Sunday, June 29, 2014

A "Because It's Ass O'Clock In the Morning and I'm Still Up" Q&A

1. Truth or dare…and why?

Depends solely on who is issuing the question, mostly because I'm a cautious risk-taker. When it comes to offering embarrassing insight or risking humiliation, it'd depend on how much I trusted that person (or didn't.) The better question is would I even play Truth or Dare.

2. Do you believe in ghosts/supernatural things?

I believe that it would be supremely arrogant for us as a species to claim we know - definitively - one way or the other. I opt for, "It's possible." That said, I have a keen sixth sense and pick up emotional cues in different settings. Case in point, I went to a tourist spot near my hometown of Abilene called Buffalo Gap Historic Village and I definitely felt an overwhelming sense of impending doom as I was walking upstairs from the old courthouse to the second floor where prisoners were kept. Later came to find there was a trap door above the stairwell for the noose when they hung people. Do with that what you will.

3. Who is on your list…you know…the list…the one you get a free pass for?

I have a weakness for soulful eyes, a well-timed smirk and a wise-ass personality. On the top of this often revolving list:



But let's keep that between us, shall we?

4. What’s your favorite sound…and why?

The sound of a baby laughing. There's no sound sweeter.



5. Dogs or cats…and why?

Both!



6. What would you get arrested for…if you were to get arrested for something?

I think it's a safe bet that any arrest would be politically motivated, like a protest or civil disobedience.



7. Cake or pie?

Both!

8. What is your ideal weekend?

It probably involves cake, pie and any or all of the laminated list. Or a trip to Vegas. I'm flexible.

9.Favorite book and why?

The Blessing Stone by Barbara Wood, because it's very empowering to see the kinds of challenges women have overcome throughout history. Dense read, but like Clan of the Cave Bear, quite worth it.

10.Favorite comfort food and why?

Look at me. Like I can choose.

11.Android or Apple?

I have an iPhone, but my endorsement can be bought. *cough*hint hint*cough*

12.What kind of music do you listen to? Why do you like it?

I love most forms of music, really. My playlist is split between classic rock and disco and dance and pop and country and comedy. Music is my muse.

Currently playing on my headphones:



13.What color best describes you? Why do you think that?

Purple, because not everyone likes it, but it's too regal to give a shit.

14.Favorite T.V. show ever? Why?

Moonlighting, because Bruce Effin Willis, that's why.



15.One place you want to travel to before you die?

One? I can name a dozen. But we'll start with Scotland/Ireland, because I've traced my lineage back to the 1100s there, and it'd be super cool to see the land of my ancestors.

Thursday, June 26, 2014

#TBT The Great Vampire Adventure of '85 (Thank you, Stephen King)

By the summer of 1985, I had a few notable obsessions. I was head over heels for Steve Perry of Journey...



I read every Bloom County comic strip I could to satisfy my endless Penguin Lust...



And I grew up reading a steady diet of Stephen King. This part you probably already knew.

But what you may NOT know is that when I was 15, I had a very brief run-in with vampires, courtesy of Stephen King's book SALEM'S LOT.

It was a typical West Texas summer. The days were long and generally hot and humid. I lived indoors by a fan (or my AC.) This really wasn't that different from any other season, as I've always been a bit of a homebody. I was an avid reader, inhaling books by the stack, and I had discovered Stephen King thanks to the movie CHRISTINE just the year before. I didn't get to finish the movie so I read the book, which ended up being one of my favorite SK books of all time. I loved the conversational tone of it, which featured multiple POVs. I loved the time frame of the late 70s when it was set. I loved the lead character, Dennis, who was a cool kid made even cooler by the fact he had a nerdy, outcast of a best friend.

I loved it so much, I became an immediate SK devotee. And as a new devotee, I had to read every single title I could get my greedy little paws on. The white-cover romance novels on my shelves were replaced by thick horror novels that I would inhale word for word. And going from romance to horror wasn't as much of a left-turn as you might think. I'm all about story, so I loved the human drama of these stories. (CARRIE was the outcast, coming to terms with being different. CHRISTINE was about friendship, and how far one would go to save their pal. PET SEMETARY was about love and loss and letting go.) Stephen King is a master storyteller and I knew I was in good hands.

