A Special Jungle Madness Friday!
Friday, March 2nd, 2007
Welcome to Friday in the Jungle! It’s a great day to be here because we happen to have a super “double” prize this week!
First of all, we’re only two weeks away from another of my FAVORITE holidays…St. Patrick’s Day! It’s not that I like green beer (I don’t even like the regular stuff) but I am a fan of all things Irish. After going on a dream vacation there two years ago, it’s become my favorite place other than the good old U.S. of A.
I know it’s a little early, but I wanted to offer a goody that someone would get in time to use/wear/eat on St. Patty’s Day itself. So this week’s winner will get a “Kiss Me I’m Irish” T-shirt…
AND a box of specialty St. Patty’s Day Chocolate Covered Oreos!
AND a copy of a book featuring my 1/2 Irish 1/2 Italian heroine Venus Messina…WICKED & WILLING
BUT WAIT…THERE’S MORE!
(Did she say MORE? She did!)
Because our amazingly talented, wonderfully gracious friend ALISON KENT is offering a special giveaway right here, too.
Her new release THE PERFECT STRANGER is coming out in a few days, and to celebrate, she’s giving special exclusive excerpts to bloggers all over the blog-o-sphere. And we Plotmonkeys definitely didn’t want to be left out.
So, not only do you get to read this “nowhere else” excerpt…today’s winner will get all the Irish themed gifts above, plus a copy of THE PERFECT STRANGER! And because Alison’s so generous (and such a good friend) she’s offered TWO copies of the book…meaning we’ll pick a runner-up to get their own copy.
Just comment and you’re entered…hope the luck of the Irish is with you!
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He shook his empty canteen. “I need water.”
“You’ve emptied that already? No wonder you keep having to stop.”
He’d stopped once. “What? It’s hot. I’m sweating. It wasn’t full to start with.” He could see the steam coming out of her ears when there was no need. Her response had crossed the line from reaction into over. “Besides, this is your backyard, not mine. I need time to acclimate.”
“I told you. We don’t have—”
“Time. I know.” She was nothing if not a broken record. “But you can’t tell me taking fifteen minutes now to refuel won’t save us thirty down the road when I pass out and you have to do mouth-to-mouth to revive me.”
He had her there. He watched her expression shift from dark to not so, watched the fight go out of her on a long exhalation of breath.
Watched as she hung her head and accepted the inevitable and what he’d known all along.
He was right.
“There’s a spring that feeds the stream we’ve been following. It’s not too far.”
The fact that they’d been following a stream at all was news to him, and sent a volley of Swiss Family Robinson points into her corner.
He’d been too busy breaking leaves and bending stalks and snapping twigs, marking the path, to notice that they were indeed climbing steadily upward.
“Then let’s go,” he said, adding, “quickly and quietly,” just to get a rise if he could.
She dropped back so they could walk side by side, his thigh bumping her hip every few steps. “I meant what I said, you know. You really are a pain in the ass.”
“Comes naturally. Like my good lucks and charming personality.”
“You argue. You give me a hard time. You’re always wanting your way. What part of that is charming?”
“What? Nothing about the good looks? The tight ass? The killer smile?”
“If you’re fishing for compliments, give me something to help us get to where we’re going, and I’ll think about it. Or at least find me a six-pack I can drink because as nice as they are?” Her scarred brow came up. “Your abs aren’t doing me a bit of good.”
Ha, he mused. But she had noticed. And he wasn’t above using that physical attraction as leverage, or seduction as a weapon.
He could hardly forget the way she’d responded to the touch of his finger when they’d been sitting in front of Gabriel’s tent.
And he’d take the memory of her body tumbled on top of his there on the jungle floor to his grave.
He shook off the thought and found another nudging into its place. Something she’d said about having cut off all contact with her family.
He wondered how that played into her decision to drag her kid through the jungle.
“As long as you’ve been down here, I would think you’d have figured a way to get the things you need. Even if it meant getting it from your family.”
“I told you. I don’t talk to my family.”
“Ever?”
“Ever.”
“A bad estrangement?”
“You could say that.”
“What about your son?”
She slowed, her voice tightened. “What about him?”
“Doesn’t he want to see his grandparents? Don’t they want to spend time with him?”
She came to a stop. She turned. She didn’t bother to cloak the emotions in her eyes. “My son is my business, Jack. Not yours. Who he sees? Who he spends time with? None of that is your concern, okay?”
Her voice, her words, both were deceptively calm. But her eyes? They gave her away. He sensed an explosion, and because he was who he was, he pushed.
“Why play violent video games when you can live one, eh?”
She swung. Her fist flew toward his jaw, a full right hook that answered any question about whether or not she hit like a girl. She didn’t.
But he knew how to duck, and so caught the blow on the shoulder and spun to the side, grabbing the whip and machete from her belt as he fell.
The momentum she’d put into her swing sent her stumbling forward, and it took only a well-placed boot tangling between her feet to put her exactly where he wanted her.
On her back. On the ground. On his good side.
He hooked his leg over hers and flipped himself up to straddle her hips, grabbing her wrists, binding them with the whip and pinning her down.
Her chest heaved, and her eyes burned with a volcanic fire, searing him with all the fury she’d convinced herself her circumstances demanded be kept bottled up.
She was the hottest thing he’d had beneath him in longer than he could recall, and his body didn’t care about the severity of her crimes.
“Don’t ever hit me again,” he said, breathing hard, weighing this chance he had against never having another, wondering about the cause of his hesitation before his mouth came down.
Like it???? Click the cover to order!
From the back cover:
Some like it hot.
The men and women of Alison Kent’s sizzling SG-5 series like it hotter. In this all-new novel of steamy suspense, the jungle is the only place wild enough for a hotshot helicopter pilot and a renegade rich girl with one hell of an agenda…
Bachelor parties are fun, as long as you’re not the poor sap getting hitched…or slipped a Mickey and waking to discover you just became the poor sap. Not to mention that your “wife” is pregnant, and if you don’t go along to her village to meet the in-laws, the nice police comandante will be muy unhappy. Just another day in the life of helicopter pilot J. Jackson Briggs? Not so much. His Smithson Group gig wasn’t supposed to be dangerous, but the the woman who drugs him, then knocks him out, then drugs him again certainly is. She also may or may not be a nun. She’s definitely a lying, scheming, lethally gorgeous…American. Jack’s light years from believing the story Jillian Endicott gives him about her noble cause in the sweltering wilds of San Torisco, but he knows one thing: he’ll get the truth—and plenty more—from her, one way or another…
Being an Endicott of the Boston Endicotts taught Jillian plenty about the haves vs. the have-nots—and made it easy to choose sides. But there’s nothing easy about her mission in San Torisco, and things only get harder when Jack Briggs is thrown into the mix. Six-foot-three of big Texas mouth and big…other things…Jack’s pegged her as a bored little rich girl. Hey, he can think what he wants, as long as he does what she wants. Do unto others what needs to be done—that’s Jillian’s motto. Problem is, Jack knows how to push her buttons from minute one—and the closer he gets to pushing her over the edge, the more she wants him to…
Now under dark velvet cover of jungle nights, two rebels with a cause are going deep—and falling hard—for the perfect stranger…
View the trailer:
