EVERY LOVE by LK Collins

Post – Living in the after, the events that took place over a year ago are etched in my brain. Haunting me in the worst ways imaginable.

Traumatic – Physical and psychological scars have me so wounded that I can’t get through a day without my mind swirling with constant fucked up images.

Stress – Anxiety. Panic. Rage. I’m not myself and the pain I fight through each day has made me make some really bad decisions.

Disorder – Out of control. Not fucking normal. Nowhere even close.

I say fuck Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

The life I left behind is gone and everything I’d hoped to return to has been stolen away, all while I was being beaten, starved, and tortured. But being Nate Wilcox, I pick my ass up, ‘cause I’m a fucking survivor. Even if my methods are totally fucked up, it’s all I can do to keep the pain at bay.

Title:  Every Love 

Author: LK Collins 

Book Tour: September 14 - 25 

Genre: Erotic Suspense 

Hosted by: S.B.B. Promotions

Chapter 1

-Nate-

Oh fuck! The bathroom is covered in blood. It’s smeared down the wall and pooled around my mom’s head, where she’s lifelessly lying flat on her face. Fear freezes me. What in the world happened? The shower curtain is ripped down, her bloody hand print is smeared along the side of the tub where she struggled to get herself up.

            “Ma,” I yell, finally willing myself to move to her side. I touch her back to wake her and suddenly I’m back in Afghanistan. I push away the images assaulting me that I have worked so hard to suppress. But still, before my eyes is a wounded soldier, shot, bloody, and hanging on to life. God dammit, stop! This is my mom, not that place. I’m scared to move her and know better than to even try. My worst fear in this world is something happening to her. Moving my trembling hands to shake her a little more, I’m about to lose it. I don’t want to hurt her, but I also want to wake her any way possible. My heart is thudding against the walls of my chest as I grab her wrist to see if she has a pulse. I sit in silence, fighting to hear her heart. How did this happen? Did someone hurt her? Where is all this blood coming from? My mind races, all the while I’m listening. I’m not sure if what I feel is her heart or mine, but I go with my gut and hop up the best that I can, my prosthetic making it hard to move around.

             Quickly I swipe the phone off of her nightstand and grab a towel as I drop back to my knees, dialing 911. Tears stream down my face looking at her this way. The blood is coming from a gash on her head, and I try to click into numb soldier mode as I press the towel onto the wound to stem the bleeding. Someone had to have done this to her. There’s simply too much blood for her to have slipped and fallen on her own. I feel the panic overtaking me, worming through the numbness.

            “911, what’s your emergency?”

            “It’s—” I choke, staring at her weak body.

            “Hello? Sir, what’s your emergency?”

            “My…My mom…I…I don’t know what….” My voice is shaky and I’m struggling through each word. “She’s…she’s unconscious and—”

            “Is she breathing, sir?”

            Fuck, there’s a lot of blood. My mind flashes back to the battlefield, my chest tightens, I’m frozen.

“Sir, I need to know if she’s breathing?”

            “I…”

            “I’m routing an ambulance to you. Are you at 211 Riverdale?”

            “Uh huh.”

            “Sir, now please tell me, is your mom breathing?”

            “She’s facedown, so… I don’t know.”

            “Is her airway clear?”

            Leaning over her, I look at my mom’s face and gently brush her hair out of the way. I can see that nothing is blocking her mouth or nose. Her eyes are closed and her poor glasses are smashed to hell, barely over her eyes.

            “There’s…” Fuck!

            “Sir? Her airway?”

            “It’s clear.”

            “Good, does she have a pulse?”

            “I think so.”

            I hear the dispatcher in the background speak to someone, then she comes back on the line. “The ambulance should be there in less than a minute, just leave her ‘til the medics arrive. Are you okay to get off the phone and open your front door?”

            “Yeah,” I say and hang up.

            I take a deep breath and try to push the panic down, unlocking the door in a haze. I need to get my shit together. Running back to my mom, I rest my head softly against hers, I cry and just pray that she’ll be okay. She has to be. I’ve already lost one woman in my life, so I sure as hell can’t lose another. Lying this close to her, I can feel her breathing.

            Thank God. Pulling the towel away, I check and see that her head is no longer bleeding. That’s good. But again my damn mind gets the best of me and morbid thoughts take over. I envision her in a casket, my dad and I crushed with grief standing over her, and the pain of it is as real as if I was standing right there, right now.