I trusted him so much that I bought SALEM'S LOT and fully intended to read it all within that brutal summer. This was not an easy decision for me, especially after I freaked out watching the tepid TV movie. See, I'm not a fan of vampires. In fact, they scare me more than zombies, werewolves, ghosts and demons COMBINED. The reason is simple. Vampires are seductive. You WANT to get close to them even when you know it would spell your doom. They are alluring. Charming. Often handsome/beautiful. They are mysterious and compelling and they offer the promise of immortality. What could be more seductive than that?

Even the way they kill you has sexual overtones. They seduce you into an embrace so that they can penetrate you with their sharp fangs, sucking the life right out of you.

Being raised in a strict Southern Baptist household made this equally alluring and forbidden.

So it would be fair to say that I was freaked out by the book before I even cracked the cover.

Worse, I made it a habit to read right as I was going to bed at night. And, it being summer, I went to bed later than my mom. So if I was alone and scared and thinking too much about vampires, I only had my cat, Fluffy, to keep me company.



I'll be honest, it took me a while to get into the story. I was reluctant to read it, and it didn't make it any easier for me that the book read drier than the previous ones that I had enjoyed. But I stuck with it like a trooper, because that's what you do as a fan. You read every single book, you know every single story and you catch every single aside SK threw at you through his various works, referencing things only true fans would catch. (Which is what gave me the idea to do it for my books.)

Within about a week, I was invested... if you can call wearing a cross around your neck and sprinkling garlic salt on your windows "invested."

I'm not ashamed to admit that I was freaked the hell out. But I wouldn't quit reading. The gauntlet had been thrown and I was determined to live up to the challenge.

So this particular night, I read my requisite chapters late into the night. It was hot, but I had that window shut and locked up tight. I was using an overhead light, which was my first mistake. The switch for said light was wayyyyy across the room. With the light on, this distance was maybe about five or six feet. The minute you flipped that light off, however, it was a good mile, mile and a half.



I had made the mistake of moving my bed from the wall nearest the switch to the far wall right next to the windows.

This would be my second error of judgment.

Finally I mustered the courage to make that long, lonely trek across my pink shag carpeting to turn out the light. I don't even think it was fully dark by the time I took that running leap and dove under my heavy comforter. Sure it was heavier than one would need on a 80-degree night, but I felt fairly confident that it was the only bedding I had that was fang-proof. I covered myself head to toe, with just a little gap facing the fan so I could breathe.

(I still sleep this way, using a fortress of pillows now to cover my neck. Thank you EVER so much, SK.)

It took a few minutes, but I finally started to calm down. I could breathe easier, my heart rate returned to normal. Everything was fine.

Until...



Within minutes of my safe return to the bed, I heard a loud THUNK against my bedroom window. At that point I bolted upright in bed, a scream locked in my throat, certain that a horde of vampires had finally pinpointed my location. I was certain that if I turned toward the window, I'd see the white face of the undead staring at me, beckoning me to open the window and leap into that eternal abyss.

Worse, I was afraid I'd willingly do so.



Needless to say,I didn't look. Not no, but HELL NAH. There wasn't any way in this world or any other, in this life or any other, that I would turn my head toward that window. Nuh uh. No way. Ain't happenin'.

At least until I heard this pitiful meow coming from the outside.

What I had forgotten up until that point was that my cat, the aforementioned Fluffy, used my (normally open) bedroom window to get in and out of the house. Sadly, for the both of us, I had forgotten this little factoid once I started making my bedroom vampire-proof.

I let Fluffy in (quickly) and finished the rest of the book without incident.

Stephen King is a fucker, s'all I'm sayin'.

I honesty never intended to write a book about vampires because they scare me so, but thanks to a late night conversation with my best friend, who suggested we were vampires in a past life because we seem to come to life between midnight and dawn, it sparked the idea that inspired MY IMMORTAL WHICH I wrote overnight, every night, for a month solid in 2004.

