltier, like it was my fault. I begged Chuck to go to AA meetings, to get a mentor, to get help. I was willing to help him anyway I could, but Chuck was a cop on the Chicago PD, he was a tough guy by nature, and I knew how he and his friends were: any cry for help was a sign of weakness, proof that they were not men. They all drank draft beer, went to ballgames, and talked about how their wives were ball-busters. I took it all in stride, trying to be there for Chuck the way I was there for Clive every night, my First Responder partner.
Then Chuck hit me.
I figured it was a one-off, everything coming to a head like a bad boil and breaking open. I thought we would heal after that, and for a while we did and things were good again. Then we had a pregnancy scare—my period was late and I was sure I had forgotten to take my morning pill that day. I’d been exhausted the day before, my brain muddied by hours of driving an ambulance through endless lower Chicago traffic while a gang of youths who had shot each other in a gang war bled all over the floor of the ambulance. Chuck said I’d forgotten accidently on purpose, that I wanted some brat so I wouldn’t have to work. Then he accused me of having an affair with Clive. I tried to be understanding; I knew he’d been drinking all evening. I tried to take the bottle away and he punched me in the stomach.
It turned out I wasn’t pregnant, thank God. But something about that last night finally got through to me. I finally stopped making excuses for Chuck’s drinking and behavior and swiftly moved out of our little suburban house. I went to live with my friend Sierra for a few weeks until I could get my own apartment in the city. About that time, I started my divorce proceedings.
Chuck showed up maybe a half dozen times, bearing increasingly expensive gifts and begging me to forgive him and take him back. He insisted he was a changed man after that last incident, that it had scared him sober. But I knew better. His dad was an alcoholic who had beat the crap out of his mom for almost thirty years. Well, I wasn’t about to become another battered woman, another statistic to be carried away in an ambulance one day. I sent him away, and when that wasn’t good enough for Chuck, I got a restraining order against him.
The day the divorce papers came through, I called Sierra and Juanita and told them my exciting news. I thought I would feel sad or disappointed that my marriage hadn’t turned out the way I’d wanted, but instead I felt relieved—and incredibly alive for a change. It felt like a black cloud had lifted from over my head. I realized I was free of Chuck, that this was a new start for me. We went out drinking and dancing all night, and my two best Latinas were only too happy to drag me to a series of cheesy pickup bars and salsa clubs.
I woke up the next morning in my brand new apartment, sleeping on my brand new mattress set, sans bed frame (I’d given Chuck all our furniture in the divorce settlement; I wanted nothing to remind me of him or our time together), my head pounding from too many margaritas, grinning like crazy, with the sun in my eyes. It was Saturday, I was off work, and I was a gal on a mission to outfit this sexy new apartment of mine and celebrate my new freedom.
Available from:
March 22, 2013
Courtesan Press titles at All Romance Ebooks!
Hope you’ve had a lovely week so far, my dears! We have exciting news here at CP. Select Courtesan Press titles are now available at All Romance Ebooks! Please see below for the links to purchase books from this popular ebook hotspot:
Indecent Proposal (Dollhouse Society Book 1) – FREE! and includes Indecent Proposal with a new cover and loads of excerpts.
https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-indecentproposalthedollhousesocietybook1-1146724-144.html
The Dollhouse Society Volume I: Evelyn
https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-thedollhousesocietyvolumeievelyn-1146465-144.html
The Dollhouse Society Volume II: Rachaela
https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-thedollhousesocietyvolumeiirachaela-1146632-144.html
The Dollhouse Society Volume III: Daniel
https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-thedollhousesocietyvolumeiiidaniel-1146634-145.html
The Dollhouse Society Volume IV: Lucky
https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-thedollhousesocietyvolumeivlucky-1146637-144.html
50 Shades of Fairy Tales: Courtesan Press Collection No. 1
And while you’re at it, be sure to check out our ally Wild & Lawless Writers. They too have books available at All Romance:
Cherry’s Sex Exploration
https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-cherry039ssexexploration-1146748-144.html
Surrender Forever
https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-surrenderforever-1146640-147.html
Waking Up Werewolf: The Complete Collection
https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-wakingupwerewolfthecompleteseries-1146752-139.html
Enjoy!
