Spotlight: In Harmony by Helena Newbury (an extract)

From New York Times bestselling author Helena Newbury, the second in the Fenbrook Academy series. Each book in the series features a different couple, so you can jump in without having read the first book and there’s no cliff hanger ending.

Everyone expects her to succeed…

Karen plays the cello like an angel, and it’s the only thing that makes her truly feel alive. But her father’s dream—for her to join a prestigious orchestra—leaves no time in her life for anything but music…not even love. Trapped on her path, she doesn’t know how to rebel.

Everyone expects him to fail…

Connor plays rock guitar like the devil himself, and his ability has got him all the way from a dead-end life in Belfast to a scholarship at Fenbrook Academy. But beneath his arrogance and charm, he doesn’t believe he has what it takes. He’s spent his time in New York drinking and partying, and the only future he sees is a return to Ireland as soon as he flunks out.

But what no one expects…

When Karen’s duet partner is injured, the bad boy guitarist and the shy, sheltered cellist are forced to team up. Neither likes the idea, but what begins as anger and distrust slowly spirals into love…and lust. If they can face up to their feelings, they might just have a chance together. If Connor will allow Karen to stop his fall, maybe he can show her a life she never thought possible…

This New Adult Romance is recommended for readers 17+ due to adult themes and sexual scenes.

(99 cents on Amazon, $2.99 everywhere else)

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An extract:

That night, when the canapés were all gone and the champagne all drunk, when we’d offered our help in cleaning up and been politely refused by Natasha, when we’d half-carried a slightly drunk Jasmine to the cab and taken her home…I thought about Connor.

I was alone in my apartment, still wearing the dress—although I’d slipped off the Heels of Death and was enjoying the blessed relief of bare feet. I was sitting facing the window, playing my cello and looking out at the city lights. I hadn’t had much to drink, just enough to make my mind a little dreamy and random. I let my thoughts guide my playing, my body just a conduit.

Connor Locke was long, low notes—the sound of my impending doom. What did I really know about my nemesis? Irish. Bad boy. Arrogant. Drunk, more often than he should be. Magnetic to women—at least, a certain type of women. And yet from what I could see, he never stayed with one for very long.

Except Ruth. What sort of woman had tamed him for long enough—or made him fall hard enough—that he wanted her name permanently etched on his body?

He was enjoying playing with me—I could see that much. He was like a cat with a mouse, knowing that I could never really escape but wanting to draw out the game as long as possible. Exactly how much was he going to make me suffer, over the next three months? Enough that I’d break and call the whole thing off?

It occurred to me that maybe that was what he wanted. If I refused to work with him, he could walk away and all the blame would be on me. Was he just looking for a way out, one that wouldn’t make him look like the bad guy?

The weird thing was, I couldn’t imagine Connor minding being the bad guy. He seemed like he’d embrace the role. So why, then, was he playing with me? Just because he found it amusing?

I stopped playing, and then started again as I thought about how his body had felt. The movements of my bow got smaller, faster. Notes rippling down over the hard ridges of his abs. Curving and soaring as they arced over the broad swell of his chest. Then hard, strong strokes as the music flowed over the thick muscles of his shoulders, down his back to his—

I broke off abruptly and sat there with the bow resting on the strings. Something had started inside me, a swirling heat that I visualized as deep, deep scarlet, and I wasn’t sure how to shut it off.

A part of me wasn’t sure I wanted to shut it off.

I laid the cello carefully down and started pacing. It wasn’t getting turned on that bothered me; it was getting turned on by him. Think about something else. I stared at my composition notes, but that only made me think of Connor. I slipped out of the dress and hung it up neatly so I could give it back to Clarissa the next day, but that left me in my underwear, and rogue thoughts of Connor’s hands on me started to creep in.

This is ridiculous! I do not like him! I told myself. It was just a purely physical reaction, I decided. Like getting goose bumps when you’re cold—nothing you can do about it. My body simply didn’t know any better, didn’t care that he was a loud-mouthed, brash idiot who coasted on his talent. It was only interested in how big his hand had seemed when he gripped my arm. How his chest had felt against my breasts when he pressed me to him, how his hard cock—

I closed my eyes. This was getting out of control.

I’d go to bed. I’d go to bed and sleep, and in the morning I’d be back to normal. I’d go to bed and I would absolutely not play with myself.

Minutes later, I was lying there under the covers in just my panties. Normally, I threw on an oversize t-shirt, but that night I didn’t bother. Going topless didn’t mean I was going to give in to temptation, though. Not at all.

I turned over, unable to get comfortable. It was like an itch, deep inside my body, impossible to ignore. It wasn’t completely dark in my bedroom, enough of the city lights making it through the blinds to light up the white covers and the wide, queen-sized bed. A bed that had only ever had one person in it, the entire time I’d been at Fenbrook. The only time it saw any sort of action was when I—

No. Not to memories of him. Not while thinking of his smirk and his twinkling eyes.