This time, however, I made sure all my cats were INDOORS before locking the windows. Somehow I still freaked myself out. I guess I'm a fucker, too. I mean, I guess I'd have to be, I've returned to the bloodsucking genre twice more after that, once, to convert my Gothic romance into an urban thriller for a movie script, and once for a dark sojourn into erotic horror.

If you like vampires, or horror, or being scared, pick up MY IMMORTAL, TASTE OF BLOOD, or RAVEN WALKS... if you dare.

*Crosses, garlic, cats and comforters not included.

Thursday, June 19, 2014

#TBT The Barbie Years (And your #FridayFreebie preview)

In 1977 I got my first Barbie as a birthday gift.



It was one of two notable gifts, the other was my very own vinyl record.



This was my launchpad into storytelling in two very significant ways. First, it was the precursor to my radio years. Until 1979, I was using my sister's cast-off record player to play her old cast-off records.



For the first time I had something that belonged specifically to me. Granted it was Debby Boone, which I would later abandon for ABBA...



...but it should be clear by now that my life has been filled with interesting detours like that.

I spent the next few months pretending that my Superstar Barbie was performing her songs for sold-out crowds. I took over the big cabinet stereo in the living room, using those funky old 70s lamps as a spotlight, singing every note along with her, vicariously sharing the fame and the glory.

But she was a lonely superstar. This world, unlike my Fisher Price Little People universe, was unpopulated. In November of 1978, I got Ballerina Barbie...



And by Christmas a month later, when I was given yet another Barbie, some Barbie furniture and a radio, I was a girl ready to explore the possibilities.



Not because I wanted to tell stories necessarily. This was simply wonderful, glorious playtime. As a somewhat only child (several half-siblings, all of whom were adults by the time I was seven,) I learned early on to entertain myself. I read, of course, and I overdosed on cheesy TV. I was known to spend a Saturday or two pretending to be Jimmy's unscripted sister as he traipsed happily through Living Island....



... or slide onto my sofa just like I was hopping into the General Lee, as a yet-to-be-introduced Hazzard cousin.



I spun like Wonder Woman and ended each and every episode of The Incredible Hulk walking off into the distance, alone and forlorn.



All these stories excited me so much I wanted to take it a step further than what I was given. I loved the wonder of "What if." And I was known to explore this no matter what ended up in my hands. (Up to and including markers, but we'll talk about that later.)

Unlike my Little People collection, my Barbies were predominantly female until about 1980, when I got my first Ken.



I guess my mom thought it was inappropriate for me to play with a man doll. She probably feared girls that played with boy dolls ended up to be girls who wanted to play with men. And she might have been onto something, because I remember with great detail the very first day I had my Ken doll, when he and my Superstar Barbie shared their very first kiss.



My Barbie World really began around 1981. After my dad's death, we ended up moving into a house with a divorcee and her two kids. One of which, the boy, left behind his 12-inch Superman "action figure" (read: doll) He was a lot more agile, given his legs, joints, hands and feet all moved. By the time I took possession of the discarded toy, he was already missing a hand. It made no difference to me, he was yet another male in the plastic population, which had been pretty scarce up till that point.

That, along with my newest acquisition...



...gave my growing Barbie Universe another couple with tons of stories to tell.

Again, thanks to the heavy influence of General Hospital to my burgeoning creative mind, the stories were quite scandalous. There were affairs and indiscretions galore. I've been an #AngstaGangsta since I was nine. I'll never forget the summer in '81 where my character, photographer Kevin Sherman (Malibu Ken playing a double role), abducted Jenny Gold (Golden Dreams Barbie) and held her captive on an island while she was pregnant with her husband Bobby's child. (One-handed Superman.)

And I had the patience of a saint. The early, drawn-out storytelling of classic soap operas trained me well in drawing out the angst. (This might explain a few things for those who read my books.) Superstar Barbie and Malibu Ken may have locked lips upon their first meeting, but every story after that took its time.

