Special Deadline-inspired sneak peek!
Wednesday, May 16th, 2007
SPECIAL REMINDER: Be sure to stop by tomorrow, when bestselling author Cindy Gerard will be our special guest blogger! 
As you all know, I’m rolling into the home stretch of the book I’m writing for NAL, a contemporary paranormal. I’m getting closer and closer to the end everyday. Technically, the book was due yesterday, but because my new editor and agent are saints-on-earth, I have an extra week. Yeah!
So, instead of blogging, I’m writing…but I wanted to give you all the VERY FIRST sneak peek of this book. NO ONE has read this except my agent (who thinks it’s incredible…which is why I love her…well, ONE REASON why!)
My working title is PHANTOM LOVER, but it looks like it might be changed to PHANTOM PLEASURES. Not sure yet, but as always, you’ll be the first to know. The hero is from the 18th century and through a magic curse (not time travel), he’s awakened in the present thanks to my heroine, who is a hotelier who owns the castle he’s trapped in.
Enjoy…
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“Maybe this is a dream,” she muttered.
“Perhaps it is. There’s also the distinct possibility that instead of you freeing me from the portrait, I sucked you in with me.”
“You’re just trying to scare me.”
His brow furrowed as he considered the possibility. “Frightening women for sport is not the measure of a true man.”
“What is?” she asked, annoyed at the unwelcome fear coursing through her.
His smile was pure sin.
She scowled to mask the sudden flare in her blood. “I can’t be in the portrait. Can I?”
“Can’t say for certain. I appear to be free of the portrait,” he said, nodding toward the painting of the room that no longer had a sexy, sardonically smiled subject in the center, “yet I cannot leave this castle.”
“How do you know?”
“While you were unconscious, I attempted an escape.”
Can I leave?”
“I have no idea,” he admitted, then leveled his ocean grey stare at her. “Why don’t you try?”
A sudden wave of dizziness struck her. She braced her hands on either side of her, willing the sensation away. She’d experienced enough vertigo for a lifetime after the wreck. She didn’t need a reminder of the pain and discomfort now.
She was healthy. She was strong. She was a survivor.
She repeated the mantra silently in her head until the wooziness subsided. After blinking away the last of the fog, she shot a glance down the stairs and to the door, then back at Damon.
His hopeful expression vanished nearly as quickly as he had.
But not quickly enough.
“No,” she replied.
“No?”
She arched a brow. “Not used to being contradicted?”
His glower was powerful. “Of course not, but I assumed you’d want to ensure that freedom was still yours to take.”
She smiled. “You let me worry about my freedom. You’ll soon discover that I’m very good at taking care of myself and getting precisely what I want, when I want it.”
He wanted her to try the door. Desperately. He was clever and commanding, this man, and he wasn’t as adept at hiding his emotions as she was in reading them. For all she knew, the wave of vertigo she’d just experienced was from him trying to exert his will on her with the same magic he’d used to disappear and to conjure the chaise lounge and the food. But she’d fought him successfully. If she played her cards right, the game could be hers.
Bottom line, she wanted this man.
To be her personal phantom.
“What could be more pressing than finding out if you are free of this curse or trapped by it?” he asked.
“Finding out more about you.”
The atmosphere shifted. The power play ended and the blaze in his eyes kindled from a spark of frustration to a slow, steady sexual heat. He sat back down on the chaise and held out his hand to her.
“You say that with seduction in your voice, my lady.”
She accepted his hand. This time, when he drew her onto the chaise, he allowed no space between them. Her thigh crushed against his, igniting a wildfire of sensation through her.
She braced her hand on his knee. “Wishful thinking, perhaps?”
He smiled with hooded eyes. “Simple observation. There’s no shame if you want me. In the most classical sense.”
She licked her lips, unwilling to deny his assertion. She did want him. She had wanted him–or at least, a man like him, for all of her life. Gallant, powerful, intense. A master of magic.
And best of all, he wasn’t real. He could not follow her out of this castle or disrupt the ordered life she’d built for herself on the mainland. He was a fantasy. A diversion. A sexy, sensual secret she’d discovered and perhaps, only she could keep.
“I won’t deny that I find you incredibly attractive,” she responded.
“How can you? Even now, your body tightens for me.”
She gasped. Even in her century, such talk pushed limits. And yet, as his gaze brushed over her breasts, her nipples responded instantly. Her thigh muscles clenched with anticipation.
Maybe he was simply like her. Honest. Insightful. Observant.
Hot for magical sex.
“Is this magic?”
He leaned closer so that his breath, wine-scented just as she’d imagined, teased her cheek. “Oh, yes. The most elemental magic of all–desire.”
She tilted her chin to match his sensual stare. “You were a playboy in your former life, then?”
He ran his tongue over his lips, drawing her attention to the fullness of his mouth. “Circumstances of my youth dictated that by boyhood was rather brief and did not include much time for play,” he informed her, his words so crisp and factual while his tone lazed with sensuality. “My pursuits of pleasure began when I was very much a man.”
“And you’ve been a man a very long time,” she said, her voice breathy with possibilities.
Their lips were mere centimeters apart.
“I’ve been a man trapped without a woman even longer,” he warned.
Their noses brushed. “Should I be afraid?”
“If you have to ask,” he said, sweeping the edge of his lips over hers, “the answer is decidedly no.”
