Emilia is excited to start a house-sitting job, even if the house is creepy and more than a little on the odd side — as odd as the owner’s requests. When she finds an unusual gaming console, she is drawn into a lusty video game in which she crosses paths with five inhuman creatures. She is drawn to them all, but when the five men keep telling her that the game is very much not what it seems, Emilia realizes she can no longer play along.
As the path she follows offers not just desire and intense experiences but also sadness, cruelty, and hurt around every bend, Emilia’s resolve firms: she will free the five men, who tell her they are already a family, already lovers. Whatever she has grown to feel for them, she cannot let them suffer if saving them is within her power.
With the rules of a game she doesn’t understand forcing her to play along, Emilia must find a way to get to the end of the game and get everyone out — whatever the cost. The freedom of her five monsters depends on her.
Emilia, as if enthralled, took another step toward him. The gravel shifted under her silly boots, and the man looked at her. His eyes were vibrant copper, and they widened as he saw her. The melody stopped, and his mouth fell away from the mouthpiece of his flute.
“Traveler?” he said, the word somewhere between surprise and disbelief.
Emilia licked her lips. “You play beautifully.”
After a moment of silence, he closed his mouth and smiled a contagious smile at her. “Thank you. It’s nice to have someone listen to it. It feels like no one has, other than those glowworms, for the past century or so.”
“Right. Because this is Rook’s prison, and you are a prisoner.”
He tilted his head. “You met Arden, clearly.”
She cleared her throat. “He stole my underpants.”
It took several long heartbeats before the flute player broke out in giggles. “He’s been known to do that, but as far as I have experienced, only after he has seen to your needs.”
As far as he has experienced? “That’s one way of putting it.” A noise caught Emilia’s attention, and she turned. The greenery that made the bower was shifting behind her back, closing off the entrance to the flower-hung space. “Uhm.” She looked back to the flute player. “Let me guess. I’m stuck here. And the only way to get out is… playing your flute?”
“Mmh. That’s not the first time someone suggested that exact thing, you see. But yes, metaphorically speaking.” He put the actual instrument into a case that he kept behind the cushion. “My name is Pheus, in case you need to scream something, later on.”
Emilia snorted, but the noise died on her lips when Pheus stood. Oh, he was pretty, but also tall, lean, his hair reaching easily to the middle of his thighs. He wore something like a Japanese style bathrobe, though this was no cheap fabric. It made him look as if he were a Faerie prince, and Emilia found herself drawn to him, just as much as the hunter and his hounds at her back had made her want to run.
Alexa Piper writes steamy romance that ranges from light to dark, from straight to queer. She’s also a coffee addict. Alexa loves writing stories that make her readers laugh and fall in love with the characters in them.
The Dark Prince will stop at nothing to save his people—even if it means kidnapping the one woman with the power to destroy them all…
Garrin Branimir, Prince of Dark Kingdom, has been trapped in endless winter for centuries, along with his people. His only hope of saving them is to find the woman with the power to destroy the magical barriers imprisoning Dark Fae. With her by his side, he and his kinsmen will finally be free.
But Lex Meinrad isn’t full Fae, and she wasn’t raised in his land, content to obey her prince’s every order. She refuses to do his bidding—no matter how intense the sparks between them fire.
With time running out, Garrin must convince this impossibly stubborn woman to cooperate before his enemies bend her to their will. And, unlike him, they’ll choose force over seduction…
Garrin Branimir, Prince of Dark Kingdom, strode down the dingy hallway where the Fae kept their half-human, half-Fae Halven, and paused near a dark-haired female on his right. The woman grinned as she passed.
She was attractive. For a human. Or Halven, given the building.
Hundreds of years ago, Fae from other kingdoms in the Faery realm of Tirnan built Dawson University to monitor their half-blood offspring, known as Halven. Particularly those Halven who developed magical powers. As far as anyone knew, no Halven born of Dark Fae blood existed due to the Land of Ice that blocked Dark Kingdom from any other living being, including in the Earth realm. But Garrin suspected the one he searched for could be hidden here.
The prophecy stated a female with Dark blood would save his people. Garrin had run out of options in Dark Kingdom. No one possessed the power needed to create safe passage to other lands. The Earth realm was his last hope for finding the one.
He fanned his hand in front of the female’s face before she passed. He’d been testing all females in the building for weeks. So far, none had deflected his magic.
The brunette blinked, then stumbled. Then her lips turned blue, and she began to choke, her dark eyes watering as ice formed across her face. Sounds of suffocation came from her throat.
She was indeed Halven. He wasn’t as good at sensing magic levels as those with the ability, but he could tell she was more than human now that he was close. Only she wasn’t the one for whom he searched. She was simply a half-blood, like all the rest.
Garrin sighed and waved forward the two soldiers behind him. “Heal her and blur her memory.”
This girl might not be the one, but Garrin would search for the female who was until his dying breath, which should give him a millennium, give or take.
“Your Highness,” Amund said, a portal creator and one such Fae with the ability to sense energy levels. “The earthbound Fae soldiers have discovered our presence.”