March 19, 2013
Cinderfella (50 Shades of Fairy Tales / The Dollhouse Society) by Alex Crossman
We have a very special book for you today, lovelies! Feast your sensuous eyes on this:
A 50 Shades of Fairy Tales / Dollhouse Society crossover by Alex Crossman.
Title: Cinderfella (50 Shades of Fairy Tales / The Dollhouse Society)
Author: Alex Crossman
A 50 Shades of Fairy Tales / Dollhouse Society crossover!
When bachelor and super-slob Ash Bennett is hired on as uber-billionaire Christian Chase’s courtier, no one is more surprised than Ash himself. After all, he has nothing going for him, and he’s the first to admit to it. But it’s said that Chase can sense greatness in people and has an indelible taste in sexual companions. A debutante ball at the Dollhouse and a mysterious pair of shoes are all that’s required to reveal the true magic of the evening.
Excerpt:
“Ash, how you would like to be promoted to my sexual companion?”
I forgot I was fitted under Mr. Chase’s desk as I tried to discover what plug was giving him trouble and hit my head on the underside. I barked out a curse before sliding out and standing up.
Mr. Chase stood at the wet bar, mixing a Tom Collins, an intrigued look on his handsome, chiseled face. “Are you all right?”
I rubbed at the smarting crown of my head. “I think I gave myself a concussion.”
“Please sit down, won’t you?”
I sat down on his leather settee, giving him a goofy smile to cover my embarrassment. Maybe I hadn’t heard him right? I mean, I’d been crushed under a desk when he’d said it. Then I saw his concentrated expression—what I called his Wolf Look—and realized he wasn’t kidding. Not at all. “Are you serious?” I croaked.
Mr. Chase narrowed his cattish eyes the way he did when he was dealing with a particularly difficult client or employee. As head of WGR Studios, an all-news channel located here in Upper Manhattan, he fielded a lot of difficult clients and employees. But he’d never used that look on me before. “Perfectly serious, Ash. I’ve given this quite a bit of thought, and I’ve decided I would like you to work as my courtier, if the position interests you.”
I was a little bit flattered, admittedly. Christian Chase wasn’t at all hard on the eyes. A tall, powerfully-built, quiet man, his sharp, determined features, wavy red hair, perpetual 5 o’clock shadow, and broody green eyes always made me think of heroes on pirate romance covers or actors in Robin Hood movies. At forty-five, he was considered the youngest man to ever own and control a TV station in New York.
From what I understood, he’d started out in the mailroom when he was sixteen years old and had steadily worked his way up the ranks, helped very little by formal education. Then, in 2001, he was one of the first reporters on the scene of the 911 attacks. He fearlessly reported all through the burning of the World Trade Center, gaining a reputation as “The Wolf,” the man who could sniff a story anywhere in the city. From there, he’d shot up the ranks of news casting, eventually becoming VP of WGR. Even today, they said he had an impeccable nose for a good story.
When you put all that together, it was hard not to feel a little inadequate. Having grown up a poor farm boy in Iowa, I’d come from similar circumstances, but even aided by an excellent education that my parents had spent half their lives scraping for, I was nowhere I wanted to be in my life. I’d come to the big city with dreams of developing video games. Instead, I was repairing video equipment at WGR.
The station had a ton of competitors, and in today’s field of internet sabotage, a few cyberattacks were all that was needed to bring a huge media empire to its knees. When Mr. Chase discovered I had a knack for cleaning out viruses as well as electronic repair, he promoted me to head of what he called “Tech Security” on his team. The work was important and the pay excellent. Mr. Christian was like a dream to work for.
Well, had been, anyway.
I took the drink he offered. He looked me up and down and I could almost hear his silent disapproval of my outward appearance. For his head of Tech Security, I was a bit of a mess these days.
Since I had a tendency to work on electronic repairs in the oddest of places—under desks, in murky basement corners, and computer rooms crammed with stinking cleaning chemicals—I usually stuck to a uniform of jeans worn shiny from crawling along floors, old washworn T-shirts with fast food stains on them, threadbare pullovers and hoodies, and running shoes patched with duct tape. It wasn’t that I couldn’t afford better; I just didn’t see the point. I was the first one here in the morning and usually the last to leave the building at night, sometimes working up to midnight on repairs that couldn’t wait. When I got back to my loft apartment, I was often so exhausted I just crashed, got up in the morning wearing the same clothes I’d slept in, and ran off to work without a shower, shave or washing my hair.