            All of a sudden the room is flooded with EMTs. “Sir, I need you to get up,” one of them says, his voice so faint as I struggle to come out of the grief brought on by my vision. Where did it even come from? He gently helps me up as I’m still having a hard time processing things.

            “What happened?” one of them asks me as the others begin to work on her.

            I replay the story the best that I can, fighting to stay calm and in the moment. Then out of the blue – a flashback to the day Arion collapsed in the hallway outside of her condo, when I showed up like an asshole and scared the shit out of her. She had no idea that I was alive, and the pure shock alone caused her to faint.

            Watching my mom just as helpless makes my world spin. Everything inside of me aches as my vision bounces between her, Arion, and war. 

Is there a way to find love when your past is so full of darkness? With EVERY LOVE by LK Collins, you take the emotional ride of fighting for hope of a life worth living.

Nate is one of those guys that you start off hating but as you see the changes in his you start to root for him and want to see his HEA. LK has a way of evoking the feels out of you, giving you a wide range of ups and down. Nate had been thru hell and back, his world ripped apart but you see the moment that everything changes with Elania.

If you are looking for a gripping, emotional ride, EVERY LOVE is just the ticket.

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EVERY SOUL

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Bestselling author, LK Collins, writes emotionally and sexy gripping Erotic Romance novels. She’s a lover of the oxford comma and everything in the writing world. Her stories are compelling and will draw you in from page one, and with twists and turns, she always keeps her readers enthralled 'til the end. When LK’s not lost in the minds of her characters, you can find her on the beach with her family, where her husband and writing partner, “The Prezident,” are sure to be plotting out her next tale.

   

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Excerpt Reveal: Sins of Sevin by Penelope Ward

 

  

From New York Times bestselling author Penelope Ward, comes a new forbidden STANDALONE romance releasing September 21st! 

PRE-ORDER  SINS OF SEVIN NOW!

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SINS OF SEVIN EXCERPT

Copyright © 2015 by Penelope Ward

As he gulped down the water, I watched his Adam’s apple moving up and down. I used the opportunity to glance over his sweaty body up close. The top of his underwear was sticking out of his jeans. The smell of him was intoxicating, a mix of cut wood, sweat and cologne. I thought about our talk the other night, how he’d confessed his sexual history. As much as it disturbed me, knowing he’d used that body to give a woman pleasure made me weak with desire. I could only imagine what that would feel like with him.

Elle would find out.

I was still looking down at his abs when he said, “Thank you.” My eyes immediately shot up to meet his incendiary stare.

He’d caught me checking him out.  

“You’re welcome.”

His mouth curved into a smile as he handed me back the glass. “How have you been? I haven’t seen you much this week.”

“Yeah. I’ve been busy.”

“I have something for you,” he blurted out in a way that indicated he was anxiously waiting to say it.

“For me?”

“Yeah. Wait here, okay?”

Sevin ran over to where his truck was parked and grabbed something out of the open window.

He returned to where I was standing and handed me a CD.

“What is it?”

“If you like the Smiths, you’ll like some of the songs on here. I included a few Smiths songs—the ones from your favorite album, but there’s also The Lemonheads, The Pixies…and Pulp.”

“You made this?”

“Yeah. I made it for myself and burned you a copy.”

“Thanks.”

He looked me straight in the eyes and said, “Number ten is my favorite.” Then, he walked away.

I immediately took it back to my room and dusted off my old portable CD player.

Lying down on my bed with the sun streaming in, I drowned out the world and listened to every song. When it got to number ten, I paid special attention, knowing he’d specifically called that one out.

The name of the song was Like a Friend. I later found out it was by Pulp. With each lyric, my eyes became heavier until they welled up in tears. The words described to a tee exactly how I’d been feeling about him. The singer was shouting out all his feelings about his friend, that she was everything he shouldn’t want, everything that was bad for him, but yet he couldn’t stop wanting her. He’d take what he could get even if that just meant being friends. Every single line spoke to me. It was the first time I realized that maybe I wasn’t alone in my torment. This situation—whatever was happening between us—was taking a toll on him, too.

I must have listened to the song five times before I went over to the window and looked down at him. At one point, he finally looked up and noticed me. He squinted his eyes to see me through the glare of the sun. I still had my headphones on. He knew I had heard number ten. The look on his face when our eyes locked only confirmed that number ten wasn’t just a song. It was his way of speaking to me.

 

What happens when the one you want is the only one you can't have?

My name is Sevin.

Homeschooled and sheltered by my ultra-religious family, I was always taught that lust was a sin.

Elle was the girl who'd been carefully chosen for me.

