EXCERPT
Trapped:
Blood Rose Tales #1
Blood Rose Tales #1
by Caris
Roane
USA Today bestselling author, Caris Roane, brings you Trapped,
a short, sexy story of the Blood Rose
Tales, priced at only $0.99. Trapped
is a passionate, paranormal romance, a vampire romance, set in the world of the
Nine Realms. Caris Roane is the author of over sixty published works, fifteen
of which are paranormal romances featuring sexy, warrior vampires and the women
who love them. Also available: Hunger.
Description
Mastyr Quinlan pursues the artist, Batya, with only one thing in mind but
soon discovers that his desire for her is just the beginning of an
earth-shattering affair …
He doesn’t want a woman
in his life…
Quinlan must keep Grochaire Realm safe from the enemy at all costs. As ruler of his realm, a woman has no
permanent place in his day-to-day existence. But when his lust takes him to
Batya’s bedroom, he soon discovers he’s deep into a powerful experience that
threatens to blow his life apart. He wants Batya with a feverish desire that
makes no sense in his logical, warrior world. But when an ancient fae attacks
Batya’s gallery, he launches into protector mode and soon finds himself embroiled
- body, soul, and fangs - with a woman he’d only meant to bed a couple of
times.
She has no desire to get
involved with a mastyr vampire…
Batya’s intense desire for Mastyr Quinlan stuns and baffles her. She
doesn’t want to be involved with the vampire on any level. His sole focus of
ruling Grochaire Realm has kept him from staying with one woman longer than the
proud length of his fangs. Besides, she’s built a life for herself in Lebanon,
Tennessee as an artist and healer to the realm ex-patriot community. But when
the ancient fae attacks Quinlan at her gallery, then attempts to kidnap her
assistant, Batya finds herself catapulted into an astonishing adventure. Even
so, she works steadily to get back to her free-clinic and her painting, but how
can she leave Quinlan behind when he’s commanded her like no other man ever
has?
Excerpt
From Chapter One: Batya watches Mastyr Quinlan battling impossible odds just outside her
art gallery. She needs to help him, but what can she do?
Batya made her way to the lower gallery floor and hid behind one of the
pillars. She couldn’t believe anything of what she was seeing and her heart beat
so hard in her chest she thought it would explode.
“What’s going on?”
Batya turned toward the doorway that led to the back rooms and her
assistant’s apartment. Lorelei had been her solid right-arm for two years now,
helping her run both the gallery and the free-clinic. “I don’t know, but I
think Mastyr Quinlan’s in trouble.”
Lorelei drew close. She stood just slightly shorter than Batya as she
stared out at the strange golden light and the massive wraith-pairs that looked
ready to eat Quinlan alive.
“He’ll never stand against her.”
“Against who?” Batya stared at the light and could vaguely make out a
woman’s shape.
“She’s the one, the ancient fae.”
“You mean the one that caused all those problems in Bergisson, at Sweet
Gorge?”
Lorelei nodded. “I know her.”
Batya felt knocked sideways. “What the hell do you mean you know her?”
“I…I wasn’t sure, but I am now. I can see her plainly. Can’t you?”
“No. I see a female figure. That’s all.”
Batya didn’t know what to do. She could sense Quinlan’s battle frequency
gearing up, but she could also feel the other vampires, that they were
super-charged. She understood then that Quinlan showed nothing but bravado,
that he knew he was going to die.
“We only want the woman.” The ancient fae’s voice sounded rough like the
splintered edges of a chopped up tree trunk.
“You can’t have her.” Quinlan’s deep voice roared along the street,
easily breaching the gallery window.
“I have to do something.” Batya spoke the words aloud, but without an
intended end-point.
“What can you do?” Lorelei asked.
“We’re lost. All of us. No one can withstand the ancient fae. Her power ripples
over my skin. Can’t you feel that? It
almost burns.”
Batya turned to Lorelei and saw that tears tracked her pale cheeks. She
trembled head-to-foot. Fear reeked from her but not a sudden kind of panic,
something that tasted metallic on the air like she’d lived with it for decades.
She didn’t know much about Lorelei. She’d shown up a couple of years ago
and stayed to help. Batya didn’t ask questions, one of her rules in the ex-pat
community.
Suddenly, the air outside the gallery lit up and streams of killing
energy passed from Quinlan to the wraith-pairs hovering. Quinlan rose into the
air as well, at least three feet off the ground.
He looked magnificent, even from behind, because he held his arms wide
and flung impossible arrays of energy at the enemy, something that would have
destroyed a normal wraith-pair with the first blow.
Yet the Invictus couples barely moved as they slowly advanced on him,
pressing their joined energy hard at him in streams of brilliant blue light.
The street was full of red and blue fireworks and killing flashes of
light. The golden aura of the ancient fae grew brighter as the battle raged.
Maybe she gained energy from the sight of destruction.
Probably.
The woman was evil.
Batya heard Lorelei’s soft sobs, but her own inclination leaned far away
from sadness or even pity in this moment. She’d grown up with the destruction
that the Invictus pairs could inflict, which was one of the reasons she’d left
Grochaire in the first place. She’d had enough of the war.
The other reason began to forge a heavy vibration through her body, the
part of her that was monumentally and powerfully fae. For a moment, she even
wondered if she could pull this off, because she’d kept her power dormant for
the past century.
Yet with one man’s life hanging by a couple of blue streams of energy,
she gathered her power. Quinlan belonged to her, not to these vile, over-sized,
monstrous wraith-vampire Invictus pairs and he sure as hell didn’t belong to an
ancient fae who even she could detect smelled like rotting seaweed.
“Stay back, Lorelei. Don’t worry, this won’t hurt you…”
Review
This was short but sweet. I love that the past hero mastyr's assets in
this book too. If you've not read the Blood Rose series I highly recommend
them. If you have them this book will be a sweet test until mastryr Seth's
story comes out. Happy reading!
From the Author
I confess I've had a love affaire with vampires for several years now,
especially warrior vampires, the kind found in the books of Sherrilyn Kenyon,
Lara Adrian and JR Ward. Though I've been published in Regency Romance under
the pseudonym Valerie King - and yes one of my Regency Novellas features a
vampire - one day I woke up knowing I had to create my own contemporary world
of the warrior vampire.
For some mystical, magical reason, early in the process, my vampires
appeared with enormous beautiful wings and it has been the most amazing
experience to include flight in my novels, in both battle scenes and scenes
involving spectacle. My special vampire world, published by St. Martin's Press,
is introduced in the first book called, Ascension
(December 2010). The second book, Burning Skies (May 2011), opens up the world a little bit more. It is followed
by my third novel, Wings of Fire (September 2011), and more since. What a thrill it has been to
live with my ascended vampires through the creation of this extraordinary,
multi-dimensional world!
For more information about my unique take on the vampire mythos, check
out my website and my book release
video on YouTube.
With every hope you'll enjoy reading my books set in the World of
Ascension.
Links