I was something of a slob. Sue me. But who was looking at me? I was the tech guy, the guy no one ever wanted to see unless their computer crashed or their Blackberry went on the fritz. There was a time before my twenty-fifth birthday when I could still make a man or woman’s head turn, but I knew damned well that those days were behind me. My last partner had left me, citing the fact that he could no longer live with my slovenly, workaholic self. My ship had long sailed. Mr. Chase’s offer made no sense to me.
“I think I mis-heard you…” I began.
“No, Ash, you didn’t.” Again he looked me over, but his look was different this time, more intense, and I squirmed under it. He settled on the arm of the settee and gave me his sharp little wolf eyes. This close, I could smell his spicy cologne—which just made me want to squirm more. I’d always been a sucker for a guy who smelled really good. “There’s no easy way of explaining this, so I’ll just be blunt and go ahead. I’m part of a private society of gentlemen who keep sexual companions. Courtesans and courtiers, depending on their gender. I’ve been part of this society for many years. In fact, I’ve kept a courtesan for more than five years now.”
I drank down a gulp of bourbon as I digested that. “So you have a…courtesan…sexual companion, whatever. What do you need me for?”
Mr. Chase’s mouth quirked up in a brief smile. “The Society has recently opened its doors to same-sex couples in a very big way. Up until now, taking a same-sex companion was discouraged, but the people I know have evolved gracefully into the new century and they want to give those of us who are bisexual or gay more play space, so to speak.”
I almost choked. Mr. Chase had never, ever, struck me as anything but straight up all-natural, boring vanilla. “I don’t know what to say,” I admitted. “Isn’t soliciting sex from someone a crime?”
Mr. Chase looked unperturbed. “The Society predates such laws. And I am not soliciting sex from you, Ash, although sex would be involved. I’m offering to make you my companion in the Society. Being my companion—my courtier—is much more involved than just soliciting your services as a stud.”
I couldn’t believe I was actually considering this…
Available from:
March 17, 2013
50 Shades of Fairy Tales: Volume III by Roxxy Meyer and Alex Crossman
Title: 50 Shades of Fairy Tales: Volume III
Authors: Roxxy Meyer and Alex Crossman
For fans of 50 Shades of Grey and Desperate Housewives, here comes a fun, flirty BDSM series that delivers sexy, mysterious doms and loads of erotic hijinks.
This collection includes:
Janet the Giant Lover
When Janet Loomis inherits her Aunt Macy’s bookshop, she has no idea what’s really in store for her. A ghostly visit from a giantess turns her plans of converting the place into a tattoo studio upside down, and Janet finds herself scaling a massive beanstalk, getting entwined with two hot giants, and helping stop a war.
The Beauty of the Beast
When handsome veterinarian Ben Bellerose is called out to the luxury ranch of retired lion tamer Karl Richter to look at a number of sick ligers, he isn’t prepared for what he finds: a powerful animal attraction, a jaded man whose face is hideously scarred, and a ten-year-old murder mystery. Soon Ben must decide if what he feels for Karl is love or lust, and if beauty alone is enough to tame the savage beast.
The Executive’s New Clothes
Successful fashion designer Katey Kitteridge is commissioned to make a suit for uber-rich media mogul Blaine Devereux, but she discovers what he really wants is custom made bondage gear and the chance to seduce her. She joins him inside the exclusive sex resort, Surrender Sanctuary, with a plan to get revenge on this man she loathes. But when the executive sheds his new clothes, there are shocking consequences that could rip him and Katey apart forever.
Rumpelstiltskin
Mexican mafia princess Sierra Vasquez is kidnapped away from the alter on her wedding day by small-time hood Valentino Perez. Perez’s main goal is to discover the whereabouts of the mysterious Golden Hand, a fabled treasure worth billions, and he knows that Sierra knows where it is. Too bad Sierra doesn’t! Locking her away in his summer home and threatening her life doesn’t help, but it does produce a mind-blowing sexual friction between the captor and his beautiful captive princess that will forever change both their lives.
Available from:
Don’t forget to pick up the other books in the series!
