BLURB:
Seduction comes in many
forms.
"Liquid fire poured into me, filling me with the intimate sense of him as he leaned in to claim my lips with his own. I reached for him, needing him closer, but my arms couldn't close the distance between us, which grew wider with each hitched breath. So close to finally feeling something real, something carnal and deep, I cried out in frustration, dropping my hands as he disappeared. My cries deepened into a frenzy of panic and my eyes flew open. I clutched my blanket and stilled myself to calm my racing heart.
Just a dream. Always just a dream."
Rose Wintersong didn't have an ordinary upbringing. Raised in what most would call a hippy commune, but what is actually a powerful coven of witches, she never questions the life fate chose for her.
Until she meets Derek O'Conner.
Derek challenges everything Rose believes and forces her to see the secrets hidden beneath the whitewashed walls of her idyllic country life.
Rose knows she should walk away, that the sexy martial arts instructor is bad news bred to create discord in her tight community… but the animal magnetism between them is impossible to fight.
Caught between the passion of first love, and the steady beat of the life she's always known, Rose must choose between the innocence of her youth or the pleasures of womanhood—but lost innocence comes at a price, and Rose harbors a dark secret that could destroy everyone she loves—including Derek.
Submit to the Seduced Saga as Derek and Rose face their future while unraveling the mysteries of their past.
Look for these books in 2013.
January -Seduced by Innocence
February -Seduced by Power
TBA-Seduced by Pleasure
TBA-Seduced by Pain
TBA-Seduced by Love(less)
"Liquid fire poured into me, filling me with the intimate sense of him as he leaned in to claim my lips with his own. I reached for him, needing him closer, but my arms couldn't close the distance between us, which grew wider with each hitched breath. So close to finally feeling something real, something carnal and deep, I cried out in frustration, dropping my hands as he disappeared. My cries deepened into a frenzy of panic and my eyes flew open. I clutched my blanket and stilled myself to calm my racing heart.
Just a dream. Always just a dream."
Rose Wintersong didn't have an ordinary upbringing. Raised in what most would call a hippy commune, but what is actually a powerful coven of witches, she never questions the life fate chose for her.
Until she meets Derek O'Conner.
Derek challenges everything Rose believes and forces her to see the secrets hidden beneath the whitewashed walls of her idyllic country life.
Rose knows she should walk away, that the sexy martial arts instructor is bad news bred to create discord in her tight community… but the animal magnetism between them is impossible to fight.
Caught between the passion of first love, and the steady beat of the life she's always known, Rose must choose between the innocence of her youth or the pleasures of womanhood—but lost innocence comes at a price, and Rose harbors a dark secret that could destroy everyone she loves—including Derek.
Submit to the Seduced Saga as Derek and Rose face their future while unraveling the mysteries of their past.
Look for these books in 2013.
January -Seduced by Innocence
February -Seduced by Power
TBA-Seduced by Pleasure
TBA-Seduced by Pain
TBA-Seduced by Love(less)
BIO:
Kimberly Kinrade was born with ink in her veins and magic in
her heart. She writes fantasy and paranormal stories for all ages and still
believes in magic worlds. Check out her YA paranormal series The Forbidden
Trilogy, her lower grade fantasy series The Three Lost Kids, and watch for her
New Adult romance and fantasy books coming in 2013 including The Seduced Saga,
Sunrise and Nightfall, Death by Destiny and The Fallen Trilogy and her next YA
fantasy adventure, The Reluctant Familiar. You can find her books on Amazon,
B&N and Goodreads among other fine retailers.
When she's not writing, she runs Daring Books Design &
Marketing with her husband, Dmytry Karpov, where they help authors with all
manner of marketing, editing, and design needs until such a time that their
brilliant children take over the business for them.
She lives with her three little girls who think they're
ninja princesses with super powers, her two cats who think they're gods (and
probably are), her two dogs who think they're humans and her husband, also
known as the sexy Russian Prince, who is the love of her life and writing
partner.
ONLINE LINKS:
Website
http://KimberlyKinrade.com Twitter: @KimberlyKinrade
Facebook: /KimberlyKinrade
Amazon: http://Amazon.com/author/kimberlykinrade
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4687115.Kimberly_Kinrade
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Amazon paper book
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Amazon Kindle copy
Seduced by Innocence
by Kimberly
Kinrade
Chapter 1
Liquid fire poured into me, filling me with the intimate sense of him as he leaned
in to claim my lips with his own. I reached for him, needing him closer,
needing to feel his flesh against mine, but my arms couldn't close the distance
between us, which grew wider with each hitched breath. So close to finally
feeling something real, something carnal and deep, I cried out in frustration,
dropping my hands as he disappeared. My cries deepened into a frenzy of panic
and my eyes flew open. I clutched my blanket and stilled myself to calm my
racing heart.