If any of my female characters became pregnant, I took nine months to tell that story. I would use Scotch tape and tissue paper to widen their middles in increments as we all waited for the blessed event.

By the mid-80s, I was living out my fantasies through my dolls. I had a Ginger doll, played by the darker haired, Barbie bestie PJ...



...who married her very own Steve Perry, played by the raven-haired Western Ken.



They got married in November of 1985. It was very romantic. You totally should have been there.

They had an uptown apartment, which was basically the bathroom linen closet. My mom was a saint to indulge all my silliness. But then again, she was a single parent who worked 60-70 hour weeks just to keep me in clothes, food and Barbie paraphernalia, which can be a very expensive hobby. I got the RV...



... but I never got the Barbie Dream House I wanted. Instead, I had to get creative. My pink shelves made for a fine mansion for my rich and fabulous characters.



I would sit beside those shelves forever, lost in my make-believe world, creating stories out of thin air while I watched such 80s classics like Three's Company, Facts of Life, Solid Gold and Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. And ... of course... listening to my trusty FM radio.



(And yes, that is one of the songs that sparks these kinds of memories.)

In fact, one of the ways my bestie and I first bonded was over our shared Barbie toys. He had the plane, which made him just about the coolest person on the planet to me at the time.



We spent the better part of 1980 carting our cargo the three blocks in between our two houses, using everything we could get our hands on to tell exciting new stories. He had Sport n' Shave Ken, which gave me another (long-haired) option for my lonely gals.



My Marie Osmond doll took the brunt of our deliciously demented creativity, plunging to her death on a regular basis from the top of wall that divided my living room and dining room.



He always "got" me. My bestie played right. Steven suggested if we ever did it again, we could turn the Barbies into giant aliens attacking my Little People village.



None of my characters were magical or had any kind of super powers or abilities. When I used Little People figures, it was to make them into children for the Barbies. I wanted it hyper-real, just like my stories now. They were couples and families and singles, struggling to find their way in this world, with love and family and purpose. That was way more fun to me than using my one-handed Superman to fight crime.

And nothing was spared to create this new world for myself. If I couldn't afford the Mattel accessories, I'd simply make my own. Pillows were beds, and my old 1970s Easy Bake Oven equipped my gourmet kitchen.



No closet or cubbyhole was safe. This fantastic world was as infinite as my imagination. Best of all, no matter how crappy my "real life" world was, or how disappointed I was in boys that were not made of plastic (except maybe for their cold, black hearts,) I could go back to this world and create whatever reality I wanted.

Though the most active years of this particular pass time lasted from 1981-1985, the Barbie years lingered until roughly 1986/1987. As I got older and my life took on scandalous elements of its own, I would play with these dolls less and less. (Turns out I *did* want to play with real men more than plastic ones.) But it was always my soft place to fall when Real Life became too intense. That's what art is to me. It's the ability to take the bad things in life and make it interesting and bearable. It also opened my perspective by living through all sorts of characters. I lived through all characters, good and bad, so it gave me the opportunity to understand why people do what they do, especially when they fuck up.

There is no ground more fertile than that.

This is why I have no problem plumbing the depths of darker, grittier material. And that is why I'll tell anyone who needs a warning to read a book to steer clear of mine. I don't know where these characters are going to take me, and I like it that way.

These characters, no matter what form they come in, come first to teach me something. All I can do is honor their stories, humbled that they chose me as their vessel to tell them.

In the case of the FULLERTON FAMILY SAGA, it was a responsibility that I took very seriously. This tragic family drama is both my most beloved, and my most hated, trilogy. For those who have read it, you already know the story. Rachel Dennehy and Drew and Alex Fullerton were cathartic characters I got to maneuver when I was going through one of the toughest periods of my life. I had just lost my newborn son and we discovered my husband at the time was bipolar. This angsty tale is full of heartache I wasn't able to fully articulate in any other way back then, and really didn't figure it out until after I rewrote the story last year. Needless to say it broke the heart of more than one reader, including me.
"If I could hunt down Ms. Ginger Voight I would hug her, beat her with my pitchfork, then cry on her shoulder. I can't remember the last time a book has affected me like this, so I guess no matter how I feel about how it all went down at the end, there is no denying Ginger Voight is an amazing author for bringing such strong emotions out of me through her pen alone." - Bookworm Betties Reviewer Jenn Green, who gave Enraptured, the final book in the trilogy, "5- Heartsick, Broken and Pi$$ed off -Stars"

If you're brave enough to wade into these waters, pick up your free copy of ENTICED, book 1 of the trilogy, at Amazon, B&N, iTunes, Kobo or Smashwords.