I turned over again. Then again. The swirling heat didn’t fade, but grew more and more intense until—

I slid one hand down my body and under the thin fabric of my panties. Eyes tight shut, fingertips stroking along my lips, up and down, up and down….

There was too much weight on me. I kicked the comforter off and lay there almost naked. I tried to keep my mind empty, but Connor’s face was there immediately and I let out a groan of anger that sounded a lot like lust. Think of Sven! I thought desperately. Strong hands working your back, all slippery with oil….

But my body didn’t want Sven. I felt the ghosts of other hands on my body, on my arm and back. Felt my nipples stiffening at the memory of him.

We all have our preferred positions. Mine is on my back, knees wide, heels digging into the bed. My fingers were slick with my moisture now, stroking up and down my lips, and my thumb was beginning to circle my clit. Ripples of energy were skittering down my body, growing stronger each time. I could feel the orgasm building inside me, but there was something missing, something not right.

It doesn’t feel like him, a traitorous little voice told me. That’s what’s wrong.

I pushed the thought away, and let my knees flop wider. I was panting now, my fingers frantic at my opening, feeling the lips swell and spread. My thumb kept circling my clit, so super-sensitive it was almost painful, yet I wanted to stroke it raw. I was desperate, aching for release in a way I’d never known before.

I could feel the orgasm trapped inside me like a tethered balloon. However fast I stroked and rubbed, it refused to rise any higher. I needed something else.

I swung myself off the bed and yanked out the carton of books. They were in neat alphabetical order, double-stacked with the filthier ones on the lower level. But when I pulled out the five bodice-rippers at the end, they revealed my other secret. A black, unmarked box which I opened with shaking fingers. Inside, a translucent pink dildo.

I’d tried a couple. A vibrator was good, in its own way, but I never got over the alien-ness of the buzzing. It felt too mechanical, too unrealistic. And the dildos I’d seen with carefully textured surfaces, with their skin colors ranging from ivory to black, had gone too far in the other direction. Mine, though, was made of some jelly-like material, and the color helped, too. It didn’t look too real. Yet when you closed your eyes….

I quickly stripped off my panties and lay back on the bed. I teased myself with it a little first, tracing my lips with the head, imagining some faceless man doing the same. But he wouldn’t stay faceless. However hard I tried, it was Connor I saw. Connor’s thick biceps either side of my head, as he supported his weight above me. Connor’s tight ass flexing as he positioned himself to—

I rolled my head back and groaned as I slid the head into me, feeling myself stretch. Just the thought of it, of the man I thought of as an arch-enemy entering me, was enough to send my climax rising and twisting, almost faster than I could control. In my mind he started to thrust, and I stroked the dildo back and forth, my teeth biting my bottom lip as the smooth rubber stretched my walls. My heels grew warm as they rubbed back and forth on the bed, and I imagined gripping his ass with both hands and pulling him in deeper….

I arched my back as it slid into me, gasping as it opened me up. I’d started to sweat, my breath coming in choking gasps. But it wasn’t enough. This was Connor, I realized, inserted into my normal Sven fantasy.

He wouldn’t take you like this, the little voice in my head said. I ignored it for a moment but when it came back, I allowed the thought to creep in. How would Connor Locke take me?

Without even thinking about it, I rolled over onto my hands and knees, one arm under me to keep the dildo moving. Immediately, it was better, more real. I had my eyes tightly closed, but I imagined there was a mirror in front of me, and in the reflection I could see Connor, driving into me from behind.

I let my body slump forward onto my shoulders my head awkwardly turned to the side, so I could rub at my clit with my other hand. I was driving the dildo in deep, now, deeper than I normally would. He wouldn’t care. He wouldn’t care that I’m a virgin, he’d drive it in fast and deep and oh God so big—

I imagined those big hands on my hips, hard fingers digging into my flesh. I arched my back and dragged my breasts along the sheet so that it caressed my nipples, burning sparks leaping from them straight down to my groin. I could feel myself teetering on the edge and as I shoved the dildo in one last time, all the way to its root, I gasped, “C—Conner!”

The orgasm ripped through me, starting at my head and rippling down to my core, then exploding outwards to devour me completely. I could feel my legs twitching, my body clenching and squirming around the rubber length buried in me. I was heaving for breath, rivulets of sweat running down my chest to drip from my aching nipples. When the climax passed, I was a shuddering, weak-kneed mess.

(99 cents on Amazon, $2.99 everywhere else)

amazon.com
amazon.ca
amazon.co.uk
Barnes and Noble
Kobo
All Romance Ebooks