Vampires and Christmas? Guest post by @AmyLeeBurgess & $25 Amazon GC #Giveaway!
Vampires and Christmas?
Guest post by author Amy Lee Burgess
Vampires and Christmas? Not two things you’d normally associate together, but in Blood Gift, Christmas plays a key role.
The vampires of the London Circle each bear a mark on their bodies. A small black X. Claire, the protagonist, discovers that this mark is actually a rune. Gebo. The rune embodies the concept of the gift and exchange. Not just presents wrapped in pretty paper with bows, but intangible things like love. Trust. Forgiveness.
When one person gives another a gift, there is a reciprocity. The receiver becomes subtly beholden to the giver. The receiver could repay the debt with gratitude, with another gift – something in proportion to what was given.
Giving gifts creates a bond. Or could break these bonds into jagged pieces.
For Claire, Christmas has always been a nightmare. Her abusive mother would bury her beneath mountains of store-bought gifts and demand gratitude and loyalty in return. Claire could never give enough back to satisfy her mother and as a consequence has come to believe she doesn’t know how to accept gifts. Nor does know how to give them.
Enter Andre, the man of her dreams. Andre understands the concept of Gebo. As he tells Claire in one scene, he likes to give gifts that require heavy lifting. His gifts always have deliberate thought behind them. This terrifies Claire who doesn’t know how to accept the gift of love Andre is offering.
Claire has to figure it out though, because if she cannot bond with Andre – have a meaningful and intense exchange with him – she will slowly go insane thanks to her psychic powers.
Love and trust are gifts that are hard for Claire to accept, but even harder for her to give.
Andre and Claire’s story ends on a rainy Christmas night in London. Is Claire able to put aside the past to embrace the future or will she descend into madness?
Blood Gift by Amy Lee Burgess
Urban Fantasy / Vampire Romance
Release Date: December 10, 2013
Published by: Loose Id
When Claire became a vampire, she hoped she could forget her abusive past. But her mentor, the sexy, perfect Parker destroys her dreams of a new start. Soon, Claire devotes her new found psychic powers to helping abused women.
Drawn to the mysterious and handsome Andre, another master in the London Circle and Parker’s archrival, Claire enters into a passionate clandestine affair which causes her powers to ramp out of control. Wild, sensual sex morphs into something deeper and, for Claire, terrifying. Andre soon discovers her abilities and realizes he is her trigger–the one vampire in the world who can help her control her spiraling powers.
Bonding with him requires Claire to trust and accept his love, two things she cannot bring herself to do. The gift of love is something her past won’t allow her to accept. Even so, Andre will have to reach her in time to save her life or stake her when her powers drive her insane.
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Read an Excerpt:
“Claire.” Andre’s voice was heavy with desire. The way he said my name with his slight Irish accent was different from the way everyone else said it. I felt special. Different. As if I mattered.
I turned my head to look at him. He had me pinned to the grass, one hand on either side of my shoulders. I’d locked my ankles so my heels pressed into the small of his back. His eyes were smoldering dark, and my lips parted.
That was all the invitation he needed. The burning shock of his mouth against mine was electric, and I brought my hands up so I could bury my fingers in his soft hair. I had just enough presence of mind to weave a shield of privacy so that mortals didn’t register we were there and avoided walking near.
Andre and I connected like interlocking pieces of a vast puzzle. Our kiss went supernova hot in an instant. I curled my tongue around his, and the whole world froze. Mortals were nearby, but their thoughts abruptly cut out of my head. For all I was aware, Andre and I were the only two beings on earth .
The explosive taste of his blood made me moan. He’d deliberately nicked his tongue on his fang. My own fangs burst from my gums, and I scraped my tongue against one of them. Blood spurted, and it was Andre’s turn to groan. The cold grass beneath my body seemed to disappear as if I floated weightless with only Andre’s kiss to anchor me. Time sputtered and died, and nothing mattered but his hot mouth moving against mine.
“Claire,” Andre said again through the blood in his mouth.
Four golden weeks I’d waited for him to kiss me, and now he was, and it was glorious.
“I’m going to make love to you in the grass if we don’t stop.” He increased the pressure of his lips against the hollow of my throat. “Come home with me, angel.”
“Dre,” I whispered, shaking with fear and desire—I wasn’t sure which was stronger. On fire for him, I didn’t want him to stop touching me. While his body was pressed to mine, we had all the time in the world, but when he moved away, would everything crash? “I’m scared.”
“Of me?” He lifted his head so he could look into my eyes. The night around us was alive with the sound of crickets. Stars wheeled in the sky, and the earth pressed against my back. I was suspended in the universe. Nothing mattered but him.
Us.
I touched his cheek with the tip of my finger, traced a line to his sensual mouth. I wanted to kiss him and taste my blood mingled with his. “Of everything. Of this not being real. That this is all a lie like Parker says. That I don’t matter. That nothing matters. That this is a race to see who can hurt the other first.”
He winced as if in pain, and I buried my face in his shoulder. He pulled me tightly into his embrace and rested his forehead against my head. “I won’t hurt you. I swear I won’t.”
About the Author:
Amy Lee Burgess lives and writes in Houston, Texas but her heart belongs to New England – especially in the autumn.
Ruled by two dachshunds and addicted to Irish breakfast tea and the Walking Dead, she loves to write about vampires, wolf shifters, gargoyles and other assorted paranormal creatures. Amy loves to travel to places like London England, Edinburgh, Scotland, Paris France and Providence, Rhode Island where she stalks the coziest Irish pubs she can find.
She writes to trance and house music by candlelight and welcomes email from her readers – especially if they want to talk about the supernatural.
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