Release Blitz ~ What's Left of Me, Firebird Trilogy #2, by Jennifer Loring

What’s Left of Me

Book Two in the Firebird Trilogy

by Jennifer Loring

“There is always one more secret…”

Publisher: Limitless Publishing

Release Date: July 26, 2016

 Recovering from years of living the superstar hockey life wasn’t easy, but now Aleksandr Volynsky finally has everything…

He’s married to the love of his life, expecting a daughter, and has a new job as an assistant coach with his old team, the Buffalo Gladiators. His happiness is short lived, however, when a sexual assault allegation surfaces, and Alex is forced to cooperate with an investigation for a crime he didn’t commit.

Stephanie Hartwell is juggling her dream job with marriage and motherhood, but she’s not convinced she’s doing any of it well… 

Stephanie’s stress level goes from bad to worse when she’s diagnosed with a serious illness. Battling declining health and the critics who question her commitment to Alex in light of the allegation, she makes a decision that could change their relationship forever.

Alex is afraid he’s about to lose everything—especially when he sees Stephanie’s friend kiss her…

Devastated that his life is spiraling out of control again, Alex turns to his friend, Natasha, a Russian pop star. Convinced that Stephanie and her friend Brandon are having an affair, Alex resumes his self-destructive behavior.

What Alex doesn’t know is Stephanie has been conducting a secret investigation of her own. She learns the truth behind the sexual assault—a truth no one, especially Alex, expects.

With everything now out in the open, can Stephanie and Alex commit to a fresh start for the sake of their daughter, or will the ghosts of their pasts finally tear apart everything they have left?

Buy now or read for free with Kindle Unlimited

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Excerpt

Stephanie sat at the tiny, square kitchen table in a tiny, square studio apartment. Dust lined the moldings and the slats on the blinds, darkened the forgotten crevices on bookshelves and in the entertainment center. The white walls were dingy with age and disregard. Thick, acrid tension clung to the air and crawled into her throat, into her belly, curdling her insides.

“Um…can I get you something to drink?”

Shiny, dark hair poured over Courtney’s shoulders and down her back. Black liner emphasized her large brown eyes. More makeup than that was superfluous, and she knew it. Her clothes, while not tight fitting, revealed enviable curves in all the right places. Pretty, and young. She’d been barely legal with Alex.

“Why do you want the money?”

Courtney’s hard eyes adopted a haunted expression. “I don’t know how else to get it. It would take me decades to save enough. My mom is in hospice, and the medical bills—I mean, she lost the house, and now I’m in this shithole—” She swept her arm. She was biting her lip, but the tears came anyway. “I had to drop out of school, so I’ve got those loans too.”

“So you decided to blackmail my husband.”

“He’s the only person I know who has the money, and I had this video… It’s fine if you think I’m a slut. So does everyone else. I’m not a sick kid, so who gives a shit about me, right?”

“Let me see it,” Stephanie murmured.

Courtney wiped her eyes and cleared her throat. “Even I don’t want you to see it.”

“That bad? Was it…” Stephanie barely mustered the courage to ask. “Consensual?”

Courtney darted her gaze away. “Most of it.”

Oh, God. Stephanie forced down her gorge.

“Everyone has secrets, you know? There’s a side of him he doesn’t want you to see.”

“It was two years ago.”

“How much do people really change? They say they do, but all they’ve done is put a coat of paint on a house with structural damage.”

“You know he’s bipolar. When he’s hypomanic, he takes risks. Mostly sexually.”

“Maybe. Or maybe it brought out a part of him that was there all along.”

No. Not the Alex I knew. Know. “I want to see it.”

“You don’t.” Courtney sighed and set a laptop on the table, opened the lid, and clicked a few buttons. She turned it so it was facing Stephanie. “I’ll be outside.”

“Thank you.”

Courtney stepped into the hall. Stephanie stared at the dark, grainy image in the media player. She could make out two pale shapes that resembled human bodies.

She took a deep breath to steady her shaking hand, then tapped Play.

It was Alex all right. Despite the poor quality, his voice—and the body whose every ridge and scar she knew intimately—confirmed it. The old Alex, bigger, uninjured, and unaware of the havoc his neurochemicals were wreaking on his brain. She’d allowed for some foolish hope that both Courtney and Alex were mistaken, that they had mutually misremembered it. Each second that crawled by, she wished for the strength to stop watching, to give Courtney the money and piece their lives back together. There was no good reason to view this except to permanently warp her vision of the man she had sworn to protect from himself.

Ignorance was bliss. Knowledge was power. She could not have both.

Blog Tour ~ Whirlwind Affair, Erotically Bound #1, by Francesa Hawley

Welcome to the blog tour of Whirlwind Affair by Francesca Hawley. 