March 14, 2013
Rumpelstiltskin (50 Shades of Fairy Tales) by Alex Crossman
Title: Rumpelstiltskin (50 Shades of Fairy Tales)
Author: Alex Crossman
Mexican mafia princess Sierra Vasquez is kidnapped away from the alter on her wedding day by small-time hood Valentino Perez. Perez’s main goal is to discover the whereabouts of the mysterious Golden Hand, a fabled treasure worth billions, and he knows that Sierra knows where it is. Too bad Sierra doesn’t! Locking her away in his summer home and threatening her life doesn’t help, but it does produce a mind-blowing sexual friction between the captor and his beautiful captive princess that will forever change both their lives.
Excerpt:
I was sixteen years old before I realized my beloved father was a gangster. I mean, the signs were definitely there—the days and sometimes weeks he spent away from home, the ridiculous luxury of our home on the Gold Coast, the legions of shifty men who visited us at all hours of the day and night. But this was the man who had raised me singlehandedly after my mom had died just after my birth, the man who took me to school in his limo, who taught me to throw a baseball, who took me to the zoo and shopping for my first bra. When I was thirteen, he held a huge birthday party for me in the garden, complete with a performing clown and a monkey, and he let me have as many friends over from school as I wanted. He was the best father a girl without a mother could possibly have.
But yes, he was a gangster, though I didn’t understand that, or just didn’t want to accept it, until I was sixteen and my life changed forever. It was the day of my birthday, my Sweet Sixteen, and my daddy had offered to take me on a vacation down to Mexico, but I had asked if I could just have some friends over. My dad’s wealth—and his propensity for spending it on me—often embarrassed me. That day, my friends gathered around the patio table on the veranda and we had cake and ice cream and talked about all the boys we liked. I was happy to spend the day with my friends, though sad my dad had had to go out of town unexpectedly.
“Connor is totally into you,” my best friend Juanita said, and I laughed at that because Connor was the first boy I had ever crushed on, and just thinking about him made my ears burn.
“Oh, Sierra’s blushing!” my other best friend Fern said. “Sweet Sixteen and never been kissed!”
(That was me—never having been kissed.)
About that time, my dad’s assistant Alejandro stepped out onto the veranda and said, “Sierra, florecita, I must speak to you privately.”
I rolled my eyes at him. Whenever my dad went out of town on business, he left Alejandro to look after me, and he always insisted on calling me florecita, which in Spanish means “little flower”. I stepped inside my father’s study and Alejandro closed the door and asked me to sit down. He made me my first drink, and I knew then that the news wasn’t good.
My father, my daddy, was dead. Alejandro did not sugarcoat it. He’d been shot during a meeting with another businessman and had died en route to the hospital.
I took a trembling sip of my dad’s bourbon, then said the one thing that bothered me more than anything else. “Daddy did bad things, didn’t he, Alejandro?”
“What do you mean, florecita?” Alejandro said, coming up behind the wicker settee where I sat and resting his big hand comfortingly on my small shoulder.
“I mean he was like…Al Capone. He was a mob boss, wasn’t he?”
Alejandro weighed my question a moment before answering, “Yes, Sierra. He was what you would call a mob boss, though we call it Le eMe and your father was El Padre to us. He did some bad things in his life but he was not a bad man, and you must never remember him that way. He was a good man who died unfairly and before his time, but he knew this day would come, and he asked that I look after his beloved nina when he did.”
He came around the settee to kneel down before me and dry my tears with his handkerchief. He let me cry on his shoulder for a good long time before easing me back. Then he showed me the carefully wrapped birthday gift that my daddy had been planning to give me for my Sweet Sixteen.
When I opened the small jewelry box, I discovered a platinum, heart-shaped locket with a picture of my mother on one side and a picture of my dad on the other. A handwritten note accompanied the locket and read, Let this locket guide you to your treasure, my daughter. I love you always, Daddy.
“Now El Padre will never be far from your heart, florecita. And I, Alejandro, will never be far from your side,” my daddy’s right-hand man said, which just made me cry some more.
Alejandro was as good as his word. In a way, he became like my second father. He saw me through the remainder of my high school years and through college and graduation. He even approved my engagement to Connor McDermott when I was twenty-two years old, though Connor was white and not Mexican. I thought he would oppose me on that, but I think Alejandro realized early on that I was not cut out for mob life. I did not want luxury if it meant bathing in blood money, and I did not want to see after my father’s business dealings—I left that to Alejandro.
