It’s the Hot Paranormal Nights Blog Hop! This summer we’re celebrating things that go bump in the night. What are your favorite things that go bump in the night? Leave a comment and your email address for a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card. Click the Hot Paranormal button above to visit all stops on this hop and enjoy!
Two of my favorite things that go bump in the night? One Dark Alley and a Drafty Old Place.
Excerpt from Falcon’s Angel, A Cardiff Novel Book 1
One Dark Alley in Naples, Italy…
What the hell?
Something flitted overhead, darker than the darkness in which he now stood alone. He pointed the Glock upward even as a figure walked up the side of the building. It looked like a black cloud but more solid than it should be.
Before he could get off a shot, the darkness disappeared over the side of the roof.
Staring at the dead end in front of him, Falcon put his gun away. No doors or windows on either side.
Where is the guy? Must be a hidden door somewhere, he’d check it out later.
Falcon turned back toward the girl. Beyond her, across the street, the man he had been chasing got into a car.
“No way,” he murmured as the car sped off. No way could the man have gotten past him in the alley.
The girl had both arms wrapped around the violin case in front of her. She was leaning against the church wall, crying.
A street lamp flickered on above them, belatedly bathing the passage in revealing light. She did not seem to realize that he was there.
“Did he hurt you, Signorina?”
She looked up. He lifted his gaze from her heaving chest.
“Grazie,” she whispered, wiping her face with the back of her hand. She shook her head. “I am fine.”
There was blood on her closed fist.
“Are you hurt?” He moved closer.
She moved her hand behind the folds of her skirt and backed into the wall.
He waited, leaning his hand against the wall above her head, inhaling her perfume. A beguiling combination of … amber, apples and musk. The scent suited her, organic, delicious. He wanted to lift her skirt right now and take her against this wall, those long legs wrapped around him.
Angelina examined the buttons on his shirt that were in such close proximity. Stepping away from him would be cowardly, and he would guess she was made of sterner stuff. When she looked up it was with the defiance he expected from a cornered tigress.
He held her gaze, reaching behind to bring her fist out from the folds of her skirt.
The bloody gold in the center of her palm was a heavy medium-sized loop engraved with a stylized dragon. She had pulled it from the man’s ear and he had not made a sound.
“A memento?” He whispered in English close to her lips.
“I don’t want it. You can have it,” she answered in her native tongue. Now, that was the truth. Her British accent was tinged with a weary sadness. He wanted to pick her up against his chest and carry her home.
She had courage. Even while his mind worked to figure out what her role was in the mystery of the Stradivarius, he admired that.
He couldn’t leave her alone now. Not on a street where men escaped him when cornered in an alley and black clouds slid up church walls.
***********
Excerpt from Love Entwined, A Cardiff Novel Book 2 Available 9/9/13 from Liquid Silver Books
A Drafty Old Place in North Yorkshire, England…
Across the green was the mansion. The floodlights lit up the old limestone, making the imposing high stone walls seem even older than they were. Large bay windows dotted the beautifully preserved façade.
My dream house.
She turned to Roman, who stared at her.
“What is it?”
“This is…” She could not speak, should not speak the words in her mind, and returned her gaze to the window. “It is like an ancient monument.”
He looked over her shoulder. “This drafty old place is over two hundred years old.”
He stopped when she wanted to hear more, anything that would explain why her dream house was here in England, why she was here, why they were both here together, she and her dream lover.
He was watching her again.
She sat back and tried for a lighter tone. “So many windows must bring warmth to the interior in the summer.” She had only just arrived and was already being seduced by the thought of summer in the English countryside.
The car drove up a road as wide as a two-lane highway in New York City. There was a hush over the place that drew her and with it came a deferential awareness.
St. Clair Manor was encapsulated in its own golden age, as if it preferred the gothic influences of the Georgian era.
Amelie shifted on the seat. A manor couldn’t prefer anything. It wasn’t alive, after all.
She was holding her breath and let it out slowly. Now the dark windows of the manor seemed to be eyes focused on her, hundreds of them, witnessing her arrival.
Stop giving yourself the creeps, Amelie.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
http://new.inlinkz.com/luscript.php?id=278822&nojump=1&key=ILMRU9IbWOJY