After a long-distance courtship, I'd be moving into her family's guesthouse so that we could get to know each other in the months before the wedding.

Boundaries were set: no inappropriate touching, no kissing, no sex before marriage.

I'd accepted those rules and my fate.

Until I met the one I wanted to sin with.

That was when restraint became a problem...especially since THE ONE wasn't Elle.

It was her sister, Evangeline.

You know what they say about best laid plans.

My name is Sevin, and I have sinned.

Told in alternating points of view, Sins of Sevin is a full-length standalone novel. Contains graphic sexual content and harsh language. Only appropriate for adult readers age 18+.

 

Penelope Ward is a New York Times, USA Today and Wall Street Journal Bestselling author. She grew up in Boston with five older brothers and spent most of her twenties as a television news anchor, before switching to a more family-friendly career. She is the proud mother of a beautiful 10-year-old girl with autism and a 9-year-old boy. Penelope and her family reside in Rhode Island.

       

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Delayed Penalty by Sophia Henry

 

She closed her heart long ago. He just wants to open her mind. For fans of Toni Aleo and Sawyer Bennett, the debut of Sophia Henry’s red-hot Detroit Pilots series introduces a hockey team full of complicated men who fight for love.

Auden Berezin is used to losing people: her father, her mother, her first love. Now, just when she believes those childhood wounds are finally healing, she loses something else: the soccer scholarship that was her ticket to college. Scrambling to earn tuition money, she’s relieved to find a gig translating for a Russian minor-league hockey player—until she realizes that he’s the same dangerously sexy jerk who propositioned her at the bar the night before.

Equal parts muscle and scar tissue, Aleksandr Varenkov knows about trauma. Maybe that’s what draws him to Auden. He also lost his family too young, and he channeled the pain into his passions: first hockey, then vodka and women. But all that seems to just melt away the instant he kisses Auden and feels a jolt of desire as sudden and surprising as a hard check on the ice.

After everything she’s been through, Auden can’t bring herself to trust any man, let alone a hot-headed puck jockey with a bad reputation. Aleksandr just hopes she’ll give him a chance—long enough to prove he’s finally met the one who makes him want to change.

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When you’re twenty years old, there’s nothing music and a drink can’t cure.

At least that was my best friend’s response when I told her I’d been cut from Central State’s women’s soccer team that morning.

The overzealous stylings of two drunk chicks bellowing “It’s Raining Men” wafted through the air, and I’d just received my vodka club from the bartender, so why did it still feel like someone scratched my heart out with a serrated shovel?

Maybe “It’s Raining Men” wasn't the right song?

Or maybe my friend’s remedy lacked one vital piece. Like, five minutes locked in a bathroom stall with the crazy-haired hottie approaching me. His head was buzzed short on the sides, leaving a thick patch of dark locks, gelled into a neat pompadour in front. Sort of like 1920s gangster, except less slicked, more height.

Every muscle in Crazy Hair’s body rippled under his clothing as he walked. He had to be over six feet tall, with a broad chest and massive arms stretching the seams of his long-sleeved black Henley. His skin was smooth and pale, a contrast to the thick dark eyebrows resting above his jump-in-and-drown-in-me blue eyes. From the scar on his left cheek to the smug smirk of his lips, he was exactly my type: dangerous, confident, and totally lickable.

I flipped my long blond hair behind my shoulder and glanced to my left, pretending Crazy Hair’s advance had no effect on me. In reality, I’d checked to make sure that he wouldn’t pass me up on the way to some beautiful bombshell I hadn’t noticed standing in the vicinity.

Like when you see someone wave, so you wave back. Then you realize they weren’t waving at you but the person behind you. So you try to play off your lame wave like you were batting away mosquitoes, which aren’t there because it’s December in Canada. Just trying to avoid an awkward situation like that.

Crazy Hair continued to close in, before stopping just inches away.

I’d opened my mouth to ream him out for stepping too far into my personal space, but the sweet scent of clove cigarettes flooded warmth through me like a sip of hot chocolate on a January morning in the Upper Peninsula.

“You work at post office?” he asked in a thick Slavic accent.

“Um, no.” I took a swig of my drink. Though I was unsure where he was going with that line, he was hot enough for me to stick around.

The left corner of his mouth curved into that sexy little smirk. “Because I see you check out my package.”

Carbonation stung my nose as I snorted and choked trying to hold in my laugh. Without time to turn my head, I sprayed vodka club and saliva across the front of Crazy Hair’s shirt.

Awesome.

“Weak!” I heard from somewhere behind me.

