Originally on Kindle Vella! If she couldn’t catch him with honey…Violence will have to do. Power, Money and Beauty; Ira Dante had it all. She was the woman of his dreams. All Tristan had to do was say “yes” and she would give him anything he could dream of. But all that money came from trafficked drugs, stolen weapons, and mountains of bloodied corpses. All that power lead to sadistic rages and nightmarish madness. Underneath her beauty was a monster that threatened to rip him apart.
Simply put: Ira was batshit insane.
So Tristan refused; their relationship was built on pretty little lies hiding the hideous truth and as a vigilante, he spent years working against criminal empires like the Dante Family. Unfortunately, Ira was a woman who never took ‘no’ for an answer and she has long learned that all is fair in love and war.
He kept hold of that thought. Those words kept him away from the fog of sensation.
Or the lack of thereof.
His cheeks and ears burned, tears falling as he remembered the humiliation. His neck was so heavy and his nerves kept firing jolts through him, again and again.
After he had spilled himself all over Ira’s hand and the floor, the heaven he had tasted was quickly replaced with hell.
The shock of his own body betraying him had revealed the extent of his mutilation.
He begged for her to touch him.
Begged for her to hurt him.
“You ruined me…”
He bit his bottom lip, breaking the skin again, chewing on the wound while sobs vomited from his mouth. His hands, freed from the shackles, moving to touch his side and the mottled scar tissue that was left. He had burnt charred marks all over his body from the electric shocks, deep primal welts on his chest and shoulder.
He sniffled his choking gasps, “I… I’ve been mauled by a lion. A lion who… who is the biggest bitch in the world.” His gasps and chuckles devolved into a laugh, hands moving to the floor. An airy laugh that heaved out of his maimed chest, his lungs working overtime to suck in breath, “Wh-what a fucking story this will be! When I get-get out of here…” His laughter slowed, eyes heavy, tears still dripping from sticky, clumped lashes, “If… if I get out of here.”
“Perfect. You are perfect… my precious Tristan.”
“Biggest, most psychotic bitch in the whole fucking world…” His brow furrowed and he run his nails against the floor, leaving shallow indents. He took in a heaving breath, trying to focus in on the anger from his humiliation, from her disfigurement of him.
Yet underneath that anger, that embarrassment, was a deep sorrow. A sinking despair came forth from one simple thought.
“… Wasn’t I perfect before?”
… stop.
“Wasn’t I good enough?”
Stop.
His knuckles rapped onto the floor, doubt and panic overtaking his mind, his anger devolving into an old anxiety. The darkness of the cell, only a bit of light sneaking in from the narrow slit under the heavy doors, fed into the ravenous despair that filled his head, “Wasn’t I beautiful enough?” His knuckled kept tapping against the floor, skin scraping off. “Didn’t I please you enough?”
“All I want is you.”
Blood and peeled flesh trailed after his knuckles. The skin rubbed raw. The burn ran up from his fingers and sent sparks alight. Even this small amount of pain made him moan, eyes rolling back slightly. “Wasn’t hurt-hurting me enough?”
STOP.
He couldn’t stop.
How her skin felt when they first touched. Warm, kissed by the daylight. How her head pressed against his shoulder, just under his chin. Those curls coiling around him, wrapped around his fingers.
“Wasn’t my touch enough?”
His lips pressed against hers, softly at first, then deeper, his tongue caressing hers, her hand stroking his cheek before her fingers curled in his locks, pulling him close.
“My kisses… weren’t they enough?”
He turned to his stomach, his forehead pressed against the ground, his bleeding, raw knuckles pressed hard against as he pushed his weight up on them, “What more did you want from me?!”
Coda Languez is a Software Engineer by day and an Artist/Author by night. She is lover of all things anime, horror, and comic related, making her a true geek in all aspects. Heavily influenced by the works of Satoshi Kon, Kouta Hirano, Francesca Lia Block, and Clive Barker, Coda mixes black comedy, horror, magic realism, and dark romance into her works, creating an ‘it’s complicated’ relationship between readers and her anti-heroic, even villainous protagonists.
When she is not programming in her day job or writing psychological terrifying romances and dark action comedies in the night hours, Coda often binges on anime, fantasy, and sci-fi sagas and indulges in competition reality tv (a guilty pleasure). She is the mother of an adorable toddler and his Pembroke Welsh Corgi brothers, and wife to an awesome and often exasperated husband.
For information on Coda’s latest works, visit codemonkeyarts.com or connect with her on social media via @codemonkeyarts.
For weeks, he stood by my side, twisting his words into pretty half-truths. He enraptured me with his smooth temptation, leaving no corner of my being untouched. He consumed my mind and my body, then finally claimed my heart for himself. But Caelum’s true identity is terrifying enough to bring me to my knees.
Then, I discovered the truth of who he is.
