It's Teaser Tuesday, yo! Before I tantalize you with some tidbits from Your Echo, can we all just take a minute to appreciate this gorgeousness made by the amazing The Reading Cat?!
Cat has been a lifesaver for me during the writing of the Sherbrooke Station series. She's a Montreal native, and she always has my back when my Montreal knowledge/French language skills fail me. She's also basically just the best in every way, and she makes incredible graphics too!
For Teaser Tuesday, I've got a few passages from Your Echo to get you pumped up to meet Ace and Stéphanie, and if you already have, well, take the opportunity to relive some of their highlights.
Here's some ~sexiness~ from Ace to start things off:
Not that I lost interest in sex completely. I stopped acting on it, but that craving to have a soft body arching under mine never totally went away. I run my fingers up the frets again, imagining a dim room and someone’s hot breath in my ear as my thighs flex between splayed legs and my teeth clamp down on a pale shoulder. I like leaving bruises. I like hearing those little gasps that are caught between pleasure and pain.
And blondes. I really fucking love blondes.
I wonder what Stéphanie would be like in bed. Would she fight back? Would she thrash on the mattress as I pinned her hands above her head? Bite down on my lip when I kissed her and leave me with bruises of my own?
She looked way too much like sunshine to not be capable of an eclipse.
*Fans self* Moving along! To say Stéphanie and Ace's relationship has a rocky start is a bit of an understatement. Writing their initial banter scenes was definitely very fun for me, and I loved seeing those sparks fly even when they were annoyed with one another. Here's an example:
Standing face to face like this, I realize he’s only got about two inches on me in height. I square my shoulders and decide to just deal with this splinter, right here, right now.
“Are you bullshitting me?” I demand.
He raises an eyebrow in answer.
“I need to know right now if you’re fucking with me, and if you are, you can leave. I have a lot of respect for these people and this place, and”—I pause to swallow—“and it means a lot to me. So if you came here for a laugh or to get your dick wet, you can walk out the front door right now and not come back.”
He raises his hands in surrender. “And here I thought this was a place of welcome and—”
“Ace,” I snap, the sound of his name turning my voice into a hiss.
Something in the air tightens, contracts—like the single syllable is a chord that’s just been strummed, the sound waves reverberating between both our bodies, echoing over and over against our chests. I realize right then that there’s an inevitable intimacy to calling someone by their name for the first time.
“I’m not fucking with you,” he says slowly, his voice lowering an octave and lingering on the word ‘fuck’ just long enough for me to question if he did it on purpose or not. “I didn’t come here to mess around with anyone. I genuinely wanted to hear this presentation."
Feeling thoroughly teased? You can get your hands on a copy of the novel here.