I turned to see who had yelled, still coughing as I noticed a group of guys and girls at the high-top table behind me. Shaggy blond hair bounced against one guy’s forehead as he snickered. The dude next to him held his fist in front of his mouth in a horrible attempt to hide his laughter. A brunette in a tight red sweater didn’t look amused. At all.

Crazy Hair threw the guys not one but both of his middle fingers.

“That girl’s a fucking smoke show. Why’d he use a shitty line like that?” the blond one said.

Smoke show? I bit down hard on my lip to fight back a smile. The last time I’d heard that phrase was in high school from my hockey-playing best friend, who’d informed me that “smoke show” was player lingo for “hot girl.”

Unsure of how to recover any semblance of cool after spitting my drink across Crazy Hair’s muscular chest, I spun around and shuffled back to the table my friends occupied in front of the karaoke stage.

It felt weird to drink in public, though we’d been to Canada on multiple occasions. As lifelong residents of Detroit, Michigan, we thought of Windsor—the Canadian city connected to Detroit by a bridge and a tunnel—as the next town over, rather than a foreign country. Nineteen was the legal drinking age in Windsor, so it made sense for underage Americans like us to cross the border for some legit cocktails.

My butt had barely brushed my seat when I heard my name, and my name alone, called over the speakers. I lifted my eyes to the outdated popcorn ceiling, as if the voice resonated from the heavens beyond, rather than the karaoke host.

“Why is he calling my name?” I asked Kristen.

“I picked you a song,” she responded, taking a swig of her beer.

“You picked us a song, you mean?” Emphasis on the us, because I’d never sung alone in my life—not counting the shower and car, of course.

“Nope. Just you.” Kristen placed both hands on my back and pushed me toward the stage. “You need to sing it out. Keeping shit bottled up never works.”

I had no problem singing it out if I was singing with other people, but not when it was just me. Hadn’t I been embarrassed enough today?

My short-lived “smoke show” happiness vanished, and the embarrassment of making a fool of myself in front of Crazy Hair returned. I tried to reverse, but Kristen’s trampoline-like hands propelled me back toward the stage.

Climbing onto the stage, I snatched the microphone out of the host’s hand. I almost felt bad about taking my anger out on him until I saw the lyrics to “Proud Mary” light up in white against the teleprompter’s blue screen. Fuck.

What the hell? I exhaled and lifted my eyes to Kristen.

“Girl power!” She saluted me with her glass.

Was “Proud Mary” a girl-power song? I thought it was about a boat.

“Do you have ‘Good Feeling’?” I asked the karaoke host. He was around my age, with big brown eyes matching his neat, trimmed beard and his shoulder-length hair.

“Flo Rida?” he asked, as disapproving wrinkles formed on his smooth forehead.

“Oh, no,” I said. “The Violent Femmes.”

A smile spread across his lips, and he nodded. “Give me a second.”

When I saw this book pop up on my Netgalley account, I was so excited to get my hands on this baby! I LOVE sports romance and hockey really gets my motor running, so I was giddy to see this new series!

Let me just say that it did not disappoint. Everything that I love about this genre, Delayed Penalty delivered for me.

Auden (which I LOVE that name) grew up with her grandparents in Detroit, after the death of her mother when she was six. Having no other family, being raised by a Russian Language Professor grandfather and Irish Catholic grandmother, she lead a somewhat sheltered life. 

Aleksandr is a Russian hockey player on the Detroit Pilots farm team. From the first time Aleksandr and Auden meet (which is at a karaoke bar in Canada), these two have a chemistry that can't be denied. This chemistry keeps the storyline fresh, fun and full of sexy appeal. I love it when a man knows what he wants and Aleksandr is just that man. He sees in Auden what others have denied. The two connect on so many levels, but Auden can't see why someone as handsome and popular as Aleksandr would want someone has dull and plain as herself.

Delayed Penalty was full of flirty fun, steamy sexy moments and twists and turns. I was pulled in from the very start and loved every minute. I didn't want it to end!

If you a fan of sport romance, definitely add Delayed Penalty to your TBR. You won't be disappointed!

4.5 Stars

Sophia Henry, a proud Detroit native, fell in love with reading, writing, and hockey all before she became a teenager. She did not, however, fall in love with snow. So after graduating with an English degree from Central Michigan University, she moved to North Carolina, where she spends her time writing books featuring hockey-playing heroes, chasing her two high-energy sons, watching her beloved Detroit Red Wings, and rocking out at concerts with her husband.

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