Thursday, June 12, 2014

#TBT: The Summer of '79

In 1979, we had moved (again) to a new neighborhood where I knew not a soul. I spent most of that summer, holed up in my room, enjoying a life-changing Christmas gift, my Bert & Ernie radio.



That was the summer I discovered my own music. It sounded nothing like the Hee-Haw 1970s Country/Western stuff my parents listened to. It was there I got introduced to Rod The Bod:



It was where I started to sing about Bad Girls...



I also learned how to rock...



I found Blondie...



And of course... it was where I first heard and loved Journey.



Every Saturday after cartoons were over...





And I had my fill of Sid and Marty Krofft...



And, of course, American Bandstand...



I would retire to my pink paradise of a bedroom, turn up America's Top 40 and lose myself with my toys. Over the course of my childhood, I had collected a few favorites. One was my Fisher-Price Little People house...



Along with the Fisher-Price Little People village...



And my McDonalds playset...



With these toys, I could create an entire world. And it was kinda the best thing ever.

Now, whether it was the fact that I was regularly watching General Hospital by 1979...



Or the sexy new rock-n-roll (devil's music) I was indulging, or the fact that I had been exposed to things well beyond my young years by the grand ol' age of nine, I had no real interest in telling fairy tales.

(Still don't.)

The stories that compelled me were the ones that colored outside the lines of my 1970s, conservative, religious, southern background. Instead... I wanted to mix things up a bit.

This girl....



...decided to tell stories that involved interracial relationships, teen runaways and *gasp* living in sin.

If you are familiar with my writing, this will come as NO surprise. If you're new to my writing, this serves as a broad warning of what you're in for.

During the summer of 1979, my pig-tailed redheaded LP ran away from her nice, Suburban home and family to live with her African-American boyfriend in the city. In telling this story, I sympathized with that teen character. She fell in love and wanted to live a life of her own, free from the shackles of her conservative family.

That, in a nutshell, is what THIS redheaded, pigtailed girl grew up to do.

This is how I look at the world. Even back then, I didn't care that the Willis' were a mixed-race couple. I didn't bat an eye when Jodie dated men on Soap.

To me, it wasn't odd or icky, it was just different.

And I find different fascinating.

In fact, the more people want to throw shade at things that are different, the more I want to play around with the "why." Why do we, as a society, decide that our expectations of how others should live supersede the happiness of an individual who is living exactly the way they want? It's the fence around anyone who dares to march to the beat of their own drum, and even at 9, I knew that was the kind of person I wanted to be.

So I've been rattling cages for a LONG, LONG time.

Nothing has thrilled me more in my life than fucking with expectations. If it is forbidden, for no other reason than a group of people has decided that it should be (i.e., it harms no one, just makes people who are different uncomfortable), then I want to splash around in those waters. And I kinda really don't care who I get wet in the process.

When talking with my BFF earlier this week, talking about these early stories that were there WAY before I even knew I had any kind of affinity to write them down, I immediately wanted to share this on the blog. The most common question I'm asked as an author is, "When did you decide to become a writer?"

The truth of the matter is I made no such decision. I was born a storyteller (and hell-raiser) and simply learned the skills that would best serve that inner calling.

Thanks to all of YOU I am privileged to do this for a living, which is mind-BOGGLING and quite humbling. That girl is a lot older now, and her entire existence is playing with mental toys to create fictional worlds that hopefully - if I'm doing my job right - will help people who are different have a voice, and people who are new to different learn that these things aren't really all that different after all.