Garrin let out a long-suffering sigh. He’d spent the last hundred years attempting to cross the barrier separating his kingdom from the others of Tirnan. It had been nigh impossible to make it across the Land of Ice weakened, only to be attacked by deadly Fae soldiers from other lands. Until an uprising left said lands vulnerable. He’d finally breached the borders of the other kingdoms and made it to the Earth realm, and he wasn’t about to turn back now. “The Fae living on Earth are a nuisance. How am I to find the girl with them nipping at my heels?”
Amund stared off in the distance. “We have two minutes before they discover us.”
His men had returned the brunette to the dwelling from whence she came, and Garrin looked down the hallway one last time. “Very well. We will return another—”
Someone exited a door halfway down. A female. Tall.
Garrin didn’t get a good look at her face because she’d pulled a hood over her head that dipped below her eyes, but he held up his hand in a staying motion. There was something about this one… He was drawn to her.
“I sense no power,” Amund said.
Fae were taller than humans, and many Halven took on the trait. “I will test her anyway.” The closer she got, his urge to be near her grew.
“Your Highness, please hurry.” Amund glanced back. “We have a minute at most.”
The female kept her head down as she moved closer. She didn’t appear to see Garrin standing there.
Odd, that. At over seven feet, Garrin wasn’t easily missed in the Earth realm. The girl was so preoccupied, in fact, that she nearly ran into him.
She stopped abruptly a couple of feet away, and her chin tilted up. Her face flushed, and she averted her gaze. But not before Garrin caught sight of her beautiful golden eyes, the mysterious energy behind them hitting him like a bolt of lightning.
There was no time. Garrin needed to test her quickly and be gone. He pursed his lips and exhaled, giving her more of his powers than he’d given other females they’d encountered.
She blinked, and ice crystallized around her nose and lips…and melted as quickly as it had formed.
Her gaze collided with his, her expression one of surprise.
Garrin’s entire body lit up with desire so powerful it took his breath away.
He stepped back, astonished at his reaction to the woman, and at what he’d discovered. For so long he’d fought death and starvation and battled enemies to reach the one. No Dark Fae were thought to live in the Earth realm, but Garrin suspected she was hiding here, and now he’d found her in the form of a Halven.
Elation coursed through him. After all this time, he’d succeeded where no other Fae had for hundreds of years.
He would save his people from isolation. He would make his father proud…and he would have the female. A smile slowly pulled at the corners of his mouth. “Take her.”
Jules Barnard is a USA Today bestselling author of contemporary romance and romantic fantasy. Her contemporary series include the Never Date and Cade Brothers series. She also writes romantic fantasy under the same pen name in the Halven Rising series Library Journal calls ”…an exciting new fantasy adventure.” Whether she’s writing about sexy men in Lake Tahoe or a Fae world embedded in a college campus, Jules spins addictive stories filled with heart and humor.
When Jules isn’t in her sweatpants writing and rewarding herself with chocolate, she spends her time with her husband and two children in their small hometown on the Pacific Coast. She credits herself with the ability to read while running on the treadmill or burning dinner.
**Please click the orange “+Follow” button to follow Jules on Amazon and be notified about her new releases**
To learn more about Jules, visit her website at: julesbarnard.com
Title: Audrey Author: Sean-Paul Thomas Genre: Contemporary Romance
From the author of My Sister and I and The Old Man and The Princess (recently optioned to be a motion picture) – comes a new, suspenseful romantic tale that will knock you off your feet. A story that has a reminiscence of ‘500 days of Summer’ and ‘Midnight in Paris’ with a fair dollop of ‘The Graduate’ thrown in. And of course Audrey, a delightful, older female protagonist who takes the young and wayward ex-con Joe under her wing.
Just out of prison Joe, a young builder from Edinburgh who writes movie scripts in his spare time, randomly meets Audrey, a washed-up, hard-drinking, chain-smoking, middle-aged French film actress at his local film festival. After hitting it off and spending one crazy, magical night together, Audrey sees some potential in Joe and his writing and tries to help him win back his estranged daughter by getting his first screenplay made into a movie in Paris. And so, the adventure of a lifetime begins…
“Don’t say that. Jesus. You were brilliant up there. And you barely look a day over twenty-nine.” Joe said with a reassuring grin. Audrey’s eyes widened and she smiled with delight at the compliment.
“Well the dim lighting out here in this dark alleyway is fantastic, yes?” she teased. “It hides all of my lovely wrinkles and skin imperfections.”
“Okay,” Joe said rolling his eyes. “Maybe thirty-five then when you were outside earlier in the natural light,” Joe said, teasing her back, trying his best to flirt with her now, but it had been such a long time since he’d played the flirting game with anyone, that he didn’t even know if he was doing it right anymore. They both chuckled at his words and Audrey even slapped him lightly on the arm. Joe took it as a pretty good sign that she enjoyed his rusty flirting banter, even if she was only humouring him. He was just about to ask her something else. Something a little bit deeper and meaningful. That was when the festival host suddenly appeared through the fire escape, desperately searching for Audrey. Joe realised instantly that he was coming to steal her away even before he gave Joe a quick dismissive look.