Just a dream.
Always just a dream. It could never
be more than that. Not with my dream man, not with any man. Knowing this did
nothing to dampen the disappointment that weighed heavy on me each time I
entered that one moment where dreams and reality co-existed and I forgot who I
really was and what would happen if I ever experienced that level of surrender.
But fear replaced my self-absorption when the alarms penetrated my foggy mind.
Outside my cottage, footsteps raced through the cold night, crunching on newly
fallen snow. Through my frosted window, flashlights wavered back and forth,
looking for something, or someone. It's happening again!
The floor under my bare
feet felt like ice as I slipped out of bed and fumbled in the dark for my
clothes. Sandy, my loyal Alaskan Husky, whined when I moved to leave the
cottage without her. I ran a hand through her thick white fur. "You want
to come? I have to go make sure all of the kennel dogs are taken care of."
The alarm shut off, leaving
us both in a stunned silence that filled the room. Sandy licked my hand and
stood by the door waiting as I pulled on my boots and coat and braced myself
for the cold. I rummaged through the basket next to my door, looking for my
warmest gloves. At least in the winter I had a ready excuse for covering my
hands.
Outside, the black pitch of
night greeted me. No one had turned on the flood lights yet, which made me
wonder if they'd been damaged. Flashlight in hand, dog by my side, I headed to
the main house on our coven’s 50-acre property as I sent my magic ahead of me
to sift through the energy from the attack.
Before I could get more
than a few steps, Blake ran up to me and laid his hand on my arm as he fought
to catch his breath. He ignored Sandy’s low growl as he pushed me toward the
door. "You should go back in. They've broken onto the property again and
slashed the tires of three vehicles and left a deer carcass as a gift."
My heart thumped with extra
force at the news. "That's horrible. Whose cars?"
"The property truck,
Darren's car and Lauren's." His jaw hardened and he narrowed his dark
eyes, squeezing my arm tighter in his anger. "Bastards will cost us
hundreds in new tires. They even smashed out the windows. We've got to strike
back. Teach them a lesson."
Using my gloved hand, I
eased his fingers off of me. He flinched at the touch, despite the layers of
protection. Good thing I had a thick skin, sort of. I kept my voice calm, even
through my own rage. "That's not a decision you can make on your own. We’ll
all talk about it when we meet tomorrow morning."
He waved his flashlight
over his watch and smirked. "More like a few hours. It's 2 a.m. The
meeting’s in two hours."
"Then I'd better check
on the dogs and try to get a bit more rest." I stepped around him to
continue walking, but he blocked me with his large frame made of the kind of
muscle you get, not from the gym, but from manual labor day in and out. He
smelled of pine needles and snow, a scent that would have been appealing on
anyone else but him.
"Rainbow wants
everyone inside except the security team. The dogs are fine," he said.
I’d thought about it a lot,
what it was about Blake that revolted me so much. Easy on the eyes, dedicated
to our coven, though lacking magic of his own, he would have been a safe
choice, if I’d had any choice at all. He’d even indicated an interest on more
than one occasion. But his touch made my skin crawl, even through clothing. I
shifted away from him. "What about my sister? She must be scared."
"She's fifteen, Rose,
not a little girl anymore. She's not as helpless as you think. Just go back
inside. We'll handle this." He smiled to soften the command in his voice,
and I sighed and walked back into the cottage.
I’m not a
little girl anymore, either, I
thought with a touch of bitterness. Guess no one got the memo.
Not for the first time I
wished for a lock on my house, but none of us had locks, despite the recent
string of break-ins. I shed my winter gear and gloves and toweled off the snow
from Sandy’s paws. Knowing I'd never get back to sleep, and frustrated that I'd
been dismissed by Blake like some kid, despite the fact that I was nineteen and
he was only twenty-one, I searched my one-room dwelling for something to occupy
my time until our daily pre-dawn meeting.
My favorite romance novel
sat on the dresser next to my bed and I reached for it, grateful that I could
at least breathe in vicarious passion through the lives of others, if not my
own. My hands stilled on the book as shivers of energy traveled through my
body, connecting me to the earth, to my coven and to my family. Mother’s voice
called out to me through one of those lines. “Rose. Help! Hurry!”