Every story has the capacity to be beautiful. And everyone gets to define their happily ever after. These are the only rules I follow.

Thanks to all of you, I can spread this message on a much grander scale that I could have ever imagined way back in 1979.

In honor of this musical #TBT, your featured freebie for the week is GROUPIE, which Maryse, of Maryse's Book Blog, called a "FANTASTIC frenzy inducer!!!!!"



Pick up your copy of GROUPIE, the first book of my first published trilogy, on Amazon, B&N, iTunes, Kobo, or Smashwords.

See you next week, when we'll talk a bit about my scandalous Barbies. ;)

Thursday, June 5, 2014

June Newsletter, featuring new releases and big sales!

Happy June, everyone! Summer is almost here, which means longer, hopefully lazy days filled with sunshine and lots and lots of books. If you've been waiting (patiently) for some new books from me, I have some exciting news! I finally have a release date for the first book in my next series, the Wyndryder Saga. Like the Fullerton Family Saga, it will be released in its entirety by the end of the year, with only a couple of months of waiting time in between each one.

And like the Fullerton Family Saga, I'm revisiting previous work I did as a much younger writer. I told this particular story in my very first completed novel way back in 1989/1990, so needless to say it's been a lot of fun to see what new things these old characters have to teach me. I've waited a long time to be "good enough" to tell their story, and they've all aged like a fine wine as they waited.

The first book in the new series is called CHASING THUNDER, so named in honor of my long-standing love for Steve Perry. I've always believed "Still They Ride" to be one of his finest vocal performances, and the song helped set the "biker" mood for the story. Since I knew I already wanted to use elements of weather to title the books in this series, it just fell into place.



***CHASING THUNDER***

"Along the gritty, crowded, noisy streets of Hollywood, there was an unexpected sound of hope for all the lost children scattered there. It was the sound of a roaring lion, the dramatic rumble of an approaching storm..."

In 2001, MJ Bennett's life was changed forever when she saw her beloved grandfather, the last of the Wyndryder MC, killed in cold blood. He left her when she was only 16 years old, but he had already trained her for a life following his footsteps, saving those too vulnerable to save themselves from the harsh L.A. streets. It was a dangerous and lonely life, one that she knew could never accommodate another person.

This was fine by MJ, who was much too scarred to let anyone close. His calling ultimately became her shield.

Ten years into her mission, this mercenary crosses paths with a runaway who needs to be kept close to be kept safe. MJ suspects this girl holds the missing clue to find the Hard Candy Killer, a suspect hell-bent on exterminating underage prostitutes in the cruelest ways possible. Since MJ is tasked with doing anything to save one more kid, one more life, one more girl, she is forced to turn to others to overcome her scariest adversary yet...

Herself.

Crusty old bikers, reluctant outlaws and lawmen join her fight, often against her will. And one by one, these old friends and new fill the missing pieces of the Wyndryder MC as it resurrects from the ashes to battle evil once more... for love, for family, and for justice.

"Chasing Thunder" is the first book in a thrilling new series by author Ginger Voight. Like her best-selling Fullerton Family Saga, the Wyndryder saga will bring readers back to the exciting backdrop in L.A., only this time she exposes the dark underbelly of teen homelessness, sex trafficking and outlaw justice.


***

As you can probably tell, this won't be a "Bad Boy Biker Saves Damsel in Distress" book. MJ Bennett is way more Michonne/Black Widow, prowling the streets of Hollywood on her OWN bike as she risks it all for what is right. But she's also terribly wounded and angry and even scared when it comes to matters of the heart. In many ways, she will be her own worst antagonist throughout the story.

Suffice it to say, it won't be an easy read. There will be sex and violence and ugly human behavior. Basically if you need a warning to read a book, this won't be the book for you. I'm digging in some wounds and leaving blood on the page. (As usual.)

I know what you're thinking. We have a badass biker chick, but are there bad boy bikers in this book?

Only the strongest of men can love a strong woman. And MJ is loved, whether she likes it or not. Meet "Snake."