This is an erotic romance novel and is book 1 of the Erotically Bound series. 

The full schedule for the tour can be found here.

Blurb

Taken by storm…

Surprised by the attentions of handsome, sexy Rodrigo Torbellino and seduced into a one-night stand, curvy Erika Bergstrom shares a night of pleasure and walks away to give herself some distance.

When fate brings them together again, she’s pleased when he demands more. But does he want her or a business deal with her family? Their whirlwind affair raises the stakes. Will it be business or pleasure?

Amazon | B&N | Kobo | iBooks

Excerpt

His dark eyes caressed the curves of her buttocks like a warm hand. Erika Larson-Bergstrom shivered as she glanced at him out the corner of her eye. She licked her lips as his gaze captured hers and he smiled, unnerving her while at the same time arousing her until she ached with need.

A part of her wondered if her mischievous twenty-two-year-old twin daughters had set this up. After all, they were the ones who’d given her the $100 gift certificate for Erotically Bound, the upscale Minneapolis adult store she shopped in right now. But the man eyeing her was no twenty-two-year-old kid. He was all man and she wanted to explore every inch of him…intimately.

Erika looked down at the lingerie she fingered, trying to clear her lust-filled mind. Her biggest problem was that she’d spent the last twelve years rearing her daughters as a single mom. She could count on one hand the number of men she’d dated during that time. The number she’d slept with was even less. She was just horny and needed to get laid, and he was the answer to a horny woman’s prayer.

“Miss, could you assist me?” His voice was warm and deep with the hint of an Antonio Banderas-style Spanish accent. She looked up into the warmest brown eyes she’d ever seen. At least he’d called her “miss” and not “ma’am”.

“Assist you?”

“Yes, I must buy a gift for a lady and I have no idea what she might want.”

“Oh.” Erika forced a smile to her tight lips. “Sure.”

Well, that certainly burst her bubble. He had a woman he was shopping for. It figured. Of course it should have been a relief he wasn’t buying undies for himself since he was shopping in the women’s lingerie section, but she’d been dreaming he might possibly be as attracted to her as she was to him. No such luck.

He wanted a buddy to help him shop for another woman. Shit. Buddy seemed to be the only way men viewed her—especially lately—and it was almost always because she was a plus-size woman. Women with big butts liked sex too. Damn men, anyway.

“So what’s the gift for? Your anniversary? Her birthday?”

“Anniversary? No.” He laughed. She liked his laugh…a lot. He threw himself into it. His head back and his hands running through his hair. Thick, black hair. Yum.

Focus, Erika. Do not notice the full, wide lips and straight, white teeth. The high cheekbones. She swallowed, her gaze skimming over him. The broad shoulders, narrow hips and tight ass. Forget how hot he is. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t ignore his appeal.

“I’m shopping for my administrative assistant.”

“Your…?” Oh geez. Sleeping with an employee. Could it get worse?

He waved his hand as he read her expression. “No, she is getting married and this place has a bridal registry.”

“A bridal registry? You’ve got to be kidding.” Erika raised her brows.

“I know. It sounds insane, and so I told her. But she assured me it was so.” He pulled out a piece of paper and handed it to her. “Here is a list of things the clerk printed for me that have not yet been purchased for her. My assistant is very organized and wants no duplicates.”

Erika looked at the list he held and realized he was telling the truth. It consisted of lingerie, loungewear, dresses, shoes and, good grief, sex toys and movies.

“It’s…um…comprehensive.”

“Yes. I refuse to buy her some of these items. I am her friend, yes, but her employer first. Can you imagine if I showed up at the office bridal shower with,” he took the list back, glaring at it while shaking his head in disbelief, “a Rotating G-Spot Rabbit Vibrator?”

“It would certainly be the talk of the party,” Erika agreed dryly.

About Francesca Hawley

Hi. I’m Francesca Hawley and I’m a fat chick. A woman with dangerous curves just like my heroines.

Many people don’t like the word, “fat” but I do because it’s the truth and I’ve learned to own it. I am a fat chick and I always will be. When I first began to read romance, the heroines were all thin. I kept wondering, where were the fat heroines? I wanted to read about a fat chick who loved herself—or at least learned to love herself—and a hot alpha hero who liked her jiggly bits just the way they were. 

Since I didn’t find many big girls to read about, I decided to write about them, so Francesca Hawley – author of Romance with Dangerous Curves was born.

In a Francesca Hawley romance, my readers will find authentic, sensual, fat heroines who love and are loved by their intense, passionate, and seductive Alpha heroes. I hope you enjoy their dangerous curves just as much as their hunky heroes do.

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