I did not even seek vengeance for my father’s murder. Alejandro taught me that in Le eMe in order for revenge to be extracted on my father’s murder, I would need to initiate it, as his next of kin, but my heart wasn’t in it. I did not want more men to die, even those who had ended my father’s life.
And besides, I had other ambitions that had nothing to do with mob business. I had graduated with a degree in art and I planned to teach at a local middle school. I was thinking of writing my first illustrated children’s book, and I was getting married in just a few months. For the first time in my life, I was satisfied. Maybe not jumping-through-hoops happy, but satisfied. I loved my life. My crush on Connor had cooled somewhat with time, but he was stable and quiet and unassuming—a good balance to my sometimes fiery Latina temperament.
I had everything I wanted, everything I needed: Alejandro to protect me, my best friends Juanita and Fern to keep me happy, and sweet Connor to comfort and protect me.
Then the day of my wedding arrived, and my life changed all over again.
Available from:
March 6, 2013
The Beauty of the Beast (50 Shades of Fairy Tales) by Alex Crossman
Please welcome a brand new author to the Courtesan Press folds, Alex Crossman.
About Alex: Alex Crossman works as a boring cubicle slave by day and writes romantic erotica by moonlight. She likes feeling like a superhero with a secret identity. She lives in the great southwest with dogs, cats and assorted cacti. She loves writing romantic m/m erotica. Check out her take on an old favorite: Beauty and the Beast (like you’ve NEVER seen Belle and the Beast!)
Title: THE BEAUTY OF THE BEAST (50 Shades of Fairy Tales)
Author: Alex Crossman
When handsome veterinarian Ben Bellerose is called out to the luxury ranch of retired lion tamer Karl Richter to look at a number of sick ligers, he isn’t prepared for what he finds: a powerful animal attraction, a jaded man whose face is hideously scarred, and a ten-year-old murder mystery. Soon Ben must decide if what he feels for Karl is love or lust, and if beauty alone is enough to tame the savage beast.
Excerpt:
For as long as I could remember, I’d love animals. As a kid I had collected hundreds of books about them, I had a ton of stuffed animals, and going to the zoo with my dad had been the highlight of my week. I loved the gorillas and the elephants like all the other kids, but the big cats were always my favorite. I used to watch them paw back and forth in their too-small cages, feeling sorry for them, wondering what they were thinking. So it really wasn’t that big of a surprise to my parents when I told them I wanted to be a veterinarian when I grew up—not just a pet vet, but an exotic animal vet.
That was back in my dreamier days. The reality of it was, in a place like Pine Barrens, Texas, (as big as the sky and as empty as all get-out) there wasn’t much of a call for an exotic animal vet, though everyone and his uncle did have a horse. After I graduated college, I got practical, went into equine veterinary medicine and opened up a country practice just outside town with my colleague, college-buddy and lover, Dr. Beau Wilkins.
Our arrangement didn’t last long. We were two young men sharing a business and a bedroom. In a small town like Pine Barrens, that made every tongue wag more than all the dogs at the Westminster Dog Show combined, and Texas wasn’t the best place in the world to be gay in. Eventually Beau found himself a practice down in Houston and a lady friend to act as his beard so his friends and family would feel happier and more secure with his life choices.
For the first time in my life, I felt lonely, isolated, and vaguely ashamed of myself. As a result, I started filling the emptiness in my life with work. I put myself on call 24/7, and even filled in for the other vets in the area when they were indisposed and couldn’t handle an emergency. So I wasn’t terribly surprised when Dr. Fields, the vet one town over, called me early one morning to ask me if I would go out to the Richter place for him and see to the owner’s exotic cats. Fields said he’d wrecked his back while delivering a breached foal the day before and was going to be laid up for a few more days.
“No problem, Dr. Fields,” I said into my cell phone while I stood in a corral beside a colicky mare and slowly pumped the air out of her stomach with a garden hose.
“You just need to pick up a sample for the lab, take a look at the cats, and call me back with your assessment. You don’t need to get any closer than that, Ben.”
“Sounds good,” I said, getting excited about my work for the first time in seemingly forever. I finished up with the mare and turned her back over to her owner. My heart was knocking in my chest something fierce.
