She’s a scientist at a blood bank. He’s a newbie vampire with control issues.
Is theirs a match made in heaven? Or hell?
KISS ME, BITE ME
(Blood Kissed, Book 1)
By Sayara St. Clair
I’d learned early on in life not to show
weakness. Like messy emotions. Shedding tears in front of my family had a
similar outcome to busting out of a shark cage wearing blood cologne.
The world hasn’t
treated Kayana Castello Branco particularly kindly. So it’s no surprise to her
when she literally bumps into her soul mate, only to find he’s already taken.
He’s gorgeous, strong, smart, kind—every woman’s ideal guy. Of course he’s unavailable for soul-matey
business.
When fate shows
pity, putting Greg Morgan in her path a second time, the resulting collision is
colossal. Their connection is epic, the stuff of romantic legends, fairy tales,
sonnets. They’re like Romeo and Juliet (only, the R-rated version).
But something has
happened to Greg. Now, every time he gets near Ana, he gets long and hard…and
pointy in the fang area. He doesn’t know whether he wants to kiss her, lick her,
do-that-thing-that-rhymes-with-duck her. Or bite and deprive her of every last
molecule of haemoglobin.
Loving a newbie vampire with control issues really and
truly sucks.
Excerpt:
When
I reached Dean’s Coffee House, I was relieved to see my usual table in the back
was the only one not taken in the otherwise crowded café. I rushed in before
anyone nabbed my spot, sat down, and was busy rifling around in my bag, trying
to get my hands on my book, when I felt someone standing beside my table.
I
saw a pair of long legs clad in worn jeans. I looked up farther to see a
muscular chest, broad, broad shoulders and bulging biceps that strained against
a fitted grey T-shirt. This guy was a big, big bastard. I started to feel a
little shaky and was almost too nervous to look at his face. Swallowing hard,
forcing myself to do it, I looked up, way up, until I met his gaze. And was
confronted by the most amazing deep green eyes I had ever seen in my entire
life.
Or
rather, that I’d seen once before in my entire life.
Holy. Freaking. Mother. Of. God!
Seemed
like suddenly my physiological systems went all out of whack. I couldn’t
breathe right and my heart took off with a rhythm like a white boy dancing.
Did
Tall Dark and About To Give Me a Heart Attack remember me? Probably not.
Perhaps he made a habit of grabbing girls in corridors all the time. Oh, plus
I’m not six feet tall. Or blonde. Or a model. My nips went hard, though, at the
sight of him. And since he must be attracted to hard N.I.Ps… But then, he
didn’t even know I’d named his lover Nordic Ice Princess, a.k.a. N.I.P., so he
wouldn’t get the connection—
‘Um,
since you’re sitting in my chair,’ he began in that deep voice I remembered so
well—the one that haunted my dreams. ‘I mean, my favourite chair,’ he amended, ‘the one I sit in every Saturday
morning. And since all the other tables are taken, I was wondering if you’d be
prepared to share?’
I
blinked at him in utter disbelief. And had the urge to start screaming
obscenities. His ass—his perfect, gorgeous ass—had been warming my chair on Saturdays, while my stupid
ass had been sitting at home?
Well, fuck a goddamn duck!
I
sat there gaping at him, unable to formulate a response. Attempting to calm
myself, I tried some deep breathing, soon realizing it would take way more than
a few ins and outs of my breath to regain my equanimity.
I
heard chairs scraping the floor and my gaze flicked to the adjacent table,
where the couple was leaving. The attention of the man who was waiting to share
my table, however, didn’t waver. He stared into my eyes with such intensity it
was as though he were willing me to comply by the sheer magnetic pull of his
eyeballs. Lucky for him, he ignored the fact that there was now a free table.
Because after all this time, if he went and sat somewhere else, I think I’d
pick up a chair and brain him with it.
Apart
from this strange potential for violence, I felt all teenage-crush fluttery. Be cool. Just be cool. It’s entirely likely
he doesn’t even remember you.
I
inhaled one last big breath—an attempt to suck up some nonchalance along with
my oxygen. ‘So what—you think I’m like, Goldilocks perhaps, sitting in your
chair?’ Ah, my level of nonchalance was awesome.
He
bit the inside of his cheek and looked at me for a handful of seconds. ‘Yes, I
think so.’
‘And
if I’m Goldilocks, then I guess you must be…Papa
bear?’
‘I
might just be.’
‘Well,
you’re certainly big enough…to be a bear.’ My voice did not waver. No sir, it
did not.
‘I
am indeed.’ He gave me a closed-lipped grin. And oh my hell, just kill me now,
dimples appeared in his cheeks when he did it.
‘Problem
with this scenario,’ I paused to tug at one of my own very un-goldy locks,
‘wrong hair colour.’
He
eyeballed my long dark locks appraisingly, which caused a slight shiver to run
through me. ‘No, not at all. Actually, your hair is…just…right.’ He said the last two words slowly, for emphasis.
I
clamped my hand over my mouth so I wouldn’t laugh outright. After a few moments
of us both pretending I wasn’t smiling behind my hand, I said, ‘Well, I’ll have
you know, this happens to be my chair
Monday to Friday.’ I watched his eyebrows as they took a trip towards his
hairline. ‘But since it’s Saturday, and it’s usually your chair on Saturdays, I
guess we can share. The table, I mean. You can sit over there,’ I said,
pointing to the chair across from me. ‘I don’t think you’ll fit on this chair
with me. Besides, I’ve already broken one of the chairs in your little cottage
in the woods.’
‘There
are a couple of ways we could both fit on that chair,’ he answered, now
sporting the most beautiful, devious grin. ‘But maybe I’ll sit here for now
and…we’ll see.’
If someone told a young Sayara St.
Clair that one day she would be an erotic/paranormal-romance-writing Aussie
expat living in Thailand, she would have snort-laughed and yelled, “You. Be.
Crazy!”
If someone told her the same thing
now, she would not yell, only nod solemnly. Because that actually happened.
Sayara has a science degree, with majors
in both microbiology and biochemistry. Working in the fields of serology and
tissue banking, she got to do lots of cool and sometimes slightly weird stuff.
She was employed as the manager/buyer for furniture retail stores, where she
had a chance to unleash her inner interior decorator. (Interior design is one
of her great passions.) And for a time, she taught English to students in Asia.
(Hanging about in a roomful of extremely loud, pint-sized humans is not one of her great passions.) She has
written: ads for TV, print and radio; real estate brochures; website copy; and
a screenplay. Now she’s writing fiction and has discovered it’s her favorite
thing to do. She’s also learned that writing sultry romances is so much more
fun than writing dry old scientific journal articles. No one has sex in
scientific journal articles. Not the ones she wrote anyway.
When not writing, she may be most
commonly found in a horizontal position reading, in the kitchen baking, in the
garden planting, or somewhere else singing at the top of her lungs. She loves
music and is prone to spontaneous bouts of dancing.
With regards to vampires and
chocolate: she bites one on a daily basis and has had a lifelong obsession with
the other. And she’s not telling which one’s which.
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