***EXCERPT***

MJ Bennett was as mad as a wet hornet when they finally pulled to a stop in the high desert of San Bernadino County. She flew off the bike and turned on Snake in a rage. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” she shouted.

“I was coming to your rescue,” he explained casually as he dismounted. “White knight,” he said, pointing to himself. “Noble steed,” he added, pointing to the bike.

“When did I ever ask you to save me?” she demanded.

“Darlin’, you were pole-dancing in a seedy strip club. That's not a cry for help. That's a blood-curdling scream.”

“I had it all under control,” she informed him coldly and he held up a hand.

“Oh, I could tell,” he replied. “Only the best dancers get dragged off to a back room somewhere.”

She didn’t have time for this. She pulled out her phone. Snake was quick to grab it. “Gonna call your new partner in crime?” he asked as he held her phone out of reach. “Or should I say new partner fighting crime? Since when do you work with cops, MJ?”

“Since never!” she hissed as she jumped for the phone. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Please,” he scoffed. “’Bob’ from Scottsdale? Give me a fucking break. I nearly had to tie him down when that guy grabbed you. So who is he, MJ?” Snake demanded softly, his eyes angry and hurt.

“Are you serious?” she exclaimed. “That’s what this is about? You’re jealous?”

“Fuck you,” he said in a cold voice.

They had a brief staredown before she backed off. He was a bastard for forcing her hand like this. Time was of the essence now. She still had one very important thing to do and had to depend on a wiseass cop to do it. She'd cave a little, and make him pay later. “Fine. He’s a cop. But I only used him to get inside the building. I had the whole thing planned before he got there. I used him as a convenient tool, emphasis on tool, to execute the plan. Can I have my phone back now?”

The phone rang as he held it in his hands. He turned down the volume and then tossed it out of view in the darkened shadows around the bike.

“I can’t believe you did that,” she said as she started to round the bike, but he grabbed her by both arms. “You have no idea what you’ve done.”

“I know one thing I couldn’t have done,” he said. “I couldn’t have gone one more night without doing anything.”

She saw the holster inside his jacket. Her eyes widened. “Snake, no.” She tried to wrench away, but he pulled her back against his solid chest. He cupped her face in one hand, drawing her closer.

“Like I ever had a choice. Can’t you see what you do to me, MJ?”

Her eyes met his. “Can’t you see that if you ever got hurt…,” she couldn’t even finish the thought. She looked away so he tipped her chin with his thumb.

“Hurt?” he repeated. “I never know if you’re okay or if you need help. If you’re alive and well or dead somewhere in a ditch after pissing off the wrong person. You get hurt, you don’t tell me. You’re in danger, you take off and say nothing. It’s like having you and losing you all at the same time. And I never know which is which until you show up on my front door. You don’t think that hurts?”

She swallowed hard. She needed him every bit as much as she needed to protect him. She had been weak because she missed those big strong arms holding her together, and the familiar scruff of his beard against her face that made her feel at home no matter where they happened to be. When she felt unsure, she knew she could draw from his endless well of strength.

It was unfair, but he had never sent her away for good.

Maybe if he had they would both be better off.

But it was the last thing she wanted as he lifted her up against him. With a groan he carried her back to the bike. He sat astride while she straddled his hips.

His hands slipped into the open shirt she was wearing to slide behind her and cup her ass as he pressed her closer, grinding her down onto his lap. He captured her bottom lip tenderly in his teeth as he ended a kiss, and their eyes locked and held. “You break my heart, MJ,” he murmured as he pulled away. “And only you can put it together again.”

***



So mark your calendars for August 15, folks. #MJiscoming #ListenfortheThunder



SALES N' STUFF


As many of you know, the first book of my FIERCE trilogy has been offered for free as an Amazon exclusive. You can also get the follow-up books, UNSTOPPABLE and EPIC, free through Amazon Prime.

But even MORE epic is what will happen June 6, 2014.



This is a one-day sale, one complete series ALL FREE, for 24 hours. 1-click like the wind, y'all!

That's it till next month! Keep being awesome. xoxo

GV