The Richter place was up in a very secluded section of Pine Barrens. The owner, Karl Richter, was some retired hotshot Vegas entertainer who’d bought a hundred-acre luxury ranch to house his big cats. The cats, as far as I was aware, were just as retired as their owner, though he had brought a pair of ligers down to the state fair about four years ago. I’d seen the giant, shaggy lion/tiger hybrids from a distance as I walked the fairgrounds to the petting zoo where I was giving away a 4H prize, but when I went back to see them up close, they were gone and the guy in charge of the exhibit had said that the owner had pitched a fit about some reporter from the local newspaper scaring his cats by taking too many pictures.
I drove out to the Richter ranch with butterflies in my stomach. I was finally going to be able to see the cats close up.
When I reached the big wrought iron fence with the call box out front, I stopped, rolled down the window of my pickup, and pushed the CALL button. “This is Dr. Ben Bellerose. I’m here to see Richter’s cats.”
It took almost five minutes for anyone to answer. I looked at my watch. It was well past five o’clock and some angry-looking storm clouds were moving across the prairie. One of the southwest’s infamous summer washouts was hot on my heels and I hoped Richter, or whoever was in charge of the grounds, hurried the hell up.
Then a course, unfriendly voice said, “Where’s Dr. Fields?”
“He threw his back out yesterday and I’m his replacement. Look, we’re getting some serious rains tonight. Can I just collect the samples and go?”
There was a tense pause, then the icy voice said, “Drive down and around to the enclosures. I’ll be waiting at Building A.”
The gate slid open and I followed a long, paved road through some hilly prairieland until a house that looked a little like a scaled-down version of the Taj Mahal suddenly appeared. It looked eerily like a mausoleum, cupolas and all, and was completely out of place on the Texas prairie, but who am I to judge what rich eccentrics did with their money? We had a number of A-list actors who owned similarly diverse homes not far from Pine Barrens. Hell, Brangelina had a ranch about ten miles east of here.
I followed the road around the house to what looked like a compound made up of several smaller buildings. The entire compound was surrounded by yet another sturdy wrought iron fence and a gate that automatically slid back as I drove up in my old, battered pickup. After I was in, I parked at the nearest building, the one I assumed was Building A (though it bore no indication that it was) and got out.
Wind, smelling bitterly of heavy rains, assaulted my senses and blew my sports coat over my head. Sweat from the lack of air conditioning in my Ford made my tough work jeans stick to my legs and ass. Heat, pressure and rain—I had a feeling it was going to be a bad storm tonight. I picked up my heavy med bag and went over to the door, but before I could knock, someone opened it. “Come in,” said that cold, steely voice I’d heard at the gate.
“Wind’s kicking up,” I said as I slipped inside a dark, professionally-outfitted clinic obviously used to house and care for the big cats. I noted the gigantic stainless steel examination table, the humongous canine scale, and racks and racks of medication and all manner of apparatuses, everything you’d need if you were maintaining the health of a collection of exotic animals.
The lights were dim, but I could tell the man who’d let me in was big, with a fit, geometric body. He wore a dark, plush jacket that I couldn’t help but wonder was a smoking jacket, like in a Sherlock Holmes novel, and his blond hair looked gelled back in a queue. I turned to shake his hand in greeting—because my mama always told me to be cordial, even to rude strangers and city folk—but the man immediately pulled away and glared at me in the dark. He had a severe face and sharp cheekbones, though he kept one side turned away from me as if I were somehow beneath his contempt. I thought he would have been handsome, striking even, were he not scowling so hard or acting like such a dick.
“Forgive me. I don’t shake hands,” he said, and I noticed he spoke with a vague, decade’s-old German accent.
A part of me wanted to be a smart-ass and answer, “Yes, mein Fuhrer!” but good sense prevailed and instead I said, “I promise I don’t have any commutable diseases.”
“I’m sure,” he answered in an exasperated tone. “But you work with animals and I don’t want to accidently expose the cats to something they have little defense against. They have enough to deal with at present.” He turned and led me to a door at the opposite side of the room, navigating the darkness of the room expertly.
Repressing a grumble, I followed. I was clumsier, and when I barked my skin on an unidentifiable crate, I swore and finally reached for the light switch on the wall. When the lights came on in the clinic, Mr. Karl Richter turned, his hand on the doorknob, and glared at me as if I’d assaulted him.
I saw the scars on his face, and it was nothing like you see on TV or in movies. It was far, far worse…
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