“Miss Beart? We need to take some more pictures now. Can you please come back inside?”
Joe had never felt so gutted before in his life. It was like the brick alley walls around him were all crumbling in and there was nothing he could do to stop the imminent disaster. They both hesitated and looked deeply into each other’s eyes like they knew they had so much more to say and ask of the other. At first, the festival host just assumed that Joe was only a starstruck fan and would be dropped by Audrey like a hot piece of coal effective immediately at the host’s mere white-knight presence in front of them. But after a long but comfortable silence, even Joe felt surprised that Audrey was still standing there and hadn’t made her excuses to leave already.
“So…” She finally uttered with that cute and delightful smile of hers, which was directed straight at him once again. “It would appear as if they remembered who I am after all…”
Audrey threw her almost finished cigarette down onto the ground and stamped it out with her shoe.
“I guess it was nice meeting you then… Joseph…”
“Please, just call me Joe”
“Hey, Joe, what do you know?” Audrey replied right back at him with a playful smile and a casual wink.
“You too, Audrey. It was an absolute pleasure,” was all Joe could fire back even though he wanted to say a million and one other things.
There was another fleeting second of hesitation. Joe didn’t want her to go anywhere and he knew she could feel it too, but in the end, he felt utterly powerless to make her stay. Who the hell was he to demand such a thing? In a normal world of boy-meets-girl, this would have been the ideal time to ask for her number or e-mail address or at least add her on bloody Facebook. But Joe did nothing. Not only was he well out of practice on the boy-meets-girl market front, but who the hell was he to ask anything of her? Joe knew he didn’t belong there. He knew he didn’t belong in Audrey’s world at that particular moment in time. He hadn’t yet earned that kind of accolade or respect as an artist. He was a nobody, and she was a somebody. Joe lived in Edinburgh as an ex-con, part-time plumber, and a starving writer and she lived in the vibrant, stunning, and equally chaotic city of Paris, or so he’d read on her IMDB page, deep within the magical film world that Joe hadn’t even begun earning the right of entry into. Plus, it felt even more awkward to him with the festival host still impatiently leering over them, still wondering why on earth Audrey hadn’t made her excuses and left with him yet, but at the same time not wishing to appear verbally rude by enforcing her to come back into the cinema.
“Good luck with the movie, too, and your writing.” Joe finally added, still not taking his eyes away from the middle-aged beauty.
“Merci Beaucoup,” Audrey replied, still gazing right at him before finally turning away and beginning to make her idle move back through the fire exit doors and into the cinema. “See you then,” she continued in a tone that suggested if Joe would only man the hell up and ask her to meet him later that evening for a drink or a late-night coffee so they could chat some more about movies, writing, or whatever the hell other life subjects that came up, then she would absolutely and positively accept his invitation. But Joe didn’t say another damn word, because Joe wasn’t that bold, or charming, or confident. Had he ever been? Yes, perhaps, once upon a time, before five long years of living in a lonely cell had robbed him of some crucial part of his personality and socialising skills to the extent where two minutes conversing with a French film actress convinced him that was two minutes more than what he actually deserved. Then, to the cinema host’s deep frustrations, Audrey suddenly paused at the fire exit door for much longer than he would have liked.
“What are you doing later, Joe?” Audrey asked out of the blue. Joe found himself utterly taken aback by her question, but quickly composed himself with a sharp, cool, and confident response that he would thank himself for in the not too distant future.
“Nothing I can’t get out of. Why, what do you have in mind?”
“Can you show me where to buy some cigarettes around here?”
“Aye. I can do that.” Joe replied, utterly delighted but trying his best to hold it in.
“Good. Why don’t you meet me out front in say… thirty minutes, and I’ll maybe even let you show me around your wonderful city, too, if you’re lucky?” Audrey said, finishing with a wink.
Joe smiled with utter pleasure. He couldn’t quite believe what Audrey had just said, but he went with it all the same.
Sean is an author from Edinburgh in Scotland. He is the best selling Kindle Author of ‘The Old Man and The Princess’ which was recently optioned to be a major motion picture.
Sean spent most of his childhood and teenage years on the move with his Scottish and Irish army Parents growing up in the likes of Cyprus, Germany, Wales, and England, as an army brat.
With a keen interest in both reading and writing, he was diagnosed with travel and writing bugs very early in life. Now, writing, travelling, reading, cinema, and Scottish football (Supporting the mighty Edinburgh City for his sins) are his main passions in life.
His main inspiration for writing today comes from living in such a beautiful, charming and hauntingly, Gothic city, such as Edinburgh. An awe-inspiring wee city that has given him so much amazing inspiration to write the more time he spends there.
Recently, Sean has been working on a couple of screenplay adaptations of his books. One of which ‘The Old Man and The Princess’ made the final of the Nashville Film Festival Screenwriting Competition 2018 and has since been optioned by an award-winning Director /Producer team. Scheduled to go into production in Ireland in the summer of 2021 filming has been postponed until 2022 due to the recent covid pandemic.
