Since Legendary Tails II is already shipping and/or on shelves in some places, I’m posting an excerpt in the blog. Not the same one that’s on the Books/Home page, a different one, featuring…the first kiss.
My wonderful web guru husband has done site updates, including linking Legendary Tails II to Barnesandnoble.com, since they’re already shipping it. If you read the excerpts and just can’t wait, you can click on over and order your very own copy. Happy Monday!
Love Spell, Ellora’s Cavemen Legendary Tails II
coming June 21 (or right now from B&N.com)
Copyright 2005 Charlene Teglia
Ellora’s Cave, Inc. all rights reserved
Blurb:
When it comes to love, demure Lucy Wilson wants to get carried away.
Literally. The inept witch has a history of relationship failure and she fears
that without passion, she won’t have lasting love. In order to have proof that she’s
the object of his desire, she wants a man who will capture her body and her
heart.
Attorney Mitch Davis is too conservative and too controlled to be the
passionate lover her heart yearns for. After months of platonic dating, Lucy
knows what she has to do. Give up on Mitch, and go after the man who will be
everything she needs with a love spell that can’t go wrong.
So why is Mitch the man she sees in the candle flame as she completes the
rite? And why is he suddenly giving her everything she needs? Does she
have him under a spell, or are they both caught up in the magic of love?
Excerpt:
Lucy set out a small, brightly colored fabric sachet of herbs, placed a pink
candle next to a crystal holder, and lit a stick of jasmine incense. As the
fragrant smoke curled around the end of the stick, she closed her eyes and
visualized a protective circle around the herself and the small draped table
that served as her altar.
She unrolled a piece of parchment and wrote, stopping often to twine a strand
of curly hair around her finger as she thought, then jotted down another
phrase or scratched out a line and rewrote.
The incense was reduced to a smoldering stub when, finally satisfied that the
list was complete, she set the parchment aside and took out a vial of rose oil.
She coated a fingertip with the oil, traced a line down the candle and
consecrated it. She opened the sachet, poured out vervain and rolled the
candle in the herbs. Then she stood the candle in the holder, lit it, and softly chanted the incantation.
“Moon of love, shining bright, aid me in my spell tonight. Guide my true love to me; as I send, so mote it be.”
Lucy gazed into the candle flame and envisioned the man who would
embody all of the qualities written painstakingly on her parchment. The man
who would be her soul mate, her knight in shining armor, her pirate, her
passionate and adoring lover. She said the words that called him to her three
times, completing the rite.
On the third repetition, a gust of wind from an open window made the candle
flicker and the picture in her mind wavered, then changed from the fantasy
pirate of her erotic dreams to the repressed Armani-suited image of her
nightmares.
Instead of a lusty hero come to sweep her away into a deeply satisfied happily
ever after, she saw a certain frozen-faced, suit-wearing, buttoned-down, aloof
and austere, emotionally and sexually withholding lawyer.
Lucy swore, blew out the candle, and scattered the herbs on the altar with one
impatient hand. “Thanks for nothing,” she muttered, instead of the traditional prayer of
gratitude.
And she’d been so sure nothing could go wrong this time. She was a terrible
witch. She couldn’t do the simplest spell.
Was a man who wanted her too much to ask for? Why had she seen Mitch, a
man she knew perfectly well found her completely resistible?
So much for love spells. Maybe she should try a dating service, instead.
Frustrated and defeated, Lucy stalked down the hall to her bedroom, yanked
off her clothes and left them in a heap on the floor, climbed into bed and
hauled the covers up over her head. She was more than ready for this day to
be over.
Sleep came eventually.
The firm masculine hand that closed over Lucy’s mouth brought her abruptly
out of her fitful dream and into a waking nightmare.
Her heart pounded as she stared into the eyes of a stranger, his face
obscured by a dark mask that left only his mouth and chin exposed. The rest
of him disappeared into the shadows and Lucy realized he must be dressed
all in black.
How had he gotten in? Her eyes left his and went to the open window she’d
forgotten to close. She let out a muffled groan at her own stupidity.
She forced herself to look directly at him again, to meet those eyes that
glinted in the moonlight. She brought her hand up to shove his aside and free her
mouth to speak.
“You don’t want to do this,” she said. Be cool. Be in control. Be firm. “You
won’t be able to undo that much bad karma in this lifetime.”
“Oh, but I do,” he answered, leaning forward until the mask touched her nose.
“I do want to do this.”
Then his hard slash of a mouth closed over hers. Lucy lay frozen between
shock and a nagging sense of something not quite right, a piece of the puzzle
she was missing in her barely-awaken fog.
That voice. She knew it. She’d heard it earlier today.
It was Mitch’s voice. Mitch Davis, Mr. Straight Arrow Attorney. A man who
would rather pass her the salt than make a pass. A controlled, dignified man
who wouldn’t be caught dead dressing up like a cat burglar and breaking into
a woman’s bedroom in the middle of the night to ravish her.
But then, maybe Mitch had hidden depths. Mitch had never kissed her before,
either. He was certainly kissing her now. Hungrily. Urgently. Like a dieter
who’d broken under the strain of prolonged denial and gone for the forbidden
double fudge brownie with single-minded fervor.
She dragged her mouth free of his long enough to gasp out, “Mitch?”
Her wrists were trapped easily by strong hands and her lips were recaptured
by his devouring kiss. “Shut up,” he growled against her lips as they parted in
amazement. “Just shut up and kiss me.”
Unable and mysteriously unwilling to do anything else, Lucy pushed aside all
the reasons why he was all wrong for her and kissed him back.
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