We almost never
communicated telepathically. The drain on energy and resources was just too
much, and, with the modern convenience of cell phones, unnecessary. Besides
that, most members of our coven didn't have enough power to do it. Heart racing
in my chest, I ran out the door and through the dark with Sandy at my heels,
straight to the lower level of the main house where Mother lived. The air
crackled with fear and desperation and the ramped up emotion of it all forced
my gut into uncomfortable knots.
As leader of the coven, my
mother commanded the most power and respect. She’d never reached out to me for
help before, which made this all the more alarming. I forced my legs to pump
faster, Sandy running at my side, as I navigated through the icy paths masked
with shadows of the night.
There should have been
others out with flashlights, checking the property, but I didn’t see or feel
anyone. Perhaps the mental cries of Mother drowned out everyone else, I
couldn’t be sure.
When we reached her door, I
hesitated. Mother didn’t like people barging in on her. While everyone else in
the coven had a default open door policy—meaning literally anyone else here
could walk into your house without knocking
Mother was immune from
that. To some extent, so was I, but only because my coven feared an accidental
touch. Only in my own home could I go gloveless, which is also why I got to
live alone while others were forced to share housing.
Sandy whined and clawed at
the door, jarring me out of my thoughts. Inside, something clattered to the
ground and Mother screamed. I pushed the door open and tried to mentally ready
myself.
But nothing could have
prepared me for what I found.
***
A giant brown wolf stood
before Mother, baring his teeth with a low, throaty growl that sent shivers of
fear up my spine. Mother cowered in the corner of her couch, eyes like saucers
as she backed away from the wolf with her hands in defense position. She made
eye contact with me as I walked in. “Help! Rose, help! He attacked me.”
Sandy growled and the pups
in the kennel barked and yipped. Feeling utterly useless, I shouted at the
wolf. “Get away from her!”
It turned its head to me,
large golden eyes glowing in the dim light. For a moment I felt a connection to
the beast, as if he was trying to tell me something, but the moment shattered
when Mother shrieked at me. “Do something, Rose.”
What did she want me to do?
I didn’t know self-defense, no one would let me study it. I had no weapons…
other than myself. Mother, who—even cornered by this magnificent beast—looked
in control and poised, with her midnight black hair in an up-do and her face
made up with flawless makeup, glanced down meaningfully at my hands.
This couldn’t be. She
couldn’t possibly want me to use my power on the wolf. It didn’t even work on
animals.
But this wolf, he felt more
than animal. He was three times the size of even a large wolf, and at any rate
what was a wolf doing in this area in the first place? Something tickled at the
back of my mind. Something I should have known but had forgotten. It hovered on
the edge of my memory, teasing me with knowledge just out of reach.
The wolf howled, his head
high in the air, and responding howls coming from the woods outside echoed
through the cold night.
Then it all clicked and I
took a step back in reflexive anxiety. So it was true. All the stories and
rumors. The O’Conner clan really could shapeshift… and they were here, on my
land, attacking my family.
For months they’d been
terrorizing our coven, trying to drive us out of our rural home in Washington.
We refused to be bullied by the wealthy shamans who commanded the public favor
in the local, and even international, spiritual communities.
We didn’t have the money to
fight them legally.
We didn’t have the power to
fight them magically.
And we had no idea what
they wanted from us.
But they’d attacked
relentlessly. Sabotaging our cars, destroying our property, leaving dead
animals for us to find. Now, they’d sent someone to hurt Mother. Maybe kill
her. Anger boiled inside of me, reaching through me and around me, and I could
feel the steel traps around my power uncoiling as I took measured steps toward
the wolf.
Reason left me. Fear
abandoned me. Only rage sustained me as I reached out with bare hand to touch
the flesh beneath the thick fur of the wolf.
With a final push, it
flooded out of me. My darkest secret. My cross to bear. It pooled into my hand,
turning it into the worst kind of weapon. My flesh turned to a fire only I
could withstand, and the wolf howled in agony as his mind or soul, or whatever
part of him made him ‘him’, turned to ash and left him forever.
I collapsed to the ground,
vision blurred, body cold, hardwood floor beneath me shifting and dipping.
Blackness pressed in on me, but before it could claim me entirely I saw the
wolf shift back to human. A naked young man, no older than myself, lay in a
heap of skin, muscle and bone, staring vacantly at me, eyes glazed over with a
white haze that indicated he’d never be himself again.
His body still lived, but
I’d essentially killed him.
A new kind of darkness
squeezed my heart as I faded into nothing.
Please Stay tuned and be on the look out for my review here on my blog and also on Amazon with in the next few days!
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