Caldris is whispered in the Nothrek wind. The legend we only speak of with hushed words, in shuttered rooms, for fear of drawing his wrath once again. His intentions are a mystery, his desires impure, and he seeks to shackle me to his side for all eternity. With the Wild Hunt as our guard, he points us back to where it all began: the village of Mistfell and the boundary where the Veil once shimmered in the wind.
Now, another secret crouches, poised to change everything.
The Mist Guard have been sworn to keep us from crossing into Alfheimr, and from treading Faerie soil, even if innocents must pay with their lives. They have orders to resurrect Mistfell’s shimmering barrier, but, once again, there’s a greater cost than what has been revealed. Once, the people of Northrek blamed me when the Veil fell.
Soon, they’ll want me to pay the price the magic requires.
Adelaide Forrest is a USA Today & Amazon Top 40 Bestselling author of dark and gritty romance, such as the Bellandi Crime Syndicate and Beauty in Lies series. Adelaide fell in love with books at a young age and quickly discovered her love for writing soon after. She wrote short stories and then delved into full-length fiction at ten-years-old. Since then, she’s created over 350 book ideas and hoarded them over the years.
When she isn’t writing, she can be found spending time with her two young children, dog, and cat. She enjoys traveling, chocolate, chai tea, and most importantly, being with her family.
Title: The Light After the Orange Author: Beverly J. Hall Series: The Tundra Stone Series #1 Genre: Post-Apocalyptic
EVEN IN A DYING WORLD, IS SURVIVAL ENOUGH?
After the Orange and the catastrophic devastation of Earth, magic began to seep in—but will it help Alex Chegasa survive?
Hidden and protected by magic, she grew up embracing her gifts. After witnessing the only people she can call family being murdered, eighteen-year-old Alex must choose between her head and her heart in her search for a place to belong. But, her hunt for a home means having to hide her magic.
All the while, in the shadows, eight-hundred-year-old Fae Billey NicNevin, suffering from amnesia, is rediscovering her magic.
Are their fates intertwined?
What if the fantastical stories Alex’s mother told her as a child were true?
ALL MYTHS ARE BASED ON TRUTH
Sales Copy: Eighteen-year-old Alex Chegasa, one of the first generation to be raised on post-apocalyptic Earth, was taught to embrace her magical gifts.
After the Orange, as the planet burned, magic trickled in. The bombs that had wiped out most life ripped open the barrier between worlds. Can the next generation, connected to the magic, be the solution to mankind’s problems or are they destined to repeat the mistakes of their ancestors?
Did the Orange, the very thing that ravaged the planet, also provide the solution? Or is magic more than a coincidence?
While Alex searches for somewhere to belong, in Massachusetts, she questions if survival is enough when she comes to understand that magic, used by the wrong people, could be more dangerous than the power of the generations before her.
Meanwhile, in a parallel story, we meet eight-hundred-year-old Fae, Billey NicNevin. With a past she doesn’t remember, she struggles to fit into Nuadh Caled (New Scotland) as it rebuilds itself. When she meets a woman whose soul calls to her, will she find her missing piece or tumble into insanity?
Are their destinies connected?
WHAT IF THE FANTASTICAL STORIES FROM ALEX’S CHILDHOOD WERE TRUE?
Loneliness ate me up from the inside, nibbling away at me and leaving an aching emptiness. I didn.t know what I missed or who I missed but knew, deep in the part of my soul that holds my intuition, there was a person-size hole nobody could fix, except for the one.
The person we all hunt for but so rarely find. The person we were made to fit with. The one imperfect, perfect, mismatch our soul longs for. *
The trees gathered around me and protected me from the breeze that grew and took on a new life. I rested against the rough bark of the largest tree, my rear now sitting into the roots that formed a seat in the ground. The tree, I almost believed, was shaped for me. Its branches wrapped around my tiny form as I snuggled among the roots. The wind grazed my cheek and I pulled my scarf around my face, desperate to stay here for every second possible.
The sound of the wind howling through the branches vibrated the leaves and created a voice I longed to understand. I closed my eyes, listening, imagining I could hear the voices of the trees. I felt my soul combine with the tree, and contentment that existed nowhere else in my life melted my anguish and pain. My eyes shot open and I stared at where Geilis had been moments earlier. Empty space filled my view. I was, again, alone.
Beverley J. Hall was born in Kent, England, and raised in Scotland. Most of her childhood was spent with her nose in a book, and her love of stories was born.
While studying Art and Design, she discovered her love of storytelling, whether with paint, sculpture, fabric, or words.
After completing an MA in Creative Writing, she is now living her best life, writing stories at the seaside with her son, her granddaughter, and her cat Bertie.
Head over to TikTok, Instagram, or Twitter to join her overthinking and daydreaming (she’s still hoping for a pet dragon).
